Japan enacts law to create holiday after Emperor Hirohito

Japan's Parliament yesterday enacted a law to create a national holiday honouring wartime Emperor Hirohito.

Critics say the move will inappropriately glorify the nation's militaristic past and could stoke tensions with Japan's neighbours.

On a 202-14 vote, the upper house approved the Bill that would make Hirohito's birthday on April 29 a national holiday called Showa Day, an upper house official said speaking on condition of anonymity.

The legislation was passed by the more powerful lower house last month, when violent anti-Japan protests erupted in several Chinese cities over Tokyo's wartime past and over Japan's push for a permanent UN Security Council seat.

Many people in Asia, especially Chinese and Koreans, still harbour bitter memories over Japan's brutal wartime invasion and occupation of Asia, and say Japan has not shown enough remorse.

The demonstrations were the latest and most intense flareup over Japan's alleged reluctance to face up to its past militarism.

Tsutomu Takebe, secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, told reporters that he did not expect "specific effects" on relations with both China and South Korea by yesterday's enactment of the Showa Day.

"I think [China and South Korea] can understand since the legislation was decided by the legislature," Takebe said.

April 29 is already a holiday, celebrated as Greenery Day. With the change, the May 4 People's Day holiday will be renamed Greenery Day. Under the law, the name changes will be enacted in 2007.

A similar bill was twice scrapped under political pressure and criticism that it was intended to soften the image of an emperor in whose name soldiers invaded much of Asia in the Second World War.

Under the law, Showa Day is intended as a time for thoughts about the nation's future but also for reflection on the turbulent days of Hirohito's reign, which ran from 1926 until his death in 1989.

The bill was sponsored by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's conservative party and its coalition partner, New Komeito.