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global asia Feature Essay
global asia Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2013
Beware
the Tomb of
the Known Soldier
By Jennifer Lind
For many of Japan’s neighbors, Yasukuni Shrine is
the history problem that simply won’t go away. At a
time when the region is already troubled by lingering
maritime disputes that are based on competing
versions of history, the announcement by newly-elected
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that he might
consider visiting the shrine has reignited controversy.
Jennifer Lind explores the ongoing obstacle to
reconciliation represented by Yasukuni.
Martial memories:
A ceremony to console the
souls of war victims at the
Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
Photo: EPA/Kimimasa Mayama
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global asia Feature Essay Beware the Tomb of the Known Soldier
global asia Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2013
1 Gary B. Nash. “For Whom Will the Liberty Bell Toll: From
Controversy to Collaboration.” www..ushistory.org/presidentshouse/
controversy/nash.htm
2 Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).
3 Isabel Kershner, “Palestinians Honor a Figure Reviled in Israel as
a Terrorist,” The New York Times, March 11, 2010.
When US President Barack Obama lays a
While the actions and choices of Japanese leadwreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in ers have contributed to East Asia’s tangled historiArlington National Cemetery, or when French cal grievances, the problem is far more complex.
President François Hollande does the same at the Japanese leaders have at times made efforts to
Arc de Triomphe in Paris, they elicit bowed heads acknowledge and atone for the past, and such
and solemn contemplation. Yet when Japanese efforts should be neither dismissed nor forgotten.
leaders visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine to honor the Politicians in neighboring countries, meanwhile,
country’s war dead, controversy roils East Asia. appear less interested in resolving history issues
Australian, Chinese, Korean and other leaders than they do in flogging Japan for domestic politdenounce the act as disrespectful to their World ical gain. Nonetheless, rather than fix the blame,
War II suffering; people boycott Japanese goods; so the saying goes, fix the problem: and there are
protestors swarm onto streets.
steps Tokyo might take to improve Japan’s foreign
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggested policy position. A Yasukuni visit is not one of them.
ahead of his election last December that he
planned to visit the shrine. Abe and other Japa- Handle the Past With Care
nese conservatives view it as an important place Commemoration is always a fraught enterprise.
to pay respects to the men who gave their lives Domestically, rival groups compete fiercely over
to protect Japan. But a visit to Yasukuni at this whom or what gets remembered, and how. In the
time would be both dangerous and self-defeat- United States, for every John F. Kennedy Square
ing. China and Japan already have tense relations or George Washington Elementary School, there
over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which were several groups who competed to have a difboth countries claim, and there is a serious risk ferent name etched onto the brass plaque. And
that the situation could escalate into a crisis. A for every monument or museum built, groups
crisis over Yasukuni is the last thing that these struggle over interpretation. For example, as
two countries need. As seen last September, anti- Philadelphians planned their Liberty Bell memoJapanese demonstrations in China have become rial, they struggled over how — and whether —
violent and costly: rioters set fire to and looted that memorial would represent the slavery-interJapanese businesses, and smashed Toyotas and twined history of the American founding fathers.1
Hondas. The crisis also triggered a sharp drop in
In addition to domestic battles, commemoJapanese exports to China.
ration can have international political ramifiFurthermore, when Japanese conser va- cations.2 A freedom fighter in one country may
tives visit Yasukuni, they undermine their own be seen as a terrorist in another — such as, for
national security agenda. Because of their grow- example, Dalal Mughrabi, whose 1978 attack
ing fears about China, Japan’s conservatives favor against Israel killed 38 people, including 13
a policy of greater military assertiveness, and children. Israelis reacted with disgust and outvalue regional support. Yasukuni visits sustain rage when in 2010 Palestinians dedicated Dalal
attention on Japan’s misdeeds in the distant past, Mughrabi Square, praising her as “a fighter who
distracting global opinion and potential regional fought for the liberation of her own land.” 3 In
partners from China’s threatening behavior in the Estonia, when the country decided to move a
present and driving a wedge between Japan and Soviet-erected statue of a World War II Soviet
its potential allies.
soldier to an obscure place, the Russians reacted
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4 Adrian Blomfield, “War of Words over Bronze Soldier,” The Daily
Telegraph, Feb. 5, 2007.
