Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni shrine on Saturday, the 81st anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, angering both China and South Korea. As the South Korean Foreign Ministry stated in protest: the Yasukuni Shrine “glorifies Japan’s past wars of aggression and honors convicted war criminals.”
According to the Japan Times, there was some speculation that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi might also visit the shrine where Japan’s war dead, including of World War II, are memorialized, but she did not. Instead Takaichi delivered a speech at the National Memorial Service for the War Dead, where she said Japan had consistently pursued peace in the postwar period and worked to contribute to global prosperity. “Japan can play an important role in resolving various issues confronting nations,” she said, adding that her country could become “a shining beacon in the Indo-Pacific that others could rely on.”
Takaichi also pledged that her country would never again repeat the ravages of war, but refrained from using the term hansei, or remorse, in her address. The omission reportedly stood in contrast to her immediate predecessor Shigeru Ishiba, who last year said Japan must “take deeply into our hearts once again our remorse and the lessons learned from that war.”
Takaichi’s comments reflect the close coordination between her government and the Trump administration, around the recently elaborated policy of building a First Island Chain perimeter to contain China, as stated by U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby during his recent trip to Asia.
