Yasukuni Shrine is a Japanese Shinto Shrine created for the war dead who served the Emperor of Japan during wars from 1867 until 1951. It was built in 1869 under the orders of Emperor Meiji. According to Shinto belief it houses the actual souls of the dead as Kami which are spirits or ‘holy powers’ that are venerated within the religion of Shinto.1 Furthermore within Shinto there is a belief that the process of enshrinement is permanent and therefore irreversible as a soul cannot be removed from the shine once placed there.2 are various controversies surrounding the Yasukuni Shrine, that I wanted to analyse to understand further the tradition of Shinto and how in this case it has been brought into debates concerning Japanese historical memory. I will analyse some of the key issues with the Yasunkuni Shrine, and why internationally there has been such a widespread reaction as shown by the vast amount of discourse on the shrine alone.
One of the most notable controversies is the issue of some of the war dead that have been enshrines at the Yasukuni Shrine, as some of these individuals have since been found guilty of war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.3 This has resulted in the shrine being viewed as nationalist, explaining the outrage when the shrine is visited by politicians. The controversial nature of the shrine is complex, as it has become an internationally recognised subject. For instance, China and South Korea who suffered war crimes under the Japanese have called the Yasukuni Shrine a demonstration of historical negationism and an unremorseful approach to their crimes during World War Two.4 The shrine was merely a domestic concern until the 1970’s when it “increasingly took on an international dimension” as issues such as citizens of South Korea and Taiwan objecting to the post-war enshrinement of their family members have arisen.5 In contrast many supporters of the Shrine have voiced that it is a Japanese affair and that the government and even Japanese citizens have a patriotic duty that should not be ignored to participate in the care of the military war dead.6
Criticisms of the shrine have highlights two key issues: firstly, the enshrinement of spirits of executed war criminals; and secondly the biased and patriotic narrative of the Second World War that is presented within the Yūshūkan war museum at the site of the Yasukuni Shrine.7) There is an interesting debate to be had here, about entitlement and whether it is “the right of any nation to commemorate and write its past as it sees fit”.8 As nations other than Japan have forged similar tradional narratives in order to commemorate those who died in the war. These narratives have been rendered into public memory and ensure they are not forgotten as regularly they are the entity of a national consensus that symbolises specific national virtues.9 But the issue with the Yakusuni narrative is that it is widely contested within Japan and internationally by historians who criticize the propagandist elements of the exhibitions in the Yūshūkan war museum. Ian Buruma shared this view by asserting during the 1990’s that the exhibitions were “straight out wartime propaganda” by removing from public memory suggestions of suffering and upholding a distinctly nationalistic view.10
However, the issues surrounding the shrine cannot be simplified to whether the shrine should exist or not, as the controversies encompass complex matters on an international scale that stretch beyond the shrine itself.11 These issues are chiefly focused on public memory and how to judge the correct process of commemoration for the war dead. The politics of representation therefore is present within this issue, as the Yasukuni Shrine has resulted in a “cult of the war dead” and questions of whether countries should be free to honour their war dead as they see fit without condemnation.12
Consequently, as it is such a multifaceted and widely debated topic my analysis of the controversy of the Yasukuni Shrine has not touched on all of the issues that are presented by this example of the battle between historical memories. Commemorative politics continues to be debated with regards to the shrine and its depiction of World War Two within its war museum, especially as the relationship between social memory and the values that mould its purpose are continually realigning.13 It is interesting to consider why the Yasukuni Shrine has inspired such widespread international attention, and the Yasukuni Shrine is a useful example that reveals a lot about Japanese historical memory and the tensions associated with its approach to the past.
- Tamura, Yoshiro, Japanese Buddhism: A Cultural History, (2000,Tokyo) p.40 [↩]
- Mark Mullins, “How Yasukuni Shrine Survived the Occupation: A Critical Examination of Popular Claims”, Monumenta Nipponica 65 (2010), p. 92 [↩]
- Ibid., p.92 [↩]
- Ibid., p.94 [↩]
- Ibid., p. 90 [↩]
- Ibid., p.90 [↩]
- Shaun O’Dwyer, “The Yasukuni Shrine and the Competing Patriotic Pasts of East Asia”, History and Memory 22 (2010), p.147 [↩]
- Shaun O’Dwyer, “The Yasukuni Shrine and the Competing Patriotic Pasts of East Asia”, History and Memory 22 (2010), p.147 [↩]
- Ibid., p.148 [↩]
- Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt, (London, 1994), p.223 [↩]
- John Nelson, “Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine”, The Journal of Asian Studies 62 (2003), p.447 [↩]
- Ibid., p.445 [↩]
- Ibid., p.464 [↩]