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The news article was incorect and has been removed from ANN's front page. A correction will be issue tomorrow.

I apologise profusely for this, the mistake was made by another news site, but ANN is still responsible for reproducing it.

-t

penguintruth wrote:

Now when anyone tries to criticize him for visiting the graves of war criminals, he can hit them with a big paper fan.

He never visited the graves of war criminals. He visits Yasukuni Shrine, a shrine honoring the spirits of those who have died fighting in the service of the emperor.

This includes some war criminals, but the cast majority of those honored at the shrine are not war criminals.

According to Wikipedia, Of almost 2.5 million people honored at the shrine, just over 1,000 of them are convicted war criminals. Of those, only 12 are convicted of "class A" war crimes.

There are no graves at the shrine.

Personally I think the whole thing is stupid, if Koizumi were to lay a wreath at the grave of General Doihara Kenji, that would be cause for international outrage. Merely visiting a shrine that does not exclude war criminals is not cause for such outrage.

-t

tempest wrote:

Personally I think the whole thing is stupid, if Koizumi were to lay a wreath at the grave of General Doihara Kenji, that would be cause for international outrage. Merely visiting a shrine that does not exclude war criminals is not cause for such outrage.

The problem began on October 17, 1978 -- there was no Class A war criminal before then. Yasukuni enshrined them secretly, which caused Emperor Hirohito himself not visiting the shrine anymore.

Emperor Hirohito wrote:

私は或る時に、Ａ級が合祀されその上、松岡、白取までもが、筑波は慎重に対処してくれたと聞いたが、松平の子の今の宮司がどう考えたのか？易々と松平は平和に強い考があったと思うのに、親の心子知らずと思っているだから、私あれ以来参拝していない。それが私の心だ。

Partial translation available at Wikipedia.

A comparable example would be like, say, carving names of Nazi leaders, who were sentenced to death by Nuremberg Trials, on the wall of Neue Wache. See if Israelis and Jewish population worldwide would be enraged.