Dressed to the nines and trailing media helicopters, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at last paid a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It was not his first visit there but it was the first by a sitting prime minister since 2006. The shrine, a monument to Japan’s fallen soldiers, is considered a symbol of Japanese wartime aggression by China and South Korea. Abe has repeatedly spoken of his desire to pay his respects at the shrine while in office, and Japan’s most conservative and hawkish prime minister in years finally got his wish today, only days after his government announced hefty upgrades to the country’s armed forces.