Three Cabinet ministers went to war-related Yasukuni Shrine on Thursday to mark the 68th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe instead made a ritual offering in an apparent effort to avoid more diplomatic friction with China and South Korea.
Yoshitaka Shindo, minister of internal affairs, Keiji Furuya, chairman of the National Public Security Commission, and Tomomi Inada, minister in charge of administrative reform, went to the Tokyo shrine. All three are known as right-leaning politicians.
A proxy for Abe visited the Shinto shrine, which honors the nation's war dead as well as convicted war criminals, to offer "tamagushi-ryo" money to pay for a sacred tree branch and for a Shinto priest to offer a prayer at the shrine.