Japan’s War Dead and Yasukuni Shrine

Each summer, in the run-up to the August 15 anniversary of the end of World War II, the Japanese media shine their spotlight squarely on the “Yasukuni issue.” Put simply, the controversy focuses on whether the prime minister, as official representative of the Japanese nation, should visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine to pay homage to the war dead, despite the fact that class A war criminals are enshrined there. Such visits invariably provoke a sharp response from the Chinese and South Koreans, who complain that they serve to glorify Japan’s past aggression. Among the Japanese, the reasons for supporting or opposing these visits vary even among those on the same side of the issue, but the positions can be summed up briefly as follows.

Those who support the prime minister’s visits argue that it is perfectly natural for a nation to pay homage to those who sacrificed their lives for their country. It is also natural, they insist, that the method of paying homage should vary according to the history, culture, and traditions of each country. This is an internal affair, say the supporters, and not something in which other countries should interfere. Opponents maintain that Japan’s leaders should consider the feelings of people in other countries and avoid actions that offend our neighbors and undermine good relations.

As these positions naturally depend to some degree on one’s perception of Japan’s role in World War II, the issue has inevitably widened into a clash between opposing historical interpretations. In this sense, the Yasukuni problem was never a purely domestic issue. That said, the controversy was a fairly low-key affair until 1985, when then Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro publicly announced that he was making an “official visit” (kôshiki sanpai) to the shrine on August 15, provoking an angry reaction from Beijing. For four decades previously, Japanese prime ministers had visited the shrine without triggering a storm of criticism either in Japan or overseas. It was Nakasone’s “official visit” that created the “Yasukuni problem” as we know it. However, Nakasone subsequently refrained from visiting the shrine in deference to Beijing. Over the next 15 years, there were two visits by Japanese prime ministers, one by Miyazawa Kiichi in 1992, and the other by Hashimoto Ryûtarô in 1996. But neither of these took the form of a kôshiki sanpai, and neither coincided with the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II.

Koizumi Jun’ichirô, however, declared his intention of visiting Yasukuni as prime minister on August 15 even before he was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party in April 2001. That summer, he more or less fulfilled his pledge, though he adjusted the date slightly, making his visit on August 13. In subsequent years he continued this practice, each time provoking an angry response from China and South Korea; indeed, the Chinese eventually declared that they would not agree to a summit meeting as long as Koizumi continued his visits. This past summer, with Japan-China relations at a low ebb, Koizumi took the occasion of his final year in office to fulfill his initial pledge to visit Yasukuni on August 15, and the controversy flared up once again.

Japan Echo has featured articles on the Yasukuni issue several times in the past, offering pieces that argue each side of the debate together with those that endeavor to explain the unique history and character of this shrine.⁽¹⁾ Yasukuni is truly a unique institution, and for this reason it is not always well understood in other countries. For example, although it was established as a memorial to honor those fallen in battle, it is not a cemetery or tomb along the lines of Arlington National Cemetery in the United States or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in France and elsewhere. Japanese Buddhist practice, followed by the vast majority of Japanese, calls for the ashes of the dead to be interred in marked graves, and the war dead are no exception to this; when a soldier fell in battle, the remains, providing they could be located, were sent to his family, who would bury them in the family grave that they visited periodically. In addition, a wooden tablet commemorating the dead person is placed on the altar for departed spirits that families traditionally keep in their homes; these altars are considered Buddhist, but the tablets have their roots in Chinese Confucianism. Neither graves nor markers can be found at Yasukuni Shrine, but the Shintô belief is that the spirits of the war dead congregate there.

The Japanese see nothing incongruous about paying respects alternately at the graveyard of the neighborhood Buddhist temple, the household altar, and a Shintô shrine like Yasukuni. Their attitudes toward the dead are tied to traditional beliefs that predate the spread of Buddhism or Confucianism in Japan and which remain engrained in the Japanese psyche. According to these beliefs, the spirit of the deceased initially lingers near its earthly home but eventually migrates to a nearby hill or mountain, that is, to a natural site that is regarded as sacred. There, it eventually becomes one with the collective ancestral spirit. Throughout Japan one finds mountains where, even today, the spirits of the dead are believed to gather–a famous example being Mount Osore in Aomori Prefecture.

In the articles featured in this section, Asô Tarô and Watanabe Shôichi discuss these distinctively Japanese religious attitudes, while Yosano Kaoru suggests that such beliefs could be satisfied without offending neighboring countries by holding memorial services at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery, where the unclaimed remains of fallen soldiers are interred. It is interesting to note, meanwhile, that all the national newspapers except the conservative Sankei Shimbun were critical of Koizumi’s action. At the same time, public opinion polls conducted by these newspapers showed supporters of the Yasukuni visits outnumbering opponents by a significant margin: 49% to 37% in the Asahi Shimbun poll and 53% to 39% in the Yomiuri Shimbun survey. (Takashina Shûji, Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo)

(1) See vol. 28, no. 6 (December 2001); vol. 30, no. 3 (June 2003); and vol. 31, no. 6 (December 2004).

© 2006 Japan Echo Inc.