A picture taken on April 9 shows the Chumon Torii and the main shrine complex of the Yasukuni Shrine located in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: CFP

Every year when August 15 comes around, the Yasukuni Shrine, an imperial shrine located in Chiyoda, Tokyo, is crowded with visitors and clouded in an unusual atmosphere.

An attendant at a Chinese restaurant near the shrine told the Global Times that while it's usually a quiet place without many visitors, the shrine starts bustling on occasions like the annual spring and autumn festivals as well as August 15, the day in 1945 that Japan admitted defeat in World War II. During these days, politicians come to visit the shrine, followed by flocks of journalists.

The Yasukuni Shrine, built on the order of Emperor Meiji in 1869 to commemorate those who died in the service of the Meiji Restoration, now houses more than 2.4 million souls of those who died for the country, from the Boshin War in 1867 to World War II.

The shrine became the most prominent of the roughly 100,000 shrines in the country after 14 convicted Class-A war criminals from World War II, including then prime minister Hideki Tojo, were enshrined there in 1978.

Although Emperor Hirohito and his successor stopped paying tribute to the war dead at the shrine in 1978, Japan's politicians still pay official visits there, despite condemnation from the country's previously colonized neighbors.

Different views

A survey jointly conducted by Chinese media and the Genro NPO from Japan, which was released on August 5, shows that 90.1 percent of the 1,000 Japanese and 92.8 percent of the 1,540 Chinese surveyed have a bad impression of each other, the worst since 2005 when the survey was initiated.

As for the causes of this impression, 53.2 percent of Japanese pointed to the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands, followed by China's condemnation on historical issues. Chinese respondents chose Japan's provocations concerning the island dispute and also inadequate repentance over their history of invasion as the top two.

Wang Xiaobo, a doctoral candidate who is taking vacation with her husband in Sendai, has no plan to visit the Yasukuni Shrine during her stay and no one she knows there has ever brought up any intention to visit the place. "It feels like a betrayal of my country to visit the shrine," she told the Global Times.

"People should pay a visit to the shrine to see what it is like and then they will understand what it is," Wang Weixing, head of the History Institute at the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

As a frequent visitor to the shrine, Wang Weixing has met many ordinary Japanese people who go there to honor their late family members.

He said the bereaved families of those millions of war dead see it as a place to pay their respects.

But a Japanese scientist in his 30s, who works in Hamburg and requested anonymity, said ordinary people may not care that much about the shrine.

""While I can understand the feelings of people in China and South Korea, the Yasukuni Shrine is just one of many shrines for ordinary Japanese people, except when China and South Korea criticize Japanese politicians for visiting the shrine. For the older generation, it may still be important as a national memorial for those who died during World War II, but it doesn't mean much to the younger generation," he said.

China's protest should be stated more clearly as being against the 14 Class-A war criminals enshrined there, not the shrine itself. This will make a distinction between the politicians' visits and those of ordinary Japanese people, and hence win the latter's support instead of pushing them into the arms of right-wingers, said Wang Weixing.

Cause of strains

August 15 is approaching again, and although the Japanese prime minister's office said that Shinzo Abe won't visit the Yasukuni Shrine on that day, Abe himself recently stated that he would not stop his cabinet members from visiting. Some politicians, including the administrative reform minister Tomomi Inada, have already announced their plan to visit with the prime minister's consent.

Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura said in early August that he had already visited the shrine "as a minister" as he would be going to Moscow to watch the world athletics championships around August 15.

Cao Dachen, a history professor at Nanjing University, told the Global Times that while Japanese politicians' visits to the shrine serve as a barometer of China-Japan relations, the Abe administration has shown no change in its attitude toward Japan's history of invasion.

"This really makes the trend of bilateral ties a big concern," he said.

A Japanese businessman surnamed Lijima believes that Japanese politicians have not handled the shrine issue properly, and as a result have let it sour bilateral ties.

"The political message sent by visiting the shrine has surpassed the visit itself as right-wingers take this as an opportunity to woo those who object to protests from countries like China and South Korea," Wang Weixing said.

A survey by the Asahi Shimbun in late June showed of 3,000 Japanese respondents, about 56 percent support Abe's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, with 17 percent "strongly supporting."

"I'm concerned that in some respects current Japan quite resembles the one of seven decades ago when it waged war on its neighboring countries. Militarism may return if a country with such strong nationalism goes unrestricted," Wang added.

Hope for future

To the north of the shrine's main hall stands Yushukan, a history museum named after a famous verse from a Chinese classic by the philosopher Xunzi. In the museum are exhibitions of pictures and documents relating to the war dead, an apparent expression of the spirit of bushido.

It is exactly these kinds of exhibitions combined that indicate Japan's advocacy for militarism and lie at the core of Asian people's dissatisfaction, Liu Di, a professor with Kyorin University, told the Global Times.

However, many war victims in the pictures hung on the walls of the museum were young students and female nurses. And in the guest books, messages written in different languages, including Japanese, convey a similar message - love peace and no more war.

A man surnamed Chen, who works in an IT company and has permanent residency in Japan, goes to the shrine and nearby Chidorigafuchi park every year to admire the beautiful cherry blossoms. For him it's a pity that Yasukuni has become a barrier to the development of Sino-Japanese relations.

"I hope some day Yasukuni can become just as normal as other shrines in Japan," he told the Global Times.