The annual official visits to Yasukuni Shrine by Japanese government dignitaries in recent years have raised controversy and negatively affected Sino-Japanese relations. This summer was no exception, as Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid homage at the shrine on Aug. 13, two days before his previously pledged date of Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. Whether he did so as a private citizen or in his official capacity remains ambiguous.
In 1985, Yasuhiro Nakasone visited the shrine on Aug. 15 in his official capacity as prime minister, causing outrage among Asian neighbors. Amid a wave of official and civilian protests in China, I remember that students at Beijing University took to the streets, chanting the slogan "Vigilance against the revival of Japanese militarism." In the following years, succeeding Japanese prime ministers did not visit the shrine in an official capacity, although former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto made a visit on his birthday in 1996.
Yasukuni Shrine enshrines "the divine spirits" of some 2.5 million Japanese war dead, many of whom were involved in the invasion of China and are believed to have committed atrocities. The memorial tablets of 14 convicted Class-A war criminals, including wartime Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, were embraced in 1978. Many people here and abroad claimed that this contradicted the common sense of international law, touching off acrimonious debate in the international community.