On her first visit to Japan in seven years, there was plenty for Germany’s Angela Merkel to talk about with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.<br /><br /> They discussed Ukraine and they have agreed to aim for an EU-Japan free trade pact by the end of the year.<br /><br /> And speaking from her own country’s experience, the Chancellor politely reminded Tokyo of the need to confront its own wartime past.<br /><br /> “I did not come to Japan to give advice, to tell Japan what to do,” she said. <br /><br /> “I can only say what Germany did. After the Second World War, there were discussions again and again, sometimes very hard discussions about how to deal with the past.”<br /><br /> Merkel’s words come as Abe prepares to make a statement later this year marking the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War Two, the legacy of which still plagues Tokyo’s ties with China and South Korea.<br /><br /> At the start of her visit, the German Chancellor also met a humanoid robot at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo.<br /><br /> Her two-d
