No reconciliation is possible for China, Japan and Korea without a deep understanding of what matters to one another

For China, South Korea and Japan, the second world war has different starting points, meaning and impact on each country's respective identities. The inability of each nation to accept and relate to that self-understanding plays a crucial role in the lack of reconciliation up to present and, I would argue, into the future.

For most Japanese, the war began with the Mukden/Manchurian Incident in 1931 and ended with the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A victim mentality persists, with Japanese seeing themselves as casualties of the atomic bomb and a military government that brought death and hardship. Japan's defeat is a reminder of its militarist past, for which many Japanese feel a sense of guilt and remorse. These experiences and the postwar pacifist constitution have deeply inculcated anti-militaristic norms in the Japanese identity.

Nonetheless, this process of self-understanding has been highly selective. The conflicts in China and the annexation of the Korean peninsula have not played a central role in Japan's modern identity. Instead, events such as the Meiji Restoration, postwar rebuilding and the economic miracle are the key experiences on which modern Japanese identity is rooted.

For Koreans, their national identity has been forged by their experience with Japanese colonialism, the Korean war and national division. The colonial experience marked the Japanese onslaught on the territory, culture, language and traditions of Korea. Being forced to adopt Japanese traditions, Koreans hold a sense of cultural violation. Deepening this sense of violation is the issue of "comfort women".

The Korean war further left the peninsula divided, with two sides competing to be the legitimate representative of Korea and defender against any future aggressor. This role strongly orients their self-understanding towards one that demands the recognition of past wrongdoings.

For China, the opium wars and the first Sino-Japanese war, which began in 1894, marked the beginning of a sense of violation, division and bullying by other countries, notably Japan, whose invasion caused the death of tens of millions of Chinese. China's self-understanding, which includes a profound sense of historical humiliation and victimhood, makes it feel it is on a moral high ground that justifies criticism of Japan and that it is now its turn to dictate the terms of international relations.

Each country feels the other is denying the fundamental parts of their modern identities. The Japanese people see their postwar history and commitment to peace as part of their modern identity. So when China and South Korea accuse Japan of being militaristic, nationalistic and unrepentant for its wartime past, many Japanese feel the core elements of their modern identity are not being recognised. Simply, Japan's imperial past represents a period of history that is alien to most and not representative of Japan today.