Brothers and Sisters

Japanistan, Chinesia, and Koraq

Tuesday I went to Yasukuni Shrine, the shrine that causes all the trouble.

What does that mean?

Well, several times a year, Koizumi Junichiro, the Prime Minister of Japan, visits this famous shrine in Kodanshita, which is near the center of Tokyo. The shrine was placed in its present location in 1869, and was originally founded so that the Japanese could worship the souls of those who have given their lives for their country. Those who are enshrined there are considered kami (dieties or gods). There are nearly 2,466,532 million (and counting) such kami (men mostly, but also nearly 57,000 women and a number of children)

So far, this makes the shrine no different from the Vietnam Memorial in Washington or any of the number of memorials to the fallen soldiers of America. But, much to the ire of Japan’s neighboring countries, the shrine honors 1,068 men who were convicted as war criminals in 1948. Fourteen of those men were executed for their crimes. For this reason, many Chinese and Koreans, victims of Japan’s past militarism, are not happy that the Prime Minister worships at Yasukuni. The Chinese and Koreans who do business with Japan now resent this memorializing of the men who once terrorized them.

This is also compounded by the fact that the government of Japan has found that Koizumi’s visit violates the separation of religion and state that is part of Japan’s constitution. This decision, issued by a court in Osaka, fazed Koizumi not in the least, and he continues to worship at the shrine, which is privately funded.

Why?

The shrine is considered by many to be a kind of symbol of politically conservative Japan. Many Japanese businessmen, the men who fund the shrine, are particularly conservative and they see Japan’s role in the world--especially this part of the world--in a very traditional light. As I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese do not consider themselves to be Asian and by extension, they do not consider Japan to be an Asian country. The Japanese, though dependent on their neighboring countries, consider themselves above their neighbors. In this way, they are more Western than Asian. Koizumi visits are a feeble kind of gesture, especially when one considers that it’s meant to show that Japan is not going to be pushed around by anyone. Because of this, his visits seem designed to placate the conservative party and to win their continued support.

As an American in Japan, none of that concerns me--except that I recognize that Koizumi’s attitude is that of the Japanese attitude towards many foreigners, gaijin, outsiders. Things are complicated when it comes to foreigners in Japan. The Japanese dislike Koreans and Chinese especially, but how does this affect me? (The Japanese dislike of Chinese and Koreans is not my imagination. Japanese students are quite vocal about their dislike of Chinese and they further assume that others in the world, Europeans in particular, dislike Chinese people. And, too, there are special names for Japanese of Korean descent, who are never truly considered Japanese by the Japanese so long as they have Korean ancestors.) How does that affect an American? Well, it affects me very little, really, except that this attitude in general is one that many Japanese can’t help but adopt toward most foreigners, regardless of their country of origin. This attitude has, in the past, been institutionalized. For example, it’s only recently that all foreigners have not had to be fingerprinted as they enter the country. (This was the case before.) And there is talk now of requiring photographs and fingerprints of any foreigner coming into Japan on anything but a tourist visa.

The Japanese are supremely concerned with something called mie, the appearance of things. Someone who appears to be Japanese (as do the Chinese and Koreans who make up the majority of foreigners in Japan) are perplexing and maddening to the Japanese. White Americans are okay because not only are they easily recognizable, but they are also the faces most familiar from movies and advertising. Nonwhite Americans are more problematic.

And no American in Japan--however young, however devoted to peace--can avoid the implications of war. The reminder is here.

Yasukuni Shrine

Yasukuni itself means “peaceful country,” and, as such, is meant to be a place that memorializes those who have made Japan such a country--if it is such a country.

The shrine itself is as beautiful--as are all the large shrines in Japan. Stepping out of Kodanshita station, one is almost immediately confronted with the enormous torii, the gates that mark the beginning of the wide, tree-lined lane that leads to the shrine. On the day I went, it was raining and the shrine was being visited by groups of uniformed schoolchildren, boys and girls who wandered along with lane under their yellow umbrellas.

There are several torii leading to the shrine. As one passes under the first gate, one begins a kind of ascendancy from the outer, impure world, to the inner, increasingly more purified and spiritual world. Stepping through the first gate at Yasukuni, I was nearly brought to tears by the wonderful smell of wet trees and earth, a smell rare in Tokyo. To either side of the long, paved lane were tall trees, their trunks darkened with rain.

At Yasukuni, one passes through three sets of torii before reaching the final gate and the trough filled with water where one purifies oneself by washing before entering the shrine. Entering, I made my way to the shrine, tossed in my coins, bowed and clapped twice to call the gods. At Yasukuni--as at any shrine--there is nothing but peace to pray for, and I, now knowing that world peace begins with being at peace with oneself, prayed for selfish prayers to become unselfish prayers. Dropping my hands, I stepped away and bowed again. Then I made my way over to the Yushukan, the museum opened in 1882 to house the artifacts left behind by those who died in the wars Japan has taken part in, those men, women and children now turned to kami, the gods interred in the shrine.

