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Continuing Yasukuni troubles

Japan has a few serious problems to sort out with China and South Korea. Its hope of entering the United Nations Security Council as a permanent member cannot be realised if the People's Republic refuses to allow it. Tokyo and Seoul need to settle the territorial dispute over the Takeshima/Tokto islets that has often led to skirmishes between their citizens. At the same time, the economic interests of the three East Asian states are closely interlocked. Given this situation, it beggars belief that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should repeatedly perform a poisonous ritual that angers the Chinese and Koreans by evoking bitter memories of World War II. Such behaviour is all the more bizarre when a majority of Japanese people are indifferent to the ritual and many deeply offended by it. Mr. Koizumi fools no one when he claims his annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine are intended merely to honour the two-and-a-half million soldiers who died in the wars fought by his country after the Meiji Restoration of 1867-68. The Yasukuni is not just a war memorial. It is a shrine dedicated to Shinto imperialism, which drove Japanese military fascism to make war time and again on the Asian mainland and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. It also features a `revisionist' historical museum. Among those honoured as "kamis" (or divine spirits) at the temple are 14 Class-A war criminals. When a Japanese Prime Minister visits the shrine, he sends out a signal that he is not uncomfortable with his country's militarist and fascist past. There is no question of the present generation of Chinese and Koreans, whose grandparents and great-grandparents suffered unspeakable atrocities, tolerating such a grossly insensitive and vulgar attitude towards their sentiments.

In the wake of protests by Beijing and Seoul, some Japanese politicians and commentators have suggested the problem might be resolved if the ashes of the war criminals were taken out of Yasukuni site and interred elsewhere. They do not seem to get the point. Japan's post-War readmittance to the international community as a legitimate member was based on the principle that it would permanently renounce imperialist aggression. So long as the Yasukuni remains a monument to the ideology that spurred that aggression, the problem will remain. This is not an insignificant question in the context of the modern world. The United States is eagerly waiting for its ally across the Pacific to be more assertive in the promotion of common interests. There are also political groups within Japan that would like to amend the constitution to enable its army to take part in offensive operations. While a militarily powerful China and the U.S.-backed South Korea might have little to fear, East Asia needs to guard against any revival of adventurism. Fortunately, a majority of the Japanese too appear to believe that the spirit Yasukuni enshrines must be exorcised forever.

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