Yasukuni Shrine


Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine located in Chiyoda, Tokyo. It was founded by Emperor Meiji in June 1869 and commemorates those who died in service of Japan from the Boshin War of 1868–1869 through the First Indochina War of 1946–1954. The shrine's purpose has been expanded over the years to include those who died in the wars involving Japan spanning from the entire Meiji and Taishō periods, and the lesser part of the Shōwa period.
The shrine lists the names, origins, birthdates, and places of death of 2,466,532 men, women and children, including various pet animals. Among those are 1,068 convicted war criminals, 14 of whom are A-Class. This has led to many controversies surrounding the shrine. Another memorial at the Honden building commemorates anyone who died on behalf of Japan, but includes Koreans and Taiwanese who served Japan at the time. In addition, the Chinreisha building is a shrine built to inter the souls of all the people who died during WWII, regardless of their nationality. It is located directly south of the Yasukuni Honden.
Various Shinto festivals are associated with the shrine, particularly in the spring and autumn seasons when portable Mikoshi shrines are rounded about honoring the ancestral gods of Japan. A notable image of the shrine is the Japanese Imperial Chrysanthemum featured on the gate curtains leading into the shrine. More recently, the visitation of the shrine by active Japanese diplomats and legislators have brought public controversy in global media. The current 13th High Priest incumbent of the shrine is Tatebumi Yamaguchi, who was appointed on 1 November 2018 after Kunio Kobori.

History

Foundation for the dead in the Boshin War and Meiji Restoration

The site for the Yasukuni Shrine, originally named Tōkyō Shōkonsha, was chosen by order of the Meiji Emperor. The shrine was established in 1869, in the wake of the Boshin War, in order to honor the souls of those who died fighting for the Emperor. It initially served as the "apex" of a network of similar shrines throughout Japan that had originally been established for the souls of various feudal lords' retainers, and which continued to entomb local individuals who died in the Emperor's service. Following the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, the Emperor had 6,959 souls of war dead entombed at Tōkyō Shōkonsha.
In 1879, the shrine was renamed Yasukuni Jinja. The name Yasukuni, quoted from the phrase 「吾以靖國也」 in the classical-era Chinese text Zuo Zhuan, literally means "Pacifying the Nation" and was chosen by the Meiji Emperor. The name is formally written as, using obsolete kyūjitai character forms.
The entombment of war dead at Yasukuni was transferred to military control in 1887. As the Empire of Japan expanded, Okinawans, Ainu, and Koreans were entombed at Yasukuni alongside ethnic Japanese. Emperor Meiji refused to allow the enshrinement of Taiwanese due to the organized resistance that followed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, but Taiwanese were later admitted due to the need to conscript them during World War II.
In 1932, two Sophia University students, who were Catholic refused visit to Yasukuni Shrine on the grounds that it was contrary to their religious convictions. In 1936, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith of the Roman Curia issued the Instruction Pluries Instanterque, and approved visits to Yasukuni Shrine as an expression of patriotic motive. This response of the Catholic Church helped the university avoid a fateful crisis, but it meant its bowing down to the military power and control by Emperor system.

During World War II and the GHQ occupation period

By the 1930s, the military government sought centralized state control over memorialization of the war dead, giving Yasukuni a more central role. Entombments at Yasukuni were originally announced in the government's Official Gazette so that the souls could be treated as national heroes, but this practice ended in April 1944, and the identities of the spirits were subsequently concealed from the general public. The shrine had a critical role in military and civilian morale during the war era as a symbol of dedication to the Emperor. Entombment at Yasukuni signified meaning and nobility to those who died for their country. During the final days of the war, it was common for soldiers sent on kamikaze suicide missions to say that they would "meet again at Yasukuni" following their death.
After World War II, the US-led Occupation Authorities issued the Shinto Directive, which ordered the separation of church and state and forced Yasukuni Shrine to become either a secular government institution or a religious institution independent from the Japanese government. Yasukuni Shrine has been privately funded and operated since 1946, when it was elected to become an individual religious corporation independent of the Association of Shinto Shrines. The GHQ planned to burn down the Yasukuni Shrine and build a dog race course in its place. However, Father Bruno Bitter of the Roman Curia and Father Patrick Byrne of Maryknoll insisted to GHQ that honoring their war dead is the right and duty of citizens everywhere, and GHQ decided not to destroy the Yasukuni shrine. Moreover, the Roman Curia reaffirmed the Instruction Pluries Instanterque in 1951.

