Poll finds more than half want PM to apologize

Japan's relations with its neighbors have been stretched for years due to some of the country's lawmakers, ministers and even the leader trying to deny it ever committed atrocities during World War II.

However, in Shibuya, a crowded commercial ward in downtown Tokyo, ordinary people felt that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should seek reconciliation with neighboring China and South Korea through including an apology in his planned war anniversary statement.

Their opinions were in line with a poll in which 54.6 percent of 1,016 respondents said they thought Abe should include regret and apology for the country's past colonial rule and aggression in his statement for the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.