Visits by high level Japanese dignitaries to Yasukuni Shrine have provoked outrage among Japan’s neighbors and unease among its own citizens.  Why has Yasukuni become such a lightning rod for the memory wars about Japan’s past?  In this episode of Realms of Memory, Akiko Takenaka, Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, and author of Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar, helps us understand how the meaning of Yasukuni has changed over time and why it has become the nation’s most controversial memory site.  

Yasukuni’s history is intimately associated with the creation of the modern Japanese nation during the Meiji Restoration beginning in the mid-nineteenth century.  The same leaders who introduced a series of dramatic reforms and initiatives intended to break with Japan’s past also saw the need to create a site of reverence and respect for the nation’s war dead.  Historically divided into warring localities, Japan never had a unified military.  The ability to imagine the sacrifices of the nation’s war dead was an integral part of the process of helping the Japanese imagine the modern nation. 

Shrines in Japan did have a long history of functioning as sacred spaces where the living could pay their respects to the dead.  However, shrines were also important sites of leisure and entertainment.  For decades after its creation, visitors came to Yasukuni because of traditional forms of entertainment such as sumo matches, freak shows and fireworks as well as novel western attractions such as circuses and horse races.  Located on Kudan Hill in close proximity to Tokyo, Yasunki also offered beautiful views of Tokyo Bay and the capital.  Few who came to Yasukuni in its first decades were aware that it was a shrine for the nation’s war dead.  For the vast majority of visitors it was above all a site of leisure and entertainment.  

It was only over time, as Japan embarked on imperialist wars of expansion against China then Russia, that Yasukuni became a site for the celebration of Japan’s military victories.  Yasukuni, together with Ueno Park and the grounds in front of the imperial palace, were linked together by lantern and victory parades.  It was a period when the state orchestrated what Akiko describes as the institutionalization of joy.  Beyond these celebrations, however, there was still very little awareness of the growing number of war dead who were being enshrined at Yasukuni.

The transformation of Yasukuni into a sacred site and a belief system had much to do with the creation of the national education system.  Yasukuni was included in the very first national textbooks published in 1904.  As early as the elementary school years, children learned about the structures on the shrine grounds, the history of the shrine, and how it was the highest imaginable honor for young men who died fighting for the nation to be enshrined there.  Akiko explains that instruction from these textbooks was often coordinated to coincide with festivals at the shrine that took place in the spring and fall.  Gradually, the Ministry of Education mandated the inclusion of rituals pertaining to Yasukuni into everyday school activities and pressured school administrators to bring students to visit the shrine as part of traditional elementary, middle, and high school graduation trips.  

With the onset of the Asia-Pacific War in 1931 the use of groups activities to help instill proper forms of respect and reverence for the war dead took on a much greater magnitude of importance.  Schools, youth groups, neighborhood associations, and workplaces organized group activities which were often compulsory, and functioned as a powerful mechanism for the promotion of conformist ways of behaving and thinking about the war dead.  Akiko explains that by seeing how others conducted themselves and how others seemed to be feeling, outwardly conformist activities could become internalized beliefs.  “This was a practice in indoctrination and some people would start to believe the actions they were taking.”  

When the cremated remains of Japanese soldiers were repatriated to the homeland, government authorities went to incredible lengths to orchestrate ceremonies and rituals of respect.  Akiko recounts the story of one ordinary foot soldier whose ashes were carried back to Japan from Manchuria by a specially assigned officer.  The long return route was punctuated by multiple memorial services as well as representatives of women’s associations and veterans groups who paid their respects at scores of stations along the way. When the remains finally reached the deceased’s home town, thousands attended the funeral and offerings were made by the emperor and empress as well as top military officers.  

The most significant memorial service was the shōkon ceremony at Yasukuni when the fallen soldiers would be enshrined in a ritual that united their spirits with that of a god who defended the nation.  Not only were select family members given special invitations and subsidized transportation to attend the ritual, they were also offered a multi-day sightseeing tour of the capital and a thick photo album to bring home to share with their family and community.  The investment made by the government to demonstrate its respect for the fallen was staggering.  

Over eighty years on there is still no agreed upon memory of the Asia-Pacific War in Japan.  Yasukuni remains at the heart of the divergent ways the Japanese remember this fifteen year conflict.

While enshrinement at Yasukuni continued unabated throughout the war, the rising number of dead caused an evitable backlog.  Only ten percent of the war dead had been enshrined at Yasukuni at the war’s conclusion.  General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, who governed Japan in the immediate postwar years and oversaw the drafting of Japan’s present day constitution, spared the shrine from destruction.  However, Japan’s new constitution mandated what was tantamount to a separation of church and state which banned the Japan’s government from direct involvement with Yasukuni.  Central to the rise of the Liberal Democratic Party or LDP, which governed Japan for much of the postwar period, was its support for Yasukuni which was now a private religious entity.  Akiko asserts that the “LDP pretty much came to power by catering to the bereaved families by promising to restore Yasukuni to its former glory.”  

What sparked international outrage, however, was the decision by high level LDP officials to visit Yasukuni.  LDP officials, Akiko explains, had always visited Yasukuni but they had gone to great lengths to avoid doing so in an official capacity.  They were especially careful not to go to Yasukuni on August 15th, the day when Japan commemorates the Emperor’s radio address ending the war.  All of this changed in 1985 when Prime Minister Nakasone made the decision to visit Yasukuni on August 15 as the head of Japan’s government.  “China is enraged,” Akiko remarks, “because the optics, you know, the prime minister, the leader of Japan, going to pay tribute to a shrine in which Class A war criminals are worshiped.  The optics of that was just so horrible.  That’s when the Yasukuni issue really becomes an issue.”  

