Word: shrines
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...between a Sunni and a Shiite. The results are dismaying, if predictable—few of the officials who should know the differences actually do. If we had our druthers, every Harvard graduate and civil servant would have understood immediately the importance of the bombing of the al-Askari shrine this past February in the Iraqi city of Samarra. Who could have noted it at that time as one of Shi’a Islam’s holiest sites, and how many Harvard students could have predicted the upswing in violence, now bordering on civil war, its destruction immediately...
...Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part - no introspective exertion or self-flagellation. Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways - and not necessarily...
...That the Beijing and Seoul summits happened at all was a surprise. A Japanese leader had not visited Beijing in five years and Seoul in more than a year, in part due to former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's controversial visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 14 Japanese war criminals along with 2.5 million war dead. The diplomatic deep freeze was worsened by rising nationalism in both South Korea and China, which culminated with violent anti-Japanese demonstrations throughout China in the spring of 2005. When Koizumi, in his last major act as Prime Minister, went...
...past history issues. Japan occupied Korea for 35 years. South Korean people - all Korean people - can never forget this. Our leadership has agreed that we should work toward a future-oriented relationship regardless of what happened in the past. But repeated visits by Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Class-A war criminals are honored, are disrespectful to South Koreans and other East Asian countries suppressed and oppressed by Japanese colonialism. They should have cared much more, should have been more thoughtful of neighboring countries. They should have been able to gain the trust and confidence...
...With the calm passing of time, China and South Korea may be perceived to be in the wrong." JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI, outgoing Prime Minister of Japan, on complaints from neighboring countries over his visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japan's war dead, in his final statement before leaving office...