ABSTRACT
In the twenty-first century, the Yasukuni Shrine serves as an awkward talisman for national identity in Japan because it is the ‘ground zero’ for an unrepentant view about Japan’s shared history with Asia in the twentieth century. The adjacent Yūshūkan Museum features a glorifying and validating narrative of Japan’s imperial aggression 1895–1945. As such, this controversial site is divisive among Japanese and between Japan and its East Asian neighbors, ensuring that visits there by leaders such as Koizumi Jun’ichirō and Abe Shinzō have drawn considerable criticism. Japanese emperors have boycotted Yasukuni ever since fourteen Class A war criminals were enshrined there in 1978, a poignant rebuke of right-wing groups and their ultranationalist agenda. This chapter examines the politics of Yasukuni and what it signifies about Japan’s troubled relationship with its wartime past and contemporary identity politics.
