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The samurai awaken

By Tom Clifford - posted Thursday, 24 April 2014


Yasukuni apologists will say that this a place where the war dead can be remembered and that Shinzo Abe's offering of a Masakaki "sacred tree" branch to the shrine on Monday was perfectly within the remit of a Japanese prime minister.

You can imagine the outrage if German politicians visited or gave offerings to a shrine that denied the Holocaust.

It is not just the fact that not a single body is buried at Yasukuni shrine, though more than 2,466,000 souls are enshrined there. By going to that shrine, by giving offerings to the shrine, Japanese politicians are turning their backs on another option. Just up the road is the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery with the remains of 352,297 unknown Japanese soldiers and civilians. It is tranquil, serene, respectful. Its evergreen trees provide ample places of shade. It is close to Yasukuni and is served by the same subway stop, Kudanshita. Like Yasukuni, it is near the Imperial palace. The emperor, who shuns Yasukuni, even though his ministers go there, is a frequent visitor.

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Chidorigafuchi's significance has not been lost on Washington.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel paid their respects during a visit to Japan in October, the most senior foreign dignitaries to do so since the Argentinian president visited in 1979, the year Yasukuni announced that the souls of convicted war criminals had been enshrined.

When Kerry and Hagel visited, US defense officials went on record saying that the cemetery was Japan's "closest equivalent" to Arlington National Cemetery. A US official said that Kerry and Hagel were paying tribute at Chidorigafuchi, maintained by the environment ministry, in the same way that "Japanese defense ministers regularly lay wreaths at Arlington". Yasukuni is funded by a private organization, the Association of Wartime Bereaved Families.

Yasukuini's role is to minimize, or better still whitewash, Japanese war crimes and portray the expansionist Japanese empire as the victim. It is a place where history and memory can be altered to fit a present-day agenda.

No mention of the 1937 Rape of Nanking is made at Yasukuini's modern museum, with a Zero fighter at the entrance.

Yasukuni does not operate in a vacuum, it is symbolic of a wider aspiration to portray Japan's wartime role in a favorable light and set the scene for a more aggressive foreign policy. School textbooks attempt to portray Japanese aggression in the 1930s as the "liberation of backward nations". The Japanese education minister is proposing to reject textbooks that do not adopt a "patriotic tone".

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There is a reason why Japanese children know so little about their country's past, there is a reason why the Rape of Nanking is barely mentioned let alone acknowledged in Japan. There is a reason why the emperor will not visit. Yasukuni is an expression of the forces at work that deny Japan's military aggression and want to shape a different, more belligerent future, for the country.

Abe is using Yasukuni to help forge a greater role for the Japanese military.

If a Japanese politician wanted to remember the horrors of war, the lives lost, then Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery would seem the obvious choice.

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About the Author

Tom Clifford worked as a freelance journalist in South America in 2009, covering Bolivian and Argentine affairs. Now in China, he has worked for newspapers in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Far East.

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