Among the many groups for which the Yasukuni Shrine raises important questions is Japan's Christian population. In 1988, for example, the Japanese Supreme Court rejected the claim of Nakaya Yasuko, the Christian widow of an officer in Japan's Self Defense Force, who objected on religious grounds to her husband's enshrinement as a Shinto deity at a shrine affiliated with Yasukuni. Yet, as John Breen's survey of Catholic responses to Yasukuni indicates, relations between Christian authorities and the shrine are often complex. At one level, of course, is a basic theological question: to what extent can Catholics participate in rituals associated with non-Christian religious traditions? Interestingly, the Vatican (in a continuation of policies set down when Yasukuni was an institution of State Shinto) affirmed that Catholics may, in fact, participate in such rituals, insofar as those rites serve as expressions of patriotism. At the same time, however, Yasukuni has raised criticism from the Catholic Bishops in Japan, especially regarding the threat posed by government support of the shrine to the constitutional separation of religion and state power. Catholic politicians and intellectuals, meanwhile, run the gamut from outright apologetics for the shrine to advocacy for a more secular memorial. In his concluding comments, Breen carefully outlines the various issues at stake, and suggests that no simple solution is likely to address them all.