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Seoul expresses “deep disappointment”
South Korea’s government expressed deep disappointment and regret after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent a ritual offering to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, a site honoring Japan’s war dead, including convicted World War II war criminals.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said responsible Japanese leaders had once again made offerings or visited a shrine that glorifies Japan’s past wars of aggression. It urged Japan’s leaders to face history and demonstrate sincere reflection through their actions, calling that approach essential to building trust and a forward-looking relationship between the neighboring countries.
Takaichi avoids an in-person visit
Takaichi sent a sacred masakaki tree branch for the shrine’s three-day autumn festival under her official title as prime minister. Kyodo News reported that she did not plan to visit during the festival, interpreting the decision as an effort to avoid diplomatic friction with South Korea and China.
Before becoming leader of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party, Takaichi regularly visited the shrine during its spring and autumn festivals and on Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender and Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. She later stopped making in-person festival visits. This Aug. 15, she paid for an offering with personal funds and bowed toward the shrine from a distance, according to Kyodo. Her aides declined to say whether she performed a similar distant prayer this time.
Several other senior Japanese officials participated in the observances. Economic revitalization minister Minoru Kiuchi visited the shrine and said he paid for an offering with personal funds. LDP policy chief Takayuki Kobayashi also visited, while the speakers of both houses of Japan’s parliament and the health minister sent offerings, Kyodo reported. A bipartisan group of lawmakers plans to visit on the final day of the festival.
A lasting source of regional tension
Yasukuni Shrine commemorates about 2.47 million people who died in conflicts dating from around the Meiji Restoration through wars waged by imperial Japan. About 2.13 million are connected to the Pacific War.
Those enshrined also include former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and other Class A war criminals convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. Visits and offerings by Japanese political leaders regularly draw criticism from South Korea and China, where memories of Japanese colonial rule and wartime aggression remain politically sensitive.
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