Behind the fact that liberalism and democracy were established in Christian countries is the fact that those countries had monotheism and that absolute authority and mandate power were separated and independent of each other there. This is what is important.
Those who deny gods make themselves gods. If mandate power becomes unified with gods, it will become impossible for those in power to redress the injustices of their power. And then errors will become absolute. Absolute errors will ruin not only those who have made the errors but also humanity as a whole.
Why are Japan, China and South Korea so obstinately doctrinaire? In the international community, you will be unable to solve any problem if you hold up your own ideals of justice unilaterally. If your beliefs differ from the beliefs of other nations, your ideals of justice will be different from the ideals of justice in such nations. What you need is belief in a transcendental existence.
Countries other than Christian nations lack the idea of penitence and repentance. But you will be unable to find any salvation in anything other than penitence and repentance.
My idea about taking a humanitarian point of view is as follows:
Let’s take slavery as an example. Even if you deny slavery and have successfully abolished it, you will be unable to make reparation for all of the people who were slaves. It will be much less realistic to compensate for the descendants of these people, too. Therefore, there is the problem of prescription. If you go back into history, you will have to indemnify everything in history. Thus, what you should do is to support and help those who were slaves and take steps to abolish racial discrimination from a humanitarian point of view. I think this is what taking the position of a humanitarian means.
As for the problem of enslaved prostitutes, I think, apart from the debates about whether the Japanese government was involved in it or not, that we should support and assist those who suffered as enslaved prostitutes from a humanitarian point of view in the form of humanitarian support and assist them instead of giving them compensation. We should also support and assist women and children who were affected by war and take nation-wide measures to protect women, children, the elderly and other socially disadvantaged people in times of war. I also think that we should carry out support activities not only for enslaved prostitutes but also for global problems. I think that we should establish organizations and build facilities and create funds for accomplishing these objectives or that the government should carry out activities for people in Japan and in the world, including lectures, speeches, learning and campaigns for enlightenment.
If you stick to historical issues too much, you will have a high risk of getting nowhere and making problems into political ones. It will be important to deal with the issue not as a historical matter but as a universal problem and in a future-oriented manner.
In any case, it will not be a good policy for Japan to continue hostile relations forever with South Korea, which is a neighboring country. Politics is the product of a compromise. To find a point of compromise is the role of politics. If you are unable to reach any common ground, you will have no alternative but to settle the matter by force. Underlying force is the national sentiment. Because of this, we must avoid fueling the national sentiment and driving people into an uncompromising dispute unnecessarily. You must not forget that we now have weapons capable of eradicating the human race hundreds of times over.
Japan should correctly understand and highly value the role played by the U.S. You often hear stories saying that the power of the U.S. is declining. But what you should not misunderstand is that the international situation at present is essentially different from that before World War II. You should not discuss the U.S. in the same terms as the world powers in the age of imperialism. You should realize that the U.S. is a liberal and democratic country and a nation-state.
The role that the U.S. has played differs from that played by hegemonic states. In other words, the problems of the U.S. are those not of power relations but of liberalism, democracy and of its being a nation-state. Whether the U.S. declines or not is a problem of liberalism and democracy and not that of its being a military power, political power and economic power. It is a problem of the legitimacy of the mechanisms of liberalism and democracy. It will not be appropriate to assess the power of the U.S. without considering these problems. The U.S. firmly believes that the market economy and international politics are working well just because it is a liberal and democratic state. Without this conviction, neither liberalism nor democracy would be valid.
Totalitarian and centrally governed states tend to become aggressive because they cannot be democratized. Aggressive acts depend on the assumption that both a governing class and a governed class exist. This is because aggression would have no meaning unless those who could be governed exist. Centrally governed countries have centrifugal force when their economies are in a favorable state, but they lose this force and tend to run into struggles for power or political strife once their economies turn bad. This is because these states have no means to bridge the gaps. As a result, classes are created, which then causes unbalanced distribution. This unbalance is the basic cause of why a healthy economy cannot be established in centrally government states. Moreover, different from liberal systems, totalitarian and despotic states cannot change their governments by peaceful means.
The main cause of war is an economic one. The aim of war is to take the means of production. Therefore, war has no justice. What war has is victory or defeat. This is evident from the fact that postwar reparations are what the victor demands from the loser and that the loser cannot demand anything from the victor. Reparations are only another word for the spoils of war. Take what you want - this is the essence of war. If you don’t want to be robbed of your assets by others, you have to rob them of their assets. This is war.
The main means of production are labor and land. This is why territories and rule become the main objectives of war. What is important is the independence and self-respect of your own country, and if you can no longer respect the independence of another country and your country wants to wage war, you will be unable to avoid it. What underlies the issue is the national sentiment. If you want peace, you should solve economic problems, as this is the foundation of peace. The issue is how you can connect the means of production, products and distribution.