Key Points
ใปPrime Minister Sanae Takaichi did not visit Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2026. She sent a tamagushi-ryo, a monetary offering presented at a Shinto shrine, paid from her own funds and in her capacity as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, while four cabinet ministers visited in person.
ใปBy the Japanese government’s own definition, only one prime minister has ever made an “official visit” to Yasukuni: Yasuhiro Nakasone on August 15, 1985. A Chief Cabinet Secretary statement the following year created the framework under which each visit is judged case by case.
ใปBecause Takaichi’s party holds one of the strongest parliamentary majorities in postwar Japanese history, the usual domestic explanations for a prime minister staying away do not apply, which makes the diplomatic constraint unusually visible.
Four Ministers Visited, the Prime Minister Sent an Offering
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi did not visit Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2026, the 81st anniversary of Japan’s surrender. Through LDP Secretary-General Shunichi Suzuki, she sent a tamagushi-ryo offering paid with her own money, in her capacity as party president rather than as prime minister. According to the Kyodo News report of August 15, 2026, Takaichi herself did not speak to reporters.
Four cabinet ministers visited the shrine: Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, Okinawa and Northern Territories Minister Hitoshi Kikawada, Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Minoru Kiuchi and Economic Security Minister Kimi Onoda. Koizumi’s visit was reported by Jiji Press in a flash dispatch timed 7:30 a.m.
Koizumi and Onoda did not answer reporters’ questions afterward. Kikawada told reporters he had offered his condolences to the war dead and that he had paid his own tamagushi-ryo. Kiuchi said the visit renewed his conviction that the devastation of war must never be repeated.
Three senior party officials went together: Secretary-General Suzuki, General Council Chair Haruko Arimura and Election Strategy Committee Chair Yasutoshi Nishimura. The Nikkei reported that while individual visits by party executives on August 15 have precedent, a joint visit by the leadership is unusual. Policy Research Council Chair Takayuki Kobayashi stayed away to handle flooding in his home prefecture of Chiba.
Shortly before noon the same day, the government-organized National Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead was held at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, attended by the Emperor and Empress. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s figures reported by Kyodo News, 3,270 bereaved family members took part. Takaichi delivered the memorial address for the first time since taking office. She also laid flowers at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery the same day.
In that address she said the devastation of war must never be allowed to happen again. According to the Asahi Shimbun’s August 15, 2026 report, the address did not use the words “deep remorse” and “pledge never to wage war,” which prime ministers had used since Tomiichi Murayama introduced them in 1994 and which Shinzo Abe dropped in 2013; Takaichi returned to Abe’s wording after her predecessor Shigeru Ishiba revived the older phrasing in 2025. The Emperor’s own remarks at the ceremony did include the phrase “deep remorse.”
A cross-party group of lawmakers, the Association of Diet Members to Visit Yasukuni Shrine Together, made a group visit the same day. Jiji Press put the turnout at about 90 lawmakers and NHK at more than 80.
China’s Foreign Ministry said on August 15, 2026 that it had lodged a “solemn representation and strong protest” with Japan over the prime minister’s tamagushi-ryo offering and the ministers’ visits, according to Kyodo News.
The government has offered no official explanation for the decision not to visit. Jiji Press and Kyodo News both reported that consideration was given to improving relations with South Korea and to the autumn diplomatic calendar, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting to be hosted by China in November.
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How Yasukuni Became a Political Question
Yasukuni Shrine is a privately run Shinto shrine in Tokyo that enshrines, according to the shrine’s own published account of its history, 2,466,000 and more spirits of people who died from causes arising out of public service in defense of the country. Shinto is less a doctrinal religion with scripture and creed than an indigenous Japanese tradition organized around kami, a word usually rendered as gods or spirits, and around the rites performed for them.
What “enshrinement” actually means
Nobody is buried at Yasukuni. This is the single point most often missed in English-language discussion, and almost every other argument depends on it.
Enshrinement, goshi in Japanese, is a religious rite in which the spirit of a dead person is installed at the shrine as a kami and thereafter venerated there. The shrine holds no graves and no remains. What it holds is a register of names and the rite that attaches to them, which is why the dispute over the 14 men convicted as Class-A war criminals is a dispute about a list and a ritual rather than about a tomb.
