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Koizumi to visit shrine on August 15

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-08-15 06:42

Backgrounder: Koizumi's six visits to war criminals-honoring shrine

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Tuesday made the sixth visit to the Yasukuni Shrine which honors Japan's notorious World War II war criminals, ignoring criticism from both home and abroad.

The outgoing prime minister has made visits to the shrine for six consecutive years since taking office in 2001.

Koizumi promised to visit the shrine as prime minister during his campaign for ruling party president in 2001. The pledge was seen as important to his election victory as it secured the votes of rightwingers.

On August 13, 2001, Koizumi made his first visit to the shrine as prime minister. The visit sparkled strong protests from neighboring countries, but Koizumi continued his visits in the following years.

Koizumi is to end his term as prime minister in September. His repeated visits to the notorious shrine have thrown his country into an awkward isolation in its Asian diplomacy.

The visits also drew criticism from the Japanese public and news media. According to a recent public opinion poll conducted by Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, 49 percent of the respondents are opposed to Koizumi's shrine visit as compared with 43 percent in favor.

Even in the United States, Koizumi's shrine visits have come under fire.

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations Chairman Henry J. Hyde had in April sent a letter to the speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, demanding Koizumi not be invited for a speech at Congress during his June visit to the United States, unless Tokyo pledged the Japanese leader would not pay any Shrine visit after returning home.

Established in 1869 and funded by the government until 1945, the Yasukuni Shrine honors some 2 million Japanese war dead, including 14 wartime leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal as class-A war criminals.

The war criminals honored at the shrine were responsible for the most atrocious crimes during Japan's war of aggression against its Asian neighbors.