1 post tagged “nationalism”

Fact : There are no deities of Class A War Criminals housed in the Yasukuni Jinja.

1. objectively attributable intent behind the visits

What most of these critiques ignore is that the Yasukuni Jinja is a commemoration of those who had died in all the wars and conflicts from the Meiji Restoration onward and cannot necessarily, nor specifically, be of those particular wars and atrocities in question.

To discern the intent of this commemorative exercise, one cannot point to particular wars, particular persons or particular actions as an indication of the intent behind the commemorative event. It is the common or core factor shared by, or attributed to, all the wars and conflicts and the intents and purposes of all the fallen that would be most pertinent as an indicator of the necessary or objectively attributable intent behind the commemoration of the war dead.

The objectively attributable intent behind a commemorative exercise is derived from the core and indisputable function of a phenomena. This has to take into consideration the relational context within which this takes place. The relational context consists of entities without which or whom, the core and indisputable function of a phenomena loses purpose. For instance, a relational context involving 'food' and a 'person', identifies the former with a core and indisputable function - that of nourishment. Nourishment itself requires the other entity within the relational context, the person, to exist within it. Now while, a person may engage in eating because s/he may, well, basically have nothing else to occupy his time with, this cannot be the objectively attributable intent behind the act of eating. This can be seen as idiosyncratic or a possible reason for eating which can but remain an assumption on the part of the observer rather than a certainty. All core entities within a relational context depend on each other for meaning.

It must, however, be noted that core entities are not indistinguishable in terms of ascendance. While food does not need the human being for its objective existence as a substance, the same cannot be said in the inverse. Analogously, while the individual does not need the state for her objective existence as a person, the state is dependent on the individual for its existence, validation, and in the context of this inquiry, its deification.

In sum, the objectively attributable intent behind an activity is derived from the core purpose it serves in relation to that which it satisfies. In this context, the attributable intent is derived from the purpose the Yasukuni Jinja necessarily serves in relation to the other entity within the relational context - the state. Just as 'food', in its core purpose, enables 'life', the Yasukuni Jinja 's core purpose must be seen as that which it necessarily realises. The 'life' and significance of the state as an entity worthy of self-sacrifice. The Yasukuni Jinja housing the deities of those who had died at the behest of the state is thus twice deified. One, as the spirits of the dead, and two, as deities receiving their divinity from their prior role as militant pillars of the Japanese State.

2. The commemoration of a phenomena, be it an event, person or thing, is simultaneously a commemoration of an overarching phenomena.

For instance, to commemorate an individual is to commemorate the person's significance to and within the family, community or other social groups. S/he is not commemorated for her individuality along with her potentials but the extent to which this individuality and potentials can be, or have been, a potential validation/realisation of the significance of the larger social group or powerful other.

Analogously, 'Saints' and 'Sinners' are conceived, not by virtue (pun intended) of their acts but by the extent to which their respective attitudes and behaviour is concordant or discordant with the alleged dictates of the God of a particular faith. Without this relational context, both 'Saints' and 'Sinners' cease to exist as such. Thus, every 'Saint' becomes an extra jewel in the crown s/he will never wear while every 'Sinner' is a thorn in the side of the validity of the faith.

As far as the interests of those who allegedly govern in 'God's name' is concerned, it would be prudent of them to assume the 'state of grace' of every sinner who has died for his nation and who's yet to be proven guilty of any 'mortal' crime against the state, than to assume the sinfulness of everyone which can only serve to compromise the significance of the source of its earthly mandate.

note: we should keep in mind that 'crimes against humanity' and 'crimes against the state' are not one and the same. Crimes against humanity can be construed as crimes against the state insofar as the state comprises the entirety of humanity. The state is one of the paradigms, besides, and amongst others, family, community, ethnicity, humanity, through which crimes against humanity achieves a dual reality. One may not do unto one's own that which the state deems legitimate if done unto another. War is one such phenomena within which this duality is evidenced.

In the context of the state, the commemoration of the war dead is a recognition of the sacredness of an act that derives its sanctity from the prudentially assumed intents and purposes of the war dead insofar as these are not proved to be incongruent with that which is expected from a relationship between a 'saint and her God' or in this context, 'the soldier and her/is State'.

Cults precede saints and martyrs, whilst saints and martyrs precede religion.

The war dead precede the deification of the state and its transfiguration.

The commemoration of the war dead, the contemporaries of the 'saints' and 'martyrs' of pre-modern traditional religion, is an effort to validate a theocentric circle at the epicentre of which is located the state. The war dead are the ultimate examples of state worship as indicated by their allegedly well-informed, and therefore 'voluntary', self-sacrifice. In this context, self-sacrifice at the alter of the state, for the state and by the state.

3. The respective directives and perspectives of various regimes are not the necessary for or definition of the commemorative exercise...

...but rather that of how the directives of the state had been, and therefore ought to be, obeyed without question. It is an instance of the state attempting to justify present loyalty by the assumed unquestioning loyalty of past adherents to the religion of the state. It is, in effect, a historical moral exemplar for the 'citizens' of today.

One also ought to remember that directives that are, in hindsight, viewed as atrocitous or regrettable are oftentimes viewed as legitimate at the time of their issuance. The cultural standards of the present serve a dual function as the advocates of that which may be considered as atrocities tomorrow and the prosecutors of those of yesterday. This has remained unchanged throughout history and there is no reason, in view of the certainty of continuing human fallibility, to assume the inverse of the present.

