Tokyo, 15 August, /AJMEDIA/
Japan on Monday marked the 77th anniversary of its surrender in World War II as Russia’s nearly six-month-old invasion of Ukraine brings renewed attention to the importance of peace.
A government-sponsored ceremony to mourn the about 2.3 million military personnel and 800,000 civilians who perished in the war on the Japanese side is set to start before noon in Tokyo, though in a scaled-back manner for the third straight year as the country faces another wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
It will be the first time for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to participate in the memorial ceremony at the Nippon Budokan since taking office last October. There will be some 1,000 attendees, 5,000 fewer than in the pre-COVID-19 era.
The focus is on whether Kishida, a liberal-leaning member of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, will touch on Japan’s wartime aggression in Asia.
His two immediate predecessors — Yoshihide Suga and Shinzo Abe, who was shot dead by a lone gunman last month — refrained from doing so.
Although pledging Japan’s contributions to world peace, Abe, who returned for his second stint as prime minister in late 2012, made no mention of aggression and remorse, something Japanese leaders had done at the annual commemoration since 1994. Suga’s speech last year essentially followed Abe’s line.
Kishida is elected from Hiroshima, the western Japan city that was devastated by the world’s first atomic bombing in the final days of the war.
Emperor Naruhito will also address the public. The emperor, who was born after the end of war, has expressed “deep remorse” since ascending the throne in May 2019.
A moment of silence is scheduled at noon for the war dead, including those killed in the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Relatives of the war dead who attend the annual ceremony are aging, with the welfare ministry saying people aged over 70 now account for about 80 percent of the total.
As part of precautions against the spread of COVID-19, the government has limited the number of participants and will livestream the ceremony on the ministry’s YouTube channel.
