Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said late Tuesday that his pledge during the Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election in 2001 that he will visit Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15 is still valid, Kyodo News reported.
Since taking office in 2001, Koizumi has, in defiance of strong protests from China and other Asian nations, visited the shrine for five consecutive years, but never on Aug. 15, the day Japan surrendered in World War II in 1945. His last visit to the shrine was on Oct. 7, 2005.
While stepping down as prime minister in September, Koizumi's repeated visits to the notorious shrine have dragged his country to an awkward isolation in its Asian diplomacy.
The Yasukuni Shrine, regarded as a symbol of the Japanese militarism, honors more than 2 million Japanese war dead along with 14 Japan's wartime leaders charged as Class-A war criminals, who were responsible for the most atrocious crimes during Japan's war of aggression against its Asian neighbors.
(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2006)
