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’.
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weird…
i’m assuming most of cnn readers are americans, or at least native english speakers.
i guess people don’t care that the war criminals in yasukuni are for the most part criminals because of war atrocities they commited on their foes. that foe happens to include americans. you know, beheading of american GI prisoners, etc.
how soon some people forget their history.
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yasukuni shrine isn’t exactly part of our history lessons so people haven’t forgot about it they’ve just never heard of it. most americans probably don’t know it exists, much less know it includes war criminals.
if they hear about the controversy they might just hear about how it pisses off china and korea and assume it’s something between them
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Yeah, the short story of the Yasukuni shrine is that it’s Asia’s equivalent of of Chancellor Merkel going to Hitler’s Bunker and leaving flowers.
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If one was to replace the word “short” with “exaggerated,” that comment would be fairly accurate.
I can’t see the poll for some reason when I click the link. Can we get another update?
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Ha! I’m retarded and should check the dates on these posts.
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The poll was obviously manipulated(probably the reason why CNN took it down). This isnt the first time that a CNN poll was hijacked by Japanese net users.
“In 2001, 2ch users voted en-masse for Japanese TV performer Masashi Tashiro as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. This act was soon dubbed the “Tashiro Festival” (Tashiro Matsuri, 田代祭) by 2ch users. Tashiro was infamous in the Japanese media for committing several crimes, including peeping up a woman’s skirt using a camcorder, using stimulants twice, peeping in a male bath and causing a car accident. 2ch programmers developed many scripts such as “Tashiro Cannon” (Tashiro-hō, 田代砲), “Mega particle Tashiro Cannon” (Mega-ryūshi Tashiro-hō, メガ粒子田代砲), “25 repeated blows Tashiro Cannon” (Nijyū-go renda Tashiro-hō, 25連打田代砲) “Super Tashiro Cannon” (Chō Tashiro-hō, 超田代砲) to be able to vote repeatedly. “Super Tashiro cannon” was so powerful that it crashed Time’s server. Due to the votes of 2ch users, he got to the No. 1 position temporarily on December 21, 2001. However, Time’s staff realized that something was unusual, and Tashiro was removed as a candidate.[5]“- wiki
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