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Legacy of war in Asia

Japanese Shinto priests attend a ritual at Yasukuni Shrine. Yasukuni has long been a source of diplomatic friction with China and other Asian countries because it honours Japan’s wartime leaders convicted as war criminals in the post-World War II international tribunal. Photo: Reuters

Japan’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine vandalised with kanji for ‘death’

It follows similar defacement incidents in June and August.

11 Nov 2024 - 10:28PMvideocam

Opinion | Bomb survivors’ Nobel Prize a reminder to world on edge of nuclear war

18 Oct 2024 - 8:30PMvideocam

Japan’s new PM Ishiba sends offering to Yasukuni war shrine

17 Oct 2024 - 4:47PM

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group wins 2024 Nobel Peace Price

Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the prize for its decades of efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

11 Oct 2024 - 10:46PMvideocam

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, reacts after the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, was announced on Friday. Photo: Kyodo via Reuters

Opinion | Hollywood needs to know there is more to Vietnam than war stories

Vietnam hopes to bring the world’s attention to its natural beauty and rich diversity instead of its war-torn recent history.

8 Oct 2024 - 9:30AMvideocam

Japan to search airports for more unexploded WWII bombs

Experts say while such bombs are usually safe and damage likely to be limited, the difficulty is in finding those that are buried deeper.

5 Oct 2024 - 3:30PMvideocam

Opinion | Don’t hate people for their political leaders’ wars and crimes

It is the leaders, not the regular people, who use the military might of nations to invade other countries and oppress other peoples.

29 Sep 2024 - 5:30AMvideocam

A woman and a boy leave the Japanese embassy in Beijing on September 19. China has expressed “regret and sadness” after a Japanese schoolboy who was stabbed in Shenzhen on the anniversary of the 918 Incident died of his injuries. Photo: AFP

Japanese families still seek lost loved ones 80 years after US invasion of Peleliu

Eighty years after the brutal Battle of Peleliu, Toshiko Kido searches for her grandfather’s remains, part of Japan’s effort to repatriate war dead.

28 Sep 2024 - 2:37PM

Did a Japanese WWII warship sail on kamikaze mission by mistake?

The battleship was sunk by US aircraft near Okinawa at the end of WWII as Japan tried to thwart further attacks on its mainland.

15 Sep 2024 - 2:20PMvideocam

South Korea’s president shocks public after ‘outrageous’ Liberation Day speech

President Yoon Suk-yeol shocked South Koreans by omitting mention of Japan’s wartime atrocities from his Liberation Day speech.

20 Aug 2024 - 9:24AMvideocam

Japanese nationalists holding war flags of the Imperial Japanese Army visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine earlier this month. Photo: dpa

Japan’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine vandalised again with graffiti

Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, seen as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, reported a second case of graffiti in three months.

19 Aug 2024 - 5:39PMvideocam

A blue sheet covers a stone pillar on which graffiti was found at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Monday. Photo: AP

Japan’s ministers visit Yasukuni shrine on World War II anniversary

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who plans to step down in September, stayed away, sending an offering instead. No serving Japanese prime minister has visited Yasukuni since Shinzo Abe in 2013.

15 Aug 2024 - 8:53PM

This British director’s surprising connection to Southeast Asian war history

British director and producer Tom St John Gray has come full circle: his latest docus take him back to his dad’s old stamping ground of Southeast Asia, where he is giving a voice to those long silenced

14 Aug 2024 - 5:00PMvideocam

In South Korea, outrage over key ‘pro-Japan’ appointments reopens WWII wounds

Selection of scholars to lead key research institutes sparks claims of history revision amid concerns over security ties with Tokyo, Washington.

13 Aug 2024 - 10:13AM

South Korean protesters hold a rally against Seoul’s announcement of plans to compensate victims of Japan’s forced wartime labour, outside the foreign ministry in March 2023. Photo: AFP

Adele deletes Japan’s rising sun flag image after uproar from South Koreans

The banner, a symbol associated with Japan’s military aggression during World War II, was displayed at her show in Germany.

12 Aug 2024 - 1:46PM

Lest we forget: a Canadian museum’s mission to immortalise Asia’s WWII history

The tireless efforts of a Toronto doctor to educate people about Asia’s blood-soaked theatre of war have come to fruition in Toronto’s new WongAvery Asia-Pacific Peace Museum

10 Aug 2024 - 12:15PM

Japanese city’s VR tour shows devastating aftermath of atomic bomb

In Hiroshima, hit by a US atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 during World War II, a travel company is operating a unique virtual reality tour to offer visitors an immersive window into Japan’s past.

