Not Again . . . .
BEIJING, Oct. 17 KYODO The Japanese Embassy in Beijing issued a warning Monday to Japanese nationals in China about possible ”strong reactions” from the Chinese public following Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine. The warning, issued through e-mail to registered Japanese nationals, follows violent anti-Japan demonstrations in Chinese cities in April, in which the embassy was pelted with stones and water bottles.
In response to Koizumi’s fifth visit to the shrine since he took office in 2001, Korea is considering scrapping a summit planned for later this year. [Link]
BEIJING, Oct. 17 KYODO China and Japan have cancelled talks between their foreign ministers, initially expected to take place in Beijing from Sunday, following Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine, a Japanese diplomatic source said Monday. Also cancelled was a meeting between senior officials of the two countries that had been scheduled to be held Monday afternoon in Beijing to prepare for the foreign ministers’ talks, according to a separate diplomatic source.
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SEOUL, Oct. 17 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon expressed “deep regret and disappointment” over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s latest visit to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo on Monday.Ban called in Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Shotaro Oshima, and said, “It is not too much to say that the biggest obstacle to the estranged relations between South Korea and Japan is Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine.”
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I’m not suggesting that men who died for their country in wars not of their own choosing don’t deserve to be remembered. I’m saying that the war criminals should be moved to another place, and the museum–if it needs to be there at all–needs to tell a more balanced story than its current theme than its present theme that Japan was an innocent victim.
Imperial Japan was anything but a victim. My reading of the British historian Paul Johnson’s Modern Times showed some remarkable parallels between psychology of the Japanese leadership in the 1930s and of North Korea today. In both situations, the leaders competed with each other to be more radical, more bellicose, more irrational, and more ruthless . . . in part because being perceived as rational had proven to be so dangerous.
On a more cynical note, there is an APEC summit coming up in Pusan, and this may well distract some of South Korea’s xenophobic bile away from us for a change.