Nearly half of Japan’s citizens oppose Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s stance on China and his visits to a controversial war shrine, according to a survey released yesterday by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
The survey was issued as China again condemned Japan for its position on its wartime aggression.
Some 48 percent of those who responded to the newspaper’s telephone survey said they do not agree with the premier’s “political attitude” toward China, while 35 percent said they support Koizumi on the issue and 17 percent were undecided, the daily said.
Forty-nine percent of the survey respondents said Koizumi should stop visiting the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead including 14 Class-A war criminals responsible for Japan’s aggression against its Asian neighbors. Thirty-nine percent said he should continue his visits.
The trips by Japanese leaders to the Tokyo-based shrine have been strongly denounced by many Asian countries, including China and South Korea. Koizumi has paid four visits to the shrine since he took office in 2001, the latest on New Year’s Day 2004.
Also yesterday, China expressed strong condemnation against Japanese leaders who are “not correctly treating history,” according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan.
“Japanese politicians’ continual expression of sympathy for class-A war criminals makes people see clearly the political fact that Japanese leaders cannot correctly face the history of aggression,” he said.
Masahiro Morioka, the Japanese parliamentary secretary for health, labor and welfare published an article recently on his personal Website in which he stated that “Class-A war criminals are no longer criminals.”
Last week, another Japanese politician, Kyuma Fumio, chairman of the Policy Research Council of Liberal Democratic Party, also reportedly defended Class-A war criminals.
Kong said that the whole world is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II this year. Nevertheless,
politicians who continue to absolve WWII war criminals of guilt are still popular in Japan.
On the energy resources front, Kong said yesterday that China and Japan agreed to resolve their East China Sea dispute through dialogue following a new round of talks in Beijing.