October 28, 2026

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira and JCP Yamazoe Taku (Senate) on October 27 attended a rally held in Tokyo by Koreans residing in Japan.

The rally was organized by Korean bereaved families and supporters living in Japan with relatives who have been posthumously enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine against their will.

Two days earlier, the bereaved families filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court against the Japanese government and the shrine, demanding the removal of their relatives, who died in battle during the Asia-Pacific War, from the enshrinement as well as the return of their remains.

The legal struggle to have the revocation of the enshrinement of Korean soldiers at the controversial shrine annulled has been ongoing for more than 20 years, but this is the first time that families of Koreans residing in Japan have filed such a lawsuit.

At the rally, a third-generation Korean woman in her 30s, who is one of the plaintiffs, stated that her two great-uncles had been forcibly conscripted into the war and had died on the battlefield.

She said that in 1959, Japan enshrined Korean soldiers at the shrine alongside Japanese soldiers (the perpetrators) without the consent of the bereaved families. She hopes that her relatives’ remains will be returned. “The Empire of Japan took our family members away for the sake of its war of aggression. After its defeat, Japan excluded them from all postwar compensation simply because they were Korean,” she added.

Past related article:
> South Koreans sue Yasukuni over enshrinement [February 27, 2007]