Japanese minister at contentious war shrine
Tomimo Inada, a hawk in Abe’s cabinet, draws fire from regional neighbours with pilgrimage to Yasukuni memorial
TOKYO // Japan’s hawkish defence minister prayed at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo yesterday, a day after accompanying prime minister Shinzo Abe on a symbolic visit of reconciliation to Pearl Harbour.
The Yasukuni Shrine honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead, but is contentious for also enshrining senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal.
For decades, the indigenous Shinto religious shrine has drawn criticism from countries such as South Korea and China, which suffered under Japan’s colonialism and military aggression in the first half of the 20th century.
Tomomi Inada’s visit was her first since taking the key defence portfolio in August, although she has frequently gone in the past.
“By taking a future-orientated stance, I offered my prayers to build peace for Japan and the world,” she said.
She noted that Barack Obama – “the president of a country that dropped atom bombs” – had gone to Hiroshima earlier this year, while Mr Abe “voiced words to console the spirits of the dead” at Pearl Harbour, although she did not mention that Japan attacked it.
Ms Inada’s visit came a day after Mr Abe and Mr Obama’s joint visit to the American navy base in Hawaii, which was struck by a Japanese naval air assault on December 7, 1941, drawing the United States into the Second World War.
Ms Inada is a close confidante of Mr Abe. Speaking from a golf course, he said he had no comment on her action.
The defence minister’s visit, which Jiji Press and Nippon TV said appeared to be the first by a defence chief since 2002, drew the ire of China and South Korea. It is “deeply ironic after the so-called Pearl Harbour reconciliation tour”, said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying in Beijing.
“It will only make the people of the world more on- guard against Japan’s actions and intentions.” South Korea summoned a senior official from the Japanese embassy in Seoul to protest. “Our government cannot but deplore” the visit, foreign ministry spokesman Cho Junehyuck said, while in separate comments the defence minis- try expressed “grave concern and regret”. The move by Ms Inada, who holds staunchly nationalist views, was an attempt to appease the government’s conservative base after Mr Abe’s conciliatory gesture to the US, analysts said.
“As Ms Inada was present at prime minister Abe’s visit to Hawaii, she wiped off some – if not all – of her reputation as a revisionist,” said Tetsuro Kato, emeritus professor of Japanese politics at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo.
“But she also had to address frustrations from right-wingers among her supporters.”
Koichi Nakano, professor of politics at Sophia University in Tokyo and a vocal critic of Mr Abe, said Ms Inada’s decision to go to Yasukuni was not a rogue act. “Yasukuni is not a normal Shinto shrine,” he said. “Naturally, she went with Mr Abe’s blessing.”
The conservatism of Ms Inada, a member of parliament from western Japan’s Fukui prefecture, is well known.
She wrote in 2011 that Japan – the only country in the world to suffer atom bomb attacks – should consider acquiring nuclear weapons.
In August, after becoming defence minister, however, she said that Japan “should not consider arming itself with nuclear weapons at this moment”. Ms Inada argued yesterday that offering respect to those killed in war should be universally accepted, echoing the argument repeated by Japanese politicians who frequently visit Yasukuni. On Wednesday, Mr Abe and Mr Obama paid homage to the more than 2,400 Americans killed in Japan’s surprise attack against the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour and stressed the power of reconciliation.
The prime minister’s Pearl Harbour visit came seven months after Mr Obama’s journey to Hiroshima, where the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945. Mr Abe has himself avoided Yasukuni after going there three years ago to commemorate his first anniversary as prime minister.
That visit sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a rare diplomatic rebuke from close ally Washington.