Yasukuni wasn’t just an international issue that enraged Japan’s neighbors, it also caused serious rifts at home.  Okinawans, whose prefecture was the only place where fighting had actually taken place on Japanese soil, were shocked to discover that their loved ones were also enshrined at Yasukuni.  A once independent kingdom, annexed by Japan in the nineteen century, many Okinawans felt that they had been brutally treated by the Japanese military and sacrificed by the Tokyo government in a hopeless conflict.  

Akiko explains that Yasukuni, a site devoted to the military war dead, ended up including civilians because of the War-Injured and War-Bereaved Families Act or Engohō in Japanese.  Passed by the LDP in 1952, two days after the end of Allied occupation, Engohō granted a pension to war-bereaved families.  Because many Okinawans aided the Japanese military, Engohō was extended in 1953 to the Okinawan civilian population.  Keeping its promise to support the now privatized and resource strapped Yasukuni shrine, which still faced the monumental task of enshrining nearly ninety percent of the war dead, the ruling LDP shared the records of all those who applied for Engohō support with the shrine administrators.  This allowed the shrine to efficiently register all the names and personal details of the remaining war dead.  Okinawan civilians ended up being indiscriminately included in this massive data dump and enshrined at Yasukuni.  Akiko notes that “there are names of a one-year-old and a ninety-something-year-old man who died, who clearly did not aid the military, but their names ended up being included into the register of the shrine.”  

How the Japanese remember the Asia-Pacific War today and how they think about Yasukuni is profoundly shaped by important generational differences.  Akiko identifies two generations in particular.  An older generation exposed to the nationalist education system and the devastation of Japan at the end of the war and a younger generation, born well after the war, in a time of peace and unprecedented prosperity.  It was this older generation who felt a tremendous sense of betrayal at the end of the war.  Not only does this older generation tend to be the most critical of Yasukuni as a surviving legacy of the wartime regime, it has also been the driving force behind Japan’s commitment to peace education.  

Japan has the preponderance of the world’s peace museums.  Many of these peace museums, Akiko explains, began in areas that experienced heavy bombing at the end of the war.  The emphasis on the air raids in these peace museums, however, tends to depict the Japanese as victims of the war.  “Victimhood narratives sell,” Akiko notes,”and a victimhood narrative is a very convenient way to build a collective identity.  And who wants to remember your country as the oppressor?”  Akiko added that those who returned from the war were not proud of their experiences and didn’t want to talk about it.  The most vocal ended up being the women or children who experienced Japan’s devastation at the end of the war.  The memory trigger for those who created these peace museums was the Vietnam war.  Japan functioned as a staging ground for the American war in Vietnam.  As the first televised war, Vietnam evoked powerful memories of Japan’s recent past.  

The younger generation, born well after the war, are caught between narratives of suffering and victimization that pervade post-war Japanese society and the outrage by Japan’s neighbors that it has not done enough to make amends for the past.  In her own childhood, Akiko recalls how she consumed this narrative of victimization that was omnipresent in everything from animated films to childrens’ books.  But this narrative is clearly at odds with another narrative that Japan hasn’t done enough to work through the past, to apologize to its neighbors.  “I think a lot of the younger generation now are being caught in between this,” Akiko commented, especially the youngest generation whose parents or even their parents never experienced the war.  “This time period is not being taken up in mandatory education in particular, and not even high schools, which means that many youths are at a loss, I think, when it comes to Japan’s past.”  

The Yushukan military museum, located on the shrine grounds, has been revamped to appeal to this younger generation, by offering a more uplifting version of Japan’s past.  The museum takes visitors chronologically through Japan’s past wars from the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-Japanese war but the main focus is on the Asia-Pacific War.  Yushukan tells the story of the Asia-Pacific War in a very revisionist way, “using objects like war-stained uniforms, tools or weapons, and letters that these men wrote back home.” “In the last couple of rooms,” Akiko adds, “you see hundreds of photographs.  You are surrounded by photographs of the faces of the men who are enshrined at Yasukuni, and several women.” Visitors encounter these photographs after experiencing a narrative of how Japan fought back and defended itself.   “If you are coming into this as a sort of blank slate because you don’t really learn about modern Japan in school,” Akiko remarks, you can leave with a sense of pride in Japan’s wartime past and gratitude for the sacrifices of its soldiers.   Reading the entries left by visitors in Yusukan’s guest books, Akiko sees the effect that the museum can have on young minds.  “It is a very dangerous tool.”  

Over eighty years on there is still no agreed upon memory of the Asia-Pacific War in Japan.  Yasukuni remains at the heart of the divergent ways the Japanese remember this fifteen year conflict.  For some, stories of heroism and Japan’s defense of Asia are a powerfully appealing narrative of the past.  For others, the experience of suffering and victimization are the most pronounced memories of the Asia-Pacific War.  These unresolved memories continue to fuel sentiments of distrust among Japan’s neighbors, complicating the possibility of Japan taking a leadership role in the region.  

But beyond international relations, divisions over the past may be taking a toll on the Japanese themselves. In The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in in Japan, author Akiko Hashimoto points out that the Japanese are endemically negative.  Surveys show high levels of distrust among the Japanese toward their political leaders and low levels of self esteem compared with other nations.  To come to terms with the past Hashimoto believes that the Japanese need to move beyond simplistic ways of framing the past in terms of victims, heroes, or perpetrators.  But when I asked Akiko Takenaka why her book had not been translated into Japanese she said that it was precisely because Japanese publishers disapproved that she had not taken a clear stand for or against the shrine.  In the memory wars that continue to rage in Japan, there may still be insufficient space to reflect on the complexity of the past in ways that may help the Japanese to move forward toward a better future.