Word: yasukuni
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...back on subsidies to local governments. But it wasn't his reforms?bold in conception though they may be?that captured the imagination. It was his visit, on Oct. 17, to the tree-shrouded Shinto shrine just across the moat from the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo known as Yasukuni Jinja. Built in 1869, the shrine (whose name means, of all things, "Peaceful Nation") commemorates the souls of more than 2.5 million of Japan's war dead. Koizumi defends his visits to the shrine?he has made one each year since taking office?as a personal and religious matter...
...colonial power, the shrine was a focal point of the country's native religion, used by political leaders to help justify national conquests. They proclaimed that the souls of those who sacrificed their lives at war for Japan and its Emperor would live forever, venerated as gods, at Yasukuni. Soldiers, pilots and seamen heading into battle would frequently bid farewell to each other by saying, "See you at Yasukuni." Since 1945, Yasukuni has remained a quiet but potent and enduring symbol for the country's die-hard nationalists. Since 1959, priests at Yasukuni have quietly enshrined more than...
...Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, recently created shockwaves by saying he would refuse to meet with Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, at a ground-breaking summit of East Asian nations that begins Monday. Reasons include rising Japanese nationalism and a recent visit by the Japanese Premier to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which commemorates Japan's war dead, including some war criminals from the time of Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s. But underneath that diplomatic spat over history is a struggle for power and influence in East Asia that is increasingly straining Beijing-Tokyo relations. "The China...
DISMISSED. A LAWSUIT demanding damages by 188 plaintiffs offended by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's three visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors soldiers killed in past wars, among them 14 Class-A war criminals; by the Osaka High Court; in Osaka. Although the court rejected the demands for nominal payments of $90 per plaintiff from Koizumi, the Japanese government and the shrine, its judgment also said that the prime minister's visits?which routinely roil relations with China and South Korea by rekindling resentment of Japanese wartime atrocities?violate a constitutional requirement calling for the separation of church...
...more Yasukuni gets attacked by foreign countries, the more I want to attach importance to it." YOSHIAKI KIKYO, a visitor at Japan's controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Class-A war criminals are buried among the war dead, during last week's 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender at the end of World...