met a senior member of the Singaporean political elite and asked him if he thought Abe’s ‘ 731 moment’ had been deliberate. ‘Of course it was,’ he exclaimed. ‘And it was utterly disgusting.’ If Abe’s action was indeed deliberate, it was probably intended as a knowing wink towards the nationalist right – who make up an important part of his political coalition and who insist that Japan’s wartime record is unfairly distorted by the nation’s current and former enemies.
