Japanese court rejects suit against war shrine visit
A Japanese court today rejected a lawsuit against visits by the prime minister and the Tokyo governor to a war shrine vilified by China and other Asian countries, a court spokesman said.
The suit was filed by some 1,000 Japanese and South Korean citizens claiming the visits to the Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara violated the constitution.
Tokyo District Court spokesman Yoichi Sakamoto said the claims of compensation and arguments that the visits violated the division of religion and state were rejected, but he refused to provide further details.
Ishihara, an outspoken nationalist, praised the decision.
“As a Japanese, I go to Yasukuni Shrine to express my respect and condolences for the war dead,” he said in a statement. “I consider this ruling to be a very natural decision.”
Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine are loudly protested by China and South Korea, and are a major factor in the current tensions between Tokyo and Beijing. Violent anti-Japan protests flared in recent weeks in China, but have tapered off.
The shrine honours Japan’s 2.5 million war dead, but its deities include convicted Second World War war criminals, and official worship there is taken as a sign in Asia that Japan does not sufficiently regret its bloody conquest of the region in the 1930s and 40s.
Koizumi has gone to the shrine four times since becoming prime minister in April 2001. A court in southern Japan ruled last year that one of the visits violated the constitution, but the decision lacked the legal force to stop further visits.
Ishihara has visited the shrine in 2000 and 2001, and his office did not have information about any other visits he may have made.
The court decision comes as Tokyo is trying to mend fences with Beijing and quell anti-Japanese sentiment in China.
Koizumi made his country’s most public apology for its wartime aggression in a speech last week at a regional summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, in a move aimed at defusing tensions.
That message, however, was undercut by the visit on the same day of some 80 members of parliament – including a cabinet member – to Yasukuni, which stands next to a museum dedicated to the glory of Tokyo’s former military conquests.
Koizumi today repeated his statement that he would “make an appropriate decision” about whether to visit the shrine again. He has not gone to Yasukuni so far this year, but many officials make pilgrimages there on August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s Second World War surrender.
