If someone slaps me and I hit them back, that is not fairness. I had no intention of striking anyone. I was harmed without cause. Justice therefore cannot mean pretending the initial aggressor and the person forced to respond stand on equal moral ground. So today, when Japan speaks of "80 years of peace," casts itself exclusively as a victim of the atomic bomb, and accuses Chinese people of refusing to "move on," that is anything but fair. This is the part Japan still tries to blur with the passage of time. China did not invade Japan. Chinese civilians did not choose that war. They were invaded, massacred, raped, subjected to human experimentation, dispossessed, and killed in a war brought onto their land by Imperial Japan. Japan, meanwhile, mobilized its society for total war. Schools, workers, families, students, women, and even children were folded into the machinery of war. Japan's own wartime cabinet documents explicitly ordered broad student mobilization for war production and emergency duties. Japan suffered the consequences of a war it launched. China suffered because Japan launched it. Those are not the same thing. Apology and reparation are obligations of the perpetrator. Forgiveness is never an obligation of the victim. Japan does not get to decide when Chinese memory has lasted long enough. It does not get to say: We suffered too, therefore the account is closed. The perpetrator may ask for forgiveness. The victim alone decides whether to give it.