This is why it is quite simply unbelievable that Shinzo Abe should visit the shrine, especially now, when Japan frankly needs all the help it can get given its territorial dispute with China over the Diaoyu/Senakaku islands and its economic woes at home. As James Fallows notes, all the sympathy the Japanese may have gained as being seen as the victims of Chinese assertiveness are set at naught by this move:
" . . . there is almost nothing a Japanese prime minister could have done that would have inflamed tempers more along the Japan-China-South Korea-U.S. axis than to make this visit. And yet he went ahead. Last month, I said that China had taken a kind of anti-soft-power prize by needlessly creating its "ADIZ" and alarming many of its neighbors. It seems that I was wrong. The prize returns to Japan."Quite.
UPDATE: Jeremiah Jenne's latest post on the PRC response to the visit in on-point. Money quote:
the
CCP calling somebody out for being unable to accept historical
responsibility is like Chris Brown putting his arm around your shoulder
in a club and saying, “Dude, you really need to chill around your lady.”
- See more at: http://granitestudio.org/#sthash.pvWiH6Sb.dpuf
" . . . the CCP calling somebody out for being unable to accept historical responsibility is like Chris Brown putting his arm around your shoulder in a club and saying, "Dude, you really need to chill around your lady."
the CCP calling somebody out for being unable to accept historical responsibility is like Chris Brown putting his arm around your shoulder in a club and saying, “Dude, you really need to chill around your lady. - See more at: http://granitestudio.org/2013/12/27/historical-responsibility-yasukuni-and-mao-zedong/#sthash.H8cqp75n.dpufthe CCP calling somebody out for being unable to accept historical responsibility is like Chris Brown putting his arm around your shoulder in a club and saying, “Dude, you really need to chill around your lady.” - See more at: http://granitestudio.org/#sthash.pvWiH6Sb.dpufthe CCP calling somebody out for being unable to accept historical responsibility is like Chris Brown putting his arm around your shoulder in a club and saying, “Dude, you really need to chill around your lady.” - See more at: http://granitestudio.org/#sthash.pvWiH6Sb.dpufIt was an insensitive and counter-productive move on the part of the Japanese government.
But the CCP calling somebody out for being unable to accept historical responsibility is like Chris Brown putting his arm around your shoulder in a club and saying, “Dude, you really need to chill around your lady.”
- See more at: http://granitestudio.org/#sthash.pvWiH6Sb.dpufIt was an insensitive and counter-productive move on the part of the Japanese government.
But the CCP calling somebody out for being unable to accept historical responsibility is like Chris Brown putting his arm around your shoulder in a club and saying, “Dude, you really need to chill around your lady.”
- See more at: http://granitestudio.org/#sthash.pvWiH6Sb.dpuf