BEIJING, Jan. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Junichiro Koizumi paid a fourth visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine on New Year's Day in his capacity as Japan's prime minister. It was a perfidious act yet again performed by Koizumi regardless of opposition in Japan and from other Asian countries, and has undermined the political basis for Sino-Japanese ties.

    The Yasukuni Shrine honors Class-A war criminals whose hands were stained with the blood of the people of China and other Asian countries.

    Koizumi's repeated visits to the shrine ran counter to the commitment made by the Japanese government and himself to reflect on Japan's war past and will surely provoke fierce opposition and indignation of the people of China and other Asian countries.

    The Yasukuni Shrine issue embodies the very essence of the question of whether the Japanese government and its leaders can adopt an acceptable attitude towards Japan's history of aggression.

    The people of China and other Asian countries who were victimized by Japan's invasive wars have long urged Japanese leaders to take a correct approach to history and not to visit the shrine, which might otherwise been seen as attempts to honor the spirit of the militarists.

    Koizumi, however, has not only turned a deaf ear to the call, but challenged it once and again, saying that he would visit the shrine every year. This has revealed the fact that the so-called reflection on history as promised by Koizumi and the Japanese government is anything but genuine, and is in contradiction to Koizumi's rhetoric of "reflection from the bottom of the heart."

    What has happened over the past 30 years since the normalization of Sino-Japanese ties shows a healthy development of bilateral relations and a mutual benefit of the two peoples presuppose a correct understanding of the issue of history, while the safeguarding of peace and stability in Asia-Pacific region also requires a correct approach to the issue of history.

    Many Japanese analysts have pointed out that Japan must make an honest acknowledgment of history to the people of other Asian nations if it is to shed the shadow of its war history.

    "Taking history as a mirror and facing the future" is the only right attitude towards history. If Japanese leaders persist in their wrongdoing over the Yasukuni Shrine issue, they are sure to lose their credibility among the people of China, Asia and even the whole world and will eventually harm Japan's own interests.

    Koizumi and other Japanese leaders ought to heed the just calls of the people of China and other Asian countries and eliminate, by deeds, the pernicious influence of the shrine visit. Enditem