By Irene Wang and Elaine Lies
TOKYO (AP) — Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed Monday on the anniversary of Japan’s involvement in World War II that his country will never go to war again, as members of his cabinet visited a shrine honoring those killed in the war, angering South Korea and China.
Japan’s relations with China were already strained after China conducted unprecedented military training around Taiwan following U. S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this month.
During the exercises, several missiles landed in the waters of Japan’s economic zone.
“We will never repeat the horrors of war again. I will continue to uphold this resolute oath,” Kishida told a secular assembly in Tokyo, which was also attended by Emperor Naruhito.
“In a world where conflicts continue, Japan is a proactive leader in peace,” he said.
Japan’s anniversary is also historically marked through visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, regarded across South Korea and China as a symbol of Japan beyond militarism.
Yasukuni will pay tribute to 14 Japanese warlords convicted of war criminals, who are among the estimated 2. 5 million war dead there.
Japanese leaders’ visits to the shrine infuriate neighbors who suffered at the hands of Japan before World War II.
Kishida, on the moderate side of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has faced a delicate balancing act, hoping to thwart neighbors while keeping the party’s top right-wing members satisfied, especially after the killing of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month. .
Kishida sent an offering to the shrine surrendering, news firm Kyodo reported, as he did at recent festivals at the shrine.
But his predecessor Yoshihide Suga and Abe in 2020, Kishida made an indirect reference to Japan’s wartime actions, saying that “history classes are deeply etched in our hearts. “
Despite this, South Korea and China have denounced visits to the shrine.
In South Korea, he expressed “deep disappointment” and regret.
“The Korean government urges the other guilty Japanese to confront history and show a humble and authentic reflected image in the afterlife through action,” a South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wengbin said Japan would like to reflect deeply on its history.
“Some Japanese political figures distort and glorify the history of aggression in various ways and blatantly violate the Cairo Declaration and other vital legal documents that obviously facilitate Taiwan’s return to China,” he told a news conference.
‘PROBLEM FOR THE JAPANESE’
People of all ages filled the shrine to pay their respects despite the sweltering heat. At noon, they lowered their heads for a moment of silence as the cicadas buzzed.
“People from other countries can say things, but it’s a challenge for the Japanese, so the Japanese have to do it for themselves,” said Yukie Takahashi, a 60-year-old worker in the workplace.
“This is a day to worship, to look back on the past, to pray. “
Among those who visited the shrine was, as usual, a small organization of far-right activists, some dressed in military uniforms and carrying flags. Others released pigeons as a symbol of peace.
Footage broadcast by broadcaster NHK showed the shrine was visited early Monday by several cabinet ministers, including Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, as well as Koichi Hagiuda, the head of the LDP’s policy studies council and a key best friend of Abe’.
“It is natural for any country to pay tribute to those who gave their lives for their country,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said earlier.
“Japan will continue relations with its neighbors, adding China and South Korea. “
Some lawmakers who made a scale in combination said last week they would not do so because of the coronavirus.
In 2013, Abe, the last prime minister to remember recently, made a stopover in Yasukuni while in office, a stopover that outraged China and South Korea and even prompted rebukes from a close ally, the United States.
The United States and Japan are staunch allies in the decades since the war, but the legacy of the standoff lurks in East Asia.
Koreans, who mark the date as National Liberation Day, resent Japan’s colonization of the peninsula between 1910 and 1945, while China has bitter memories of the invasion and occupation of parts of the country by imperial troops between 1931 and 1945.
(Additional reporting via Satoshi Sugiyama and Sakura Murakami in Tokyo, Josh Smith in Seoul and Eduardo Batista in Beijing; Editing through Kenneth Maxwell and David Holmes)
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