Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was scheduled to visit the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam yesterday to highlight Japan’s friendship with the Jewish people and sees no contradiction with his recent controversial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine at home.
The Anne Frank House, where the German-born Jewish girl kept a diary of her life in hiding before she was discovered and died in a Nazi concentration camp, is now one of Europe’s best-known memorials to the victims of the Holocaust, drawing more than 1 million visitors per year.
Abe’s planned visit comes less than three months after his visit on Dec. 26 last year to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Japan’s Asian neighbors as a symbol of the country’s wartime aggression, as it honors convicted World War II war criminals, as well as others who died in battle.
“On this visit [to the Anne Frank House], we would like to reiterate the lasting and profound friendship between Japan and the Jewish people around the world,” a Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said.
Asked whether there was a difference between visiting a memorial to Japanese soldiers at home and a memorial to war victims abroad, the spokesman said “there is no contradiction.”
He said Yasukuni enshrines 2.46 million souls who died for their country during conflicts since 1853, including both world wars, and that at the time of the visit, Abe issued a pledge that Japan must never wage a war again.
Yasukuni played a key role in Japan’s Shinto religion, which mobilized the population to fight in the name of a divine emperor. China and South Korea, both which have been occupied by Japan, have repeatedly criticized visits by Japanese leaders to the shrine.
Abe — in the Netherlands for a G7 summit — will be the most prominent world leader to visit the Anne Frank house since Israeli President Shimon Peres, former German president Christian Wulff and former UN secretary-ceneral Kofi Annan.
“Abe seems more sensitive to Western criticisms of his revisionism than those coming from China or Korea, and in particular of the Jewish American community, as represented by the Simon Wiesenthal Center,” Sophia University professor Koichi Nakano told Reuters in an e-mail.
An official at the Anne Frank House museum said the story of the young diarist is well known in Japan and more than 33,000 Japanese tourists visited the house last year.
The Abe visit to the house comes after a series of incidents in recent months in Japan in which Anne Frank diaries were vandalized in public libraries. A suspect has been arrested.
A Japanese government official told reporters last week that there is no direct causal relationship between these incidents and Abe’s visit, but said Abe wants to convey the message that many Japanese are pained by the vandalism.
Separately yesterday, the Japanese prime minister indicated that he wanted Tokyo and Seoul to put wartime enmities behind them ahead of his first meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Relations between the two countries are at their lowest ebb in years, mired in emotive issues linked to Japan’s 1910 to 1945 colonial rule and a territorial dispute, as well as Japan’s use of “comfort women” in wartime brothels.
Abe left Tokyo’s Haneda Airport for a three-day visit to the Netherlands for a Nuclear Security Summit that opens today in The Hague.
On the sidelines of the event he is due to meet with Park and US President Barack Obama after Washington urged the two Asian neighbors to mend strained ties.
“It is going to be my first talk with President Park Geun-hye and I want to make it the first step to build a future-oriented Japan-South Korea relationship,” Abe said before leaving.
The three-way meeting — designed to discuss North Korean threats — is considered a diplomatic breakthrough as Abe and Park have never held a formal summit.
Abe also said he wanted to “exchange views frankly on security in East Asia” with the South Korean and US leaders.
The Japanese prime minister will also take part in a meeting of G7 leaders in The Hague to discuss the Crimean crisis.
Japanese media have reported that the prime minister will announce nearly US$1 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not