Abstract
This article examines the relative importance of international versus domestic considerations in order to predict how Japanese politicians will behave with regards to the Yasukuni Shrine. Whenever high-ranking politicians visit the shrine, there are substantial costs in Japan’s relationship with South Korea and China. Yet, some Japanese politicians continue to visit the shrine. To better understand why they visit, this study not only looks at cases in which politicians were unresponsive to anticipated international costs (and hence visited the Yasukuni Shrine), but also moments when politicians were responsive and changed their behavior accordingly (and thus did not visit Yasukuni Shrine). This study concludes that domestic political considerations, specifically politicians’ ties to conservative groups that support shrine visits, their attachment of a positive ideological meaning to a shrine visit, and whether they have the popularity to withstand a domestic backlash to a shrine visit are the most important factors that facilitate the occasional visit, while the known diplomatic consequences of visits usually constrain politicians from visiting.
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