Japan yesterday commemorated the 65th anniversary of its surrender in World War II without the ministerial visits to a controversial war shrine that regularly provoke outrage across Asia.
For the first time in at least a quarter of a century, no government minister went to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, a place dedicated to 2.5 million Japanese killed in conflicts, including 14 of Japan’s top World War II criminals.
The anniversary is the first since Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s center-left Democratic Party ousted the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last year.
PHOTO: AFP
Kan and Emperor Akihito, whose father Hirohito surrendered exactly 65 years ago, attended a memorial service in Tokyo and reaffirmed a vow that Japan would not engage in war again.
“During the war, Japan inflicted significant damage and pain on many countries, especially the people of Asian countries,” Kan said in the ceremony. “I deeply regret that and express my sincere condolences to the victims and their families.”
Emperor Akihito said: “Here, I look back on history and ardently hope that the calamities of war will never be repeated.”
Ahead of the ceremony, Kan visited a national cemetery in Tokyo where he laid a bouquet in honor of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers who died overseas.
However, Kan and his Cabinet have vowed not to visit Yasukuni shrine, something various LDP members have done regularly in the past, provoking outrage in China and on the Korean Peninsula. It is the first time since at least 1985 — when government records began — that the day has been marked without a ministerial visit to the shrine, local media reported.
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