U.S. State Department’s declaration of ‘disappointment’ uncalled for
While it is true that China and Korea suffered for years from unspeakable atrocities at the hands of Japan’s Imperial Army, the Japanese soldiers who died during the conflicts before and during WWII deserve the same honor from its country’s leaders as Chinese and Korean war dead deserve from the leaders of their countries.
And the State Department’s declaration of disappointment is the same as if the Japanese - who consider the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities - were to express their disappointment over the President of the United States laying a wreath at our war memorials.
JAPANESE PM PROVOKES ANGER WITH YASUKUNI WAR SHRINE VISIT
By Jonathan Soble in Tokyo, Jamil Anderlini in Beijing and Song Jung-a in Seoul
The Financial Times
December 26, 2913
Shinzo Abe has provoked anger in China and South Korea by visiting Tokyo’s Yasukuni war shrine, breaking an informal seven-year freeze on visits by Japanese prime ministers to the site reviled by many in Asia as a symbol of Japanese imperialism.
Mr Abe, trailed by news cameras, worshipped at the shrine on Thursday to mark the first anniversary of his administration. Members of his cabinet had visited the shrine on significant dates this year but the premier himself had stayed away out of what analysts and government officials had said was deference to Japan’s Asian neighbours.
Yasukuni honours the souls of some 2.5m soldiers killed in Japanese military campaigns since the 19th century, but the politics surrounding it have been highly fraught since the late 1970s when the spirits of 14 wartime leaders convicted as Class-A war criminals by an Allied tribunal were surreptitiously enshrined there.
Within hours of Mr Abe’s visit, China’s foreign ministry released two statements of “strong indignation” and warned of unspecified “consequences”. It later summoned the Japanese ambassador to express its opposition.
“The Japanese leader’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine is, in nature, an attempt to whitewash the history of aggression and colonialism by militarist Japan,” the ministry said, and “cannot but give rise to high vigilance and strong concerns of Japan’s close Asian neighbours and the international community over where Japan is headed.”
South Korea also condemned the visit, calling it a “deplorable and anachronistic act” that would damage bilateral relations and stability in northeast Asia. “Mr Abe’s visit to the shrine reveals his wrong understanding of history,” the government said in a statement.
Thursday’s visit chimed with what many see as a deepening focus on rightwing causes by Mr Abe, who for most of his first year in office had prioritised his “Abenomics” campaign to reenergise the economy.
Mr Abe has recently pushed an unpopular official secrets act through parliament and is taking steps to strengthen the military and loosen restrictions on its participation in foreign conflicts.
The last serving Japanese prime minister to visit Yasukuni was Junichiro Koizumi, in 2006. Mr Koizumi’s regular attendance at the shrine enraged China and resulted in a prolonged suspension of top-level government contact between the two countries.
Ironically, it was Mr Abe who repaired the fault created by Mr Koizumi, by staying away from the shrine during his first stint as prime minister from 2006-07. This time, however, relations have only worsened amid a bitter stand-off over control of the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which China claims and calls the Diaoyu.
Japanese media suggested that, with little prospect of a rapprochement in sight, Mr Abe may have felt he had little to lose by visiting the shrine. On taking office a year ago he said he “painfully regretted” having stayed away during his first term, and his many conservative supporters expected him to make what they see as a patriotic show of respect to Japan’s war dead.
The US said it was “disappointed” by Mr Abe’s decision to visit Yasukuni. “The United States hopes that both Japan and its neighbours will find constructive ways to deal with sensitive issues from the past,” the state department said in a statement.
Mr Abe said: “Regrettably, it is a reality that the visit to Yasukuni Shrine has become a political and diplomatic issue. It is not my intention at all to hurt the feelings of the Chinese and Korean people.”
As many of China’s neighbours have grown wary of its own rapid military build-up and growing assertiveness in a string of territorial disputes, Beijing has tried to present itself as the victim of bullying by Japan and the US, which it accuses of trying to stir up trouble in the region in order to contain China’s rise.
China’s tightly controlled state media often portrays Beijing as standing up for other countries in the face of a rising Japanese threat, though surveys in the region show animosity towards Japan is mostly limited to China and Korea.
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