By EDWARD WONGPublished: April 23, 2009
BEIJING — The Chinese government denounced Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso on Thursday for making an offering earlier this week to a Japanese war shrine in Tokyo that has been a source of ongoing conflict between Chinese and Japanese leaders.
“China has already used diplomatic channels to express its strong concern and dissatisfaction, and stressed the high sensitivity of historical issues,” Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a statement read on Chinese state television news.
“Any erroneous actions by Japan will have grave negative consequences for bilateral relations, and we demand that the Japanese side exercise caution in its words and actions and appropriately deal with this,” she added.
The heightened tensions come as Mr. Aso prepares to travel to China next week for a two-day meeting with top leaders here. Mr. Aso and Chinese leaders are expected to discuss responses to the recent missile test by North Korea.
On Tuesday, Mr. Aso made an offering of a potted tree worth about $500 to commemorate a spring festival at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese soldiers who have died during wars in the last 150 years. The honored soldiers include 14 “Class A” war criminals convicted in trials established under the command of American Gen. Douglas MacArthur after World War II. On Wednesday, dozens of Japanese lawmakers visited the shrine. Mr. Aso did not visit the shrine himself.
The shrine has a history of fanning outrage among the Chinese, who are taught as students the history of Japanese atrocities in China during World War II. In 2005, Chinese leaders engaged in diplomatic sniping with Japan over visits to the shrine by Junichiro Koizumi, then the prime minister of Japan. The next year, a new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, did not visit the shrine;some analysts in China say he might have reached a secret agreement with Chinese leaders in order to improve relations.
Mr. Abe’s successor, Yasuo Fukuda, was openly pro-China and also never visited the shrine. Mr. Aso, who took office in September 2008, has not stated publicly his views on shrine visits.
South Korea has also criticized Mr. Aso for making the tree offering.
In China, a big-budget movie released nationwide on Wednesday has again galvanized the emotions of Chinese over the Japanese invasion and occupation of China during World War II. The movie, “City of Life and Death,” is set during the massacre of Nanjing in 1937, in which Japanese soldiers killed about 300,000 people, according to official Chinese estimates. Many Chinese demand that Japan apologize for the massacre, but Japan has yet to do so.
Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that Lu Chuan, the director, said the movie was much harder to make than he first thought because he “had underestimated the capacity and sensitivity of that part of history.”
Zhang Jing contributed research.
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