Yasukuni Shrine

As I’m sure you all know, Tokyo is a sprawling behemoth of a city; a metropolis that could make even Fritz Lang blush. For someone like myself who has spent the last eight months living in the remote reaches of the countryside, it almost came as a shock to again encounter smog, English speakers and homelessness-all of which were once a part of my daily existence. However, these aren’t the things that most people associate with Japan’s capital. When you picture Tokyo in your head, you probably see something like this:
Yes, Tokyo is full of bright lights, tall buildings and neon signs but then again, so is New York City. There’s something else just below that shiny, plastic exterior that defines the character of Tokyo just as much as the Harajuku punks and Ginza skyline do. The city’s present is inextricably bound to the weight of its past; a fact made manifest by the numerous shrines, temples and historically important sites hiding in the shadows of skyscrapers all over the city.

Since most of you will already be familiar with Tokyo’s bright exterior, I thought it might be more interesting to discuss some of the more historical areas that we visited on our trip instead. I'll start with what is probably the most recognizable: the infamous Yasukuni Shrine.

You probably recognize the name Yasukuni from international news reports, where the shrine has been repeatedly featured since Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s first annual visit in 2001. While the shrine’s name, translated literally, means “Peaceful Nation Shrine,” Yasukuni is actually a sort of war memorial, honoring the souls of those who died fighting in the name of the Japanese Emperor. Originally constructed by the Meiji Emperor in 1869, the shrine was built to honor those who died in the previous year’s Boshin War, the war that lead to the restoration of the Emperor. Since then, the spirits of all Japanese soldiers (as well as Taiwanese, Korean and Chinese colonial soldiers) have come to be enshrined here, including those of over a thousand Japanese war criminals who were executed during the Second World War. The main cause of controversy, however, is the 14 Class-A war criminals who were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni in 1978. When this was revealed by the media, it caused an outcry among Japanese liberals as well as in the Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean communities. Japan’s enshrinement of war criminals was seen as glorifying the numerous atrocities committed during the Second World War (and also, as symptomatic of a larger failure to acknowledge wartime agression in East Asia) and has become a sore point in Japan’s international relations ever since. While no Emperor has visited the shrine since the enshrinement of the war criminals, four Prime Ministers have, including Koizumi (who has visited once during each of his five years in office). Each of these visits has resulted in a public outcry and has done little to help Japan’s already strained relationships with its neighbors.

One point that some news reports often fail to communicate is that Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine are an extremely controversial topic in Japan as well as abroad. While the shrine has long served as a rallying point for right-wing nationalists, many scholars, socialists and liberals here in Japan have taken offense and demanded that government officials condemn Koizumi’s visits. Some have also noted that visits by public officials to the shrine possibly violate the explicit separation of church and state specified in the Japanese Constitution.

This is the shrine’s main gate (torii). While virtually all Shinto shrines display such a gate, this is by far the largest that I have ever seen, standing a few stories tall. Does it seem a bit slanted to you or is that just parallax error?

Just inside the main gate is a statue of Omura Masujiro, who is credited as having designed the reforms that led to the creation of the modern, Western-style Japanese army. Many of you will remember him as the primary villain in the historically inaccurate Tom Cruise film The Last Samurai. He is honored here as the “father of the Imperial Army”.

This is the main shrine where worshippers pay their respects. While most laypeople simply pray from the outside of the shrine, high-profile visitors such as Koizumi have been known to enter the shrine’s main hall from time to time.

Various ema (“horse pictures”) are hung in a designated area of the grounds. While it was once customary to give horses as gifts to shrines when making a prayer or requesting that a wish be fulfilled, tablets with pictures of horses (or other animals) printed on them are now used for that same purpose. The person making the wish writes it on the opposite side of the ema and then hangs it where the kami may read it.

Here we see omikuji tied to a pole. These small scrolls contain fortunes and are randomly selected from a box. When the fortune is good, it is considered customary to keep the scroll. Omikuji containing bad fortunes are usually tied to a pole or tree (traditionally a pine tree) on the grounds in the hope that the bad luck will remain attached to the scroll. Remember when that girl in Lost in Translation tied an omikuji to a tree? Considering that she probably couldn’t read it, she quite possibly cheated herself out of some good luck. What a fool.