Beijing
China this week canceled a planned visit by Japan’s foreign minister, because of outrage over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s honoring of war criminals. Koizumi this week visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which pays homage to 14 convicted war criminals, along with other war dead. Koizumi has visited the shrine numerous times, but he hinted last summer that he would no longer do so. The shrine has a museum extolling the glories of Japan’s imperial past, which included the brutal conquest of much of China in the 1930s. Koizumi’s aides said that the prime minister visited this time as a private citizen, not as an official—a distinction lost on China. “The Chinese government and people express their strong indignation,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. “Koizumi should bear all the responsibility for his wrongdoings and for the serious political consequences.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Citizenship: Trump order blocked againFeature After the Supreme Court restricted nationwide injunctions, a federal judge turned to a class action suit to block Trump's order to end birthright citizenship
-
Loyalty tests: The purge at the FBIFeature Kash Patel is conducting polygraph tests on FBI agents to weed out anyone speaking badly about him
-
The all-seeing tech giantFeature Palantir's data-mining tools are used by spies and the military. Are they now being turned on Americans?
