China’s official media on Sunday criticized visits by two Cabinet members earlier in the day to war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, saying the moves will heighten tensions in the region.
Yonhap News Agency, meanwhile, reported that the international community, including South Korea and China, sees the shrine visits as bids to justify Japan’s aggression before and during World War II.
In its dispatch from Tokyo, China’s Xinhua News Agency said that continued visits to the shrine by some Japanese politicians are causing tensions in relations between Japan and its neighbors, including China and South Korea.
Xinhua’s English article also mentioned that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to the shrine on Saturday, and remarked that even though he did not visit it, his offering “is still deemed provocative” at a time when a trilateral summit with China and South Korea is being arranged for next month.
A day after Abe sent a masakaki (tree offering), Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi and Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki separately visited the Shinto facility, which has been a source of diplomatic friction with China and South Korea, both of which suffered under Japan’s wartime aggression.
South Korea and China view the shrine as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
Yonhap said the two ministers’ shrine visits “could cast a pall on the planned summit” of the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea.
Yasukuni Shrine honors over 2.4 million of nation’s war dead, including wartime Prime Minister Gen. Hideki Tojo and other convicted Class-A war criminals.
Source: The Japan Times
