Abe Visits Meiji Shrine – Could Yasukuni be Next?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday visited a Tokyo shrine honoring a former emperor. The move may be aimed at appeasing nationalist conservatives while defusing criticism of his support for visits to a controversial war monument.
Public broadcaster NHK carried footage of Abe attending Meiji Shrine in downtown Tokyo in heavy rain. Meiji is a popular shrine with few political connotations, and draws many worshippers during New Year’s holidays.
Visits by Abe’s predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, to another Tokyo shrine (Yasukuni) have sparked outrage among Japan’s neighbours who saw it as a glorification of Tokyo’s militarist past.
The Yasukuni shrine honors Japan’s war dead, including convicted WWII criminals, and Koizumi’s visits particularly angered China and South Korea where memories of Tokyo’s often brutal wartime occupation are deeply entrenched.
Abe has not attended Yasukuni since he took over from Koizumi in September last year, although he reportedly went there in April. He has expressed his support for such visits by Japanese leaders, but has so far kept quiet on whether he plans to go to Yasukuni as prime minister.
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So wait a minute, if Yasukuni Shrine is off limits, does that mean that all shrines are off limits now too? How does visiting Meiji Shrine have any relation to visiting Yasukuni Shrine? I’m very interested in the Yasukuni issue myself, but isn’t this article just an excuse to get Yasukuni in the headline and people seeing the advertisements?
You started by throwing oil in the fire by saying “The move may be aimed at appeasing nationalist conservative” but were quick to put the fire out with with a dose of reality by saying, “Meiji is a popular shrine with few political connotations, and draws many worshippers during New Year’s holidays.” Meiji Shrine is probably the most popular place to go for your first shrine or temple visit of the year, and there’s no [logical] reason to think he went for any other reason. Regardless, what are these ‘few’ political connotations? I personally can’t think of any, unless you have are against standardized education which the Meiji Emperor instated….
It’s an article about a visit to the Meiji Shrine, yet 3/5 paragraphs are about Yasukuni.
January 7th, 2007 at 4:35 pmAfter reading the wikipedia entry about Yasukuni I’m left scratching my head over the controversy. The shrine is no longer maintained by the government, and is for about 2.4 MILLION people, only a little more than one thousand of whom were convicted of war crimes.
If the shrine were dedicated SOLELY to those people, I could see the visits as a source of conflict, but it’s not. Is honouring those who gave their lives for their country a bad thing just because a few of them are war criminals?
January 8th, 2007 at 5:09 amIs honouring those who gave their lives for their country a bad thing just because a few of them are war criminals?
YES!
January 8th, 2007 at 1:00 pmI strongly disagree Danny…
War Criminals are a political term used to define the opponent who lost in battle.
Sacrifice is just that and should not be forgotten. If I may…
… A 25 year old girl working in a munitions factory just so she can feed her young family in Hiroshima gets killed when the nuke drops. Her name is enlisted in the book of souls at Yasukuni (which I’ve seen first hand) as someone who died serving their country.
Can anyone honestly say thats wrong to have a place to remember people like her? Remember, its not the uniform or the politics… Is the lives and the death that is remembered there.
January 8th, 2007 at 1:08 pmIn Japan, when somebody dies, “he was a good/bad person” goes out of the window. We honour their soul and…. what’s the point, chinese and korean politicians will always say “it enlists 14 war criminals” and suggests that it’s like worshipping the past aggression, while we made it clear that we are embarrassed about our past so many times. I personally don’t understand all the negative attention on japan, when we’re not making nuclear missiles to test them. Think about it from japanese point of view, we could never say “it’s none of your business” because south korea and china would then respond (as always) “see you guys are evil!!”
January 8th, 2007 at 1:52 pm[...] While the blogging community and the media seems to be making a big news story out of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the Meiji Shrine over the weekend as a substitute or a possible build-up for a later visit to Yasukuni Shrine, none of the articles seem to mention the fact that Sumo Grand Champion Asashoryu also visited the shrine over the weekend: Japan’s sumo grand champion performed traditional new year’s rites at a Tokyo shrine stamping powerfully before thousands of sumo fans and visitors. [...]
January 8th, 2007 at 5:45 pm