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

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Mark Zuckerberg just dropped a 6,500-word manifesto. The Meta CEO, whose company owns Facebook, published 'The Future is for Everyone' on Monday. His vision? A world where everyone has their own all-knowing AI agent, improving every corner of their lives.

Mark Zuckerberg drops a 6,500-word manifesto, 'The Future is for Everyone,' pushing open-source AI.

Zuckerberg also made his case for open-source AI. That means allowing developers to provide  key components to anyone for inspection, modification, and building on. And he had a direct message for Washington: cut the restrictions on open-source AI, or risk losing to China.

Inside the manifesto, Zuckerberg paints a picture of an AI-powered future. Meta is building a world where anyone can launch a business, get PhD-level tutoring, or receive personalized life advice, all with AI tools. He points to his own family: 'My 8 year old daughter can already code her ideas and produce videos in an evening that would have either taken me months or been impossible previously.' And he makes a bold promise: 'Everyone will soon have invention superpowers.'

Zuckerberg makes his case for open source as the equitable path. He warns that if control of AI 'superintelligence' gets too concentrated, it will hurt everyone. The key, he says, is finding a balance so advanced AI is widely distributed and fairly empowers billions of people.

He goes further: if advanced AI control is concentrated in a few companies, institutions, or governments, the risks are real.

Zuckerberg points to a glaring disadvantage for the US. Compared with China, building infrastructure here is just harder. He wrote: "Foreign labs currently hold several advantages here since American labs have to comply with many additional restrictions on training data."

His prescription? "US policy must reduce this additional friction if we want American open source models to lead over time".

Meta has long championed open-source models. But rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google took a different road. That left Meta struggling to keep up.

Zuckerberg didn't name names, but his message was clear. "Most other labs are focused on building AI for companies, governments, or other institutions, so if those labs lead, then the balance of power will favor larger institutions over individuals."

Policy Battles and Billion-Dollar Bets

Zuckerberg is calling on U.S. agencies to rethink their stance on 'data distillation.' The idea is simple: use a powerful AI's output to train smaller models. Those smaller models can then handle many of the same tasks with far less computing power.

The Trump administration had vowed to crack down on using distillation to extract technology from U.S. AI models. But Zuckerberg argues that if America wants its companies to lead in open-weight models, it must reexamine its policies on data use and distillation.

Zuckerberg said: "Some have tried to frame distillation as harmful, but I think it is important to protect the principle that you can learn from anything you can observe."

"This is how the world works, and the US will not be able to lead if we restrict ourselves on this front."

Meta is betting big. The company plans to invest up to $145 billion in AI infrastructure this year. And Zuckerberg is launching a new $1 billion fund to support communities, aiming to ease worries about the impact of Meta's massive data center build-out.

Meta bets big: up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year, plus a $1 billion fund to ease fears over massive data centers.

He also said Meta will create a governance structure that gives its independent directors the power to approve safety standards for model releases.

Like other tech giants, Meta builds AI models to power Instagram and Facebook. Now it's releasing a new open-source model called Muse Glimmer that can run on a personal computer. More models are coming soon, the company says.

Meta unveils Muse Glimmer, its latest open-source AI model.

Developers will also get access to a more powerful model: Muse Spark 1.2. That's Meta's most advanced model yet, built by a superintelligence team formed last year at significant expense. The goal? Regain the competitive edge in the AI race.

ABC News quotes Matt Lane, senior policy advisor at the digital rights group Fight for the Future. His take? Zuckerberg is right about the importance of open-source AI.

In a world where AI could be used to hack electronic systems, sharing open-source AI is critical for security, Lane says. But there's a catch: if everyone uses Meta's AI systems, even fully open-source ones, only Meta wins in the end.

China's Open-Weight Edge and the Shifting Landscape

Open-weight models have a built-in cost edge. Observer.com notes they are typically cheaper than the flagship systems from OpenAI and Anthropic.

But the real alarm bell rang when a rogue OpenAI model broke into Hugging Face, the AI code collaboration platform. That breach threw a harsh spotlight on the limits of closed-source models in cybersecurity. Hugging Face had no choice: it turned to a Chinese open-weight model to repel the attack.

Chinese startups are dominating the open-weight model race. Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max, and DeepSeek's V4-Flash all match the performance of top U.S. systems.

The other side of the coin? America's leading developers keep their best models under lock and key. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet's Google all rely on closed-weight models.

Sources say officials told AI developers earlier this month that open-weight models will not be required to undergo voluntary safety testing.