Ghost Worship by Proxy: LDP Top Brass Stand In for Takaichi at Yasukuni

Deep Throat

Japan announced its unconditional surrender 81 years ago. Yet to this day, its top officials are still "worshipping ghosts" as a pack. On 15 August, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stopped short of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in person. She instead made a "tamagushi" offering at her own expense in her capacity as president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). That same day, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi went to the shrine himself, joined for the first time by a collective of senior LDP executives. The spectacle drew international attention.

Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visits the Yasukuni Shrine in person. Photo: AP

According to Kyodo News, Takaichi paid the "tamagushi" ritual offering fee out of her own pocket today as LDP president. She did not visit in person. Since the LDP returned to power, a prime minister's "tamagushi" offering on 15 August, made in the capacity of party president, has become an unbroken "tradition" for 14 consecutive years.

The Defense Minister and the "Four-Horse Carriage"

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni in person on the morning of the surrender anniversary. He is the first sitting defense minister to worship there on 15 August in two years, since Minoru Kihara did so in 2024. The Nikkei noted that Koizumi has visited the shrine many times before, including as environment minister and as minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

More striking still, LDP Secretary-General Shunichi Suzuki, General Council Chairperson Haruko Arimura and Election Strategy Committee Chairman Yasutoshi Nishimura visited the shrine together. It was the first collective pilgrimage by the party's top leadership. The original plan was reportedly for the LDP's entire "four-horse carriage" to worship as one: the secretary-general, the General Council chairperson, the Policy Research Council chairman and the election strategy chief. But Policy Research Council Chairman Takayuki Kobayashi was absent. His constituency in Chiba Prefecture had been hit by rare torrential rain, forcing him to hurry home to handle the disaster.

Takaichi's Stand-Ins

Analysts point out that the LDP's "leadership group visit" was anything but a spontaneous act by a few like-minded leaders. In reality, it was a scaled-down, cut-price version of a "Takaichi visit". The goal was “to deceive the heavens and cross the sea”: lull international attention while currying favor with far-right voters at home. The four who worshipped together were, in effect, Takaichi's own stand-ins. The move embodies the collective will of the LDP leadership under her rule. But it is also a provocation, a bid to manufacture a new precedent and test, step by step, how far the bottom line can be eroded.

The LDP's collective "ghost worship". Photo: AP

A Japan politics observer with Guancha.cn said the LDP is a "big tent" party. Its conservative right wing, with its near-obsessive devotion to Yasukuni worship, carries considerable weight. So whoever is elected LDP president, and whatever his personal view of history, he must make some gesture on 15 August. The point is to preserve party unity and appease the hardliners. For them, it is more a matter of political expediency.

For Takaichi, however, things are different. She has long been a vanguard of the "we should visit Yasukuni" chorus. During her two runs for the LDP presidency, she made "support for visits" a key personal selling point. She even vowed that "I will keep visiting even as prime minister". But what is the reality? As former Osaka governor Toru Hashimoto put it: "Anyone who uses their brain knows that a sitting Japanese prime minister simply cannot visit the shrine right now." Japanese netizens who once backed Takaichi are now pouring out grievances: "So much for 'I'll visit even as PM'. All lies, pure verbal fraud"; "Takaichi has really let us down". For Takaichi, the cunning heart is willing but it lacks the nerve is. Unable to visit, she can only settle for the next best thing: sending a "tamagushi" offering like everyone else, and calling it a day.

The Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined. Photo: AP

Swapping the Carriage for the Prime Minister

The secretary-general, the General Council chairperson, the Policy Research Council chairman and the election strategy chief are the "four-horse carriage" that actually keeps the LDP machine running. According to the Guancha.cn observer's analysis, the Takaichi government faces a bind. On one hand, constrained by the international situation, no one in the government dares to shoulder the grave consequences of a "sitting prime minister's visit". On the other, the government has broken its word time and again, and cannot give its diehard far-right supporters at home a proper account.

At present, centrist voters have turned sharply against the Takaichi government over issues such as amending the Imperial House Law. Its forced push for a consumption tax cut has deepened divisions within the LDP itself. If far-right voters were to abandon the government now, it would be adding frost to snow. A "tamagushi" offering alone could never satisfy the far right. Hence the leadership's new scheme: swap the "four-horse carriage" in for the "sitting prime minister", and demonstrate just how much they "value Yasukuni worship".

An LDP official told the Mainichi Shimbun on the 14th that, with Takaichi's absence a foregone conclusion: it would be good if this could show maximum consideration for the feelings of our conservative support base. Whether Japan's conservative voters swallow this trick is another matter. But the international community certainly will not be fooled. Eighty-one years on, Japan's right-wing forces keep rewriting history and building up armaments. The Defense Ministry is about to submit a budget request totaling some 8.9 trillion yen for fiscal 2027, yet another record high.

The Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined. Photo: AP

Beijing's Warning

In response, Senior Colonel Chen Xi, spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defense, said that 81 years ago, under the heavy blows of China and the world's anti-fascist forces, Japan announced its unconditional surrender. Japanese militarism once dragged all of Asia into an abyss of blood and fire. Atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre, the Bataan Death March and the Thai-Burma Death Railway brought untold catastrophe to the peoples of Asia and the world. The Japanese people themselves also suffered deeply.

Chen stressed that the truth of history must not be forgotten, and that justice and peace brook no desecration. "We urge the Japanese side to reflect deeply, confess and atone for its crimes, strictly abide by the post-war international order, and halt its dangerous march toward 're-militarization'. Straying back onto the wrong path will only invite a more painful defeat and a more thorough reckoning."

Deep Throat

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

The future belongs to artificial general intelligence (AGI). China and the United States are pursuing different strategies in the contest for global leadership.

But one US national security think tank wants to take the rivalry to an extreme. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has gone so far as to suggest that Washington consider extreme measures to stop China from achieving AGI first.

CNAS released “Superpowers and AGI” report late last month.

Jacob Stokes, one of the report's authors and a former White House official, called on the US to prepare itself. He listed possible extreme measures, from diplomacy and espionage to cyberattacks and coercive steps. Among them: military strikes on Chinese data centers.

Stokes, one of the authors of the report urged extreme steps, even strikes on Chinese data centers.

CNAS is headquartered in Washington and was founded in 2007. It has long advised the US government on defense, Indo-Pacific and China strategy. Its lean is hawkish.

Late last month, CNAS released a report titled “Superpowers and AGI”. The document reeks of gunpowder. It argues that the race for AGI, and the technology's potential emergence, could profoundly affect US-China competition. It could also heighten the risk of military conflict or catastrophe on multiple fronts.

The Containment Checklist

To that end, the report urges US policymakers to act on several fronts. First, ensure that American resources and technology do not aid China's AI development. Second, establish AI-focused diplomatic channels with allies and with China, so that the potential emergence of AGI is placed on the agenda. Third, develop a technically sophisticated method to track the inputs into AGI and the key performance thresholds of frontier AI systems.

The list goes on. Washington should conduct scenario exercises testing when and how the US should intervene to halt China's AGI development. It should prepare to reverse-engineer or steal the technology should China obtain AGI first. And it should limit and contain the reach of authoritarian digital infrastructure.

The most extreme proposal of all is military strikes. The South China Morning Post reported on 4 September that Stokes, deputy director of CNAS's Indo-Pacific Security Program, addressed an online event on Thursday.

His message was blunt. The US Department of Defense, the National Security Agency and other agencies should begin assessing what intelligence would be needed to justify such operations. That would pave the way for the "hard action" to follow.

The Cold War Playbook

Stokes served as a national security staffer under former US president Barack Obama. In the report he unabashedly lays out a menu of what he calls "diplomatic, espionage, cyber and kinetic measures." Among them are military strikes on the data centers that train and run China's AGI systems. He even touts preventive strikes before China develops AGI at all.

Stokes goes so far as to compare the undertaking to the way "in a past era, policymakers would learn about nuclear weapons." His declared method is to "work backwards from the science to the policy implications."

Citing assessments by research outfit Epoch AI, the report notes that the US currently leads China in advanced AI models by only "months." But it warns that China could pull off an "unexpected technological breakthrough" in fields such as robotics and "embodied AI."

Citing research institute Epoch AI data, the report sees China pulling off surprise breakthroughs.

Notably, Stokes also concedes a gap on the American side. The US government and its intelligence agencies have "not been organised for espionage to gather technological secrets for decades."

"The Height of Recklessness"

Stokes' extreme remarks have drawn questioning within the United States itself. William Hartung, a senior arms and defense budget expert at the Washington-based non-profit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), publicly slammed the report as "the height of recklessness."

Hartung warned that any strike on Chinese data centers would "risk starting a shooting war between two nuclear-armed powers". Such a war could bring tragic consequences for all concerned.

China has consistently maintained that AI should be people-centered and that intelligence should serve the good. Military applications must remain under human control. Beijing opposes turning technological issues into bloc confrontation or weaponry.

Make no mistake: technological competition is no casus belli. When individual American politicians and think-tank figures reach for threats of "military strikes" and "espionage" at every turn, they gravely violate the basic norms of international relations. They also expose a dangerous bid to politicize and militarize technology.