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Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

John Breen
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Extract

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Yasukuni is first and foremost a site for the performance of ritual before the kami (gods), those men, women and some children who sacrificed their lives for the imperial cause. This article examines the organizing of space and ritual at Tokyo's shrine to the war dead and the implications for memory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 6 , June 2005 , e19
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

Footnotes

Summary in Italian available here: http://www.cultorweb.com/Yasukuni/Y.html

References

Notes

[1] The best discussion of the political dimension to the Yasukuni problem, with which this article does not engage, is to be found in John Nelson (2003), “Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine,” Journal of Asian Studies 62, 2.

[2] For a fuller discussion of the rites of apotheosis, and of propitiation, see John Breen (2004), ‘The dead and the living in the land of peace: a sociology of Yasukuni shrine’ in John Breen ed., Death in Japan (Mortality [special issue]) 9, 1, pp. 77-82.

[3] For veterans and their views on Yasukuni, see Breen (2004), ‘The dead and the living’, pp. 88-90.