Growing U.S.-Japanese Fracas Over Yasukuni Visits

Yesterday, I added the following “Link of Interest:”

Rep. Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, has a message for President Junichiro Koizumi. Hyde, a veteran of the Pacific Theater of World War II and no fan of Japan’s revisionist view of history, suggests that Koizumi won’t be invited to address the House during his upcoming state visit if he intends to visit the Yasukuni Shrine this summer. . . .

I swear there must be a clock in Tokyo that goes off every time a Korean election is imminent. Like a regular cuckoo clock, only the cuckoo shouts “Takeshima!” and “Yasukuni!” Koizumi may be a stalwart against Kim Jong Il, but the Uri Party owes its survival to him.

Today, a reader forwards an article from the Asahi Shimbun, which characterizes the issue slightly differently from the Chosun Ilbo piece:

A senior U.S. congressman has demanded assurances that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will not visit Yasukuni Shrine if he is to make a speech to a joint session of Congress in June, sources said.

In a letter to Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert in late April, Henry Hyde asked that Koizumi take steps to reassure Congress that he would not visit Yasukuni any time soon after his unprecedented address to the joint session.

Without the assurance, Koizumi’s visit to Capitol Hill would dishonor the place where Franklin Roosevelt made his “day of infamy” speech after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, wrote Hyde, who is chairman of the House Committee on International Relations.

This suggests that Hyde didn’t exactly claim the authority not to invite Koizumi, but merely asked for reassurances from Koizumi that he wouldn’t visit the shrine this year. The Chosun Ilbo conspicuously failed to note that Hyde has also become one of South Korea’s most stalwart critics over the handling of North Korean human rights issues. For his part, Koizumi isn’t making any promises:

In Tokyo, officials were quick to play down any effect the letter might have on Japan-U.S. relations.

Some government sources went so far as to deny that Japan is seeking an opportunity for Koizumi to address a joint session of the House and the Senate, which would be a first for a Japanese prime minister.

. . . .

In Tokyo, Japanese government officials said Hyde’s letter represented the opinion of a single politician.

“The opinion will not become that of the entire United States,” a government source said.

“U.S. President George W. Bush and Koizumi are on friendly terms. While Japan may be thanked, it will not be disliked by the United States.”

In response to Diet questioning, Koizumi himself has said that “the U.S. government understands the true intent of my Yasukuni visits.”

While some Americans oppose the visits, no one in the U.S. government has spoken out against them, according to Foreign Ministry officials.

Thanks to the reader for sending.