Beijing Rebrands Yasukuni Shrine

Whenever a question was asked about Japanese leaders visiting or making offerings to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, China’s Foreign Ministry would refer to it by its name, describe it as a place that houses World War II war criminals and mete out its criticism. 

On August 17, that approach took a subtle turn. The ministry spokesperson, when replying to a question at a regular press briefing, did not mention Yasukuni Shrine by its Chinese name, “jing guo shen she” or “peaceful country shrine”, at all. Instead, he called it “zhan fan shen she”, or “war criminals shrine” in Chinese. 

The Yasukuni Shrine commemorates Japan’s 2.5 million war dead but among them are 14 World War II criminals, making any visit or offerings to the shrine by the country’s leaders anathema to China and South Korea, which grievously suffered under Japanese occupation. 

The term “war criminals shrine” first surfaced during a regular media briefing of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing on April 21, after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made an offering to the shrine on the first day of a traditional spring festival. 

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said then that Yasukuni was “in effect” a war criminals shrine. 

At the August 17 briefing, the qualifier was dropped. The spokesman, Lin Jian, called it “war criminals shrine” outright, while replying to a question on Takaichi sending another offering on August 15, marked in Japan as the 81st anniversary of the end of World War II. 

While the dispute centres on a site that has long been associated with Japan’s wartime past, the latest shift in language comes as Beijing and Tokyo are facing a broader deterioration in ties, shaped by tensions over Taiwan, Japan’s defence modernisation and the two sides’ competition for influence in South-east Asia. 

Chen Yang, a research fellow at Chinese think-tank Charhar Institute, described the new phrasing as marking a shift by China from factually citing the presence of 14 convicted Class-A war criminals enshrined in Yasukuni as deities, to applying a political judgment to the shrine itself as an institution. 

“‘War criminals shrine’ has formally become part of China’s diplomatic vocabulary”, he explained. “This linguistic shift signals at home and abroad that China rejects attempts to portray Yasukuni Shrine simply as an ordinary religious facility or a memorial site for those killed in war”. 

Japanese officials have justified past visits to the shrine as being done in their personal capacity to honour those who died in the nation’s wars, but such visits are seen in China and South Korea as evidence of a lack of remorse on the part of the Japanese for their war atrocities. 

Both China and South Korea’s governments have repeatedly criticised the shrine visits by top Japanese leaders, and Seoul reiterated on August 15 that future relations with Japan must be built on Japan showing remorse for past wrongs. 

Chen added that China’s newer term is meant to deny Japanese conservative politicians room to present the site simply as a religious facility or a memorial for the war dead. 

“Japan’s right wing has long sought to present Yasukuni as a site for personal acts of mourning”, he said, but the phrase “war criminals shrine” directly binds the site to those convicted of wartime crimes. 

Professor Heng Yee Kuang of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy claimed that this new labeling is consistent with China's recent warnings about "neo-fascism" and "new militarism" in Japan. 

He noted that the Japanese media uses similar “war criminal” language to describe those convicted at the Tokyo Trials, but not to describe the shrine as a whole. The trials took place from May 1946 to November 1948, during which high-ranking Japanese leaders were prosecuted over atrocities committed during World War II.