[Vigilanteman]

Anyone who understands squat about Japanese culture understands that apologies actually mean something. Abe wasn't around to do the crime, so an apology would have no meaning.

Those who were are mostly in their 90s and older and many of them have apologized. Some repeatedly. When I lived there, my bicycle repairman would apologize everytime I took work there. He was a nice old gentlemen and a low ranking draftee during the war. But he witnessed brutality which haunted him the rest of his life. It was almost like I was his priest taking confession.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Sagamihara & Yokohama, 1951-1961.

[bus man]

Those who were are mostly in their 90s and older and many of them have apologized. Some repeatedly. When I lived there, my bicycle repairman would apologize everytime I took work there. He was a nice old gentlemen and a low ranking draftee during the war. But he witnessed brutality which haunted him the rest of his life. It was almost like I was his priest taking confession.

I believe that Asian societies tend to have a sense of collective responsibility, one that is rather alien to our own individualistic culture. When Korean-born Seung-hui Cho killed all those people at Virginia Tech, an older Korean gentleman attempted to apologize to me, as if their mutual Korean-ness made him somehow culpable. And in his mind, maybe it did. But I respectfully replied that, in my estimation, the one and only person who bore any responsibility for the massacre was the guy who brandished the gun. Period.