Yasukuni Shrine

Welcome!

The first blog is about the Yasukuni Shrine that commemorates the Japanese war-dead, not only war criminals. Japanese PM Koizumi visits the shrine yearly. This often invokes lots of noise from China and Korea which blame Japan not to take its war history serious. It recently escalated to aggressive protests in both China and Korea against Japan.

How to solve the Yasukuni Shrine problem? Japan could set up a separate place for those war criminal and expell their souls from the Yasukuni Shrine. The problem is a war-time Japanese PM who did not actively defend himself during the war tribunal and was sentenced to death. According to many Japanese he did nothing wrong and is not a war crimial. He had the pride to take all responsibility for the Emperor's and military wrong doings. Japan could set up a separate place for him as well.

Will this solve the problem? I am afraid not. China will continue blaming Japan because both countries are aiming for regional leadership. Japan had the economic leadership and China the political. Japan and China are now interested to become political and economic leaders, respectively, as well.

Both countries have a hunger for natural resources. It is very likely that they will continue to struggle for some time. As the Pacific War broke out because of Japan's growing needs for resources, I hope this time the matter will be solved by co-operation rather than ongoing unease -- stay tuned.