Japan ex-PM Murayama, famous for WWII apology, dies aged 101

Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama delivers a speech before civic group members during an anti-government rally outside the National Diet in Tokyo on July 23, 2015, to protest against controversial security bills that would expand the remit of the country's armed forces. Murayama, famous for making a statement apologising over World War II, died Friday at the age of 101. AFP-Yonhap

TOKYO — Japan's former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologising over World War II, died Friday at the age of 101, officials said.

Murayama, in office from 1994 to 1996, issued the 1995 statement on the 50th anniversary of Japan's surrender in which he expressed "deep remorse" over the country's atrocities in Asia.

"Tomiichi Murayama, the father of Japanese politics, passed away today at 11:28 am at a hospital in Oita City at the age of 101," Mizuho Fukushima, head of the Social Democratic Party, seen as the successor to Murayama's now-defunct Socialist Party, said on X (formerly Twitter).

Hiroyuki Takano, the secretary general of the Social Democratic Party in Oita, Murayama's hometown, told AFP he had been informed that the former premier died of old age.

In the landmark statement in August 1995, Murayama said that "Japan ... through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations".

"In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology," the statement said.

The phrases "deep remorse" and "heartfelt apology" were later used by successive Japanese prime ministers when marking the 60th and 70th World War II anniversaries.