With Eye on China, Japanese Premier Skips War Shrine
TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, hoping to appease conservative supporters without closing the door on a hoped-for summit meeting with China's leader, refrained from visiting a controversial war shrine in Tokyo on Friday, the 69th anniversary of the end of World War II, sending a cash offering instead.
Some 80 Japanese politicians, including three members of Mr. Abe's cabinet, did visit Yasukuni, the large shrine in central Tokyo that honors the nation's war dead, including convicted war criminals. But in an apparent attempt to avoid angering China as well as South Korea, Mr. Abe did not join them, despite calls from right-wing supporters for him to pay respects by doing so.
Instead, Mr. Abe sent an aide with the donation, which Mr. Abe signed as president of the Liberal Democratic Party and not in his public capacity as prime minister. The offering continues a pattern of sending gifts to the shrine instead of paying actual visits that Mr. Abe has largely followed since taking office in December 2012 amid concerns that his nationalistic views on history might isolate Japan in the region.
The one time Mr. Abe did visit Yasukuni, in December, brought strong reactions not only from China and South Korea, two victims of Japan's early-20th-century empire building, but also from the United States, Japan's postwar protector. The Obama administration saw the visit as undermining its efforts to get Japan and South Korea, America's two main Asian allies, to present a united front in the face of regional challenges like an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.
However, the show of restraint by Mr. Abe may not have been enough. The governments of China and South Korea both criticized the ministers' visit, with China calling it a sign that Japan still does not fully feel remorse for its wartime aggression.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/16/world/asia/with-eye-on-china-abe-skips-visit-to-war-shrine.html
