Yasukuni Shrine

Yasukuni Shrine PDF Author: Akiko Takenaka
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This is the first extensive English-language study of Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial. It explores the controversial shrine’s role in waging war, promoting peace, honoring the dead, and, in particular, building Japan’s modern national identity. It traces Yasukuni’s history from its conceptualization in the final years of the Tokugawa period and Japan’s wars of imperialism to the present. Author Akiko Takenaka departs from existing scholarship on Yasukuni by considering various themes important to the study of war and its legacies through a chronological and thematic survey of the shrine, emphasizing the spatial practices that took place both at the shrine and at regional sites associated with it over the last 150 years. Rather than treat Yasukuni as a single, unchanging ideological entity, she takes into account the social and political milieu, maps out gradual transformations in both its events and rituals, and explicates the ideas that the shrine symbolizes. Takenaka illuminates the ways the shrine’s spaces were used during wartime, most notably in her reconstructions, based on primary sources, of visits by war-bereaved military families to the shrine during the Asia-Pacific War. She also traces important episodes in Yasukuni’s postwar history, including the filing of lawsuits against the shrine and recent attempts to reinvent it for the twenty-first century. Through a careful analysis of the shrine’s history over one and a half centuries, her work views the making and unmaking of a modern militaristic Japan through the lens of Yasukuni Shrine. Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar is a skilled and innovative examination of modern and contemporary Japan’s engagement with the critical issues of war, empire, and memory. It will be of particular interest to readers of Japanese history and culture as well as those who follow current affairs and foreign relations in East Asia. Its discussion of spatial practices in the life of monuments and the political use of images, media, and museum exhibits will find a welcome audience among those engaged in memory, visual culture, and media studies.

Yasukuni Shrine

Yasukuni Shrine PDF Author: Akiko Takenaka
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first extensive English-language study of Yasukuni Shrine as a war memorial. It explores the controversial shrine’s role in waging war, promoting peace, honoring the dead, and, in particular, building Japan’s modern national identity. It traces Yasukuni’s history from its conceptualization in the final years of the Tokugawa period and Japan’s wars of imperialism to the present. Author Akiko Takenaka departs from existing scholarship on Yasukuni by considering various themes important to the study of war and its legacies through a chronological and thematic survey of the shrine, emphasizing the spatial practices that took place both at the shrine and at regional sites associated with it over the last 150 years. Rather than treat Yasukuni as a single, unchanging ideological entity, she takes into account the social and political milieu, maps out gradual transformations in both its events and rituals, and explicates the ideas that the shrine symbolizes. Takenaka illuminates the ways the shrine’s spaces were used during wartime, most notably in her reconstructions, based on primary sources, of visits by war-bereaved military families to the shrine during the Asia-Pacific War. She also traces important episodes in Yasukuni’s postwar history, including the filing of lawsuits against the shrine and recent attempts to reinvent it for the twenty-first century. Through a careful analysis of the shrine’s history over one and a half centuries, her work views the making and unmaking of a modern militaristic Japan through the lens of Yasukuni Shrine. Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar is a skilled and innovative examination of modern and contemporary Japan’s engagement with the critical issues of war, empire, and memory. It will be of particular interest to readers of Japanese history and culture as well as those who follow current affairs and foreign relations in East Asia. Its discussion of spatial practices in the life of monuments and the political use of images, media, and museum exhibits will find a welcome audience among those engaged in memory, visual culture, and media studies.

Japan's Yasukuni Shrine

Japan's Yasukuni Shrine PDF Author: William Daniel Sturgeon
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 1581123345
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
"... this research are base upon both an in depth analysis of the available literature as well as extensive interviews with diplomats from China, Korea, and Australia as well as with military officers, governmnent officials, professors of international relations from each of the countries involved, as well as with Shinto Priests, including the Vice-Chief Priest of Yasukuni Shrine" -- p. i

Yasukuni Fundamentalism

Yasukuni Fundamentalism PDF Author: Mark R. Mullins
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824890167
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Although religious fundamentalism is often thought to be confined to monotheistic “religions of the book,” this study examines the emergence of a fundamentalism rooted in the Shinto tradition and considers its role in shaping postwar Japanese nationalism and politics. Over the past half-century, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the National Association of Shrines (NAS) have been engaged in collaborative efforts to “recover” or “restore” what was destroyed by the process of imperialist secularization during the Allied Occupation of Japan. Since the disaster years of 1995 and 2011, LDP Diet members and prime ministers have increased their support for a political agenda that aims to revive patriotic education, renationalize Yasukuni Shrine, and revise the constitution. The contested nature of this agenda is evident in the critical responses of religious leaders and public intellectuals, and in their efforts to preserve the postwar gains in democratic institutions and prevent the erosion of individual rights. This timely treatment critically engages the contemporary debates surrounding secularization in light of postwar developments in Japanese religions and sheds new light on the role religion continues to play in the public sphere.

Class-a War Criminals

Class-a War Criminals PDF Author:
Publisher: 五洲传播出版社
ISBN: 9787508507491
Category : Prisoners of war
Languages : zh-CN
Pages : 128

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Book Description
本书介绍了靖国神社中供奉的14名甲级战犯对中国人民和亚洲许多国家人民犯下的罪行,以使世人明了中国为什么反对日本领导人参拜靖国神社。

Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past

Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past PDF Author: John Breen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231700436
Category : Shinto and politics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Located in the heart of Tokyo, Yasukuni is a controversial shrine dedicated to the Japanese war dead. It holds the remains of twelve convicted and two suspected Class A war criminals, and its museum features an account of Japan's involvement in the Second World War that many would describe as revisionist. Visits to Yasukuni by cabinet members often spark protests in Japan and abroad, especially in China, Korea, and Taiwan, and the shrine continues to foster a sense of mistrust between Chinese and Japanese governments. This volume presents authoritative yet divergent views on Yasukuni and its place in postwar Japanese diplomacy, ideology, and history, including critical contributions by leading Yasukuni and anti-Yasukuni Japanese intellectuals, as well as Chinese and Western commentators. For the first time, this collection gives English-speaking readers a full portrait of the shrine's significance and unique position in the highly contested history of Japan.

