The Japanese Prime Minister’s surprise resignation may affect Japan’s handling of its two most important bilateral relations, Japan-China and Japan-US relations.

The new president showed that the United States would attach importance to the Asia-Pacific region, to its alliances and to deepening the relationship with the region’s major countries. His recent overtures to China, however, and his disinterest in Abe’s “values diplomacy” suggest that US policy will not always give Japan what it wants.

Not long ago, China, Japan and the ROK finally got their foreign ministers together in Tokyo. The foreign ministers’ meeting naturally had an important mission, and the opportunity it created may, to a considerable extent, reshape the relations among the three countries.

South Korea and China need to understand that the moral and military defeat of the Japanese military in World War II was so total, that it echoes to this day. Despite the historical revisionism and fear mongering of Shinzo Abe’s faction, the Japanese public appears unwilling to trust another “military clique” and engage in adulations of its military leadership and the military.

The Seventieth Anniversary of the victory of the Allies over Japan in the Second World War is now upon us. This War created tens of millions of victims, perhaps even as many as a couple of hundreds of millions, in Asia. I was one of the victims of the War, but a relatively lucky one. My parents lived in Hong Kong before the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour.

Only when people with vision in Japan take positive actions, and the entire international community successfully urge Japan to adopt a correct reading of history, will Japan’s relations with its East Asian neighbors be able to move forward into an era of mutual trust and respect.

The peaceful desires of most Japanese people and the powerful trends of economic globalization and world multi-polarization do not in any way support the strengthening of the US-Japan military alliance. In fact, they are harbingers of its disintegration.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s speech on the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII proves that he is master of words that couldn’t be reduced to substance.

Shinzo Abe finally delivered his speech commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II on August 14. Though the speech did include the “four key words” – “apology”, “remorse”, “aggression” and “colonial rule”, it failed to present a correct outlook on history.

Seven decades after it surrendered to the Allied Forces, it is time for Japan to re-Asianize and come into its own as a fully sovereign nation.