Japan's foreign minister backtracked yesterday on his call for Emperor Akihito to visit a war shrine at the center of regional friction, saying the current climate prevented him from going.
Foreign Minister Taro Aso's comments had triggered outrage in China and South Korea, which were victims of Japan's wartime violence and which see the Yasukuni shrine as the symbol of Japan's militarist past.
"What I said was that I believed those who fell during the war would want that. I never said I wanted His Majesty to visit the shrine under the current circumstances," Aso told reporters.
"It is desirable if His Majesty, the symbol of the Japanese public, could go, but there are problems that have to be resolved," said Aso, known as an outspoken hawk.
"There are various opinions. We must think seriously about this issue," he said.
Aso had said on Saturday that it would be "best" if the emperor visited the Yasukuni shrine instead of only Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who has angered China and South Korea with an annual pilgrimage there.
Aso said soldiers had gone to war saying "Long live the emperor," who was revered as a god until after World War II, and not hailing the prime minister. No emperor has visited Yasukuni since late wartime monarch Hirohito in 1975.
South Korea, which was under colonial rule by Japan from 1910 to 1945, had demanded a retraction of Aso's original remarks.
"This intends to justify and beautify Japan's history of past invasions," South Korean foreign ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho said in a statement released late on Monday. "It's so regrettable. The government urges Japan's top diplomat to immediately withdraw his remark that ignores the relations with the neighboring countries."
The Yasukuni shrine honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead from 11 wars, including 14 top World War II war criminals.
Koizumi has prayed at Yasukuni every year since becoming prime minister in April 2001, sending relations plummeting with China and South Korea, which were invaded by imperial Japan.
The Japanese foreign minister, who stirred up controversy last year by calling China a "considerable threat," said the foreign criticism encouraged visits to Yasukuni.
"It's just like when you're told `Don't smoke cigarettes,' it actually makes you want to smoke," Aso said in his controversial speech on Saturday in the central city of Nagoya.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe on Monday tried to play down Aso's remarks, indicating it was unlikely that the emperor would visit the Yasukuni shrine.
Akihito's father, late wartime emperor Hirohito, stopped visiting the Yasukuni shrine after it quietly enshrined war criminals in 1978, including militarist World War II premier Hideki Tojo, who was hanged by order of a US-led tribunal.
Emperor Akihito has refrained from going to Yasukuni since becoming emperor in 1989.
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