How Japan confronts its haunting World War II history

A couple of times every year, Ken Kato visits the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo to "say hello," as he explains it, to his grandfather. On Tuesday, the 78th anniversary of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II, Kato paid his respects to his grandfather. 

Yasukuni is a sprawling Shinto shrine beside the moat of the Imperial Palace in the heart of the Japanese capital. 

Established in 1869, the memorial is dedicated to some 2.5 million men, women and children who have died in Japan's wars.

Among the Japanese commemorated at the site are World War II leaders who were convicted of war crimes. 

The Yasukuni Shrine is seen as a symbol of Japan's history of military aggression, which Tokyo often faces calls to apologize for.

It generally attracts tens of thousands of people on the anniversary of the 1945 surrender. 

Although fewer people than usual turned out for this year's memorial ceremonies, due to the impact of a tropical storm, the ceremony still attracted family members, widows and nationalists in quasi-military garb.

Former soldiers pay respects

Several former soldiers, some wearing Japanese World War II imperial army uniforms, also paid their respects to those who never came back from World War II battlefields. 

One by one, the ex-soldiers approached the main hall of the shrine, bowed their heads, clapped their hands and uttered a short prayer. 

Other visitors attended the ceremony wearing Japanese costume uniforms from World War II. 

Kato's grandfather worked as a translator for the Japanese military throughout the war until he contracted malaria in the jungles of the Philippines in 1945. Evacuated to Singapore, he died shortly before Japan's surrender. 

"I go quite regularly, to stand before his photograph and give a little prayer," Kato told DW.

"For me, it's important that I go there and remember him," he said.

Japan's war victims outraged over shrine

Kato, a conservative Tokyo-based businessman, was not surprised that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida this year declined once more to attend memorial ceremonies at Yasukuni Shrine. 

Kishida instead attended a ceremony at the Budokan Hall in Tokyo to mark the anniversary.

"Under the banner of proactive contribution to peace, Japan is determined to join forces with the international community and do its utmost to resolve the various challenges facing the world," Kishida said. 

Japan will "stick to our resolve to never repeat the tragedy of the war," he added.

Prime ministers have in the past visited Yasukuni, typically for the shrine's spring and autumn festivals.

This has prompted furious condemnations from China and both North and South Korea, whose citizens suffered immensely under Japanese colonial rule in the early decades of the last century. 

Yasukuni also commemorates 1,000 war criminals responsible for some of the most horrific atrocities committed in the Pacific Theater, including 14 "Class-A" war criminals convicted and executed by the Allies.

The Japanese empire's military regime killed millions of people across the Asia Pacific during World War II, with some scholars estimating Japanese soldiers murdered more than 10 million.

Japanese WWII atrocities included mass rape, sexual slavery, the slaughter and starvation of prisoners of war, cannibalism, biological warfare experiments, and the killings of scores of civilians.

China says Japanese troops killed 300,000 Chinese in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre (a postwar Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000). However, some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny a massacre took place at all.

Japan lost an estimated 2.5-3 million lives, both civilians and soldiers, during WWII.

Japan's war history remains sensitive politically 

During his speech, Kishida did not address Japanese aggression in Asia during WWII.

Critics see the absence of any reference to Japanese aggression across Asia in the first half of the 1900s, or its victims, as a move to whitewash Japan's wartime brutality.

At the Budokan Hall ceremony, Japanese Emperor Naruhito expressed "deep remorse" over the pain and suffering of war.

"Reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse, I earnestly hope that the ravages of warwill never again be repeated," he said. 

Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University, paid his respects at a shrine close to his home in central Japan on Monday. 

"I had hoped that Kishida might this year go to Yasukuni, but it does not surprise me that he didn't," he said.

"It is very unfortunate that the act of a leader paying his respects in this way has become so politicized by other countries," he said.

Edited by Sou-Jie van Brunnersum