Table of Contents

Contents:"The Yasukuni Shrine Problem in Sino-Japanese Relations: Facing a Stalemate" by Caroline Rose, University of Leeds; "A Religious Perspective on the Yasukuni Shrine Controversy" by Kevin Doak, Georgetown University; "Unlocking the Secrets of Yasukuni: A Chinese Perspective" by Wang Zhixin, Miyazaki University; "Plumbing the Depths: The Yasukuni Controversy in China" by Seki Hei, Japan-resident Chinese critic; "The Showa Emperor and the Yasukuni Shrine" by Takahashi Tetsuya, Tokyo University; "And Why Shouldn't the Prime Minister Worship at Yasukuni?" by Nitta Hitoshi, Kogakkan University; "Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory" by John Breen, SOAS; "Pledge Fulfilled: the Japanese Media and Prime Minister Koizumi's Yasukuni Worship, 2001-6" by Phillip Seaton, Hokkaido University

Promotional Information

The controversial Yasukuni Shrine has become a barometer of the inclinations of the Japanese political elite, but we have lacked a dispassionate examination of its history and political significance. John Breen has brought his formidable energies as a researcher and his expertise in the history of Japanese religion to bear on a subject of continuing political significance. This splendid book ought to dispel much of the mythmaking and mistaken suppositions that surround this subject. -- Peter Kornicki, professor of East Asian studies, University of Cambridge

About the Author

John Breen is senior lecturer in Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. With Mark Teeuwen, he has coedited Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami and coauthored A Brief History of Shinto.

Reviews

"In following Yasukuni over several years, I've come to see in John Breen's work the deepest and most reflective approach to the multiple problems that the shrine has posed: in war and war memory, in Japanese religious praxis, in state-shrine-society relations, and in Japan-China-global relations. Where the literature has spun endlessly around the issue of the Prime Minister's visits to the shrine, Breen's work, and this volume, cut far deeper into all of the above mentioned realms, and offer important new perspectives. Casting Yasukuni in multiple historical, ideological, political, and religious frameworks, this volume contributes much that is fresh and provocative." -- Mark Selden, Cornell University, and a coordinator of Japan Focus