Taiwan Envoy Skips Nagasaki Memorial Over Seating Row
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- Lee Yi-yang, head of Taiwan's Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Tokyo, boycotted the Sunday Peace Park ceremony and accused Nagasaki of being "a pawn of China's insistence that Taiwan is not a state and has no sovereignty."
- Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki rejected the accusation, telling reporters Taiwan was "courteously accommodated" with seats behind other envoys and that the city "place[s] great importance to our relationship" with Taiwan.
- Lee sent a lower-ranked Fukuoka official, Chen Ming-chun, in his place, who told Nippon Television there "shouldn't be any discrimination at a place where we pray together for a world without war or nuclear weapons."
- Nagasaki's invitation policy — covering countries, regions and organizations with diplomatic missions in Japan or at the UN — was adopted after the 2024 ceremony was boycotted by then-US ambassador Rahm Emanuel and five G7 envoys over Israel's exclusion; Taiwan does not formally qualify but was accommodated at its request last year.
- Lee attended the August 6 Hiroshima memorial days earlier with equal treatment as other foreign envoys, and had attended Nagasaki last year with the same seat assignment but chose not to raise the issue then to "prioritise friendship."
Why it matters: The seating dispute exposes how Taiwan's contested status spills into remembrance diplomacy — Nagasaki's invitation policy, redrawn after the 2024 G7 boycott over Israel, now leaves the city choosing between formally inviting Taiwan (which China opposes) and risking repeat diplomatic absences at its own atomic bombing memorial attended by 98 countries.
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