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Yasukuni Shrine 靖国神社, Yasukuni Jinja, a Shinto shrine in Tokyo dedicated to the spirits of Japanese soldiers and others who died fighting on behalf of the Emperor of Japan. As of 2004, its Book of Souls listed the names of 2,466,532 men and women, including 27,863 Taiwanese and 21,181 Koreans, whose lives were lost in the service of Imperial Japan. Since 1979, 12 convicted and 2 suspected Class A war criminals and 1,068 people convicted of war crimes, by the post World War II War Crimes Court, were enshrined at Yasukuni by the rightist politicians of the (so called) Liberal Democratic Party. To add fuel to the fire, visits by several Japanese prime ministers to the shrine since 1975 have caused concerns amoung Japan's neighbors. For Asian countries which suffered most under past Japanese imperialism, the shrine is a symbol of Japanese militarism and ultra-nationalism, and many take the prime ministers' visits as a sign that Japan has not faced up to the horrors they perpetrated in China and other Asian nations. On the Japanese side there are few signs of official remorse.

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Japan 日本

Tokyo 東京