Tag: Yasukuni Jinja

  • Five Years of Transpacifica: Five New Japanese Prime Ministers

    I’m in transit these days, moving for the time being from Seattle to New York. This is a perfect opportunity to look back on what I’ve written in this space since I started here just over five years ago, on Aug. 18, 2006. Looking back, I found some early speculation about what Aso Taro, then…

  • Top Japanese Officials Not Among Politicians Visiting Yasukuni

    Tis the season for Yasukuni Shrine visits. Between 62 (per Mainichi) and more than 150 (per AP) Japanese lawmakers visited the shrine on the traditional occasion of the spring holiday. But Jun Okumura notes that none of the very top leaders were among them: The AP report does tell you that “Prime Minister Fukuda did…

  • Yasukuni in Context: Nationalism and History in Japan

    Documents revealed in March that the Japanese government’s long-held position that it had nothing to do with the enshrinement of war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo wasn’t exactly, well, accurate. This week at Japan Focus, Akiko Takenaka has written a great update on these revelations. It’s published with an Asahi Shimbun editorial calling for…

  • Who's the Bigger Nationalist: Abe or Koizumi?

    Ampontan criticizes English-language media for their “[m]indlessly parroted assumptions based on conventional wisdom” that lead to their labeling Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as a “nationalist.” The entry notes Abe’s hands-off approach thus far on the disputed island situations with Korea and Russia as evidence that he is no “hawkish nationalist.” Observing Japan, on the…

  • A Warning on Yasukuni: Out of Nowhere?

    Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in an interview with Kyodo gave a standard warning against any visit by Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to the Yasukuni Shrine leading up to Wen’s visit to Tokyo next week. This would not be the least bit surprising, except that Abe hasn’t visited the shrine since taking office. Either Wen…