Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologizes for Japan's war record.
This is a list of war apology statements issued by Japan regarding war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The statements were made at and after the end of World War II in Asia, from the 1950s to present day. Controversies remain to this day about war crimes of the past.
Junichiro Koizumi (; 小泉 純一郎, Koizumi Jun'ichirō [ko.iꜜzɯmi (d)ʑɯɰ̃.iꜜtɕiɾoː]; born 8 January 1942) is a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009, and he remains the sixth-longest serving Prime Minister in Japanese history.He was often described as a "populist" or "right-wing populist". Widely seen as a maverick leader of the LDP upon his election to the position in 2001, he became known as a neoliberal economic reformer, focusing on reducing Japan's government debt and the privatisation of its postal service. In the 2005 election, Koizumi led the LDP to win one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern Japanese history. Koizumi also attracted international attention through his deployment of the Japan Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, and through his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine that fueled diplomatic tensions with neighbouring China and South Korea. Koizumi resigned as Prime Minister in 2006.
Although Koizumi maintained a low profile for several years after he left office, he returned to national attention in 2013 as an advocate for abandoning nuclear power in Japan, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which contrasted with the pro-nuclear views espoused by the LDP governments both during and after Koizumi's term in office.