Japan court to reject lawsuit against prime minister

A Japanese court has thrown out a lawsuit stemming from visits by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to a Tokyo shrine that honours Japan’s World War II dead, a spokesman said today.

A spokesman for the Naha District Court on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa said it had dismissed the compensation claims by a group of 94 plaintiffs, including relatives of those killed in the bloody ground battle on Okinawa in the closing days of the war.

The plaintiffs had argued that Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni shrine in August 2001 and April 2002 violated the constitutional separation of religion and state, alleging that he had gone under his official capacity.

The plaintiffs were seeking a total of 9.4 million yen (€70,000) from the prime minister and government for emotional distress, court spokesman Yoichi Yoshihama said.

Judge Kazuto Nishii, however, said there was no need to discuss the legality of the visits because they did not cause any damage to the plaintiffs or interfere with their own freedom of belief, Kyodo news agency said.

Koizumi has visited Yasukuni – a Shinto shrine in downtown Tokyo that honours Japan’s 2.5 million war dead, including convicted war criminals – four times since becoming prime minister in April 2001.

Koizumi has defended himself saying all his visits to the shrine were made as a private citizen.

During the visits, he signed his official title in the shrine’s visitor book and was accompanied by his aides to the monument in a government car.

Yasukuni was a centre of pro-war propaganda and emperor-worship during Japan’s pre-1945 militarist era, and Koizumi’s visits have drawn criticism from Asian countries where many still harbour bitter memories of Japanese aggression in the first half of 1900s.

The repeated visits by Japanese leaders have hampered Tokyo’s relations with China, and Koizumi’s visits have also invited a series of lawsuits at home.

The Fukuoka District Court last year ruled that his 2001 visit violated the constitution, although it had no power to prevent further visits.

Other suits seeking to block further visits are still pending.