The recent jeering of Japanese by Chinese soccer fans in the Asian Cup soccer tournament in China has not prompted Japan to speed up talks over a proposed secular war memorial, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Thursday.
"We don't see it as an opportunity to do that. We would rather wait and hear the public's opinion," Hosoda told a news conference when asked whether Tokyo would pursue such a memorial to help soothe anti-Japanese sentiment in China.
Building a national secular memorial for the war dead was proposed in December 2002 by a government advisory panel as a means to help settle the controversy over top government officials visiting Yasukuni Shrine, which is dedicated to Japan's war dead and also enshrines Class-A war criminals.