Page 2 of
2 Lost
love over Yasukuni Shrine By
David McNeill
to erase the tapes. It was
right-wingers who did this. You could never make
this film, shooting in the standard way. I think
that's why no Japanese has ever made a film like
this. They would follow the ordinary process of
applying for press passes and permission, but it
doesn't work to take that approach. All you can do
is shoot a bit at a time. When it was possible, I
applied for permission. But there are places where
permission wouldn't be granted, and you either
have to go ahead and film there, or give up.
JJ: This is one of the
issues that is being raised in criticism of the
film.
LY: I did get
permission to film on August 15. I gave my name
card to the people in charge at Yasukuni, and I
had permission to
film then. In the
beginning, I had no idea of what kind of film I
would make, so I shot like a tourist. There are a
lot of tourists who shoot video at Yasukuni. But
when I understood there were things I needed to
shoot, I got permission. The people in charge knew
who I was. I never shot with a concealed camera. I
didn't use a long lens.
JJ:
Was making a film about Yasukuni something of a
provocation?
LY: It was more
like a conditioned response than a provocation. I
was provoked, and I responded. I often say, this
is a sequela, the psychological aftereffect of the
war. Not just World War II, not just the war with
China, but it's a disorder caused by all the wars
Japan fought since the Meiji period. Yasukuni
Shrine is intricately tied to Japan's modern
history. It was built by the Meiji emperor, it's
the emperor's shrine. So it is these
contradictions, this disorder caused by war that
can be seen on the stage of Yasukuni. When I go
inside there, I feel like I too am suffering from
a disease. I contracted the disease at the Nanking
symposium, and I've been suffering from it ever
since. I'm not a doctor, who can diagnose
someone's disease. I'm suffering from the disease
as well. So it's not a provocation, but a
conditioned response, I'm responding by instinct.
Tojo Hideki and Pride I had a
dialogue once with Ito Shunya, the director of
Pride. We're both members of the Directors
Guild of Japan, and Ito has always been very
cordial and friendly toward me, a Japanese
gentleman. But around that same time, 1997, he
made the film called Pride. That too was a
shock. When it comes to history, there's a gap
that's so large. It's a film about the "pride" of
Tojo Hideki, his defiance of the Tokyo war crimes
trial, arguing that the war was fought in Japan's
self-defense. We had a special meeting of the
international committee of the guild and I engaged
in a three-hour discussion with Ito. And I thought
at the time that it was pointless to debate, that
what I needed to do was respond with a film of my
own. So, it's matter of conditioned response. The
other side is provocative, I'm just responding by
instinct.
JJ: So you don't
consider this film to be anti-Japanese.
Curing the disorder caused by
war LY: Of course not. What's
wrong with curing an illness, the disorder caused
by war? The point is to live together in a healthy
atmosphere, and that would work in Japan's favor
as well. People don't want to recognize their
illness, they don't want to think about it, look
at it. They say, "Japan is beautiful. How can you
say it is sick?" But if you watch the film, you'll
see that diseased cells are living within the
space of Yasukuni. And that's dangerous. It could
lead to heart disease, or to brain disease. But
what's really serious about this disease is that
it comes not from internal organs but from the
soul. So it is a psychological disorder, a disease
of the spirit. That I haven't been able to leave
this issue alone for the last 10 years means that
I too am suffering from this psychological
disorder. I didn't really want to make such a
difficult film, it's only going to cause problems,
so I must be sick to do it. The point is to look
directly at the disease.
The meaning of
Yasukuni I've been observing for 10
years, and this is the result. The film asks the
question: What is the meaning of the spirit of
Yasukuni? That's all. Each viewer can come up with
his or her own answer. This has to be good for
Japan. It's an opportunity, an opportunity to get
well. That's good for Japan, not anti-Japanese. To
suggest that the film is anti-Japanese suggests
that Yasukuni symbolizes all of Japan.
