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| Prime Minister Shinzo Abe |
A lot is riding on Abe’s speech before US Congress. His address in Indonesia gives an idea of what to expect.
On April 22, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke at the Asian-African Conference commemorating the original “Bandung Conference.” In the speech, he discussed Japan’s strong commitment to upholding widely-accepted international principles such as “(r)efraining from acts or threats of aggression or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any country,” and “(s)ettlement of all international disputes by peaceful means.” Abe also stressed that Japan’s resolve is rooted in the country’s “feelings of deep remorse over the past war.” He then went on to lay out his government’s plan of engaging in the activities that aims for helping the countries in Asia and Africa to achieve sustainable economic development.
The structure of his speech parallels the speech Abe delivered to the Australian Parliament when he visited Canberra in July 2014. In both speeches, Abe spoke clearly about how Japan’s foreign and security policy principles today are grounded in the country’s remorse over its wartime past and emphasized that these principles will not change. He also discussed in both speeches his vision for Japan’s engagement with the specific country that he was visiting at the time of his speech.
Based on these two speeches, it is very likely that Abe’s upcoming speech in front of the U.S. Congress will have a comparable structure. Specifically, it will probably have three components: a reference to “remorse” about Japan’s wartime behavior in some form, a discussion of the role of U.S.-Japan relations in Japan’s postwar rise as a “peace-loving country,” and an articulation of Abe’s own vision for Japan’s future role in the world.
Read the full story at The Diplomat