Most Japanese believe Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should halt his annual visits to a Tokyo war shrine, poll results released yesterday showed amid warnings from China that further visits will inflame troubled relations with Beijing.
The results come, however, a day after a ruling party lawmaker said that Koizumi likely intends to continue worshipping at Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals.
TBS television network said that 61 percent of Japanese believe Koizumi should not visit the shrine while in office, while 34 percent said he should continue what he believes.
Koizumi has visited Yasukuni Shrine four times since becoming prime minister in 2001. The visits have riled neighboring countries, who consider the shrine a glorification of Japan's militarist past.
Hidenao Nakagawa of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said on Sunday that the leader would likely visit again.
"I think Koizumi will visit the shrine again this year, while carefully considering the timing," Nakagawa said on a TV talk show.
Koizumi has argued that the visits are simply a way of paying respects to the country's war dead, rather than an honoring of Tokyo's wartime militarism.
Chinese officials, including Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (李肇星) this past weekend, have repeatedly cited the visits in explaining deteriorating relations and anti-Japan protests in China last month.
In the TBS poll, the largest percentage of respondents attributed the surge in anti-Japan sentiments in China to Chinese education and its negative portrayal of Japan.
Respondents also cited Japan's own approach to history, wartime atrocities committed by Japan's military and visits to Yasukuni.
Tokyo-Beijing relations have sunk to the lowest level in decades since violent anti-Japan protests erupted last month in several Chinese cities over Tokyo's wartime past, and over Japan's push for a permanent UN Security Council seat.
The shrine honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including wartime prime minister and convicted war criminal Hideki Tojo. Another trip to the shrine this year by Koizumi would be certain to anger China, South Korea and other countries in the region.
But another LDP lawmaker, Koichi Kato who is a close Koizumi ally, said halting the visits would not help Japan-China relations. The only way to appease Beijing would be to find a different shrine for the convicted World War II criminals, or to set up a separate, secular war memorial, Kato said on the TV Asahi show on Sunday.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS