Arson Fire at Yasukuni

[John Odom]

I don't know where the appropriate place is for this, but I know some members will be interested:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111226p2a00m0na005000c.html

[nigelweysom]

interesting news story here John , had to do a google search to find out what the Yasukuni shrine was , according to an article in the Times , a Korean resident in Japan , had threatened to start a fire on twitter,
Nigel

[John Odom]

I hadn't heard that, Nigel. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

[nigelweysom]

yes i would imagine that if the attacker was Japanese it would have far more significance , than if they were Korean, i did see a comment about the shrine being controversial, do you know anything about that
Nigel

[John Odom]

Yes, this shrine is VERY controversial, because it is the center of the current Japanese nationalists. The war dead from all the Japanese wars, including the convicted class one war criminals. The Yakusuni claims that Japan was the victim in WWII and that the "pacific war was a purely defensive war by Japan against the aggression of the imperialist western powers.

[Don Boyer]

When I was working at the Arizona Memorial, I had a discussion with a Japanese gentleman whose father had been in the "China Incident" from the beginning before being killed; this individual espoused the extreme nationalist views as John has mentioned. He was adamant that it was a defensive war on the part of Japan "because we cut off their oil." Apparently the reasons for us doing so escaped him. I pointed out that regardless of how one perceives the war, offensive or defensive, in either case the Japanese had done one hell of a lousy job at it, suffering millions of casualties, both civilian and military, for not the slightest gain whatsoever. I suggested that this must have been a tremendous loss of face for the Showa Emperor to have been let down by his third-rate military like that, at which point this gentleman stopped speaking to me. It's their normal reaction to being presented with unpalatable truths.

Yasukuni Jinja is a beautiful and beautifully maintained shrine that honors all Japan's war dead since the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 (but not those killed in the civil disturbances following the Meiji Restoration). So it includes not only the class 1 war criminals but all the soldiers and sailors who were involved in the thousands of atrocities committed by the Japanese military in WWII. It does not include any members of other races that supported Japan's wartime efforts, voluntarily or otherwise. Were it not for the distasteful odor of the atrocities committed by Japan's wartime soldiers and sailors, and for the continual attempts to deny these events on the part of the Japanese, Yasukuni would not be much different than any other country's war memorials.