Cross-party group of Japanese lawmakers visits war-linked Yasukuni shrine
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A shrine maiden walks at Yasukuni Shrine during the shrine's spring festival in Tokyo, Japan, on April 21.
PHOTO: REUTERS
TOKYO – A cross-party group of more than 120 Japanese lawmakers on April 22 visited Tokyo’s war-linked Yasukuni shrine, regarded as a symbol of the nation’s past militarism by its Asian neighbours, for its spring festival.
Mr Minoru Kiuchi, Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister, visited the shrine separately, becoming the first Cabinet member confirmed to have done so during the three-day event from April 21, while Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent a “masakaki” ritual offering that day.
Ms Takaichi as president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) made a personal monetary offering on April 22, according to Ms Haruko Arimura, head of the ruling party’s General Council, who delivered the offering to the shrine on her behalf.
Mr Ichiro Aisawa, leader of the group and a veteran House of Representatives member of the LDP, told reporters: “The many war dead laid the foundation for a peaceful and prosperous Japan.”
He added: “We must firmly pass down the memories and records of war to keep them from fading.”
Mr Kiuchi told reporters that he had offered his “sincere gratitude, with deep reverence, to the spirits of heroes who gave their precious lives for the nation”.
Ms Takaichi, a conservative known for regularly visiting the shrine, has no plan to do so during the ongoing festival, according to a source close to her, as ties with China have deteriorated since her remarks in November 2025 suggesting Japan might intervene if Taiwan is attacked.
China views Taiwan, a self-ruled democratic island, as a breakaway province to be eventually reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Visits to the shrine by Japanese politicians have long been a source of diplomatic friction, mainly with China and South Korea, because it honours wartime leaders convicted as war criminals by a post-World War II international tribunal, along with more than 2.4 million war dead.
The cross-party group routinely visits the shrine for its spring and autumn festivals, as well as the anniversary of the surrender in World War II on Aug 15. Before taking office on Oct 21, 2025, Ms Takaichi also made such visits, even while serving as a Cabinet minister.
During the autumn festival in mid-October 2025, weeks after Ms Takaichi won the LDP’s leadership race on Oct 4, 2025, she refrained from visiting the shrine and instead made a monetary offering.
Yasukuni enshrined 14 wartime leaders as deities in 1978, most of whom were convicted as Class-A war criminals. They include General Hideki Tojo, a wartime prime minister who was executed in 1948 for crimes against peace.
Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and occupied a wide area of China by the end of the war. KYODO NEWS
