After more than half a century, the Japanese government is offering proper, written, apologies to its neighbours for crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during the second World War.
This is expected to lay the ghosts of Japan's imperial past and pave the way for the establishment of normal relations between Japan and its two nearest neighbours, Communist China and South Korea. The Japanese government will make a direct apology to China when President Jiang Zemin visits Tokyo next month - the first Chinese communist president to do so - a Japanese official said yesterday.
In China anti-Japanese sentiment still runs high because of the cruel treatment of Chinese people at the hands of Japanese troops and the inability or refusal of successive governments in Tokyo to come to terms with the Imperial Army's wartime conduct.
Japan's invasion of the northern province of Manchuria in 1931 began a bloody campaign to control the Chinese mainland which included the 1937 massacre in the Chinese city of Nanjing. According to Chinese estimates Japanese soldiers butchered 300,000 civilians in the southern Chinese city in the winter of 1937-38.
The apology to President Jiang will take the same form as that issued to the South Korean President, Mr Kim Dae-jung, last week when he visited Japan - also a ground-breaking visit.
"China is to get the same kind of apology as South Korea got, in a joint declaration," foreign ministry spokesman, Mr Masaki Okada, said.
"The Japanese government squarely sees its past history and at the same time is willing, through dialogue and co-operation, to build our future relationship" with China.
On Thursday the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Keizo Obuchi, delivered the fullest apology yet for Japan's treatment of Koreans during colonisation and the second World War. The apology was not unlike that delivered orally to Asians in general by a former prime minister, Mr Tomiichi Muryama, in 1995, but was the first in written form and the first to specifically express regret to a specific country.
During the 35-year Japanese occupation of Korea, which ended with the defeat of Japan in 1945, its rule was marked by summary executions, the compulsory study of Japanese, deportation of workers to Japanese factories, and the forced use of Koreans as "comfort women" in military brothels. The use of sex slaves by the Japanese was not even admitted until 1992.
The Japanese prime minister "expressed deep remorse and extended a heartfelt apology to the people of South Korea, having humbly accepted the historical fact that Japan inflicted heavy damage and pain on the people of South Korea through its colonial rule". He did not, however, acknowledge that the invasion was wrong. Feeling against Japan still runs so high in South Korea that the import of Japanese cars and other goods is prohibited.
Anticipating the Japanese apology to China next month, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr Zhu Bangzao, said on Thursday that Japan committed war crimes in China. "This is a historical fact and cannot be denied. We hope the Japanese side can face the historical facts and make a serious reflection and apology, and stay the course of peaceful development."
Despite the political expressions of regret, many wounds remain unhealed. Yesterday a Japanese district court rejected a claim by 46 Filipina women demanding government compensation for forcing them to serve as "comfort women" during the second World War. Judge Yoriaki Ichikawa said international laws did not allow individuals to demand compensation from a government. The women filed the claim in 1993 along with other survivors of the estimated 200,000 Asian women forced to act as sex slaves. Several Filipina women last year accepted the equivalent of £12,000 compensation from a private Japanese welfare fund and a letter of apology from the then prime minister, Mr Ryutaro Hashimoto.