In this paper we present a diachronic corpus-based contrastive pragmatic study of German and Japanese Second World War crime apologies. War apology is a very emotively loaded and sensitive phenomenon, in particular because the crimes perpetrated can never be undone. We approach war apologies by examining their pragmatic features and explore the diachronic development of these features. Our aim is to offer a different insight into the phenomenon of war apology than would have been obtained using critical discourse analysis-based and sociological research on language and politics, which often departs from and confirms ideologically loaded assumptions. We approach war apologies through the lens of speech act theory, focusing on apology as an ‘extended’ interactionally embedded phenomenon. Our corpus consists of apologies issued by Japanese and German representatives of the state. Our analysis not only shows that there are major differences between the public war apologies under investigation and interpersonal apologies, but also that there are significant differences between the realisations of Japanese and German war apologies across time.

在本文中，我们对德国和日本第二次世界大战的犯罪道歉进行了基于历时语料的对比语用研究。战争道歉是一种非常令人动容且敏感的现象，尤其是因为所犯下的罪行永远无法撤消。我们通过检查道歉的实用功能来探讨道歉，并探讨这些道歉的历时发展。我们的目的是对战争道歉现象提供与使用基于批评性话语分析的语言和政治社会学研究所获得的见解不同的见解，后者常常背离并证实了意识形态上的假设。我们通过言语行为理论的视角来处理战争道歉，重点是将道歉视为一种“扩展的”互动嵌入现象。我们的语料库由日本和德国国家代表发表的道歉组成。我们的分析不仅表明，在调查中的公开战争道歉与人际道歉之间存在重大差异，而且随着时间的推移，日本和德国对战争道歉的认识也存在显着差异。