| Behind Japan's political battles, a war over history
By Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian Studies in Stanford University, the former co-director of the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project at the Asia-Pacific Research Center, and an APP member.
First appeared on Observing Japan, August 5, 2025
Constitutional Democratic Party leader Noda Yoshihiko questions Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru in a 4 August meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives. During their exchange, Noda asked about Ishiba’s plans to mark the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II; Ishiba said he intended to issue a personal statement, though not a formal cabinet statement. Source: CDP
The political battles now raging in Japan in the aftermath of the July Upper House election are being waged across many fronts – tax policy, trade, corruption, and at base, a struggle for power.
Largely hidden from sight is another, deeper and more long-standing conflict – the war over Japan’s wartime history and its national identity. This dimension of the political battles emerged into the open this past week when the embattled Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru seemed to back away from his plan to issue a potentially landmark statement to mark the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war on August 15.
The Japanese media reported last week that Ishiba had changed his mind when faced with fierce resistance from the rightwing of the Liberal Democratic Party, mostly but not entirely followers of the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzō. For these conservatives, the last words on the meaning of the war were uttered by Abe in his seventieth anniversary statement. Fearing what Ishiba might say, they mounted a growing campaign to demand he back off from his plans.
“I believe it is unnecessary and will cause unnecessary confusion,” argued Nishimura Yasutoshi, a former Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry and a former senior member of the Abe faction in the party. They are leading the charge to force Ishiba to step down after the election results led to the loss of the majority in the Upper House for the ruling LDP-Kōmeitō coalition.
As the Asahi Shimbun put it:
Having been dealt a devastating blow in the Upper House election July 20 and facing calls from within his Liberal Democratic Party to resign, Ishiba has chosen not to rankle conservative elements in the party that would take umbrage at a fresh interpretation of Japan’s role in the war.
But in answer to a question from an opposition leader in the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives on Monday, August 4, Ishiba left open the possibility he may still issue some kind of eightieth anniversary statement as a personal message rather than a formal cabinet approved document which carries more weight.
"We must not let history fade away,” Ishiba replied. “We need to make active and proactive efforts to prevent this from fading away. Regardless of the formality, it is necessary to issue a statement to ensure that war never happens again."
The anniversary statement over time
The wars over anniversary statements are not new – they are in fact one of the most significant battlegrounds in the fight over Japan’s past.
The baseline for Japan’s official view of the war remains the statement issued in 1995 by Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, a Socialist who had joined an unusual coalition government with the LDP. For the first time, a Japanese leader not only marked the end of the war but apologized directly for Japan’s aggression and colonization in Asia. He expressed “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology” for “tremendous damage and suffering to the peoples of many countries, particularly those of Asian nations” that Japan caused “through its colonial rule and aggression.”
From the start this was a target of attack from those in the LDP who embraced revisionist views of the war, regarding it as a justified act of self-defense, of liberation of Asia from Western colonial rule, who focused on Japan’s victimization and condemned apologies as acts of “masochism.” Despite this opposition, which among other things blocked a Diet resolution echoing Murayama’s statement, his clear view remained as the official view. In 2005, when then Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō issued his sixtieth anniversary statement, he very notably echoed Murayama’s language.
When it was Abe’s turn in 2015, he issued a statement that carefully stepped around this challenge to rewrite the Murayama precedent. Under clear pressure from the Obama administration and from within Japan, Abe’s own statement does echo key words – “aggression” and “colonial rule” – while also trying to rewrite the narrative about the war. As I wrote at the time, based on my own expertise on the formation of historical memory about the war, in Nippon.com:
Abe’s version of events can be read as a justification for Japan’s own imperialism (which he neglects to mention began in the late 1800s with the seizure of Taiwan) and a denial of historical responsibility. But he goes on to acknowledge Japan’s own decisions that led to war (my italics):
‘With the Manchurian Incident, followed by the withdrawal from the League of Nations, Japan gradually transformed itself into a challenger to the new international order that the international community sought to establish after tremendous sacrifices. Japan took the wrong course and advanced along the road to war.’
This version of history will not satisfy many people, including many historians, but it is a step away from the view held by Japanese revisionists, including Abe himself, that Japan waged a war of self-defense and not of aggression, or even more provocatively, that it was engaged in the noble cause of liberating Asia from colonial rule.
