J-News Mini-Roundup: Japanese Prime Minister Just Says NO to Yasukuni Shrine
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J-News Mini-Roundup is a recurring feature written by Friend Of JET, Jon Hills, who maintains the blog for Hills Learning (www.hillslearning.com). Hills Learning is a NY-based language learning services company offering customized and personal Japanese and Chinese language learning options. 
Background: Yasukuni Shrine is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) diplomatic challenges that Japan has with its neighbors. The shrine exclusively celebrates the Japanese war dead, so naturally when an anniversary of a war comes up the prime minister needs to look patriotic and pay homage to fallen soldiers. The problem is that those fallen soldiers, to neighbors such as China and Korea, also include Class A war criminals that tortured and killed their people. Every prime minister in recent years that has visited the shrine has ended up getting key diplomatic missions cancelled, and on a more extreme level countries will shut off economic and political negotiations entirely.
Prime Minister Aso today commented on Yasukuni, in the background of the anniversary of the end of WWII coming up on August 15th. Each newspaper had a different take on the event.
Nikkei “I’m Against Visiting Yasukuni While in Office” On the evening of August 10th at the Prime Minister’s residence, Prime Minister Aso stated in regards to the anniversary on the 15th of WWII…
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