Some Yasukuni lanterns are more important than others

It was widely but briefly reported by the Japanese media two days ago that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ponied up 10,000 yen (about $US 82) out of his own pocket to buy and donate a commemorative lantern for the Mitama Festival at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. (Yes, that Yasukuni.)

The prime minister’s name was written on the lantern without his title, indicating that he made the donation as a private citizen. The media are intensely interested about prime ministerial visits to the shrine for several reasons. Obviously, one reason is that former Prime Minister Koizumi’s annual visits during his term in office ignited public hysteria in China and South Korea, with the governments of both those countries fanning the flames. It’s not good for cordial diplomatic relations for folks to protest by cutting off their fingers and shooting flaming arrows into the grounds of the Japanese embassy.

Another is that the visits are important domestically because they symbolize what some see as the creation of an identity for a post-war Japanese state. Yes, the Japanese are still working this out, which is why Constitution reform continues to be an issue. On the other hand, some in the media, particularly overseas, prefer to portray this as a “resurgence of Japanese nationalism”. It makes for jucier copy.

Conservatives (for want of a better word) say that since its defeat, Japan has had plenty of government, but hasn’t been a state (in the nation-state sense of the term). They think Yasukuni is an essential part of that identity as a memorial for the country’s war dead in the same way Arlington serves in a similar role in the United States.

An official visit by a Japanese politician is not really a hot-button political issue in itself—voters of an ideological bent already have made up their minds one way or another based on their broader philosophy. During the last Diet election, it was ranked a low fifth in opinion polls on the list of issues voters considered important. Some in business and financial circles, however, would rather the politicians stay home. It’s bad for business in East Asia when people in the easily irritated countries stage boycotts or break the windows of the local Japanese branch outlet.

The prime minister himself is rather coy about both his past actions and his intentions for the future. Mr. Abe was a strong supporter of former Prime Minister Koizumi’s inflammatory visits, but he refuses to tell the media whether he went last year or not, and they weren’t able to catch him in flagrante. He passed up the opportunity to go in January during the New Year’s holidays, when it is customary for Japanese to pray at shrines, and followed the example of Mr. Koizumi’s predecessor, Yoshiro Mori, by going to the Meiji Shrine instead.

Mr. Abe also donated 50,000 yen out of his own pocket for a masakaki to decorate the Shinto altar at Yasukuni’s spring festival this year. And of course many are waiting to see what he will do on August 15th, the date of the Japanese surrender.

A curious phenomenon regarding the Mitama Festival, however, is the relative absence of media coverage of the many prominent politicians besides Mr. Abe who also donated funds to buy a lantern. For example, the photograph shown here appeared in a Japanese newspaper with the caption, “Lanterns donated by Prime Minister Abe and many other politicians hung at the shrine”.

A careful examination of the photograph shows that the lantern with Mr. Abe’s name on it is not pictured. But there at the top left is the lantern donated by Ichiro Ozawa, the head of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s primary opposition party. His lantern even reportedly contains the inscription, “Member of the House of Representatives”, though it is not clearly visible in the photo.

Considerable media coverage is devoted to Mr. Abe’s shrine-related activities, but Mr. Ozawa’s donation, if it is mentioned at all, is noted only briefly at the end of reports. If it is important that the public be made aware of the prime minister’s actions, is it not also important that the public be told in equally unmistakable terms about the behavior of the man who would replace him if his party took power?

Perhaps Japanese readers will disagree, but it might be that Mr. Ozawa’s donation is lightly covered so as to slip the news by some of his party’s supporters. Political activists of both parties know who’s doing what, of course, but some voters who generally support Mr. Ozawa’s DPJ may not be paying close attention.

The DPJ has to be the gooney bird of political parties in the advanced industrialized countries. It was formed during the political reorganization of the 90s, and primarily consists of people who bolted Mr. Abe’s party, the LDP, and those who left the Socialist Party (now the Social Democrats) when it imploded. In other words, it’s a walking contradiction—it is comprised both of Diet members who signed the recent Washington Post advertisement rebutting the comfort woman resolution, and a few serious socialists who are knee-jerk anti-Emperor/Flag/National Anthem/American Alliance, and who supported their old comrades’ so-called Peace Cruises to Pyeongyang in years past.

This grouping of unlikely bedfellows is one reason the party has yet to gain traction as a serious opposition group in Japan. They remain a catchbasin for the votes of those who are opposed to the LDP for various reasons, but are too middle-of-the-road to cast a ballot for the Socialists or Communists.

The leftist element of the party might not care for their standard bearer publicly supporting a Yasukuni festival as a member of the Diet. In the past, Mr. Ozawa has called for the convicted war criminals to be enshrined at a separate location to allow politicians to visit Yasukuni itself.

Their enshrinement didn’t stop him from buying a lantern, however.

The Mitama Festival, incidentally, just ended on the 16th. It was inaugurated in 1947 for the consolation of the souls of the nation’s war dead. More than 30,000 lanterns are lit at night, and this photo from the Japanese portion of the Yasukuni website gives you an idea what it looks like. The shrine also planned to have the students at a local women’s junior college and children carry mikoshi, or portable shrines, but poor weather forced the cancellation of that event.