Japan PM shuns shrine, apologises at WWII ceremony

Japan’s new liberal prime minister shunned a visit to a shrine which has outraged Asian neighbours for honouring war criminals, breaking from past governments’ tradition and instead apologising today for the suffering World War II caused.

Members of the now-opposition Liberal Democratic Party, which ruled Japan almost continuously since the end of the war, made a point by carrying out their own trip to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on the 65th anniversary of the end of the war.