(1) Coup d’etat of the Yasukuni faction
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who succeeded Koizumi, put off a visit to Yasukuni Shrine with no clear comment because he wanted to recover some diplomacy with Asian nations. Abe is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a former prime minister and class-A war criminal suspect. Abe also is a young leader of the Yasukuni faction of the LDP. The mass media essentially made him prime minister, praising Abe as a strong politician against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Abe was shown as a very gentle person who fully sympathized with those Japanese who had been abducted by the DPRK.
It may also be called a coup d’etat by the Yasukuni faction that the Abe admini-stration weakened the Fundamental Law of Education and created a public referen-dum for constitutional revision of Article 9. But Abe did not visit Yasukuni Shrine.
The six visits to Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Koizumi has clearly violated Article 20 of the Japanese Constitution, which demands the separation of religion and politics(1). Visiting Yasukuni includes some other problems because it violates the freedom of citizens’ minds and conscience.
It is necessary for journalism in Japan to be a critical entity against building any facilities to glorify and condole those who victimized themselves by dying for the nation. But the corporate media, which has lost the true spirit of journalism, has be-come an accomplice to Prime Minister Koizumi in condoning his six visits to Yasukuni.
There were many dissenting opinions when Koizumi went to Yasukuni the first
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time. But public opinion was divided when he repeated the visit to Yasukuni, and fi-nally most of the Japanese public came to think that they hated to be criticized by foreign countries over the Yasukuni issue. Japanese people often say, “Don’t suc-cumb to foreign intervention by China and Korea in Japanese domestic affairs,” and this sentiment was created by the biased media reporting on the Yasukuni issue.
The Japanese mass media based all the problems of the Yasukuni issue on diplo-matic issues and insisted that the visit to Yasukuni by a prime minister does not con-tribute to the Japanese state interest. When journalism such as this promotes the na-tional interest, it will die. What journalism should defend is the public interest, which is in direct conflict with the national interest.
(2) Dangerous essence of Yasukuni Shrine
What is Yasukuni Shrine as a religious facility? Koizumi said that he went to Yasukuni to pray for peace, but Yasukuni Shrine is not an appropriate place for him to declare that he will never wage a war or abandon a nation’s right to have armed forces.
Yasukuni Shrine (known as Tokyo Shokonsha in the beginning) is a “war affirma-tive” Shinto shrine that commends and enshrines the soldiers who were killed in the emperor’s name as “spirits of the war dead” since the Meiji Restoration. Especially after 1985, Yasukuni has enshrined people who were mobilized and killed in order to invade the Asia-Pacific region; only soldiers were admitted by the government, not civilian victims.
Yasukuni Shrine is the central facility of the national Shintoist ideology in the im-perial nation’s historical view under fascism. Yushukan, the attached museum of the history of warfare of Yasukuni Shrine, asserts that “There are a lot of wars that were to have been avoided, the Greater East Asia War included, for self-defense and to achieve a free and equal world not based on skin color.” And they note that “It is in the spirits of the war dead that honorable lives were sacrificed for those wars.”
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(source: Yasukuni Shrine homepage). Yasukuni Shrine insists that the Asia-Pacific War by Japan was a “war of self-defense” and that “it was a holy war to liberate Asia from the European and American powers.”
It cannot be said that Yasukuni Shrine is a religious facility. How, then, should we translate a religious, corporate entity like Yasukuni Shrine into English? I think that we should translate it as “Yasukuni Cult Shrine,” though it is usually translated as Yasukuni Shintoist Shrine.
(3) Prime Minister Koizumi forces the visit to Yasukuni on August 15
Prime Minister Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine in the early morning of August 15, 2006. Fifty-six Diet members of the “Association of Diet Members Visiting Yasukuni Shrine” (the Democratic Party was included) also visited the shrine.
The prime minister approached Yasukuni wearing coattails and took a state vehi-cle with bodyguards. There were many reporters around his official residence. He did Shoden Sanpai (昇殿参拝, entry into the sanctum of the shrine for praying), reg-istered himself as “Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi,” and paid money to purchase flowers at private expense. Ten news helicopters or more hovered about in the sky overhead, covering the event.
For an incumbent prime minister, it was the first visit to Yasukuni by a premier on August 15, the day marking the end of the war, in the 21 years since Yasuhiro Nakasone went to the shrine on that day in 1985.
It was an act that went against the interest of the people because it violates the Constitution and justifies a Shinto shrine that affirms a war of aggression. When NHK reported the reactions from overseas on its 12:00 news broadcast that day, the Beijing and Seoul correspondents explained the reaction of the Chinese and South Korean government spokespersons. Afterward, a Taipei correspondent reported the Taiwanese government spokesperson’s comments, which were not critical of Koi-zumi’s visit to Yasukuni on August 15. It was very strange that NHK picked out
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Taiwan from among the several countries which the Imperial Japanese army had in-vaded during the war.
