2 days ago
On anniversary of WWII's end, China urges Japan to make the 'right choice'
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged Japan to "make the right choice" and learn from history on Friday, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
"Only by facing history squarely can respect be earned; only by drawing lessons from history can a better future be explored; only by remembering the past can straying onto the wrong path again be avoided. We urge Japan to make the right choice." the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Wang as saying.
Wang, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China's Central Committee, made the remarks at a news conference following his meeting with foreign ministers from Mekong River states, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
International documents such as the Potsdam Declaration clearly defined Japan's responsibility for the war and required it to return territories including Taiwan to China, Wang said.
However, some in Japan are attempting to glorify its invasion and distort history, he said, calling such actions a challenge to the postwar international order.
Also on Friday, Liu Jinsong, director-general of the Chinese ministry's Department of Asian Affairs, summoned Akira Yokochi, the No. 2 official at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, and protested against visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine by Cabinet ministers of the administration of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and others on the day, which marked the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender in WWII.
Yokochi explained Japan's position to Liu, according to the embassy.
The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo also criticized the Yasukuni visits by the Japanese officials.
The visits showed a wrong attitude toward the history of invasion, the embassy said, urging Japan to be prudent in speech and action over history issues and break away from militarism.
Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi, Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato and other Japanese politicians on Friday visited the Shinto shrine, which honors Class-A war criminals along with the war dead and is therefore regarded as a symbol of Japan's past militarism by neighboring countries such as China and South Korea.
Ishiba offered a ritual offering to Yasukuni Shrine while refraining from paying a visit.
On Friday, a spokesperson at South Korea's Foreign Ministry in a statement expressed "deep disappointment and regret" at visits and ritual offerings to the shrine by "responsible leaders of Japan," while stopping short of referring to the Japanese leaders by name.
The South Korean government "strongly urges the leaders of Japan to squarely face history and demonstrate through action their humble reflection and sincere remorse for" the country's past history, and "stresses that this is an important foundation for the development of future-oriented relations between the two countries based on mutual trust," the statement said.
Meanwhile, an official at the South Korean ministry took note of the fact that Ishiba used the word "remorse" over WWII in an address at an annual memorial ceremony held in Tokyo on Friday for those who died in the war.
He thus became the first sitting Japanese prime minister to use the term at the war-end anniversary event since 2012.
South Korean media scrambled to report this. Yonhap News Agency reported that Japan's prime minister used "remorse" in an address at the war-end anniversary ceremony for the first time in 13 years, but added that this was not direct remorse over Japan's wartime colonial rule.
