TOKYO, (MILLAT+APP/AFP) – Japan’s hawkish
defence minister prayed Thursday at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo, the day after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a highly symbolic visit to Pearl Harbor.
Yasukuni Shrine honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead, but is
controversial for also enshrining senior military and political figures
convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal.
It has been criticised by countries such as China and South Korea
which suffered under Japan’s colonialism and military aggression in the first half of the 20th century.
Tomomi Inada’s visit was her first since taking the key defence
portfolio in August, though she has frequently gone in the past.
“By taking a future-oriented stance, I offered my prayers to build
peace for Japan and the world,” she told reporters.
She noted that Barack Obama — “the president of a country that
dropped atomic bombs” — had gone to Hiroshima earlier this year, while Abe “voiced words to console the spirits of the dead” at Pearl Harbor.
The timing is likely to prove highly contentious coming so soon after
Abe and Obama’s joint visit to the site of Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on the navy base in Hawaii that drew the US into World War II.
Inada is a close confidante of Abe with staunchly nationalist views.
Abe, who was reportedly playing golf, said he had “no comment” on her visit, Jiji Press said.
South Korea was quick to criticise Inada.
“Our government cannot but deplore” the visit, foreign ministry
spokesman Cho June-Hyuck said in a statement, while in separate comments the defence ministry expressed “grave concern and regret”.
– ‘Gratitude and respect’ –
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Inada wrote in 2011 that Japan — the only country in the world to
suffer atomic bomb attacks — should consider acquiring nuclear weapons.
In August after becoming defence minister she told reporters that
Japan “should not consider arming itself with nuclear weapons at this moment”.
In 2014, she and another conservative lawmaker were seen in separate
photographs standing next to the leader of a Japanese neo-Nazi party, though
spokesmen for both denied any political affiliation.
Inada argued Thursday that paying respect to war dead should be
universally accepted, echoing the argument repeated by Japanese lawmakers who frequently visit Yasukuni.