Japan’s emperor famously renounced his divine status after the second World War, making him essentially a ceremonial figure. Yet, for many Japanese their monarch retains a powerful moral authority, in much the same way as the pope does for older Irish people. His pronouncements still ripple through the national psyche, especially on those rare occasions when he seems to touch on politics.

So Emperor Akihito's new year message, in which he urged the nation to learn from the war, was interpreted as a rebuke to the government of prime minister Shinzo Abe. The emperor's successor and oldest son, Prince Naruhito, reinforced that message last week when he said it was important to "look back humbly on the past" and "correctly" pass on the tragic experiences of history.

Though filtered through the opaque language of Imperial Household bureaucrats, there was no masking the concerned tone of these royal homilies – or their timing. Abe has appointed a panel of experts to discuss what he should say to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in August. Though not a single word of the “Abe statement” has been penned, it is already the subject of charged political debate.

Murayama

statement That’s hardly surprising. The prime minister is at best ambiguous on Japan’s war legacy. His political constituency bristles at the 1995 Murayama

statement, inherited from a socialist prime minister, which, by contrast, unambiguously expressed remorse for the war and is widely considered Japan’s official position on its responsibility for starting it. Any attempt to tamper with that cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy will go down badly.

Abe has therefore tried to avoid stepping on diplomatic landmines ahead of the summer. In a statement to the history panel last week, he insisted that the path Japan took in 1945 as a peace-loving nation “will remain unchanged”. His government merely wants to make greater contributions towards international peace and prosperity under the banner of “proactive pacifism”, he said.

But on the few occasions when he has been pushed for more details Abe has fluffed his lines. During a discussion in January on NHK, Japan’s state broadcaster, he hinted that the government might not “strictly adhere” to the Murayama statement. During Diet questioning a month later, he made it clear he was unhappy with phrases in the statement such as “war of aggression” and “heartfelt apology.”

To those who have followed Abe’s two-decade political career, such semantic tap-dancing is unsurprising. In 2013, he told the Diet the definition of Japan’s wartime aggression “has yet to be established in academia or in the international community”. That merely reflects a common argument on the Japanese right, that Japan was not brutally colonising other Asian countries but fighting western aggression.

Scarred relations

The endless wrestling over the wording of a document saying sorry (or not) for events that took place (or didn’t) 70 years ago is puzzling to many, but it matters. Japan’s failure to shrug off the baggage of the past has deeply scarred ties with its nearest Asian neighbours. On Sunday, South Korea’s president,

Park Geun-Hye

, who has never formally met Abe, again demanded that Japan “stop distorting” history.

China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, also criticised Japan at the UN last week when he said: "aggression should not be denied".

Abe's supporters use these now ritual howls of protest at Japan's perceived lack of atonement to argue that Japan should stop apologising. Nationalist voices, which have grown shriller under Abe, say these demands for atonement will never stop. This clash of irreconcilables means that 2015 in Asia will likely be overshadowed by history.

Such a prospect worries most ordinary Japanese, and it seems the emperor too. Though officially barred from politics, he has found a way of intervening in these debates.

In the past he has called attention to the monarchy’s Korean roots as a way of building bridges between the two countries rather than burning them. Despite pressure from nationalists, he has stayed away from Yasukuni Shrine, which venerates the 14 class-A war criminals who led Japan to disaster.

Given this background, there could be no mistake about his new year dispatch.

“So many people lost their lives,” he said. “I think it is most important for us to take this opportunity to study and learn from the history of this war.” Those who were listening surely got the message.

Unfortunately, the history of his family shows that the people around the emperor often only heard what they wanted.