In a series of statements this week, Mr Abe has suggested that he will be the first Prime Minister not to embrace the so-called Murayama statement, a passionate and unambiguous expression of regret and apology for the “irrefutable” suffering inflicted by Japan.

As well as enraging the neighbouring countries formerly occupied by Japan, such as China and South Korea, such a move would risk upsetting veterans and former prisoners of war in Europe and America.

“I think that it was an historical statement of the administration of the time and that such statements should be left to the judgment of the government of the day,” Mr Abe, at present the Chief Cabinet Secretary, said yesterday. “I don’t think it is necessary to bring it up every time a new government is formed.

“Japan’s progress 60 years after the war was made possible after many people’s suffering. But Japan was able to become a peaceful and democratic country because of its honest reflection on the fact that it left scars on many countries . . . Such historical evaluation should be left to historians.”

The statement was issued in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of Japan’s surrender, by the Cabinet of Tomiichi Murayama, the only Socialist to have been Japanese Prime Minister. It speaks of Japan’s “mistaken national policy” and of “colonial rule and aggression [that] caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations”.

“In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future,” it concludes, “I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology.”

Mr Abe said that he expected the spirit of the statement to continue but implied that he would neither repeat it nor give it his endorsement. As the grandson of a former prime minister imprisoned, although never charged, as a Class A war criminal, he has repeatedly questioned the legal basis of the Allied Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, which convicted Japanese wartime leaders.

He has been a leading member of a group of politicians who have criticised as “masochistic” school textbooks that describe Japanese wartime atrocities.

Mr Abe has already stated his wish to revise Japan’s pacifist Constitution to allow the Armed Forces to play a more active role in international peacekeeping operations, which pleases Britain and the US but alarms China.

“Perhaps the strategists and advisers at Abe’s side see this strategy of ambiguity as a success, but they appear to have forgotten the lesson that sincerity can vanquish a hundred tricks,” the Chinese state-run newspaper People’s Daily said yesterday. “Abe must ultimately use facts to demonstrate whether he’s truly serious about relations with China.”

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