Japan marks the surrender as prime minister Takaichi omits the word remorse

Japan has commemorated the eighty-first anniversary of the surrender that ended the Second World War. At the government ceremony in Tokyo, prime minister Sanae Takaichi restated the country's commitment to peace without using the word remorse.

The omission carries a precise weight in Japanese political language. It is the formula by which Tokyo governments acknowledged for decades the country's responsibility for the war in Asia, and its absence is read as a signal of change. Emperor Naruhito, who attended the ceremony with Empress Masako, did speak of deep remorse, as in previous years.

Takaichi did not go to the Yasukuni shrine, sending only an offering. Defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi and three other members of the government visited it in person. The last visit by a defence minister on the anniversary itself was in 2024.

Why Yasukuni matters

The shrine holds the souls of Japan's war dead, among them fourteen class A war criminals convicted by the post-war international tribunal. Every visit by a member of the government draws official reactions from Beijing and Seoul, which read the gesture as an endorsement of the war of aggression waged across Asia.

Takaichi's predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, kept a more cautious profile on both counts. The new prime minister comes instead from months of tension with China, following the remarks she made in parliament in November about possible Japanese involvement in a crisis over Taiwan.

Japan remains the largest foreign investor across much of South-East Asia and one of China's biggest trading partners. How the Tokyo government handles the memory of the war therefore continues to have effects beyond the symbolic, reaching into economic and security files that have been open for years.