1/02/2014

What Yasukuni shrine means

The problem of worship by our prime minister or by the other ministers in the cabinet to Yasukuni shrine is not in the fact that they deify the victimized soldiers in and before the WWII and the JSDF soldiers dead in the service after the WWII. But Yasukuni shrine has been doing it without any permission of the victims or of their families.

There has been a political movement to establish this shrine as the national religion for the imperialism. This way of defying is against the principle of the human rights for freedom in religion, idea and thoughts our constitution provides. This violation to the fundamental right is to recruit the people into any war in the future. The authority had done the same thing for the people until the end of the WWII.

Of course, the history of this shrine was political from the beginning. It has been establshed by Meiji Emperor to deify the casuaities of the soldiers dead for his name. It has worked as an institution to recruit the soldiers for the imperialism from the people, who have worked to invade the neighbor countries in WWII. Automatically deifying those victims means the government has administered the deads. Through that system of administration, the government has dominated as well as controlled the people. It has worked as a political institution in this way.  

It won't matter if the politicians worship the shrine in private or in public form. In either way, when politicans worship there, it means public in nature. The present conservative politicians aim at reestablishing the shrine to be the national religion. They have repeatedly tried to legislate a law to do this without success. It was against the principle of the separation between the religion and the politics. Now they are intending, in stead, to repeat worships to the shrine even if there are any oppositions to that in or out of the country. They seem to believe it is the only way to nationalize the institution as they have intended for years. It would become, in their belief, a spiritual center of the people. The founding rule of the shrine contains description how to accept "new" souls to the shrine, that is, new caualties of soldiers.

Remebering those dead in the WWII is not the same as worshipping at this shrine at all. Remembering them is a matter in our mind but not a matter in a forced religion. The politicians should never intend to unite the people under this political shrine.

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