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.

Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) President Taizo Nishimuro speaks to
journalists during a press conference at TSE in Tokyo, Tuesday, Aug.
22, 2006. (AP) |
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
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