Couple that with Abe's well-known right-wing sentiments, desire to increase spending on the military and amending the constitution to eliminate the war-renouncing Article 9. For the time being, the Abe government has shelved constitutional revision, but it is moving ahead with plans to permit Japan to engage in what's called "collective defense."
The Yasukuni Shrine was created by the Emperor Meiji to honor and permanently enshrine the spirits of approximately 2.5 million soldiers who died in his service -- not for Japan, but for the Japanese Empire. (It includes spirits of Taiwanese and Koreans who fought for the empire during World War II and before.)
In 1978 the priests enshrined the spirits of 14 former leaders of Japan known as "Class A" war criminals who had been convicted in the Tokyo Trials for the crime of waging an aggressive war. Most of them either were hanged or given long prison sentences. That has been the nub of the argument ever since.
In a strange way, the American occupiers planted the seeds of the conflict. Determined to wipe out any vestige of State Shinto, which it believed behind emperor worship and Japanese aggression, it severed any official connection with the government. The American-written constitution forbids any state aid to religious institutions or festivals.
The shrine is thus run by a private foundation that can do what it wants and say what it wants without any permission from the government, no matter if that should cause the government embarrassment or complicate Japan's relations with other countries. Ever since the 1978 induction, the priests have insisted that the spirits of the 14, or anyone else, cannot be removed.
Moreover, the shrine operates the adjacent Yashukan Museum, which advances the most extreme right-wing revision theories about the war, asserting that the 14and other convicted criminals are "martyrs," that Japan went to war with China to suppress bandits and "terrorists" and launched the wider war as a righteous crusade against Western colonialism.
As Jeffrey Kingston, director of East Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan, put it recently, "Yasukuni is not about dignified homage [to Japan's war dead] it is about scoring points and drawing attention to revisionist history."
Almost every year the question rises: why not ignore the Yasukuni shrine and choose other venues to honor the fallen? Not far from Yasukuni is the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery, which, unlike Yasukuni, actually has remains buried there, more than 300,000 of them. But all of them are unidentified. Abe did lay a floral wreath at the site.
He also joined Emperor Akihito and the empress in bowing to a special memorial obelisk that is in the Nippon Budokan. Since 1978 that has been the imperial family's way of honoring the war dead. Since 1978 neither Akihito nor his father, Hirohito, has visited the Yasukuni.
In the first eight months of his administration, Abe has visited more than 15 countries, including virtually every Asian country. But there are two important neighbors he has not yet visited: China and South Korea.
