Eighty years after the guns fell silent, Japan still carries a legal designation written for a world that no longer exists. Standing before the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Shigeru Takaichi asked the international community to do what history already has — close the chapter on Japan as an enemy state. The request is simple in spirit but complex in execution, requiring the consent of the very powers whose postwar dominance the Charter was designed to preserve. It is, at its heart, a question about whether institutions can learn to let go of the past.