BEIJING, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) — Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine has lengthy been a political flashpoint throughout Asia. For international locations like China and South Korea, its very existence is an unhealed historic trauma.
Any go to and even ritual choices by Japanese officers is seen as a provocation, drawing speedy, fierce condemnation. When Shinzo Abe, then prime minister, visited Yasukuni in 2013, the backlash was so widespread that even the United States made a uncommon public expression of “disappointment.”
No sitting prime minister has visited the shrine since, but Sanae Takaichi has signalled she might break the precedent.
Fresh from her victory within the decrease home election, Takaichi floated the prospect of a go to on Sunday, saying she had been working to “create an environment” conducive to paying respects on the shrine.
In response, China’s international ministry urged prudence and a clear break with militarism. “Amnesia of history means betrayal, and denial of responsibility spells relapse,” mentioned spokesperson Lin Jian.
What makes Yasukuni such a potent taboo, why is it so detested by the neighboring international locations and what ties does it must Japanese militarism?
WHO ARE ENSHRINED?
Amid the upheaval of the Meiji Restoration, the Yasukuni Shrine was initially constructed by order of Emperor Meiji to honor those that died within the civil struggle that paved the way in which for Japan’s modernization — and, sadly, militarism.
In the late Meiji period, Japan launched the First Sino-Japanese War, forcing China to cede Taiwan to Japan.
Originally referred to as Shokonsha, devoted to the spirits of the struggle useless, the shrine was later renamed Yasukuni, that means to “preserve peace for the entire nation.”
Today, Yasukuni presents itself as a “shrine of peace,” enshrining 2.47 million “divinities” who it says “sacrificed their lives in the course of fulfilling their public duty to protect their motherland.” Notably, 2.13 million souls contributed to Japan’s aggression in World War II.
In the shrine’s personal account, no matter their rank, social standing and historic function, all are honored equally and “worshipped as venerable divinities.”
However, amongst these “divinities” conceal 14 World War II Class-A struggle criminals — all convicted on the Tokyo War Crimes Trials and sentenced to penalties starting from loss of life to imprisonment — together with seven who had been executed, 5 who died whereas serving their sentences, and two who died earlier than remaining judgment.
The struggle criminals had been surreptitiously enshrined within the Yasukuni Shrine in 1978, an act carried out with out public disclosure and remained hidden till April 19, 1979, when main newspapers lastly introduced it into mild.
Together with these convicted below Class B and C classes, Yasukuni commemorates over 1,000 struggle criminals in complete, who’re accountable for among the most horrific atrocities dedicated within the Pacific Theater.
Yet, aligning with the Japanese authorities’s place, Yasukuni refuses to deem them as criminals below home regulation.
WHAT DID THEY DO?
Hideki Tojo, Japan’s prime minister throughout World War II, ranks among the many 14 Class-A struggle criminals. It was below his management that Japan launched its aggression, the place tens of millions throughout the Asia Pacific had been brutally killed.
Warfare quickly engulfed a lot of East and Southeast Asia, pushing so far as British-controlled India. Across these occupied territories, Japanese militarists launched large-scale massacres, enforced pressured labor and wrought widespread devastation.
Of the 14 Class-A struggle criminals enshrined at Yasukuni, 13 had been instantly concerned in Japan’s struggle of aggression towards China or bore main duty for shaping and implementing its invasion insurance policies.
Among them was Iwane Matsui, who ordered the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937. Over the next weeks, Japanese troopers carried out his orders with ruthless effectivity.
Over 300,000 civilians and disarmed troopers had been slaughtered — shot, stabbed, buried alive, or drowned. And greater than 20,000 ladies had been raped. Japanese troops looted and burned town, destroying greater than a 3rd of the buildings.
According to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East Judgment, the Japanese army perpetrated over 100 large-scale massacres in locations like Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand, many commanded by Class-A struggle criminals.
In the Philippines, Akira Muto oversaw the Manila Massacre, wherein roughly 100,000 Filipino civilians had been killed. Meanwhile, Heitaro Kimura, dubbed the “Butcher of Burma,” presided over the development of the Thai-Burma “Death Railway,” which was constructed at the price of pressured laborers from Myanmar, Malaysia and Australia with some 100,000 deaths.
The atrocities of the “venerable divinities” enshrined in Yasukuni prolong far past the battlefield: the pressured imposition of Japanese-language schooling throughout occupied lands, the sexual enslavement of girls and ladies, the organic warfare and human experimentation carried out by Unit 731, the sneak assault on Pearl Harbor… and the checklist goes on.
