CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- Without entering the notorious, unending controversy surrounding Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, I would like to examine peripheral issues arising from it and to question the inability of some campaigners to respect the views of others. While I fully understand the fury of many observers over the pattern of visits to the memorial for Japan's war dead, especially by the current Japanese prime minister, I fail to grasp the benefits of some of the proposed corrective medicine.
A case in point is the Jan. 11 letter to The Japan Times' Readers in Council, "Diplomats too easy on Koizumi." The essence of the text was that diplomats are too easy on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, that his visits would "never occur" if Western diplomats in Tokyo properly briefed their respective governments about the real meaning of this shrine and that these officers should be ashamed for "sipping champagne" while ignoring Koizumi's actions.
I presume the writer of the letter is not alone in this reasoning. Without trying to justify the poor diplomats in "esprit de corps" solidarity, I am tempted to scrutinize the polemics in the light of pure common sense: