A Japanese district court on Wednesday ruled that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi‘s visits to a controversial war shrine violates the constitution.
The decision was handed down in a suit filed by 211 plaintiffs in the Kyushu region in west Japan who claimed the premier’s visitto the Yasukuni Shrine on August 13 of 2001 violates the constitutional separation of state and religion.
In the first ruling of its kind on Koizumi’s visits to the Shinto shrine, the Fukuoka District Court said the visit falls under religious activity that the state is banned from participating in under the Constitution.
