5 ministers visit Yasukuni Shrine on war anniversary

Japan Policy & Politics, August 19, 2002

TOKYO, Aug. 15 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING NO. OF DIET MEMBERS VISITED SHRINE, ADDING INFO IN 4TH-7TH PARAS FROM LAST)

Five cabinet ministers and a group of Diet members paid tribute at Tokyo's war-related Yasukuni Shrine on Thursday on the 57th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The five are Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Takeo Hiranuma, Defense Agency chief Gen Nakatani, Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Minister Toranosuke Katayama, National Public Safety Commission Chairman Jin Murai and Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tsutomu Takebe. The farm minister also visited there on Aug. 6.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who went to the Shinto shrine in April, will not visit again Thursday. A prime minister's visit to the shrine on the war anniversary generates more controversy at home and abroad than a visit any other time.

Three other cabinet ministers visited the shrine earlier -- economic and fiscal policy minister Heizo Takenaka in late July, Financial Services Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa on Aug. 7 and Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa on Aug. 8.

Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi and Nobuteru Ishihara, minister in charge of administrative and regulatory reform, have said they will not visit the shrine Thursday.

Fifty-one members of a lawmakers' group and 115 proxies also visited the shrine. The lawmakers include former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and former Defense Agency chief Tsutomu Kawara, a Diet member from the LDP who heads the group.

The group pays tribute at the shrine every year on the anniversary of the end of the war and during two festivals.

It comprises Diet members from such parties as the LDP, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Party.

Former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto of the LDP and House of Representatives Speaker Tamisuke Watanuki separately went to the shrine shortly before the group's visit.

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, father of the administrative reform minister, plans to visit the shrine Thursday for the third straight year since assuming the post in April 1999.

The shrine, widely viewed as a symbol of Japan's wartime militarism, honors Class-A war criminals along with the nation's 2.5 million war dead.

Visits to the shrine by Japanese prime ministers have repeatedly sparked protests in neighboring Asian countries that suffered under Japan's military aggression before and during the war.