Building a new national memorial for the nation's war dead would not keep prime ministers from visiting Yasukuni Shrine, the government's top spokesman said Tuesday.
During a summit in Seoul the previous day, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun said he and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi agreed that Tokyo would "consider" building a new, secular war memorial in view of the controversies caused by Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni, which served as a spiritual pillar for Japanese militarism during the 1930s and 1940s.
But such a facility would not necessarily mean a permanent end to future prime ministers going to Yasukuni, because such visits are "private" in the first place, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda argued.