Uyoku gallery: snaps from Yasukuni Shrine
It was the day when Japan cast off its masochistic war guilt and took the first step into a new age of pride and patriotism.
Or . . .
It was a catastrophic backward step which will alienate the rest of Asia for decades.
Who cares?
It's late. it's been a long, damp, sweaty day. Instead of lingering on the serious stuff about Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine (which you can read about here), let's sit back and enjoy amateurish photgraphs of nasty right wing people in silly outfits!
I'm being unfair: the older fellow pictured above was actually very friendly. He explained that his group's mission is "to build up the nation with maximum respect for the Emperor, and based upon that to strive for world peace".
Cosy!
The geezers below are far more typical of the uyoku (rightist) type: human, in theory, but definitely a few DNA strands short of the full helix (by the way, please click on any of these images to double your pleasure).
What you've got to remember about blokes like that is that the closest they've been to a battlefield is Kabuki-cho after a few jars on a Friday night. The gentleman below, however, may be a genuine veteran. He was reading from some kind of proclamation when I passed him.
This one was with a group which I saw here last year. He looks the right age, but the uniform is certainly fancy dress, rather than 1945 vintage.
The leader of his band of fancy dress enthusiasts is in the next picture. I think he told me when I talked to him last year that he'd been a sergeant in the Imperial Army. His costume (and beard), though, is that of General Maresuke Nogi, the great hero of the Russo-Japanese war, who famously popped his entrails on the day of Emperor Meiji's funeral in 1912.
Here's a right-wing man playing the shamisen. He's sitting beneath one of the shrine's handsome stone lanterns which I failed fully to get into the picture (along with the subject's left foot).
There don't seem to be all that many women in the world of the Japanese ultra-right, but here is one uyoku babe.
Finally, here are some more goons in silly uniforms.
Oops! Sorry! My mistake - that's the Japanese police.
In 1945, Japan ceased to be an independent country and became a vassal state of the United States. Japanese are completely reliant on the US 7th fleet and thousands of American assault troops on Okinawa for their national defense. These visits to Yakusuni help Koizumi to bolster his image as a leader when in fact the puppeteers in Washington really run the show. If America is a benevolent empire, the US should feel embarrassed that brutal killers and maniacs are enshrined in Yakusuni and demand that their bodies be exhumed, rendering the shine more consistent with American ideals.
Posted by: J Shelley | 15 Aug 2006 17:18:37
It would be impossible to exhume anything from Yasukuni, because nothing is buried there. The "kami" (deities/spirits/souls) enshrined there are immaterial and invisible.
Posted by: Richard Lloyd Parry | 15 Aug 2006 17:34:30
As an american in Japan I've never had any run-ins with uyoku but as your photos show, their milling about in regulation blue uniforms make them look more like lunch-time janitorial staff from the local high rise buildings...
Posted by: Greg Lewis | 15 Aug 2006 21:10:55
I heard yesterday that "de-shrining" people is, so they say, conceptually impossible in Shinto. The idea of Shinto having such immovably fixed concepts is itself rather hard to digest, but this gels with Richard's note that physical remains are not interred at Yasukuni. Once a soul becomes part of the whole, it cannot be removed again, goes the shtick. I haven't had a chance to look into the details of this yet.
The upshot, though, is that Yasukuni would presumably have to be done away with altogether in order for the goal of not enshrining war criminals to be met. The question remains of where kami are deemed to go when their shrine is demolished, however...
Posted by: gme | 16 Aug 2006 03:35:18
Great photos of Japanese cosplay. They look a lot less scary than the thugs we know so well in Europe with the swastikas who like to beat up anyone who isn't blond or belong to the right football team. Having said that, I think we should all be very thankful these fellows don't have nuclear bombs.
Posted by: Martin | 16 Aug 2006 04:17:51
Er... in what way exactly are these State-worshippers correctly described as "right-wing"?
Posted by: Scott Campbell at Blithering Bunny | 16 Aug 2006 08:42:17
They revere a hereditary monarch. They believe that it should be mandatory to pay respect to national symbols, such as the flag and national anthem. They believe that Japanese imperialism was beneficial to all concerned. Plenty of them assert the superiority of their own race and the inferiority of others. I could go on ... I'm no political scientist, but none of these are traits associated with the left or centre, are they?
Oh, and they call themselves "right wingers".
Posted by: Richard Lloyd Parry | 16 Aug 2006 08:55:46
Was General Nogi a lion-tamer, then?
Posted by: Cultural Snow | 16 Aug 2006 10:04:47
Richard, it sounds like you are describing the UKIP. They like the flag and the anthem, they believe British imperialism was right and they call themselves right-wing. Why does your article have to be so cynical and condescending? At least Japan allows people to express their views: radical, right-wing or otherwise, and doesn't lock them up like China. These guys are a very small percentage of the total population who make a lot of noise but achieve little else. Most Japanese have no time for them.
