More than half of Japanese don't want their next prime minister to visit a Tokyo war shrine at the center of a diplomatic row with China, according to two newspaper polls published yesterday.
A survey in the Mainichi Shimbun showed that 54 percent of 1,065 respondents felt that whoever replaces Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi -- who is set to step down in September -- should not visit Yasukuni Shrine. Another 33 percent supported the visits, while the remaining 17 percent were undecided, the July 22 to July 23 poll found.
China and other Asian countries say Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including 14 convicted World War II war criminals, glorifies Japan's militarist past.
Opposition to the shrine visits has increased since the newspaper's last survey on the issue in January, Mainichi said.
Koizumi is widely expected to make a final visit to Yasukuni as prime minister on Aug. 15, and a majority of respondents were also opposed to that, Mainichi said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the most-favored candidate to succeed Koizumi, said yesterday that he has visited the shrine to pray for the souls of people who perished in the war, but refused to say whether he plans to visit again.
"There is or will be no change in the feeling," Abe said. "But I have no intention of stating whether I will go or not, or when."
The media have speculated that he is likely to avoid a shrine visit ahead of the ruling party's presidential election in late September.
The Mainichi attributed the rise in opposition to Japan's prolonged diplomatic row with China and South Korea, as well as to a recent report indicating the late Emperor Hirohito did not want war criminals included in the shrine.
Hirohito, under whose name Japan fought World War II, visited the shrine eight times before 1975. The palace never clarified why he stopped visiting the shrine after that, although the 14 convicted war criminals were enshrined at Yasukuni in 1978.
Emperor Akihito has not visited Yasukuni since succeeding Hirohito in 1989.
According to the Mainichi poll, 63 percent want the war criminals' names removed from the shrine, while 23 percent said that no change is necessary.
A separate survey conducted by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun showed similar results, with 53 percent opposing the prime minister's war shrine visits, 28 percent supporting them and 19 percent undecided.
The Nihon Keizai survey was conducted July 21 to July 23 through telephone interviews of 966 respondents.
Neither Mainichi nor Nihon Keizai provided a margin of error.
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