Post-war issues and controversies

The shrine authorities and the Ministry of Health and Welfare established a system in 1956 for the government to share information with the shrine regarding deceased war veterans. Most of Japan's war dead who were not already entombed at Yasukuni were entombed in this manner by April 1959.
War criminals prosecuted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East were initially excluded from entombment after the war. Government authorities began considering their entombment, along with providing veterans' benefits to their survivors, following the signature of the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, and in 1954 directed some local memorial shrines to accept the enshrinement of war criminals from their area. No convicted war criminals were entombed at Yasukuni until after the parole of the last remaining incarcerated war criminals in 1958. The Health and Welfare Ministry began forwarding information on Class B and Class C war criminals to Yasukuni Shrine in 1959, and these individuals were gradually entombed between 1959 and 1967, often without permission from surviving family members.
Information on the fourteen most prominent Class A war criminals, which included the prime ministers and top generals from the war era, was forwarded to the shrine in 1966, and the shrine passed a resolution to entomb these individuals in 1970. The timing for their entombment was left to the discretion of head priest Fujimaro Tsukuba, who delayed the entombment through his death in March 1978. His successor Nagayoshi Matsudaira, who rejected the Tokyo war crimes tribunal's verdicts, entombed the Class A war criminals in a secret ceremony in 1978. Emperor Hirohito, who visited the shrine as recently as 1975, was privately displeased with the action, and subsequently refused to visit the shrine. The details of the entombment of war criminals eventually became public in 1979, but there was minimal controversy about the issue for several years. No Emperor of Japan has visited Yasukuni since 1975, although the Emperor and Empress still continue to attend the National Memorial Service for War Dead annually. The head-priest Junna Nakata at Honzen-ji Temple requested the pontiff Pope Paul VI to say a Mass for the repose of the souls of the 1,618 men condemned as Class A, B and C war criminals, and he promised to do so. In 1980, Pope John Paul II complied, and a mass was held in St. Peter's Basilica for the 1,618 war criminals.
The museum and web site of the Yasukuni Shrine have made statements criticizing the United States for "convincing" the Empire of Japan to launch the Attack on Pearl Harbor in order just to justify war with them, as well as claiming that Japan went to war with the intention of creating a "Co-Prosperity Sphere" for all Asians.

Chronology

See details on related controversy in Controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine.
, King Rama VII 's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine
and Anne Morrow Lindbergh visiting Yasukuni Shrine
visit to Yasukuni Shrine
A January 2014 poll by the conservative-leaning Sankei Shimbun found that only 38.1% of respondents approved of the most recent visit by Abe, while 53% disapproved, a majority of whom cited harm to Japan's foreign relations as their reason. At the same time, 67.7% of respondents said they were not personally convinced by Chinese and Korean criticism of the visit. However, another poll in 2015 by Genron NPO found that 15.7% of respondents disapproved of visits in general by Prime Ministers while 66% of respondents saw no problem, particularly if they were done in private.
There are over 2,466,000 entombed kami listed in the Yasukuni's Symbolic Registry of Divinities. This list includes soldiers, as well as women and students who were involved in relief operations in the battlefield or worked in factories for the war effort. There are neither ashes nor spirit tablets in the shrine. Entombment is not exclusive to people of Japanese descent. Yasukuni Shrine has entombed 27,863 Taiwanese and 21,181 Koreans. Many more kami – those who fought in opposition to imperial Japan, as well as all war dead regardless of nationality – are entombed at Chinreisha.

