Tokyo Swan 7: Yasukuni Shrine

In this episode of Tokyo Swan, I visited the very controversial Yasukuni Shrine in the heart of Tokyo. To this day, the shrine receives a lot of media attention, and that's becuase it honors the dead soldiers from World War II, including war criminals. Pre vious Japanese prime ministers received a lot of criticism from other countries becuase they would come to honor the dead here, and it was seen as disrespectful to other countries to honor convicted criminals.

It was a pretty emotional trip. There's a few rooms in the museum where they have pictures of all the Japanese soldiers who died in the war. They also had exhibits on the kamikaze techniques, or how the Japanese soldiers would crash their planes into US fighters killing both soldiers.

Regardless of a person's views about the treatment of history at Yasukuni Shrine, I think it's an important place to visit just to see how different cultures and groups of people view historical events. While the views presented at Yasukuni do not represent the majority of Japanese people, it is still another view point into one of the world's most historic events.