Visits To Yasukuni Shrine
On August 15, 2012 Hata, along with National Safety Commissioner Jin Matsubara became the first cabinet ministers of the DPJ to openly visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on August 15 since the party came to power in 2009. They made their visits to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the end of World War II despite requests from South Korea to refrain from doing so, and despite Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda requesting his cabinet not to do so.
Read more about this topic: Yuichiro Hata
Famous quotes containing the words visits and/or shrine:
“I suggested a doubt, that if I were to reside in London, the exquisite zest with which I relished it in occasional visits might go off, and I might grow tired of it. JOHNSON. “ ... No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)