Word: shrines
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...into a single entity, reduce the bureaucracy's control over government funds, and cut 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...
...During Japan's time as a 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...
...just in China and South Korea that the visits are controversial. In June, five former Japanese Prime Ministers asked Koizumi to stop going to the shrine. Only the most conservative of Japan's five major newspapers have run editorials in favor of the visits. And there is evidence that Koizumi's stubbornness is now threatening to do irreparable harm to Japan's long-term interests. "Japan pays nearly 20% of the U.N.'s budget, which [it says] argues strongly for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council," says Jeff Kingston, a professor of Japanese history at Temple University...
...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...
...GREEN FOOTBALLS and other conservatives decried it as a "monumental insult," largely because the crescent of red maple trees resembled an Islamic prayer station, pointing toward Mecca. Some critics tipped their hats last week at the bowl-shaped redesign, above, until ERROR THEORY pointed out that the "Islamo-fascist shrine ... still contains all of the features that made it a terrorist memorial." One element that was retained: the flight path lined with 44 translucent blocks, one for each person who died in the crash--including the four hijackers...