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Comment by jpatokal | Hacker News Reader

Actually, Japan has apologized repeatedly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements...

However, Japan has more than its fair share of far-right fruitcakes who deny everything, and in both Korea and China politicians have found Japan to be a convenient whipping boy whenever they need a distraction from domestic problems.

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However, Japan has more than its fair share of far-right fruitcakes who deny everything

They elected a far right "fruitcake" to the post of prime minister.

To be fair, they only elected the conservative party, the LDP; the party elected the prime minister. Granted, they've elected the LDP almost continuously since 1955. Of course, they tried electing the other party in 2009, but their leadership kept resigning. Of course, given the LDP's stranglehold on politics, one has to wonder why they feel a need to pander to the nettouyo.

I stopped paying to attention to politics about 5 years ago and am very surprised to learn that the major opposition party (DPJ?) has essentially fractured into multiple, smaller parties, all using a variation of the same name.

At this point, I'm not even sure who to vote for anymore.

The problem is that Japan has a history of doing things like this:

> In October 2006, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's apology was followed on the same day by a group of 80 Japanese lawmakers' visit to the Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines more than 1,000 convicted war criminals.[57] Two years after the apology, Shinzo Abe also denied that the Imperial Japanese military had forced comfort women into sexual slavery during World War II .

This is from your link.

Japan demands the issue to be "settled" or "forgotten" after mulling quick apologies. Imagine Germany demanding that the Holocaust be forgotten.

Germany's the exception, not the rule. Most countries's governments like nothing more than to behave as if their past transgressions never happened. And even then Germany has had no shortage of politicians who say "Germany has apologized enough".

Japan and South Korea signed an agreement in 1965 that was supposed to settle all financial claims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Basic_Relations_betw...

This agreement is about property claims, not about war crimes against civilians.

The agreement is about "property and claims" between the two states. Of course, individuals can and have sued various Japanese entities, some successfully.

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