August 16, 2016
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2016 August 10 - 16 [POLITICS]
Defense Minister Inada reluctantly cancels her visit to Yasukuni due to ‘official overseas trip’ |
The government on August 12 announced that Inada will go abroad for four days from August 13 to visit a Self-Defense Forces’ base in Djibouti which was set up to counter piracy in the waters off Somalia in East Africa.
At a press conference on the same day, pro-Yasukuni Inada in a tearful voice admitted that the official trip made it impossible for her to visit Yasukuni on August 15.
Commenting on the government announcement, a Liberal Democratic Party official said, “Inada’s trip to Djibouti was unilaterally decided on by the Cabinet Office with the aim of preventing her visit to Yasukuni on the very day of commemorating the end of WWII.” An LDP lawmaker also said that the government needed to have Inada give up visiting Yasukuni because her appointment as Defense Minister has drawn unexpectedly fierce criticism from the United States in addition to objections from China and South Korea.
Inada is a key member of a parliamentary group in support of Japan’s largest rightist group, Nippon Kaigi. She has also been advocating the need to break away from the historical viewpoint rooted in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. It is a matter of principle for her to visit the war-glorifying Yasukuni Shrine on August 15. At a press conference held after her assignment as Defense Minister on August 3, she stopped short of denying the possibility of making the controversial visit this year.
The Abe Cabinet’s tactics to avoid coping with Inada’s Yasukuni visit indicated that its insistence on the war-justifying Yasukuni view of history runs counter to the accepted historical perspective of the world.
Past related articles:
> All new Abe Cabinet ministers from LDP are members of ‘Yasukuni’ faction [August 5, 2016]
> Far-rightist Inada assumes office as Defense Minister [August 4, 2016]
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