This week, 80 Japanese legislators, including some advisors to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, visited the Yasukuni Shrine, sparking criticism from the Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China. The controversial site serves as a memorial to all Japanese soldiers who died serving their country and to 14 Class A war criminals who did not die serving their country.
Kishida did not visit, but he did send an offering, as he did last year. The last Japanese PM to visit while serving was Shinzo Abe in 2013. Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a relatively terse and boilerplate statement:
1. The government of the Republic of Korea expresses deep disappointment and regret over the fact that responsible leaders of Japan have once again sent offerings to and paid respects at the Yasukuni Shrine which glorifies Japan’s war of aggression and enshrines war criminals.
2. The ROK government strongly urges the leaders of Japan to squarely face history, and demonstrate through action their humble reflection and sincere remorse for Japan’s past history.
Japan’s historical revisionism has been an ongoing problem for the relationship between Korea and Japan for decades but especially since 2015. Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol tried to improve Korea-Japan relations by excusing Japan from a high court ruling requiring Japanese companies to pay forced laborers. Japan rewarded Yoon by revising its textbooks shortly thereafter to deny that forced labor ever took place.
Now Kishida is sending masakaki to the resting place of Hideki Tojo’s soul. Compared to previous Japanese Prime Ministers, Kishida isn’t a hardliner, and his actions regarding Yasukuni are standard for Japanese PMs.
How should the Yasukuni Shrine be treated? Should it be regarded as an affront to peace and justice for a Japanese leader to send offerings to the 2.46 million Japanese soldiers resting there? Should interactions with Yasukuni be fully condemned until the 14 planners of the war crimes are removed? What about the 1,054 Class B and Class C war criminals?
At any war memorial honoring an imperialist country’s war dead, there are bound to be soldiers who killed civilians, mistreated POWs, and violated other laws of war amongst those being honored.
A couple of things make Yasukuni different—in addition to the scale of the war and the international context. The Class A war criminals, who were prime ministers, generals, and leaders who were responsible for inciting the war and presiding over the massacres, were enshrined in a secret ceremony after the fact. They did not sacrifice their lives in battle. Seven of them were executed as punishment for their war crimes, four of them died in prison after convictions, two of them died before their trials could be completed, and one, Hiranuma Kiichirō, died after he was pardoned from having to serve a life sentence. The Yushukan War Museum at the shrine includes explicitly false and militaristic content, including a denial of the Nanjing Massacre, a claim that Japan’s puppet state of Manchukuo was established as a legitimate government by Chinese minorities, and a laughable story about Chinese citizens cheering on the Japanese soldiers who, as part of the Eight Nation Alliance, invaded and looted Beijing in 1900.
Report from Korea’s Arirang News in 2014:
The Japanese lawmakers who visit are typically the most right-wing and most supportive of historical revisionism. Sanae Takaichi, one of the Kishida administration’s highest-ranking economic advisors and former LDP party leader, visited this year, with 80 legislators, and has visited for the past three years. While denying forced labor and other abuses Japan committed, she also says Japan should revise the Murayama’s 1995 statement apologizing for the war.
One solution would be for Japan to establish a national memorial (Yasukuni is privately-run by a fringe Shinto organization), but Takaichi and other nationalistic politicians opposed that proposal when it was raised in 2005.