Volume 5 | Issue 4 | Article ID 2401 | Apr 02, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

Yasukuni Shrine at the Heart of Japan's National Debate: History, Memory, Denial

Takahashi Tetsuya

Yasukuni Shrine at the Heart of Japan’s Expedition of 1874, up to the of National Debate: 1941-45. History, Memory, Denial

Takahashi Tetsuya

Tomita Tomohiko, former grand steward of the Japanese imperial household, recorded in his diaries (1) that Emperor ceased visiting the Yasukuni shrine in when it decided to honour certain men sentenced to death by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (2). Seven of the 14 class A criminals condemned, including the prime minister, former general Tojo Hideki, were executed; the others died in prison.

The Yasukuni shrine was built in 1869 on the sacred order of the Emperor , to glorify the deeds of soldiers who fell during the overthrow of the shogunate Yasukuni Shrine and the restoration that inaugurated the new imperial During Japan's colonial period the emperor was state of the the sovereign Meiji period (3). Subsequently this shrine and religious power, and commanded its honoured all the armies. The soldiers and auxiliaries from the formerpopulations of Japan and its colonies were all Japanese armed regarded as forces -- 2,460,000 "heroic souls" -- killed in his servants, with a moral duty "to dedicate foreign wars themselves to from modern Japan's first overseas deployment, the emperor and the state in times of national the crisis, with

1 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF no regard for their own lives." Soldiers who died during these wars, which were considered holy, were an example to the nation and it was the responsibility of the Yasukuni shrine to raise military morale and foster the spiritual mobilisation of the nation for war.

At the end of the Second World War, the shrine, seen as a "symbol of ", a "shrine to war" and even a Prime Minister Koizumi "shrine to invasion", was neutralised. In visiting Yasukuni Shrine December 1945, under the issued by the A number of politicians and newspapers occupying allied suggested that the forces, it was removed from state control. In class A war criminals might be excluded from accordance with the shrine. the separation of politics and religion,Citing Tomita's journals, they suggested that "if introduced under the even 1946 Japanese constitution, it wasEmperor Hirohito refused to visit . . . because administered as a private [the shrine] religious association, like Christian churches honoured these war criminals, then prime and Buddhist minister Koizumi temples. This remains the situation today. should also stop." That suggestion covered up many aspects of During his term as prime minister, from 2001 the story. to 2006, Koizumi Junichiro paid annual visits, the last on `Profound remorse' 15 August, the day that Japan commemorates as the end of The Yasukuni shrine and the official visits clearly represent the second a denial of Japanese responsibility for the war. world war -- celebrated by as a day of To be fair, victory, and by no postwar prime minister who went there has South as a day of liberation from colonial openly denied domination. that responsibility. Speaking on behalf of the These visits became the most sensitivegovernment, diplomatic issue Koizumi reaffirmed the validity of a 1995 between Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul. Koizumi declaration by then rejected protests Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, expressing and presented himself as a politician defending "sincere regret Japan's and profound remorse for the enormous position against foreign pressure. suffering and damage

2 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF that [Japan] inflicted upon its neighbours The shrine honours all Japanese soldiers who during the have fallen in all-too-recent past, through colonialcombat since the 1874 Taiwan Expedition and domination, invasions the subsequent and misguided policies." repressions first of Taiwanese of Chinese origin and then of This did not prevent officials at the shrine from native peoples [of Hokkaido and Okinawa] who insisting resisted Japanese that these wars had been conducted "for the occupation. Japan attacked Korea in 1876 and defence and put down a survival" of Japan, in an attempt to free Asia series of rebellions. Japanese soldiers and all from western those who died in colonial domination, and from asserting that combat during this period are recognised as the "falsely divinities at the accused" war criminals, from classes B and C, shrine. Their glorification, beside the class A as well as A, war criminals, had been unjustly categorised as such by the represents a continued denial of colonial winning side. aggression.

Far-right revisionists are not the only problem. If the presence of class A war criminals at the Although heart of this progressive intellectuals recognise the communal commemoration were the only responsibility of problem, their class A war criminals, they view the Meiji removal would end the controversy. This period as a solution will not remarkable success that allowed Japan to satisfy. The concept of class A allowed Japan's match western leaders to be powers. In their view, only after the 1920s did judged for alleged crimes committed from the Japan turn bad: until the first Sino-Japanese war of incident of 1931 (4), even its preparation in 1894-95, and the 1928, to the end Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, the Japanese of the Pacific war in 1945. In the process, army was Japan's earlier wholesome. The turning point was the history of colonial aggression against Asia, aggression against including Korea China after 1931. and Taiwan, has been overlooked. It is fair to add that among Media coverage of the Tomita journals the allied countries that passed judgment on emphasised that the Japan, the United emperor had stopped visiting the shrine States, Britain, the Netherlands and because he were all disapproved of its glorification of class A war themselves colonial powers and had neither the criminals. desire nor the The effect was to heap all responsibility on to ability to judge Japanese responsibility for the criminals colonial and to exonerate the emperor; that had also oppression. happened at the

