Word: yasukuni
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...countries cannot agree on the "facts." This lack of consensus plays into the hands of demagogic politicians. Japanese nationalists know their constituents respond to downplaying and denial of the massacre. A vocal and powerful minority, they fan the flames of other incendiary political issues, such as visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the general who commanded forces in Nanjing is honored. Meanwhile, Chinese leaders know that keeping the memory of the Rape of Nanjing alive stirs outrage against a common enemy and inspires a fervent patriotism that helps to distract the public from the Beijing government's shortcomings. In other...
...address these problems cost his party control of Japan's upper house, and yet, like their fallen predecessor, both Fukuda and Aso preferred to highlight their foreign policy differences - Fukuda called for open talks with Japan's neighbors, while the hawkish Aso took a conservative stance on the Yasukuni war shrine, a sore point in Asian relations. Both favored postponing a general election until next spring; both have also inherited Abe's insistence on continuing Japan's support of coalition forces in Afghanistan through its refueling operations in the Indian Ocean...
...called for Japan to rely on American military protection so it could focus on developing an export-led economy. Fast-forward half a century and Aso, a former Foreign Minister, staunchly supports the U.S.-Japan security alliance, while antagonizing China by defending visits of Japanese statesmen to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are memorialized. Meanwhile, Fukuda's father was an LDP stalwart who while PM promoted diplomatic relations with Asia through "heart-to-heart" dialogue. And guess what? That's what Fukuda, a former Chief Cabinet Secretary, peddles himself as today: a consensus-driven political insider who opposes...
...that is actually an improvement - until January, Yushukan had maintained that Washington tricked Tokyo into war in order to lift the U.S. out of the Great Depression. That was deleted in a recent revision of the some of the museum's historical explanations, although Yasukuni officials deny that the changes were made to placate any foreigners. They certainly don't go out of their way to soothe the feelings of Asian nations that suffered far more than the U.S. did at the hands of the Japanese army. Yushukan's exhibits on Japan's colonization of Korea in the first half...
...emperor. But the past still matters. It would be right - to Japan's wartime victims and to Japan itself - to have a memorial that honors the war dead without honoring the ideology that cost them their lives. As peaceful a square as any you might find in Tokyo, Yasukuni shrine could be that place, but only with a radically different museum. And if that ever happens, perhaps even Premier Wen could spare a visit...