Buddha Smoker said:
I've been doing a little research and thought I would open this open with some questions to see what kind of response I get.
It is in fact a huge topic, the following is nothing more than a bit of backgrounds. No basics such as Boshin civil war or Bruno Bitter is to be covered here, and Google is always helpful when any of info below sounds questionable.
窶｢ The name list of the war dead was provided to Yasukuni shrine by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The 1967 list included the class A war criminals.
窶｢ Yasukuni decided on Jun. 30th 1970 to enshrine the class A war criminals sometime, and left the date up to the chief priest. Fujimaro Tsukuba, the fifth chief priest, refused to do that for eight years.
窶｢ Prime ministers had been visiting the shrine 34 times after the war without public protests, before Takeo Miki's "private" visit on Aug. 15th 1975 which became a domestic controversy. The "private/official" distinction became the issue since then.
窶｢ When Tsukuba passed away in 1978, Nagayoshi Matsudaira, the sixth chief priest, immediately enshrined the war criminals at his own discretion. Criminals whose qualifications were questionable included there too: Fumimaro Konoe for instance did not die on duty, not to mention that he was a civilian.
窶｢ Emperor Hirohito had visited Yasukuni eight times after the war, but he stopped that after his last visit in Nov. 1975.
窶｢ Matsudaira was known for having strange ideas. He believed that Naruhito (current crown prince) should not study in Oxford, according to the former imperial household grand master Sukemasa Irie. Matsudaira expressed his anger in many occasions about a prime minister's "contemptuous" visit with four police bodyguards too.
窶｢ Matsudaira reportedly said that everything was fine because he was going to confide the enshrinement only to the bereaved families, but newspapers found that out in Apr. 1979, making it a domestic controversy. People's Daily reported that in 1980 but no criticism or concern from Chinese government at that time.
窶｢ Tadashi Yuzawa became the seventh (current) chief priest in 1992 after Matsudaira's resignation. Currently the shrine and government are pointing fingers at each other: Yasukuni insisting that they enshrined the criminals following the name list, impossible to separate certain spirits once they become a part of whole, while Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare insisting that the list was just for reference, interventions are unconstitutional due to freedom of religion.
窶｢ After the initial report by People's Daily, there was no complaint from Chinese government about the visits of prime ministers, namely Zenko Suzuki on Apr. 21st, Aug. 15th, Oct. 17th (1981,) Apr. 21st, Aug. 15th, Oct. 18th (1982) and Yasuhiro Nakasone on Apr. 21st, Aug. 15th, Oct. 18th (1983,) Jan. 5th, Apr. 21st, Aug. 15th, Oct. 18th (1984,) Jan. 21st and Apr. 22nd (1985.) Those visits were conducted under "private" or "decline to answer" conditions.
窶｢ Chinese government's complaint for the first time was on Aug. 14th 1995 about the first "official" visit on Aug. 15th by Yasuhiro Nakasone. China learned that Yasukuni criticism was useful for diplomatic pressures, which was helped by collaborations with anti-Japan pro-China groups inside Japan. They also succeeded in making it unable for prime ministers to visit the shrine for more than a decade until Jul. 29th 1996, after the Socialist Party more or less disappointed the nation.