Of course, revisionist history is everywhere. I don’t just mean that the Japanese wash clean their part in the wars that they fought in, sweep “comfort women” under the rug, ignore their part in the decimation of the Okinawans, once themselves an independent people. I mean that all nations throughout all time have a tendency to revise history. For example, women are erased from American history, and we rewrite our own history books to downplay the fact that we lost the Vietnam war. In a similar vein, the Japanese rewrite their own history at Yasukuni so that Japan was never the aggressor, but was always under pressure to defend itself against the invasion or threats from other countries, America and Russia in particular. This is a familiar and expected act, this attempt to willfully manipulate the feelings of the viewers. It happens everyday all over the world.

But despite this attempt at manipulation, there is still some true feeling to be had at Yasukuni’s Yushukan.

The exhibit begins on the second floor of the museum and one winds around the exhibit hall looking at the historical objects of Japan’s military history, the swords and armor that the earliest soldiers carried. Most of the exhibits are labeled in Japanese, though there are enough English signs that one knows that one is looking at the objects of war that have been drawn from various periods in history.

And I’ll be honest: I am not particularly interested in the objects used to perpetuate war. I am not interested in how and when and why Japanese soldiers wore armor. Because I am not interested in these things, I made my way quickly through the rooms and found myself at the end of the exhibits on the second floor where there is a small lounge with vending machines and a bathroom. Off the lounge, there is a balcony that overlooks the first floor. I stepped onto the balcony where there was a bench where one could stop and contemplate the tiny plane that hung from the roof of the museum. A Japanese plaque explained the plane, and underneath the Japanese plaque, as an afterthought, there was an English sign that explained to me what I was seeing.

What I was looking at was a Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka. The plaque explained that these tiny, stripped-down planes were transported beneath larger planes and that the Ohka, the Cherry Blossom, had two engines that could be fired for 9 seconds, long enough to propel them into targets. That’s all the sign said. That’s all it needed to say. From this, I understood that this was one of the planes used by kamikaze pilots in WWII.

My heart snagged on this knowledge and I stepped back, away from the plaque, away from the plane, shocked.

But I’ll admit that I have American sensibilities when it comes to such things.

Before I came to Japan, I had lunch with Barry and we had talked about those men, those soldiers who laid down their lives for the Emperor. Barry wondered if it was possible that kamikaze pilots were really killing themselves for the Emperor. Could it really be true? The implication behind the question was: Surely they were smarter than that. Barry had asked Toshi who was born in Tokyo close to the end of the war and whose family had had sufficient funds to send him away to spend his early childhood in, I believe, Kyoto or Osaka. Toshi had given Barry a very Japanese answer, one that neither agreed nor disagreed, but that let Barry think what he liked.

But I knew. I stood in the Yushukan and I looked at that plane, and I read the short explanation in English and I thought about those men and I knew, after ten short months in this country, knew without question that these men laid down their lives for the Emperor and that they considered it an honor to die for him and that their families considered it an honor to lose their sons this way. I knew this because the men and women I live and work amongst would lay down their lives for less.

I live among Japanese who work fourteen- or twenty- or sometimes twenty-four hour days, who lay down their lives for corporations, out of loyalty to the company. I work with and among people who work themselves to death sometimes and who do it without ever questioning whether a different kind of life is possible. That’s the truth. I have asked dozens and dozens of salarymen what they would do if they could have any job. The vast majority had no answer and in fact, the question itself puzzled them, was unfathomable. (Only two had answers. One was the Ex-Student. The other was the Handsome Businessman.)

People here don’t question their roles, they fulfill them. They don’t question in part because there is no institution in place whereby people complain and something is done about it. There are few grassroots movements in Japan, and there is little history of successful revolution. Oh, there are stories here and there, but the reality is that in Japan, there is giri (social obligation or duty), there is gaman (patience), there is haji (shame), there is sekentee (social reputation) and there is obedience. Above all, there is obedience.

Japan is a strong and successful nation even though they have no wellspring of natural resources. They have few natural resources (a fact which leaves them dependent on their Asian brothers and sisters, the neighboring countries that Koizumi insults with his visits to Yasukuni) but they do have an incredibly hardworking and obedient population. This is Japan: It’s not the individual who is important, it's the group. One works for the group and, if necessary, one sacrifices onself for the group. The Emperor was only the embodiment of that cultural sentiment that reflects an undying loyalty to the group, a loyalty that ultimately requires a kind of sacrifice of individuality that most Americans will never be forced to make.

And these sacrifices are only for economic reasons. Imagine that attitude hyped up on patriotism the way Americans get hyped up, high, on patriotism and on war.

But to an American anyway there’s something else. There’s the thinking that makes suicide bombings so alien. Climbing into a plane and dying for your country takes something that isn’t rewarded by Americans, though we routinely reward solitary acts of bravery that take lives. (Remember the firemen who died on 9/11 or the numerous soldiers in WWII who saved others and sacrificed themselves in the line of duty?) We recognize bravery and we reward it. But what we mistakenly don’t recognize is that these acts are not uniquely American. They lay instead along the lines of a continuum of bravery that includes Al Qaeda suicide bombers and Japanese kamikaze pilots.

Who commits those acts? Who climbs into those planes? Our brothers and sisters do.

Maybe the kamikaze pilots didn’t do it for the Emperor. Maybe they didn’t do it knowing that they’d be forever worshipped as gods. Maybe they didn’t do it to uphold the reputation of their families’ names. Maybe they didn’t do it because of the enormous social pressure. Maybe they didn’t do it for any one of these reasons--but for some reason, they did it.

I couldn’t do it. I’m not that brave.