Two related terms recur. Eirei, literally heroic spirits, is the honorific Japanese term for the spirits of those who died for the country, and it carries a tone of reverence that the neutral phrase “war dead” does not. A tamagushi-ryo is a monetary offering presented at a Shinto shrine, while a masakaki is a branch of the sacred sakaki tree placed before the altar. Both are ways of participating in the rite without attending in person, and in Japanese politics the money involved and the name attached to it are read as carefully as a visit itself.
Who is enshrined, and who is not
The shrine states that its kami are enshrined equally, without distinction of rank, merit or sex, and that the single thing they share is having died from causes arising out of public service. That framing matters for the arguments that follow, because a visitor cannot choose which of the enshrined spirits to address.
The list is not limited to soldiers. It includes nurses and schoolgirls who worked in battlefield relief, students who died in munitions factories under labor mobilization, people from Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula who fought and died as Japanese subjects, servicemen who died in Siberian internment, and those executed as war criminals.
Civilians killed in air raids and the atomic bombings do not fit that common thread. A 2002 report by a private advisory group to the Chief Cabinet Secretary noted that many civilians lost their lives in air raids and in the wider hardship of war, and that a considerable number of them are not covered by any existing memorial institution. The question of who exactly the state is memorializing starts here.
Former colonial subjects were enshrined without reference to the wishes of the dead or their families. Lawsuits seeking to have those enshrinements revoked have been filed since 2001, and all have ended in defeat for the plaintiffs.
The 1978 enshrinement and the framework built in 1986
Two events, eight years apart, turned a shrine visit into a diplomatic question.
In October 1978, according to accounts compiled by nippon.com from the shrine’s records, Yasukuni enshrined 14 men including wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo as “Martyrs of Showa.” The fact became public through newspaper reporting in April 1979 and caused little immediate uproar. What enlarged the issue was what prime ministers did afterward.
A silence on the imperial side runs alongside this. Under Japan’s postwar constitution the Emperor is the symbol of the State and holds no political power, so an imperial visit is not a policy act; it is closer to a ceremonial confirmation of what the shrine is for. Emperor Showa, known outside Japan as Hirohito, last visited Yasukuni in November 1975, and no emperor has visited in the fifty years since, across three reigns. Some observers link the break to the 1978 enshrinement, but neither the Imperial Household Agency nor the government has ever given an official reason, and the causal claim rests on posthumously published diaries rather than on any statement of record.
The issue became international on August 15, 1985, when Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone visited in an official capacity. According to a Japanese government written answer dated February 10, 2006, that visit by Nakasone is the only official visit to Yasukuni ever made by a prime minister. The visits by Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe are treated by the government as private acts. This distinction is the entry point to almost every argument about Yasukuni.
Facing objections from China and South Korea, the government issued a statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaharu Gotoda on August 14, 1986. The statement said that because the shrine enshrines Class-A war criminals, the previous year’s official visit had produced criticism among the peoples of neighboring countries that Japan had paid homage to those responsible for the war, and risked generating misunderstanding of and distrust in the remorse Japan had expressed.
The statement was not an abolition. Its final section says explicitly that official visits are not institutionalized and that whether to carry one out is to be judged on each occasion, and that the measure taken did not deny or abolish official visits as such. The judgment was left open, and left to be made again every time.
How previous prime ministers handled it
The choices have never been a simple yes or no. They have divided along the lines of which name is used and what is offered.
Whether a tamagushi-ryo or masakaki comes from public or private funds, and what title is attached to it, has served as the visible marker of deference to the separation of religion and state written into the postwar constitution.
| Prime minister | Position before taking office | Conduct in office | Aftermath and diplomacy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yasuhiro Nakasone | Supportive of visits | Official visit on August 15, 1985, the only one in the postwar period | Did not visit again after objections from China and South Korea |
| Junichiro Koizumi | Pledged to visit on August 15 | Repeated visits from 2001, each described by the government as made as one private citizen | Leader-level exchanges with China and South Korea broke off |
| Shinzo Abe | Called his failure to visit during his first term a matter of deep regret | Visited on December 26, 2013, then sent masakaki at the spring and autumn festivals and a privately funded tamagushi-ryo on August 15 | The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo issued a statement of disappointment |
| Sanae Takaichi | Said she would continue visiting even as prime minister | Sent masakaki in the name of “Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi” at the spring festival in April 2026; sent a privately funded tamagushi-ryo as party president on August 15 | Has not visited since taking office |
On Koizumi, the government’s written answer of February 10, 2006 lists five visits: August 13, 2001, April 21, 2002, January 14, 2003, January 1, 2004 and October 17, 2005. The same document states that it is difficult to account for every private visit, so this is not a complete record. His visit on August 15, 2006 came after that answer was issued.
