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Japanese politicians on their way to the shrine
Photo: Kenzaburo Fukuhara / AP
Around a hundred Japanese MPs have made a pilgrimage to the Yasukuni Shrine for Japan's war dead, which also honors convicted war criminals.
The action sparked violent protests in China.
Foreign Office spokesman Zhao Lijian accused Tokyo of willful provocation.
It was "no coincidence" that the Japanese politicians chose the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor 80 years ago for their pilgrimage, said the Chinese spokesman in Beijing.
"What are you up to?" He asked.
Such pilgrimages by Japanese politicians repeatedly trigger protests by China and South Korea, against which Japan's aggression in World War II was directed. The non-partisan parliamentary group in Tokyo has long campaigned for regular pilgrimages to the controversial shrine, three times a year: during the spring and autumn festivals in the Shinto shrine and on August 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. In the past two years, however, the group had waived the visits because of the corona crisis and the recent parliamentary election.
The then right-wing conservative head of government Shinzo Abe, who still has strong influence in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of his successor Fumio Kishida, visited the shrine in December 2013 and thus drew sharp criticism. Since then, Japan's prime ministers have left it with offerings, most recently Kishida in October. His Vice Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry, Kenichi Hosoda, and Vice Environment Minister Shunsuke Mutai, however, visited the shrine as members of the group.
After Japan's attack on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941, the US also entered World War II.
On August 6, 1945, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and three days later on the city of Nagasaki.
Japan finally surrendered on August 15, 1945.
A Japanese professor recently found out on the basis of US documents that the ashes of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was executed as a war criminal in 1948, and six others who were convicted with him had been scattered over the Pacific by a US military aircraft.
Tojo and the six others had been sentenced to death in a war tribunal and hanged in 1948.
The memorial in the Yasukuni Shrine also includes them.
as / dpa
