"Why Japan cannot 'apologize' enough for World War 2?" being put on hold for "off-topic" (too basic) and swiftly deleted?

Question

Edit:

Now the question is deleted! From what I can tell it now has a +7/-6 vote. I believe that those who vote to delete the question owe us an explanation.

Here's my question, "Why Japan cannot “apologize” enough for World War 2?". And it has been put on hold because it's too basic.

"This question is too basic; it can be definitively answered by a single link to the relevant topic on Wikipedia or another standard reference source. If you are instead questioning the correctness of a reference source, please edit the post to supply a link and explain what you find unclear, or why you believe it to be wrong or incomplete." – Denis de Bernardy, Reinstate Monica - M. Schröder, Giter, Spencer, justCal

It is reasonable to believe that the closers think the very wiki article I linked to can provide the answer. But I have taken great pain to explain why this article is inadequate, obviously the closers simply ignore it.

To summarize here: the closers might think that the answer is because the Japan apology is not sincere enough, but I've also asked a follow up question that remains unanswered: what is preventing Japan from issuing a sincere apology like the Germany did?

There is also a comment suggested that the question should be put on hold because it is asking about the motivations of people:

Questions asking for the internal motivations of people, how specific individuals would behave in hypothetical situations or predictions for future events are off-topic, because answers would be based on speculation and their correctness could not be verified with sources available to the public

But this is not about the motivation of individuals. It is asking about the motivation of a country. In the former case, the individual motivations (most likely) could not be verified with sources, but in the later case, it's different because a country decision can be verified with sources as before it is made, it must undergo debates and can be recorded.

A simple search on History SE reveals a lot of well-received questions do ask about motivations:

1. Why did Ford pardon Nixon?
2. Why did Gen. Lee (Civil War) surrender to the U.S?
3. Motivation Behind the USSR Assisting China's Nuclear Program
4. What was the Japanese or Axis motivation to drag US into the War?

The list goes on and on and on. So the "reason" that History SE doesn't tolerate motivation question can't stand up to scrutiny.

I believe that this question is closed wrongly. Please reopen.

Answer 1

The Wikipedia article you cited includes a section titled Controversy, which does in fact appear (to me) to answer your question. Despite your assertion that

"... I have taken great pain to explain why this article is inadequate ..."

I do not see that explanation in your question (where it should be) or in the comments below the question (which are in any case ephemeral).

In the absence of that explanation, your question does indeed appear to be too basic, as defined in the Help Centre, and the closure looks to have been reasonable.

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To take the specific example of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's 2006 apology, the Wikipedia article notes that:

In October 2006, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's apology was followed on the same day by a group of 80 Japanese lawmakers' visit to the Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines more than 1,000 convicted war criminals. Two years after the apology, Shinzo Abe also denied that the Imperial Japanese military had forced comfort women into sexual slavery during World War II . In addition, Prime Minister Abe claimed that the Class A war criminals "are not war criminals under the laws of Japan". He also cast doubt on Murayama apology by saying, "The Abe Cabinet is not necessarily keeping to it" and by questioning the definition used in the apology by saying, "There is no definitive answer either in academia or in the international community on what constitutes aggression. Things that happen between countries appear different depending on which side you're looking from."

[Citations for these assertions are included in the original article.]

It is, perhaps, unsurprising therefore that many felt that apology to be insincere.

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Now, consider if Germany had maintained an official shrine to Nazi war-criminals, and that a large group of members of the Bundestag had visited that shrine shortly after the German Chancellor had issued a formal apology for atrocities committed during the war.

Imagine that a couple of years later, the German Chancellor had then denied that some of those atrocities had actually occurred, and argued that in any case, those war-crimes were not actually 'crimes' under German law.

Do you think that people would have believed the original official apology to have been sincere under those circumstances?

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Now, I wasn't one of those who voted to close. However, I did consider doing so on the grounds that it is unclear exactly what you are asking. There are many different groups and individuals who feel that Japan has never issued a sincere apology for their acts during the Second World War. When you ask:

Why Japan cannot “apologize” enough for World War 2?

my first question is "apologise to whom?". There will be different answers according to who you ask.

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To address your supplemental point about up-votes and down-votes in comments, you say that you received 2 downvotes on the main question. That is incorrect. The current vote-count shows that you have actually received 5 down-votes and 4 up-votes.

The tool-tip for the up-vote button states that:

This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear.

while the tool-tip for the down-vote button states:

This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful.

Of course, up-votes and down-votes are anonymous, and people do vote for other reasons (which, I assume, explains the up-votes in this case).

For other possible reasons that people may have down-voted, you might find the post Why did my question get a downvote? here on Meta to be helpful.