Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in his first news conference of the year, argued that Yasukuni is not a diplomatic issue, rebutting claims that Japan is being isolated in Asia because of his repeated visits to the war-related Shinto shrine.
Naturally, freedom of speech in Japan allows for a variety of opinions on the issue, but the claim that Japan is being isolated just because of the absence of top-level dialogue with China fails to paint the broader picture of Japan's diplomacy in the region.
In December alone, the prime minister took part in the inaugural East Asia Summit, the ASEAN-plus-three conference and the Japan-ASEAN summit, expressing Japan's position to his counterparts. The joint statement issued at the Japan-ASEAN summit urged the parties to deepen and expand their strategic partnership and reaffirmed that the two would cooperate on the basis of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, international laws, and other universal values and global rules.