Posted by: Paul | 16 Aug 2006 10:10:45
I wouldn't disagree with any of that, Paul - and I'm happy to let anyone express their views. As for "cynical and condescending", I prefer to think of myself as - let me see - "sceptical and ironic".
Posted by: Richard Lloyd Parry | 16 Aug 2006 10:52:01
It was the Russian Bear which General Nogi tamed.
Posted by: Richard Lloyd Parry | 16 Aug 2006 10:55:02
Richard, although I wouldn't complain about you poking a little fun at some of these people, I think the point about the Police was a little silly. I'm sure many people from the UK would be insulted if someone called our lads "goons" - even if it was a joke.
When I was last in Shibuya, I came across one of those cute little "ultra-nationalist vans". The surprising thing was that although the guy with the loudhailer was giving it his best, no one was paying any attention to him. Goes to show that these people are still rather much a minority.
Posted by: Raj | 17 Aug 2006 12:16:15
"... but none of these are traits associated with the left or centre, are they?"
So, what traits would you associate with the left or centre?
I'm intrigued to know how you would characterise them, and if you are as sceptical and ironic about some of their heroes as your blog is about the uyoku.
By the way, just to counter Martin's stereotyping, I'm sure you know that the swastika is a very old Buddhist insignia that many Japanese may well carry - being mostly Buddhists. My wife's family do so.
I would add that Japan has a lot of fissile plutonium which it burns for peaceful purposes, and the Japanese generally have black hair, although your uyoku babe could be my undoing...!
By the way again, your habit of posting replies goes further than most other blogs, and is very welcome.
Posted by: john gregory Flinn | 17 Aug 2006 19:39:49
I've read that Tojo and other war criminals ashes were moved there during the Seventies - is that true or is it just that their names were added to the list of the dead?
Posted by: Mark Bellis | 18 Aug 2006 02:39:21
There are no physical remains at Yasukuni - only 'kami' or Shinto deities. The kami of the 14 Class A criminals were enshrined ritually in 1978. As I understand it, the ritual does include the adding of the names to a roll of the dead.
Posted by: Richard Lloyd Parry | 18 Aug 2006 05:17:37
What do you think, if a Japanese press reports on anti-Jewish activities and meetings in your country and suggests on a large scale that your country is very ugly? Japanese extreme uyoku is very small scale and it involves discontented elements such as 'Buraku' who are Japanese discriminated class persons and 'Zainichi' who are Korean living in Japan. This is a very distorted and difficult problem. A part of them gather in Yasukuni of August 15 especially, wearing strange military uniform. Can you say there is no similar issue in your country? I think that the messages, that ignore social positioning of the information, are ill-considered abetments.
Posted by: Japanese Maple | 18 Aug 2006 17:26:10
If a Japanese report stated such a thing, I'd think that it was silly and inadequate. But that is not what I wrote.
You're absolutely right - what happens in Yasukuni on 15th August isn't remotely representative of the country as a whole, and racism and extremism are found all over the world, and certainly in western Europe. You misunderstand if you believe that I was suggesting otherwise.
Posted by: Richard Lloyd Parry | 19 Aug 2006 01:37:48
are there really 'zainichi' Koreans who are also uyoku? sounds slightly hypocrytical. or perhaps they're just made to feel they have something to prove.
Posted by: Copacabana | 21 Aug 2006 14:13:07
Apart from the "hereditary monarch" part, your description of the Japanese ultra-right could be a description of the state of Israel.
Alexis de Tocqueville thought that the great strength (and weakness ?) of American democracy is that all Americans "face the same way".
Surely Japan is the most "facing the same way" society in the world. I have (regretably) never visited Japan, but wouldn't the idea of separating the "war criminals" from the rest of the war dead commemorated at Yasakuni, be an impossibly alien concept to the Japanese ?
Posted by: Pamela | 29 Aug 2006 11:36:24
hello ! I NEED HELP ! im studiing in vienna on the university of applied art and i wanna make a work about extrem rights.. and i thought about countrys like germany/austria/europe/america then israel turkey japan maybe russia...
no my question.. are there no more official information about uyoku (or even more right?) especially about music i would like to know.. there has to be a younger part of them ...
i would be REALLY happy if someone could help me and send me some adresses !
thank you very much
nemo
Posted by: nemo | 17 Oct 2006 15:04:24
These people, or their organisation, are linked closely with the Yakuza (you can see some "Yankee" guys in some of the pics above). If you check online, you will also find that the Righ Wingers have close ties with government and those who have opposed them have sometimes come to a sticky end.
Although many Japanese dont like them, the Uyoku's influence in Japan, along with their Yakuza bretheren, should not be underestimated.
Its also been said that POLICE, on their days off, drive the black vans sometimes.
I have seen these people first hand. Ive seen them learing at me when I was with my Japanese girlfriend at the time, and I heard one rather nasty Uyoku van screaming "Chinese go home!" in the nastiest way possible...in Osaka's China Town district..over the van's PA system.
No, this organisation is scum. Pure and simple.
Posted by: Craig | 26 Feb 2007 08:56:58