Biding his time
Hisahiko Okazaki, a former senior diplomat and a leading conservative commentator close to Abe, said the prime minister had not forsaken his conservative roots but was merely biding his time.
"Regarding policies toward the comfort women issue and other issues like that, he says they were established by previous governments, right?" Okazaki said. "Since previous governments set those policies, this government can naturally set its own policy."
Last April, former Bush administration officials, including Green and James Kelley, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, said at a conference in Tokyo that Yasukuni was giving Japan a black eye.
Then Thomas Schieffer, the US ambassador to Japan, described as "very disturbing" the view of history presented at Yasukuni's museum -- that Japan was tricked into war by the US.
Now, Yasukuni officials said that they plan to change an exhibit that states that former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt forced Japan into war so that the US could recover from the Great Depression.
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