Politicians are usually the ones telling a country what its own history means. Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, argued that this was not really their job to begin with. "My opinion is that politicians should be humble in the face of history," he said. "And whenever history is a matter of debate, it should be left in the hands of historians and experts." Coming from someone who spent decades in a role that regularly required him to comment on Japan's own contested past, the statement reads as a deliberate act of restraint rather than an easy thing to say, and it is worth reading alongside his own record on exactly these questions, not just as a standalone principle.
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