Yasukuni Shrine remove names from its list of enshrined war dead

"Landep News"

In the past, Korean groups have filed lawsuits in Japan demanding that the Yasukuni Shrine remove names from its list of enshrined war dead. Most of the lawsuits have come from surviving family members of Koreans who served and died in the service of the Imperial Japanese armed forces. Because the Yasukuni Shrine is a private Shinto shrine, Japanese courts have rejected all such lawsuits. Japan’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion and the separation of church and state, so courts simply do not have the power to order Yasukuni to comply with the demands of the Koreans.

Despite the obvious unconstitutionality of these demands, lawsuits of this kind are still being filed. The latest came from a group that included an 86-year-old Kim Hui-jong, a former “civilian worker” in the Japanese Imperial Navy who survived the war but somehow ended up enshrined at Yasukuni:

Learning the embarrassing news that his tablet was enshrined at Yasukuni with millions of Japanese war dead in 2006, he launched his legal battle the year after, the first such case for a living man, with the help of several South Korean civic groups. In his preparations, he visited Japan three times and held a press conference there in spite of his delicate health.
“When I visited the Yasukuni Shrine, I asked officials there to show me my tablet. But they barred me from even entering the temple,” he said. “I was so furious that I wanted to blow the shrine up.”
The former draftee also expressed regret at lukewarm responses from the South Korean government, as well as the lack of “any plausible reasons” explaining Japan’s response.

When the lawsuit was predictably rejected by a Japanese court, one of Kim’s lawyers had the following to say:

“The ruling is the worst ever, and I feel ashamed as a Japanese citizen,” an attorney for the plaintiffs said. “Judges seem to have no idea about what Japan should repent of, while putting priority only on the freedom of religion.”　

The attorney seems to have no idea about the importance of freedom of religion.

The court “only” put priority on freedom of religion because the lawsuit demanded that the government violate constitutionally protected rights. If the court had ruled in favor of the Mr. Kim, it would have been an illegal and unconstitutional ruling.

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