Japan Press Weekly

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2014 February 5 - 11 [HISTORY]

SDF officials regularly visit ‘Yasukuni’ in Hokkaido

As Prime Minister Abe Shinzo was harshly criticized inside and outside the country for his visit to the war-glorifying Yasukuni Shrine at the end of last year, a group of officials of the Self-Defense Forces in Hokkaido made a visit to the so-called “northern Yasukuni Shrine”.

A total of 60 Ground SDF officials on January 6 visited a shrine for the war dead which is located in Hokkaido’s Asahikawa City.

In 1939, when the number of Japanese soldiers killed in China dramatically increased, Japan’s Home Ministry designated local shrines across the nation as facilities to honor the war dead as “heroes” of the country, following the example of Yasukuni Shrine. The Imperial government used these shrines as tools to encourage the general public to worship the Emperor and to mobilize them for the war of aggression.

An official of the GSDF in Asahikawa City told Akahata that they took a leave of absence from work for the visit and they offered a sprig of a sacred tree to the war dead at their own expense. To the question when they started the group-visit to the Shinto shrine, he just replied, “Since always as far as I know. I’ve no idea exactly.”

Another person connected with the SDF northern army corps, which is part of the Asahikawa division, told Akahata that some SDF members voiced objections to visiting the war shrine. “Taking a leave of absence” is just an excuse used to give the impression that it was just a personal visit, and not an official one, he added.

In June last year, high-ranking SDF officials attended a spirit-consoling service held at the shrine and seated in special seats. At the ceremony, all the participants sang in unison “The Gods of Yasukuni”, in honor of the spirits of “fallen heroes”.

Yui Hisashi, secretary of the Asahikawa Peace Committee, pointed to the fact that military authorities dispatched SDF troops from Asahikawa to Iraq and then to Djibouti for anti-piracy missions off Somalia. “It is absolutely intolerable for the authorities to again make a system in which they instill ‘Yasukuni thought’ in young people and send them to battlefields,” he stressed.


Past related article:
> Pro-Yasukuni force creates abnormal scene in Diet: Shii [January 30, 2014]