Defined broadly, memorials to Japan’s military war dead dot the landscape of contemporary Japan. The most (in)famous of course, is Yasukuni Shrine in the centre of Tokyo. Aside from Yasukuni, there are 52 other Gokoku Jinja (lit. nation-defending shrines) that enshrine the war dead, as well as individuals like policemen, firefighters, and members of Self Defense Forces who have died in the line of duty. These 52 shrines are distributed throughout Japan, from Hokkaido, through the Tohoku and Chubu regions, to Kyushu and Okinawa, with many of these being prefectural shrines. There are also many monuments in the form of steles and obelisks to former units of the Imperial Japanese Army (Figure 1), along with preserved buildings and museums (Figure 2). In addition, there are innumerable local graves and shrines which hold the remains of or are dedicated to individual soldiers, tended to on a private basis by families or by local authorities in the case of public graveyards. There is thus far little English-language literature on such sites other than Yasukuni Shrine.
Figure 1: Memorial to Imperial Japanese Army 18th Division in Kurume
Figure 2: Former HQ building of Imperial Japanese Army 15th Division, now Aichi University Memorial Hall
Also understudied are the memorials to the war dead abroad, in the territories where most military deaths occurred. Where the absolute number of Japanese war deaths are concerned, not all areas formerly occupied by the Imperial Japanese military are equal – a point with implications for post-war overseas memorial activities. In a May 2019 report, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare estimated a total of 2.4 million war dead outside of Japan during the Second World War. Of these, the remains of approximately 1.27 million had been repatriated to Japan, while roughly 1.12 million remained in the places where they had fallen or were otherwise unaccounted for. The table below shows the Ministry’s breakdown of war dead by region:
| Area | Repatriated Remains | Un-repatriated Remains | Total War Dead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iwo Jima | 10,000 | 11,000 | 22,000 |
| Okinawa | 187,000 | 1000 | 188,000 |
| Central Pacific | 74,000 | 173,000 | 247,000 |
| South Pacific (Bismarck Arch., Solomon Islands) | 61,000 | 58,000 | 119,000 |
| Papua New Guinea | 51,000 | 76,000 | 128,000 |
| West Papua | 33,000 | 20,000 | 53,000 |
| Indonesia (not incl. West Papua) | 20,000 | 11,000 | 31,000 |
| North Borneo | 7,000 | 5,000 | 12,000 |
| Philippines | 149,000 | 369,000 | 518,000 |
| Malaya, Singapore, Thailand | 20,000 | 1,000 | 21,000 |
| Burma | 91,000 | 46,000 | 137,000 |
| India | 2,000 | 1,000 | 3,000 |
| French Indochina | 7,000 | 6,000 | 13,000 |
| Manchuria | 39,000 | 206,000 | 245,000 |
| China (not incl. Manchuria) | 438,000 | 27,000 | 466,000 |
| Taiwan, Korea | 52,000 | 44,000 | 95,000 |
| North Pacific (Aleutians, Kurile Islands, Sakhalin) | 2,000 | 23,000 | 24,000 |
| Soviet Union | 22,000 | 33,000 | 55,000 |
| All Regions | 1,265,000 | 1,111,000 | 2,377,000 |
Figure 3: Approximate Japanese war dead by region, estimate by Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare
Even in the best of circumstances, recovery of the war dead could be an arduous process. Excavations required treks through difficult terrain, careful archaeological (and more recently DNA analysis) work to identify remains in various, usually advanced stages of decomposition, as well as the close cooperation of partner countries.i This latter condition could not always be counted upon, as the Kōrōshō’s report indicates. The postcolonial states that emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War have their own complex (often decidedly non-unitary) “domestic” landscapes of and conflicts over war remembrance, which both presented opportunities for and placed limitations on Japanese overseas memorial activities – thus no account of the latter can be told without reference to the specific national-historical and socio-cultural contexts which shape those countries’ post-war relations with Japan.
In addition to collecting data on and facilitating the repatriation of the war dead from overseas, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has also, since 1952, organized memorial services and tours for relatives of the deceased and manages overseas monuments to the war dead in coordination with non-governmental organizations including the Nippon Izokukai and the Ajia Chiiki Senbotsusha Irei Kyōkai.i As Franziska Seraphim has shown, these non-governmental organizations worked closely with the Kōrōshō since the early 50s; by 1961, the Izokukai’s youth wing had begun leading expeditions to Okinawa in order to recover the remains of the war dead and hold memorial services.ii The Kōrōshō started formally organizing memorial pilgrimages for families of the war dead in 1976.iii These pilgrimages were intended to bring families to sites where remains could not be recovered, and participants included parents, children, siblings, and widowed spouses. For participants undertaking these pilgrimages, a third of their travel expenses would be covered by the Japanese government. Cultural diplomacy in the form of interactions “cultivating a better understanding” between bereaved families and local people of these former battlefields, facilitated by non-governmental organizations like the Izokukai, was another crucial element of these pilgrimages.