The orders of those respective regimes draws its legitimacy not from its content but from its source - The State. The war dead, thus, become the moral exemplars for the living. Not for the evils that they as individuals had done or for the evils that they as armed representatives of the state had perpetrated, but for what they as faithful adherents of the religion of the State have not failed to do - accord unquestioning obeisance to the will of the state even at the cost of their lives.

aside: The only true aethist is one who is devoid of any motivational belief. Substitution of one God for another is a poor argument for aethism. Every living individual subscribes to a belief/s, be it in the Buddha, the State or her/imself. All of these qualify as 'Religion' by the fact that 'Faith' is an intrinsic part of one's experience of any of them. Show me an aethist and you show me the dead.

4. The commission of atrocities in the course of an attempted adherence to the directives of respective regimes are not the necessary focus of a commemorative exercise...

...unless it can be established that the commission of these atrocities were the core aims of the directives of all the respective regimes whose war dead are enshrined. The commission of atrocities are not necessarily an affront to the divinity of the state insofar as they do not compromise the general attitude toward the state as detailed in 2-3. The state’s explicit directives are not transgressed by such acts. The war dead had ‘given unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar’ - their very lives. That which s/he keeps unto herself, via atrocitous deeds, does not invalidate what s/he gives to Caesar.


5. The enshrining of those deemed to be 'war criminals' is justified by their not having violated any of that enumerated above.

Number 4 is especially applicable here. The deification of 'war criminals' does not call into question the war dead's previous blind unquestioning loyalty to the state which is the central focus of the commemoration of the war dead. Caesar is mocked not by that which you do but that which you fail to do that compromises the interests of Caesar.

6. One should also note that in Japanese Culture, the dead are absolved of their crimes...

One should also note that in Japanese culture, the dead are absolved of their crimes. Their veneration is not viewed as a validation of the moral sense/lessness they displayed whilst amongst the land of the allegedly 'living'.

Most criticisms of the Yasukuni Jinja arise from the application of their respective cultural standards. For instance, in Chinese culture, the exhumation of bodies for posthumous punishment is not unheard of, whilst the Judaeo-'Christian' tradition views the soul as a carrier of the sins and virtues of their mortal past which, in turn, determines their internment in either a 'hell' or a 'heaven'. For the Chinese and the West to demand the removal of those deities deemed as war criminals is nothing short of ethnocentric cultural arrogance. In this sense, there are no deities of 'Class A war criminals' being housed in the Yasukuni Jinja as their 'criminal' status, if it is to be deemed as such, is one they had enjoyed whilst in the land of the living. Just as we do not prosecute those who suffer complete amnesia after the commission of a crime, to demand the removal of those deities deemed to 'Class A war criminals' is to wrongfully attribute guilt to those who cease to exist as such within the spiritual realm.

7. Finally, the dominance of the Shinto religion in Japan at present is due to the efforts of the Japanese administration to ensure the subservience of the populace to the will of the state...

... in counterposition to the morality of the previously dominant Buddhism. The latter was deemed to be antithetical to Capitalism and the cultivation of the hadean spirit required to ensure its success or at least diminish any opposition arising from an antithetical system of beliefs.

With Shintoism, an individual is relieved of accountability in the next life for actions in the present. It was only the state s/he was accountable to. This was achieved through the effecting of state policies at the onset of the Japanese confrontation with the west in the colonial era and the realisation that adapation to western ideals and perspectives was necessary to prevent colonisation. This would explain why the deities are not deemed to be 'war criminals' by the Japanese themselves as this would only serve to undermine the basis upon which the Japanese state would be able to accord itself the role of the arbiter of morality complemented by a religion that absolves its citizenry of any wrong doing committed in this life at the behest of the state. The 'citizen' is thus morally enabled to do as the State states without any or little conscientious repurcussions.

If we look at the west, we'll find that a similar process took place at the advent of capitalism and the rise of the modern nation-state. Whilst the west modified traditional religion to accomodate capitalism, the Japanese ought to be credited with a more honest eradication of it altogether.

8. If we are to agree that the supremacy and divinity of the state is evidenced by the commemoration of the assumed or attributed intents and purposes of the war dead....

..., as discussed above, then we also ought to agree that the proponents of the separation of the church and state have mistaken this contradistinction in name as indicative of a contradistinction in personality and function.

The state’s assumed supremacy and divinity is best illustrated in its view of the individual in the fact that if one is shot for desertion, s/he is killed not for betraying her/is family, but for betraying the state. Till the state can be proved beyond even a fleeting hint of a shadow of a doubt that it is an extensive and equitable representation of all of the people all of the time, its claims to being the ‘family collective’ is suspect. (It is strange that we apply such a standard with regards to the family and yet fail to apply these selfsame standards when it comes to this modern family collective.) In the face of such uncertainty, any claims to the right of life and death over individuals is a claim, or more appropriately, a usurpation of the rights of traditional divinity.

Unless explicitly stated, or at the satisfaction of condition 4, the necessary focus and definition of the commemoration of the war dead is not that of individual wars, atrocities or the idiosyncracies of the individuals. It is a celebration and validation of that which the State claims to deserve of its citizens.


Undying loyalty till death do they part.

1. The Yasukuni Jinja should be dismantled and visitations by political figures stopped if the state is deemed to be an atrocity in itself.

2. The Yasukuni Jinja should be dismantled or visitations by political figures stopped if unquestioning allegiance to the state becomes an atrocity in itself.

3. The Yasukuni Jinja should be dismantled and visitations by political figures stopped if war in the name of the State is deemed to be an atrocity in itself.

4. And even if conditions 1-3 are met, that would not render those who had fought, killed or died whilst in pursuance of activities that were not incongruent with the explicit will of the state, 'war criminals', but rather victims of misconceptions arising from the fallibility of the State.




(article first published in May 2005 in blogspot)