Yasukuni continues to embody great political significance for Japan and its neighbours, illustrating the tensions between Japan, China and both Koreas over wartime memory, history, and denial of responsibility.
In late 2017, Japanese Prime minister Shinzō Abe was reported to have sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine for the war dead to celebrate its annual autumn festival (‘Abe sends ritual offering’ 2017). The ritual offering, like many of Japan’s Prime Minister and lawmakers’ visits to the infamous shrine, has drawn criticism from neighbouring Asian countries such as China and South Korea. In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang has stated that the Chinese government is “firmly opposed to Japanese politicians’ wrong practices” and has urged Japan to “face squarely and deeply reflect on its history of aggression” (‘Abe’s offering and lawmakers’ visit’ 2017). In Seoul, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry has expressed “deep concerns and regret” over the ritual offering to the shrine and similarly urging Abe to “look squarely at history” (‘Abe’s offering and lawmakers’ visit’ 2017).
As such, Yasukuni continues to embody great political significance for Japan and its neighbours, illustrating the tensions between Japan, China and both Koreas over wartime memory, history, and denial of responsibility brought by the controversial enshrinement of fourteen Class A war criminals, convicted with the highest level of criminal responsibility under the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, along with numerous visits by Japan’s political elite and its close ties to the emperor (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.101).
Method, Framework, Thesis
As the shrine has shown, the mere act of memorializing war through monuments, enshrinement, and rituals can greatly affect political relations and cause rifts among countries. This is consistent with a discourse among scholars, which posits that “the cultural significance of memorials as reminders of past wars has always been simultaneously a political one” (Niven 2007, p. 48).
Thus, the theoretical framework for this essay will be the study of memory politics and urban geography. This essay will use examples from museums, public monuments/statues and places of worship, as they are facilitators of memorialization (Niven 2007, p.39). Hereafter, South Korea is referred to as Korea. Thus, the subject of analysis for Japan will be the Yasukuni Shrine and its adjoining Yūshūkan military and war museum. For Korea, the case studies are the War Memorial of Korea (WMK), the comfort women statue, and Tak Gyeong-hyeon memorial.
Thus, this essay posits the following conclusions; for Japan, Yūshūkan transforms memories of Japanese war aggression during the Pacific War into a sanitized narrative of glorious warfare, liberation, and patriotism, while avoiding war responsibility. For Korea, WMK deliberately dissociates the Korean national identity from colonial embarrassment and emasculation by focusing on heroic resistance and omitting mentions of collaboration, as was the case of hiding the Tak Gyeong-Hyeon statue. Certain memories can be exploited for profit, as Japan’s ruling LDP party, Izokukai (The Japan Association of War-bereaved Families) and the Ministry of Health and Welfare had gained political capital from elevating the status of Yasukuni. Likewise, the memorialization of the Pacific War can also serve as a resistance against hegemonic narrative such as the comfort women statue in Korea against revisionist denial of responsibility with the Yūshūkan and Yasukuni against the trend of pacifism and self-criticism in Japan.
Memory as a social construct; selective remembering and forgetting
Fundamental to memory politics is the notion that the social construction of memory is deeply political, shaped and maintained through collective recollection and repetition, often using commemorative events and rituals, which produces “a single, highly idealized, composite image” (Mitchell 2003, p. 443). The invented image and transformed memory, exemplified by monuments and rituals, is then used as a tool by political elites to legitimize authority and promote social cohesion (Osborne 1998, p. 432).
The Yūshūkan War museum, located within the Yasukuni complex, is an extreme example of selective remembering through war memorials. Built in 1882 as a venue to display Japanese war relics, Yūshūkan gained prominence in the 1930s, during the onset of the second SinoJapanese war, where students were encouraged to experience the war first hand through interactive displays of air rifles and bomber planes (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.102). This glorification of war was mainly used to instill values of patriotism and civic morality for the mobilization of the Japanese public in the near-future (Kal 2008, p.2).
An “interactive” museum exhibit at the Yushukan, Tokyo, c. 1940.
Post-War Perspective on the Pacific War: Revising the Past to Complicate the Future?
Now in the Post-war era, one would assume that this narrative of glorious warfare and calls for armament would have no place in Japan’s contemporary discourse. But after the museum’s reopening in 2002, the displays and exhibition text presented a war narrative that was “somewhat subdued though clearly unrepentant presentation of Japan’s wartime past” (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.103), almost as if nothing has changed since the second-Sino Japanese war.
