Abe Should End the War Over Yasukuni Shrine

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Every year around this time, in therun-up to the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan’s surrender in 1945,feverish speculation ensues about whether Japan’s toppoliticians will visit the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo.Chinese and South Koreans -- not to mention many Japanese --abhor such visits because the shrine honors the souls of 14Class A war criminals. Visitors say they have every right tohonor the 2.5 million other Japanese war dead celebrated atYasukuni; they compare the shrine to the U.S. war cemetery atArlington.

This is dangerous nonsense. Yasukuni is ground zero for anunrepentant view of Japan’s wartime aggression. During World WarII, the shrine served as the “command headquarters” of StateShinto, a religion that deified the emperor and mobilizedJapanese subjects to fight a holy war at his behest. The privatefoundation that runs Yasukuni only added the 14 mostcontroversial “souls” -- surreptitiously -- in 1978.