Shadow of Japanese war shrine diminishes

It is odd enough that Hirohito, Japan's wartime emperor, has spoken to voters and their political leaders 17 years after his death. Odder still is the influence that this historically controversial figure appears to wield on a question that has come to overshadow both domestic politics and diplomacy.

With the recent publication of Hirohito's misgivings about Yasukuni Shrine and the 14 Class A war criminals honored there, Japan appears set to face an issue that politicians have danced around for decades and that jeopardizes Japan's relations in the region, notably with China and South Korea.

Should prime ministers visit Yasukuni in an official capacity, even as neighboring nations object that it is a celebration of imperial atrocities? His predecessors may have equivocated, but Junichiro Koizumi's well- publicized answer to this conundrum has been yes, honoring the war dead - all of them - is a personal matter.

The prime minister confirmed this view again over the weekend, when he asserted during a visit to Hiroshima that he reserved the right to visit the shrine "at any time." He reiterated his position in an exchange with a reporter from NHK, the state-supervised broadcasting network.

But Koizumi is six weeks away from stepping down. Now that Hirohito has been quoted posthumously on the matter, all eyes - including many in China, South Korea and elsewhere around Asia - are on Shinzo Abe, Koizumi's all- but-certain successor as prime minister and president of the governing Liberal Democratic Party.

As the Hamlet of the hour - will he or won't he? - Abe is as difficult to read as Shakespeare's Danish prince. But Hirohito has given him an out: With the emperor's distaste for the enshrinement of Class A war criminals as political ballast, Abe can do what Koizumi could not: decline visits to the shrine without being attacked across his right flank for caving in to Chinese and South Korean pressure.

LDP's views

"Hirohito's thinking is significant in that it's a very good excuse to alter policy," said Tsuneo Watanabe, a foreign policy expert at the Mitsui Global Strategic Studies Institute. "'Considering the emperor's will, I shall not visit the shrine.' It's a lot easier for Abe to say this than to offer any other reasoning." Japan seems ready for this.

Opinion polls indicate that the late emperor's published reflections shifted the public decisively against prime ministerial calls at Yasukuni. Business executives are becoming vocal in their desire for Tokyo to repair its diplomatic relations in Northeast Asia.

Senior members of the Liberal Democratic Party appear to share this view.

Post-Koizumi, they hope they can begin the kind of cleansing national conversation from which the party has habitually flinched.

"It might be difficult and it might take two or three years," said Ichiro Aisawa, the party's No. 3. "But now that the debate is open it's a good opportunity to settle the issue once and for all." Hirohito's opinions were not especially surprising.

Ever the pragmatist, he stopped visiting Yasukuni in 1975, when the shrine first became politically touchy. Three years later, when Yasukuni's head priest enshrined Hideki Tojo and other wartime officials, Hirohito's stance became a matter of personal policy. In 1988, a year before his death, the emperor explained this to Tomohiko Tomita, a now-deceased official in the Imperial Household Agency, and it was a memo based on this conversation that was published on July 20.

No one knows why Tomita's family decided to release a record of this long- ago exchange - Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the leading business daily here, published it without explanation. But it appears that someone in a position of influence thought it useful to remind Japan and its leaders of Hirohito's thinking.

The timing, two months before the Liberal Democratic Party elects a new leader, is one of those periodic gems of Japanese political kabuki. In an instant, Hirohito has given a key measure of legitimacy to the liberal and left side of the political spectrum and thrown right-wing supporters of the shrine on the defensive.

Corrupt politicians

Even before his recent remarks, Koizumi was widely expected to go to Yasukuni on Aug. 15, the date of Japan's surrender, when any prime min ister committed to visiting the shrine usually does so. But it will be Abe's first test; if he stays away he will have a year to weigh his political liabilities and decide on a policy toward Beijing and Seoul.

Abe's political bloodlines are imposing: He is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a senior official in the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and a wartime cabinet minister who was charged with war crimes but later released.

Kishi went on to become one of postwar Japan's most notoriously corrupt prime ministers and remained a lifelong nationalist.

Abe himself has won public favor by taking a tough stance toward North Korea; he briefly hinted that Japan had a right to a pre-emptive strike when Pyongyang launched test missiles last month.Last Friday, in another apparent bit of political theater, Yasukuni officials disclosed that Abe, who is the Liberal Democratic Party's chief cabinet secretary, visited the shrine in April.

But Abe's strategy appears to be one of ambiguity by design. While he is clearly mindful of conservative sentimen t, he has taken evident care to avoid giving any clear indication of his intentions with regard to Yasukuni.His current position is that it simply is not an issue in the Liberal Democratic Party election - a plainly disingenuous stance.

Most analysts and politicians, including many in the party, think Abe will recognize that the winds have shifted, avoid the shrine and begin repairing Tokyo's ties in the region. Not only do the public and the business community appear to want him to do so; Beijing has signaled that it has given up on Koizumi but his successor's visiting the shrine would bring a diplomatic breach.

Abe is thus poised to achieve a Nixon- in-China effect: With unassailable credentials as a conservative, he is arguably in the strongest position of any politician now contending for Koizumi's job to move Japan forward in its relations with the mainland.

If he takes this route, Abe would also reduce the influence that his party's most conservative wing has long exercised over national policy. In this respect his choice on Yasukuni could prove a decisive turn in Japanese politics, and it is a notable irony that a deceased emperor - who had little to say on political matters - has come back to urge him away from the shrine.

The favored solution now to the Yasukuni dilemma is to separate the Class A war criminals from the millions of others honored at the shrine by creating a new memorial elsewhere.

This reflects a simple reality: For most Japanese, worshiping at Yasukuni is a matter of private memory entirely devoid of politics. For politicians of all stripes, a new policy toward Yasukuni is a wrenching business; none wants to be seen opposing Japan's right to honor its fallen.

But most now recognize, as Koizumi does not, that such rights must be combined with pragmatic attention to policy.

"In principle he's free to choose," said Tsutomu Takebe, the Liberal Democratic Party's secretary general, referring to Abe. "But I think we're entering a new era in our ties with China, South Korea and the rest of Asia."

International Herald Tribune