Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should face up to history if he wants his country to be unshackled by its past, the Wall Street Journal said Monday.

"Japan has pursued a peaceful path since the war, but Mr. Abe raises new doubts about its intentions when he makes excuses for Japan's conduct. The country's prewar isolation was an effect, not a cause, of a conflict started by a fanatical regime devoted to racial purity and superiority," the U.S. paper said in an editorial.

It was referring to Abe's assertion in last week's statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II that Japan went down the wrong path of militarism after Western colonial powers isolated it. The paper said similar justifications are made at the Yasukuni Shrine's museum in Tokyo that glorifies Japan's wartime past.

"Far from liberating Asia, Tokyo exercised totalitarian control over its colonies, forcing subjects to adopt Japanese names, language, culture and history," the editorial said.

"We and other friends of Japan share Mr. Abe's desire to see it become a normal nation not shackled by its past, not least so it can be trusted to stand with other democracies against potential Chinese aggression. Mr. Abe would bring that goal closer if he took his own advice and faced history squarely," it said.

Abe's statement was met largely with criticism that he failed again to offer his own clear apology for the country's wartime brutalities, including its sexual enslavement of women, mostly Korean, for its troops during World War II.

Monday's editorial said it is hard to believe Japan's past apologies were sincere.

"Some Japanese complain, with justification, that no apology would satisfy critics in China and South Korea who have their own nationalist axes to grind," it said. "But reasonable foreigners, including Americans, find it hard to credit Japan's apologies as sincere when school textbooks whitewash atrocities." (Yonhap)