JAPAN: Prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has damaged Japan's already battered ties with its Asian neighbours by again worshipping at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine war memorial, just two weeks after a Japanese court ruled his annual trips there were illegal.
Mr Koizumi's fifth visit to the shrine since he came to power in 2001 immediately sparked protests yesterday in Beijing, Hong Kong and Seoul and led to the cancellation of several high-level meetings, including a planned weekend visit to China by the Japanese foreign minister.
The shrine, in the heart of Tokyo, honours 14 war criminals as well as 2.5 million soldiers and is viewed by much of the rest of Asia as a symbol of Japan's unrepentant militarism.
South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki Moon told the Japanese ambassador to Seoul that Mr Koizumi's insistence on visiting Yasukuni was the "greatest obstacle" to normal bilateral ties, before warning that president Roh Moo Hyun's scheduled trip to Tokyo in December may be scrapped.
Chinese ambassador to Japan, Wang Yi, said the latest visit "deeply hurt the feelings of people in countries that suffered during the second World War" and called it a "serious provocation," coming at the same time as the "glorious return" of the successful space mission Shenzhou VI.
Dozens of online bulletin boards in China alleged that Mr Koizumi deliberately timed his trip to steal Beijing's thunder, but the visit on the opening of the shrine's autumn season had been widely predicted in Japan, as had the likely reaction from Beijing and Seoul. China is likely to be further angered by an unwelcome intervention by former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui, who said he supports the Yasukuni visits.
Mr Koizumi, who was returned to power in last month's general election with a huge majority, seems to have calculated that he can ride out the diplomatic storm by insisting that the visits are private. "I went an individual citizen and not as prime minister," he told the press yesterday afternoon, adding that "mourning the war dead once every year is a good thing."
Osaka High Court ruled earlier this month, however, in one of several Yasukuni-related lawsuits, that the visits violate the separation of state and religion, a ruling the prime minister called "strange".
"Every country should be able to respect its war dead," he said at the time. Mr Koizumi has pledged to visit the shrine on the most explosive date of all - August 15th, when Japan commemorates the end of the Pacific War.