Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi expressed disappointment over an erroneous report by Kyodo News that said Akiko Ikuina, parliamentary vice foreign minister, had visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine.
The report “caused confusion and is extremely regrettable,” the top government spokesperson said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Hayashi made the comment after the Japanese news agency said the previous day it mistakenly reported that Ikuina, also a member of the House of Councilors, visited the Shinto shrine on Aug. 15, 2022, which marked the 77th anniversary of the end of World War Il.
The news coverage in question is believed to have prompted the South Korean delegation to skip a memorial service for all gold miners including Koreans on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture on Sunday.
The shrine honors Class-A war criminals along with the war dead and is seen as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism by its neighboring countries.
According to Kyodo, it reviewed the news gathering process that led to the erroneous story after Ikuina on Sunday denied ever going to the shrine after becoming an Upper House lawmaker.
Then it found that the story was written on unconfirmed information that she entered the shrine.
Kyodo concluded that a person who had been thought to be Ikuina was not actually her, as several her colleagues in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who were actually at the shrine said they did not see Ikuina at the time.
