Quote Originally Posted by Loyalist
The Yasukuni Shrine honors those who died for thier country, and the Japanese should worship them. Not all enshrined their are war criminals. The term "war criminal" should not exist, It should just be "criminal". The united States killed many japanese civilian (672,000).
When you don't know the meaning of a particular term like "ar crime" or "war criminal", you should look it up in an online dictionary, or better an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. It may surprise you, but there are laws regulating war and some actions are prohibited. Mass murder or genocide of civilians is one of them. The Japanese committed many war crimes, the most famous of which is the Nanking Massacre.

FYI, there are 14 class-A war criminals and a few thousands class-B and class-C enshrined in Yasukuni Jinja. The shrine was built in 1869, and is dedicated to war deads since then. However, the war criminals (not ordinary soldiers but the people who commanded the massacres, rapes or torture of civilians) were only added to the Shrine in 1978. The controversy only started at that time. Before that nobody complained that the Japanese, even politicians, paid homage to war deads. The problem is that Prime Minister Koizumi has been visiting Yasukuni just since 1978, and now as PM it appears as if he is worshippig war criminals equivalent to Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, etc. (if you don't know them, check Wikipedia or Google).