In Unit 731, the Japanese ran gruesome medical experiments towards the prisoners, also using deadly diseases to develop biological weapons.

In this case, Forward looking applies: Past wrongs led to current society being marked by inequalities and broken relationships, thus to improve society must address past wrongs, thereby justifying reparations

However, Japanese apologists argue: "Children from other countries can publicly and confidently boast about their history. But Japanese children cannot. That's how severe the brainwashing is."

Rebuttal: German schoolchildren frequently visit holocaust memorial museums and it is part of their education

Post-war Germany's path to reflection was not easy. "In 1952, when West Germany began the process of making amends for the Holocaust, it did so under conditions that should be instructive to us. Resistance was violent. Very few Germans believed that Jews were entitled to anything. Only 5 percent of West Germans surveyed reported feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and only 29 percent believed that Jews were owed restitution from the German people."

Germany is very much an exception; most countries are more like Britain—while there are museums documenting Britain's role in slavery, schools do not teach children about it or they glance over it briefly. However, there is arguably still a difference between not mentioning the history and whitewashing it completely

British musuems' willingness to reckon with the truth can be contrasted with the revisionism that plagues Japaneses museums: See the Yūshūkan museum, the war museum built within the shrine grounds to promote the nationalist ideology that has become known as the Yasukuni doctrine.

This book was in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the 1868 Meiji Ishin [political reforms of the Meiji Emperor] and ever since has served as a model for later revisionists.

His work is noted to have downplayed the actions and the intentions of the Japanese Government during the war - giving an imperialist point of view. Additionally, he also sympathizes with Japanese nationalism, which he thinks liberated not only Japan but also the rest of Asia from Western domination.

In short, Hayashi defines war as a means of achieving political hegemony in a region. Although war is not a solution to all political problems, it is a means of protecting national hegemony based on his definition. He asserts that since there was the decline of China, Japan had to maintain its hegemonic power over Asia, because otherwise the West would have filled the power vacuum. His point of view contains a imperialist mindset which can be argued to be similar to the west in terms of their expansionist intentions.

Japanese politicians frequently visit the shrines, which has increaed tensions between China and Japan.

According to Chong-Ming Lim:

... commemorations are a way in which a community takes its past seriously. They acknowledge the importance of a certain person or event (and often the values that undergird them) for the community.

Commemorations usually celebrate the past and lionise the people associated with it, as is evident in this case with the Shrines. Since the Shrines are publicly available, the views represented by them—that the Japanese war criminals were great men whose actions deserve to be emulated—are widely promulgated.

The fact that the shrines are visited by Japanese politicians—including multiple Prime Ministers of Japan, no less—demonstrates official endorsement by elected representatives of the values promulgated by the Shrines. This is exacerbated by the the continuous visits by politicians notwithstanding protests by the Chinese and South Korean governments.

Lim states that for such "tainted" commemorations, their mere existence is a source of controversy. He suggests that even without outrightly removing them from public view, either counter-commemorations or contextualisations would be appropriate in order for history to be properly acknowledged. Counter-commemorations are defined as commemorating those who actively resisted or were victims of the people or events celebrated by the tainted commemorations. Contextualisations, on the other hand, refer to adding information at the commemoration itself to "directly address and repudiate the views expressed by [the] tainted commemoration".

However, as it currently stands, nothing close to either of the two proposed solutions is likely going to occur for the Shrines. The Japanese government have not discussed any form of counter-commemorations to be installed near the Shrines, as they consistently declare the visits by the politicians are for the sake of "[expressing] respect and gratitude to the many people who lost their lives in the war", rather than gloryifying Japan's past militarism. For the possibility of contextualisations, it is likewise severely hampered by the fact that the located near the Shrines is the Yūshūkan, a war museum known for revising Japan's wartime past by claiming that all wars fought by Japan were "wars of self-defense", with no mention of any atrocities commmitted by the Japanese military. In other words, not only is there a lack of proper contextualisation, the only contextualisation that exists serves to further distort the truth and glorify past wrongs.

Accordingly, not only is the demand for Japanese politicians to cease visiting the Shrines warranted, it is at most a baseline requirement that Japan must fulfill, before it can even move on to the vexed question of handling tainted commemorations.

After 1975, the Japanese Emperors have never visited the shrines. Only Japanese politicians visit them.

Additionally, Japan has also collaborated with the western powers in world war 1 and during the boxer rebellion - signifying that they still are allies with the west.

In lieu of virtue ethics (Aristotle declares that one should do what a morally just person does), it is unethical to revise history as it is dishonest of the government to do so and one good virtue is honesty. It also undermines wisdom as rewriting history corrupts knowledge and makes it difficult for society to learn from past mistakes.

It cannot be denied that China relies on such reparations as diplomatic leverage.

Chinese emphasise on such reparations depends on the level of tension between the governments. When China seeks closer ties with Japan, it will downplay such issues.

For example, Mao Zedong said in 1972, in response to a Japanese diplomat apologising for Japan's war crimes: "We have to thank Japan, without Japan's invasion of China ... we [the Communist Party] would not have been able to develop and eventually gain power ... If there had been no Japanese invasion of China, there would have been no Communist victory."

That being said, bearing in mind the polluter pays principle, given that the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, wielded actual power during WW2 and was not just a constitutional monarch. As such, an apology by his grandson, the current Emperor, would be warranted. However, there is academic disagreement on the role played by the Emperor in Japan's war crimes. While the Allied forces did not prosecute him on grounds that he wielded no real power, many have pointed out that the need to preserve stability in post-war Japan was the main reason. Instead, the Emperor may have, among others, signed off on uses of chemical weapons during the war in China, and that he also knew about the mistreatment of prisoners of war and about the murder of civilians in Nanking, but did not try to stop these war crimes or punish military leaders despite his ability to do so.

On the other hand, regardless of how much actual power was wielded by the Emperor then, he is the official and symbolic head of the country of Japan. An apology by him would jump-start Japan's path to reflection, while also placing pressure on the Japanese government to seriously consider Reparations #1 and #2.

Hence, following the PPP, an official apology from Emperor of Japan would be a hugely symbolic gesture of repentance.

• https://allthatsinteresting.com/japanese-war-crimes

• Oh, Ingyu, and Douglas Ishizawa-Grbić. “FORGIVING THE CULPRITS: JAPANESE HISTORICAL REVISIONISM IN A POST-COLD WAR CONTEXT.” International Journal of Peace Studies 5, no. 2 (2000): 45–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41852877.

Emperor Hirohito. Nuclear Museum. (n.d.). https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/emperor-hirohito/

Fraga, K. (2023, April 12). Inside the most horrific Japanese war crimes of World War II. All That's Interesting. https://allthatsinteresting.com/japanese-war-crimes

Hilldrup, V. V. (2006, December 9). The reasons for Japanese imperialism (1895–1910). SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2352281

Ito, M., & Fukada, T. (2008, April 23). Lawmakers visit Yasukuni Festival. The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/04/23/national/lawmakers-visit-yasukuni-festival/

Li, David Daokui (2024). China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393292398 at pg 226.

Sieg , L., & Saito, M. (n.d.). Japan emperor Naruhito expresses “deep remorse” over country’s wartime past | reuters. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ww2-anniversary-japan-emperor/japan-emperor-naruhito-expresses-deep-remorse-over-countrys-wartime-past-idUSKCN25B07C/

Vox. (2017, May 26). Japan’s Rising Right-Wing Nationalism. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHJsoCAREsg&t=200s

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https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/07/28/issues/trip-around-yushukan-japans-font-discord/#.VDUpAo0cR9A