NO EASY CHOICES : Japan confronts defeat--again.

September 8 was the date set for a gathering of the American-Japanese establishment--scholars, diplomats, intellectuals, artists, corporate executives, politicians, even a smattering of journalists and entertainers--to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which formally ended the war in the Pacific. Signed in 1951 with great solemnity--and an even greater sense of optimism--the treaty resolved various territorial and economic issues, pledged Japan to make good on war reparations, set in motion the end of American occupation, and cautiously welcomed Japan back into the community of independent nations by restoring full sovereignty.

Judged by the congratulatory tone of the festivities scheduled for San Francisco fifty years later, the treaty seems to have succeeded in rehabilitating Japan. Dance festivals, art exhibitions, concerts, and a host of heavy-duty seminars, all generously funded by blue-chip corporations and foundations, celebrate a peace-loving Japan and emphasize the mostly happy state of U.S.-Japanese relations. No one, it seems, is remembering Pearl Harbor. Issues like Japan's predatory war in China, its suppression of Korea, and the grisly war crimes committed by the imperial army while conquering Southeast Asia did not figure prominently on the agenda.

Has Japan finally moved out of the shadow and curse of World War II? Has all been forgiven and forgotten? Well, not quite. Only three weeks before the anniversary celebration, a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, a memorial to Japan's war dead, set off a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment, especially in Asia. The controversy clearly demonstrates that Japan's wartime record continues to excite passions abroad, as well as ambiguity and confusion in Japan itself. The Chinese and Koreans, who suffered years of torment at Japan's hand, are easily unnerved by anything that might signal a return to militarism. A visit by a senior government official to the green and majestic confines of Yasukuni has become one of those signals.

But should it be? Yasukuni was established in 1869 to honor those who died in all of Japan's wars. The shrine has become the resting place, according to Shinto belief, for the souls of the 2.5 million dead--2.3 million from World War II--whose names are recorded on sheets of paper secured in more than two thousand folders. No bones, ashes, or bodies are actually interred at Yasukuni. Over the years, names have been added to the register, including in 1978, the names of fourteen officers who were found guilty by the Tokyo war crimes tribunal and were either hanged by the American occupation forces or died in prison.

When the news of this addition, secretly inscribed by Shinto priests, leaked out the following year, Yasukuni became a focal point of conflict about Japan's war legacy. Radical nationalists and militarists--extremely noisy but relatively small groups--appropriated Yasukuni. Leftists, peace groups, and most foreign governments scorned veneration at the shrine as a threat to Japan's peace constitution. In 1985 when former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone made an official visit to the shrine on August 15, the anniversary of the end of the war, protests exploded and relations with China and Korea suffered. He did not return. Since then only two other prime ministers have visited the shrine, but not on the August anniversary and only in what each called a private visit, which meant he paid for the flowers out of his own pocket.

During his election campaign earlier this year, Koizumi pledged to visit Yasukuni on August 15. Fears were raised that Koizumi, perhaps the most charismatic and dynamic leader the country has had in the postwar era, was a closet nationalist intent on destroying Japan's constitution, which foregoes war as a sovereign right. Everyone, especially his foreign minister, opposed the visit, but Koizumi befuddled the nation by keeping his promise to visit the shrine--although he made his visit a few days before August 15.

In the hubbub of protests and outrage that followed, no one seemed to have noted what Koizumi said in a statement issued that day and repeated again in the presence of Emperor Akihito during ceremonies on the August 15 anniversary. Koizumi apologized for Japan's actions in the war and promised to maintain Japan's pacifist stance. Said Koizumi:

   With regard to the neighboring countries in Asia, for a period in the past,
   Japan embarked on aggression and colonial rule based on mistaken national
   policies and brought great disaster and suffering to these people. This has
   left unhealable wounds among the people of these countries that remain even
   up to this very day. Here, I accept with all humility this remorseful
   history of our country and convey to all victims of the war my heartfelt
   repentance and condolences with all respect. I believe that Japan should
   never again take the road to war. Before the souls of all those who died in
   the battlefields with unfailing faith in the motherland's future, I am
   reminded once again that the peace and prosperity that Japan enjoys today
   is founded on their noble sacrifice.

These are not the words of a closet militarist nor do they sidestep the question of Japan's war guilt and responsibility. But Koizumi's words and his visit to Yasukuni show the complexity, and even contradiction, in Japanese attitudes toward the war. On the one hand, as Koizumi made clear, most Japanese are profoundly pacifist. The military and militarism are discredited, even scorned. Despite suspicions in Beijing and Seoul, it is as impossible to conceive of Tokyo gearing up for new military adventures in Manchuria or Korea as it would be to imagine Washington preparing to go back to Vietnam. For the Japanese, the disaster of the Pacific war and the painful years of poverty and reconstruction which followed--to say nothing of prosperity of the '70s, '80s, and '90s--have convinced them that war is unthinkable.

On the other hand, Koizumi--and many Japanese--want to pay tribute to those millions who died in the lost war. This is not easy. Winners get to build arcs de triomphe and name boulevards for famous victories. Their dead--even those of dubious character and morals--are venerated as heroes. Losers have a more complicated task. No one builds monuments to defeat. Waterloo is the name of a train station in London, not a Metro stop in Paris. What nation, after a losing war, has ever paid tribute to the living or the dead, most of whom were dutiful patriots who served honorably though the cause proved futile, misguided, or worse?

Americans struggled with that question after Vietnam. Like Japanese soldiers returning home after World War II, American veterans from Vietnam were initially shunned and disparaged. Ultimately the dead from that conflict were honored brilliantly with Washington's Vietnam Memorial--a place where veterans can offer a prayer for their fallen comrades and where the stark vista of more than fifty-eight thousand names chiseled in the polished black stone records the insanity of war.

Koizumi clearly struggled with a similar conflict: How do you honor the war dead without honoring war? His task was made more complicated because of the names of the war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni. Should he forego paying tribute to the staggeringly large number of dead who were not war criminals, he asked, because of the presence of a few who were? In the end he didn't think that should stop him, even though many of his advisers suggested otherwise.

Koizumi's decision has ignited the war debate once again. Some believe he would have been better off avoiding the issue entirely. But then, wouldn't that have led to familiar charges that the Japanese ignore their war history? Losers at war, it seems, have no easy choices.

Barry Hillenbrand, a journalist now living in Washington, D.C., was Tokyo bureau chief for Time magazine from 1986 to 1992.