Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze Read Free Page A

shrine as an unrepentant, in-your-face manifestation of poisonous nostalgia for Japanese militarism. These criticisms were only exacerbated when the souls of Class A war criminals hung by the Allies after the Tokyo Tribunals were welcomed to the shrine in a formal Shinto ceremony in 1978. [7] Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone then pulled the issue out of the frying pan and tossed it into the fire with an official (and possibly illegal) prayer visit in 1985, and international controversy has surrounded the institution ever since.
    But I am not here this morning to pass judgment on the moral implications of Yasukuni’s existence. I am here to observe and record, and to visit the shrine’s library. I have arrived before the library opens, so I decide to pass the time with a little exploration of these hallowed premises. Perhaps the walk will help me focus my thoughts, despite the feeling I cannot quite seem to shake that something – or someone – in the cherry branches is watching my every move here.
    The first thing that strikes me about the shrine is the sheer size of the land it occupies, which would be exceptional in any other world-class city, but is downright mind-boggling to behold in the center of the capital of this space-starved nation. Yasukuni sits on about ten acres of astronomically expensive real estate in Kudan, Tokyo, located on a gently rising slope that faces the northern border of the giant moat surrounding the Imperial Palace grounds (an even more astounding piece of land – worth more than the combined public and private real estate value of the entire state of California during the heady days of Japan’s Bubble Economy in the late Eighties). The shrine was originally built on the orders of Emperor Meiji to honor Imperial troops fallen in the Restoration campaign that wrested political sovereignty from the Tokugawa Shogunate, but it is currently maintained by funding from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, generous private donations, and collections from a large tithing box in front of Yasukuni’s altar that is kept filled with coins and cash by daily throngs of worshippers and tourists.
    If you can look past the lines of tour buses, souvenir stands and the uniformed rent-a-cop next to the altar, there is an almost Gothic air of masculine dignity about this place – a Japanese West Point or Notre Dame with white-robed Shinto attendants flitting about all the macho masonry and elegant woodwork. It seems a worthy final resting place for the souls of modern-era samurai, as well as a neat architectural metaphor for Japan’s Jekyll-and-Hyde cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century – all bamboo flutes and battleships, tea ceremonies and around-the-clock assembly lines, brush calligraphy and long-range bombers. Although the aged tone of the wood used in the main ceremonial buildings makes them appear to be centuries old, they are actually of recent construction, and represent only the latest of several reincarnations of the shrine. Nevertheless, their breathtaking carpentry and decorative carvings nevertheless firmly places the aesthetic at work here in ancient Japanese tradition.
    A quick look around at the rest of the facilities suggests that most of the place dates from the 1930s, built in the handsome stone and copper Frank Lloyd Wright-influenced Asian Art Deco style that was used in official Japanese buildings before that godawful postwar stucco-slathered steel-reinforced concrete look took over as the de rigueur architectural style for the nation’s public infrastructure. The thirty-meter high steel torii gate at the main entrance of the grounds accentuates the exotic early twentieth century atmosphere of industrialized military might crossed with “traditional” Japanese culture. Passing under this gate, the promenade continues around and past a columned statue of topknot-coiffed and kimono-clad Masujirō Ōmura, founding father of the Imperial Army, who was assassinated by