South Korea protests as Tomomi Inada, Japan’s defence minister, pays homage at Yasukuni memorial where those honoured include leaders of wartime atrocities

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Japan’s defence minister, Tomomi Inada, has provoked anger in South Korea following a visit to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo, a day after she accompanied the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, on his reconciliatory trip to Pearl Harbor.



South Korea’s foreign ministry denounced as “deplorable” Inada’s visit to Yasukuni, a site it said “beautifies past colonial invasions and invasive war and honours war criminals”.



The defence ministry in Seoul said: “We express deep concern and regret over Japan’s defence minister visiting Yasukuni shrine, even as our government has been emphasising the need to create a new, forward-looking South Korea-Japan relationship.”

Why is the Yasukuni shrine controversial? Built in 1869, Yasukuni enshrines the souls of almost 2.5 million Japanese soldiers – including more than 1,000 war criminals – who died in wars since the second half of the 19th century. In 1979, it emerged 14 class A war criminals were secretly enshrined a year earlier. Subsequent visits by Japanese leaders routinely provoke anger in China and South Korea, where Yasukuni symbolises Japanese militarism. The Yūshūkan military museum nearby promotes the belief Japan went to war to liberate Asia from western imperialism. It glosses over wartime atrocities committed in Asia, including the 1937 Nanjing massacre.



Inada, a prominent rightwinger who has been tipped as a future prime minister, made the pilgrimage to the contentious shrine on Thursday morning – her first since becoming defence minister in August. As an MP she had made the trip every 15 August – the anniversary of Japan’s wartime defeat – between 2006 and 2015.



Television footage showed a smiling Inada arriving at the shrine, which honours 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including several leaders executed for war crimes.

She told reporters that her visit was intended to “create peace for Japan and the world”.

“This year the president of the country that dropped the atomic bomb visited Hiroshima and yesterday the prime minister made remarks of consolation at Pearl Harbor,” Inada said, in a reference to Barack Obama’s highly symbolic trip to Hiroshima in May.

“I visited the shrine wishing to firmly create peace for Japan and the world from a future-oriented perspective.”

Asked if she risked prompting a diplomatic backlash from South Korea and China, she said: “I think that no matter what their historical views are and whether they were friends or foes, they understand my paying respects to those who dedicated their lives to their country.”



There was no immediate reaction from China, where Yasukuni visits by politicians are viewed as evidence that Japan has yet to atone for atrocities committed in parts of China and on the Korean peninsula before and during the second world war.

On Wednesday Inada watched as Abe and Obama talked about the power of reconciliation at the USS Arizona memorial, which has come to symbolise the December 1941 attack in which 2,400 US service personnel were killed.

Abe offered his “sincere and everlasting condolences” for the attack and vowed that Japan “must never repeat the horrors of war again”.

Abe, who shares many of Inada’s hawkish views, sparked anger in China and South Korea when he visited Yasukuni in December 2013, a year after he became prime minister for a second time.

That pilgrimage prompted an unusually critical response from the US, which said it was “disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbours”.

He has not been to Yasukuni since – in an apparent effort not to provoke Japan’s wartime victims – but sends cash offerings and gifts to mark significant dates in the shrine’s calendar.

Inada’s visit comes a day after Masahiro Imamura, who oversees the reconstruction of regions hit by the March 2011 triple disaster, went to Yasukuni. Speaking just hours after Abe had paid tribute to fallen US service personnel in Hawaii, Imamura claimed the timing of his visit was a coincidence, adding that he had prayed for Japan’s peace and prosperity.

Some observers expected Inada to pay her respects at Yasukuni this August on the 71st anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the war. But she was unable to do so after being sent to Djibouti to meet Japanese troops taking part in an anti-piracy mission.