China and South Korea protest as Japan honours war dead at Yasukuni Shrine
Yasukuni Shrine honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead, but is contentious for also enshrining senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal
China and South Korea called on Japan to face up to its wartime past after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an offering to a shrine to war dead on Tuesday, the anniversary of Japan’s second world war surrender.
Masahiko Shibayama, a lawmaker who made the offering on Abe’s behalf, said he did so to express condolences for those who died in the war and to pray for peace. He added Abe said he was sorry he could not visit the Yasukuni Shrine.
Past visits by Japanese leaders to Yasukuni have outraged Beijing and Seoul because it honours 14 Japanese leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal as war criminals, along with other war dead, sometimes chilling ties for months.
China’s relations with Japan have long been poisoned by what Beijing sees as Tokyo’s failure to atone for its occupation of parts of China before and during the second world war. Japan occupied Korea from 1910-1945.
But maintaining harmony with China and South Korea is now more important than ever amid heightened tensions in the wake of North Korean missile tests, threats from North Korea to strike the area around the US Pacific territory of Guam and US President Donald Trump’s warning of retaliation.