Koizumi had campaigned on visiting specifically on August 15, and the only year he actually did so was his last, in 2006. Shifting the date, changing the name on the offering, or stopping at an offering rather than a visit are not inventions of 2026.
The other places the state mourns
Yasukuni is not the only site of national mourning, and the August 15 ceremony rests on a cabinet decision rather than a law.
The National Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead has been held annually since 1963. A cabinet decision of April 13, 1982 designated August 15 as the “Day to Mourn the War Dead and Pray for Peace” and provided that the ceremony would continue. That cabinet decision makes no mention of Yasukuni Shrine at all. The national day of mourning and the prime minister’s shrine visit come from separate lineages.
Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery was established as a tomb of the unknown war dead, holding the remains of servicemen and civilians who died overseas and could not be returned to their families. According to the Ministry of the Environment, 371,008 sets of remains were interred there as of May 2025. The ministry manages the site, while the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare hosts the annual memorial rite each May.
A new facility was once proposed. In December 2002, the advisory group to the Chief Cabinet Secretary concluded that a permanent, non-religious national facility was needed so that the country as a whole could mourn and pray for peace. Deciding its name and location was judged premature, and the proposal stopped there. The report also records, as a reference opinion, the dissent of a member who opposed the need for a new facility.
Proposals to remove only the 14 Class-A war criminals have surfaced repeatedly. The government’s position is that what deities a religious corporation enshrines is a matter of religious freedom on which it is not in a position to express a view. That is a procedural refusal to enter the question, not a statement that separation is impossible. The shrine has been reported to hold that once enshrined, a deity cannot be divided out.
The Office Changes How a Belief Can Be Expressed
Why did Takaichi skip the Yasukuni visit on the war anniversary?
The government has given no explanation, so what can be established is the shape of the day rather than the reasoning behind it.
On August 15, 2026, Takaichi sent a privately funded tamagushi-ryo to Yasukuni as party president, and attended the Budokan ceremony as prime minister to deliver the memorial address. The same person mourned in two places on one day under two different titles, and laid flowers at Chidorigafuchi as well.
April makes the contrast sharper. At the spring festival she sent a masakaki in the name of “Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.” In August the offering was a tamagushi-ryo from private funds in the name of the party president. Both the title and the object changed between the two occasions.
Whether that was designed is unknown. What the sequence does establish is that the choice was never binary.
One caution belongs here. The idea that private money and a party title settle the constitutional question does not survive contact with the case law. In the litigation over Koizumi’s visits, courts looked less at where the money came from than at the outward form: the use of an official car, the title entered in the visitors’ register. Those cases all ended in defeat for the plaintiffs, and the unconstitutionality language sits in the reasoning of judgments whose operative rulings dismissed the claims. The reasoning nonetheless survives. China and South Korea have in past years objected not only to visits but to offerings of tamagushi-ryo and masakaki themselves.
The “judge on each occasion” formula was built forty years ago
Takaichi’s repeated phrasing tracks the 1986 Gotoda statement almost word for word.
That statement said official visits are not institutionalized and that whether to carry one out is to be judged on each occasion. Leaving the judgment to be remade every time placed the visit in a state that is neither prohibited nor established.
The result is less a prime minister wrestling privately with conscience than a prime minister standing inside a mechanism designed to force the question annually. Every new occupant of the office receives the same question again and has to answer it again.
Inside that mechanism, Koizumi’s choice to visit every year and Takaichi’s choice to stop at an offering are two different solutions to one framework. The generalization that politicians who support visits always stop once they become prime minister does not hold, because Koizumi is a counterexample.
