Japan Defense Chief Koizumi Visits Yasukuni as PM Takaichi Stays Away
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- Shinjiro Koizumi prayed at Yasukuni Shrine on Saturday, the anniversary marking Japan's surrender 81 years ago; the previous defense-minister visit was in 2024 by Minoru Kihara, now Takaichi's chief secretary.
- Sanae Takaichi did not visit the shrine despite repeatedly saying she would pray there on Aug. 15, with Japanese media reporting she stayed away to avoid worsening already difficult ties with Beijing and to maintain relations with Seoul.
- Three LDP executives, including secretary-general Shunichi Suzuki, prayed together at Yasukuni and brought cash offerings on Takaichi's behalf — a rare joint visit on the prime minister's behalf seen as a move to placate her right-wing base.
- Koizumi's visit carries extra weight because as defense minister he is pushing to expand Japan's military capability and weapons sales under Takaichi's hawkish government, and he is the son of former PM Junichiro Koizumi, who outraged China with his own 2006 visit as sitting premier.
- Takaichi's domestic position is weakening: her support is seen as rapidly falling over delayed economic measures addressing rising prices, alleged negative election-campaign videos, and unpopular revisions to Japan's imperial succession rules.
- Takaichi's historical revisionism runs deep: she considers Shinzo Abe a mentor, has denied coercion was used against Korean "comfort women," and previously campaigned to remove references to wartime sexual slavery from school textbooks.
- Japan-China tensions escalated in November after Takaichi said a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan requiring the use of force — a comment that enraged Beijing and now frames every Yasukuni calculus.
Why it matters: The split between Koizumi going and Takaichi staying away exposes the bind she's created for herself: her own hawkish November comments on Taiwan have made every shrine visit a China-relations landmine, while her right-wing base demands she keep her Yasukuni pledge. Sending LDP executives with cash offerings to compensate lets her dodge the diplomatic cost without fully alienating her nationalist supporters — but the optics of her defense minister visiting while the PM hides are a rare public fracture in Takaichi's hawkish brand.
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