CNN online poll: 98% think it is appropriate for Shinzo Abe to visit Yasukuni Shrine

Gerry Bevers over at Occidentalism has scooped this amazing story: The respondents to a CNN online poll asking “Now that Shinzo Abe has become Japan’s prime minister, do you think it is appropriate for him to visit the Yasukuni Shrine?” have overwhelmingly voted in favor of Abe’s visits. The poll has been up since Monday, and at this time, 98% of the 202759 voters have said “Yes”.

While I personally don’t see a problem with Abe visiting the Shrine, it’s very surprising to me that such an huge percentage of CNN.com poll-takers would have such an opinion about the Yasukuni shrine. The U.S. media often potrays Yasukuni in a very negative light, focusing on the war criminals and often unquestionably agreeing with people who say the visits glorify Japan’s militaristic past. Perhaps many of the voters didn’t know what Yasukuni shrine was and simply voted “yes”? Or maybe the only people who would bother reading about Japanese news on CNN’s website are the kind of folks who follow the Yasukuni issue and support visits by PM’s? There’s also the chance that a Japanese website could have tipped off netizens to the poll’s existence and brought thousands of pro-Yasukuni votes. Or maybe the average American reader of CNN.com actually sees nothing inappropriate about an Abe visit to Yasukuni?

Check out the poll and see the results while they last. Korean online news sites broke news of the poll today, so we can look forward to thousands of Korean netizens flooding the poll with “no” votes in the coming hours (when Gerry posted about the poll a few hours ago, 99% of 198,000 votes said “yes”).

Update: One hour after I posted this, about 800 new “no” votes have appeared vs. about 200 new “yes” votes. Pretty good, but at such a rate it will take quite some time for the Korean netizens to drive up the “no” percentage to something ‘respectable’.