by David Pilling
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
Yasukuni shrine officials have agreed to delete a controversial exhibit and discuss further changes to the shrine’s military museum, criticised by many for glossing over Japan’s wartime history.
Officials from the shrine will meet a leading conservative historian today to discuss the alternations. These are likely to focus on exhibits that accuse the US of deliberately forcing Japan into the second world war, but are unlikely to address more contentious displays relating to the Japanese invasion of China and south-east Asia.
However, agreement to make changes would show that Yasukuni, which has become a flashpoint in Japan’s relations with Asia, is sensitive to outside pressure even though it is a private religious organisation.
The museum, which was renovated in 2002 to reflect what many consider a revisionist view of Japanesehistory, is adjacent to the shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead, including a handful of convicted war criminals.
Hisahiko Okazaki, a rightwing political commentator, said museum staff and an advisory historian from Japan’s self-defence force had agreed to meet him today to discuss potential changes.
The meeting follows acolumn in yesterday’s Sankei newspaper, in which Mr Okazaki called for the removal of an exhibit accusing Franklin D. Roosevelt, the former US president, of engineering a war with Japan to strengthen the US economy.
The exhibit says the plan to force Japan into war followed the failure of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Mr Okazaki said the shrine had agreed yesterday to delete that reference.
An official from Yasukuni shrine said there had been contact between the shrine and Mr Okazaki’s office but he declined to confirm whether there would be a meeting today. It confirmed that a review of the museum’s contents was under way.
Mr Okazaki, a strong supporter of prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni, said: “This is very significant. At least we can take out the thorn with the US. This kind of interpretation is unnecessary and inaccurate.”
Thomas Schieffer, US ambassador to Japan, has expressed dislike of the Yasukuni museum, which he says presents a skewed and disturbing view of Japan as wartime victim.
However, the ambassador has refrained from commenting on the controversial visits to the adjacent shrine of Junichiro Koizumi, prime minister, which have inflamed opinion in China and South Korea.
Mr Okazaki said there was no need to alter other parts of the exhibit relating to Asia, even though many historians have said these dodged issues such as the Nanking massacre and the use by the imperial army of South Korean sex slaves.
He defended some of the museum’s apparent glorification of war, saying curators had chosen merely to use contemporary material that naturally reflected the wartime government’s views.
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