Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took reluctant steps toward saying the right things in his speech on Aug 14 commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. And despite not going far enough, he appears to believe that a few highly qualified and clearly limited expressions of polite regret can wipe clean Japan's historical debt toward China.

Does the moral universe or the memory of a people have a statute of limitations on war crimes? Can the murderous, horrific slaughter of 20 million people in China alone from 1937 to 1945, not to mention the enslavement of the Korean people for 35 years, be banished by 25 minutes of mumbled politeness?

Read superficially, Abe seemed to say all the right things: He expressed "profound grief" and offered "eternal, sincere condolences" for the dead. He acknowledged that Japan had inflicted "immeasurable damage and suffering" when it "took the wrong course and advanced along the road to war" all those years ago.