xinhua | No matter what pretexts Japanese politicians employ
to justify it, the Yasukuni Shrine in the heart of Tokyo is a highly
symbolic reminder of Japan's militarist past, because it enshrines 14
convicted Class-A war criminals such as Hideki Tojo and other war
criminals among Japan's war dead.
Whether a Japanese prime minister visits the shrine is a
tested-and-true political weather vane for judging its political
direction, as well as proof that he respects or disregards the
sensitivities of other countries and the postwar international order.
On Thursday Shinzo Abe signed the entry book to the shrine as Japan's
prime minister, revealing the claims by his subordinates, that he
visited it in a "private capacity" and it was a matter of "personal
belief", to be poor disguises and outright lies.
Resorting to their same old gangster logic in the dispute over the
Diaoyu Islands, they want us to swallow Abe's offensive pilgrimage to
Yasukuni as a non-issue.
Responding to the ensuing angry diplomatic ripples, the unapologetic
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida highlighted his government's "hope" to
"avoid letting an affair as such develop into a political or diplomatic
issue". This "hope" is sheer hypocrisy. Because Abe knows full well "it
is a reality that the visit to Yasukuni Shrine has become a political
and diplomatic issue".
Contrary to his claim that Abe had "no intention at all of hurting
the feelings of Chinese or South Korean people", Abe made the visit
anticipating opposition from both countries, as Japanese New Komeito
Party chief Natsuo Yamaguchi confirmed.
Abe knew it would be an insult. But he does not care. What he wants
to do is use the opposition of neighboring countries to fuel domestic
nationalism and garner more support.
Abe's shrine visit is a signal that nothing at home is holding him
back from his ultra-rightist political agenda to rewrite Japan's
pacifist Constitution and revive his war-cabinet grandfather's dream of
making Japan a military power.
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