In 1978, Yasukuni enshrined the spirits of 14 Class A war criminals as “martyrs,” after which Emperor Hirohito (and, from his accession to the throne in 1989, Emperor Akihito) ceased making visits to the shrine. Nevertheless, visits by prominent elected representatives (most notoriously, the annual visits by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro on the anniversary of Japan's surrender) have continued, stirring international protest and internal legal challenges. As the following article suggests, at stake in these challenges is not only the constitutionality of such visits, but also the meaning of enshrinement itself. If, as legal arguments contend (and the Osaka High Court affirmed), shrine visits by Koizumi took place in his official capacity as Prime Minister, this represents a violation of the separation of religion and state power affirmed in the post-war Constitution. At the same time, these official visits imply to many at least tacit governmental support for the policies of the shrine, which not only works to glorify Japan's imperialist past, but also enshrines a number of names (including those of former Taiwanese and Korean colonial subjects) over the strong objection of surviving relatives.