Update: Japan gives the finger to its aggrieved neighbours

Yesterday, in a serene yet defiant and provocative gesture, Japanese Prime Minster Junichiro Koizumi paid his respects at Japan’s shrine to its war dead

Once again, Japanese PM Koizumi has made quite a jingoistic show of visiting the Yasukuni War Shrine to pay homage to Japan’s war dead. On such previous occasions, China issued pro forma statements expressing outrage at Japan’s unqualified reverence for soldiers the Chinese regard as nothing more than warmongering imperialists and war criminals. (In fact, many of those honoured at this shrine were convicted as war criminals by the Allied Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in 1948.)

China’s statement of protest this time, however, is conspicuous for its heated rhetoric. And, Asian tensions were only exacerbated last night when South Korea issued its own statement of protest – out of respect, one presumes, for its citizens who were also victims of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Japanese.

In conversation with a European friend about this international spat, she expressed bewilderment that China and South Korea would take offense at a Japanese PM visiting a shrine to his fallen comrades in his own country. In response to her bewilderment, I merely posed the following questions:

How do you suppose the Poles, French and British would feel if German chancellors made a similar show of annual pilgrimages to a shrine to Germany’s war dead, including Adolf Hitler and other SS war criminals?

And, surely you’re aware that the Japanese committed atrocities against the Chinese and Koreans that were very much in kind to the atrocities the Germans committed against the Jews and other Europeans during World War II?

My friend responded to these rhetorical questions with an appropriate moment of silence (eventually conceding that my point was “well-taken”). And, I hope that anyone who wonders what this Yasukuni shrine fuss is all about will find these questions just as instructive.

Nevertheless, I invite you to click here to read my previous article on this conflict – which is only one of many simmering (political) skirmishes threatening to destabilize relations between Japan and its Asian neighbours in years to come. And, click here and here to read more on the statements issued by China and South Korea.

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