62 Diet Members Visit Yasukuni

The Yasukuni Shrine held its spring festival today, and 62 diet members came to visit:

The 62 politicians from the “Diet members association for visiting Yasukuni Shrine together,” headed by former farm minister Yoshinobu Shimamura, consisted of 54 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) members, two Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) members, one person from the People’s New Party, one person from New Party Daichi, and four independent politicians.

No Cabinet ministers took part in the visit but participants from the government included Eriko Yamatani, an aide to the prime minister; Yoshio Nakagawa, a senior vice-minister of the Cabinet Office; deputy farm minister Masahiro Imamura; and five parliamentary secretaries.

In a news conference after the visit to the shrine, Shimamura commented on the problem of cinemas canceling screenings of the controversial documentary “Yasukuni,” which is set at the shrine, saying, “We’re not thinking of doing anything in particular about it.”

He also commented on Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s statement that he will not visit the shrine, saying, “People have various thoughts and they act on those. One shouldn’t say it is good or bad.”

In the video clip embedded in this post, Shimamura states he visited the shrine to pray for those Japanese who died for fighting for their country.

Update: Jun Okumura has pointed out that the AP version of this article, which has appeared on sites such as CNN.com under the the headline “Japanese officials visit war shrine,” ignores the fact that not a single cabinet minister took part in the visit. Previous annual visits to the shrine have often included cabinet ministers, but their absence this year suggests that Fukuda must of made sure that no one in his cabinet participated in this visit.