GSDF vice chief punished for using official car for Yasukuni visit

Yeah, in the meantime China builds its military up for invading the borders of at least five independent (for now) countries, Japan included. So no wonder they'll protest anything like this. Like, why would Japan care about that?

Japan has much bigger problems than what just happened and they will solve then with the very military that just got reprimanded.

Just dropped by to say a little prayer for Tojo.

BigP - it's not only Tojo that's they're. The souls of a few million ex soldiers are also enshrined. There's absolutely no shame in going and respecting those people, many families have a father or grandfather there.

Punished but not subject to penalty.

Now that is unusual, or is it...

What was the car part about?

Clearly they walked across the river from Ichigaya and uphill to the shrine. 20 minutes if you aren't slackers.

They had a car pick them up afterwards?

[ The ministry, however, added that the visit itself to the Shinto shrine on Jan. 9 was a private one and "based on their free will," and thus not subject to any penalty. The trip was made by 22 GSDF members in total including Lt. Gen. Hiroki Kobayashi, the vice chief of staff.

According to the ministry, Kobayashi had invited his colleagues to take the afternoon off and visit the shrine, which is a 30-minute walk from where they worked. ]

January 9?—Missed them by just 2 days; my place is kinda close to Yasukuni and I go there when I want to say a few prayers…; love the statue honoring the widows and children of soldiers that died in the war … and the Kamikaze (some of those kids were sixteen, seventeen years old)…; it’s a special place, no doubt, and every Japanese citizen should be free to go there; as for Mr. Kobayashi and his buddies, you should’ve taken a walk, heheh.

[ Past visits to Yasukuni shrine by Japanese lawmakers have been a source of diplomatic friction with China and South Korea as the shrine honors the World War II dead including Japanese leaders who were convicted as war criminals in an international tribunal. ]

Let them talk…; there are 2466532 names there…; of those 2466532, 1054 were convicted war criminals and 14 were A-Class war criminals…; “do the math” as I usually say.

The ministry had been investigating whether their action violated a directive issued by the then vice defense minister in 1974 prohibiting group visits by SDF members to a religious facility.

And yet somehow the ministry failed to find that that a group of SDF members visiting Yasukuni was a group visit by SDF members to a religious facility. I wonder how much more it has to be SDF members visiting, as a group - including senior officers - to a religious facility than this.

There is nothing wrong with visiting Yasukuni Shrine. It is a memorial to those who gave their lives for their country. I visited, and was moved to tears viewing the thousands of very young boys who sacrificed themselves for Japan.

Granted, there are some controversial figures interred here, but that should not be cause for criticism or condemnation of this spiritual shrine.