"And why shouldn't we?"
With a thumping Upper House election victory behind them, this question is likely on the minds of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his political allies as they contemplate a visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15, the day Japan commemorates the end of World War II.
If they do visit the shrine, they will probably insist that they are doing what politicians do in every other country with military conflicts in its past — proudly commemorating their war dead, with an utterance seemingly indifferent to the rights and wrongs of that past: "They sacrificed their precious lives for their country."