<![CDATA[FT.com / Comment & analysis / Analysis – Unbowed Japan stands up to China :
At least twice during Junichiro Koizumi’s nearly four years as Japanese prime minister, senior government officials are known to have steeled their nerves and asked him to stop visiting Yasukuni shrine. Both stated that, in the interests of improving frosty Sino-Japanese relations, Mr Koizumi should cease his annual pilgrimage to Yasukuni, the supposed resting place for the souls of 2.5m war dead, including those of 14 “class A” war criminals convicted for crimes against humanity.
Mr Koizumi’s seeming obsession with paying his respects at the shrine – for the Chinese a hated symbol of Japan’s wartime aggression – has enraged China and torpedoed whatever hope the prime minister had of receiving an official invitation to Beijing.
Yet according to one foreign ministry official who counselled Mr Koizumi to stop, the prime minister was resolute. “His face went completely red and he grew very angry,” he recalls. “He said: ‘Don’t you understand? Unless I keep visiting the shrine, China will forever bring up this issue. By continuing to go, I can put a stop to this once and for all.'”
In the past few months, the thrust of Japan’s policies towards China across a range of diplomatic issues has followed a similar logic. For years, many Japanese officials have felt that China has exploited Japan’s wartime guilt to extract countless political concessions as well as a rich bounty of aid.
This is a great article, well researched and written. Worth a read if you have an FT subscription. It raises concerns for me that Japan is reaching back to the samurai militarism of the early 20th century to regain a national sense of self, but it also asks the legitimate question of just how many generations have to pay for the sins of their grandfathers. The sidebar on China’s culture of anti-Japanese feeling is also very good.]]>