Japan PM Skips Yasukuni but Defense Chief Visits on WWII Anniversary

Japan marked the 81st anniversary of its World War II surrender on August 15 with a familiar ritual of diplomatic friction, as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stayed away from Yasukuni Shrine but sent a formal offering — while Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and four other cabinet members visited in person, drawing immediate condemnation from China and South Korea.

Takaichi, who regularly visited Yasukuni before becoming prime minister in October 2025, did not enter the shrine grounds. Instead, she sent a traditional "tamagushi" ritual offering, as several of her predecessors have done. She also stepped out of her vehicle near the shrine and bowed in its direction from a distance — a gesture Japanese media described as a ritualized act of remote worship.

Takaichi's restrained approach was offset by the scale of participation from within her own government. Four cabinet ministers visited the shrine, along with three senior Liberal Democratic Party executives — including Secretary General Shunichi Suzuki, General Council Chair Haruko Arimura, and election strategy chief Yasutoshi Nishimura. On August 16, LDP senior executive Takayuki Kobayashi also paid his respects, saying he visited in a personal capacity because his grandfather had died in the war.

Koizumi's visit was his first to Yasukuni as defense minister. He told reporters he had offered condolences to those who "sacrificed their precious lives for the nation" and reaffirmed Japan's commitment to its postwar path as a peaceful country. His father, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, was the last sitting premier to visit the shrine on the August 15 anniversary, having done so in 2006. The most recent prime ministerial visit on any date was by Shinzo Abe — Takaichi's political mentor — in December 2013, which prompted sharp rebukes from Beijing and Seoul and a rare expression of disappointment from Washington.

Beijing did not limit its response to the ministerial visits. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of National Defense, and the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo all formally objected. "We urge the Japanese side to do serious soul-searching on its history of aggression, make a clean break with militarism, and earn trust from its Asian neighbors and the rest of the world with concrete actions," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement.

South Korea's response was equally pointed. Seoul's defense ministry summoned Japan's defense attaché to lodge a formal protest specifically over Koizumi's visit. The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed "deep regret" over what it called "anachronistic" actions by Japanese officials and urged Tokyo to demonstrate "humble reflection and sincere remorse" through concrete steps, not just words.

Takaichi's Memorial Speech Raises Questions About Japan's Postwar Stance

The shrine controversy unfolded alongside a separate debate about the language — and the silences — in Takaichi's address at Japan's national war memorial ceremony. Her predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, had vowed to keep Japan's "remorse" over the war at the forefront and pledged to "renounce war." Takaichi expressed a commitment to peace without using either phrase, and the omission did not go unnoticed. Japanese media reported that before Abe's second term began in December 2012, prime ministers had consistently mentioned the nation's aggression and expressed remorse at the ceremony.

Her remarks on other sensitive security questions have been similarly calibrated. At commemorations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki earlier this month, she affirmed Japan's Three Non-Nuclear Principles as current policy while stopping short of committing her government to preserving them in the future — a formulation critics said appeared designed to leave space for potential revisions to national security documents by year's end.

Takaichi also invoked the "Indo-Pacific" in her memorial address, declaring that Japan could become "a shining beacon in the Indo-Pacific that others could rely on." For some observers, the inclusion of the geopolitical phrase in what is traditionally a solemn reflection on war dead signaled the extent to which foreign-policy competition with China now shapes even the most historically freighted moments in Japanese public life.

Yasukuni Shrine was established in 1869 under Emperor Meiji to honor those who died fighting for Japan. Today it enshrines approximately 2.5 million war dead. The political sensitivity surrounding it sharpened dramatically in 1978, when 14 convicted Class-A war criminals — civilian and military leaders found guilty by Allied tribunals after Japan's defeat — were enshrined alongside the other war dead.

For China and South Korea, official visits to Yasukuni carry symbolic weight that goes beyond any individual politician's stated intentions. During the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945, an estimated 15 to 20 million Chinese were killed. Imperial Japan colonized the Korean peninsula from 1910 until 1945, subjecting its population to forced labor and the systematic sexual enslavement of women conscripted as so-called "comfort women." Both governments argue that so long as war criminals remain enshrined at Yasukuni, Japanese officials who visit — regardless of how they frame the gesture — are signaling an insufficient reckoning with that history.

For Japan's neighbors, this year's August 15 made that argument harder to dismiss: the prime minister stayed away, but the government she leads showed up in force.

Sources:

• Japan PM Sanae Takaichi skips Yasukuni Shrine on WWII surrender anniversary
• Yasukuni visits serve as 'mirror' laying bare Japan's neo-militarism 
• What is Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, linked to Japan's wartime atrocities? 
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