By Barry Desker, Published The Straits Times, 5 Nov 2014
Perhaps Mr Abe was hoping that this gesture would appease Chinese leaders who will host him during the forthcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Meeting in Beijing on Nov 10-11. This is unlikely to happen.
I had visited the Yasukuni Shrine a week earlier during a visit to Tokyo, in an effort to understand the reasons for the persistence of Japanese politicians in making annual visits on ritual holidays, as well as the strong opposition of the Chinese government to such visits.
While the shrine honours 2.5 million Japanese war dead since the Meiji Restoration, it is seen by many as a reminder of Japanese militarism during World War II. Criticism is strongest in China, South Korea and Taiwan. I felt that, like many other nations, Japan would want to honour those who had paid the ultimate sacrifice serving their country.
My visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and its museum changed my view.
I did not have great problems with the shrine itself. It had an air of tranquillity and was marked by the respectful attitudes of the middle-aged and elderly Japanese paying homage to their ancestors and relatives and worshipping them as "guardian deities". Although Japan lost the war, commemorating its war dead could help its people reinforce belief in the futility of such wars.
Most criticism has centred on the enshrining of 14 Class A war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine in 1978. The enshrining was done by the temple's Shinto priests without any public consultation. As a consequence, Japan's emperors have not visited the shrine since then.
This enshrining and the criticisms by Japan's neighbours of visits by Japan's leaders and parliamentarians have reinforced the controversial image of Yasukuni Shrine.
My view is that the inclusion of the Class A war criminals has symbolic significance and will be an opportunity for China, in particular, to criticise the Japanese government.
However, it is the revisionist view of World War II presented in the museum which really highlights the perspective taken by the Shinto leadership responsible for the shrine and is most troublesome for Japan's friends.
As the museum has excellent descriptions in Japanese, with English translations, the revisionist message is relayed even to foreigners visiting the museum.
As someone from South-east Asia, I was taken aback by the honoured place at the museum's entrance of the original locomotive used during the opening of the Siam/Burma railway.
The "death railway" was built during the war and resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 South-east Asian forced labourers and 13,000 allied prisoners-of- war. There was no indication of the cost of the project in terms of the lives lost and the privations undergone by the conscripted workforce.
The display of the beautifully reconstructed Zero fighter aircraft and heavy artillery next to the locomotive paled in comparison.
In the well-tended garden near the entrance to the museum is a statue honouring kamikaze suicide pilots. Its position comes after one's views have been positively influenced by walking past statues honouring horses, carrier pigeons and dogs serving the Japanese military which were killed during the war.
Despite the wide variety of displays, I saw during my visit that most visitors were drawn to the section on kamikaze suicide attacks, which had photographs of successful kamikaze air attacks on naval vessels.
There were also photos of those who had undertaken these attacks, including poems and letters they had written before they embarked on these acts. There was a display of a kamikaze mini-submarine torpedo and a piloted kamikaze glider with three rocket engines that fired for nine seconds each which would be released from an aircraft.
As someone familiar with the eulogies to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria suicide terrorists, I found this paean to Japanese suicide pilots a chilling reminder.
The garden also contained a statue honouring Dr Radha Binod Pal, who was the Indian judge on the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (the International Military Tribunal for the Far East).
Pal was the only judge who supported "not guilty" verdicts on all charges for those on trial on the grounds that the impartiality of the tribunal was doubtful and that it was carrying out "victor's justice".
Pal has legendary status in Japan. During his visit to India in 2007, Mr Abe said that Pal was "highly respected" for his "courage" in his address to the Indian Parliament. He also met Pal's octogenarian son in Kolkata and was given photographs of Pal with Mr Abe's grandfather, former Japanese prime minister Nobusuke Kishi.
The museum visit gave me an insight into the background for Mr Abe's positive attitudes towards India today and the development of closer ties with the Narendra Modi administration.
The museum visitor is left with an image of Japan as the victim of the war, reinforced by the scenes of the fire-bombing of Japanese cities and the effects of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The stark revisionist message is conveyed in a 50-minute film which stressed that Japan was forced to go to war by the American oil embargo which was imposed to support American demands that Japan withdraw from China. The film denies the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and criticises the "wrongful" convictions in the Tokyo tribunal.
The dioramas and displays highlight Asian support for Japan's war effort and Japan's role in the national liberation of Asian peoples.
While international attention has been focused on visits to Yasukuni Shrine by Japanese leaders, the museum is really more worrying. It draws attention to the lack of recognition in Japan of the Japanese role in World War II.
With the passing of time, stridently nationalist views of history in China and Japan will make peacemaking between the two Asian giants more difficult and spark periodic tensions in the bilateral relationship.
Barry Desker is Distinguished Fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. He was its dean until Nov 2.
Barry Desker is Distinguished Fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. He was its dean until Nov 2.
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