August 15 in Japan
&mdash Annual Action to Challenge the Japanese Emperor System and Yasukuni War Shrine
by Amano Yasukazu (Network against the Emperor System)
Posted October 2008
For decades, Japan's mass media has espoused August 15 as the "memorial day" for the end of World War II (the Asia-Pacific War). Since 1963, the Japanese government has hosted an annual August 15 "National Memorial Service for the War Dead," with the Emperor and Prime Minister in attendance. Each mid-August, the mass media carries out a massive "commemorating" campaign for Japanese war dead - including as the more than 200,000 people killed by the A-bombings in Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). August in Japan has been settled on as a month of mourning for Japanese war victims.
This systematic campaign, jointly carried by mass media and the government, is a mass-scale endeavor to shape and control the historical understanding of people in Japan. Although reflections on Japan's war history realistically should mark the failure of fascist Imperial Japan's wars of invasion and alliances with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the government and mass media's ongoing "memorial" campaign elaborately veils the facts.
Moreover, in spite of international law, which states that a war ends when the involved actors sign a peace treaty (September 2 in the case of WWII), Japan stubbornly regards August 15th as day WWII ended. This is because August 15 is when Emperor Hirohito, the ssupreme commander of Japan's wars and colonialism over neighboring countries, announced his acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. Hirohito's address, The Imperial Edict of Termination of War was broadcast on radio throughout Japan on that day. And so, focusing on August 15 is a choreographed scheme to influence people to believe it was the Emperor who ended the war and brought peace to Japan. Further, since its official inception in 1968, Hirohito presided over the annual "memorial" ceremony, in which Japanese war dead are described as having "died for the peace." Since Hirohito's death in 1989 and to this day, his successor Akihito has attended the ceremony.
For more than 20 years, our Anti-Emperor-System Network has carried out an annual August 15 demonstration to refute this national campaign of manipulation, and to continue working to expose Emperor Hirohito's unpunished war responsibility. In the action, we also show our opposition to the Emperor system, which continues to function as a nest of Japan's narrow-minded nationalism to this day.
August 15 is also a day that rightist members of Japanese parliament, including government ministers, have made pilgrimages to Yasukuni Shrine. Even Japanese prime ministers have visited the shrine, where Japan's wars of aggression against Asian countries are described as "wars of liberation." Therefore, our demonstrations have also inevitably denounced Yasukuni as a shrine to Japanese imperialism.
On August 15 this year, more than 200 people from many generations turned out for our annual protest against the Emperor system and Yasukuni Shrine. Protesters from Europe, who had participated in July's anti-G8 summit actions in Tokyo and Hokkaido, also attended. The demonstration started from a small park a five minute walk from Yasukuni Shrine. From the beginning, we were sandwiched by riot police and faced the annual reaction to our action from the Emperor-supremacist ultranationalists, who violently resist attempts to desacralize the Emperor system and Yasukuni. The protesters chanted, "No to war-glorifying Yasukuni!"and so on. Big helium balloons trailing a banner emblazoned "Crush Yasukuni" and a handmade skeleton puppet of Emperor Hirohito shone in the blazing sunlight, making this year's demonstration especially colorful. (August 2008)
