Japan's defence minister shuns war shrine

TOKYO, Dec 19: Japan's outspoken defence minister, Fumio Kyuma, said he would avoid paying his respects at Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine as long as World War Two prime minister Hideki Tojo was honoured there.

Yasukuni is seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past military aggression, partly because it honours wartime leaders later condemned by an Allied tribunal as war criminals.

''It is difficult for me to bow my head there when Tojo, the man primarily responsible for the last war, is enshrined there,'' Kyuma told Reuters in an interview at the huge Defence Agency compound in central Tokyo yesterday.

Tojo served as prime minister for much of the war and was later sentenced to death by the Allied tribunal.

Kyuma, 66, called on the Shinto religious body that runs the shrine to remove Tojo's name from the lists of those honoured at the shrine, although shrine authorities have said doing so is impossible. No remains are buried at the shrine.

''I think the easiest way would be for the religious group to separate Hideki Tojo out,'' Kyuma said in his first interview since last week's enactment of a law upgrading the defence agency to a full-fledged ministry, a mostly symbolic move that reflects Tokyo's desire to play a bigger global security role.

Japan's relations with neighbouring China deteriorated to their coldest state in decades over former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual pilgrimages to Yasukuni, but ties have improved since his successor, Shinzo Abe, took over in September.

Abe visited the shrine privately earlier this year, Japanese media reported, but has declined to say whether he would visit as prime minister -- an ambiguous stance that has enabled him to start mending ties with China.

NORTH KOREA THREAT While some analysts have pointed to China as a long-term danger to Japan, Kyuma singled out North Korea as the biggest threat facing the country and compared the reclusive communist state to Japan in the run-up to World War Two. ''One wonders whether deterrence will really work on North Korea, which makes us uneasy,'' he said.

''From the viewpoint of other countries, it is like pre-war Japan. It is seen as a threat and we don't know what it is going to do next,'' Kyuma said, as six-party talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programme resumed in Beijing.

Japan invaded and occupied much of Asia before and during World War Two, leading neighbouring countries to look with suspicion at any political developments that suggest a drift away from the post-war pacifist constitution.

North Korea's October test of an atomic device, months after it fired a barrage of missiles, prompted some Japanese politicians to suggest Tokyo should at least discuss acquiring its own nuclear weapons.

Kyuma, however, said Japan should retain its pacifist constitution and non-nuclear status.

''We should maintain Japanese pacifism,'' said Kyuma, who was born in the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, near the city of the same name where the United States dropped the second of two nuclear bombs in August 1945.

The white-haired Kyuma sparked a media fuss this month by saying he believed Japan's government had not officially supported the U S-led war in Iraq.

He later withdrew this comment, but said that he personally had doubts about whether there had been a need for Japan's biggest ally to go to war.

Kyuma stressed yesterday the importance of Japan's alliance with the United States and of the U S troop presence in the country, where residents often complain about noise, pollution, crime and accidents associated with U S bases.

He said he planned to visit U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates early next year and check on the status of plans initiated by his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, to reorganise U S troops based in Japan as part of a global restructuring.

The plans include reducing the number of U S troops from the current 50,000. ''I expect him to say yes,'' Kyuma said.

Reuters