Controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine

There are major controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine, a Japanese Shinto shrine to war dead who served the Emperor of Japan during wars from 1867–1951. This eligibility includes civilians in service and government officials. Yasukuni is a shrine to house the actual souls of the dead as kami, or "spirits/souls" as loosely defined in the English words. This activity is strictly a religious matter due to the religious separation of State Shinto and the Japanese Government. The priesthood at the shrine has complete religious autonomy to decide to whom and how enshrinement may occur. It is thought that enshrinement is permanent and irreversible by the current clergy. Due to the enshrinement of individuals found to be war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and an approach to the war museum considered by some to be nationalist, China, South Korea, North Korea and Taiwan have called the Yasukuni Shrine a microcosm of a revisionist and unapologetic approach to Japanese crimes of World War II.

Of the 2,466,532 people contained in the shrine's Book of Souls, 1,068 were convicted of war crimes by a post-World War II court. Of those, 14 are convicted Class A war criminals ("crime against peace"). The war crimes tribunals were carried out by the IMTFE, which comprised the victors of World War II including Australia, Canada, China, France, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, United Kingdom, United States, and the Soviet Union. The main problems arose from how the IMTFE used a method of information collection called "Best Evidence Rule" that allowed simple hearsay with no secondary support to be entered against the accused. The Indian Justice Radha Binod Pal found that due to the significant procedural flaws of the proceedings, that the court was an invalid form of victor's justice. As these problems with the tribunals left much to be argued about convicting the accused, and that the living convicted criminals were all released from prison by 1958 gave many Japanese people a reason to believe that they were not war criminals. While he fully acknowledged Japan's war atrocities, Pal said they were covered in the Class B and Class C trials. No judge on the court disagreed as to the wide scale of atrocities.

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