Nobody should read any political implication into former President Lee Teng-hui’s visit to the Yasukuni shrine in the heart of Tokyo a couple of days ago.The reason is simple.He had no ulterior political motive, so far as his visit to the Shinto shrine is concerned.
Lee, who had a Japanese name of Masao Iwasato and served briefly as a Japanese army lieutenant towards the end of the Second World War, had an elder brother.Masanori Iwasato, born Lee Teng-chin, was killed as a Japanese navy petty officer in Luzon shortly before the end of the war.As a sailor killed in action, Masanori Iwasato is enshrined at Yasukuni along with more than thousands of others like him.
Prior to his visit to Yasukuni, where Japan’s war dead are honored, Lee held a press conference to emphasize it as one to pay respects to his brother he hasn’t met for 62 years.“We didn’t receive my brother’s belongings or his body,” he went on, “so my father did not believe my brother had passed away.That was why we did not build a tomb for him.”He added “it is only natural that I visit and pay my most sincere respects to him.”“After my visit,” he said, “I think he should be happy and gratified in heaven.”
Those words expressed the sincere desire of the former president, who is the spiritual leader of the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union and has been condemned as a “separatist” by China.One may call him whatever one likes, but Lee is an honest man.
However, that does not mean he should hype his visit to Yasukuni, among whose enshrined war dead are General Hideki Tojo and other war criminals condemned by the Tokyo tribunal in 1946.In fact, the shrine made an end run of its own canon of excludingthose who were not killed in action to honor Tojo, who as prime minister ordered a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and failed to commit suicide after the war.No should Lee shout “Banzai” at Yasukuni.Well, he may have just uttered the word out of the habit he formed while he was in school prior to joining the imperial army.
But a lecture Lee delivered at Takushoku University after the visit was politically motivated.Takushoku was known in prewar Japan as the “training ground for ronin (unemployed samurai) in Shina (China).”Many of its alumni, who studied Chinese and Mongolian intensively while in school, went to China as “empire builders” for Japan’s expansionist military.Of course, the university doesn’t offer any such training now, though Beijing may justifiably consider Lee was trying to agitate Japanese against China.
（本文刊載於96.06.11 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
周家華
王順民
薛承泰
李正修
