The Sino-Japanese tension revived a sense throughout East Asia that although Japan had apologized time and again, its expressions of regret were not enough. The difference with how Germany had behaved was subtle and almost impossible to quantify. It was as if German politicians regularly visited the graves of Nazi war criminals in order to bolster their poll ratings. In Asia there was a sentiment that Japan did not yet understand how brutal its colonization had been, nor what it needed to do to move on.
