“To our regret, during Vice-Premier Wu Yi’s stay in Japan, Japanese leaders repeatedly made remarks on visiting the Yasukuni shrine that go against the efforts to improve Sino-Japanese relations,” seethed Kong Quan, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, explaining Vice-Premier Wu Yi’s abrupt departure from Japan during her good will visit, which was intended to warm the frosty Sino-Japanese relationship.  

The shrine in question is Yasukuni Shrine, which is a perennial if symbolic thorn in Sino-Japanese relations. Founded in 1869, Yasukuni is dedicated to the souls of the approximately 2.5 million Japanese war dead, and the souls of innocent children and war criminals alike are venerated in the shrine. Hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to Yasukuni every year, and the shrine functions as a symbol of both respectful patriotism and militaristic nationalism. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi is a frequent visitor, and he insists that he makes his visits in his capacity as a private citizen; his Chinese counterparts view his visits as persistent affronts to China and a tacit approval of Japan’s history of military aggression against its East Asian neighbors.  

Given the recent publication of a new Japanese history textbook that glosses over Japan’s wartime atrocities that occurred in the 1930s and 1940s — one of the most notable editorial revisions to Japan’s wartime history includes referring to the Nanjing Massacre, during which anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were killed by Japanese troops between December of 1937 and March of 1938, as an “incident,” and neglecting to mention any numbers of civilians murdered during that massacre — and the ensuing violent protests that erupted in China, the nasty game of brinksmanship is consistently escalating.  

Mimi Hanaoka