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:
“At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what diverted me most was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbons with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“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)