Tokyo war shrine priest to quit for criticising Emperor

Senior Japanese politicians including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have made appearances at the shrine but Emperor Akihito has never visited since his coronation in 1989, while his father Hirohito did not return to Yasukuni after war criminals were enshrined there in the mid-1970s.
In its latest issue, the Shukan Post weekly magazine quoted chief priest Kunio Kohori, 68, as saying at a closed-door meeting in June that "the emperor is trying to destroy Yasukuni Shrine".
The more the emperor goes on memorial trips for the war dead, the more the Yasukuni Shrine's position declines, he reportedly added.