That's a mistake to begin with. It's one
face of Japan, the face of Japan when it's
suffering from disease. That's not all of Japan.
Japan has many beautiful faces. But this face must
not be ignored. It must be confronted. Many
Japanese don't know about Yasukuni, they feel it
has nothing to do with them. But that's wrong. It
needs to be recognized, looked at, and thought
about, and the film provides that opportunity. So
it's not anti-Japanese. It's my love letter to
Japan, in that sense. I live in Japan. How could
something that is anti-Japanese be good for me,
personally? This love letter may be hard to watch,
but that's the form my love takes. There are many
forms of love. There's one that declares that
everything is wonderful, but that's not my way.
This is my expression of love.
JJ: But there are those who
consider it a taboo to address this.
LY: That's because it is
questioning the spirit, and so the spiritual pain
comes out, and there is resistance. I'm not
stating a conclusion. We don't use any narration.
The space itself raises the questions, the
atmosphere of the place. My theme is the space
that is Yasukuni. The space and the spirit. It's
the spirit of Yasukuni that I'm trying to capture.
So you need a variety of perspectives to see the
space. It's not one-sided. But no one has looked
at that space, so seeing it may be a shock, it may
be unpleasant, but it's reality.
JJ: What is the spirit of
Yasukuni?
The spirit of Yasukuni: The
sword LY: In the shrine's
own doctrine, the spirit is the sword. It is the
object of worship. All of the spirits of the dead
are embodied in that sword. So that's the symbol
of Yasukuni. The film depicts symbolic meaning.
Everyone who appears in the film, every scene, and
the sword itself, all are symbols. I am using the
doctrine of Yasukuni to make a film: the world of
symbols. The sword is the spirit, but what meaning
does that spirit have? That's the question the
film raises. Is it the samurai spirit? The Yamato
spirit? An entirely beautiful spirit?
JJ: But it is a spirit that
doesn't allow for reflection.
LY: They are all tools. The
sword is a tool. Yasukuni itself is no more than a
building. It's a tool. What meaning do people
invest in those tools? How they are used changes
their effect entirely. So it always returns to
people. How do people use these tools, how do they
see them? How do they interact with the tools?
People are weak, so the government uses the tools
to manipulate people.
JJ:
There are many war memorials in the world, and
everyone who visits them brings their own meaning
to them. But Yasukuni does not allow that freedom.
The compulsory nature of Yasukuni is the key
problem, it seems to me.
Yasukuni and
state Shinto LY: It began as
a symbol of the state. Under the emperor, it was
part of a political religion. It was a military
facility. The head priest was a general in the
army, for example. It was run by the military.
During the war, it had a status that surpassed all
religions, it represented the morality of the
Japanese people. That was the nature of state
Shinto. State Shinto conveyed the power of the
state as the image of the nation.
The
problem comes after the war, when state Shinto was
disestablished, and separation of religion and the
state was adopted. Yasukuni became an independent
religious institution. But is it really
independent? Is it really simply a religious
shrine? There are many contradictions there. For
example, in the film, there's the story of the
Buddhist priest, Sugawara Ryuken. The question he
asks is this: If Yasukuni is an independent
religious institution, how did it obtain the
information needed to enshrine his father? He was
enshrined, as a heroic spirit, after the war. How
could they accomplish that? His father was a
Buddhist. Why does a Buddhist have to be enshrined
in a Shinto shrine? That's a contradiction.
Even after the war, there is no separation
between Yasukuni and the government. The
enshrinement rolls are all prepared on the basis
of information that comes from the Ministry of
Health, Labor and Welfare. That's true of the
Class-A war criminals too. All of that information
came from the government. So the government is
still using Yasukuni.
The Japanese
government employs a double standard. With regard
to international society, it recognizes the
verdicts of the war crimes trials, it acknowledges
the existence of war criminals. But domestically,
it uses Yasukuni to honor them, and give them the
status of heroic souls, to express gratitude and
respect. This is very Japanese, a different face
at home and abroad. And this double standard has
created the contradictory nature of Yasukuni over
these decades.