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Tokyo Tribunal, when Hirohito was not called countries through colonialism, constitutes an to account, unacceptable although he held supreme power and was the disgrace." commander in chief of the armed forces. The US, afraid of Japan falling to communism, kept him in place as a "symbol of Japan and the unity of the people" (5). His responsibility was again denied during the controversy over visits to the shrine.

The denials don't stop there. The shrine abuses the memory of the combatants by transforming their miserable deaths into sublime acts of heroism. This falsification ignores some 50,000 soldiers from colonised countries who Taiwan aboriginal protesters died in combat, at Yasukuni Shrine, 2005 including 20,000 Koreans and almost as many Taiwanese. As So far the shrine's priests have refused to give part of its policy of empire building (ora positive assimilation), response, insisting: "They were Japanese when Japan required Koreans and Taiwanese to they died, so "serve and die for they can't stop being Japanese now they are the emperor and the state." Many were forcibly dead." (6) mobilised. Many supposed volunteers were actually trying There is also the issue of civilians killed during to escape the battle ethnic segregation and they did not embrace for Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Okinawa, an Shintoism. independent kingdom and part of the Ryukyu islands that An `unacceptable disgrace' stretch between Japan and Taiwan, was annexed by Japan in In 1978, for the first time, the descendants of a 1879, during the dead first period of colonisation. In the last days of Taiwanese requested the removal of his name the Pacific from the shrine. War, the Japanese army involved non- A subsequent request by Korean families led to combatant civilians in legal the name of a supposed "unity between people proceedings. The commemoration of the dead, and army." the families About 100,000 died in the battle for Okinawa; claimed, "at the heart of this symbol of an they were shot aggressor's as spies or killed themselves in collective militarism, alongside aggressors who invaded suicides incited by and occupied our the soldiers. By commemorating many of them,

4 5 | 4 | 0 APJ | JF the shrine renounces war and turned the army's victims into its collaborators. refers openly to an army of self-defence. The Out of the ban on the use 2,460,000 dead commemorated, two million of armed force would end, in order "to preserve died in the Pacific world peace." war, but only 40% of them in combat. Many The current prime minister, Abe Shinzo, has died of hunger -- clearly expressed his most of the soldiers sent to New Guinea, for desire to pursue this constitutional change example, died during his term after exhausting their food supplies, lost in the of office. depths of the jungle, their bodies left to rot where they fell. When Japan sent its defence forces to Iraq in 2004, there was An attempt has been made to use Tomita's debate among the soldiers: should any of their diaries to end deaths be official visits to the shrine. In the longer term commemorated at the shrine? they may ______have the opposite effect. Some influential ______politicians, most prominently the foreign minister, Aso Taro, Tetsuya Takahashi is a professor of philosophy have called for at the University the renationalisation of the shrine and the of Tokyo and author of the best-selling book resumption of The Yasukuni Shrine imperial visits. The ruling Liberal Democratic issue (Tokyo, 2005). This article is taken from a party (LDP) lecture delivered introduced a parliamentary bill for state at the University Paris-VIII. patronage of the shrine in 1968 and 1970-73. The opposition This is a slightly edited version of an article defeated them at that appeared in Le the time, pointing out the risk of a return to Monde Diplomatique April 2007. Published at militarism. Japan Focus on April 6, 2007. But 30 years later influential LPD politicians argue: "There is Translated by Donald Hounam only one way to obtain a state order for the removal of the (1) The existence of these diaries was revealed class A war criminals, to placate China and by the Tokyo , and newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun. finally to secure the resumption of prime ministerial and, (2) In 1945 the allies set up three categories of above all, imperial visits; and that is towar crime: nationalise the class A, crimes against peace; class B, Yasukuni shrine." conventional war crimes; and class C, crimes against humanity. This relates to the proposal for a new constitution that (3) After the that overthrew the revises the current article nine, whichshogunate

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(military dictatorship), imperial government 1946. was fully restored in January 1868, marking the(6) 1978 declaration by the second priest in beginning of the Meiji charge of the period, which lasted until 1912. Yasukuni shrine.

(4) In September 1931 Japan falsely accused Chinese dissidents of blowing up a section of railway as For a more extended statement by Takahashi, an excuse see for the annexation of Manchuria. The National Politics of the Yasukuni (5) Article 1 of the Constitution of November Shrine

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