When the pop singer Justin Bieber was in Japan in the spring of 2014 he asked his driver to make an impromptu stop at a shrine in Tokyo. Naturally, Bieber posted some photos of his shrine visit online, but instead of getting likes, his photos prompted outrage. Bieber, like Prime Minister Shinzo Abe before him, had — albeit inadvertently — dropped by the Yasukuni Shrine, where the spirits of millions of war dead are enshrined, including those of war criminals. Sensing a PR disaster, Bieber quickly apologized with the classic nonapology apology: "To anyone I have offended I am extremely sorry." He finished by declaring: "I love you China and I love you Japan."
"Japan might learn something from his (Bieber's) readiness to apologize," writes Jonathan Clements in "Modern Japan: All That Matters." Clements uses the Bieber vignette to espouse on a few points about the "heavily politicized shrine," which frequently threatens Japan's diplomatic ties with Korea and China.
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