On May 29 of this year, a peculiar meeting took place at the Budokan hall in Tokyo. An assortment of politicians from the Liberal Democratic Party, members of the Japan Association of Bereaved Families and right-wing intellectuals had hired the massive martial-arts stadium to remember Japan's war of liberation--liberation, that is, of Asia. The Pacific War, or Great East Asia War, as Japanese nationalists prefer to call it, was presented at this jamboree as a brave struggle against Western colonialism. The official name of the event, given in English for the foreign press, was A Tribute, Appreciation and Friendship: A Celebration of Asian Nations' Symbiosis. The heads of state from 22 Asian countries had been invited; not one came. But ambassadors and academics from 15 countries, including Nepal, Burma and Bangladesh--not China, Korea or Singapore--were there.

In speech after speech, some given by former Cabinet ministers, the iniquity of U.S. and European imperialism was decried and the nobility of pan-Asian idealism celebrated. Among these former government ministers was Seisuke Okuno, a proponent of the view that Japan fought a just anticolonial war. Another participant was Masayuki Fujio, who lost his job as Education Minister in 1986 for saying Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910 was legitimate. Such statements are not rare: this year a former Foreign Minister, Michio Watanabe, made the same point. Last year Justice Minister Shigeto Nakano lost his job for saying the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, when Japanese troops killed tens of thousands--perhaps even hundreds of thousands--of Chinese, was a fabrication.

Neither Koreans nor Chinese take kindly to such opinions voiced by senior Japanese politicians. In Seoul this summer, students threw fire bombs at the Japanese Cultural Center, while others hurled eggs at the embassy and demanded a "sincere" apology from Japan for its wartime behavior. Similar demands were heard in other parts of Asia invaded and occupied by Japan, such as China, Hong Kong, North Korea and Singapore. Japanese Prime Ministers have apologized in the past, especially to Asian countries. But these apologies have been undercut by the many attempts by government officials to dodge or distort the truth. On Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued an apology that went further than any statement from his predecessors. He used the word owabi, "to apologize," instead of the usual hansei, "regret." Even so, many former victims of Imperial Japan, in China, Korea and also Britain, were not satisfied. It was pointed out that this was not a government apology but only a personal one. The impact of the Prime Minister's statement was further weakened by the deliberate absence of eight conservative government ministers. Instead of listening to Murayama's apology, they attended a ceremony at Yasukuni shrine, where the spirits of Japanese war dead, including war criminals such as Hideki Tojo, are officially enshrined.

Murayama's effort was preceded by a parliamentary resolution in June, which marked the 50th anniversary of the war's end by stating that Japan had been guilty of "aggressive-like actions," as had other nations engaged in colonialism. In this official--rather than personal--statement the key word was "remorse," not "apology." And the tortured phrase "aggressive-like actions" hardly describes a war that left at least 10 million dead in China alone. So Murayama has taken Japan a step further in the direction of acknowledging past guilt. Many Japanese, as well as former victims in Asia and the West, do not think he went far enough. And conservatives in his own government think he went too far. In short, Japan's struggle with its past is far from over.

A Japanese professor of psychiatry told the New York Times the official unwillingness to apologize has something to do with ancestor worship: "Some Japanese feel that it would be sinful to apologize for World War II because they would be blaming their ancestors." Perhaps so, but the fact that Murayama and many other Japanese are more willing to face the facts about modern Japanese history shows that the cultural explanation is not adequate.

The parliamentary resolution is not a precise reflection of what "the Japanese" really think. It is like the notorious Japa nese history textbooks, which until recently only mentioned the "Nanjing Incident" in a footnote. This did not reflect a Japanese consensus. It was a compromise between left-wing teachers, who wanted to emphasize the massacre as a lesson about militarism, and conservative bureaucrats, who did not want to mention it at all.

The conventional wisdom is that the Germans faced up to their terrible past while the Japanese did not. Reality is more complicated. Some Germans are evasive about their history; others are obsessed by it. But most Germans, whatever their political views, agree that Nazism was wicked and that Nazi Germany waged a war of aggression. In Japan there is no such consensus. Many Japanese condemn Japan's wartime role, others continue to justify it and most don't think about it much. The differing natures of the European and Asian wars explain the divergence. No country was liberated by German troops. In Western and Northwestern Europe, the Nazis invaded independent, democratic nations. In Southeast Asia, Allied troops were fighting not for freedom from Japan but for their colonial possessions. In effect, Japanese aggression did hasten the end of Western colonial rule. Japan's expansionism was hardly virtuous, but its consequences were undeniable.

