I believe it would be good for Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to visit Yasukuni Shrine during the annual autumn festival. I am very well aware that the prime minister himself is extremely cautious about the visit. But, objectively speaking, the time is getting ripe to resolve the Yasukuni problem.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's strategy of "not saying whether he would go (to Yasukuni) or would not go" was successful in its own way. Because Abe did not depart from the principled argument that visiting Yasukuni Shrine was inherently "correct," such commentators as Shi Ping thought that the Chinese had no choice but to restrain their behavior that would provoke Japan since the Chinese did not know when the prime minister would make a visit.
This strategy of Abe may explain why China did not become worked up over such things as the elevation of the Defense Agency to a ministry and the referendum law on constitutional revisions by resorting to a rhetorical statement that there is resurgence of militarism in Japan.