Through its displays, the newly-renovated Yūshūkan remains firm in its position that “the ’Greater East Asian War’ contributed to liberating Asia” and that the Pacific War was far from “an act of imperialist aggression”, the official leaflet from the Museum had claimed (Yoshida 2007, p.7). And true to the leaflet’s claims, the museum attests to the narrative of heroism by displaying Japanese fighter planes diving into enemy ships to glorify the suicide attacks along with an exhibition of a Japanese locomotive running on the rail lines between Thailand and Burma with the display text providing no mentions of the enslaved workers who had died building the Japanese war infrastructure (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.103).
Furthermore, the annexation of Korea was described as an effort on Japan’s part to liberate the peninsula from Chinese occupation (Kal 2008, p.15). Through the exhibits, the Yūshūkan war museum manages to transform memories of the Pacific War into portrayals of Japanese patriotism and heroic effort to liberate Asia from the Western hegemony without mentions of Japanese actions as war aggressors (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.104).
To selectively remember and forget memories: a political act
The ability to selectively remember memories can similarly be utilized to forget certain memories, to dissociate the nation from a particular event, as “images are remembered only when located in conceptual structures defined by the community at large” (Hutton 1993, p.7).
Korea's Remedy to the 'embarrassing' wartime experience
While Yūshūkan serves as a reminder of Japan’s relentless colonial ambitions, the War Memorial of Korea downplays its portrayal of the colonial period and the Pacific War (Kal 2008, p.10). The WMK, initially planned during Roh Tae Woo’s tenancy in 1988, was built on the former site of the Korean Army Headquarters of Seoul in 1994 (Kal 2008, p.2). The war memorial’s official mission statement states that “the patriotism of [Korea’s] forefathers started from the time of the three nations as well as through the Koryeo dynasty, Chosun dynasty and the Today” (War Memorial of Korea [WMK] 2014). From this statement, there is no mention of the Japanese occupation nor of the Pacific War, despite the profound impact of Korea’s colonial experience (Kal 2008, p.10). Furthermore, Kal (2008) also observes on the wall sculptures on the pedestal of the museum building that “there is no mention of how Japanese colonial rule contributed to the formation of the South Korean army” (p.11). Such omissions, according to Jager (2003), is to transform the embarrassing experience of colonialism into “a mere blank period” to preserve the narrative of Korean military history, which prides itself on “the masculinist language of the national self-definition” (p.129). Hence, there is a deliberate dissociation of the colonial period and the Pacific War vis-à-vis the War Memorial of Korea.
War Memorial of Korea, scant of any attention given to Japan.
Korea's divergent memory of the Pacific War: Minority Voices
While the WMK proudly stands in Seoul as a testament to “heroism and resistance” (Kal 2008, p. 11), another statue in the southern city of Sacheon, sits idly wrapped and hidden from the public eye. The monument was erected in 2008, in memory of Tak Gyeong-hyeon, a Sacheon native who was recruited as a Kamikaze pilot and subsequently perished on a suicide mission during the final year of the Pacific War (Morris-Suzuki 2013, p.164). Upon its unveiling, the statue was met with protest by local nationalist groups, who saw Tak Gyeong-hyeon’s service in the Japanese imperial forces, especially in the Kamikaze division, as an explicit “act of collaboration, a betrayal of the Korean nation” (Morris-Suzuki 2013, p.164). Again, the wrapped Tak Gyeong-hyeon demonstrates the use of war memorials to suppress or emphasize certain memories and events to form an idealized narrative. By keeping the memorial hidden, the narrative of civilian participation and complicity along with collaboration with the “other” is suppressed to prevent the erosion of the Korean national identity, which posits collective self-sacrifice against the “other” as nobler than emasculation through collaboration (Kal 2008, p.10).
Exploitation for profit
Katharyne Mitchell (2003) observed that the strategic use of memories can be exploited for profit (p.450), in a way that memories of the past have become commodified by the government and political entities to further their interest (Belanger 2002, p. 73).
Yasukuni provides exemplary evidence of war memory as a profit facilitator. Located in Tokyo, the shrine is a Shinto memorial dedicated to over 2 million people who had died in a series of wars on behalf of the emperor (Morris-Suzuki et al. 2012, p.108), where the vast majority of its enshrined were those who had died in the final year of the Pacific War (Kal 2008, p.13). At the beginning of the post-war decade, institutionalized religion became a highly salient political agenda as many saw the need for reforms to prevent a second Pacific War (Seraphim 2006, p.229).
