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Yasukuni [靖國神社]. Dir. LI Ying [李纓]. Perf. Naohara Kariya, Ryuken Sugahara, Ciwas Ali/Kao Chin Su-mei [高金素梅]. Dragon Films: 2007.
An important and emotionally difficult documentary on the Yasukuni War Shrine in Tokyo, where soldiers who died in service of the emperor are enshrined. Li Ying begins with an interview of the last surviving Yasukuni swordmaker -- a hale, stately, and reticent old man. "Please share your memories," pleads the filmmaker. "Your memories are important." For all that the swordmaker is unwilling to verbalize, the director tries to show. Much of the footage is captured on-site, centering on the controversy around Prime Minister Koizumi's "personal" visit to honor the dead at the war shrine in 2005. Citizens who get screen time include other Yasukuni worshippers, protestors, local politicians, tourists, aged militants and right-wingers, and more.
Director Li Ying has managed to pull together an impressive range of funding from his native China, Japan, as well as Korean sources [to be confirmed? I thought I saw funding from the Pusan Film Festival in the final credits...]. Nevertheless, to even broach this subject outside of domestic context is to invite controversy. For the most part, the director and his camera play the role of silent observer, though there is no way to be impartial with a topic as plosive as this. He reaches back into historical archives, including gruesome reports on "beheading contests" that occurred during the war -- news that was gleefully reported in the Japanese press at the time, now denounced as falsifications by war history revisionists. He has to introduce the war criminals who are now enshrined along with the rest of the dead soldiers. Then, there is the issue of family members who have been appealing unsuccessfully, year after year, to have their family members' names removed from the shrine register.
In one of the most stirring moments of the documentary, an international delegation of protestors met with shrine officials. The group including Okinawan and South Korean representatives, Ryuken Sugahara, a Japanese Buddhist monk whose father was the head monk at the time he was drafted into the army, and a Taiwanese Atayal aboriginal group led by fiery legislator Kao Chin Su-mei. The problem, as these protestors gently made clear, was that their family members were enshrined without permission. Basically, the state decided that their family members had died under terms befitting enshrinement and send notifications and accolades to the family after the fact, without ever consulting them. These surviving family members knew that their deceased loved ones had personal and ethical qualms against the war, even as they were duped or forced into participation, so enshrinement felt like anything but an honor. The first batch of Japanese-speaking protestors was polite enough, offering their petition letters with bowed heads and gentle voices.
Then Kao Chin Su-mei moved up front, eyes blazing, and started speaking in terse Chinese. The reaction from the Japanese diplomatic side was immediate. One diplomat tried to leave the scene (perhaps recognizing her, as she claimed this was her 7th attempt) and Kao Chin rightfully called him out for being disrespectful and trying to blow her off. The scene that follows is intensified by the rapid flux of languages. Kao Chin speaks loudly and clearly in Chinese, making sure to announce how very different she is from the Japanese country that has claimed her ancestors' spirits. Her words are translated on the spot into Japanese. The English subtitles are carefully rendered to grasp the slight differences in meaning between what she says and what her translator says to the Japanese audience. Her righteous anger is contagious -- the translator even mimics her emotional tenor, and the way her anger spills over into this second language intensifies the moment, making for a truly heartbreaking scene.
This scene and interviews with these activists in particular underscored that honoring what the shrine stands for is to make no distinction between war criminals, the honorable dead as a whole, and one's own family members who perished in the war. The shrine extends its authority beyond the scope of the individual and the private; its value stands on a higher symbolic order. Ultimately, it seems to me that worshipping at Yasukuni is absolutely not a personal decision for anyone involved (least of all Koizumi, who lost his right to engage in such decisions without public comment as soon as he decided to become a public, official figurehead). The shrine's legacy exists on the very basis of conflating the individual with the national. Those that make a decision to support the shrine are making a choice to stand for a glorified "Yamato spirit" -- a kind of nationalism with its own legacy of violence and moral burden that all nationalisms necessarily need to own up to. I say this not as an attack against Japanese nationalism, but all nationalisms in general. I believe each individual should have something(s) they believe are worth dying for, but there is no country, no creed, no culture worth killing for. No matter how the state tries to dress it up with fancy, honorable rhetoric, that's what will happen in a war. So why honor that, any aspect of that, at all?
