Jap-Tex-Mex and Nationalism in Tokyo

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Jessie and I took a day trip to Tokyo Tuesday to see possibly the most controversial destination in all of Japan: Yasukuni-jinja (shrine) and Yushukan, the shrine's accompanying museum. The museum commemorates Japan's war dead from the late 19th century up through WWII and the Japanese believe the shrine is home to the spirits of those who fought and died for Japan. The shrine is a popular destination for families of dead soldiers and Japanese leaders, including the prime minister. In many ways it resembles Arlington National Cemetery, however, visitors to Arlington Cemetery do not pray to the spirits of dead soldiers and revere them as gods.

Among the 2.4 million who are enshrined there are 14 class A war criminals who were executed for ordering atrocities during WWII in China and Korea, mostly. This is where the whole thing gets sticky. Suffice it to say that as nationalists and right-wing Japanese politicians become more and more adament about not cowering in the wake of WWII defeat and Japan's Asian neighbors say, "hey, at least ACT like you're sorry about some of the horrible things you did to us," the debate continues.

The museum aspect of the visit was riddled with revisionism and nationalistic rhetoric -- something you'll find in many museums, I think, although this museum in particular is notorious for its one-sided view of Japan's victimization throughout the 20th century.
But, taken with a grain of salt (or two) the museum was very well done and very interesting.

These things always make me curious, so I looked up some numbers to put the Asian aspect of WWII into perspective: 20,400,000 Chinese and Korean people were killed during the course of the war, a number that surpasses the number of total people killed from the combined countries, combined: Germany, Italy, Japan, United States, UK, France, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

I know I always think of the war in Europe as being center stage, but it certainly wasn't. Chinese deaths were approximately equal to Russian deaths at the hands of the Germans. The major difference was that half of Russia's casualties were civilian while almost 80 percent of China's losses were civilian. Japanese and Chinese leaders met just this weekend to try to sooth over hard feelings and come to an understanding now more than 60 years later.

Well, all that thinking made us hungry, so we tried to find a Tex-Mex restaurant we knew of in nearby Shibuya. Thankfully, a nice girl about our age saw us looking confused and, having a little time to burn, got directions to the restaurant and walked us there. We would NOT have found it by ourselves. And it was well worth the effort. Let's just say those enchiladas are going to get me through a good month here...yummy.

In all, it was a surprisingly relaxing trip to one of the world's largest cities. We're getting pretty good at navigating our way around the place at this point, and some of our Japanese friends have remarked than we know more about getting around Tokyo than they do. We generally think of ourselves as small-town people but we decided we could definitely enjoy a place like Tokyo. There's something nice about not feeling like everyone is looking at you.

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Photos

Song and a Prayer
This man was singing/praying loudly in front of the shrine. Apparently this is not uncommon at this shrine.

Zero Fighter
Maybe Japan's most famous war vehicle, this Zero Fighter was pieced together by multiple destroyed planes.

River Kwai Train
So this was really cool: the first train engine to traverse the Thailand-Burma Railway featured in the 1957 film "Bridge on the River Kwai."

Politician
A nationalist propagandist drives his van around piping announcements over his loudspeaker.

Tex-Mex
Mmmm...

Comments

[Inge]

Tex-Mex
Great pics! I couldn't help notice how clean the train looked! Someone must be ready to sweep at every station!! Look forward to seeing you this summer. Are you sad or happy to be leaving Japan???

[Jeff]

Jap-Tex-Mex
Very cool photos. The shrine looks like it's a Buddhist one, from the dharma wheel motifs on the front. I've been hearing more about nationalism in Japan over the last few years. I really prefer the more modern and peaceful culture. I guess it's similar to what has been going on in the United States, though, where attitudes got pretty nationalistic after the World Trade Center attacks. It's funny that there are restaurants in Japan that serve a Texas version of Mexican food...