Souls or Sabers? : Japanese Shrine Spurs Unholy Row

China and Japan are at odds over a shrine in a conflict that involves the souls of several Japanese war criminals and threatens to chill the warming of relations between the one-time enemies.

The dispute centers on a parklike compound in downtown Tokyo. It is the repository for a midget submarine of the kind used for suicide missions in World War II, some vintage artillery pieces, a statue to the memory of conscripted horses, a plaque bearing the name and number of a unit of the once-dreaded Kempeitai, the old Japanese secret police, and--as many Japanese believe--the souls of 2.4 million war veterans.

Although its name, Yasukuni, means “peaceful country,” the Shinto shrine has been the object of heated debate for most of the 40 years since Japan’s defeat in World War II.

On one side of the debate are relatives of the millions of Japanese who, in keeping with wartime propaganda, believe that the souls of the men who died for Emperor Hirohito have returned to dwell among the beautiful cherry trees that dot the grounds of the shrine.

Symbol of Intolerance

On the other are Socialists, devout Buddhists and members of Japan’s tiny Christian minority who see Yasukuni as a symbol of prewar religious and political intolerance. The prewar military regime turned Shintoism, a set of traditional rituals and customs emphasizing reverence for nature, ancestors and dead heroes, into a state religion.

Last September, the Yasukuni debate took on international significance when anti-Japanese demonstrations broke out in China, apparently in response to a decision by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone to be the first Japanese leader to pray at Yasukuni in his official capacity as head of government.

Previously, Cabinet-level officials had been careful to make it clear that they were visiting the shrine as private citizens. The disclaimer allowed the politicians to please voters on both sides: those who belonged to the politically powerful associations of bereaved families and those who opposed official support for the shrine.

Visit Was ‘Official’

Nakasone, a former naval officer who makes no excuses for his nationalistic beliefs, chose to declare himself an “official visitor” at Yasukuni on Aug. 15, the 40th anniversary of Japan’s defeat.

The demonstrations erupted in China on Sept. 18, the anniversary of the Manchurian Incident of 1931, which gave Japanese troops a pretext to overrun and later colonize most of northern China. Since September, Chinese student demonstrators have accused Japan of everything from reviving its militaristic past to flooding China with products the Chinese do not need.

A Tokyo newspaper reported this week that a group of politicians has sounded out the priests of Yasukuni about the possibility of symbolically “removing” 14 souls believed to be enshrined there, those of such former leaders as Gen. Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister.

This effort to separate the 14 wartime leaders from ordinary soldiers has been an embarrassment for Nakasone, because it tends to concede that Nakasone’s Aug. 15 visit damaged Japan’s foreign relations and that a compromise is urgently needed.

But it probably will be difficult for the prime minister’s friends to find an arrangement that pleases both sides.

Shumpei Kiyohara, an official of a parliamentary group committed to scrapping Japan’s liberal postwar constitution, denied news reports that a visit he paid to priests at Yasukuni last October was aimed at removing the souls of the war criminals.

“I was just making some preliminary inquiries,” he said. “I was not there in any official capacity.”

But a Yasukuni priest recalled that Kiyohara’s visit did concern the removal of the 14 souls, possibly to a yet-to-be-constructed shrine in some other part of the Yasukuni compound.

Chinese Suggestion

Also, as Japanese newspapers have pointed out, the disclosure of Kiyohara’s inquiries came only 10 days after China’s ambassador to Tokyo, Zhang Shu, told reporters that the delicate situation could be quickly resolved if the Japanese government made it clear that the prime minister had not been paying his respects to important war criminals, those designated as Class A.

And it seems that the priests of Yasukuni are not about to let go of the souls of Tojo and his associates.

“There is no reason to remove the Class-A war criminals,” Deputy Chief Priest Jushin Konnoto said. “No one has complained about the presence of Class-B and Class-C war criminals here.”

He said the shrine regards all Japanese who were executed or imprisoned by Allied war tribunals as men who served their country. The priests keep a card file of the names of 2,460,000 Japanese war dead since the 1860s. All are revered as gods.

Sentenced to Death

Tojo was among 29 wartime civilian and military leaders tried in 1949 at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. The former prime minister and Gen. Iwane Matsui, commander of Japanese forces in China at a time when Japanese soldiers massacred thousands of civilians, were among seven who were sentenced to death. The names of Tojo and 13 others were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni in 1978, though the acceptance of their souls was not made public until the following year.

According to Deputy Chief Priest Konnoto, once a soul has been accepted by the shrine, it is impossible to reverse the process of enshrinement.

If Nakasone’s Liberal Democratic Party is finding the priests difficult to deal with, the Chinese have proved to be equally so. Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe informed Chinese leaders last fall that Nakasone would not be praying at Yasukuni in the autumn or spring ceremonies, but Chinese officials have continued to demand that Japan not forget “the unfortunate past.”

According to Kogo Tsuji, lecturer in Chinese studies at Tokai University and author of several books on China, the shrine controversy is only the outer shell of a much more serious domestic Chinese problem.

Chinese Frustration Seen

“The Yasukuni controversy should be viewed in the context of North-South issues,” Tsuji said. “The Chinese are finding out that (Chinese leader) Deng Xiaoping’s free-market reforms have not brought them prosperity overnight. The frustration makes them nationalistic.”

China’s anti-Japanese demonstrators are reported to be making an issue not only of “a revival in Japanese militarism” but also what they perceive to be unpatriotic purchases of Japanese products. China has a $2-billion trade deficit with Japan.

Japanese commentators appear to be fully aware that there are no easy solutions in sight. And they have not failed to call attention to the recent removal of advertising for Japanese products on Peking’s streets and the fact that Chinese television virtually ignored the presence of a Japanese delegation at an opening ceremony for a steel mill built with Japanese help.

“Though the students may lack a correct understanding of the situation, any attempt to curb the movement by force would only cause more adverse reaction,” the correspondent of the Asahi newspaper reported from Peking.

Deng Seen as Target

As other observers here interpret the anti-Japanese demonstrations, the real targets are Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Both have visited Japan and have exhorted their people to learn from Japanese successes.

Any falling-out with China that might be attributed to the Yasukuni issue could have serious consequences for Nakasone, who until now has enjoyed unprecedented popularity among Japanese voters.

It was at Nakasone’s initiative that a committee of the Liberal Democratic Party declared nearly two years ago that official visits to Yasukuni by Cabinet-level officials do not run counter to the postwar constitution’s separation of church and state. The ruling paved the way for the prime minister’s official visit.