Abe is widely viewed as a right-wing nationalist.[48][49][50] The British journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes of BBC described him as "far more right wing than most of his predecessors."[51] Since 1997, as the bureau chief of the 'Institute of Junior Assembly Members Who Think About the Outlook of Japan and History Education', Abe led the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform. On his official homepage[52] he questions the extent to which coercion was applied toward the comfort women, dismissing South Korean "revisionism" as foreign interference in Japanese domestic affairs. In a Diet session on October 6, 2006, Abe revised his statement regarding comfort women, and said that he accepted the report issued in 1993 by the sitting cabinet secretary, Yōhei Kōno, where the Japanese government officially acknowledged the issue. Later in the session, Abe stated his belief that Class A war criminals are not criminals under Japan's domestic law.[53]

In a meeting of the Lower House Budget Committee in February 2006, Shinzō Abe said, 'There is a problem as to how to define aggressive wars; we cannot say it is decided academically',[54] and 'It is not the business of the government to decide how to define the last world war. I think we have to wait for the estimation of historians'.[54] However, on a TV program in July 2006[55] he denied that Manchukuo was a puppet state.

Abe published a book called Toward a Beautiful Nation (美しい国へ Utsukushii kuni e?) in July 2006, which became a bestseller in Japan. In this book, he says that Class A war criminals (those charged with crimes against peace) who were adjudicated in the Tokyo Tribunal after World War II were not war criminals in the eye of domestic law.[citation needed] The Korean and Chinese governments, as well as noted academics and commentators, have voiced concern about Abe's historical views.[56][57][58]

In March 2007, in response to a United States Congress resolution by Mike Honda, Abe denied any government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during World War II,[59] in line with a statement made almost ten years before on the same issue, in which Abe voiced his opposition to the inclusion of the subject of military prostitution in several school textbooks and then denied any coercion in the "narrow" sense of the word, environmental factors notwithstanding.[60]

However, it provoked negative reaction from Asian and western countries, for example, a New York Times editorial on March 6, 2007:

What part of 'Japanese Army sex slaves' does Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have so much trouble understanding and apologizing for? ... These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army's involvement is documented in the government's own defense files. A senior Tokyo official more or less apologized for this horrific crime in 1993...Yesterday, [Abe] grudgingly acknowledged the 1993 quasi-apology, but only as part of a pre-emptive declaration that his government would reject the call, now pending in the United States Congress, for an official apology. America isn't the only country interested in seeing Japan belatedly accept full responsibility. [South] Korea and China are also infuriated by years of Japanese equivocations over the issue.[61]

The American newspaper Washington Post editorial, "Shinzo Abe's Double Talk" (March 24, 2007), also criticized him: "he's passionate about Japanese victims of North Korea—and blind to Japan's own war crimes".[62] A March 2, 2014 New York Times editorial called Abe a "nationalist" who is a profound threat to American-Japanese relations,[63] and a November 14, 2014 opinion piece labeled Abe's position on the subject of comfort women a "war on truth." [64]

 kronk wrote:
Back on topic, so are there a lot of WW2 revisionists in the Japanese politics? They hold offices and stuff?

 generalgrog wrote:
ONTOPIC... was either atomic bomb "necessary"? I think from a strategic standpoint in hindsight, probably not. However, it's Monday morning quarterbacking to decry the use of them as a warcrime. After okinawa, the USA wasn't going to go through another bloodbath, if they could avoid it. And the mass bombing of cities, had already been an established doctrine in ww2, so.. to the planners of the time, it wouldn't be any different than the firebombing of Tokyo, or the bombing of Dresden or London.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Here is a very good article by a Japanese BBC journalist on the teaching of WW2 in Japanese schools.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/658765.page

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Here is a very good article by a Japanese BBC journalist on the teaching of WW2 in Japanese schools.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/658765.page

Abe published a book called Toward a Beautiful Nation (美しい国へ Utsukushii kuni e?) in July 2006, which became a bestseller in Japan. In this book, he says that Class A war criminals (those charged with crimes against peace) who were adjudicated in the Tokyo Tribunal after World War II were not war criminals in the eye of domestic law.[citation needed] The Korean and Chinese governments, as well as noted academics and commentators, have voiced concern about Abe's historical views.[56][57][58]

 Jihadin wrote:
Its like the attempt of US Government today issuing a official apology to Black Americans on behalf of Confederate State Government.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
Its like the attempt of US Government today issuing a official apology to Black Americans on behalf of Confederate State Government.

Which US Government? The one Federal government? One of the fifty State Governments? One of the numerous local governments? We aren't even getting to principalities, territories, ect.

The British, the Vatican, the Germans and the South Africans have all issued formal apologies for their official cruelties, and each case has had a cleansing, even liberating effect. The United States Congress apologized to African-Americans for slavery in 2009, though it came with a caveat that the mea culpa could not be used as legal rationale for reparations.
And President Bill Clinton, while in Africa in 1998, apologized for the slave trade, but not for a government that institutionalized white supremacy during its first four score and change.

 Jihadin wrote:
Not sure of your um....vintage Ahtman but....

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yamamoto's primary objective at Midway was to destroy the US carriers.

 Jihadin wrote:
I think the present administration (Japan) is tired of WWII atrocities being used as a beat stick against them being they (present people in administration) have nothing to do with the issue.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
I think the present administration (Japan) is tired of WWII atrocities being used as a beat stick against them being they (present people in administration) have nothing to do with the issue.

Gibberish. They have nothing to do with the issue? The hell is that suppose to mean? You are the head of a state, you got to deal with what your predecessors left you and that is NOT optional. No "I did not took this loan personnally so the debt does not exist", no "I did not vote this treaty myself so I will pretend it does not exist" and no "I did not personally rape and kill and enslave and conducte inhuman "scientific" experiments on thousands of Chineses and Koreans and ... so history is irrelevant and I totally do not have to account for it".

They totally have everything to do with how the memories of the war crimes are handled, they are doing a crappy work and they totally deserve a LOT of flak for it.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Explain please how Japan will make these hateful attitudes go away by saying sorry over and over? Seems like a waste of money to me. This goes for any country. Saying sorry does nothing.

See my edit. Learn how Germany did it. Get a hint, basically.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also you might want to learn that there are still survivors from those times.

 Frazzled wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Back on topic, so are there a lot of WW2 revisionists in the Japanese politics? They hold offices and stuff?

Don't know about Japan, sure seem like a lot here.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Back on topic, so are there a lot of WW2 revisionists in the Japanese politics? They hold offices and stuff?

Don't know about Japan, sure seem like a lot here.

Trying to equate having a debate about the merits of the atomic bombings with flat-out denial of stuff like Nanking or the "comfort women" is dishonest and rude at best.

 Frazzled wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Back on topic, so are there a lot of WW2 revisionists in the Japanese politics? They hold offices and stuff?

Don't know about Japan, sure seem like a lot here.

Trying to equate having a debate about the merits of the atomic bombings with flat-out denial of stuff like Nanking or the "comfort women" is dishonest and rude at best.

Strange, thats how I feel when I see misguided idiots equating the Allies with the Axis powers in terms of war crimes.

 Frazzled wrote:
You must have skipped to the end and not read the previous ten pages.