Controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine

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There are a number of war controversies relating to Yasukuni Shrine and its war museum Yūshūkan in Tokyo, Japan. The shrine is based on State Shinto, as opposed to traditional Japanese Shinto, and has a close history with statism in Shōwa Japan. Most of the dead served the emperors of Japan during wars from 1867 to 1951, but they also include civilians in service and government officials. It is the belief of Shinto that Yasukuni enshrines the actual souls of the dead, known as kami in Japanese. The kami are honored through liturgical texts and ritual incantations known as Norito. Of the 2,466,532 men named in the shrine's Book of Souls, 1,066 are war criminals convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, following World War II. Eleven of those war criminals were convicted of Class A war crimes; one was charged with Class A but found guilty of lesser Class B war crimes; two other men were charged with Class A crimes but died before their trials could be completed. This...

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