Ishiba wont visit Yasukuni Shrine for autumn rite, source says

Japan's new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will not visit Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, seen by its neighbors as a symbol of the country's past militarism, during the fall festival next week, a source close to him said Friday.

Among the key members of Ishiba's cabinet launched on Oct 1, Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said he has no plan to visit the shrine during the three-day festival from next Thursday. Others, including Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, have not clarified their stance.

When asked whether Ishiba would make an in-person visit or send a ritual "masakaki" offering to the shrine, Hayashi, the top government spokesman, told a press conference Friday that the premier will make an "appropriate decision," as will he.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, a former Self-Defense Forces officer, told reporters, "It is natural to offer condolences," but he said he will not visit the shrine next week as he is scheduled to be on a trip abroad.

Ishiba's predecessor Fumio Kishida, seen as a dovish moderate within the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party, did not visit Yasukuni for the spring and fall festivals, opting instead to send ritual offerings.

Yasukuni has been a source of diplomatic friction with China and South Korea as Japan's wartime leaders, convicted as war criminals in a post-World War II international tribunal, are among the more than 2.4 million war dead honored at the shrine.

Past visits to Yasukuni by Japanese prime ministers have drawn backlash from China and South Korea, where memories of Japan's wartime actions run deep. It invaded a vast swath of China before the end of the war and ruled the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.