By Oliver Green
A Japanese cabinet minister and dozens of members of Japan’s parliament have visited the Yasukuni shrine for war dead, seen in China and the two Koreas as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism. The Kyodo news agency stated that Yasuhisa Shiozaki, minister for health, labour and welfare, was among around 80 parliamentarians to have visited the shrine on Tuesday to mark an autumn festival. The group visit came a day after Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to the shrine, provoking outrage from Beijing and a reminder from Washington of the importance of reconciliation over the past. Visits by Japanese leaders to Yasukuni have outraged China and South Korea as the shrine honours 14 Japanese leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal as war criminals, along with other war dead. South Korea conveyed “deep concern and disappointment” over the shrine visit and offering by Japanese political leaders. Shinzo Abe himself also visited the shrine in December 2013, one year after taking office. So why does Japan’s political establishment refuse to remove all convicted war criminals from its shrine, and continue to so blatantly glorify their nations imperial conduct, from the initial invasion of Manchuria on 19th September 1931, right up until its formal surrender on 2nd September 1945?
What many people overlook when addressing this issue is the big differences between how Nazi Germany and Militarist Japan were defeated in WWII, as they lead to big differences in their political and cultural attitudes towards their respective nation’s wartime conducts. Nazi Germany was totally and utterly defeated both militarily and politically. It was occupied by the four allied powers, which included two that it had occupied and fought its biggest most crucial battles in, France and the Soviet Union. But the most significant occupying power by far being the Soviet Union which had the biggest of the four occupation zones when you include the former Prussian and East German regions that were used to form post-war Poland which also fell into the Soviet bloc, allowing the Soviets to take possession of half the country including its food producing regions.
The Germans therefore had to answer most directly to the very nation they had committed the biggest atrocities against, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had absorbed the vast bulk of Nazi Germany’s fighting power at a cost of around 25 million casualties, contributing by far the most to its defeat. Furthermore, in Germany’s case there was no military option or political necessity to drop any Atomic bombs on her, which meant she could fight to the bitter end and had to be forced to surrender unconditionally. This meant that the Brand of Hitler and Nazism was totally crushed and discredited, and the German Army disarmed and sent home in disgrace, and a new disunited post-war Germany was build up from its ashes, making post-war German culture and politics completely divorced, and cut-off and opposed to its Nazi predecessor.
But, none of this applies to Japan. She was not defeated or occupied by China which had been by far the biggest recipient of Japan’s wartime atrocities, or by any of the other peoples in South East Asia and the Pacific who were on the receiving end of them. But most significantly, she did not surrender unconditionally and got to keep the very figurehead and brand behind her military exploits, the cult and personality of her Emperor. Thus the political and cultural brand of Militarist Japan was not crushed and discredited, but instead harnessed and channeled by the Americans to get it built back up again as soon as possible as bulwark against Sino-Soviet Communism. In addition, the Japanese Army was re-employed by Britain and America for quite some time after the war, so as to aid them in the post-war reconstruction and stabilisation of South East Asia, along with Japan itself. Thus Japan was able to achieve peace with honour and was not politically and culturally crushed, but was instead redirected and adapted to the new Geo-political and economic demands of the post-war world.
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