Eligible categories

As a general rule, the entombed are limited to military personnel who were killed while serving Japan during armed conflicts. Civilians who were killed during a war are not included, apart from a handful of exceptions. A deceased must fall into one of the following categories for entombment in the honden:
  1. Military personnel, and civilians serving for the military, who were:
  2. * killed in action, or died as a result of wounds or illnesses sustained while on duty outside the Home Islands
  3. * missing and presumed to have died as a result of wounds or illnesses sustained while on duty
  4. * died as a result of war crime tribunals which have been ratified by the San Francisco Peace Treaty
  5. Civilians who participated in combat under the military and died from resulting wounds or illnesses
  6. Civilians who died, or are presumed to have died, in Soviet labor camps during and after the war
  7. Civilians who were officially mobilized or volunteered who were killed while on duty
  8. Crew who were killed aboard Merchant Navy vessels
  9. Crew who were killed due to the sinking of exchange ships
  10. Okinawan schoolchildren evacuees who were killed
  11. Officials of the governing bodies of Karafuto Prefecture, Kwantung Leased Territory, Governor-General of Korea and Governor-General of Taiwan
Although new names of soldiers killed during World War II are added to the shrine list every year, no one who was killed due to conflicts after Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty that formally ended World War II in 1951 has been qualified for entombment. Therefore, the shrine does not include members of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces which was established after the peace treaty.
Entombment is carried out unilaterally by the shrine without consultation of surviving family members and in some cases against the stated wishes of the family members. Some families from foreign countries such as South Korea have requested that their relatives be delisted on the grounds that entombing someone against their beliefs in life constitutes an infringement of the Constitution. The Yasukuni priesthood, however, has stated that once a kami is entombed, it has been 'merged' with the other kami occupying the same seat and therefore cannot be separated.

Conflicts

Japan has participated in 16 other conflicts since the Boshin War in 1869. The following table chronologically lists the number of people entombed as kami at the honden from each of these conflicts.
The Yasukuni shrine does not include the Tokugawa shogunate's forces or rebel forces who died during the Boshin War or Satsuma Rebellion because they are considered enemies of the emperor. They are entombed at Chinreisha. This exclusion, which includes the ancestors of former Chief Priest Toshiaki Nanbu, is deeply resented in both areas.

Precinct

There are a multitude of facilities within the 6.25 hectare grounds of the shrine, as well as several structures along the 4 hectare causeway. Though other shrines in Japan also occupy large areas, Yasukuni is different because of its recent historical connections. The Yūshūkan museum is just the feature that differentiate Yasukuni from other Shinto shrines. The following lists describe many of these facilities and structures.

Shrine structures

On the shrine grounds, there are several important religious structures. The shrine's haiden, Yasukuni's main prayer hall where worshipers come to pray, was originally built in 1901 in styles of Irimoya-zukuri, Hirairi, and Doubanbuki in order to allow patrons to pay their respects and make offerings. This building's roof was renovated in 1989. The white screens hanging off the ceiling are changed to purple ones on ceremonial occasions.
The honden is the main shrine where Yasukuni's enshrined deities reside. Built in 1872 and refurbished in 1989, it is where the shrine's priests perform Shinto rituals. The building is generally closed to the public.
The building located on the right side of haiden is the Sanshuden, which was rebuilt in 2004. Reception and waiting rooms are available for individuals and groups who wish to worship in the Main Shrine.
The building located directly behind the Sanshuden is the Tochakuden.
The building located directly behind the honden is known as the Reijibo Hōanden built in styles of Kirizuma-zukuri, Hirairi, and Doubanbuki. It houses the Symbolic Registry of Divinities—a handmade Japanese paper document that lists the names of all the kami entombed and worshiped at Yasukuni Shrine. It was built of quakeproof concrete in 1972 with a private donation from Emperor Hirohito.
In addition to Yasukuni's main shrine buildings, there are also two peripheral shrines located on the precinct. Motomiya is a small shrine that was first established in Kyoto by sympathizers of the imperial loyalists that were killed during the early weeks of the civil war that erupted during the Meiji Restoration. Seventy years later, in 1931, it was moved directly south of Yasukuni Shrine's honden. Its name, Motomiya, references the fact that it was essentially a prototype for the current Yasukuni Shrine. The second peripheral shrine is the Chinreisha. This small shrine was constructed in 1965, directly south of the Motomiya. It is dedicated to those not entombed in the honden—those killed by wars or incidents worldwide, regardless of nationality. It has a festival on July 13.

