Japan PM Takaichi sends offering to war-linked Yasukuni Shrine for spring rite
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The Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is viewed by China and South Korea as a symbol of Japan’s wartime militarism.
PHOTO: REUTERS
TOKYO – Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent a ritual offering to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on April 21 as the shrine, viewed by China and South Korea as a symbol of Japan’s wartime militarism, started its three-day spring festival.
Ms Takaichi, who regularly visited the shrine before taking office in October 2025, is unlikely to do so during the festival this time, a source close to her said, as worsened ties with China following her November remarks on how Japan might respond to a Taiwan emergency show little sign of improvement.
Visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders and ministers have long been a source of diplomatic friction with neighbouring countries because it honours wartime leaders convicted as war criminals by a post-World War II international tribunal, along with millions of war dead.
Ms Takaichi sent a “masakaki” evergreen twig offering under her name as prime minister to the shrine for the biannual event, following the practice of her predecessors in recent years. Among those who made the same offering were House of Representatives Speaker Eisuke Mori and House of Councillors president Masakazu Sekiguchi.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, the top government spokesman, told a news conference Ms Takaichi made the offering in a “private capacity” and that it was therefore not a matter for the government to comment on.
A wooden plaque, sent as a ritual offering on April 21 for the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine, bearing the name of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Even while serving as a minister, Ms Takaichi routinely visited the Shinto shrine during its spring and autumn festivals and, on Aug 15, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II.
But during the 2025 mid-October autumn festival, held weeks after Ms Takaichi won the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership race on Oct 4, she refrained from visiting and made a monetary offering using her personal funds.
Beijing has increased political and economic pressure on Tokyo after Ms Takaichi said in Parliament on Nov 7 that a Taiwan emergency could be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan that may prompt a response by the Self-Defense Forces in support of the United States.
Taiwan is a self-ruled democratic island that China sees as part of its territory to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.
At a press conference after winning the LDP leadership race, Ms Takaichi, a conservative with hawkish security views, said she would decide “appropriately” on future visits to Yasukuni as prime minister, adding that the matter “should never be made a diplomatic issue”.
The last Yasukuni visit by a sitting Japanese prime minister was in December 2013 by Mr Shinzo Abe, known as Ms Takaichi’s political mentor.
Past visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders, Cabinet ministers and lawmakers have drawn harsh criticism from neighbouring Asian countries. Japan invaded large parts of China before World War II and colonised the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
On April 21, some senior members of the conservative Japan Innovation Party (JIP), the LDP’s junior coalition partner since October, visited the shrine.
JIP co-leader Fumitake Fujita told reporters after the visit that “we live today in (a) Japan that was defended by heroes” whose souls are honoured by the shrine, and praying there is “what a politician should do”.
A cross-party group of Japanese lawmakers plans to visit the shrine on April 22.
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. KYODO NEWS
