WW2 consensus eludes Japan 61 years after defeat

After visiting the island a few years ago, Koga -- now 66 and head of a powerful group of relatives of Japanese war dead -- spoke of how his father must have felt facing certain death.

"We have no food. We have old guns, but we have no ammunition. Why am I here and why must I die?" Koga imagined his father thinking as he waited to die.

More than six decades after Japan's defeat in World War Two, its people have yet to agree on an assessment of who was to blame for the nation's role in the conflict, which killed millions in Asia and wrought devastation at home.

That lack of domestic consensus -- as much as outraged reactions by China and South Korea -- lies at the core of a debate over politicians' visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 wartime leaders convicted as Class A war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honoured with the nation's 2.5 million war dead.

"In the post-World War Two discourse on history and Japan's identity, the issue of war responsibility has been one of the most difficult issues about which there is no answer, no consensus and even no direction," Kazuhiko Togo, a former diplomat and grandson of wartime foreign minister Shigenori Togo, wrote recently.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has paid his respects at the Shinto shrine each year since taking office in 2001.