Suga sends offering to Yasukuni Shrine; Abe visits

Maybe skip it this year for the sake of the Olympics not to provoke the usual annual negative stories in the foreign press

He should have visited Yasukuni Shrine.

That would have been totally based.

Yasukini Shrine. Akin to visiting Bitburg cemetery. Shameless behavior on the part of any P.M., or fellow politico.

Doesn’t Abe hang out there drinking sake, these days?

There's a shrine to Confucius in Naha City. The original shrine was built in the 17th century by the descendants of the so-called 36 Kume families officially immigrated to Ryukyu to help the kingdom transact commerce and trade with China.

The shrine was of course completely destroyed during the war but reconstructed on he same compounds now turned to city property. Takeshi Onaga, later Governor of Okinawa, was Naha City Mayor at the time. The city exempted the shrine from paying rentals for many a historical reason.

It was in a litigation brought by right wingers when Supreme Court ruled last February that Naha City's preferential treatment of the shrine, that is, exempting the non-religious maintenance body from paying rentals, was against the separation of religion and state.

If the Supreme Court is so mindful of the separation of religion and state, how will they judge succeeding prime ministers and LDP lawmakers' annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine and making ritual offering to the shrine? Is it OK because these politicians say their offering is made in a private capacity?

Some Japanese say Korea should forget the past and look for the future, but it is Japanese politicians who continue to revisit the past, provoking the neighbor countries to remember the past.

Why?

This book will help understand the paradoxical behaviors of Japanese politicians:

https://www.amazon.com/Japan-Shackles-Past-Taggart-Murphy/dp/0190619589

Tone deaf Japanese leaders, why they are worthless too Japan

You really should think before you complain. Always demanding religious freedom means of course also religious freedom for Abe, Suga or whoever else visits shrines , temples, churches, mosques anything else, or only makes any contribution, not even going personally. In addition you also have to consider the relation of the numbers written above. Some convicted war criminals and 2.4 million war deads. Would you also forbid visits or demand closing of almost all cemeteries in all your other countries, not anymore allowing yourself even visiting graves of your own families, only because anywhere at that place are also a few graves of not so good people , criminals, war criminals? Probably not...your media attention or sometimes even up to direct hate is only directed to that one specific shrine in Tokyo. That’s really quite psychotic and weird....

Suga only refrains from visiting because of his official capacity now and before. Abe did not go because he was PM only. He went before and he goes now, after. Suga will go as soon as he is no longer PM.

You'd think that even the clueless leader of this gov wouldn't complain to SK about the comfort women, on the very same day that he acknowledges/visits/honors/etc., etc. the war criminals at Yasukuni.

Sven, worth remembering again that Yasukuni is not a cemetery.

Public figures, either prime ministers or lawmakers, cannot cast off their titles wherever they may go. So, in my opinion, it's a sham and shenanigans for politicians to say that they visit Yasukuni Shrine and make ritual offering as private citizens

It may be safe to say then that LDP lawmakers' (including prime ministers') visit to Yasukuni Shrine and making ritual offering is in violation of Article 20 of the constitution, that says in part that "(t)he State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity."

This is especially so if the ruling by the Supreme Court last February of the Confucius shrine litigation in Naha is taken into consideration.

Zichi, neither interned nor interred, but it is true that some war criminals’ (as defined by the Western powers) names are listed there. It would actually be physically possible to move the names to a different shrine, (this is what I favour) but certain very influential families are shrill in their opposition to such a proposal.

To keep the peace in the squabbling, the Emperor has refrained from visiting.

Since it is a place to contact/thank/appease the immortal souls of those who died for Japan, there are many who would make no discrimination among such souls after physical death.

A legal specialist says the Supreme Court's ruling last February in the Confucius shrine litigation in Naha can be a precedent to bring lawmakers' visit to Yasukuni Shrine to litigation. See an article by lawyer Masatoshi Uchida run on April 4, 2021 Asahi Com.

「最高裁「孔子廟」違憲判決と靖国神社」("Ruling by Supreme Court as Unconstitutional in "Confucius Shrine" Litigation and Issue of Yasukuni Shrine")

https://webronza.asahi.com/politics/articles/2021040200002.html