6 Aug 2024 - 4:15PM

Hiroshima survivor too stunned to speak let her art do the talking

Aged six, Toshiko Tanaka survived the Hiroshima bombing that killed all her classmates. She used her cloisonné enamel art to express her feelings about it for decades until, at 70, she finally spoke of it.

28 Jul 2024 - 1:15PM

Toshiko Tanaka survived the Hiroshima bombing aged six and became an artist. Photo: Hiroshima: Faces

Japan’s Sado gold mine gains Unesco status after pledge to exhibit WWII history

To gain recognition, Japan included new material to ‘explain the severe conditions’ of Korean labourers’ work and remember their hardship.

27 Jul 2024 - 6:00PM

Mysterious pile of human bones could hide evidence of Japanese war crimes, activists say

Activists want to know if bones discovered at a Tokyo site in 1989 are linked to the notorious Japanese ‘Unit 731’.

26 Jul 2024 - 3:14PM

Chinese man in Japan arrested over Yasukuni Shrine graffiti incident

Jiang Zhuojun, 29, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly conspiring with two others to spray-paint the word “toilet” in English on a stone pillar at the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

9 Jul 2024 - 10:14PM

People pay respects to the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. A Chinese man was arrested on Tuesday for his alleged involvement in spray-painting graffiti on the shrine. Photo: AP

Landmine blasts injure North Korean troops laying mines at border, South says

South Korea’s military also said on Tuesday that warning shots were fired at North Koreans who briefly crossed the heavily fortified border.

18 Jun 2024 - 2:02PMvideocam

North Koreans work at an undisclosed location near the border in a photo provided on Tuesday. Photo: South Korean Defence Ministry / Handout via AFP

North Korea hates the South’s propaganda loudspeakers. But do they even work?

The South’s military claims the speakers can blare pop songs and political messages as far as 10km. Doubtful, defectors and experts say.

17 Jun 2024 - 11:06AMvideocam

Reflections | Mass slaughter long predates Israel-Gaza war; look at Chinese history

Israeli forces show a cruel disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in their pursuit of Hamas fighters. Non-combatants are often slaughtered in war, as China’s history shows. Is it bloodlust?

7 Jun 2024 - 7:45AM

As Japan marks bombing anniversary, Mideast relations a ‘constant dilemma’

As they prepare to mark the 79th anniversary of their atomic bombing, Hiroshima and Nagasaki send Israel a symbolic message on the horrors of war.

6 Jun 2024 - 9:06AMvideocam

A bonfire burns next to the A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima during last year’s anniversary commemoration. Photo: EPA-EFE

US$64,000 bounty offer for suspected Chinese graffiti vandal at Japan shrine

The video showing a Chinese man urinating and spray-painting ‘toilet’ on a shrine to Japan’s war dead so incensed a cosmetic surgeon that he’s offered a 10-million-yen reward for help bringing the suspect to justice.

5 Jun 2024 - 1:17PMvideocam

A still from a video that circulated on Chinese social media shows a man next to the word “toilet” in red graffiti on a pillar at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine. Photo: X/Ek_aike

Japan police hunt man who spray painted ‘toilet’ on Yasukuni Shrine

In a video on Chinese social media, a man identifying himself as Iron Head said he would give the Japanese government ‘some colour to see’, before urinating on a stone pillar and spray-painting ‘toilet’ in English.

4 Jun 2024 - 12:36PMvideocam

The Spanish Philippines: what is there to see in Manila, Cebu and beyond?

Natural disasters and war have destroyed many of the buildings erected in the Philippines under Spanish colonial rule. But in historical areas of the archipelago, impressive examples still stand.

12 May 2024 - 1:15PM

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Legacy of war in Asia

In the first half of the 20th century, Japan invaded and occupied large areas of Asia, and the scars of Japan's wartime atrocities in Asia are still obvious in China and the Korean peninsula as the region prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Although the nations have solid trade and tourism ties with their former colonial aggressor, diplomatic relations remain poor, soured by territorial disputes and rising nationalism.

last updated:

9 September, 2024