Japan's prime minister said yesterday that he is ready "at any time" to visit a Tokyo war shrine criticized as a symbol of militarism, indicating he plans to make another pilgrimage before he steps down in September.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi again defended his visits to Yasukuni Shrine to pray for Japan's war dead, but did not specify when he might go again.
Koizumi last visited the shrine last October, and he is widely expected to make his next pilgrimage on Aug. 15, the anniversary of the end of World War II, before stepping down as prime minister next month.
PHOTO: AFP
"I'm ready to visit at any time, but I will decide appropriately," Koizumi told a group of reporters in Hiroshima, where he attended a ceremony marking the 61st anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the city at the end of World War II.
"I don't think there is anything wrong with a visit by a Japanese prime minister to a Japanese establishment to mourn for the war dead," Koizumi said. "The purpose of the visit to Yasukuni is to pray for the war dead and renew my commitment that war should never be waged. I don't see any problem in that."
Yasukuni deifies the country's 2.5 million war dead, including executed war criminals from World War II. Koizumi's visits to the shrine have strained Tokyo's diplomatic ties with China and other Asian countries that suffered from Japan's wartime aggression.
China and South Korea have harshly protested Koizumi's five visits to the shrine since he took office in 2001.
Koizumi's visits have also spawned several lawsuits claiming they violated the constitutional division of state and religion.
On Friday, the front-runner to be Japan's next prime minister, Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, defended visits to the shrine, but refused to confirm reports that he secretly went there in April.
Abe said such visits are a matter of individual conviction and said he intended to pray for the souls of the dead, implying that he could make further visits. His support for visits to the shrine signal further possible friction between Japan and its neighbors should he succeed Koizumi.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will tell Abe on Wednesday that "South Korea-Japan relations can move forward only when Japanese political leaders have the right recognition of history," ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho told reporters in Seoul.
Ban is to visit Tokyo this week to attend a funeral tomorrow for a former Japanese prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, who died last month.
Ban also is scheduled to meet with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso to discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons program and recent missile launches.
Aso is reportedly hoping to persuade Yasukuni to surrender its religious status and become a state-run memorial, so the government can remove the names of convicted war criminals there and end a row over the shrine visits.
Opponents of Yasukuni have focused attention on the inclusion of 14 convicted top war criminals among the war dead. The shrine also hosts a museum that attempts to justify Japan's past militarism.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and