Koizumi to continue to visit war shrine

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will continue his annual visits to a war shrine, a close aide said today, despite furious objections from China and other Asian countries who say the visits glorify Japan’s past wartime brutality.

Koizumi believes it’s his responsibility, as head of the nation, to pray for its war dead, said Taku Yamasaki, the prime minister’s adviser and a senior lawmaker in the ruling party.

“Judging from Mr Koizumi’s personality, I don’t think he will bend his beliefs,” Yamasaki said.

“We need to seek diplomatic measures that can gain the understanding of China and South Korea when Mr Koizumi makes another visit,” Yamasaki said on a talk show on TV Asahi.

Koizumi has visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine four times since taking office in 2001, and is expected to do so again, although he has avoided specifying a date.

The shrine honours a number of Japan’s 2.5 million war dead – including executed war criminals.

Koizumi’s annual visits to pay respects have caused a steady build-up of outrage in China and other countries that suffered atrocities at the hands of invading Japanese troops in the first half of the 20th century.

Worried about the rising tensions with neighbours – especially China – even conservative seniors in Koizumi’s own party have begun trying to discourage the prime minister from further visits.

Some lawmakers and officials have suggested removing from the shrine the remains of the 14 war criminals who faced the most serious charges. They include World War II Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.

Yamasaki said China’s State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, in talks with Yamasaki last month, supported the idea of separating the war criminals’ remains.

But that possibility has been dashed.

“Their (the war criminals’) separate enshrinement will never happen,” Yasukuni’s operators – a religious group headed by a Shinto priest – said yesterday in a statement issued to the Kyodo News agency.

“It’s impossible to ask Yasukuni to separate (the war criminals),” Yamasaki said.

A push to find a new, non-religious state war memorial as an alternative to Yasukuni has stalled due to massive opposition in the ruling party, and there is no chance to revive it during Koizumi’s tenure, Yamasaki noted.

Yasukuni officials defend Japan’s wartime aggression, and do not acknowledge the findings of the 1946 to 1948 international war tribunal in Tokyo, which passed judgment on the war criminals.

Unlike other shrine’s from Japan’s ancient Shinto religion, Yasukuni was founded in 1869 to boost Japan’s military expansion – a bid to compete with the European colonisers in Asia – historians say.

The selection of the remains to be enshrined was made by the wartime navy, which was succeeded by the Health Ministry after the war. There are no civilian remains at the shrine.

Koizumi told parliament last week he makes the visits to mourn soldiers who died for the country, not because he supports shrine officials’ nationalist views of Japan’s wartime past.