“Why can’t a Japanese leader go to Yasukuni−just because the Chinese and Ko-reans are against it?” Koizumi repeatedly asked the Japanese people. The Japanese mainstream media has not carried out their duties for setting the agenda in the Yasukuni issue.
The Yasukuni problem is an extremely important internal affair.
The prime minister answered a question from the Bankisha (journalists who cover the prime minister) at a bura-sagari (literally, “hanging down from the premier”−a style of brief interviews with reporters that is not a press conference.)
“If I hear what China and South Korea mean, I do not think that Asian diplomacy will improve. I would go [to Yasukuni] even if America opposes it, but President Bush wouldn’t say such a childish thing.”
There appeared in each newspaper (the evening newspapers of the 15 th and the morning newspapers on the 16th) many citizens’ comments on Prime Minister Koi-zumi’s visit to the shrine. Most ordinary people’s opinions that appeared in the pa-pers supported Koizumi’s tricky explanations, such as “I think a prime minister has a human right to have his own thoughts and beliefs” and “It is a very natural thing to go to Yasukuni and express our condolences to those who died in the war.” Some of them say that they now found the Japanese war had a cause and should be histori-cally justified.
There were people’s voices of having understood the just war existed, too. Such a description was in the evening newspaper society column on the August 15 Asahi Shimbun:
“A high school girl (age 18) in Nagoya City came to Yasukuni for the first time with her mother (age 44) for the purpose of seeing Prime Minister Koizumi’s visit.
‘My teacher at school opposed Prime Minister Koizum’s visit to Yasukuni. I now think he was impolite to Mr. Koizumi. Those who are enshrined at Yasukuni are
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diers who sacrificed their lives for our nation’,” she commented.
This high school student should study history more.
It is said that those who visited the shrine and the citizens surged, and a shout of joy of “Banzai!” went up when Prime Minister Koizumi showed up at Yasukuni.
There were a lot of people waving the Hinomaru (Japanese national flag). These flags were apparently prepared and distributed by ultra-nationalist groups such as the
“Association of People to Be with National Heroes and Souls.”
Ordinary Japanese citizens who have these thoughts about Japan’s “righteous” war are as dangerous as Koizumi and his followers.
According to the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, 250,000 people visited Yasukuni on August 15, with 50,000 people having increased more than 2005.
The Osaka District Court handed down a clear judgment, ruling that Prime Minis-ter Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni was against the Japanese Constitution. The judges said that a rapid increase in the number of people who visited Yasukuni after Koi-zumi’s visit showed a strong influence on people’s religious attitudes.
There are a lot of young people who support the visit to Yasukuni. There seem to be a lot of people who consented after hearing Koizumi’s comments to reporters, too. I received an e-mail about it: “I first thought Koizumi’s visit is a problem. After hearing Koizumi’s comments after his worship at Yasukuni, I now can understand what he wants to say.” This student is a clever and serious person.
The citizens who do not know history and the law enough are cheated by Koi-zumi’s illogical and unreasonable explanation.
(4) Public opinion allowing the prime minister’s visit to Yasukuni
Let us now look at the transition of public opinion polls concerning Yasukuni.
There were a lot of opposing opinions when Prime Minister Koizumi declared his visit to Yasukuni Shrine. That is natural because doubts about the unconstitutionality of it were many; no one had tried to visit Yasukuni as prime minister since
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sone. However, Koizumi succeeded to make the visit to Yasukuni an accomplished fact by using the media, especially television.
Koizumi made a success by changing the date of his shrine visit to August 13. A lot of people thought that date was better than August 15.
In a survey by TBS about the visit to Yasukuni, 46% of respondents said “It was good,” while 35% of respondents said “There is a problem.” After having visited Yasukuni, the cabinet support rate exceeded 80% (according to a public opinion poll of the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper).
・January 27, 2003 by Mainichi: Good evaluation 47%, Bad evaluation 43%
・January 28, 2004 by Mainichi: Good evaluation 44%, Bad evaluation 48%
・January 19, 2006 by Asahi: Agree 36%, Oppose 52%
Reasons for agreement: Yasukuni should become a memorial for the war dead, 37%; It is not correct to stop the visit to Yasukuni because of the repulsion of for-eign countries, 24%.
When Koizumi visited Yasukuni the sixth time in 2006, Kyodo News Service did an urgent public opinion poll. As a result, the good evaluation exceeded the majority by 51% for the prime minister’s visit to Yasukuni.
According to the Tokyo Shimbun, of the number of people who visited Yasukuni, only tens of thousands of people before Prime Minister Koizumi visited the shrine.
But the numbers were 100,000 people in 2004, 200,000 people in 2005, and in-creased rapidly to 250,000 people in 2006. However, it dein-creased to 10,000 or more people in 2007, the year that Prime Minister Abe decided not to visit Yasukuni.
2. Visit to Yasukuni by Koizumi and the Powerlessness