Crossing the United States recently on a book tour, architect Yoshihiro Takishita observed that Americans begin their lectures with a joke, "but being Japanese, I will start with an apology."

From Maine to Hawaii that invariably provoked laughter from audiences familiar with Japan's record of apologies for its aggression before and during World War II.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized again at last weekend's Asian and African summit in Indonesia. But as before, the words did little to mollify China and other Asian nations still bitter at the death, destruction and cruelties inflicted by Japan.

Whatever goodwill Koizumi hoped to gain was diminished by the visit of more than 80 Japanese lawmakers to a Shinto shrine in Tokyo that honors the spirits of several million Japanese war dead, including executed war criminals.

Speaking at the opening of the summit, Koizumi was the first Japanese prime minister from the conservative Liberal-Democrat Party to use the words "deep remorse" and "heartfelt apology."

Those were the same words that a Socialist prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, used in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the war's end.

But another LDP prime minister, Kakuei Tanaka, whose usual blunt speech earned him the nickname "computerized bulldozer," could not bring himself to be so straightforward.

In 1972, he went to China to establish full diplomatic relations with a communist country that had been hostile to Japan for 23 years. He carefully avoided "moshi wakenai," the Japanese phrase for apology.

Chinese officials didn't complain. They were grateful Tanaka had come to an economically backward China, seven months after Richard Nixon's historic visit, bearing not only recognition but the bright prospects of lucrative trade.

Distracted by Nixon's Watergate scandal, the United States took seven more years to forge formal ties with Beijing. Given its head start, Japan became China's biggest trading partner.

In those days, when Japan was the engine of China's economic growth, there was no talk of formal apologies.

Today, a noisy, and sometimes violent, faction in Japan refuses not only to apologize for wartime abuses but stoutly denies they occurred. For example, the Japanese education ministry, more conservative than other government organs, recently angered much of Asia by approving school textbooks that skirt the idea of guilt.

Ironically, the bad press Japan gets for its restrained apologies obscures the fact that since 1945 it has been the very model of a world citizen, guided by an American-inspired constitution that bans war as an instrument of foreign policy.

Japan is second only to the United States in financially supporting the United Nations, where it is now seeking, with American support and Chinese disapproval, to win a permanent seat on the Security Council in recognition of its role as the world's No. 2 economy.

It leads all other nations, except the United States, in international aid.

And while it boasts a powerful military, Japan is alone among the great powers in not having engaged in war since World War II. This seems remarkable for a country that in the early 1940s had almost all of Asia at its feet.

Still, Japanese forces are becoming more active overseas. Japan has sent troops to help out with reconstruction in Iraq and in tsunami-battered areas of Asia.

And some politicians are arguing for a more forceful military stance because of saber rattling by a belligerent North Korea.

Even Japan's abhorrence of nuclear weapons, born of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, could be weakened if North Korea fired another missile across Japanese territory, as it did in 1998.

Over the years Japan has failed to get much credit no matter what it does internationally.

This is largely its own fault. Shy, awkward, inarticulate and poor at languages, the Japanese find it hard to make a convincing case for themselves on the international stage.

"What we need," says Mr. Takishita, the architect, "is a first-class American advertising firm to help sell ourselves to the world."