Think tank urges Shinzo Abe to stay away from Yasukuni Shrine
Think tank also chides China for raising tension in islands row with Japan
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should stay away from a controversial Tokyo war shrine, an international think tank said, as it offered ideas on defusing mounting Sino-Japanese tensions.
In a new report, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned that Abe's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine last December "triggered a bitter argument as to whether Japan has fully atoned for its second world war aggression, a still vivid sore in the region".
The Brussels-based group also chided China for asserting greater authority over regional airspace, a move that it said "deepened Tokyo's anxiety that Beijing desires both territory and to alter the regional order".
"China should calm anti-Japan rhetoric, delink wartime history from the islands dispute and open senior political channels to Japan," said the group's China analyst, Yanmei Xie, referring to a territorial dispute between both countries in the East China Sea. "Japan should avoid actions and comments suggesting revisionist history views."
The report comes as Sino-Japanese relations have reached their lowest point in years. It also comes weeks ahead of the August 15 anniversary of Japan's 1945 defeat, a date many politicians in Tokyo mark by visiting Yasukuni, where 14 top war criminals are enshrined.
China and South Korea see the shrine as a symbol of what they say is Tokyo's unwillingness to repent for its wartime aggression last century. The US tries to discourage visits.