150 Japanese lawmakers visit controversial Yasukuni Shrine, straining regional tensions
A Japanese cabinet minister and some 150 lawmakers visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Tuesday, in a move that could further strain ties with China, which seized a ship owned by Japanese shipping firm on Sunday
A Japanese cabinet minister and some 150 lawmakers on Tuesday visited Yasukuni Shrine, which is seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, in a move that could further strain fraught regional ties.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an offering to the shrine on Monday, just days before a visit to Tokyo by US President Barack Obama, provoking an angry response from China and South Korea, which decried it as romanticising Japan’s wartime past.
Internal Affairs minister Yoshitaka Shindo, along with a close aide to Abe, paid their respects at Yasukuni, where 14 war criminals convicted by an Allied tribunal are honoured along with the nation’s war dead, as part of the shrine’s annual spring festival that ends on Wednesday, the day Obama arrives.
Watch: Nearly 150 Japanese lawmakers visit controversial war shrine
“The government should not interfere with a shrine visit made by an individual ... This is the fundamental thinking of the Abe government”
“As this visit was my personal visit, I don’t believe that it will have any effect on the US President’s visit,” Shindo told reporters. A separate visit Shindo made to Yasukuni earlier this month prompted an angry response from China.