Observing silence: People bowing their heads during a moment of silence at noon during a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, to mark the 79th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. — AFP
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed to step up his country’s effort to defend a rules-based international order in a peace pledge made on the 79th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II.
“We will never again repeat the tragedy of war and will stick to the country’s post-war pacifist resolve,” he said at a solemn ceremony at the Budokan hall.
“In the world where tragic battles have persisted, Japan will continue its effort to maintain and strengthen the rules-based, free and open international order and endeavour to resolve difficult global issues,” Kishida said.Kishida noted the more than three million Japanese killed, destruction and lives lost from bloody ground battles on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, fire-bombings across Japan and the atomic attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
He did not mention or apologise for Japanese aggression across Asia or the millions of lives lost there.
The omission follows a precedent set by then-prime minister Shinzo Abe in his speech 2013, a move critics call a whitewashing of Japan’s wartime atrocities.
Earlier yesterday, three of Kishida’s ministers, including Defence Minister Minoru Kihara, prayed at the Yasukuni Shrine – seen by Asian neighbours as a symbol of militarism.
The controversial shrine honours convicted war criminals among about 2.5 million war dead. Victims of Japanese aggression, especially China and the Koreas, see visits to the shrine as a lack of remorse, and visits by defence officials are considered especially controversial.
Kihara is the first serving defence chief to pray at the shrine on the anniversary since then-defence minister Nobuo Kishi’s 2021 visit. — AP
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