5 “A Cyber-riot,” The Economist, May 10, 2007.
6 Michael Schwirtz, “Putin Marks Soviet Massacre of Polish
Officers,” The New York Times, April 7, 2010.
Yasukuni visits sustain
attention on Japan’s
misdeeds in the distant
past, distracting global
opinion and potential
regional partners from
China’s threatening
behavior in the present
and driving a wedge
between Japan and its
potential allies.
with fury, lambasting Estonia’s “blasphemous
attitude towards the memory of those who struggled against fascism.” 4 Estonia suffered waves of
cyber attacks against its state websites, attacks
attributed to the Russians.5
Because commemoration is fraught both at
home and abroad, countries at times find it useful to view the past through a soft-focus lens.
Scholar Benedict Anderson, in his seminal book
Imagined Communities, discussed how a “Tomb
of an Unknown Soldier” makes citizens feel connected. The vagueness of the memorial serves
another important purpose: citizens can project
memories and mourning into the tomb, picturing
whomever soldier they wish to honor. Foreigners,
even former adversaries, can see the occupant in
the manner most agreeable to them.
Another way to achieve this palliative vagueness is through greater inclusiveness of victims.
Vladimir Putin gave a speech in the forest at
Katyn, the site of a 1940 Soviet massacre of more
than 20,000 Polish officers. “We bow our heads
to those who bravely met death here,” Putin said.
“In this ground lay Soviet citizens, burnt in the fire
of the Stalinist repression of the 1930s; Polish
officers, shot on secret orders; soldiers of the Red
Army, executed by the Nazis.” 6 Putin’s mourning
of the Polish officers offered a gesture of reconciliation to Poland, which has long fumed at Soviet
denials of the event. His inclusion of Russian suffering made his gesture to Poland more palatable
to audiences back home.
The strategy of the soft-focus lens also eased
German disquiet created by Britain’s new memorial to Strategic Bomber Command. The memorial, dedicated last summer, honors the more
than 55,000 airmen who died in the World War II
bombing raids over Germany. Winston Churchill
declares from its marble walls: “The fighters are
our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the
means of victory.” Germany — today, of course,
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global asia Feature Essay Beware the Tomb of the Known Soldier
7 David Crossland, “Germans Grudgingly Accept Bomber Memorial,”
Der Spiegel, June 25, 2012. www.spiegel.de/international europe/
controversial-memorial-to-british-wwii-bombers-to open-a-840858.html
8 Ann Sherif, “Lost Men and War Criminals,” in Sheila Miyoshi Jager
and Rana Mitter, eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the PostCold War in Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), p.122.
9 www.japanfocus.org/-Wakamiya-Yoshibumi/2124
10 Quoted in Wakamiya Yoshibumi and Watanabe Tsuneo,
“Yomiuri and Asahi Editors Call for a National Memorial to Replace
Yasukuni,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, www.japanfocus.
org/-Watanabe-Tsuneo/2124
11 www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=06TOKYO4629
&version=1314243000
12 Sam Jameson, “Nakasone Heeds Protests, Won’t Visit Japan
Shrine to War Dead,” The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 15, 1986.
13 “In UN Speech, Japanese Leader Rejects Militarism:
Nakasone Apologizes for WWII,” The Los Angeles Times,
Oct. 24, 1985. http://articles.latimes.com/1985-10-24/
news/mn-12688_1_japanese-leader
14 Jennifer Lind, “Japan Must Face Its Past,” The Washington Post,
Jan. 25, 2013.
14 men included Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime
minister, and Iwane Matsui, the commanding
officer of the Japanese force responsible for the
Nanjing Massacre. Class-A crimes were a new category, “crimes against peace.”
