Word: yasukuni
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Junichiro Koizumi was dressed to the nines for his last visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, because if you're going to be the center of international controversy, you might as well look good. Wearing a formal tuxedo jacket with coattails, the Japanese Prime Minister arrived at Yasukuni, where WWII-era war criminals are enshrined along with 2.5 million Japanese war dead, at 7:40 on Tuesday morning - 61 years after Japan surrendered to end World War II. He followed a white-robed Shinto priest into the shrine's inner hall, worshipped briefly and departed, the entire 10-minute visit carried...
...China and South Korea reacted angrily to his visit, the sixth during Koizumi's time as Prime Minister, but the reality is that both countries have long since written off Koizumi, who leaves office in a month. Solving the intractable question of Yasukuni - and possibly ending Japan's virtual diplomatic isolation in Asia - will fall to Koizumi's likely successor, the hawkish Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe. Both China and South Korea have signaled their willingness to give Abe a chance once he takes power, to allow him to begin to repair the immense damage that Koizumi has done...
...Yasukuni is a losing diplomatic issue for Japan, but there's always been support at home, especially among older Japanese who feel they deserve a place where they can pay respect to their millions of war dead without guilt. Although he had never visitied the shrine before he ran for Prime Minister in 2001, Koizumi made an election promise to pay his respects at Yasukuni if he won. That pledge won him key support from conservatives, and in the following years Koizumi deftly used Yasukuni to score political points at home. The louder China and South Korea would complain...
Japanese Gesture A shrine visit could mean trouble PM Junichiro Koizumi's likely visit this week to the Yasukuni shrine honoring Japan's war dead may create more strain with South Korea and China, who see it as an homage to Japanese atrocities...
...Many Japanese say such historical distortions at Yasukuni museum are disseminated by an ultra-conservative minority affiliated with the shrine, and that mainstream Japan has confronted its war past head on. Koizumi's Yasukuni visits are highly controversial in Japan itself, with public opinion split roughly in half. Yasuo Fukuda, a candidate to succeed Koizumi, has picked up support by publicly criticizing Koizumi's Yasukuni fetish. One of Japan's most influential business associations has called for the erection of a new, non-denominational memorial where the next prime minister can pay his respects instead. That may be the only...