Sunday, February 12, 2006

Samurai’s Yasukuni

Samurai’s Yasukuni

New York Times in its online version has spotlighted Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe, chairman of the Yomiuri Group, the most influential media group in Japan.

He also controlled the most popular baseball team in Japan, Yomiuri Giants, which led him once to direct confrontation with Livedoor Corp, a Japanese Enron of its poor IT business version.

In 2004, the president of Livedoor, Mr. Takafumi Horie, had tried to buy one of professional baseball teams in vain, mainly due to opposition of Mr. Watanabe.

After the 9/11 election Mr. Horie had run for but lost, he reportedly asked the director-general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to help him acquire another baseball team. Mr. Watanabe was again rigidly opposed to it. As Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is also the head of LDP, the relationship between Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Watanabe got uptight.

What’s more, Mr. Watanabe has been expressing his dissent over Mr. Koizumi’s going and worshipping at the Yasukuni Shrine where souls of many soldiers who died in past wars are enshrined.

The issue is that Yasukuni, meaning putting the nation in pease, also deifies Japanese supreme leaders in WWII.

Believe or not, the Spirit told me the other day that Japanese Prime Minister at heart would not like to recommend some others to visit Yasukuni. Nobody has ever suspected such possibility. So, only the Spirit told me so.

On his last visit, Mr. Koizumi walked on the main path of Yasukuni and prayed before the altar, slipping the 500-yen coin into an offertory box. It is a style for ordinary people when visiting Yasukuni. In his previous visits, the prime minister followed an authentic course.

There must be a reason that Mr. Koizumi cannot stop his visit to the shrine, if he so wishes.

Mr. Watanabe is said to keep hamsters as his pet or animal companion. In a TV interview, he said that he had read a magazine article telling that a certain Diet (national parliament) member keeps hamsters, and then he called her to come and help him buy and keep them.

Someday, Mr. Koizumi may ask Mr. Watanabe to help make a pet of a hamster.

* * *

Nonetheless, samurai won’t buy and keep hamsters. Until the end of WWII, Japan had been actually governed by samurai and their direct offspring.

Even after late 19th century when the last samurai regime and shogun were abolished, samurai of other clans than the shogun family controlled the government of the Empire of Great Japan.

Most of high-ranking officials in Imperial Japan during and before WWII were from ex-samurai families, but most of soldiers and citizens were not.

The Yasukuni Shrine is rather new, compared with other shrines mostly functioning for 1500 years or so along with venerable myths. Yasukuni was established by the Meiji government with full of ex-samurai to appease the spirits of soldiers who died in wars, including one that had put an end to the shogun regime.

So, until 1945, Japan had been in effect under control of spirit of samurai for almost 750 years, which makes its tradition deeply rooted in part of Japan and the Japanese.

* * *

On August 15, 2005, Japan’s Minister of Environment Yuriko Koike visited the Yasukuni Shrine (as a private person), which helped her win her own 9/11 election. Her brilliant election campaign boosted LDP in the election, decisively contributing to victory of the prime minister.

On August 15, 1945, Emperor Showa declared unconditional surrender to the allied, putting an end to WWII and the Empire of Great Japan eventually.

For some, Yasukuni may be the most reasonable place to commemorate on August 15 the extinct Empire above any political and international disputes, for the deceased have nothing to do with worldly sins any more.

“IF YOU HAVE EARS, THEN LISTEN TO WHAT SPIRIT SAYS”