Koizumi urged to stop visiting Yasukuni Shrine (Xinhua) Updated: 2005-08-15 15:14
Nearly 200 people gathered on Monday in Tokyo at a conference sponsored by a
group of bereaved World War II families, demanding Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi stop visiting the war-related Yasukuni Shrine.
They urged the Japanese prime minister to consider the feelings of other
Asian countries that suffered from Japan's wartime aggression. The notorious
shrine in Tokyo honors 14 Class-A war criminals responsible for Japan's
aggression war against its neighboring countries.
Koizumi indicated Friday he would not visit the Yasukuni Shrineon around
the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. Kyodo News said Koizumi apparently
hopes not to provoke a further deterioration in relations with Japan's
neighbors.
Koizumi made his fourth visit to the shrine on Jan. 1 last year. He has
visited Yasukuni every year since taking office in April 2001.
Six decades after Japan's surrender in WWII, peace-loving people across Japan
called for world peace, with war victims' relatives and civic groups taking to
the streets or holding meetings to protect Japan's pacifist postwar
Constitution.
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