Japan's former PM: Emperor should visit Yasukuni
(Kyodo)
Updated: 2006-02-10 10:27

Japan's Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone proposed Thursday that the emperor, not the prime minister, should visit Yasukuni Shrine when the proper conditions for such a visit have been established.

Nakasone said at a seminar in Kyoto that the souls of those who were drafted into the military and are honored at the shrine "have been waiting for the emperor, not the prime minister, to visit there."

He said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi should play a leading role in helping to establish an environment in which the emperor can visit the shrine. "It's the prime minister's job to create a situation in which the emperor can visit (Yasukuni)," he claimed.

Japan's relations with China and South Korea have deteriorated due to Koizumi's repeated visits to the war-related shrine, which honors Class-A war criminals together with Japan's war dead.

To help create an environment for the emperor to visit the shrine, Nakasone proposed that the Class-A war criminals be separated from the war dead enshrined there.

Nakasone said he does not accept the rulings of the 1946-1948 Tokyo war crimes trials against political and military leaders of the prewar and wartime Japanese governments, including those enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine.

But he said that those leaders should bear responsibility for the outcome of the war, adding that only the shrine's priest has the discretion to separate the Class-A war criminals.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convicted 25 Japanese wartime leaders and found many of them guilty of conspiracy to commit aggression.

Emperor Hirohito, posthumously called Emperor Showa, visited Yasukuni Shrine in 1975, but his son Emperor Akihito has not gone there since ascending the throne in 1989.

Fourteen of the 25 Class-A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Gen. Hideki Tojo, have been enshrined at Yasukuni since 1978.

Foreign Minister Taro Aso recently came under fire both at home and abroad for making remarks supporting the idea of the emperor visiting Yasukuni Shrine.

China, South Korea and other countries and peoples which suffered under Japan both before and during the war regard Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine as an attempt to condone past Japanese militarism.