[whiteperil] Sean: Abe buttonholed about Yasukuni Shrine in Diet

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Posted by Sean:
Abe buttonholed about Yasukuni Shrine in Diet
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1159429259.shtml


   Abe's cabinet line-up was publicized on Tuesday. The Japan Times has
   an English [1]list attached to its [2]article on the announcement that
   unfortunately doesn't contain the brief biographies from the print
   edition. Different commentators have different prognostications to
   offer, as always, but most agree that what will be most important to
   pay attention to is how the Abe government decides to prioritize and
   compromise. The cabinet members and advisors who are personal allies
   of his are almost uniformly hard-right in their public positions, but
   much of the rest of the LDP isn't. Besides, some of Abe's policy goals
   are, on their face, at odds with each other. (I'll be interested to
   see how he manages to repair relations with China while also scotching
   its plans to become the preeminent regional economic and political
   power and increasing Japan's military autonomy.)
   Speaking of which, Abe has not stated one way or another whether he
   plans to visit the Yasukuni Shrine as prime minister. He was, however,
   [3]questioned about it this morning:

     The first questioner from the Democratic Party of Japan was party
     leader Yukio Hatoyama, who raised the point that the prime minister
     is coordinating visits to the PRC and ROK without having stated
     clearly whether he will make pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine.
     Hatoyama criticized the prime minister: "This is going to turn into
     Jun'ichiro Koizumi, the Second Act--losing trust [from China and
     Korea] through evasive maneuvers."
     Touching on the prime minister's [previous] argument that "thinking
     that requires separating Class-A war criminals from others is
     off-target," Hatoyama pressed him: "Just where does responsibility
     lie?"

   The second act part is originally äºã®è (ni no mai: "second dance"),
   usually used when you fail in the same way as someone else by making
   the same dumb mistakes. Abe is, if anything, more combative about the
   Yasukuni issue than his predecessor was. Koizumi's line was, to the
   extent that one could get meaning from it, that it was possible to pay
   respect to those who'd served Japan in good faith while leaving the
   malefactors to whatever reward/retribution had been served to them in
   the next life.

References

   1. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/nn20060927c1.html
   2. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060927a5.html
   3. http://www.nikkei.co.jp/news/main/20061002AT3S0100O02102006.html