Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has decided not to visit the war-linked Yasukuni shrine, a site that has long been a source of diplomatic friction with Japan's neighbors, during its spring festival next week, sources familiar with the plan said Thursday.Ishiba will instead offer a "masakaki" ritual offering to the shrine, the sources said, as he did during its autumn festival when he and his entire Cabinet refrained from visiting.Yasukuni honors the souls of Japan's more than 2.4 million war dead, but the country's wartime leaders, convicted as war criminals by a post-World War II internation…READ FULL ARTICLE