An important and emotionally difficult documentary on the Yasukuni War Shrine in Tokyo, where soldiers who died in service of the emperor are enshrined. Li Ying begins with an interview of the last surviving Yasukuni swordmaker -- a hale, stately, and reticent old man. "Please share your memories," pleads the filmmaker. "Your memories are important." For all that the swordmaker is unwilling to verbalize, the director tries to show. Much of the footage is captured on-site, centering on the controversy around Prime Minister Koizumi's "personal" visit to honor the dead at the war shrine in 2005. Citizens who get screen time include other Yasukuni worshippers, protestors, local politicians, tourists, aged militants and right-wingers, and more.
Director Li Ying has managed to pull together an impressive range of funding from his native China, Japan, as well as Korean sources [to be confirmed? I thought I saw funding from the Pusan Film Festival in the final credits...]. Nevertheless, to even broach this subject outside of domestic context is to invite controversy. For the most part, the director and his camera play the role of silent observer, though there is no way to be impartial with a topic as plosive as this. He reaches back into historical archives, including gruesome reports on "beheading contests" that occurred during the war -- news that was gleefully reported in the Japanese press at the time, now denounced as falsifications by war history revisionists. He has to introduce the war criminals who are now enshrined along with the rest of the dead soldiers. Then, there is the issue of family members who have been appealing unsuccessfully, year after year, to have their family members' names removed from the shrine register.
In one of the most stirring moments of the documentary, an international delegation of protestors met with shrine officials. The group including Okinawan and South Korean representatives, Ryuken Sugahara, a Japanese Buddhist monk whose father was the head monk at the time he was drafted into the army, and a Taiwanese Atayal aboriginal group led by fiery legislator Kao Chin Su-mei. The problem, as these protestors gently made clear, was that their family members were enshrined without permission. Basically, the state decided that their family members had died under terms befitting enshrinement and send notifications and accolades to the family after the fact, without ever consulting them. These surviving family members knew that their deceased loved ones had personal and ethical qualms against the war, even as they were duped or forced into participation, so enshrinement felt like anything but an honor. The first batch of Japanese-speaking protestors was polite enough, offering their petition letters with bowed heads and gentle voices.
Then Kao Chin Su-mei moved up front, eyes blazing, and started speaking in terse Chinese. The reaction from the Japanese diplomatic side was immediate. One diplomat tried to leave the scene (perhaps recognizing her, as she claimed this was her 7th attempt) and Kao Chin rightfully called him out for being disrespectful and trying to blow her off. The scene that follows is intensified by the rapid flux of languages. Kao Chin speaks loudly and clearly in Chinese, making sure to announce how very different she is from the Japanese country that has claimed her ancestors' spirits. Her words are translated on the spot into Japanese. The English subtitles are carefully rendered to grasp the slight differences in meaning between what she says and what her translator says to the Japanese audience. Her righteous anger is contagious -- the translator even mimics her emotional tenor, and the way her anger spills over into this second language intensifies the moment, making for a truly heartbreaking scene.
This scene and interviews with these activists in particular underscored that honoring what the shrine stands for is to make no distinction between war criminals, the honorable dead as a whole, and one's own family members who perished in the war. The shrine extends its authority beyond the scope of the individual and the private; its value stands on a higher symbolic order. Ultimately, it seems to me that worshipping at Yasukuni is absolutely not a personal decision for anyone involved (least of all Koizumi, who lost his right to engage in such decisions without public comment as soon as he decided to become a public, official figurehead). The shrine's legacy exists on the very basis of conflating the individual with the national. Those that make a decision to support the shrine are making a choice to stand for a glorified "Yamato spirit" -- a kind of nationalism with its own legacy of violence and moral burden that all nationalisms necessarily need to own up to. I say this not as an attack against Japanese nationalism, but all nationalisms in general. I believe each individual should have something(s) they believe are worth dying for, but there is no country, no creed, no culture worth killing for. No matter how the state tries to dress it up with fancy, honorable rhetoric, that's what will happen in a war. So why honor that, any aspect of that, at all?
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