Prime Minister Shinzo Abe defended in an interview on Friday the right of Japan’s leaders to visit a controversial shrine to war dead but hit back at critics who accuse him of revisionism.
Amid the latest flare-up with China and South Korea over history, Abe quoted a US scholar as comparing the Yasukuni shrine to Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, which has a section for Confederate Civil War dead.
“I am of a view that we can make a similar argument about Yasukuni, which enshrines the souls of those who lost their lives in the service of their country,” Abe told the policy magazine Foreign Affairs.
“I think it’s quite natural for a Japanese leader to offer prayer for those who sacrificed their lives for their country, and I think this is no different from what other world leaders do,” he said.
Abe, who was also prime minister from 2006 to 2007, has stayed away from the shrine after China and South Korea angrily denounced predecessor Junichiro Koizumi’s annual pilgrimage. But a growing number of Abe’s ministers visit it.
The Yasukuni shrine honors some 2.5 million Japanese who died in World War II and other conflicts. In 1978, the Shinto priests enshrined 14 top or “Class A” war criminals convicted in Allied trials.