Word: koizumi
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...enshrined. Since 1978, when 14 of Japan's most notorious World War II war criminals were added to the books of veneration there, Japan's neighbors have considered the shrine not a national and religious monument, but a hateful celebration of Japan's warmongering past. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual trips to the shrine unfailingly provoke formal protests from China. Two weeks ago, Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura that one of the major stumbling blocks to improving relations were politicians' visits to Yasukuni...
...this brisk and sunny spring morning, Diet member Yasukazu Hamada was undeterred. A young and conservative member of Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Hamada saw his pilgrimage to Yasukuni as a proper personal tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. No offense to China was intended, he says, but no special concessions were made to soothe China's sensibilities, either. Three such parliamentary prayer services had been held every year for decades, Hamada notes, and this one had been scheduled long before the anti-Japanese riots in China. He looks surprised when asked whether...
...disputes are made more urgent by rising oil prices and China's booming energy demands. But the hostilities are due as much to historic frictions as to economic ones. Many South Koreans and Chinese contend that Japan has never fully repented for its brutal wartime past. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has only exacerbated tensions, they say, with his repeated trips to the Yasukuni Shrine?where military dead, including convicted war criminals, are honored?and with his failure to visit China since...
...hasn't helped matters that Japan's Education Ministry?headed by one of Koizumi's more conservative appointees?last week approved a textbook that critics say whitewashes the country's imperialist past. Among other things, it downgrades the Nanjing Massacre to an "incident." China immediately labeled the book "poison" and summoned Japan's envoy to Beijing for a dressing down, while a text-message campaign urged Chinese to boycott Japanese goods. One of China's largest supermarket chains, Nonggongshang, said its 1,200 stores would no longer stock products from Japanese companies whose top brass are associated with a group...
...threw himself off a bridge to protest Japan's claim on the tiny island the Koreans call Tokdo (the Japanese know it as Takeshima), while a mother and son lopped off the ends of their little fingers and threatened to send the bits of flesh to Prime Minister Koizumi. Meanwhile, Roh's popularity rating has rebounded recently to 38% from a low of around half of that last year...