Japanese prime minister visits Tokyo war shrine

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Japanese prime minister visits Tokyo war shrine

The China Post
October 19, 2005

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi prayed at a Tokyo shrine honoring the country's war dead on Monday, defying critics who say the visits glorify militarism and risking a further deterioration in relations with China and South Korea.

The visit was Koizumi's fifth to the Yasukuni Shrine since becoming prime minister in April 2001, and came despite a recent court decision that ruled the visits violate Japan's constitutional division of religion and the state.

Koizumi last went to Yasukuni in January 2004, triggering protests by Beijing and Seoul and compounding tensions between Tokyo and its neighbors. Those tensions peaked in April with anti-Japanese riots in several Chinese cities.

The international implications of the visit were immediately apparent. South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon summoned Japanese Ambassador Shotaro Oshima to protest shortly after the visit, expressing Seoul's "deep regrets."

"It's not an exaggeration to say that Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine has been the biggest stumbling block that has strained South Korea-Japan relations," Ban told Oshima. "Our government has repeatedly requested that he not visit the shrine, which enshrines war criminals who inflicted indescribable suffering and pain in the past."

The Japanese Embassy in Beijing issued a warning urging Japanese citizens to be cautious, the Foreign Ministry said.

Japan's 2.5 million war dead are worshipped as deities at Yasukuni, a shrine belonging to Japan's native Shinto religion. They include executed war criminals from World War II, such as wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. The shrine also runs a museum that attempts to justify Japan's wartime aggression.

In what could be a nod to the constitutional dispute, however, Koizumi made the visit in a business suit rather than traditional Japanese dress, and he only stood in silence and bowed at the entrance to the shrine, throwing coins into a donation box, rather than entering the inner chamber as he has done in the past.

Speculation has been high all year that Koizumi would visit Yasukuni, but he had not said whether he would go until an announcement early Monday. The visits are popular among conservatives and the families of soldiers who died in World War II.

"If my children were dead and enshrined here, I would want him to make a visit. So I understand the prime minister's feelings," said Kyoko Matsuura, a housewife in her 40s who was in a crowd at the shrine. "I think he comes here with a commitment not to repeat a war."

Public opinion, however, is deeply split over the visits. Nippon Television conducted a poll over the weekend showing that 47.6 percent of respondents supported the visits, while 45.5 percent were opposed. NTV surveyed 479 people from Friday to Sunday, and provided no margin of error.

Koizumi's visit invited mixed reaction from within his ruling coalition.
"We find (the visit) regrettable," said Takenori Kanzaki, head of the ruling Liberal Democrats' coalition partner, New Komei Party. "I think he should explain to Asian countries why he made the visit today."

Koizumi's move defied a recent ruling by the Osaka High Court that the visits violated the constitutional division between religion and the state. Koizumi suggests the visits are personal, but as in past occasions, he went to Yasukuni on Monday in an official car, accompanied by his aides.

But several other rulings have avoided ruling on the constitutionality of the visits.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Monday's visit was not in Koizumi's official capacity, but suggested the government might expect protests from neighboring nations.

"(Koizumi) did not visit the shrine as an official duty of the prime minister," Hosoda said.

"There may be various diplomatic actions that may develop later on but I cannot predict what exactly may happen," he said.

Yasukuni officials said a group of more than 100 national lawmakers were scheduled to visit the shrine Tuesday morning.

The visits have enraged Japanese neighbors and worsened relations with South Korea and China, which suffered from Tokyo's conquest of East Asia in the first half of the 20th century.


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Koizumi's shrine visit puts ties at new low

China Daily
October 18, 2005

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is true to his promises, no matter what damage such pledges cause.

Since taking office in 2001, Koizumi has kept his word to pray annually at the Yasukuni Shrine.
The prime minister visited the shrine in an effort to placate his critics.

Despite his attempts to play down the significance of the ceremony, Koizumi's visits to the shrine had an unambiguous implication.

The symbols of Japan's militarist regimes, which prior to and during World War II invaded China and much of Southeast Asia, are still held in high esteem domestically.

If Koizumi had simply wanted to pay his respects to the ordinary Japanese troops who died in World War II, he could have visited the tomb of the unknown soldiers, a memorial that has none of the political or religious associations as Yasukuni has.

To pay homage at Yasukuni is nothing but an innocuous political act. Koizumi has been dismissing the controversial connotations the shrine has.

The Shinto shrine, built in 1869, houses the souls of 2.5 million soldiers who have died in Japan's wars. During the 1930s and 1940s, it became the focus for the official state ideology - a mixture of Shintoism, emperor worship and militarism. While the postwar constitution ended Shintoism as a state religion and reduced the emperor from the status of a god to constitutional monarch, the shrine has remained a constant centre of attention for extreme right-wing nationalist groups.

The shrine is a place that commemorates those who ordered Japan's invasion in Asia and those who were sent out to fight.

Yasukuni honours not only civilian victims and regular soldiers from wars dating back to the 19th century. In 1978, 1,068 convicted war criminals, among them executed wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo and 13 other Class A war criminals, were secretly enshrined there.

Inside the shrine, signs refer to Tojo and the others as "martyrs" who were "wrongly accused by the allied forces."

While a radical fringe in Japan still insists the country's troops were wrongly condemned for war atrocities, the debate over Yasukuni highlights one of the noteworthy features of Japan's Shinto religion, which does not distinguish between good and evil when it comes to questions of the eternal.

The Japanese prime minister refuses to grasp the political nettle of his Yasukuni pilgrimage.

China and Japan were engaged in a strategic dialogue over the weekend in an effort to figure out solutions to the disputes between the nations.

We have our suspicions about Japan's will and sincerity, qualities that are essential in steering bilateral relations through difficult times.

Japan has, time and again, spoken with its tongue in its cheek. What the politicians say bears no relation to what they do.

Members of the parliament paid homage at Yasukuni on April 22 when their prime minister apologized for his country's colonial rule and aggression.

Japan's way of atoning for its militaristic past has been a thorn deep down in the flesh of bilateral relations. The wound is festering.

By sojourning at the Yasukuni Shrine, Koizumi has driven a wedge between Beijing and Tokyo.

Koizumi's visit was not a faux pas or a personal foible. He was well aware of the opposition at home and abroad - and went ahead anyway.

Far from being a diversion from the domestic tasks at hand, powerful sections of the Japanese ruling class regard the resurrection of right-wing nationalism as an essential political ingredient for implementing its programme.

Not true in word and resolute in deed, Japan is putting bilateral relations on a tortuous path.


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[Gil]

I think Koizumi is a brave traditionalist who was forced to accept an unnatural "alliance" with the US due to political/social pressures but remains a staunch defender of his beliefs in traditional Japan and their heritage. Perhaps more western politicians should follow his example.