(As published in http://www.theforeigner-japan.com/archives/200601/denyingshame.htm).
During the winter Tokyo becomes a single mass of grey upon grey. Cold weather sets in, the scant greenery subsides, and the few large parks seem unable to contain the invasion of concrete all around. Far away from the neon-glitz of downtown Shibuya, suburbs and mid-points remain quiet in their anonymity. Some less anonymous places have other reasons for silence.
Straight from the sixth exit of Kudanshita station lies the infamous Yasukuni shrine. A huge promenade and two looming Torii gates lead the way into this, the resting place of the souls of the Japanese Imperial Army. On every side, blackened cherry blossom trees sprout leafless like menacing tentacles, exacerbating the dark colours of the main shrine. A pristine white cloth with artful patterns hangs on the front, giving the place striking contrasts of imperial grandeur. Outside, neo-fascists bow reverentially while sombre temple girls carry on with their duties. The tone is grave and the execution martial. This is not a happy place.
Once the hub of religious imperial frenzy, Yasukuni is both the lovechild and the lover of Japan's extreme right. Its name literally means "peaceful country," but it would be wrong to assume Yasukuni is a monument to pacifism. Quite the opposite, Yasukuni is a place of reverence to the heroic feats of Japan during every war since the Meiji restoration, when the shrine was founded. This includes Japan's invasion of several Asian countries and World War II. Not only are the names of over 2.5 million soldiers revered here, but also the souls of Japan's biggest war criminals are supposed to rest within its dark halls. These include 14 Class A criminals, such as former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and general Iwane Matsui, one of the people formally responsible for the Nanjing massacre (aka the "Rape of Nanking") in 1937. The concept of peace impulsed by Yasukuni, in short, is the kind exercised through a gun barrel.
On one of the sides of the main building there is a large box with a number of leaflets about the shrine and the many organisations that support it. In one of them, a peace dove explains how the War was necessary to maintain Japan's independence, to make it a truly peaceful country and spread its peace through Asia. Another leaflet tells how only by fighting in Asia could the continent be rid of the "white menace." Yet another leaflet advertises a documentary which tells the "true" story of the war, from Japan's altruistic pan-Asian intentions to the unfairness of the Tokyo War Trials. "Show this to your children and grandchildren," says the advert, "to raise their awareness and patriotsm." Near the dark Torii gate, a girl no more than 10 years old bowed at almost 90 degrees to the altar in the shrine.
Yet, for all its conspicuous propaganda, Yasukuni itself is not the blatant monument to imperialism one wishes it to be (as it would be much easier to ignore that way). It is not a shrine built on revisionism, but rather the latter follows as a consequence of the nature of the place. Yasukuni is a memorial which caters to feelings, not history. The feelings in question are those of "patriots" and their families. And because this is ultimately a religious site, propaganda is shrouded under the guise of morality, a mixture of culture, piety and pride, based on honour, heroism and suffering.
The suffering of the soldiers' families - pointed out repeatedly in several inscriptions around the shrine - is the kind of moral detergent used to review history from the point of view of the aggressor as a victim. It is not unlike the constant references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki one finds in Japanese history books, to show that neither side is ever free of guilt. Albeit a sound argument, it is one that requires objectivity and a large degree of introspection, too. The lack of either in Japanese post-war rhetoric is enough to write off Yasukuni's imperialist arguments of Japan's "just" war.
On emotional grounds, then, Yasukuni could be justified at an individual level. The problems happen when these cases are brought into the political arena. When the Prime Minister visits the shrine in his capacity as such, he is representing an individual emotional matter as a collective national issue. It is not the suffering of a family anymore, but the suffering of the Japanese nation as a family. The great lie of nationalism is fed through individual pain. This, at the same time, gives itself to further political machinations where purity of action through following orders becomes an excuse for bloody deeds, putting ideological principles on top of life and civility. When history is explored in religious terms it makes way for political agendas. In Yasukuni's case, the agenda is to legitimise a particularly ruthless and self-righteous -but more to the case, outdated- brand of authoritarianism.