OXFORD, ENGLAND ¨C Around this time of year, speculation in Asia always runs high as to whether Japan¡¯s prime minister or other prominent politicians will visit Yasukuni Shrine.
The shrine, which honors more than a thousand indicted war criminals who took part in Japan¡¯s disastrous war in Asia, remains a place of fascination for Japanese rightists, who persist in claiming that Japan¡¯s war in Asia was a war of liberation against Western imperialism.
This claim sounds particularly hollow in China and South Korea, which suffered horrifically from Imperial Japan¡¯s invasion and occupation of much of Asia.
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