A Japanese court yesterday refused to order former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi to pay damages to people who said they suffered mental anguish from his controversial visits to a war shrine.
Eighty relatives of World War II victims had each sought ?100,000 (US$840) in damages from Koizumi and the state for the former leader's pilgrimages to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors war dead including war criminals.
Judge Masaaki Kobayashi of the Fukuoka High court in southern Japan upheld a lower court ruling that the plaintiffs had no legal grounds to seek damages.
The lawsuit claimed Koizumi had violated the constitutional separation of religion and state as he used an official car to the shrine and signed his name as prime minister. Koizumi's defense has argued that he went as a private citizen.
The lawsuit was filed by residents of the southern island chain of Okinawa, which was the site of the fiercest Pacific battle in World War II and where anti-war sentiment runs deep.
Koizumi, who stepped down last month, visited the shrine six times while in office, enraging China and South Korea, which see the site as a symbol of Japan's past imperialism.
The new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a past defender of the shrine, has refused to say whether he will visit while in office. This week he travelled to China and South Korea in a bid to repair relations damaged under Koizumi.
Lower courts have delivered divided judgments in a raft of cases filed by critics of Koizumi's pilgrimage.
The Supreme Court ruled on the row for the first time in July, handing Koizumi a victory by refusing to award damages to critics of the shrine or to rule on whether his pilgrimage was constitutional.
The latest case dealt specifically with Koizumi's visits to the shrine in 2001 and 2002.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in