Word: shrines
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With outgoing prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi due to step down next month, Japan's neighbors are breathing a sigh of relief and focusing their attention on his likely successor, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe. Koizumi's visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine?the latest on Aug. 15?have long outraged China and South Korea, who view them as deliberate celebrations of Japanese militarism. But Beijing and Seoul have signaled their willingness to give Abe a chance to repair ties?if he forgoes Yasukuni...
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...
...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...
...main opponents, Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki, has come out against the Yasukuni visits, while another, Foreign Minister Taro Aso, wants to sidestep the issue by transforming the shrine into a state-sponsored memorial, instead of a religious one. But Tanigaki and Aso are only polling in the single digits, and the LDP stalwarts who will be voting in the party election tend to be conservative. Abe will have to decide eventually. Many observers assume that his past record means he will make the trip as Prime Minister at some point. But with Abe's proven conservative bona-fides, he might...
...Japan is virtually split over the issue, although it is slowly turning against the shrine visits. That change is in part due to revelations published last month that Emperor Hirohito apparently stopped visiting Yasukuni because 14 Class A war criminals, including WWII-era leader Hideki Tojo, were secretly enshrined there in 1978. There's also evidence that Japan's conservatives may finally be coming to grips with the truth of WWII. This week the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest paper and a traditionally conservative voice, published the conclusion of a yearlong examination of Japan's responsibility for the war. Rejecting...