Posted on: Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Koizumi shrine visit a malignant symbol

He was doing Japan's neighbors a favor, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi insists, by moving up his visit to Tokyo's shrine for the nation's war dead by a couple of days.

Had he visited today — the anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender — as planned, it would have been clear to all that the occasion was all about World War II, and thus to some extent the 14 war criminals still honored at Yasukuni Shrine.

The shrine invites the souls of all of Japan's 2.5 million war dead, dating back to Meiji times, to dwell within. By visiting on any day but Aug. 15, Koizumi hoped the world would suppose he was doing nothing more untoward than a U.S. president visiting Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day.

It fooled no one. Chinese, Koreans and Southeast Asians were deeply wounded by the visit. But so were the non-Shinto religions of Japan, such as the Buddhists, who see worship at Yasukuni as endorsing Shinto as the official religion of Japan, in violation of a constitutional separation of church and state.

So, too, were right-wing Japanese, who see nothing wrong with Japan's past — as reflected in recent histories that gloss over wartime atrocities — and hope to see their nation strong once more. They called Koizumi cowardly for changing the date of his visit.

In this context, Adm. Dennis Blair, the U.S. Pacific commander, should reflect on how his call for revision of Japan's pacifist constitution plays in the rest of Asia and in Japan. True, Blair's budget-strapped command could use some help with the heavy lifting in the region, but that benefit is a poor fig leaf for the deeply troubling implications.

In most years, Japan has marked its experience of World War II by emphasizing the anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A shift to Yasukuni, if that's what we're witnessing, would be a jarring one, turning the focus from innocent victims to martyred heroes.

But both approaches reflect Japan's inability to come to terms with its militaristic past.

Indeed, if Japan could atone for its history with the honesty and humility that Germany has shown, Yasukuni today would be just another war memorial, of little interest to outsiders.

To an amazing extent, Japan's inability to deal with its economic and political nightmares today reflects confusion over what Japan should and could be in the 21st century — due in turn to a refusal to appreciate what Japan was.