Abe acknowledges responsibility of grandfather Kishi, other wartime leaders

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday acknowledged the war responsibility of his grandfather, the late former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, and Japan's other wartime leaders ahead of his fence-mending talks with the leaders of China and South Korea.

Abe, known for his conservative views on history, also committed himself to accept two official statements in the 1990s in which Tokyo apologized for Japanese colonial rule and aggression and the use of Asian women as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.

Abe, who took office on Sept 26 as Japan's youngest postwar premier, clarified his official stand on the country's past militarism during a House of Representatives Budget Committee session Thursday.

"As a result of starting war, many Japanese lost their lives and families, and we left many scars on the people of Asia," the 52-year-old Abe said.

"Particularly, those people in the position of leader at the time, including my grandfather, had great responsibility. Since politicians have to take responsibility for any outcomes, that decision certainly must have been wrong," he said.

Abe made the comment in response to a question by opposition Democratic Party of Japan heavyweight Naoto Kan about his view on Kishi's signing of the rescript for starting the war in the Pacific in 1941 as a member of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.

Kishi, Abe's maternal grandfather who was then the commerce and industry minister, was detained as a Class-A war criminal suspect after the end of World War II but was released soon after Tojo and six others were hung in 1948. He served as Japan's prime minister from 1957 to 1960.

As for a landmark 1995 statement, in which then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama apologized and expressed remorse for Japan's colonial rule and atrocities before and during World War II, Abe said, "It is valid for my cabinet."

When asked his personal view, Abe said it is "natural" for him to accept the statement as prime minister, including its descriptions of the country's colonial rule and aggression as "has been presented...in a statement adopted by the cabinet."

On a 1993 statement by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, in which the government officially acknowledged that the Imperial Japanese Army forcibly held Asian women in sexual servitude for its soldiers, Abe said, "Including myself, the current government has taken it over."

When asked his view in Monday's lower house plenary session, Abe refrained from admitting the responsibility of the wartime leaders charged as Class-A war criminals at the 1946-1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Tribunal.

Abe in 1995 abstained from approving a parliamentary resolution carrying a similar message to the Murayama statement. In 1997, he formed a group with fellow lawmakers with revisionist views on history, including the issue of sex slaves, and criticized Kono's statement.

But since taking office, Abe has vowed to strive to mend the strained ties with China and South Korea angered at former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which some regard as symbolic of Japan's militarist past.

He is slated to hold summit talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Sunday and with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun on Monday.