Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura yesterday called China's criticism of visits to a war shrine "absurd" and defended a controversial history textbook, accusing Beijing of ignoring Tokyo's pacifist record as a donor.
China has said relations were at a three-decade low due to an annual pilgrimage by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors 2.46 million Japanese war dead, including 14 convicted war criminals.
"As soon as he visited the Yasukuni shrine, China said Japan was turning to militarism and we were not peaceful. This is absurd," Machimura said.
"We gave them aid, even by issuing deficit-covering bonds. At least in the 1990s, we were the world's biggest provider of aid" to China.
"I can say this proudly," Machimura told a foreign ministry meeting on foreign aid.
Koizumi has visited the Yasukuni shrine each year since he took office in 2001, with his last visit on January 1 last year.
He has indicated he will go again this year despite criticism from China and South Korea, and also appeals by former prime ministers concerned about Japan's diplomatic isolation.
In April sometimes violent protests erupted in China, which accuses Japan of not atoning for its past after Tokyo approved a history textbook written by self-described nationalists who believe Japan is too apologetic about its wartime record.
But Machimura defended the book by the Fusosha publisher, saying that "leftist Japanese scholars and journalists" had taken the issue out of proportion.
"If you read the textbooks you know," Machimura said. "Obviously there is no textbook that praises militarism and colonialism."
"The teachers' union would not adopt a textbook unless it has leftist-slanted passages," Machimura told a luncheon hosted by Jiji Press.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
RSS