Editor's note: Xu Weijun is an associate research professor at the Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology. His research interests include East Asian international relations and China-US relations. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

In March 2026, an opinion poll conducted by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation revealed a thought-provoking result. When asked whether World War II was "a war of aggression launched by Japan against its Asian neighbors," only 35% of respondents agreed, 16% disagreed, and as many as 48% answered "I don't know." These figures reflect not merely a gap in historical knowledge, but also a deep rupture between war memory and the perception of historical responsibility in contemporary Japanese society.

Contemporary Japanese society does not lack memories of the war. In post-war Japanese public life, there have always been numerous war-related commemorative ceremonies, peace education and narratives of the atomic bombings. At the same time, however, Japanese politicians have repeatedly visited Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines Class-A war criminals and is widely regarded as a symbol of Japanese militarism and historical revisionism.

This contradictory picture reveals the underlying structure of Japan's war memory: Japanese society remembers the war, and even harbors a genuine fear of it, yet it has not recalled to the same extent how Japan launched the war, how it invaded Asian countries, and how it inflicted enormous suffering on the peoples of those countries. In other words, the current situation in Japanese society is not simply "forgetting the war," but rather "selectively remembering the war."

Many Japanese people can perceive the suffering of war through the atomic bombings, the Battle of Okinawa and the trauma of defeat, yet they may not necessarily understand Japan's responsibility as a perpetrator through the lens of colonial rule, the Nanjing Massacre and the atrocities committed on battlefields in Southeast Asia. For Japanese society, the core issue regarding historical understanding lies not in whether the war is remembered, but in whose suffering is remembered and whose is forgotten.

Structural flaws

This divergence in memory is first related to structural flaws in Japan's history education. 

Japanese school education system does not entirely avoid the history of WWII. A 2025 survey of 18-year-olds conducted by the Nippon Foundation found that about 95% of respondents stated they had learned about the "Pacific War," and two-thirds said their memories of the war mainly came from classes in school. 

The more critical question, however, is the narrative framework through which this history is presented. The same survey found that among war-themed works that left a deep impression on Japanese youth, Grave of the Fireflies ranked first with 42.2%. This work mainly focuses on the suffering of ordinary Japanese civilians, particularly children, amid air raids and starvation during the final months of WWII.

Such memories of victimhood are not inaccurate; they carry genuine anti-war value. But the problem is that if education about war history mainly revolves around Japanese experiences of victimhood, it can easily lead students to form an intuitive impression that "the war brought suffering to Japan," while making it difficult for them to develop a sense of responsibility that "Japan inflicted profound suffering on Asia."

Japanese youth might be instilled with value judgments such as "war is terrible" and "peace is precious," but they are not sufficiently guided to ask three more fundamental questions: Why did Japan launch the war? How did the peoples of Asian countries bear the consequences of Japanese aggression? Why does post-war Japan need to continue engaging in historical reflection? 

'Victim-centered' narrative

Second, public memories of the war in Japanese society have long been characterized by a "victim-centered" narrative. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Great Tokyo Air Raid, the Battle of Okinawa, and post-war reconstruction constitute the primary narrative entry points through which the Japanese public perceives the war. The deeper challenge lies beneath these historical memories. When the memory of victimhood is detached from the dimension of perpetrator responsibility, it creates a moral cognitive dislocation: the Japanese public can genuinely perceive the cruelty of war, yet find it difficult to understand why neighboring Asian countries repeatedly demand that Japan reflect on its past. The Japanese society is unwilling to confront Japan's historical identity as an aggressor and perpetrator.

These victim-centered memories have become further entrenched amid generational change. More than 80 years after the war, the number of people with first-hand wartime experience has sharply declined, and direct war memory based on individual experience is gradually fading from Japanese society. Meanwhile, schools, the media, museums, and political discourse have become the primary channels for shaping war memory. Whoever controls these channels is better positioned to determine what Japanese society remembers, what it forgets, and how it understands history.

A conservative political landscape

Third, the long-term trend toward political conservatism in Japan has been an important driving force behind the divergence in perceptions of historical responsibility. The political landscape characterized by the Liberal Democratic Party's long-standing dominance has granted right-wing historical perspectives institutional influence far greater than that of left-wing and civic forces engaged in reflection.

Japanese conservative politics does not always directly deny historical facts. Rather, it is more adept at defusing historical responsibility by obscuring narratives and shifting the focus. For example, vague phrasing such as "upholding the positions of previous cabinets" is used to avoid reaffirming an apology, and the argument that "future generations should not be destined to apologize" is employed to cut off the intergenerational continuity of historical responsibility. Through these shifts in discourse, historical responsibility is no longer a moral baseline constraining Japan from repeating past mistakes. Instead, it has been framed as a historical burden hindering Japan's path to becoming a "normal country."

Historical understanding is never merely a debate about the past. It profoundly shapes how a country understands itself, views its neighbors, and chooses its future path. The divergence within Japanese society regarding the nature of the war and historical responsibility appears on the surface as a split in historical narratives. But in essence, it concerns whether post-war Japan can maintain its identity as a peaceful nation through a genuine consciousness of reflection.