Tokyo Redux V: Yasukuni Jinja

"I assure those of you who fought and died for your country, that your names will live forever at this shrine in Musashino."

~Emperor Meiji

Yasukuni Jinja is probably one of the best-known of Japan's shrines, probably due to its controversial nature as a war memorial shrine. Japan has had separation of state and religion since 1945, but since it was built in 1869, the souls of the war dead have been enshrined here, deifying them. Emperor Meiji ordered its construction originally to commemorate the souls of all those who died for their country after the Boshin War ended (1869.)

Here is the bronze statue of Vice-Minister of War Omura Masujiro, a key figure in the development the Japanese army during the Meiji Restoration. It was also Japan's first Western-style statue.

 

Yasukuni Jinja reportedly enshrines more than 2,466,000 kami of souls who died in war efforts from the Boshin War until WWII: included are volunteers in war efforts, citizen casualties, and those who were condemned and executed as war criminals by the Allies after WWII. Which I think is why there was some fussing when President Bush visited it at some point--I don't really remember well. And I'm not really going to argue about whether it's right or wrong to deify war criminals.

(This is only one of the controversies surrounding Yasukuni Jinja.) The tradition of deification in order to pacify spirits of the deceased is ancient and long-standing. So is the Japanese sense of respect for their ancestors and honoring the dead in general. All of the kami here are thought to be deserving of equal respect, no matter their social background or their past deeds. I'd also like to point out that Japan's not the only country who pays respects to war dead who might have and probably committed horrible atrocities in the line of duty, so to speak.

 

Yasukuni Jinja's Haiden

 

the torii leading to Motomiya, a small shrine built out of sympathy for imperial loyalists of the Meiji Restoration, and Chinreisha, a shrine built to pacify war dead from all over the world