HOW JAPAN WHITEWASHES ITS TRACK RECORD?
In Yushukan, Yasukuni’s historic museum, historical past is introduced from a starkly totally different perspective.
According to the museum, Japan’s victory within the Russo-Japanese War “inspired dreams of independence in people around the world, especially in Asia.”
In its telling, Japan’s march throughout the Asia-Pacific was “unavoidable” and mandatory for “national survival and self-defense.” Japanese militarists in Southeast Asia had been portrayed as liberators quite than occupiers, aiming to rescue the area from Western imperialism and construct a self-sufficient regional order.
Beyond distorting historical past, it brushes apart the atrocities they dedicated throughout Asia and the immense struggling of their victims.
Calling it an “incident,” the monstrous Nanjing Massacre is diminished to only a few transient strains within the museum: After the autumn of Nanjing, “the defeated Chinese rushed to Xiaguan, and they were completely destroyed. The Chinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothes were severely prosecuted.”
The museum’s show is a masterpiece of selective reminiscence. It proudly showcases a locomotive from the Thai-Burma Railway, gushing over its “wartime importance” and “postwar benefits” however willfully obscuring the brutal actuality of its development: a venture synonymous with pressured labor, atrocity, and loss of life on a large scale.
“No matter how much we try to reshape history to fit our own narrative, we only end up hurting and tormenting ourselves,” mentioned Haruki Murakami, a well-known Japanese author. “Japan must acknowledge its past aggression and keep apologizing until the oppressed countries accept it.”
Despite fierce criticism from Japan’s right-wing teams, Murakami has talked about the Nanjing Massacre in his novel, denouncing it as “extremely wrong to forget or distort” historical past.
“We must fight historical revisionism. There is only so much a novelist can do, but it is possible to fight through the medium of storytelling,” he mentioned.
WHY SHRINE VISIT DRAWS INFURIATION?
The historic revisionism and the evasion of Japan’s wartime culpability that Yasukuni embodies have saved it a persistent supply of regional rigidity.
Each go to by Japanese politicians sparks anger in neighboring international locations, which view Yasukuni as a religious image of Japanese militarism and an affront to the victims of its previous abroad aggression.
That backlash resurfaced in October 2025, after then Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba despatched a ritual providing to the shrine and several other senior, right-leaning lawmakers paid visits.
China’s international ministry slashed the strikes as a “blatant challenge to historical justice and human conscience,” demanding Japan be prudent on historic points such because the shrine and utterly sever ties with militarism.
South Korea additionally voiced robust objections, calling on Japanese leaders to face historical past and stressing that Japan’s future relations with its neighbors should relaxation on “humble reflection and sincere remorse” over its wartime previous.
However, Ishiba’s successor Sanae Takaichi mentioned in a latest ebook of interviews that Japan’s drawback is just not what it did in World War II, however that it misplaced.
“If Japan had won the war, Japan probably wouldn’t be blamed by anyone now, and those who started the war would be heroes,” mentioned the prime minister. “When victors judge the vanquished, it creates an enduring misery of defeat and hardship for future generations. Yet I believe it is wrong for Japanese people to apologize endlessly simply for being born Japanese.”
An everyday customer to the Yasukuni Shrine, the firebrand nationalist has lengthy denied well-documented Japanese struggle crimes, together with the Nanjing Massacre and the forcible conscription of “comfort women” and laborers.
Her latest remarks implying the potential of armed Japanese intervention within the Taiwan Strait pose “a serious threat to peace and stability” each regionally and globally, mentioned Richard Black, a senior researcher on the Schiller Institute.
“Frankly speaking, militarism is once again on the rise in Japan,” he mentioned.
Experts highlighted that even 80 years after its World War II defeat, Japan has didn’t reply elementary questions on “aggression” and “responsibility,” revealing a scarcity of regret and a distorted understanding of historical past.
Frank Schumann, a German writer and author, informed Xinhua that whereas Germany confiscated the belongings of Nazi officers and struggle criminals, eliminated “Nazi remnants” from the schooling and judicial techniques, and totally carried out anti-fascist schooling within the media and cultural spheres, Japan nonetheless enshrines Class-A struggle criminals, and refers to as “incidents” its atrocities dedicated towards Chinese individuals on the time.
“Japan has not truly reflected on its history of aggression to this day,” he mentioned.