SEOUL, South Korea — Very different commemorations were held Friday for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, a conflict that laid the foundation for today’s Asian geopolitics and ongoing tensions.

Tokyo was torn between remorse and remembrance. Seoul focused its messaging toward North Korea, with no mention of its liberators, the wartime Allies. Pyongyang’s key message was its renewed relationship with Russia, whose troops liberated the north of the peninsula in 1945.

Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender via radio on Aug. 15, 1945. On Sept. 2, surrender documents were signed aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

China commemorates the war the day after the signing, and President Xi Jinping is expected to preside over a massive parade in Beijing on Sept. 3.

A divided Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who hails from the left wing of the broadly conservative Liberal Democratic Party, sounded an elegiac note.

“We must never again repeat the horrors of war. We must never again lose our way,” said Mr. Ishiba, who was joined by Emperor Naruhito. “We must now take deeply into our hearts once again our remorse and also the lessons learned from that war.”

The venue was Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan Hall, an arena designed for martial arts competitions but also used as a concert venue.

Mr. Ishiba’s future hangs by a thread. Since taking power in October 2024, he has lost the LDP’s majority in both houses of the Diet.

There are widespread rumors that he will be ousted from within the party.

Some lawmakers took a more controversial approach to the 80th anniversary of the end of the war. More than 100, from multiple parties, visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines Japan’s 2.5 million war dead.

However, the enshrinement of war criminals, as well as the shrine’s take on the Pacific War — that Tokyo’s war aim was to eject White colonialists from East Asia, rather than simply embarking upon a brutal regional rampage — has made politicians’ visits to the shrine controversial, especially in China and South Korea.

Among LDP dignitaries visiting Yasukuni was Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, son of a former premier and widely suggested as a possible replacement for Mr. Ishiba.

The Japanese are divided over the war. Some are remorseful for the country’s aggression and brutalities, while some say Japan was also a victim and has apologized enough.

Tokyo-based U.S. academic Jeffrey Hall noted on X that a viral tweet with more than 5.7 million views accused Mr. Ishiba of being an “anti-Japanese” leftist because he didn’t visit Yasukuni.

Mr. Naruhito also skipped Yasukuni. No emperor has visited the site since the war criminals were controversially enshrined there in 1978.

In the lead-up to the ceremonies, the emperor had been visiting sites emblematic of Japanese trauma in the war’s final months: The islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which were sites of merciless battles, and the city of Hiroshima, victim of history’s first atomic bombing.

Koreas also divided

Speaking in central Seoul’s Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung was conciliatory toward Japan, which colonized Korea from 1910-1945.

“We will seek forward-looking, mutually beneficial cooperation with Japan while holding frequent meetings,” he said.

Per Aug. 15 tradition, he also praised Koreans who fought for independence and “vowed to honor and respect” their memory.

However, he made no mention of the wartime allies who defeated Japan and thereby freed Korea.

For years, Anglo-Indian forces in Southeast Asia, Chinese forces in China and U.S. forces across the Pacific battled Imperial Japan. In the war’s final week, Soviet forces stormed into Manchuria, Korea and Japan’s northern islands.

“There was more than one factor that brought liberty to the people of Korea,” said Park Dong-suk, who holds a doctorate in Korean-Japanese history. He cited local independence activism, Nationalist Chinese support and the Allies’ battlefield defeats of Japan.

“Koreans in China were working in collaboration with [CIA predecessor] OSS to retake Korea, but the atomic bombs and Soviet entry into the war alleviated the need for trained Koreans to fight,” he said.

Mr. Lee also stated his ambition to improve relations with North Korea, starting with “restored trust and improved dialogue.”

He said he would respect the North’s political system and would take proactive military moves to reduce tensions.

His latest move at rapprochement — removing propaganda broadcasting gear from the DMZ — has not been reciprocated by Pyongyang.

There, dictator Kim Jong-un focused his Aug. 15 message on his country’s revitalized relationship with Russia.

Soviet troops liberated northern Korea and placed Mr. Kim’s late grandfather, Kim Il-sung, an anti-Japanese guerrilla, as head of state. Moscow-Pyongyang relations degraded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but with the two capitals now allied in Russia’s war on Ukraine, their partnership has been restored.

Speaking at Pyongyang’s Arch de Triumph, Mr. Kim said, per state media, “The unity and comradeship forged at the cost of blood in the struggle for the common cause are fully displayed in the battlefield of the 21st century to frustrate the imperialists’ outrageous arbitrary practices … are developing into a powerful alliance.”

He made no mention of the United States.

Why WWII still matters

The legacies of 1945 live on across the region.

With the last-minute Soviet assault, Korea was divided at the 38th parallel. The Soviets took Korea’s north. The Americans occupied the south weeks later, creating a national division that persists to this day.

Heavy combat against Japan depleted Chinese Nationalist forces, who were defeated after 1945 by Chinese Communist forces. Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, where cross-strait tensions continue to simmer.

Though eventually defeated, Japan’s 1941-42 victories over Western imperial powers in Southeast Asia inspired post-1945 overthrows of European colonialism in South and Southeast Asia.

Arguably the biggest change from 1945 is Japan-U.S. relations. Despite trade tensions, the two are strategic allies. Historic ironies, however, live on.

With U.S. backing, Tokyo is rearming. Its largest vessel, the F35B light carrier Kaga, bears the same name as a forebear that joined the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, then was sunk by the U.S. Navy at the battle of Midway.

• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.