shrine of the peaceful country. YASUKUNI, the movie

I watched Yasukuni, the movie by Li Ying.

I think it is an excellent work, it is a passionate struggle to understand more about symbols, people, ideology orbiting around the shrine. It should be considered like a psychoanalysis session where the dark soul of the Country just flows out: something Japan really needs. But like a patient cannot be cured or healed by somebody that is ill himself, this Chinese doctor Li was necessary to unveil something the average Japanese refuse to look at. After the war, nobody ever stated in clear words that the Japanese army and his supporters had been responsible for colonialism, racism, slavery, torture, arbitrary killings, rape, aggression. I know it was wartime, but that’s why war tribunals are made for. Instead, politicians, generals and the emperor were left at their places, suggesting the idea that nothing and nobody was to be blamed, and the ones who died were to be honored. I am Italian, I can feel how painful can be admitting war sins, but the republican Italy was born from opposition to fascism, and even if some colonialist generals were left in charge in high army ranks after ‘45 (some of them tried a putsch!), the politicians have been chosen among the resistant forces. In Italian law “apology of fascism” is still a crime.

Following with my loose psychoanalytic view, I really believe that Japanese as a collective conscience and especially as an Official State should find the courage to bury their fathers who did wrong (after having killed them), regardless of how much Chinese and Korean governments will take advantage of this (this seems to be the biggest concern to common people: surrender to Chinese and Korean “theories” about pacific war). Japanese need to do that for themselves, for their conscience’s health.

What I really liked about Li’s documentary was the lack of paternalistic or manipulative view (I know it should be like that in every documentary), just a vivid desire to get closer to facts and people’s feelings. The word I keep in my mind is symbols: these contributes to a huge amount of misunderstandings all through the movie. Flags held by veterans, flags used by politicians or uyoku members, the souls enshrining in the shinto shrine: a way to glorify some of the worst war criminals that set foot in Asia or just respect for all dead; slogans, violence, security granted by policemen that arrest invariably the weaker among the fighters, civil rights…

My favorite scene is the one in which a real estate broker from the U.S.A. (I think he was from Montana state) is waving a star spangled banner and a cardboard sign in japanese saying “i support Koizumi”, just in front of the entrance to the infamous shrine. It was the year in which the prime minister resumed the Yasukuni Jinja visit tradition. The scene that follows is tragic in terms of symbolic power: some of the visitors are expressing their joy and camaraderie to this American that doesn’t speak a word of Japanese. The atmosphere is friendly, but some other people approach him yelling against Americans, communists, Chinese and foreigners. The man is confused, cannot understand, the friendly ones in the crowd try to assure him that “Japanese are not like that”, that is not a correct sample of their breed. Police officers arrive and he is asked to fold and put away his american flag. A big mess of symbols, identities, messages, memories from history, conflicting truths: something that Japanese people should analyze deeply, maybe with the help of foreign eyes.