This public display of honoring the dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals, had an unmistakable purpose for Japanese society: sanitizing history to prepare society for greater crimes in the future. Junichiro KoizumiKoizumi presented the visit as a simple act of respect for Japan's war dead, pledging that Japan would “never go to war again.” Koizumi had repeatedly signaled a desire to circumvent the “pacifist clause” in Japan's postwar constitution restricting the military, and had been embroiled in a controversy over a school textbook that covered up Japan’s war crimes. A large portion of the Japanese public disapproved, along with the Buddhist Soka Gakkai organization (persecuted during the 1930s), the Komeito Party (part of the ruling coalition), and the opposition Democratic Party. China summoned Japan’s ambassador and issued a formal protest, stating the essence of the issue is “whether the Japanese side can sincerely repent that aggressive period of history.”