Ironically, The Japan Association of War-bereaved Families (Izokukai) seized the opportunity from advocating increased state protection of Yasukuni to increase their political capital by forging alliances with politicians from the right-wing, nationalistic Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and bureaucrats in the Ministry of Health and Welfare (Seraphim 2006, p.230). This was a mutually beneficial alliance as the Izokukai could benefit from an already existing political network in the Diet, where war-bereaved diet members were already organized into special leagues, in having their political interest represented on a national scale (Seraphim 2006, p.229). Likewise, the LDP could rely on the loyal Izokukai and the war-bereaved Diet members for votes and favours (Seraphim 2006, p.229).
The party has simultaneously benefited from and has supported campaigns for the revival of the Yasukuni Shrine since the post-war era (Seraphim 2006, p.238). The Ministry of Health and Welfare, too, gained political spotlight after their assistance in the enshrinement of Class A war criminals, to the benefit of the LDP and Izokukai (Seraphim 2006, p.245). Predictably, Abe’s ritual offering for Yasukuni coincided with news of Japan’s upcoming general election, where his ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is predicted to win (‘Abe sends ritual offering’ 2017). As such, conservative politicians, the ministry, and Izokukai sought to profit from the memorialization of the Pacific War to gain political capital.
As a response against hegemonic narrative
While memorialization are commonly tools of political gain by elites, the use of war memorials can also be used to resist hegemonic narrative (Mitchell 2003, p. 451).
Such was the case in Korea, where a bronze statue of a girl was placed outside the Japanese consulate of Busan (Luu 2017). The statue, erected by a civil group last year (Han & Griffiths 2017), symbolized the plight of “comfort women”, women who were forcefully recruited or coerced to work in the Imperial Army’s brothels as sex slaves (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.116).
The installation of these statues signifies a resistance against hegemonic narrative by revealing the “public secret” regarding male violence against women (Mitchell 2003, p.451). The hegemonic narrative in question has been on the rise following a revival of pro-Imperialist revisionism in the mid and late 1990s (Yoshida 2007, p.6). The most prominent revisionist, Sakurai Toshiko, has even argued that the “comfort women” were not sex slaves but rather, willing prostitutes under a system of licensed prostitution (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.116).
Likewise, the use of public space to convey a message is also a political act with real political implications. The comfort women statues in Korea have not only highlighted wartime atrocities but has also affected political relations, with Japan recalling two of its high-ranking diplomats from Korea and ceasing strategic talks on high-level trade deals between the two countries (Luu 2017). This is an expected response as the act of “telling of the truth” in a public space is considered a taboo in society and thus, generates animosity (Burk 2003, p.321).
Meanwhile, the reopening of Yūshūkan was also, ironically, an attempt to resist hegemonic narrative of the Pacific War. Prior to the mid and late 1990s, the dominant narrative of the Pacific War revolved around pacifism and self-criticism, brought by the rise of the previously suppressed left-wing during the immediate post-war years (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.106). Disillusioned by the Pacific War and its carnage, the Japanese leftists and progressives sought to embrace war responsibility and pacifism (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.105), evident in the establishment of several peace museums, such as the Hiroshima Ground Zero and the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum (Yoshida 2007, p.6).
However, the capacity for the narrative to be sustained is highly reliant on the dominant power structure as memories are largely produced by the hegemony (Mitchell 2003, p.441). As the progressives and leftists were dethroned following the Cold War and the losing popularity of the Soviet and Chinese Communist systems, the rise of the new-right was increasingly reflected through trends of revisionism and wartime glorification (Shin & Sneider 2016, p.106). As such, the rising new-right sought to erase the “masochistic and inimical” trend of pacifism and selfcriticism and build national pride among youth (Yoshida 2007, p.6). Likewise, the revival of the Yasukuni Shrine was also utilized by the new-right, where the grief and sorrow from the human loss and sacrifices from the disastrous Pacific War are transformed into commemorations and celebrations of national glory and the birth of the nation (Seraphim 2006, p.232). This form of emotional alchemy (Henry 2014, p. 186), helped place the emperor, war and the shrine in the forefront of modern Japanese national identity and shared heritage (Seraphim 2006, p.231), to the benefit of the nationalistic, conservative politicians
Conclusion
The memorialization of the Pacific War in both Korea and Japan is deeply entrenched in politics. Through selective remembering, Japan manages to weave a wartime narrative of patriotism and glory without addressing its war atrocities. Meanwhile, Korea opts to selectively forget the Pacific War and dissociate itself from memories of embarrassment, emasculation, and collaboration to preserve its narrative of military strength and heroic resistance. Likewise, the glorification of war has been exploited for profit by conservative politicians and bureaucrats in Japan for political gain. However, the comfort women statue serves as a counter-narrative to growing imperialist revisionism while Yūshūkan and Yasukuni serve as revisionist projects to quell the trend of pacifism in Japan.
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