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Editorial: Lee Teng-hui's Yasukuni shuffle

Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) is being coy about his latest trip to Japan. While his previous trips have all attracted controversy, this one is sparking additional fireworks because of Lee's presence at the Yasukuni shrine.

Lee has tried to downplay the Yasukuni visit by describing it as a personal matter. His brother, who was killed fighting for the Japanese navy in 1945, is enshrined there along with convicted Japanese war criminals.

But it would be unwise to assume that Lee considers himself to be just another old man taking a nostalgic journey in memory of a family member.

China has been helpful enough to give Lee widespread publicity in the world press with its cookie-cutter condemnation of his "splittist" activities. Meanwhile, Taiwan's pan-blue media outlets have predictably dedicated a generous helping of editorial space to racist attacks depicting Lee as a Japanese lackey.

Lee says it is purely a personal matter of emotional importance to him. But the arrangement of the trip seems at odds with that assertion. Lee has made a number of trips to Japan since 2000, but he has forgone chances to go to Tokyo to visit the shrine.

Even if the visit is serving a personal purpose, as a former president he will have a hard time convincing anyone that anything he does is merely personal, much less visiting a shrine that is a painful thorn in the side of Japan's relations with the rest of Asia.

And now, deliberately or not, he is planning to symbolically associate Taiwanese independence with it.

Of late there seems to be a widening gap between the extent of Lee's actual influence on Taiwanese affairs and the perception of it. His role in mainstream politics has in fact been greatly truncated.

He does still have a degree of influence: His reference to a "third force" in politics last October has been repackaged and advanced by various legislators and pundits ever since. But the extent to which he can influence the next generation of pro-Taiwan forces has been hampered by puerile attacks on his own "side" of politics.

One certain purpose of Lee's Japan trip this time around is to reaffirm the strength of Taiwan's ties with Japan. Japan's last significant Taiwanese visitor was former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who last July bumbled through an embarrassing grilling from Japanese Diet members over his involvement in anti-Japanese demonstrations in his youth.

But Lee may find that a visit to Yasukuni -- a symbol that many Japanese themselves are not comfortable with -- could undermine the goal of bringing Japan closer to Taiwan.

Perhaps Lee is trying to be provocative. Perhaps he doesn't care what anyone thinks. Only Lee knows what the intended effect is, and in the past, the effects of his maneuvering have proven enormously destructive for his enemies. The question that needs to be asked, therefore, is whether it is possible his strategizing in the twilight of his career will be destructive for his friends.

Lee does not have the influence he once did, but he is far from lying down and accepting his fate. Whatever his intentions may be, going out with a whimper is not one of them.
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