Yasukuni shrine visits: Japan honoring the dead or insulting the neighbors?
(CNN) -- Visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine by Japanese officials, including the younger brother of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, ignited criticism from China and Korea, which see the visits as an homage to Japan's past wartime aggressions.
Over the weekend several officials, including Abe's brother, senior vice foreign minister Nobuo Kishi, visited the shrine, according to Kyodo News. The visits started last week as part of an autumn festival and included 159 members of the Diet, Japan's national legislature.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe refrained from visiting the shrine, but sent an offering.
An editorial in Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper, blasted Japanese officials for their deference to the shrine.
"Chinese and Koreans will never accept the Yasukuni Shrine, whether it is a matter of rationality or sensibility. No matter how much trade with Japan grows, or how interdependent their economies are, the positive elements are flushed away once the Japanese politicians stage a group show at the shrine," it stated.
The Japanese lawmakers who went to the shrine defended their decision to go to the site where 14 of Japan's Class-A war criminals from World War II are enshrined with thousands of Japanese soldiers
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/21/wo...html?hpt=hp_c1
Do You think Japan shall stop visit Yasukuni Shrine?