On March 26, 1971, the first of what is currently a total of fifteen official overseas monuments commemorating the Japanese war dead was established on Iwo Jima. The next monument, and the first outside of sovereign Japanese territory, was constructed in the Philippines on March 28, 1973, and dedicated to Japanese soldiers that had fallen there.i Similar cenotaphs would be built through the 1980s into the 1990s in Saipan, Rabaul, Yangon, Papua New Guinea, East Malaysia, the Marshall Islands, Peleliu, Attu Island, West Papua, and Imphal. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became possible to access sites in Siberia and Mongolia where Japanese prisoners of Soviet POW camps had been held. Of the fifteen official monuments, one was built in Khabarovsk in 1995, another in Sakhalin in 1997, and the last in Ulaanbaatar in 2001. In addition to these fifteen monuments are a larger number of unofficial or privately built memorials to Japanese war dead (Figure 4).
| Country/Area | Number of Memorials |
|---|---|
| Thailand | 21 |
| Malaysia | 9 |
| Singapore | 17 |
| Indonesia | 48 |
| Myanmar | 122 |
| India | 2 |
| Philippines | 164 |
| Papua New Guinea | 32 |
| Solomon Islands | 20 |
| Australia | 1 |
| New Zealand | 1 |
| Saipan and Tinian Island | 64 |
| Guam | 17 |
| Micronesia | 13 |
| Palau | 48 |
| Kiribati | 5 |
| Marshall Islands | 1 |
| China | 4 |
| Taiwan | 7 |
| South Korea | 1 |
| Russia | 58 |
| Kazakhstan | 5 |
| Uzbekistan | 17 |
| Khakassia (Russia) | 3 |
| Mongolia | 1 |
| Total | 681 |
Figure 4: Number of private overseas memorials to Japanese war dead
Unlike the large, well-kept, cenotaph-like official monuments, these private memorials vary in size and form, including memorial tablets and pillars slightly larger than or sometimes smaller than a human, such as those in the Japanese Cemetery Park in Singapore. Furthermore, as the Congress of Greater East Asia War Dead Memorial Organizations noted with concern, some of these memorials had fallen into disrepair or were otherwise not maintained satisfactorily (such as 18 of the Russian memorials, 13 of those in Myanmar, and 17 Philippine memorials).
Nonetheless, the distribution of these private memorials reveals the effect of the politics of access on overseas memorial activities. Some of these numbers are not surprising in that the number of private memorials appears proportionate with the absolute numbers of war dead – the Philippines for instance, leads in both categories, an example where Japanese interest in commemoration met with a receptive post-war politics in the independent postcolonial state. In others, as in the case of China (including Manchuria), the contrast between high numbers of war dead and the paucity of private memorials is stark, perhaps a consequence of a Chinese state far less accessible and well-disposed to the Japanese individuals and groups creating such memorials. Coming second only to the Philippines is Myanmar, with 122 private memorials (some of which are pictured in Figures 5 and 6), not including one of the fifteen official monuments, the Burma Peace Memorial, completed in Yangon on March 28, 1981. It is known that some of the private monuments were built in the 1970s, preceding the official 1981 Burma Peace Memorial.
Further English-language research remains to be done on the how this large number of private memorials came to be, as well as what the memorials meant to the people who built or visited them.
Figure 5: Memorials to the 33rd Division at Thatbyinnyu Monastery in Bagan district, Myanmar. The 33rd Division was nicknamed the “Bow” (yumi 弓) Division, hence the epitaph to the yumi butai on the leftmost memorial
Figure 6: Memorial at the Rikugun bochi (Army Cemetery) in Pyin Oo Lwin (Maymyo)
- Yasukuni Jinja, “Zenkoku Gokoku Jinja Ichiran,” Yasukuni Jinja, last accessed May 12, 2023. https://www.yasukuni.or.jp/gokoku.html
- Aichi Daigaku, “Aichi Daigaku Kinenkan,” Aichi University, last accessed May 13, 2023. http://edu.aichi-u.ac.jp/toa/
- Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, “Senbotsusha no ikotsushūshū no suishin ni kansuru kentō kaigi,” May 23, 2019, 3.
- Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, “Senbotsusha no ikotsushūshū no suishin ni kansuru kentō kaigi,” 4.
- Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006) 181-2.
- Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, “Senbotsusha no ikotsushūshū no suishin ni kansuru kentō kaigi,” 3; Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, “Senbotsusha no ireijigyō no jisshi,” Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, last accessed Dec 22, 2022. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/hokabunya/senbotsusha/seido01/index.html
- Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, “Senbotsusha no ireijigyō no jisshi.” ; Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 163.
- Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, “Senbotsusha no ireijigyō no jisshi.”
- Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, “Senbotsusha no ireijigyō no jisshi.” ; Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 163.
- Daitōa Sensō Zen-senbotsusha Ireidantai Kyōgikai, “Kōhōshi (Irei) ichiran.”
- Shinzō Hayase, A Walk through War Memories in Southeast Asia (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 2010) 156-66.
- The earliest was erected in January 1970; Hayase, A Walk through War Memories in Southeast Asia, 155-6.
- Kobe Myanma Kaikōkai, “Senbotsusha irei hakamairi,” last accessed Dec 23, 2022. https://myanmarkaikoukai.jimdofree.com/支援の内容/戦没者慰霊-墓参/
- Takahiro Yamakami, “(Myanma) Rikugun bochi,” Senbotsusha ireihi meguri, last accessed Dec 23, 2022. https://japan-warmemorial.com/mammy/