TOKYO, April 25 (Xinhua) — “This place has hidden the truth about Japan’s history of aggression. I want to reveal it to more people.” Standing at the entrance of the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japanese militarism and wartime aggression, 89-year-old Junichi Hasegawa told Xinhua.
Having served as a member of the Shinjuku ward assembly in Tokyo for nearly 30 years, Hasegawa now heads an organization that guides tours of war-linked sites across Tokyo.
Since 2010, he has led visits to Yasukuni Shrine more than 400 times, sometimes with groups of a dozen or more, sometimes with just two or three people.
On each visit, Hasegawa hands out a booklet he has spent years compiling, one that methodically exposes how the shrine conceals wartime atrocities and glorifies Japan’s history of aggression.
“I was born in 1937, son of a Japanese soldier who fought in China,” Hasegawa said. After World War II (WWII), he began reflecting on the past and came to feel a deep responsibility to tell the true history behind Yasukuni Shrine.
“The shrine looks peaceful on the surface, but in reality, traces of aggression are everywhere.” As he spoke, Hasegawa led Xinhua reporters to a large stone lantern near the second torii gate. On its base, a relief carving depicts three soldiers charging toward a railway with explosives.
Since modern times, Japan has launched a series of aggressive wars against foreign countries, including the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the War of Aggression against China by Japanese Invaders, and the Pacific War. The vast numbers who died in those conflicts have been enshrined at Yasukuni, making it a central pillar of Japan’s war mobilization system.
Hasegawa explained how Japanese militarism used the shrine to mobilize the public for war: “Those who die in battle are ‘deified’ here, and through that, the public is fed a certain idea that if you die in war, you die for the emperor and can be worshiped as a ‘divinity.’ Therefore, you should be willing to march off to the front.”
In 1978, 14 WWII Class-A war criminals were enshrined in Yasukuni, including Hideki Tojo. For countries such as China and South Korea, which suffered immensely from Japanese aggression, Hasegawa said, “this is clearly unacceptable.”
Hasegawa has traveled to east China’s Nanjing three times to express remorse and has visited the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.
He showed reporters a passage he wrote in 2018: “I apologized on behalf of my father when I was 70 and 80 years old. When I turn 90, I want to travel to Nanjing again.”
Today, Japanese right-wing forces continue to use Yasukuni Shrine to push a revisionist view of history, one that whitewashes aggression and glorifies war, especially among younger generations.
“In recent years, Yasukuni has tried to present itself as an ordinary shrine, even branding itself as a popular destination for cherry blossom viewing,” Hasegawa said.
Because the shrine deliberately obscures and sanitizes the history of aggression, visitors exposed to such narratives risk walking away with a distorted understanding of the past, he added.
That is precisely why Hasegawa keeps coming back.
“I will keep speaking out,” he said. “More people need to know the truth about Yasukuni Shrine.” ■
