It noted that earlier this year, the deputy chief of the General Staff of the ground troops of the so-called Self-Defense Forces and dozens of military chiefs paid tribute at the graves of notorious war criminals.

The news agency warned that it is extremely worrisome because tensions on the Korean Peninsula threaten to escalate into a military confrontation due to the joint maneuvers by the United States and its allies in South Korea and Japan.

In October 2023, KCNA, following the visit of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and hundreds of parliamentarians to the Yasukuni Shrine, said that Japan is showing signs of forgetting the lessons of history with the constant visits of its politicians to the site.

In its Book of Souls, the Yasukuni Shrine lists the names of nearly two and a half million soldiers killed in war, including 14 notorious war criminals.

For the DPRK, China, South Korea and other countries victimized by Japanese military aggression in the 20th century, the site is a symbol of Japanese militarism and proto-fascist nationalism during World War II.

The visits to the Yasukuni Shrine reveal the Japanese Government’s attitude toward the war and become a guideline for judging whether Japan moves away from its past and chooses the path of peace or returns to the path of aggression, KCNA stressed.

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