''Torii'' and ''Mon'' (gates)

There are several different torii and mon gates located on both the causeway and shrine grounds. When moving through the grounds from east to west, the first torii visitors encounter is the Daiichi Torii. This large steel structure was the largest torii in Japan when it was first erected in 1921 to mark the main entrance to the shrine. It stands approximately 25 meters tall and 34 meters wide and is the first torii. The current iteration of this torii was erected in 1974 after the original was removed in 1943 due to weather damage.
The Daini Torii is the second torii encountered on the westward walk to the shrine. It was erected in 1887 to replace a wooden one which had been erected earlier. This is the largest bronze torii in Japan. Immediately following the Daini Torii is the shinmon. A 6-meter tall hinoki cypress gate, it was first built in 1934 and restored in 1994. Each of its two doors bears a Chrysanthemum Crest measuring 1.5 meters in diameter. West of this gate is the Chumon Torii, the last torii visitors must pass underneath before reaching Yasukuni's haiden. It was recently rebuilt of cypress harvested in Saitama Prefecture in 2006.
In addition to the three torii and one gate that lead to the main shrine complex, there are a few others that mark other entrances to the shrine grounds. The Ishi Torii is a large stone torii located on the south end of the main causeway. It was erected in 1932 and marks the entrance to the parking lots. The Kitamon and Minamimon are two areas that mark the north and south entrances, respectively, into the Yasukuni Shrine complex. The Minamimon is marked by a small wooden gateway.

Memorials

Guji (Chief priests): term of office

Yasukuni shrine is an individual religious corporation and does not belong to the Association of Shinto Shrines.
Yasukuni shrine has departments listed below. The Gūji controls the overall system, and the Gon-gūji assists the Gūji.

  • Saimu-bu
  • * Sōgi-ka
  • * Chōsa-ka|調査課nihongo\|Sōmu-bu|総務部nihongo\|Sōmu-ka|総務課nihongo\|Jinji-ka|人事課nihongo\|Kanri-ka|管理課nihongo\|Kōhō-ka|広報課nihongo\|Sentoku-bu|宣徳部nihongo\|Sūkeihōsan-ka|崇敬奉賛課nihongo\|Sentoku-ka|宣徳課nihongo\|Keiri-bu|経理部nihongo\|Keiri-ka|経理課nihongo\|Jigyō-ka|事業課nihongo\|Yūshūkan-bu|遊就館部nihongo\|Shiryō-ka|史料課nihongo\|Tenji-ka|展示課nihongo\|Bunko-shitu|文庫室nihongo\|Shamu Jisshusei|社務実習生clear|left

    Cultural references to Yasukuni shrine

Bank notes

  • 1942–1948: Empire of Japan 50 sen banknote

    Postage stamps

  • Japanese 17 sen stamp
  • Japanese 27 sen stamp
  • Japanese 1 yen stamp

    Scenic postmarks

  • Kudan Post Office
  • Kōjimachi Post Office

    Popular music

  • Kudan no haha
  • Tokyō dayo Okkasan

    Plays

  • Dōki no sakura

    Books

  • 1881: Buko Nenpyo zokuhen
  • 1863–1872: Hirosawa Saneomi Nikki
  • 1868–1877: Kido Takayoshi Nikki
  • 1905: Yasukuni Jinjashi
  • 1905–1907: Wagahai wa Neko de Aru
  • 1911: Yasukuni Jinjashi
  • 1917: Tokyo no sanjunen

    Posters

  • 1871: Shōkonsha keidai Furansu ōkyokuba no zu

    Japanese swords manufactured at Yasukuni Shrine

In 1933, Minister of War Sadao Araki founded the Nihon-tō Tanrenkai in the grounds of the shrine to preserve old forging methods and promote Japan's samurai traditions, as well as to meet the huge demand for guntō for officers. About 8,100 "Yasukuni swords" were manufactured in the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine between 1933 and 1945.