To be sure, the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 cannot possibly be described as a war of liberation, which is why Japanese nationalists do not count the war in China as part of World War II. Instead they call it the "China Incident," which, they maintain, was merely a series of skirmishes with communists and "bandits." The Great East Asia War in their view began in 1941, with Pearl Harbor.

The other difference between the Japanese and the German experiences is the Holocaust in Europe. The planned extermination of the Jewish people was not an act of war in the sense of fighting another army; it was mass murder based on the idea that a particular people had no right to exist. Japanese soldiers killed millions of people in the course of the war. But there was no planned genocide. And many Japanese who agree that their country fought an unjustified war of aggression believe that as acts of war, the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were worse atrocities than the attack on Pearl Harbor. Still, to say the Japanese war in Asia was morally less clear cut than Hitler's war in Europe is not to say it was just.

It was the war's aftermath that created the current political impasse. In 1945 the U.S. Occupation imposed a new constitution on the Japanese, under which Japan could neither maintain nor use armed forces. To ensure a sense of continuity in Japan, Emperor Hirohito was permitted to remain on his throne but renounced his semi divine status. And to ensure that Japan would be a stable ally against communism, Japanese bureaucrats, conservative politicians and industrialists were encouraged to channel their considerable energy into economic development.

This arrangement, which seemed so sensible at the time, resulted in political rifts that continue to plague Japanese politics and Japan's relations with other countries. Mainstream conservative politicians and bureaucrats were happy with the postwar order, since it allowed them to monopolize power and get rich. Socialists were happy with the pacifist constitution but felt betrayed by the U.S. because it used Japan as a military base, especially during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Right-wing nationalists were not happy with the constitution, which they believed robbed Japan not only of its sovereignty but, to use their favorite term, of its national soul as well.

Thus Japanese politics was divided between left-wingers, who saw themselves as guardians of pacifism; right-wingers, who wished to restore the national soul; and mainstream conservatives, who concentrated on industrial expansion. If this had led to a serious political debate on the constitution and the postwar political system, these differences might have been resolved in party politics. But the debate never materialized. So long as bureaucrats and moderate conservatives of the Liberal Democratic Party monopolized political power, the mainstream was insulated from debate: Washington took care of security while Tokyo took care of getting rich. The left issued shrill warnings about the dangers of militarism, and the right spoke just as shrilly about the loss of Japanese spirit and soul.

This left-right divide was most apparent in education, where the left-wing teachers' union was continually at loggerheads with the right-wing Ministry of Education. And the main source of contention was the history of World War II. Should the Japanese war in China be called an "invasion" or simply an "advance"? Was the Nanjing Massacre really a massacre or just a bloody incident? Did Japanese army doctors experiment on prisoners or not? The results, as we know, were footnotes, doublespeak, unsatisfactory promises.

As long as pacifists argue that Japan cannot be entrusted with the constitutional right to wage war because of its aggressive past, right-wingers will counter by saying the past was not really aggressive. And as long as constitutional revisionists use such arguments to press their case, the debate will not get started, because many voters are frightened that Japanese security might once again fall into the hands of extreme militarists. There has indeed been little incentive to challenge the status quo, because most Japanese have been happy to benefit from their country's economic boom while the U.S. guaranteed their security. Only if and when Washington shows signs of wishing to change this arrangement will a serious debate start in Japan.

These divisions were confusing enough when the left was in permanent opposition and the right was wielding its influence inside conservative governments. The muddle is worse now that the former socialists of the Social Democratic Party and right-wingers in the Liberal Democratic Party are in the same government. This explains the tortured nature of the parliamentary resolution. It is a reflection not of wrongheaded Japanese consensus but of its opposite: unresolved political schisms. It is often said that Japan, or any other formerly aggressive nation, must face its history honestly before it can be a stable democracy, trusted with matters of war and peace. But the problem in Japan is the other way round: until the Japanese sort out their politics, they cannot honestly discuss their history.

Ian Buruma is the author of The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan.