Shadows of the Past

Recently I made a trip to Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, famous for enshrining Japan’s war dead, infamous for mixing war criminals up with them, without expressing remorse for their victims, (which in this sense makes it the polar opposite of the universally praised memorial at Hiroshima). The shrine itself, from the outside at least, looks just like any other one in Japan and surprisingly for me, so do the visitors- at least when I went, there were none of the loony right-wingers to be seen. Going to the museum is where you start to get a sense of just why this is such a controversial and emotionally-charged place.

The museum is basically a war museum, starting in Japan’s distant feudal past and finishing right up to the present day. What makes it stand out (and to my mind makes it inherently flawed) is it's constant glorification of war, even wars that had become hopeless to win. I suppose from a certain perspective this is it’s strength, after all, hasn’t war always been with us and soldiers always been willing to risk their lives for glory and their country, like sportsmen striving for their team? Well, yes and no- to apply the standards of medieval warfare, which was mostly trained soldiers fighting one another (I know this is debatable, but lets just stay with the stereotype for now)- to modern, especially urban warfare, is more than just problematic, it’s plain wrong.

Ever since the First World War, modern weaponry has been capable of randomly inflicting damage on people, in many cases taking away the ‘nobility’ of ground combat, though perhaps reserving it for the likes of top-gun fighter pilots. Soldier’s bravery, sacrifices and risks they run are still very real, but the work they often get engaged in is far from pure. The spread of urban warfare, however necessary it may have been, has also involved civilians like never before and with this the possibility of harsh reprisals being committed against them, to an extent that breaches the Geneva conventions.

Now, again some would say that a war crimes accusation is by its very nature political- if all sides breach the Geneva conventions in a war, is it really fair for only the loser to get punished for this? Well, this is another argument that I won’t be getting into here and I think the most neutral thing I can say is that no-one wants their own side to receive such rebukes and that in the heat of war all sides do things that are wrong, but some very much more so than others. My main point is that trying to cover up this feature of modern war is wrong, will be widely condemned whenever it happens and is the main problem with this museum- such that the location raises up international outcry for ‘beautifying’ conquest and war and only lamenting the fact that the former Axis power lost!

However, to be fair, I should add that whenever revisionists seek to posthumously accuse Allied generals of war crimes, British and American people are generally up in arms at the prospect, so much so that the Smithsonian museum in Washington DC had to change a planned exhibit on the horrors of Hiroshima as it seemed disrespectful to the war dead. Meanwhile Japan, with it’s 60-odd years of pacifism, is often accused of glorifying war, which in itself is more than a little hypocritical and unfair. Yet, despite the museum’s constant protestations of exhibiting a ‘struggle for peace’ (one which involved quote ‘subjugating’ parts of China), that is exactly what one sees here. They are far from the only ones doing this… a fact that doesn’t make these exhibits any less excusable, but at least puts them in context. We all want to honour our war dead. Without them we wouldn’t have the great nations we now have. We should just be sure not to do so in a way that glorifies atrocities in the same breath, for ‘those that forget their history are doomed to repeat it’.

It would be unfair of the world to deny Japan the natural right to fondly remember their war dead, most of whom died in the belief that they were serving their country, however twisted a leadership they may have been operating under. In case anyone says that fighting to take over other countries is obviously ignoble, it can be safely said that all countries able to have engaged in some form of colonialism to aid their economic growth. The question is not just that of taking over countries, but the manner in which it is done, to concern taken to protect the innocent inhabitants from harm. The kind of harsh reprisals made by Japanese forces against the Chinese and their treatment of both Asians and Westerners taken prisoner are beyond the pale.

No doubt countries like Russia and the same did far worse, but the point here is that ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’. When one attempts to gloss over or justify atrocities one is inviting scorn and confusing the issue. Soldiers fighting soldiers is one thing- soldiers massacring civilians or torturing prisoners quite another and something that cannot easily be explained away by the ‘heat of the moment’. It’s quite obvious to me that a racially prejudiced ideology was at least partly responsible, just as was the case in Germany and that people who try to justify such actions may well be guilty of the same prejudices themselves. It goes without saying that this is unacceptable for any decent people, whatever their national origins. Which means that whenever a Japanese Prime Minister visits this shrine to pray for world peace and the memory of lost soldiers, sparks will fly and the average Japanese person will feel hard done by, unaware of the issues at stake (which incidentally are edited out of approved school history textbooks, but that’s another issue, for another time!) One can be proud of one’s country for the good things it has done, there’s no need to gloss over the errors, the sins, the mistakes, to have a positive self-image.

So my advice? Move the war criminal’s remains to another site and make clear that this shrine is for celebrating the bravery of those who fought nobly, not for just everyone in a uniform. This would be a great and long-overdue contribution to global understanding and a way for Japan to get over this dark period better with her neighbours. Either that, or make another site dedicated to the same purpose; whatever it takes to distinguish between war heroes and war criminals, so that we are all on the same page. If Germany can do it, there’s no reason why Japan can’t… and personally I believe that sooner or later they will manage it. For myself, remembering the tragedies of the past and realising how much we have done in the relatively peaceful (for us!) years since, it makes me realise just how important finding peaceful solutions to world problems is, Sure, there’ll be wars, and despite all the evil new good things will come from them, such as new technologies and the movements of people’s around the world. Still, The more they can be limited to consensual combatants, if such people can be found, the better. How about computer games wars played on the Internet? Now, there’s an idea…