PM Koizumi's Yasukuni Shrine visits

Taichi Sakaiya, The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo

Yasukuni Shrine is a religious corporation. Japan's Constitution bans the state from having religious affiliations. Therefore, when people visit Yasukuni Shrine to pay homage to the nation's war dead, they should do so as private citizens.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is no exception. In that sense, no one should criticize the prime minister for visiting the shrine as a Shinto believer. However, to make this point clear, I urge him to use a taxi when visiting the shrine.

If in fact he considers his visits to Yasukuni Shrine as part of his official duty as prime minister, he should be aware that the practice violates the Constitution.

The fact that Class-A war criminals are enshrined together with other war dead is causing controversy both at home and abroad. Looking at it from a religious viewpoint, we see other aspects of the problem. Unlike Buddhism and Christianity, Shintoism has no concept of "hell." All people good or bad become "deities" when they die. People worship good gods to seek their blessings and offer prayers to bad gods to deliver them from evil. That is the basic philosophy of Shintoism.

However, during the period from the Meiji Era (1868-1912) up until Japan's defeat in World War II, Shintoism became an integral part of government and strategies of the state. It was the emergence of so-called state Shintoism.

After the war, even Shintoism denied state Shintoism. Now, Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto facility which enshrines people classified as "war dead" as "deities." As such, it is natural for Shinto believers and people who worship deities who perished in war to visit the shrine.

Last year, I gave a lecture on economics at Peking University. Students asked me about the "Yasukuni problem." When I explained Japan's religious culture, they said they could now understand the problem. They also said they felt the Japanese government had not adequately explained Shinto philosophy and teachings to China.

If the government wants to remember the war dead, it should build a facility that has no religious ties.

And if such a memorial is built, it should have no bearing on Yasukuni Shrine, which should continue to serve as a religious center for Shinto believers.

Everybody, including those in public office, are free to practice their religious faith in their personal capacity. No one can stop them from paying tribute to shrines or other religious facilities as private citizens.

Meanwhile, no country in the world has more serious political and diplomatic problems with its neighbors than Japan.

The root cause of these problems lies in the way politicians leave foreign policy to bureaucrats. There is also the problem of sectionalism by ministries that are determined to protect their turf. The Yasukuni problem is no exception.

The government leaves it to the Foreign Ministry to provide explanations about Koizumi's Yasukuni visits to China and other neighboring countries. As a result, Japan seems to be giving different explanations to audiences at home and abroad.

In foreign policy, political judgment to choose what is more important to the nation and give in to other countries on other points is indispensable. Such judgment is lacking in Japanese diplomacy.

The situation is so critical that I am reminded of a comment by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the eve of the Pacific War. He said that Japan refuses to compromise on anything.

Koizumi has remained adamant about making the shrine visits since he first publicly pledged to make them when he was campaigning for the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election. If that is the case, he should squarely face the Yasukuni problem as a religious problem and not a political one.

He should explain his thoughts on Yasukuni Shrine and make a concerted effort to win the understanding of neighboring countries. Doing so would also be the first step in sloughing off the practice of leaving diplomacy to bureaucrats and recovering strategic foreign policy.

The writer was a bureaucrat of the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry before he became a novelist. He served as Minister of State for Economic Planning in the administrations of Keizo Obuchi and Yoshiro Mori.