The Christian Science Monitor has a story on Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s latest visit to the Yasukuni shrine — the fifth this week:

In fact, the museum appears to be regularizing an extremist narrative about Japan’s 20th-century military behavior and role in Asia. No mention is made of Japanese soldiers subjugating Asia and its populations. Rather, the new history portrays Japan as both the martyr and savior of Asia, the one country willing to drive “the foreign barbarians,” as one panel describes them, from the Orient.

The unapologetic nationalism, emperor worship, and military glorification offer graphic clues about why Asians remain concerned about “the lessons learned” by Japan after the war, to borrow the phrase used often in post-Nazi Germany.

This week, after Koizumi visited the shrine, thousands of Japanese paid $10 to visit Yushukan, with its 20 rooms, high-tech displays, and two theaters. They saw and heard that Japan occupied China and Korea in order to liberate and protect Asia from Russian Bolshevism and European colonialism. They were told the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was “forced” by “a plot” by President Roosevelt. Japanese-led massacres, Korean comfort women, Chinese sex slaves, or tortured POWs are not mentioned. There are only Japanese martyr heroes dying in defense of Japan.

What kind of game is Koizumi playing? This reminds me of commentary concerning GWB’s recent political grandstanding, his recent display of private concerns which trump national interests. The Japanese are far less isolated than the Germans post WWI, but I can’t help wondering if this revisionism is a potential prelude to similar efforts to reduce the aftermath of defeat; as the article at CSM states in describing the museum,

In one set of panels about the European war, Adolf Hitler was merely “trying to reclaim the territory lost in World War 1.” No mention is made of other contexts, such as the murder of 6 million Jews.

This is not only a justification of Hitler’s activities; it is an effort to justify post-defeat revisionism made a reality. It is also a claim that territorial concerns may justify a new pursuit of war for the loser of a previous war. This puts a whole new spin on the Sea of Conflict. China, of course, is furious with Koizumi. Koizumi seems to welcome that fury.

What game is Koizumi playing?