LONDON -- He didn't clap his hands, he did not wear a frock coat and he did not sign the visitors' book as "prime minister." So what?
Until recently I would have described Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi as a clown if he thought that any of this would make difference to the critics -- domestic and foreign -- of his visits to Yasukuni Shrine. He is the prime minister of Japan, and it was as such he went to and worshipped at the shrine where war criminals are honored. Period.
Until the last election, my Japanese friends used to tell me that going to the shrine was the price Koizumi had to pay to get the support of the rightwing factions in the Liberal Democratic Party to allow him to survive as prime minister. Now that argument does not hold -- he confronted the right wing in the recent general election and won. He won a personal majority, which means he is beholden to no one. And he has announced his retirement from the prime minister's job late next year, so he no longer needs to cultivate any factions to secure his future.