The Tokyo trials that set down these verdicts
were, and remain, highly fraught in Japan. Many
people view them as puppet trials carrying out
victor’s justice, point to their rampant procedural
flaws and rail against the hypocrisy that leaders
of other countries were not held accountable for
similar or even identical actions. One Japanese
person who held this view was the Yasukuni head
The Tomb of the Known Soldier
For many years after World War II, Yasukuni priest Matsudaira Nagayoshi, a Navy lieutenant
Shrine enjoyed at least some of this gentle ambi- commander during the war, who in 1978 made
guity. The shrine, to be sure, was controversial: the decision to go against precedent and enshrine
US occupation officials, viewing it as linked to the 14 men at Yasukuni.9
emperor worship and imperialism, had stripped
In 1985, on the 40th anniversary of the end of
it of its national funding. In 1953, Japanese of- World War II, it was this Yasukuni — which honficials suggested to a touring US Vice-President ored 14 men convicted as war criminals — that
Richard Nixon that he visit Yasukuni; he refused Yasuhiro Nakasone visited, clad in formal mornwhen he learned its history.8 Many of Japan’s ing dress, in his official capacity as prime minisown critics of the shrine object to prime-minis- ter. Nakasone said, “I did not go to pray for Tojo.
terial visits there as a violation of the separation My younger brother died during the war and his
of religion and state. Yasukuni, then, was never spirit lies there. I went to meet my brother.” 10
devoid of controversy.
Decades later, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
Nevertheless, the shrine, the name of which echoed a similar theme when he visited. “I do not
means “peaceful country,” was the final spiritual go to Yasukuni to pay my respects to specific peoresting place of Japan’s 2.5 million war dead. As ple,” he said. “There are soldiers who suffered
seen through the eyes of the politically powerful during the war and there are those who did not
Japan War Bereaved Families’ Association, and go to war but still died. We should offer sincere
many other Japanese as well, Yasukuni was the condolences to those victims. This is our counproper place to shed tears for brave boys who had try’s culture.” Koizumi emphasized, “I do not go
paid the ultimate price to protect their country to Yasukuni Shrine to pay my respects to Class-A
from what the Japanese saw as the grave threat war criminals. Class-A war criminals were punof Western colonization.
ished, taking responsibility for the war. There are
Regional outrage over the shrine began when two different issues here.” 11
its ambiguity ended: in 1978, Yasukuni became a
However, after 1978, it was simply not possible
Tomb of the Known Soldier. That year, the souls for Nakasone to pay respects to his brother, or for
of 14 men, convicted as “Class-A” war criminals Koizumi to honor the fallen, without also honin the Tokyo Trials, were enshrined there. The oring the architects of Japanese aggression and
Britain’s NATO and EU partner — objected to the
memorial: the bombings had destroyed German
cities and incinerated hundreds of thousands of
civilians. The British agreed to add an inscription: “This memorial also commemorates those
of all nations who lost their lives in the bombing
of 1939-1945.” 7 Though the monument’s focus
remains the airmen who stand proudly at its
center, the inscription softens the memorial in
the eyes of Britain’s World War II adversaries. It
can be their place too.
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global asia Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2013
Then and now: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi follows a Shinto priest during his controversial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine
on August 15, 2006, the 61st anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. Shinzo Abe, pictured visiting the shrine on October
2012 while still leader of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, hinted that he might visit again as prime minister.
Photos: Kimimasa Mayama, Everett Kennedy Brown/EPA
atrocities. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito ceased visit- retary Masaharu Gotoda explained that the prime
ing Yasukuni after 1978 for this reason.
minister had decided to abstain out of “consideraNakasone’s 1985 visit was particularly trou- tion of the feelings of the peoples of neighboring
bling to outsiders — just as an Abe visit would be countries.” 12 (The accommodation of the neighparticularly troubling today — because he was bors required snubbing an influential domespromoting a more assertive national security tic constituency. The Bereaved Families Associposture. In the 1980s, a Soviet military buildup ation registered its displeasure by withdrawing
in the Pacific threatened Japan, and Nakasone 160,000 of its members from Nakasone’s Liberal
wanted to respond, within the US-Japan alli- Democratic Party.)
ance, by mobilizing his nation spiritually as well
Nakasone also provided leadership on the issue
as militarily. He urged greater patriotism, calling of the boundaries between politically acceptable
for a “final accounting” about the war. He and and unacceptable speech about Japan’s past:
other conservatives sought changes in history he fired a cabinet minister who denied wartime
textbooks that dismayed liberals at home and, atrocities and antagonized Japan’s neighbors.
