...Yasukuni and my uncle put several of those spirits in there (or Chidorigafuji, the dedication to the Unknowns here).
It is, I claim, a vital part of a nation's heritage that whether one believes in militarism, pacificism, or something in-between, so long as we have States ordering young people off to war we need to have places to remember the war dead.
Here is the Mainichi Shinbun's report on this year's August 15th visits to Yasukuni Jinja, the once-National Shrine established during the Meiji era to those who died in military service.
There are a couple issues here, though...
1) Since the American-led Occupation of Japan banned the State-religion form of Shintou, a private trust has run the Shrine. That trust would happen to also be rather unrepentant as to Imperial Japan's role in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
2) Some one, claiming to have saved the ashes upon their cremation, brought the remains of 12 convicted Class-A war criminals (and 2 more almost-certain-to-have-been-convicted, who died in captivity) and the Trust claims to have mixed those remains in with the other two and half million or so remains of fighting men. The Trust has never "enshrined" the 14 into the rolls of the honored dead explicitly, but they did put up a seperate cenotaph to the memory of "their sacrifice".
3) And the unstated but ugly little trick... the Nation of Japan can't take the property of the Shrine back, even as a National Treasure, because the American-written Constitution of modern Japan prohibits any role of the nation in religion.
reap. sow. ((nods))
I've said it before. Time to amend the Constitution, my adopted brothers, for a lot of reasons.
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7 comments:
I have heard that the Shrine has probably one fo the best examples of Japanese "Tools of the Trade" and many of the display captions are in English. It woul dbe worth taking a look, atleast for me.
On the whole I think it would be wise for the Shrine to not push the issue of the visits any more lest they be "modified", and their mandate is forced to change.
Scott
slightly off-topic:
Actually, the Yuushuukan is what you mean there. It is built on some of the property of the Shrine, to one side. It's like visiting most intensely jingoistic museums: Lots of stuff, only one viewpoint. Their early period stuff is good, the *big* display on the 'Togo Turn' is superb, their version of Nomonhan is crap (read Alvin D. Coox book instead); and the World War II stuff is... piecemeal and biased as you would expect. The one good reason to go see it is that they have several one-of-a-kind artifacts because almost *everything* was either looted or burned in the time just following the surrender. And I do mean everything. Because of that, most of the collections of WWII items are all overseas and made up of captured items.
wiki-p entry on the Yuushuukan
back on topic:
See the grounds, see the main enshrinement, the statuary, the cenotaphs (if you can read them). If you like war history, see the Yuushuukan as well.
I read your link-- the biggest issue I read was those war criminals are "enshrined" with the war victims--
hmmm? Hard to think of this as a shrine when you have war criminals mixed in---
I just learned something new!
so if the shrine is not under state protection, are there incidents of criminal acts?
That's convicted War Criminals (by the modern standard).
As to criminal acts:
No more than any other 'museum or cultural site'. The Shrine is private property, and entitled to police protection just as any other private property is here. There are occasional protests by left and right on the roads outside shrine grounds, but they get the "move along" pretty quick if they are more than just noisy.
clarify that one for me, por favor--
convicted war criminals by modern standard---
are they or are they not?
Oh, they (the 12) were convicted. The issue becomes the fact that the crimes they were charged with *didn't exist, legally* before the war. They were a creation of the need to prosecute in a court of law something that in the past was dealt with by summary judgement...
...like the Old West comment about chasing down a renegade: "caught 'em, shot him"...
...but since the aftermath of WWII, there has been a consistant effort to "criminalize and prosecute" acts of barbarity.
Here's one to think about:
The US Army Air Corps firebombed (and at the end atombombed) major population centers of Japan in the course of the war. At the time, such was *perfectly legal* in the absolute sense of law regarding war. Try doing that now. Hell, try even giving an order to do such.
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