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Interestingly, the "Shinto Institute" in Japan is devoted largely towards developing war propaganda. This is an area where religion and politics blur.
EDITORIAL
Yasukuni issue must be resolved
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine continue to cast a shadow over Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors. In particular, China and South Korea remain critical of a Japanese head of government paying an official visit to the shrine, which is dedicated to millions of Japan's military war dead, including convicted Class-A war criminals of World War II. As a result, Koizumi's trip to Beijing is up in the air.
Establishing good relations with neighboring countries is a top priority of Japan's foreign policy. For now, the trust and cooperation of China and South Korea are key to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis as well as the abduction cases involving Japanese nationals. Prime Minister Koizumi should try hard to settle the Yasukuni issue once and for all.
Yasukuni Shrine was also a hot subject of controversy in the immediate postwar years. Critics argued that the state-sponsored Shinto institution, which had been used by the Japanese military to advance the cause of war, should be dissolved. Yet a religious affairs adviser to the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers, the postwar allied occupation authority, called for the continued existence of the shrine. GHQ approval of its survival is apparently based on his report.
Interestingly, the report -- details of which were disclosed recently -- also called for changing the shrine's name back to "Tokyo Shokonsha" (Shrine for Inviting the Spirits), the predecessor to Yasukuni. Established in 1869, the second year of the Meiji Era, Shokonsha was renamed Yasukuni Jinja (Shrine for Establishing Peace in the Empire) in 1879. The proposed name change seemed designed to weaken the link between Yasukuni and militarism.
The proposal seems to have reflected a strong view in the GHQ that Yasukuni had given moral weight to Japan's military expansion before and during World War II. Why, then, did the occupation authorities approve of the shrine? The exact reason remains unclear, but it is easy to imagine that they were concerned about political and emotional problems that would have arisen had they ordered the shrine disbanded.
Although the GHQ banned the government from supporting Shintoism, thus breaking the deep ties between the state and Yasukuni Shrine, the proposed name change to Shokonsha never materialized. Today's Yasukuni is a private religious organization, but its very name continues to evoke dark memories of Japanese militarism.
It is not just the name of Yasukuni that matters, but also its past role in prewar Japan. That is the primary reason why political leaders of postwar Japan should avoid visiting the place. It cannot be forgotten that the shrine is dedicated to World War II criminals convicted by a Tokyo international military tribunal. Moreover, official visits by elected officials may violate the principle of separation of religion and politics.
Mr. Koizumi rekindled the Yasukuni controversy in April 2001 -- when he took office after being elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party -- by declaring that he would visit the shrine in his official capacity on Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. He was to be the first prime minister to make an official visit there since Yasuhiro Nakasone did so in 1985. As it turned out, Mr. Koizumi visited on Aug. 13, avoiding the anniversary date.
Last year and again this year he also selected a different date -- in April and January, respectively. If this was intended to defuse the political and diplomatic fallout, the results appeared mixed at best. The prime minister says he will continue to visit Yasukuni once a year.
Meanwhile, a proposal to erect a new national memorial facility for the war dead -- an idea put forward by a private advisory panel to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda -- appears to be going nowhere. It is a plan worth considering, but reportedly the government wants to shelve research funding for fiscal 2004. It seems that the prime minister has been and is sitting on the sidelines as far as this plan is concerned.
Some LDP members maintain that Yasukuni visits are a domestic issue and that opposition from China and other nations amounts to interference in Japan's internal affairs. That argument misses the big picture: The Yasukuni issue is intertwined with what Japan did before and during World War II. It cannot be resolved without regard for relations with the Asian nations that suffered at the hands of the Japanese military.
The fact is that Yasukuni remains a throwback to Japan's militaristic past, no matter how some of our political leaders try to justify their visits. It will be little use repeating a "no war" resolution unless they are trusted by those Asian nations. Self-complacency is often synonymous with self-righteousness.
The Japan Times: Aug. 21, 2003
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