Fifty-nine years after Japan surrendered in World War II, several Japanese ministers took the anniversary of the defeat to visit Yasukuni shrine and pay their respects to, among other people, wartime prime minister and convicted war criminal General Hideki Tojo.

China was livid as it usually is when a Japanese politician visits the controversial shrine. Yasukuni Shrine, founded in 1869, is dedicated to the souls of the approximately 2.5 million Japanese war dead, and the souls of innocent children and war criminals alike are venerated in the shrine. Hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to Yasukuni every year, and the shrine functions as a symbol of both respectful patriotism and militaristic nationalism.  

Politicians visiting Yasukuni are certainly not unusual; several Japanese prime ministers have visited the shrine — the current prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has visited Yasukuni four times since he took office in 2001 — and cabinet ministers pay their respects to the souls of the dead at the Shinto shrine. The subtle nuance, which has never quite been resolved, is whether these visits can ever be completely personal and private. Prime Minister Koizumi has dismissed this nuance as rubbish, and stated “I’m both a public and private person.”

Prime Minister Koizumi has defended his controversial visits as personal trips during which he prays for peace and expresses his desire that Japan should never again go to war again since Yasukuni does, after all, translate as “peaceful country.” Given Japan’s recent and usually eager participation in the war and occupation in Iraq, let’s hope that the ministers’ purported desire for peace has not been complicated or compromised.

Mimi Hanaoka