SHINZO ABE’s visit to America was already a success before its high point on April 29th, when he became the first Japanese prime minister to address a joint session of Congress. The mood music had grown exuberant on April 27th, amid the announcement of new joint-defence guidelines to bolster America and Japan’s security partnership. The promise that Japan could soon conclude a bilateral deal with America for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade grouping, also gratified Mr Abe’s audience. And the Americans were delighted to hear him reaffirm his commitment to the relocation of an unpopular base for American Marines in the southern island prefecture of Okinawa, in the teeth of fierce local opposition.

Strains on the bilateral alliance show themselves in Okinawa But the hardest part of Mr Abe’s visit was always going to be the question of Japan’s reckoning with history, in the run-up to the highly charged 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Here too Mr Abe scored well before his American audience. An unexpected early gesture was a visit he made to Arlington National Cemetery, America’s most sacred military burial ground. Barack Obama declared that with this observance Mr Abe showed how “the past can be overcome, former adversaries can become the closest of allies, and that nations can build a future together”.

Congress received Mr Abe’s speech warmly. Not long ago the White House found it tricky to read his views on history. His visit to Tokyo's militaristic Yasukuni shrine in December 2013 aroused some mistrust. Yet his statement before the assembled congressmen, that Japan’s actions during the war “brought suffering to the peoples in Asian countries”, was straightforward. “We must not avert our eyes from that,” he acknowledged.

He also affirmed that he upholds apologies for Japan’s wartime atrocities that were made by previous prime ministers, and used the same phrase, “deep remorse” as did Tomiichi Murayama, a Socialist prime minister who set the standard for Japan’s statements of regret and apology in 1995. Joe Biden, America’s vice president, dubbed the speech “clear” as well as “very, very tactful and meaningful”.

Mr Abe also visited a memorial in Washington, DC to the victims of the second world war, and evoked battles named there: Pearl Harbour, the battles of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines and the Coral Sea battle off Australia. He offered his “deep repentance”—language he has not before used—as well as condolences for American lives lost. Yet he did not directly acknowledge the horror of the enforced march that followed the battle at Bataan, which killed thousands of Filipino and American prisoners.

Nor did he offer the personal apology that some of his critics had demanded. They were on their guard, after his past prevarications over history. The reaction from China has so far been muted. South Korea had lobbied strongly through Korean-American groups for a public display of contrition over Japan’s wartime treatment of so-called comfort women, or sex slaves. In answer to questions, Mr Abe repeated that he upholds a previous statement on the comfort women by Yohei Kono, a former chief cabinet secretary, in 1993.

Yet in the sole specific reference to the comfort women during his speech to Congress (apart from referring in general to the suffering Japan caused), Mr Abe remarked merely that women have always suffered the most in armed conflicts. That will cause disappointment in South Korea, wrote Bonnie Glaser of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

There was some subtext to parts of the visit. Mr Abe’s pilgrimage to Arlington seemed to signal that he wants Yasukuni to be treated in the same way, to be understood as the place where the Japanese state properly honours its war dead. It remains to be seen how Mr Abe’s friends and ideological allies will interpret his speech for the home audience. The Japanese translation of words such as “remorse” and “uphold” can be watered down, and this will also affect how China and South Korea regard the speech. Such distinctions are also expected to play a part in Mr Abe’s end-of-war statement in August.