With his recent visit to Yasukuni Shrine, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has unleashed a diplomatic storm in East Asia. In the Groundhog Day of East Asia’s history problems, his visit triggered condemnation from China and South Korea. It prompted laments from many commentators (see here and here) that Abe was poisoning Tokyo’s foreign relations and contravening its own strategic interests.

Abe’s gesture is just the most recent of Tokyo’s unfortunate “one step forward, two steps back” approach to remembering its wartime past.  To improve relations with Japan’s former victims, Japanese leaders have previously given many apologies (and contrary to the conventional wisdom, many of them were quite sensitive and sincere). However these apologies were often contradicted by other statements or actions that sent the opposite message.

Sometimes it was simply democratic politics at work — one leader would deliver an apology, only to have a different leader condemn it and deny the act in question; or one group would release a forthright textbook, while another group would publish one that whitewashed past atrocities.

But other times, both the salve and the slap would come–confusingly–from the same individual. For example, Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa delivered perhaps Japan’s most candid and self-reflective apology during a 1993 visit to Seoul. But then he undercut this historic gesture with his subsequent word games over whether or not Japan was indeed an “aggressor” in the war.

Similarly, Junichiro Koizumi in 2000 made an important gesture with his trip to Seoul’s Seodaemun prison (where the Japanese used to imprison, torture, rape, and execute Korean independence leaders during colonial rule). Koizumi apologized, stated his country’s commitment to peace and good relations with South Korea, and laid a wreath at a memorial. Yet the visit barely registered. Enraged by Koizumi’s recent appearance at Yasukuni Shrine, protestors thronged wherever he went.

Today we see Shinzo Abe treading this same unproductive path. The prime minister issued a thoughtful, remorseful, and sensitive statement about his government’s attitudes toward Japan’s wartime past. He also prayed at Chinreisha (a memorial in the Yasukuni compound that honors those from all nations who died in war). These are commendable gestures that, on their own, would signal a commitment to remembering Japan’s past misdeeds and to repairing relations with its former victims.

But Abe made these gestures at a place that Japan’s victims associate with nationalistic mobilization for regional aggression. Yasukuni is bound up with imperialism and emperor worship; it enshrines 14 convicted war criminals; and the compound also hosts a museum (the Yushukan) that whitewashes Japan’s past violence.

Abe’s statement and prayers at Chinreisha should have been gratifying, but have already been forgotten. Indeed, Tokyo’s efforts to heal the past will never succeed as long as the slaps continue to sting.