NYAFF Report: Controversial Documentary YASUKUNI Review

The Sto… The Situation:

For practicing Shintoists and/or family members of fallen Japanese soldiers, the Yasukuni shrine is an important place of worship, as it allows them to honor and appease the spirits of those who fell during the war, basically protecting Japan and the Shinto faith.

For extreme Japanese Nationalists, Yasukuni shrine represents what is right about Japan, untainted by what they call “lies from China” (many refuse to acknowledge war atrocities like the Nanking massacre). They are are adamant in their protection of the Yasukuni shrine, and do not condone any criticism towards the shrine, or towards Japan in general for that matter.

For many people from the nations who suffered under Japanese occupation during the second world war, the practice of venerating and laureling tried-and-convicted war criminals is an outrage. For them Yasukuni shrine represents an unrepenting Japan which only shows disrespect to its victims.

For family members of non-Japanese who were coerced (or, as some call it, “brainwashed") to fight on the Japanese side after the occupation of their country, the Yasukuni shrine represents a place where the names of their people are being used without proper consent. Year after year they ask the shrine organization to strike the names of these people (who were often Christians, or Buddhists, or Taoists, but NOT Shintoists) from the Yasukuni records, but every time they are refused because “the right to the enshrining of these spirits do not belong to the families, but to the state of Japan”.


The Movie:

“Yasukuni” takes a difficult subject and valiantly tries to give a more-or-less objective view of it. With director Li Ying being Chinese this must have been rather hard, as the pro-Yasukuni crowd contains many people who are openly hostile towards anything which comes from China. Still, an effort is made to hear all sides, including those of family members of regular Japanese fallen soldiers who are interred inside Yasukuni shrine. These people are clearly baffled by the controversy because they see Yasukuni as a war cemetery, where people pay respect to the fallen and pray that such a war will never happen again.

And at first “Yasukuni” seems rather tame. We see a lot of shaky-cam syndrome as Li Ying travels through crowds with his camera, sometimes getting so close to people that I’d probably have pushed him away had I been among them. And at first all he gets are some mutterings about foreign intervention and the right to choose your own religion. Edited between these bits is footage of his visit to the old swordmaker, but the man is quite deaf and reluctant to give even the tiniest details about life at Yasukuni during the war when swords were being made there by the thousands. You get the impression the director must have been pretty exasperated, yet the old man is the only survivor so he’s all Li Ying has to work with.

The viewer may be looking at his watch after a while, and wonder if this will continue for the full two hours running time. Thankfully it doesn’t. As the ceremony comes closer, so do the visitors become more colorful and outspoken. Taiwanese demanding the remains of their ancestors, Japanese veterans claiming the “Rape of Nanking” never happened and is a Chinese propaganda lie, an American businessman who tells everyone his opinion and actually survives unfurling an American flag at the Yasakuni shrine (seriously, even radical Japanese are sometimes just too damn polite...). Li Ying even captures an interesting event when a pro-Yasukuni lecture is disrupted by a protester and the crowd goes violent. The protester even needs to be saved by the police, while abuse is hurled at him from all sides. “Go Back to China!” is yelled at the protester continuously, but Li Ying manages to get close enough to the man to ask if he is Chinese, upon which the man answers “No, I’m Japanese."…

And slowly but surely a disturbing picture arises. That of a Japan in which a large group of people act polite but have nothing but a deeply ingrained disdain for anything which is non-Japanese. People who flatly refuse that anything done by a Japanese can ever be judged by someone non-Japanese, not because of lack of knowledge, but because non-Japanese simply don’t have the right. End of discussion, only there never was a discussion. People for whom “foreigner” and “Chinaman” are the worst curse words imaginable.

Yet the other people are also shown so it never really turns into a freak show (well, the American maybe...), although Li Ying does show the difference between people who are willing to discuss things and people who just want to shout. His sympathies may lie squarely with the former, but everyone seems to be treated honestly here. He also doesn’t offer a solution for the controversy. He certainly doesn’t say that people shouldn’t pray at the shrine anymore, or should stop paying their respects to the fallen.

So the film turns gears a bit and goes from “too slow” to “pretty interesting”. Also, the bits about the old swordmaker now move into a more comfortable area when the man is shown making a sword, and it certainly is fascinating to watch him at work.

Of course both sides in the conflict complained about not being represented strongly enough, and Li Ying was criticized for not taking more of a stance, but in this case that is more a badge of honor than an indictment. When the final shots of the Yasukuni shrine fade out, showing its close vicinity to the urban surroundings, it left me with plenty to think about. When near the end of the movie an extensive sequence of archive footage from the war is shown, you have the impression that you now have the background to interpret these pictures better than before. Which makes “Yasukuni” a unspectacular but successful documentary in my opinion.


Conclusion:

The subject is brilliant, but “Yasukuni” is a slow film with lots of “shaky-cam” footage which makes this borderline boring at the start. Still, it gets more interesting as it proceeds with ever more colorful people being interviewed, so perseverance is rewarded.
As a primer for the unknowing (like me) it works, but you need a fair dose of patience. If you’re already familiar with the Yasukuni debate than I doubt you’ll find anything new here.

Still, definitely recommended.