Politics in Asia Series. London; New York: Routledge, 2017. xii,165 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$123.25, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-94570-8.
Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto establishment which emerged almost hand-in-hand with the rise of the modern Japanese state in the second half of the nineteenth century, has become a focus of both international disputes in Asia and scholarly attention among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and news commentators. In this well-composed book, political scientist Mong Cheung presents a sharply focused analysis of Japanese prime ministerial visits to the controversial shrine. Drawing upon contemporary sources ranging from newspaper reports to writings by politicians and interviews with them, Cheung raises an intriguing question: Why did the more hawkish prime ministers, known for their assertive nationalism, often refrain from visiting the shrine, while a less ideologically inclined prime minister, once in power, took a more provocative posture by repeatedly visiting the shrine, despite the vehement protests by neighbouring countries that had been subjected to Japan’s past military aggression?
In seven chapters, Cheung approaches this question through a micro-analytical concept of “political survival,” which views retaining the loyalty of a winning coalition of supporters as the primary goal of any office-seeking politician. Following an introduction that defines the Yasukuni problem in international and domestic debates, chapter 2, “Political Survival and Japan’s Policy toward China on Yasukuni,” identifies three current approaches and explains Cheung’s own take on the prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Cheung shows that an explanation for the incongruity between the hawkish statements and reconciliatory actions of a politician, or vice versa, cannot be found by focusing on an individual politician’s political or ideological preference, emphasizing the broad ideological and cultural changes from one generation of politicians to another, or by stressing the imperative of foreign strategy in response to international pressure. The paradox, he argues, has its inner logic when seen from the perspective of the “political survival” of office-seeking politicians, who need to maintain strong domestic support. Chapter 3, “Understanding Yasukuni,” narrates a general history of the Yasukuni Shrine, its association with and legal separation from the Japanese state, and the rise of the Yasukuni problem between China and Japan.
The following three chapters provide case analyses that form the evidential base of this book. Chapter 4, “Refraining from the Yasukuni Visit,” pairs two Japan-China controversies over prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine during the administrations of Nakasone Yasuhiro (1985–1986) and Hashimoto Ryutaro (1996–1997). While both were assertive nationalists seeking Japan’s “normal” status in the international arena, Nakasone was arguably more important and influential in initiating major attempts to raise Japan’s international profile. He stands out as an important case as well for being the prime minister whose official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine provoked the first salvo of official protests from China. In the years that followed, Nakasone stopped visiting the shrine while in office. Ten years later, Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro repeated a similar pattern of behaviour. He visited the shrine as Japan’s prime minister in 1996, but refrained from doing so while in office after Chinese protests. Cheung rejects the view that these decisions were made as a response to international pressure from China. Instead, he argues that both politicians were motivated by domestic political calculation. Nakasone stopped visiting the shrine from his strengthened political position in 1986, as he no longer needed it to rally support from his target political factions. Hashimoto stopped his Yasukuni visits, on the other hand, because of his weak political position. He needed to avoid antagonizing the Social Democratic Party, a longstanding opponent to prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine and an important partner within his Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition government. Despite the different political strengths of these two prime ministers, each made a decision on Yasukuni visits based on a similar rationale: a focus on its potential to increase or sustain domestic political support.
By and large, chapters 5 and 6, “Differing Responses” and “Policy Variations,” present two more cases that follow the same pattern: prime ministers Koizumi Junichiro (2001–2006) and Abe Shinzo (2006–2007, 2012–2015). Cheung shows that, in spite of Chinese protests, Koizumi made repeated visits to the shrine and did so from his relatively weak position within the Liberal Democratic Party. Even though Koizumi did not demonstrate any enthusiasm about the Yasukuni question before seeking office, he used Yasukuni visits to invigorate intraparty support while in office. On the contrary, Abe Shinzo had been a strong advocate for Japan’s “normalcy” and adopted a hawkish position over the Yasukuni question before taking office. Yet he responded to Chinese protests and stopped Yasukuni visits in person during his first term. Cheung argues that Abe did not cave in to Chinese pressure but was able to put aside the Yasukuni problem when he had a secure political base of majority support. Likewise, Abe refrained from making a public gesture of visiting the controversial shrine during much of his second term as prime minister. This time, however, he did so mainly to improve relations with China, which he viewed as important for achieving higher approval ratings at home.
Political Survival and Yasukuni in Japan’s Relations with China presents a convincing argument on the relationship between political gestures on Yasukuni by Japanese prime ministers and their domestic political reckoning. Within a well-defined frame of an individual politician’s action, Cheung’s study takes into consideration a range of important issues, from domestic policy goals to management of Japan’s international relations with China and the role of personal ideology, while discussing the relative weight of each in prime ministerial deliberations on Yasukuni Cheung has made a valuable contribution to the expanding scholarship on the Yasukuni problem from the perspective of a political scientist. Nonetheless, readers interested in the Yasukuni problem must be aware that this is not a book on the problem of Yasukuni per se, but on short-term political decisions. The fact that politicians in Japan could use Yasukuni as a political instrument itself raises questions about the shrine’s existence and evolution, its relationship with Japan’s modern state, and its electrifying power in contemporary Japanese society. The task of this book is not to provide answers to these questions, which have to be found in other studies using a more comprehensive framework.
Lu Yan
University of New Hampshire, Durham, USA