Emperor Hirohito against the war criminals in Yasukuni
Tokyo (AsiaNews) – Emperor Hirohito was deeply disappointed by the insertion of major war criminals (the so called class A) in the Yasukuni shrine, where over 2 million 400 thousand war dead soldiers are honoured. Moreover he also expressed his concerns regarding the negative reactions this had in Asia. These facts have come to light in extracts of a diary written by one of his close collaborators, which were published this week.
The author of the diary is Ryogo Urabe, superintendent of the Imperial family agency from 1969 to 1988 and then special council to the deceased Emperor. Urabe first began to write the diary after his nomination as grand chamberlain and concluded it in 2002. A month before his death (March 2002) he gave it over to the director of the daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun authorizing its publication.
An entry dating to July 31, 2001: “What induced his majesty to suspend his visits to the Yasukuni shrine is the fact that the Emperor was deeply disappointed by the fact that there class A war criminals were honoured”.
In another entry dating to April 28th 1988 Urabe had written that during a private meeting, the Emperor had referred to the honour bestowed on the war criminals in Yasukuni, to China’s condemnation and the controversial comments of Seisuke Okuno, then member of government, who had attempted to justify the invasion of China. On that same day Urabe’s successor as director of the Imperial household Tomohiko Tomita, had also noted in his diary that the Emperor (Hirohito) had decided to never again visit the shrine after 14 major war criminals were interned there. In fact his last visit dates back to November 1975. Emperor Hirohito died on January 7th 1989.
The two diaries quash the opinion that the emperor had suspended his visits to Yasukuni for diplomatic opportunism and that the decision to intern men condemned by the Tokyo international tribunal at the sanctuary was an initiative by the temple’s religious authorities rather than the government.
Recently the confirmation of government involvement in the decision was also confirmed by official documents. In the aftermath of controversies surrounding the former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to Yasukuni, a large number of parliamentarians requested that the Diet’s (parliament) national library make available material pertinent to the history of Yasukuni. The library began collecting the requested information in January 2006. From what has been found so far it appears that in 1966 the minister for public health sent a list of class A war criminals to be inserted in the shrine. In meeting between the minister and temple authorities in 1969 the authorities gave their permission on the condition that it was not made public. This is why the memorial plaques of the condemned were secretly placed in the shrine in October 1978. A year later the media broke the story.
The Japan Times comments: “The close relationship between the government and the Yasukuni has to be considered a violation of the law separating religion and State a fundamental principal of the Constitution”.
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