Scholar seeks moratorium on shrine

Kazuhiko Togo, director of the Institute for World Affairs at Kyoto Sangyo University, has long called for a moratorium on Yasukuni Shrine visits by serving prime ministers.

He made the proposal following several visits to the shrine from 2001 to 2006 by then Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. The visits drew strong protests from the Republic of Korea and China.

Togo said suspending visits by incumbent prime ministers would create breathing room for the nation to examine its wartime past and responsibility for the tragedies it unleashed in the region.

Togo, the grandson of Shigenori Togo, Japan's foreign minister in wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo's Cabinet, is a retired career official from Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former ambassador to the Netherlands. His grandfather is one of the convicted Class-A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni in Tokyo.

"What Koizumi did during his premiership showed that visits by serving prime ministers are provocations for China," Togo said. "Efforts should be made to prevent the contentious areas of concern from expanding."

"Under the circumstances, I don't think (Japan's) prime minister should visit Yasukuni."

He has written books in English and Japanese to help Japan emerge from the shadows of its wartime history by doing soul-searching about its war responsibility. His publications include Japan and Reconciliation in Post-war Asia: The Murayama Statement and Its Implications and History and Foreign Policy: Yasukuni, Asia and Tokyo Tribunal.