TOKYO, March 3 (UPI) -- On the eve of the March 1 anniversary of a South Korean uprising against Japanese colonial rule 85 years ago, the war shrine in central Tokyo was crowded with Japanese paying their respects to imperial soldiers who died in past military campaigns.
Pilgrims tossed coins between the wooden slats at the front of the shrine, then clapped their hands and bowed their heads to show respect to the 2.5 million Japanese war dead who are honored at the Shinto memorial.
Many parents bring their children to the Yasukuni shrine to be blessed by a priest for good health and good fortune. Schoolteachers bring students to this shrine for history lessons. The Yasukuni shrine, located near the Emperor's house, is Japan's national memorial enshrining the spirits of Japanese soldiers killed in domestic and foreign wars.
"I am here to commemorate and worship those who have died in war for our country," said Takashi Murayama, a 59-year-old engineer. Asked about criticism of the shrine in Korea and China, he said: "I cannot understand why they (Koreans and Chinese) blast our visits to this shrine. Those who sacrificed their lives for the country deserve to be respected."
Shigeki Michishita, a 34-year-old computer programmer, said he supported Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the controversial war shrine. "If Koreans and Chinese protest his shrine visits, it is interference in Japanese domestic affairs," he said.
The Yasukuni shrine is considered in South Korea and China as the symbol of Japan's militarism because it is the burial site of 14 convicted Class-A World War II criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Gen. Hideki Tojo, among the 2.5 million dead enshrined there. These criminals were secretly interred at Yasukuni in 1979. The war criminals were given a special designation as "Martyrs of the Show Era."
Koizumi, who has been accused of nationalist leanings by his Asian neighbors, began the New Year by paying his respects at the Yasukuni Shrine. The Jan. 1 visit, his fourth pilgrimage since he took office in April 2001, provoked anger in South Korea, China and other countries that suffered under the brutality of the Japanese military before and during World War II.
Despite condemnation from his neighbors, Koizumi has vowed to continue his annual visits to the war shrine, according to the major Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun on Friday.
Koizumi's justification of these controversial war shrine visits has angered South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. In a speech to mark the independence movement of March 1, 1919, Roh urged Japan's leaders to stop stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment in comments taken as a reference to Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni.
"A national leader should not behave like reckless members of the public or politicians who are driven to gain popularity," Roh said, stressing that the memory of Japan's harsh colonial rule from 1910-45 is still vivid in South Korea.
The remarks were seen here as Roh's strongest criticism yet of Koizumi's trips to the Yasukuni Shrine. Japanese leaders should not think that every problem has been solved just because Korean leaders do not bother to point out unresolved historical problems with regard to Japan's law and system, Roh said.
In central Seoul, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, including students, took to the streets to rally against imperial Japan's colonial rule of the peninsula. They shouted anti-Japanese slogans.
Amid anti-Japanese sentiment, South Korea's parliament easily approved a bill on Tuesday to set up a special committee to inquire into pro-Japanese collaborators during the 35 years of Japanese colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.
It was the first time for the Seoul government to have such a committee since 1945, when the peninsula was divided into the communist North and the pro-Western South shortly after the 1945 liberation from the colonial rule.
In response to Roh's critical comment, Koizumi said that Japan and South Korea should respect each other's positions on bilateral history. "I believe it is important to take the stance of recognizing differences between each side and respecting those positions," Koizumi told reporters at his office.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda also said the two countries "should make efforts to deal with the issue" of different interpretations of the history of Japan's rule of the Korean peninsula.
Many Japanese government officials have made formal visits to the shrine since Koizumi took office. Some of them have seemingly gone out of their way to anger their Asian neighbors with intentional remarks defending the crimes of their imperialistic military.
Last year, Tokyo Mayor Shintaro Ishihara, notorious for his chauvinism, insulted and infuriated South Korea by saying that Japan annexed the Korean peninsula in 1919 only after a request by the Korean people.
Koizumi and senior government officials have said they go to the shrine to renew their resolve to create a world free of war. The meaning of Yasukuni is "peaceful country." But the shrine is shrouded in the symbols of war. At the Yushukan, a museum commemorating Japan's wars located just next to the shrine's main buildings, a documentary film entitled, "We never forget (the war)," was being aired for visitors.
The museum contains many types of war vehicles, tanks, and weaponry. It also displays military clothes spotted with blood where they were hit by bullets, and thousands of photos of war dead. The final letters of kamikaze pilots in which they pledged their loyalty to the Emperor are displayed under glass.
A Japanese visitor said the museum was "a symbol of Japan's glorious military past." He added, "But because Japan lost the war, the war dead are regarded as war criminals." He refused to give his name.
"Whenever I visit this shrine, I feel that the Japanese still harbor wartime enmity," said South Korean Shin Hyung-gu, who works at the Tokyo branch of a South Korean company.
"Yasukuni was nurtured by the state and then the military into a powerful religious and iconographic center to promote Japanese ultranationalism," said Safier Joshua, the author of a book titled, "Yasukuni Shrine and the Constraints on the Discourses of Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Japan."
