Yasukuni Shrine

Listen first. Gravel crunches under every footstep here, a dry and steady sound that slows people down. Overhead, a vast steel gate frames the sky. Crows call from the old trees. Just behind you, central Tokyo carries on with traffic and train announcements. But on this long approach, the city feels further away than it is.

This is Yasukuni Shrine, on the high ground of Kudan in Chiyoda. The slope you may have climbed from Kudanshita station is Kudanzaka. It is one of the old hills of the city, close to the moat and walls of the former Edo Castle, where the Imperial Palace now stands. The shrine sits in a quiet pocket of government offices, schools and embassies.

The shrine began in 1869, the year after the Meiji Restoration, when Japan's emperor took back political power from the shogunate. It was founded on the order of Emperor Meiji to honour those who died fighting for the new imperial government in the Boshin War. That was the short civil war that ended samurai rule. At first it was called Tokyo Shokonsha, a name that means a place for summoning the spirits of the dead.

In 1879 it received the name it carries today. Yasukuni is usually translated as peaceful country, or pacifying the nation. Over the following decades, the list of the enshrined grew with every conflict Japan fought. Today the shrine records almost two and a half million names. Most of them died in the Second World War. In Shinto, the native religion of Japan, these souls are honoured as kami, or divine spirits.

It is important to understand what this means. Yasukuni is not a cemetery. There are no graves and no remains here. The names are written into registers, and the spirits are believed to reside in the shrine itself. The list includes soldiers and sailors, but also nurses, students mobilised in wartime, and people from Taiwan and Korea who served Japan when those lands were under Japanese rule.

This is also why the shrine is one of the most debated places in Asia. In 1978, priests quietly added fourteen men convicted as Class A war criminals by the postwar Tokyo tribunal, including wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo. The news became public the following year. Since then, visits by Japanese prime ministers and politicians have drawn sharp protests from China and South Korea, who see them as honouring the leaders of a war of aggression.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Emperor Hirohito, who reigned through the war, visited the shrine several times after 1945. His last visit came in 1975. He never returned after the war criminals were enshrined. His successors have also stayed away. For many Japanese, the shrine is a place of private family grief. For others, at home and abroad, it is a political symbol. Both views stand on the same gravel you are standing on.

Now look ahead along the approach. In the middle of the path stands a tall bronze statue of a man in Western dress. This is Omura Masujiro, a military reformer who is often called the father of the modern Japanese army. He was attacked by opponents of his reforms and died in 1869, the same year the shrine was founded. His statue was one of the first Western-style public monuments in Tokyo.

Further on, you reach the Shinmon, the main inner gate. It is built of plain, unpainted cypress wood, a material prized in Shinto architecture for its pale colour and clean scent. On the heavy doors, look for large golden chrysanthemums. The sixteen-petal chrysanthemum is the crest of the imperial family, and it marks the shrine's close tie to the throne. Beyond the gate is the main worship hall, simple and dark under a sweeping roof.

If you wish to pray, the custom is simple. Rinse your hands and mouth at the water basin first. At the hall, bow twice, clap twice, and bow once more. Many Japanese visitors do exactly this, then walk away in silence. Photography inside the inner area is restricted, so watch for signs and follow the lead of the people around you.

The second surprise is softer. Inside these grounds grows a group of Somei Yoshino cherry trees, the pale pink variety seen all over Japan. One of them is the official sample tree for Tokyo. Each spring, officials from the Japan Meteorological Agency come here and count its open flowers. When enough have opened, they announce that cherry blossom season has begun across the capital. The whole city waits for this one tree.

To the right of the main hall is the Yushukan, the shrine's military museum. It holds a steam locomotive from the Thai–Burma railway, which was built with forced labour and prisoners of war, and a Zero fighter plane. Many historians criticise the museum for presenting the war as a struggle of self-defence and liberation. Go with open eyes. Near the museum, small statues honour a horse, a dog and a pigeon, the animals that died in service.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment and listen again. The gravel, the crows, the low wind in the trees. In July, during the Mitama Matsuri festival, this same approach glows with thousands of paper lanterns. Today it may be quiet, or busy with school groups. Either way, as you walk back under that great steel gate and down Kudanzaka, you carry with you a place that Japan itself has not yet agreed how to remember.