So there are people with
different stances and the confrontations among
them are repeated. It also makes Yasukuni very
indefinite. To young people, it's perplexing, and
they don't want to have anything to do with it.
And this connects, of course, to the larger
question of Japanese war responsibility throughout
the postwar period. It is the matter of collective
memory, and that's where coercion comes into play.
In the film, everyone is part of a
collective, it has nothing to do with the
individual. They have collective memory, they are
in a collective context, collective currents and
relationships. Yasukuni is a powerful collective
symbol, a powerful symbol of collective memory. It
is a symbol of Japan as a kyodotai, a
communal society. To live collectively, with
gratitude to the dead. It's that kind of symbol.
Yasukuni is not a simple symbol of militarism,
it's not simply a matter of whether the prime
minister will worship there or not. It is
connected to the collective memories that stretch
back to the beginning of the Meiji period, when
Japan began to walk the path of a modern state,
with pride and honor.
JJ:
How do you think the film will be seen in China?
LY: This film is a
Japanese-Chinese coproduction, with producers from
the Beijing Film Academy and a Chinese film
company. So it will be released in China. And
that's important, because it depicts sides of
Yasukuni that have never been shown before.
JJ: But there is a chance it
will lead to increased anti-Japanese sentiment.
LY: That's possible, but
until now Yasukuni has been used for political
purposes, with a nationalist spirit on both sides.
But this film shows many aspects of Yasukuni, so
it may have the effect of dampening the
nationalist response. It provides the opportunity
to engage the subject calmly, to watch, feel,
study and relate to it. An opportunity to
communicate not in a political, nationalistic way,
but in a cultural way.
JJ:
There are many appealing characters in the film,
starting with Kariya-san, the swordsmith, and some
of the ordinary people who worship at the shrine.
Swordsmith Kariya LY: The spirit of the artisan is
a central aspect of the Japanese character.
There's a concentration on the work in front of
one. But there is also a tendency to not think
about what is done with the product of one's
labor, and that's problematic. That can be used by
the state again, as it was during the war.
Soldiers went to war doing a job, they didn't go
to war as "devils". They were all ordinary people,
and it was their job. Then they were changed. They
may have engaged in atrocities, but it was war, so
it's forgivable. Is that kind of thinking
acceptable? The film poses that question to the
Japanese people.
Germany, Japan and the
war dead The desire to remember the war
dead is the same throughout the world. When I
showed the film at the Berlin Film Festival, the
response was interesting. There are many war dead
in Germany, and they had families who have their
grief and want to commemorate the dead. But the
Germans first built a memorial to the Jews. There
is no facility in Germany commemorating the German
war dead. Why is that?
The founder of the
International Forum of New Cinema at the Berlin
festival, Ulrich Gregor, has an interesting take
on this. He argues that the difference between
Germany and Japan is that Germany was lucky to
have gotten rid of its emperor after World War I.
For Japan, the symbol of the state has remained
the same, before, during, and after the war. The
emperor has lost his authority, he made a
declaration of his humanity, but he remains the
symbol of the state. That's the source of the
difficulty and complexity of the problem. Yasukuni
Shrine is the emperor's shrine. The film calls
that into question. And that's the reason it has
generated an intense response.
David
McNeill writes regularly for a number of
publications including the Irish Times and the
Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a Japan Focus
coordinator.
John Junkerman
is an American documentary filmmaker, based in
Tokyo, and a Japan Focus associate. His recent
film, Japan's Peace Constitution, has been
screened widely in Japan by groups dedicated to
defending Article 9. Information on his films can
be found at www.cine.co.jp.Japan's Peace
Constitution is distributed in North American
by First Run Icarus Films.
(The article
and interview were prepared for Japan Focus,
posted on April 1, 2008 and updated April 6,
2008.)
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