Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past (review)

The Yasukuni shrine was the focus of Sino-Japanese tensions during Koizumi Jun’ichirō’s premiership, and the issue, although contained, remains a potential powder keg for diplomatic relations in East Asia. Yet there has been a dearth of serious academic information in English on this issue. Apart from one recently published dissertation by William Daniel Sturgeon (“Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine: Place of Peace or Place of Conflict?” Boca Raton, FL: Dissertation.com, 2006), no book-length discussion of the Yasukuni issue has been available in English.

This volume edited by John Breen adds much to the existing literature in English, bringing together eight authors from Japan, China, Britain, and the United States who present a wide variety of perspectives on the issue. In fact, no single volume on Yasukuni published in Japanese encompasses such a wide variety of viewpoints. Nakano Kōichi has edited a comparable volume in Japanese (Yasukuni to mukiau, Mekong, 2006), but the range of viewpoints represented there is narrower. Given the international controversy surrounding the shrine, there was clear need for a volume that conveys a variety of voices in English. The editor should be commended for making such a volume available, featuring some of the leading proponents of proYasukuni as well as anti-Yasukuni positions.

Perhaps the most valuable essay in the volume is Breen’s dispassionate and substantial introduction, which is easily the best short discussion of the Yasukuni issue in English. In the space of twenty-one pages (plus seven pages of illustrations), Breen skillfully covers the history of the shrine and the latest developments. Of particular note is the revelation that the initiative in the 1978 enshrinement of the Class-A war criminals rested not with the shrine (as has been commonly assumed), but with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which, having decided to regard the executed war criminals as “war dead,” urged Yasukuni to consider their enshrinement. Initially, Yasukuni, under the comparatively liberal leadership of the head priest Tsukuba Fujimaro, hesitated. It was when Tsukuba was replaced by Matsudaira Nagayoshi that the enshrinement went ahead. Indeed, for Breen, the “Yasukuni problem as it is today is . . . a legacy of the Matsudaira era from 1977 to 1992” (p. 10).

Two other chapters offer detached social scientific analysis. Caroline Rose points to the paradoxical function of Yasukuni in the domestic politics of Japan and China. Though Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits were controversial in Japan, Koizumi gained from Yasukuni because it allowed him to highlight his unswerving resolve in the face of mounting international pressure. In China, opposition to Yasukuni visits became a core element in the CCP’s attempt to shore up its legitimacy. Yet anti-Japanese sentiments slipped out of the party’s control, threatening the regime’s stability. Philip Seaton, in his detailed analyses of Japanese media coverage of the issue, emphasizes the divisions in Japanese public opinion. Contrary to the perception of the rise of “neonationalism” in Japan, public support for prime-ministerial visits to Yasukuni has declined significantly since the mid-1980s. At the same time, Seaton sees no easy solution, for opinions in Japanese society are highly polarized.

The remaining six chapters contribute to the polemics surrounding the shrine. Kevin Doak, Seki Hei, and Nitta Hitoshi see no problem in prime-ministerial visits, while Wang Zhixin, Takahashi Tetsuya, and John Breen offer critical views. Three related issues are at the core of the debate: the nature of Yasukuni shrine, the proper way of remembering the war (dead), and the meaning of prime-ministerial visits.

On the nature of Yasukuni, supporters tend to emphasize the shrine’s religious significance, arguing that it is a place for paying respects to the souls of the war dead. For them, a memorial for the war dead is not the proper place to address the thorny questions of guilt and responsibility. Doak points out that Yasukuni does not venerate the deeds of the war dead, but their...