Do you know 'Yushukan'?

By Kim Ji-myung

This column is supposed to mainly deal with cultural topics, traditional and modern heritage. However, the last one in May was an exception because it was about an episode in which former chancellor of Germany reprimanded Japan and advised it to be honest about history.

This is the second part of that exception on the same subject, presented along with my hope that these two pieces based on my experience and observations are worth sharing.

To the international community, the Yasukuni Shrine near Tokyo has become a symbol of Japan’s lack of repentance for the horrible actions of their military during World War II in Asia. By ignoring the protests of their victimized Asian neighbors and by demonstrating their respect to the enshrined "divinities,” including some of the masterminds of that horrible war, Japanese politicians who visit it reveal their perception of their past.

The Koreans and Chinese have strongly protested against the Japanese political leadership whenever they paid homage to the Yasukuni Shrine where 14 Class A war criminals of World War II are enshrined together with other Japanese who devoted themselves "to build a peaceful nation” in the war.

“In any country, people are respectful of the war dead, of those who sacrificed their lives for the nation with deep affection for their families,” claims a booklet on Yasukuni and the attached museum.

Then how much liberty is allowed to a nation in interpreting its own national and international history and in educating its own people?

Many were enraged when the current Japanese Prime Minister recently equated the Japanese politicians’ visits to Yasukuni to Americans visiting Arlington National Cemetery.

There is a grain of truth in that Yasukuni is the de facto national cemetery for the Japanese as it is the only place which enshrines the spirits of more than 2,460,000 war dead.

However, the barely-hidden truth is that Yasukuni is not a "normal” graveyard where the dead are buried; it is a strategic point of political mobilization, intended to inspire the Japanese people, as the enshrined dead are all revered as "national deities.” Some Japanese ultra-rightists secretly enshrined there the 14 worst offenders against human right during the war on April 21, 1979.

In a situation of historic atrocities committed against neighbors such as during World War II in Asia, there are victims, perpetrators and bystanders. Victims find it especially hard to forgive when their enemy will not simply admit the facts. Furthermore, outright lies about events that happened less than a century ago cannot be accepted by any standard.

That is why the Koreans have established an official team to find out and rectify inaccurate statements in Japanese history textbooks.

Ironically, the name Yasukuni literally means "Peaceful Nation.” The Japanese still call the war in which they killed and destroyed so many people of their fellow Asian nations by the fictitious name "the Greater East Asian War."

I found two odd facts in the Korean reactions regarding the Yasukuni Shrine and Japanese distortions of history.

One is that not many people seem to have really sincerely analyzed these behaviors in-depth and theorized about the Japanese psyche on this issue.

The other is that very few Koreans ― including government officials, professors and journalists alike ― seem to have paid attention to or visited the Yushukan Museum, which sits beside the Yasukuni Shrine, where the core perception of revisionist history is so proudly displayed.

A ranking government official even told me, “Isn’t it an unpleasant place that should be avoided?”

I doubt that it is because of the "unidentifiable” name of the war museum; I even suspect that this typical Japanese-style round-about expression of its function is quite intentionally misleading. It is not publicized as a war or military museum.

The explanation of the name in the museum catalog still seems far-fetched: "The character Yu and Shu are derived from the phrase,‘Where the gentleman resides is sure to be a carefully chosen neighborhood, and when he goes abroad for study, it is certain to be in the company of scholars.’ This name reflects the wish that visitors to the museum touch and learn about the enshrined divinities who dedicated their precious lives to their nation.”

I noticed that at some point many years ago the exhibitions of the museum, founded in 1882, totally changed its face from a traditional display of collections to a kind of modern multi-media "spiritual education center” for the Japanese people.

The exhibit of the blood-stained white garment of the Korean "terrorist” Lee Bong-chang, who tried but failed to assassinate the Japanese Emperor in 1932, revered by us as a martyr-patriot, has been removed.

It seems that they continue to revise their exhibit to present half-truths, omissions, suppressions and outright falsehoods. The museum presents only the heart-moving naïve face of Japan, cornered by the Western enemies, forced to wage a war to protect the Asia but was destroyed and victimized by two atomic bombs.

We may hope that Japanese leaders will soon reform their policies concerning the ``history war” in Asia that they are waging now. But first we must know exactly what kind of stories about history are moving and uniting the Japanese people now.

As the saying goes, you should first know your enemy and yourself accurately to win a war.

The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.