Toto

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Bush-Shrine.html" target="_blank">Tokyo Shrine Visit Awkward for Koizumi</a>

Bush wants to pretend that religion is always a force for good (unless it is false religion that supports terrorists.) But what on earth prompted him or his advisors to stage a visit to a shrine of a religion that prompted suicidal kamikazi pilots to attack this country in World War II?

What's going on here?

Grumpy

You've pretty much answered your own question. In Bush's view, religion can only be used for good. Nothing evil can come from religion. Therefore, if anyone does evil in the name of a religion, it is only because they have "hijacked" the religion and perverted it.

lpetrich

Yasukuni Shrine is a shrine to Japan's war dead over the last century. But there is a certain problem: the nature of the wars in which they died. Those wars were wars of conquest and aggression, in which millions of people died deaths that were sometimes very horrible. And those who survived were often not much better off; one nasty atrocity was "Comfort Women", in which women had to be prostitutes, servicing Japan's troops.

And as to Shinto in all this, Emperor Hirohito promoted himself as a divine being, a descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, and military orders would have his name on them. But for the most part, Shinto is not aggressively evangelical, and it is non-exclusive, coexisting with other religions like Buddhism. It is focused more on practice than belief; it might be compared to European and Middle Eastern pagan religions.

As to the kamikaze guys themselves, that got started only late in the war, as Japan's navy got its rear end kicked really hard by the good ol' U.S. of A., losing many ships and planes and experienced pilots. Flying cruise-missile missions, even if fatal to the pilots, was more effective than trying to survive as one attacked the US fleet, which had become almost suicidal. Also, one only needed basic flying skills to fly such missions, instead of serious aerial-combat skills, which made pilot training easier -- and some kamikaze pilots seemed to lack such skills.

Some of the kamikaze pilots were apparently willing to go on such mission, though there was some controversy over this tactic, both among Japan's military commanders, and among the "madmen" (pro) and "lechers" (con) in the lower ranks. But even there, they saw a kamikaze death as dying in battle.

And yes, many kamikaze pilots were promised an honored existence at the Yasukuni Shrine; some their commanders even described them as becoming war gods. In fairness, some of those commanders (Onishi and Ugaki) were willing to commit suicide when the war ended.

The name literally means something like "divine wind", a name given to a hurricane that had wrecked a big Mongol invasion fleet back in 1281. This is sort of like the belief of some disaster survivors that God or an angel or whatever had protected them, but on a national scale. And in 1944, as in 1281, Japan had faced an enemy from across the sea, an enemy with superior numbers and with superior technology. So the hope of the kamikaze pilots and their commanders is that they would have a similar effect on our fleet, with their demonstration of a superior will to fight.

And both enemies would display superior expertise with explosives; the Mongols with gunpowder bombs, and our side with the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

For more, see this URL: <a href="http://www.petrich.com/writings/Sept11_prlhrbr_kamikaze.html" target="_blank">http://www.petrich.com/writings/Sept11_prlhrbr_kamikaze.html</a>

[ February 18, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>