My Trip to the Yasukuni Jinja Shrine

The Yasukuni Jinja Shrine is located right in the middle of Tokyo. This particular shrine was built in 1869 and is devoted to fallen warriors and others who have died in the service of Japan. There are 2.5 million people enshrined here including soldiers, nurses, doctors, students, aid workers etc; pretty much anyone who died while serving Japan during its’ many conflicts (or even being caught in the crossfire). Not surprisingly Yasukuni Jinja has generated much controversy over the years. It doesn’t take much to realize that many of the people enshrined here are considered war criminals by many nations such as Korea, China, and the US. Every year the Japanese Emperor comes here to pay tribute to the fallen which stirs up ire from neighboring nations who still harbor deep wounds from past wars. My squadron has taken field trips to the shrine in the past but this is the first time we were going to get a guided tour where we were going to go into the temple for a Shinto ceremony honoring all the fallen warriors.

We joined up with our guides in the main courtyard of the shrine. (One of our guides was a retired Japanese Army Colonel who seemed old enough to have served in WWII however no mention of his background was ever made.) They brought us into a side building and into a conference room where we were served tea and introduced to a Shinto priest. The priest gave us a brief history of the shrine and told us about the ceremony we would be participating in. He also made it clear that while yes, it was a shrine specifically for Japanese warriors, all the spirit of all warriors were being honored including ours. They also specified that even though this was a Shinto ceremony we weren’t worshiping any one or thing and also weren’t doing anything that would be at odd with our own faiths.

After the introductions and tea we formed up into three lines behind the priest and walked out to the main sanctuary (in our socks, it was cold!!). We went into an area where this is a water basin that you wash your hands before entering the sanctuary. Once in the sanctuary we bowed twice, clapped twice and bowed again. The priest said some stuff in Japanese then we filed back out to an area where we were given a small bowl of sake for a toast. And that was about it. We went back to the area were we left our shoes and prepared for the next war museum tour.

The Imperial War Museum was pretty much exactly what you would have expected from a typical war museum. They have a few airplanes, ship models, weapons, armor, and artifacts from various periods and conflicts, etc. My favorite area was where all the samurai armor and weapons were displayed. The elegance and simplistic beauty of a vintage samurai sword is amazing. The periods covered were from the transition of what the Japanese consider the "modern" era (mid-1800’s) through the end of WWII, which is where their official “military” history ends (after WWII Japanese forces have been considered “self-defense” forces and not an official military).

To provide some perspective of the Japanese transition into modern times, up until the middle of the 19^th century Japan had been in self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world for over two hundred years. Japan was still feudal at this point and ruled by the samurai class. They maintained little to no contact to outside nations other than a few Dutch and Chinese traders that were only allowed access to one remote port in southern Japan. They had completely missed out on the Industrial Revolution that was racing across the rest of the world. When Commodore Matthew Perry sailed his “black fleet” into Tokyo Bay in July of 1853 this was the first time that Japanese people had seen steam powered ships! Over the course of the next year Commodore Perry negotiated a trade agreement on behalf of the US government, opening the doors of Japan and effectively ending the samurai/feudal period. The movie “The Last Samurai”, while fictitious in its portrayal of Tom Cruise’s character, is a good portrait of the painful process the Japanese people went through during this era. There was a struggle between those that wanted to maintain the old ways and those that understood the need to advance into modern times. There were even clashes between holdout bands of samurai against modernized Japanese military forces just like in the movie.

You can get more details about Yasukuni Jinja from their website: http://www.yasukuni.or.jp/english/.