Yasukuni Shrine on home page argues that Tojo Hideki and others are "not war
criminals" but "martyrs"

"I am surprised to know that Yasukuni Shrine has begun public relations
to assert that Class-A war criminals are not war criminals and that the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East was illegitimate," Tetsuzo
Fuwa, Japanese Communist Party Central Committee chair, said during a
campaign speech in Tokyo.

Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine which enshrines war dead, including
Tojo Hideki (who launched the Pacific War) and other Class-A war criminals.
Until the end of WWII, it served as a military-religious institution to
drive Japanese people on to the war of aggression.


In disregard of concerns expressed by neighboring countries, Prime
Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro has publicly expressed his willingness to visit
Yasukuni on the 56th anniversary of the end of the WW II on August 15.


The Yasukuni Shrine Office on its home page argues that Tojo Hideki and
other so-called Class-A war criminals are not "criminals."


It goes so far as to say that the International Military Tribunal for the
Far East was an illegal court ignoring international law and that it forced
Japan, the loser in the war, to call them war criminals. It insists that
those people are the "martyrs" of the Showa era, similar to other war dead.


The posted statement was taken from a pamphlet published by the "Shinto
Political League," a political organization founded in 1969 calling for
"Japan's national politics to be carried out based on the Shinto spirit."
The "League" has an organization of parliamentarian supporters. Prime
Minister Koizumi, until the day before he became prime minister, was vice
president of this organization.


Fuwa said, "Prime Minister Koizumi's explanation that his visit is for
his paying respects to the dead is an excuse. He is clearly committed to
approving Japan's war of aggression. A politician without serious reflection
on the war of aggression is not qualified to be government leader in Japan
in the present-day world." (end)