The weight of the question concentrates on the prime minister. Foreign governments read the prime minister’s act as a statement of national intent. Ministers and party officials have visited in most years, but the episodes that became major diplomatic incidents involved the prime minister personally.
Without an explanation from Takaichi, it cannot be told from outside whether the belief is intact and only its expression changed, or whether carrying the diplomatic responsibility of the office changed the belief itself. What can be observed is the change in form. For an ordinary politician the choice is to go or not to go. For a prime minister it decomposes into timing, title and offering.
What a 316-seat majority rules out
This case narrows down the list of things that could have held the visit back, because domestic political weakness cannot explain it.
According to the Nikkei’s tally of the general election of February 8, 2026, the LDP won 316 seats on its own in a 465-seat House of Representatives, more than a two-thirds majority without partners. A government with one of the strongest bases in postwar history did not visit. The explanation that a weak support base left no room to move is unavailable here.
The familiar coalition explanation is also gone. Komeito has left the coalition and fought that election alongside the Constitutional Democratic Party as part of a centrist reform alliance. The long-running journalistic template in which Komeito acts as a brake inside an LDP-led coalition does not apply this time.
That leaves diplomacy. Relations with China have been strained since Takaichi’s November 2025 parliamentary remarks on a Taiwan contingency. Reporting has focused on whether a Japan-China leaders’ meeting can be arranged at the APEC summit in China in November, and on the effect on improving relations with South Korea and on Japan-U.S.-South Korea coordination. None of this is an official government explanation; it remains reporting and inference.
On the United States, the precedent is the statement of disappointment issued by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo after Abe’s 2013 visit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been reported as expressing concern over the deterioration of Japan-China relations, but that remark concerns the bilateral relationship in general and is not a comment on Yasukuni.
Why conservatives and the left criticized the same decision
Takaichi’s statements did not flip overnight; they receded in stages over roughly four years.
In September 2021 she said she had continued visiting regardless of the post she held and that it was in no sense a diplomatic issue. By September 2024 the formulation was that she wished to visit calmly and as usual at an appropriate time. After winning the party presidency in October 2025 she said she would judge at an appropriate time and stopped stating whether she would go. In February 2026 she explained that she was working to create the right environment. In a 2022 lecture she was reported to have said that stopping halfway is what emboldens the other side.
The critics have a case. Having presented the visit as a matter of conviction, and having drawn conservative support on that basis, a change of course calls for an explanation in her own words. When someone who said Yasukuni was not a diplomatic issue is reported to have stayed away out of diplomatic consideration, the question becomes one of credibility. Similar criticism has been reported from the conservative side.
The defenders have a case as well. By the time she won the party presidency she had already shifted to judging at an appropriate time, so her conduct in office falls inside that advance notice. A private politician and a prime minister carry different responsibilities, and giving priority to the national interest can be described as a way of accepting responsibility rather than abandoning it.
The criticism does not come only from the right. There are positions that object to the visit being considered at all, and to the party leadership visiting as a group. The same act is drawing opposite criticisms for opposite reasons.
The argument for visiting is also more specific than it is usually rendered. Because the shrine enshrines its deities equally and a visitor cannot select among them, that structure supports the charge of paying homage to war criminals and, at the same time, the rebuttal that a visit aimed at 14 particular men is not possible in the first place. For families who never received remains, a shrine where the dead are enshrined and a cemetery that holds remains are not necessarily equivalent.
Comparisons with Nazi Germany, common in English-language discussion, also have limits, and the limits are structural rather than moral. Yasukuni enshrines its more than 2.46 million kami as a single undivided body, and the 14 convicted men sit inside that body rather than form the point of it, which is why the government has no mechanism to have them removed and why the shrine says a kami once enshrined cannot be divided out. A hypothetical church dedicated to 14 named individuals would work nothing like this. That difference does not settle whether the visits are defensible; it does determine what a visit can and cannot be said to mean.
| Arguments for a prime ministerial visit | Arguments against, or for caution |
|---|---|
| Mourning the war dead is a duty of national leadership | Class-A war criminals are enshrined, inseparable from the question of war responsibility |
| The form of mourning should not be set by foreign reactions | Damaged relations with neighbors harm the national interest |
| It is a question of religious freedom and therefore domestic | Separation of religion and state raises a constitutional question for a prime minister |
| Some bereaved families want the prime minister to visit | Victims of air raids and the atomic bombings are not enshrined, so the scope of mourning is uneven |
| Criticism will not stop even if visits stop | Chidorigafuchi and the national ceremony already exist as alternatives |
Japanese Reactions to Takaichi’s Yasukuni Decision
What follows are posts circulating on X in Japanese on and around August 15, 2026. They are reactions on one platform, not a measurement of Japanese public opinion, and engagement on X skews toward the politically engaged in both directions. Read them as temperature, not as polling.
