Word: yasukuni
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...first glance, the timing looked impeccably bad. With emotions between China and Japan still raw after weeks of anti-Japanese protests in major Chinese cities, 80 Japanese Diet members and the personal representatives of 86 others assembled at 8:00 a.m. last Friday to pay their respects at the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo. No ordinary center of Shinto worship, Yasukuni is where the souls of 2.5 million Japanese war dead are 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...
...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...
...same time, diplomatic relations between China and Japan have been tense. Beijing carps about Koizumi's visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors some Japanese war criminals, and the two governments squabble over disputed territories such as the Diaoyu Islands (known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands). The Japanese public is also suspicious of Beijing's economic and diplomatic support of North Korea, which has a history of kidnapping Japanese citizens. A government survey released last December showed that 58% of the Japanese polled said they "do not have friendly feelings toward" China...
...terms in Asia. Under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, it is modernizing its military and strengthening its strategic alliance with the U.S. ("The relationship between our countries is the best it's ever been," said Baker last week.) Notoriously, Koizumi has ignored China's demands that he cease visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where the souls of some war criminals from World War II are memorialized...
...your report believe that Japan has apologized enough to other countries for the suffering it inflicted during World War II. As a Japanese art student said, "The war is over. It has nothing to do with me." And yet, for the Japanese Prime Minister to regularly visit Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where many notorious war criminals are honored, is equivalent to a German Chancellor's paying homage at a memorial to Adolf Hitler. For the Japanese and the Chinese to respect one another is not to water down history. Henry Kwok Hong Kong...