Intimate Rivals

Intimate Rivals PDF Author: Sheila A. Smith
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538022
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
No country feels China's rise more deeply than Japan. Through intricate case studies of visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, conflicts over the boundaries of economic zones in the East China Sea, concerns about food safety, and strategies of island defense, Sheila A. Smith explores the policy issues testing the Japanese government as it tries to navigate its relationship with an advancing China. Smith finds that Japan's interactions with China extend far beyond the negotiations between diplomats and include a broad array of social actors intent on influencing the Sino-Japanese relationship. Some of the tensions complicating Japan's encounters with China, such as those surrounding the Yasukuni Shrine or territorial disputes, have deep roots in the postwar era, and political advocates seeking a stronger Japanese state organize themselves around these causes. Other tensions manifest themselves during the institutional and regulatory reform of maritime boundary and food safety issues. Smith scrutinizes the role of the Japanese government in coping with contention as China's influence grows and Japanese citizens demand more protection. Underlying the government's efforts is Japan's insecurity about its own capacity for change and its waning status as the leading economy in Asia. For many, China's rise means Japan's decline, and Smith suggests how Japan can maintain its regional and global clout as confidence in its postwar diplomatic and security approach diminishes.

The Burden of the Past

The Burden of the Past PDF Author: Kan Kimura
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472125036
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The Burden of the Past reexamines the dispute over historical perception between Japan and South Korea, going beyond the descriptive emphasis of previous studies to clearly identify the many independent variables that have affected the situation. From the history textbook debates, to the Occupation-period exploitation of “comfort women,” to the Dokdo/Takeshima territory dispute and Yasukuni Shrine visits, Professor Kimura traces the rise and fall of popular, political, and international concerns underlying these complex and highly fraught issues. Utilizing Japanese and South Korean newspaper databases to review discussion of the two countries’ disputed historical perceptions from the end of World War II to the present, The Burden of the Past provides readers with the historical framework and the major players involved, offering much-needed clarity on such polarizing issues. By seeing behind the public discourse and political rhetoric, this book offers a firmer footing for a discussion and the steps toward resolution.

The History Problem

The History Problem PDF Author: Hiro Saito
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824874390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Seventy years have passed since the end of the Asia-Pacific War, yet Japan remains embroiled in controversy with its neighbors over the war’s commemoration. Among the many points of contention between Japan, China, and South Korea are interpretations of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, apologies and compensation for foreign victims of Japanese aggression, prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the war’s portrayal in textbooks. Collectively, these controversies have come to be called the “history problem.” But why has the problem become so intractable? Can it ever be resolved, and if so, how? To answer these questions author Hiro Saito mobilizes the sociology of collective memory and social movements, political theories of apology and reconciliation, psychological research on intergroup conflict, and philosophical reflections on memory and history. The history problem, he argues, is essentially a relational phenomenon caused when nations publicly showcase self-serving versions of the past at key ceremonies and events: Japan, South Korea, and China all focus on what happened to their own citizens with little regard for foreign others. Saito goes on to explore the emergence of a cosmopolitan form of commemoration taking humanity, rather than nationality, as its primary frame of reference, an approach increasingly used by a transnational network of advocacy NGOs, victims of Japan’s past wrongdoings, historians, and educators. When cosmopolitan commemoration is practiced as a collective endeavor by both perpetrators and victims, Saito argues, a resolution of the history problem—and eventual reconciliation—will finally become possible. The History Problem examines a vast corpus of historical material in both English and Japanese, offering provocative findings that challenge orthodox explanations. Written in clear and accessible prose, this uniquely interdisciplinary book will appeal to sociologists, political scientists, and historians researching collective memory, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and international relations—and to anyone interested in the commemoration of historical wrongs.

Shinto and the State, 1868-1988

Shinto and the State, 1868-1988 PDF Author: Helen Hardacre
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691020525
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Explores church/state question in Japan. Focuses on the ordinary people whose lives are affected by the ongoing struggle of the Japanese to define their national character and policy.

Transgenerational Remembrance

Transgenerational Remembrance PDF Author: Jessica Nakamura
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810141310
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In Transgenerational Remembrance, Jessica Nakamura investigates the role of artistic production in the commemoration and memorialization of the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945) in Japan since 1989. During this time, survivors of Japanese aggression and imperialism, previously silent about their experiences, have sparked contentious public debates about the form and content of war memories. The book opens with an analysis of the performance of space at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine, which continues to promote an anachronistic veneration of the war. After identifying the centrality of performance in long-standing dominant narratives, Transgenerational Remembrance offers close readings of artistic performances that tackle subject matter largely obscured before 1989: the kamikaze pilot, Japanese imperialism, comfort women, the Battle of Okinawa, and Japanese American internment. These case studies range from Hirata Oriza’s play series about Japanese colonial settlers in Korea and Shimada Yoshiko’s durational performance about comfort women to Kondo Aisuke’s videos and gallery installations about Japanese American internment. Working from theoretical frameworks of haunting and ethics, Nakamura develops an analytical lens based on the Noh theater ghost. Noh emphasizes the agency of the ghost and the dialogue between the dead and the living. Integrating her Noh-inflected analysis into ethical and transnational feminist queries, Nakamura shows that performances move remembrance beyond current evidentiary and historiographical debates.