The loudest strand was not relief or approval. It was disappointment from the right, framed as a question of keeping one’s word.
> Before Takaichi became prime minister, she said again and again and again, “I will visit Yasukuni even as prime minister.”
>
> Could the reason be, possibly, possibly, that she never actually thought she would become prime minister?
>
> Naoki Hyakuta, novelist and leader of the Conservative Party of Japan, August 15, 2026
Criticism also came from the opposite direction, and for the opposite reason: not that she failed to visit, but that the party leadership visited at all.
> LDP executives are planning to visit Yasukuni together on the anniversary of the war’s end. Presumably as a substitute for the prime minister, who is giving up on visiting.
>
> Yasukuni Shrine was made the spiritual pillar for driving the population into war under the slogan of serving the country. It remains a facility that describes Japan’s past war of aggression as a just war to liberate Asia, and only military personnel and civilian employees of the military who died for the emperor are enshrined there. It is neither a place of mourning for the victims of war nor a place to pledge never to fight again.
>
> Taku Yamazoe, member of the House of Councillors, Japanese Communist Party, August 15, 2026
A third strand attacked the group visit itself as performance, a line that split the conservative side rather than the left and right.
> LDP executives considering a joint visit to Yasukuni Shrine.
>
> That is a political appeal aimed at conservative voters, not gratitude toward ordinary soldiers or a pledge against war. A visit is something you make quietly. Is going as a group not embarrassing? They call themselves conservatives while acting against Japanese manners. This is fashion conservatism in its purest form.
>
> Toru Hashimoto, former mayor of Osaka, August 15, 2026
In a follow-up post the same day, Hashimoto laid out the structural argument behind that criticism, one that echoes the enshrinement problem described above.
> A visit to Yasukuni by the prime minister and the Emperor is indispensable for the nation. But the reality is that neither can visit Yasukuni as it stands now. The wartime and military leadership should be politically separated from the ordinary soldiers, so that the state can press its hands together for the ordinary soldiers. If even that is condemned, then Japan should make its case internationally.
>
> Toru Hashimoto, former mayor of Osaka, August 15, 2026
Posts defending the decision were fewer and drew markedly less engagement than the criticism. The strongest of them argued from the difference between a private conviction and the duties of the office.
> Looking at the people making all this noise, I honestly wonder. Is being a conservative about holding to your ideals no matter what?
>
> I think it is sometimes necessary to hold your feelings in check and make a realistic judgment in order to protect what has to be protected.
>
> Valuing Yasukuni and judging, as prime minister, when to visit while weighing diplomacy, security and the national interest are two different things.
>
> Rather than measuring patriotism only by whether someone visited, I want to watch what a prime minister is choosing in order to protect Japan and its people today.
>
> A user posting under the name Mika, August 15, 2026
Two things stand out in the distribution. The criticism from the right outran the defense by roughly an order of magnitude in likes, while the offering itself, the actual substance of what the prime minister did, drew very little reaction in either direction. News flashes reporting the tamagushi-ryo attracted a fraction of the engagement of the flash reporting Defense Minister Koizumi’s visit. Whatever the offering was meant to accomplish, it did not register as a resolution to anyone.
Whom to Mourn, in Which Capacity, and Where
Almost no one disputes that the war dead should be mourned. What has never been settled is how a secular national act of mourning relates to the religious and historical mourning that Yasukuni has carried, and underneath that sits an unresolved question about whom the state counts as its war dead, including the civilians killed in air raids and the atomic bombings.
Takaichi’s conduct on August 15, 2026 reproduces that lack of settlement exactly. An offering as party president, a memorial address as prime minister. Two acts of mourning on one day, separated only by the name attached to them.
