A Japanese court yesterday ruled that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi violated the Constitution's rules on religion by going to a Tokyo war shrine that critics say glorifies Japan's militarist past. However, the Osaka High Court rejected the Taiwanese plaintiffs' claims to be compensated over the visits.
The panel said that Koizumi's worshipping at the Yasukuni shrine is a public act and therefore violates the constitutional separation of state and religion, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said.
It was not immediately clear whether the ruling had the force to prevent further visits, but plaintiffs and their supporters called the decision a watershed.
It was the second time in 18 months a court has ruled such visits unconstitutional.
"This is groundbreaking, a landmark ruling," plaintiffs' lawyer Mitsunori Nakajima said from Osaka. "Most important was the recognition that Koizumi's visits were clearly carried out in a public capacity."
Koizumi and other government officials were disappointed.
"I don't understand why my visits to Yasukuni violate the Constitution," Koizumi said at a parliamentary session following the ruling. "I'm paying my respects to those who died in the war, with the conviction that we must never wage such a war again."
"I visit Yasukuni as a private citizen, and as prime minister, but not in a public capacity," he said.
The court rejected compensation demands of ?10,000 (US$88) by each of the 188 plaintiffs, who included Independent Legislator May Chin (高金素梅) and bereaved families of World War II veterans from Taiwan, many of them enshrined at Yasukuni against the families' wishes, according to court spokesman Masaharu Otani.
"We're not satisfied with today's ruling, though it did take one little step forward," Chin said. "We urge the Japanese government to take three or four steps forward," she said.
"The ruling suggested Japan has started to face the fact that emergence of militarism would endanger the humanity," she said in a statement.
"It is regrettable, however," she continued, that, "Japan has yet to face up to its past `monstrous crimes' which it had committed against Taiwan's Aborigines."
It was the second ruling on a lawsuit concerning the shrine in as many days. On Thursday, the Tokyo High Court turned down a similar case and declared Koizumi's visits were private, but it did not rule on the constitutionality of worshipping at Yasukuni.
Koizumi has gone to the shrine four times since becoming prime minister in April 2001.
"These visits go against Article 20 of the Japanese Constitution, which calls for the separation of the state and religion," the ruling read, according to Nakajima.
The court noted that Koizumi visited the shrine with a government secretary and used a state car, and also criticized him for not clearly denying he was on an official visit.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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