Nakasone Heeds Protests, Won’t Visit Japan Shrine to War Dead

Heeding protests from China and South Korea, Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone will forgo a visit to a Shinto shrine today to pay respects to Japan’s war dead, which numbered more than 3 million servicemen and civilians in World War II.

Chinese and South Korean officials protested when Nakasone officially visited Yasukuni Shrine last Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender, and they urged him not to do it again. Fourteen Japanese war criminals, including Gen. Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister, are among those enshrined there.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaharu Gotoda, announcing the decision Thursday, made no specific reference to China and South Korea. He said the decision was taken in “consideration of the feelings of the peoples of neighboring countries.”

Gotoda said that Nakasone also asked the other 20 members of his Cabinet to forgo official visits to the shrine. Welfare Minister Juro Saito nevertheless said he would visit the shrine in an official capacity. At least 14 other ministers reportedly intend to do so but privately. A large number of members of Parliament, members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, also plan to pay their respects at the shrine.

Foreign Minister Tadashi Kuranari and Justice Minister Kaname Endo said they will not visit the shrine.

Nakasone’s decision to stay away represented an about-face for him. Last year he overturned a Cabinet ruling that official visits might be in violation of a constitutional requirement of separation of politics and religion.

The Cabinet held, however, that visits in which officials refrained from following prescribed Shinto forms of worship would not represent participation in, or support for, a religion.

State Funds Contributed

Last August, Nakasone and 18 of his ministers visited the shrine, all in their official capacities. The contributions they made for flowers came out of state funds.

Nakasone’s decision to stay away today marks the first time since he became prime minister, in November of 1982, that he has not paid his respects at the shrine on Aug. 15. In 1983 and 1984, he went there in a private capacity, on both occasions making a contribution out of personal funds and signing a shrine guest book with the inscription, “A man named Yasuhiro Nakasone who is prime minister.”

On his official visit last year, he signed the guest book “Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone.”

China and South Korea complained last year that worshiping the souls of the 14 war criminals was tantamount to promoting the resurrection of militarism and whitewashing aggression.

Gotoda said Thursday that an official visit by the prime minister “threatened to cause misunderstanding in neighboring countries that suffered war damage” caused by Japan.

Nakasone’s decision this time, he said, “is not meant to reject (the legality of) official shrine visits in the future.” He said the government respects the feelings of relatives of Japanese war dead, but “the feelings of the peoples of the countries that suffered damage must also be considered.”

No Remains Interred

Until the end of World War II, Yasukuni Shrine was maintained by government funds and administered by the ministries of the army and navy. Other Shinto shrines were operated by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

No human remains or ashes are actually interred at the shrine. It is the spirits of those who sacrificed their lives for the emperor, dating back to the mid-1800s, that are considered to be enshrined there. Tojo and the other war criminals were secretly enshrined in 1978, but this was not disclosed until the following year.

Hajime Tamura, minister of international trade and industry, complained that the feelings of neighboring countries should not be a reason to refrain from paying respects to Japanese war dead. Nor, he said, should neighboring countries interpret visits to the shrine as ignoring their feelings.

Education Minister Masayuki Fujio criticized Nakasone’s decision as an invitation to future foreign interference in the rite.

“We should at least once a year pay our respects to those who sacrificed their lives for the country and, at the same time, commemorate world peace,” he said. “Even debating it is strange.”

Fujio said that failure by Nakasone to pay respects at Yasukuni exposes “the clumsiness of our diplomacy” in failing to make China and South Korea understand the true Japanese intent.

After Thursday’s announcement, the Foreign Ministry called in diplomats from China and South Korea to notify them of the decision.

Nakasone himself made no public comment Thursday, but in a press conference on July 23 he said his official visit last year was special, because “many ceremonies were being held in connection with the 40th anniversary of the end of the war.”