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| Yasukuni Shrine |
By Ankit Panda
The Japanese prime minister seems to have learned his lesson about visiting Yasukuni.
A group of 73 politicians and 96 representatives in Japan visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Tuesday. However, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, was not seen in the vicinity of the controversial shrine. Abe’s absence at Yasukuni on Tuesday demonstrates that the Japanese prime minister is keenly aware that any diplomatic misstep could scuttle the fragile diplomatic rapprochement that is taking place in Northeast Asia between Japan, South Korea, and China after months of mistrust and distancing.
Abe last visited the Yasukuni shrine in December 2013, in a move that drew sharp criticism from Chinese and South Korean leaders. Yasukuni is a fixture of diplomatic controversy in East Asia where historical issues continue to limit the scope of international diplomacy. Fourteen Class-A war criminals found guilty by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East following World War II are commemorated at Yasukuni. The shrine has taken on particular significance with Abe’s tenure as Japan’s prime minister, as he is perceived as a revisionist when it comes to Imperial Japan’s wartime atrocities in East Asia.
Abe’s last major spat involving Yasukuni was last August, when he sent a note to a ceremony honoring over a thousand World War II war criminals at the shrine. Yoshihide Suga, Abe’s chief cabinet secretary, noted that Abe did so in his capacity as the head of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and not as the prime minister of Japan. That incident did not lead to a major freeze in Tokyo’s relations with Seoul and Beijing. In fact, later that year, Japan and China began a still-ongoing process of diplomatic thawing after over 16 months of zero high-level diplomatic contact.
Read the full story at The Diplomat