A remarkable report from Reuters:
An aide to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sought to quell a row with China over Koizumi's visits to a shrine for war dead, floating an idea on Sunday to enshrine wartime leaders separately from other war dead.I suggested the idea of Japan using a separate shrine for its war leaders in this post. At the time, it struck me as a straightforward solution to the problem of how Japan could honor its war dead without offending its Asian neighbors. Yet Japan long resisted such a move. So what's motivating its current change of heart?
Sino-Japanese relations have been chilled by a series of disputes led by a row over Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni shrine, where convicted war criminals are honored along with 2.5 million military war dead.
The controversy stems from the fact that Yasukuni, in 1978, officially added 14 "Class A" war criminals, including wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo, to those honored at the shrine.
Hidenao Nakagawa, a senior lawmaker with Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, urged authorities in charge of the shrine to honor Class A war criminals separately to help resolve the dispute.I have a hunch how this gambit will play out: Japan will enshrine its war leaders separately, and China will still veto its Security Council bid.
Nakagawa said he hoped such action would result in China giving its assent to Japan becoming a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.
6 comments:
The Japanese are fools if they think they can get past Chinese opposition and get on the security council... of course that raises the question of what's a frustrated Japan gonna do about it's UN funding. Don't they pay for like a quarter of the thing?
Posted by Sairai_x
The absurd Japan-China chauvanism posturing contest shows what happens when the news media dutifully parrots the government's line on everything.
Koizumi's has risin to the top of the political heap without ever having his policies systematically questioned by anyone. The newspapers all basically report the LDP line as fact with any dissent strictly on a token basis. Hu Jintao effectively owns the entire media in China, so he's faced even fewer questions about his thinking toward Japan.
So when one of these leaders tells the other, to his face, that he's full of shit, neither has any idea where to begin. Worse, both are thoroughly convinced that it isn't necessary to solve any of the problems, since no one in their domestic media will ever mount any systematic criticism of their policies.
The U.S media are headed exactly in that direction, with "imbedded" reporters in Iraq seeing themselves primarily as conduits for military propaganda, rather than as independent reporters. Major magazines like Newsweek are, apparently, afraid to print critical articles in the U.S. out of a reasonable estimation that a growing, extremely vocal segment of Americans equate criticism with disloyalty.
Posted by bunkerbuster
Yeah, I can't see any reason (for China) not to veto. They (China) hold the biggest stick in that sand lot.
Posted by gecko
Hmm.. you don't seem to have trackback, so I'll be rude and just link my related post in the comments
Posted by Smith
No problem, Smith, as long as the link is relevant, and yours is.
Posted by GaijinBiker
Yasukuni is not WAR SHRINE. Please come to my blog and click "read more". Leftwing writers in Japan write biased articles. From a woman in UK.
Posted by quansh
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