a few years before, sparked crises with Japan’s Furthermore, Nakasone also issued an apolneighbors. Nakasone also sought to increase the ogy in the United Nations in October 1985. He
defense budget and revise Japan’s “peace consti- said: “Since the end of that war, Japan has protution” to permit greater military activism. From foundly regretted the ultra-nationalism and milthe outset, Asia worried about Japan’s conserva- itarism it unleashed, and the untold suffering
tive concoction of nationalistic education, higher the war inflicted upon peoples around the world
defense spending, and increased military partici- and, indeed, upon its own people.” He added that,
pation. The dash of Tojo, however, was too much: “having suffered the scourge of war and the atomic
the region recoiled in protest.
bomb, the Japanese people will never again perAfter the diplomatic imbroglio triggered by mit the revival of militarism on their soil.” 13
his visit, Nakasone realized that acknowledgA visit to Yasukuni today would be as unhelping Japan’s past was essential to achieving his ful to Abe’s agenda as it was to Nakasone’s.14 As
foreign-policy goals. Although he had planned Japan’s strategic competition with China is intena second trip to Yasukuni for a fall festival, he sifying, its conservatives favor shedding pacifist
announced he would not visit. Chief Cabinet Sec- taboos and embracing a more assertive diplo91
global asia Feature Essay Beware the Tomb of the Known Soldier
15 Rowan Moore, “Bomber Command memorial: review,” The
Observer, June 24, 2012, at www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/
jun/24/bomber-command-memorial-london-review?INTCMP=SRCH
matic and defense posture. Many of these taboos
have already gone by the wayside; for example,
Japan’s Defense Agency, long relegated to inferior status in the government so as to minimize
the military’s influence in politics, was in 2007
upgraded to Defense Ministry. But conservatives
want to shed the constraints that linger. Tokyo is
relaxing its ban against weapons exports, and its
leaders talk more openly about collective security (anathema during the Cold War). Many conservatives also advocate revision of the Japanese
“peace constitution” in order to provide a more
solid legal framework for greater Japanese activism in international peacekeeping (and, possibly,
for conflicts in the East China Sea).
Solving the Yasukuni Dilemma
As Japan’s conservatives pursue this agenda, how
should they approach the past? As Rowan Moore
mused regarding the challenge of commemorating Britain’s Strategic Bomber Command, it is a
difficult thing “to recognize at once the courage
and loss of airmen, and the awfulness of the thing
they were told to do.” 15 How might Japan honor
its war dead — satisfying an important human
need in the Japanese people — without alienating and alarming its neighbors?
One failed approach has been to tinker at the
margins of the problem. Perhaps, thought various prime ministers, they could avoid censure by
visiting the shrine not on the emotionally charged
date of Japan’s World War II surrender (August
15), but on a different date in August. Or in April.
Perhaps they could soften the visit by avoiding
Shinto rituals: by offering flowers instead of the
sacred tree branch, and bowing in lieu of the
ritual clapping. Or perhaps they could declare
their visit unofficial, that they weren’t visiting as
prime minister but as “a man who is prime minister” (as Nakasone and Koizumi wrote in the registry). Each of these tweaks failed. Japan’s unspun
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16 Sherif, “Lost Men and War Criminals,” p.122.
17 Ibid.
neighbors remained fixed on the unspinnable
reality that a Japanese prime minister had just
paid respects to war criminals.
The solution to the Yasukuni imbroglio is, of
course, the refuge of vagueness. Japan’s leaders
might return Yasukuni to its former ambiguity by
removing the war criminals that made the shrine
so controversial in the first place. Nakasone and
other LDP politicians recommended precisely
this, urging Yasukuni’s authorities to construct
another shrine to which the 14 men could be
moved. But Yasukuni’s priests have declared this
plan impossible: that according to Shinto doctrine, the spirits, once enshrined, become part of
a family of spirits that cannot be separated.
