The 14 war criminals were secretly added to the list of souls honored at Yasukuni by the shrine’s priests in 1978, a move that reflected the belief of some Japanese nationalists that they were actually patriots who had been victims of victor’s justice by the triumphant Allies. When the enshrinement was made public a year later, in 1979, the emperor at the time, Hirohito, protested by refusing to visit Yasukuni, a boycott continued by his son, the current emperor, Akihito.
The honoring of the 14 has also been the main reason given by China and South Korea for their objections, starting in the 1980s, to Japanese politicians’ visiting the shrine. In those countries, the inclusion of the war criminals has helped make Yasukuni a symbol of Japan’s perceived lack of repentance for its wartime misdeeds
via Conservative Group Urges Changes at Japanese War Shrine – NYTimes.com.



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