靖国神社/Yasukuni Jinja

It's been a while, but time to write about the next thing I jotted down in my notebook--some impressions of the Yasukuni Jinja, which roughly translates to Shrine for the Peace of the Nation (says the guidebook). It was built in 1869 by the Meiji emperor to commemorate all of the war dead from the Boshin War, which was the war the brought about the Meiji Restoration.

The shrine used to be an official shrine under state Shinto, until after World War II and the forced separation of church and state under the peace agreement. Its main purpose is the enshrinement of kami (神) or spirits of war dead so they can be prayed to according to Shinto tradition.

Where it gets controversial is at the point where war criminals were also deemed worthy of being enshrined. It wasn't publicly announced that they were enshrined, and due to the nature of the act itself, it was slightly scandalous when the news got out. Because enshrining is roughly equivalent to deifying, war criminals might not be the best candidates.

In addition to the shrine itself, there's a military history museum which I took some time to go through because I like military history (remember that "I'm going to join the Navy" phase I had? I don't know if I actually ever told anyone about that). It was definitely an interesting experience, and arguably the most passive aggressive experience of my life--military Japan reflects its isolationist past, and a bit of the aggression towards outsiders. To give an example, I was comparing Japanese captions with translations (I couldn't read much of the Japanese but eh, I try) and 外国人, gaikokujin, most often shortened to gaijin and translated as foreigner or outsider (it used to have a negative connotation but lost most of that), was translated as barbarian. Technically correct, but really? In any case, it was awkward being the only American in the museum going through the WWII section. But I'd definitely recommend going.