Japan Observes End of WWII With Prayers, Public Agonizing

Japan marked the 41st anniversary of the end of World War II on Friday with prayers for peace and a fresh bout of public agonizing over criticism that national pride could again lead the country to war.

Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, worried about angering Japan’s Asian neighbors, declined to visit a memorial shrine to war dead that China, South Korea and other countries contend glorifies war criminals.

But 16 members of his 20-member Cabinet prayed at the downtown Yasukuni Shrine, most of them going on the grounds that their presence only expressed patriotism and did not condone the prewar nationalistic militarism that Japan renounced after its defeat.

Education Minister Masayuki Fujio, an ultraconservative who has been sharply criticized for strong nationalistic views, went so far as to justify the visit by rejecting the 1946-48 war crimes trials at which occupation officials punished wartime leaders.

Trials Not ‘Legitimate’

“I do not recognize the Tokyo trials as legitimate,” Fujio said later. “No responsible person from Japan decided on the war criminals.”

The Foreign Ministry swiftly disavowed Fujio’s comments as personal and said Japan had accepted the trial judgments in the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty.

Nakasone, as part of a long political effort to “close the book” on the war, last year became the first postwar leader to pay an official visit to Yasukuni, a Shinto compound where the souls of Japanese killed in wars since the late 19th Century are considered to be enshrined.

But Asian nations that underwent ruthless Japanese occupations charged that the visit honored the men responsible, since among those enshrined are 14 “Class-A” war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and others executed after the trials.

Domestic critics contended the visit violated the separation of church and state written into Japan’s postwar constitution, which also renounced war.