Japan persists in reviving militarism.

Shortly ago, Japanese Prime Minister Suga and some other government officials offered a tree called sakaki as a tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine and former Prime Minister Abe visited it on the occasion of the spring ancestral rite day with the glaring eyes of the international community kept on it.

Such uninterrupted visits to the shrine, a base for inspiring the ideology of Japanese militarism, are an obvious expression of the retaliatory ambition of Japan to beautify the history of its past aggression and revenge its defeat.

Now many countries and nations endeavour to prevent militarism and fascism from being revived, mindful of the past wars which inflicted holocausts upon humankind.

On the contrary, Japan does not hesitate to praise the militaristic specters, holding them holy before the eyes of the world.

On the recent spring ancestral rite day, Eto, former minister in charge of Okinawa and Northern Territories of Japan, told the press reporters after his visit to the shrine that "he appeased the souls of the dead in the war", and Abe posted on a website his photo of visiting the shrine along with the remarks that "he visited to pay his respect to the souls of those who sacrificed themselves to the country."

Among those entombed in the shrine, all of whom met death gaining notoriety in the wars of overseas aggression, are killers and war criminals that caused untold harm to the Japanese people, as well as the Asian people.

Far from denouncing such villains, the visitors are holding up the criminals as "souls who dedicated their lives to the country", even regarding them as "holy," only to betray that they are as despicable as the war criminals.

This is an intolerable act as it hurts the victims of the war of aggression and their offspring again and poses a downright challenge to the justice of history and the world's public sentiment.

At present, the Japanese reactionaries are trying to create a social atmosphere favourable for realizing militarization and reinvasion by instilling into people a sense of pride in the history of aggression, not a sense of guilt, and thoughts of revenge, not the will to settle its past, through the visits to the shrine.

Recently, Japan, in a revelation of its territorial ambition, has persisted in causing friction with neighbouring countries, removing the legal hurdles to its moves for turning itself into a military giant and for overseas expansion, beefing up its military muscle and shamelessly distorting history. This is unthinkable apart from the frantic militarism with which Japan's rulers corrupted the whole of Japanese society.

The international community will never pardon the present Japanese reactionaries who make desperate efforts to reproduce the bloody past, following in the wake of the war criminals who inflicted huge misfortune and pain on humankind.

Japan should stop running amuck, well aware of the demand of the international community against the revival of militarism.

KCNA