Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo, Japan

Posted by: hcpen1111

Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo, Japan
A picture of the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. I visited it once and it really is a horrible place.....the sad thing is that many people were praying there as if it were some sacred place when it houses 14 class A war criminals and is a monument to the unknown rapist, murderers and torturers that were some of the Japanese soldiers during WW2. The museum attached to Yasukuni Shrine is a right-wing bastion with books denying Japanese war time crimes and the museum glorifies Japan's war of invasion during WW2. Examples are how the museum frames phrases glorifying sacrifice for the emperor and emphasises modernisation of Manchuria under the Japanese. Japanese warcrimes are completely absent in the museum and there is even a section on how Japanese 'liberated' South East Asia and Japan's invasion 'helped' SEA gain independence. Similarly, the colonisation of Korea is justified through showing documents of Korea's gov agreeing to the colonisation conveniently leaving out how the Korean govt was forced into the agreements due to the Korean peninsula's relative backwardness compared to Japan then. Further, a list war dead with photographs fill an entire section of the museum which is insensitive to Asian victim countries' feelings as these were the very soldiers that committed horrendous atrocities/crimes during WW2 towards the occupied Asian countries. Anyways, the whole museum was recently renovated and looked very grand indicating how much support and donations it gets from Japan's big companies.......in my opinion, the musuem should be closed down and the Japanese PM Koizumi and everyone else should stop visiting Yasukuni out of respect for other Asian countries as well as to show sincere remorse for past wrongs.