Since that time, the backers of the revisionist right in Japanese politics have been eager to both protect the Abe legacy but also to correct even the concessions he made at the time. The most ardent advocates of this view of the past include the leader and members of the newly emergent darlings of the right in Japan – Sanseitō, a new party that made a significant showing in the recent election, now holding fifteen seats in the Upper House.
Sanseitō* is now well known as a Japanese echo of Trumpian rhetoric – from its slogan of “Japanese People First” to its anti-immigrant rhetoric. But what is less well understood is its passionate advocacy for an ultra-nationalist view of Japanese history, articulated by its leader Kamiya Sōhei and distributed for many years now on his YouTube Channel, CGS or Channel Grand Strategy. The channel features so-called “history lessons” taught by prominent rightwing historians.
“A fundamental reason for Sanseitō's rise, I believe, is rooted in the historical perspective shared by its candidates,” wrote historian Fujioka Nobukatsu in the rightwing daily Sankei Shimbun. “Building on the momentum of these study sessions, Sanseitō, established in 2020, has uniquely emphasized the importance of taking pride in Japanese history. It's an approach no other political party has adopted.”
Fujioka is a historian and the vice president of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai), the driving force for decades behind revision of Japanese middle and high school textbooks and opposition to what it views as a distorted view of Japan’s past. Sanseitō members have been active in promoting use of their alternative textbooks in Japanese schools.
What would Ishiba say?
If Ishiba were to deliver his own judgement on Japan’s wartime history in an anniversary statement, what would he say? There are some clear clues to this, clear enough to have fueled the fears of the revisionist rightwing in Japan.
Ishiba has made numerous remarks that indicate he shares Murayama’s view of Japan’s aggressive and colonial past and saw the eightieth anniversary as a key moment to declare Japan’s intention not to repeat that past, despite his reputation as a defense hawk.
Ishiba was among the most forthright of Japanese politicians in advocating close ties to South Korea based on a recognition of the illegality of Japan’s 1910 annexation of Korea.
“There’s no need to flatter Korea or to lay out the logic of the past, but we should admit that what was a mistake was a mistake,” he said in a December 2023 interview touting his bid for leadership. “We must redouble our emphasis on the fact that it is vital for this region that Japan and South Korea understand one another and cooperate.”
In unscripted remarks to the Global Dialogue organized by the Japan Institute for International Affairs, where this author was present, Ishiba spoke frankly about his desire to mark the eightieth anniversary as a moment for self-reflection about the disaster of the decision to go to war. “It is time for us to revisit and review the war experience,” he said. He called for Japan to understand “how to position itself in the world to create a world with more peace.”
The idea that the mistakes that led to Japan’s war and its total defeat should not be repeated is a persistent obsession of Ishiba. As he told the Diet this week:
What should we do to ensure that war never breaks out again? It is not simply a matter of expressing our thoughts, but rather of what went wrong. I have strong feelings about what our country will convey to the world this year.
Tanzan Ishibashi
Perhaps the most intriguing, and least known, clue as to what an unfettered Ishiba would say is his membership, since its beginning in 2023, in a study group dedicated to the life and work of former Prime Minister Ishibashi Tanzan. Ishibashi, also a former editor of the august Japanese weekly Tōyō Keizai, was a long time opponent going back to the prewar era of Japanese militarism and aggressive nationalism. In his brief tenure as PM in the 1950s, he sought to defy the United States and establish diplomatic relations with Communist China.
According to Richard Dyck, a longtime resident of Japan and a businessman with a passion for Ishibashi and his work, Ishiba has been a regular attendent at these study sessions. Among the members are also two prominent members of his cabinet and close friends – Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi and Defense Minister Nakatani Gen. At the most recent meeting of the group, according to Dyck, Foreign Minister Iwaya gave introductory remarks along the lines of “the message we get from Ishibashi is that relations in Asia need to transcend nationalism, ideology and history.”
From all this we can gain a glimpse into the largely hidden – at least to Western eyes – war over history that still is being fought in Japan and that lies behind, in part, the fate of Ishiba and his government. ### *According to Sanseito Senator Gen Yamanaka's [山中泉] X feed, he and Sanseito founder and leader Sohei Kamiya [神谷 宗幣] will be in Washington, DC in mid-August. Their visit will be arranged by their Washington lobbyist Matthew Martin Braynard who is an all-in MAGA loyalist and J6er. Love to hear from anyone who they visit or who knows how to get ahold of Mr. Braynard. [APC Editor] |
