A HANDFUL of Japanese Liberal Democrats, out of their heart-felt nostalgia for Japan's militarism and history of aggression, have made a despicable proposal: that foreign leaders pay homage at the notorious Yasukuni Shrine honouring key Japanese war criminals.
The Foreign Policy Committee and the parliamentary group for foreign affairs of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) decided unanimously on November 28 that foreign heads of state and leading statesmen should be required to visit the Tokyo-based shrine, where memorial tablets for 14 Class-A war criminals, including wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo, are housed.
The proposal is unbelievable. It is nothing but a reflection of the memories cherished by certain political circles in Japan of the country's swaggering militarism and rampant aggression that inflicted such unforgettable suffering on other nations.
"Japanese emperors and prime ministers on visits to foreign countries usually lay wreaths at monuments for the fallen in battle. Why do not the visiting foreign heads of state and leading statesmen pay homage at the Yasukuni Shrine?" asked Nakayama Taro, chief of the LDP Foreign Policy Committee and leading politician of his ilk.
It might be forgivable if the remark came from young Japanese knowing little about history; it was astonishing to hear this from a major Japanese politician.
Worse, as the proposal was part of a decision made by both authoritative organs of the ruling LDP, the remark cannot but arouse indignation once the initial shock of astonishment passes.
If a country which repeatedly launched wars of aggression requires foreign leaders to pay respects to a place memorializing war criminals as well as their misled cannon fodder, people may doubt whether any sense of right or wrong has survived in Japan.
What did the Japanese militarists do? Their fascist crimes are almost too numerous to record. What is the Yasukuni Shrine? It is a place that honours Japanese servicemen killed in wars of aggression and the 14 Class-A war criminals, whose hands were stained red with the blood of peoples of other Asian nations.
Evidently, the Japanese politicians espousing this degrading proposal have completely distorted their own history.
Since the end of the World War II, and particularly in recent years, popular opinion in Asian countries has persistently denounced the handful of Japanese trying to relight the dying embers of militarism.
But these few Japanese, deaf to the voice of justice, continue uttering their shameful words, blaspheming the justified actions and yearnings of Asian peoples to maintain regional and global security.
The disreputable performances of this handful of Japanese politicians have exposed a sad reality of Japan's political life: the confusing of right with wrong.
That's why insightful Japanese lament that Japan has hardly matured politically.
Japan's political circles cannot win the confidence of other nations if they allow the country's politics to be manipulated by demagogues like this handful of Liberal Democrats, whose daydream of political power must surely end as nothing but a dream. (Xinhua)