Several paths exist and each carries a cost. Continuing to send offerings under the party title leaves conservative supporters dissatisfied. Visiting brings back both the diplomatic burden and the constitutional litigation. Reviving the non-religious national facility shelved in 2002 is possible, but the objections recorded at the time have not disappeared.
The constituency asking for visits is also changing. Bereaved families are aging and their organizations show signs of shifting toward preserving memory. At the same time, calls for the prime minister to visit continue to come from those organizations and from political actors, so the substitution is still under way.
Whom to mourn, in what capacity, and where. The mechanism that forty years ago left the judgment to be remade each time keeps returning that question every August.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Prime Minister Takaichi visit Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2026?
No. She stayed away and instead sent a tamagushi-ryo offering paid from her own funds, in her capacity as president of the Liberal Democratic Party rather than as prime minister, delivered through Secretary-General Shunichi Suzuki. Four cabinet ministers did visit the shrine in person, according to Kyodo News reporting on August 15, 2026: Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, Okinawa and Northern Territories Minister Hitoshi Kikawada, Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Minoru Kiuchi and Economic Security Minister Kimi Onoda.
What does it mean to be enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine?
It means a religious rite, not a burial. Yasukuni holds no graves and no remains; enshrinement installs the spirit of a dead person at the shrine as a kami, a Shinto god or spirit, to be venerated there. Because the shrine states that all 2,466,000 and more of its kami are enshrined equally as a single body, a visitor cannot address one and not another, which is the structural reason the government says it cannot order the 14 Class-A war criminals removed and the shrine says a kami once enshrined cannot be divided out.
How many Japanese prime ministers have made an official visit to Yasukuni Shrine?
One. According to a Japanese government written answer dated February 10, 2006, the only official visit by a prime minister was made by Yasuhiro Nakasone on August 15, 1985. The government classifies the later visits by Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe as private acts rather than official visits, and that distinction is the basis of most Japanese domestic argument about the issue.
Why is a prime ministerial visit to Yasukuni controversial?
Because Yasukuni enshrined 14 men convicted as Class-A war criminals in October 1978, alongside more than 2.46 million war dead. The Chief Cabinet Secretary’s statement of August 14, 1986 said that this enshrinement had led neighboring countries to read the previous year’s official visit as homage to those responsible for the war, and risked casting doubt on Japan’s expressed remorse. Japanese courts have separately addressed whether such visits breach the constitutional separation of religion and state.
How did Japanese social media react to Takaichi’s decision?
The dominant reaction on X was criticism from the political right, focused on her earlier promise to keep visiting as prime minister rather than on Yasukuni itself. Criticism also came from the left, aimed at the joint visit by LDP executives, while posts supporting the decision were fewer and drew far less engagement. The offering itself attracted comparatively little reaction from either side.
Reference Links
- Statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Gotoda on official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, August 14, 1986๏ฝThe World and Japan Database
- Statement on Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine, December 26, 2013๏ฝEmbassy of the United States, Tokyo, via Internet Archive
- Written answer on imperial and prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, February 10, 2006๏ฝHouse of Representatives
- Report of the Advisory Group on Memorial and Peace Prayer Facilities, December 24, 2002๏ฝThe World and Japan Database
- Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery๏ฝMinistry of the Environment
- Defense Minister Koizumi visits Yasukuni as prime minister stays away๏ฝJiji Press
- Four cabinet ministers visit Yasukuni; prime minister sends tamagushi-ryo from private funds๏ฝAkita Sakigake Shimpo (Kyodo News)
- Koizumi visits Yasukuni along with Kiuchi, Kikawada and Onoda on the war anniversary๏ฝNikkei
- Full text of Prime Minister Takaichi’s memorial address, August 15, 2026๏ฝTokyo Shimbun
- More than 80 cross-party lawmakers visit Yasukuni on the war anniversary๏ฝNHK
- China’s Foreign Ministry lodges strong protest over ministers’ Yasukuni visits๏ฝSaga Shimbun (Kyodo News)
- LDP Secretary-General Suzuki visits Yasukuni with Arimura and Nishimura๏ฝNikkei
