Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today visited the controversial Yasukuni War Memorial Shrine, the first visit by a serving prime minister in more than seven years.  Yasukuni venerates all of Japan’s war dead including Class-A Workd War II war criminals.

The visit was supposedly unannounced, and yet the television news crews knew to be there ahead of time to catch PM Abe hopping out of a limo in his morning suit and broadcast it live across Japan.

“I hope for an opportunity to explain to China and South Korea that strengthening ties would be in the national interest,” Abe told reporters afterward.

The visit to the Shinto Shrine in the heart of Tokyo comes exactly one year after Abe took office.  It’s likely to further inflame already tense relations with neighboring China and South Korea, which see Yasukuni as celebrating Imperial Japan’s wartime aggression. 

Abe's visit comes as Japan and China remain locked in a bitter dispute over East China Sea islands that both claim.  South Korea and Japan also are involved in a territorial row, this time over an island midway between the two over which both say they have sovereignty.