History can't be denied

A shadow was cast over regional peace and stability last week when Japan's chief cabinet secretary rejected Chinese President Xi Jinping's remarks on Japan's invasion of China and the Nanjing Massacre, says a Xinhua commentary.

Adopting absurd rhetoric, Yoshihide Suga referred to Xi's remark that "Japan's war of aggression against China caused more than 35 million Chinese military and civilian casualties" as "extremely unconstructive".

Suga refused to recognize the number of the victims, saying that the Japanese government has yet to verify the "various views".

Such remarks are in blatant defiance of the evidence and a challenge to both justice and human conscience and reflect the fact that the Japanese government, with Shinzo Abe at its helm, is going further down a revisionist path.

Japan's military aggression against its Asian neighbors, including China, during World War II is a fact well accepted by the international community.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946 and the testimony and confessions of the Japanese soldiers provide irrefutable evidence of Japan's wartime atrocities.

Still, the Abe administration shamelessly seeks to deny this evidence and encourages the country's already growing rightist tilt, angering not only those nations that were the victims of its aggression, but also every righteous nation in the world.

It would be sensible for Japan to nip in the bud the rightist tilt which could jeopardize the peace and stability in East Asia. Unfortunately, Abe, carrying his family's "political DNA", is a pioneer among the country's rightists.

Claiming his life-long aim is to build "a strong Japan", Abe has been increasing Japan's defense budget to expand Japan's military buildup and conducting war games aimed at grabbing the Diaoyu Islands, an integral part of the China.

In the meantime, he has denied Japan's history of aggression time and time again, which is widely seen as a first step to try to rid his country of the post-war system.

The actions and words of the Abe administration, instead of making Japan strong, have isolated the country from its Asian neighbors.

Abe needs to know that a strong man takes responsibility for his actions. Japan should acknowledge its past mistakes and free itself from the rightist grasp, which has become a source of instability in the Asia-Pacific region.

(China Daily 04/08/2014 page8)