The Yasukuni Shrine and its Meaning for Nikkei Today

By Ryan Masaaki Yokota

Recently protests against Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in Asia, especially in China and Korea, have reached a fever pitch, calling attention to longstanding sentiments that the Japanese government has failed to fully acknowledge their wartime responsibilities for crimes committed during World War II. Of particular ire to these protesters have been the continuing visits by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto shrine wherein a number of “class-A” criminals from the wartime period were, along with other convicted wartime criminals, enshrined as veritable kami, or “spirits,” of the nation of Japan. Often missing from these news reports, however, has been an acknowledgement that the problems with the shrine visits by Prime Minister Koizumi, aside from being unconstitutional in their violation of constitutional separations between religion and state, more importantly reflect a one-sided view of history inconsistent with international norms that have condemned Japanese wartime militarism.

This failure to address Japanese wartime responsibility has not just occurred within Japanese textbooks, but is even actualized on the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine, in the Yushukan, a historical museum on the shrine grounds, which serves as the historical adjunct of the shrine. There, the Yushukan standing exhibit states among other questionable assertions, that the Treaty of Shimonoseki liberated Korea, when in fact it subjugated Korea under Japanese control; that Japan liberated Manchuria from Chinese control, when in fact it set up a puppet state; and that in many ways Japan was a victim of history. The patronizing tone of the exhibit towards the former Japanese colonies mirrors the racism of the wartime period in its attempts to cover up the exploitative nature of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and nowhere within this museum are the voices and perspectives of the colonized people heard in their complexity. And of course, the Yushukan fails to mention such travesties and horrors as the “comfort women,” the biological experimentation of Unit 731, the Bataan death march, or any of a range of other atrocities that occurred under Japanese colonialism. In fact the overall impact of the museum glorifies the militaristic spirit of Bushido that buttressed Japanese militarism (and even has an actual Zero fighter on display in the museum), and ends up by positioning the Japanese as victims of the war, a perspective that continues to exist today in the emphasis on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings without equal consideration being given to Japanese atrocities.

While historical overviews of Japanese wartime guilt must always balance the reality of previous public apologies by the Japanese government for the war period, and recognize that international criticisms of Japan must always be understood as tools that can be used for leveraging power on other political issues, part of the problem with the issue of Japanese responsibility for the wartime period cannot be understood without understanding the complex relationship of Japan to the United States in the post-war period. In many ways the United States, in propping up Japan as its main ally and outpost in Asian regional affairs, consciously shielded Japan from having to acknowledge much of its wartime guilt vis-à-vis other Asian nations, considering this as potentially undermining Japan’s position in Asia, which the U.S. deemed as critical with the onset of the Cold War.

Today, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the changes in regional economic trading blocs, and the ascendancy of state-capitalism in China, Japan has found itself increasingly under social and economic pressure to reassess its relationship with its former colonies. Additionally, with the organization of citizen groups by those most affected by Japanese colonization, such as the “comfort women” or other labor groups exploited by the Japanese expansionist forces, these issues have also been pushed from the grassroots up. It has been under this context that the Yasukuni Shrine controversy has become so pronounced in recent years.

Recognizing that the war crimes tribunals were exemplary of “victor’s justice” should not obscure the fact that much of what occurred under Japanese imperialism was loathsome and reprehensible, consisting of a number of crimes against humanity that are indisputable by even the most stringent reactionaries. Ultimately, the Yasukuni Shrine is odious, not just in terms of the fact that war criminals are enshrined there, but also because of buildings like the Yushukan, which describe a viewpoint of history that attempts to bury the fascistic nature of the Japanese wartime government, a government which stood in marked contrast to the ideals of democracy and freedom that currently constitute the international norm. The viewpoints expressed at the Yushukan are an embarrassment to those honestly seeking to develop linkages between Japan and other Asian countries, and demonstrate a backward and reactionary element in Japan that is unwilling to recognize the slightest possibility of wartime wrongdoing, even in the face of the evidence. Like Holocaust deniers in Germany, such people exist in a world of illusions that are unable to see both the victimizing nature of Japan in the wartime process as concurrent with its victimization in the nuclear bombings. In the current post-Cold War era, conscious people who support such issues as democracy and historical accuracy must recognize that the Yasukuni Shrine is far from harmless in its apologetic depiction of Japanese imperialism, and when a head of state in official capacity lends his support to such a perspective, justifiably deserves criticism from those abroad.

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