If vagueness is the answer, and Yasukuni can
never again be made vague, there is another
Tokyo site that fills the bill: Japan already has a
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Chidorigafuchi
National Cemetery in Tokyo commemorates and
houses the remains of more than 300,000 unidentified soldiers and civilians who died in the
chaos of World War II. The Japanese government
created the cemetery in 1959 partly in response
to Nixon’s refusal to visit Yasukuni: attempting
to create a place where Japan, its allies and its
victims might pay respects together.16 Japanese
leaders have indeed visited there. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda went in 2008, and Koizumi —
though he visited Yasukuni on different days as
part of the “tinkering” approach described above
— went to Chidorigafuchi on August 15.
But this solution seems to have been tried
and found wanting. “Chidorigafuchi greets few
mourners, and cowers in the shadow of tall buildings constructed on its perimeters,” scholar Ann
Sherif has written. She notes that the place “is
abstract, cold, and lacking in symbolism of
mourning or national memories.” 17 Forty years
after this cemetery’s creation, the problem of Yasukuni remains.
global asia Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2013
18 Reiji Yoshida, “New war memorial is old idea back in the
spotlight,” The Japan Times, June 23, 2005. www.japantimes.co.jp/
text/nn20050623f1.html
Another solution is to construct a new memorial, one that is more inclusive in its commemoration, and is free from the taint of men viewed
by others as war criminals. This idea has been
proposed and explored over the years by several
Japanese intellectuals and leaders. Koizumi discussed the idea with South Korean president Kim
Dae-jung, and subsequently created an advisory
panel to study the issue. The panel recommended
building a new memorial, because, as stated in
its final report, “Japan has not sufficiently sent
its messages home and abroad about its pre-war
behavior regarding peace and war, and its postwar activities for international peace.” 18
Japanese conservatives may still decide to
visit Yasukuni. After all, American conservatives
recoiled at then Democratic presidential candidate (now US Secretary of State) John Kerry’s offhand line about a “global test” — namely, that US
foreign policy-making might be informed by the
views of America’s allies and partners. Japanese
conservatives might similarly reject the idea that
others might have a say in whom Japan honors
and where. Some Japanese conservatives, writes
Brad Glosserman, view a proposed new memorial “as capitulation to the wishes of other nations”
and “denounce such interference in Japan’s sovereignty.” 19 Perhaps such leaders would reject the
politically correct new digs and journey to Yasukuni to show that they represent the Real Japan,
just as American conservatives today claim to
speak for “traditional Americans.”
But visits to Yasukuni, and the jaw-dropping
denials sometimes uttered by Japanese leaders, are dangerous during this era of growing
Sino-Japanese tension. Moreover, visits to Yasukuni hurt the very agenda that Japan’s conservatives want to pursue. Focusing attention
on Japan’s human rights violations in the past
distracts regional and world attention from China’s threats and human rights violations in the
19 Brad Glosserman, “Yasukuni Shrine: Better a memorial to
promote peace,” The New York Times, Feb. 4, 2003.
present. They alienate Japan from countries that
also worry about China and North Korea, most
importantly South Korea.
Critics might argue that leaders in Seoul will
continue to flog Japan for domestic political
gain regardless — as is clear from last summer,
when then President Lee Myung-bak demanded
another Japanese apology. But the calculus of
those leaders can change. It can change depending on the extent to which co-operation with
Japan grows more valuable (namely, in response
to growing Chinese aggressiveness in the region).
And it can change depending on the extent to
which Tokyo is willing to remember its past in
ways compatible with the South Korean mindset. Indeed, when former South Korean President
Kim Dae-jung discussed the idea of a new memorial in Japan with Koizumi, Kim said he would be
happy to pay respects at a Japanese war memorial that did not commemorate war criminals.
In 1985, when Nakasone announced he would
not repeat his visit to the shrine, it set an important precedent respected by subsequent Japanese
leaders. It was Koizumi’s repeated visits, during
his 2001-2006 rule, that reignited the Yasukuni
problem in Japan’s foreign relations. After Koizumi, prime ministers returned to the pattern
of avoiding the shrine — including Shinzo Abe,
during his first stint in the role from 2006-2007,
— reportedly out of deference to healthy JapanChina relations. For the sake of calm in East Asia,
and for the betterment of Japan’s own foreign
relations, one can only hope he follows Nakasone’s, and his own, precedent, and keeps his
morning coat in the closet.
Jennifer Lind is Associate Professor of
Government at Dartmouth College.
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