The Mitama Festival at Yasukuni Shrine is held every year from July 13 to 16, during Obon, the season when the spirits of the dead are believed to return to visit their families. Nationwide, Obon is more commonly observed in August, but parts of Tokyo and a few other areas keep to this July Bon, or shinbon. The festival is said to have been established in 1947, shortly after the end of World War II, to console the mitama, or spirits, of those who gave their lives for the country and to express heartfelt gratitude to them. Eighty long years have passed since the end of the war, and few people today are likely to know how the festival originated. Like festivals throughout Japan that have turned into popular events, the Mitama Festival has become a celebrated feature of summer in Tokyo, drawing large crowds.

Our leader, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, believes in the mitama enshrined at Yasukuni and has regularly paid tribute and expressed her gratitude to them. Even while serving as a Cabinet minister, she has continued to visit Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary of the end of the war and during its annual spring and autumn festivals. She had previously stated clearly that, because freedom of religion is guaranteed, she would continue visiting the shrine even after becoming prime minister; however, in light of the current deterioration in relations with our neighboring superpower, it appears that she felt compelled to forgo a visit now that she leads the nation. Still reluctant to give up entirely, however, she reportedly faced Yasukuni Shrine from the Nippon Budokan, where the National Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead was held, and paid her respects in the prescribed manner of two bows, two claps, and one final bow. Given Japan’s need to maintain a workable relationship with its neighbor, she should have considered how such a public display would be received. She could simply have closed her eyes and prayed before her Shinto altar at home. Speaking as someone who makes shrine visits a daily routine, I would have expected the leader of a nation to have the sense to understand that mourning the dead and expressing gratitude do not require a public display.

Every year, when August 15, the anniversary of the end of the war, comes around, the prime minister, Cabinet ministers, and other national leaders make a conspicuous show of visiting Yasukuni Shrine. This year as well, four Cabinet ministers went ahead with visits. But if they genuinely wish to mourn the spirits of the dead and express their gratitude, I question whether doing so only once a year is enough, and at the very least, they should stop and consider whether that particular day is really the appropriate one. August 15 is the day on which Emperor Hirohito’s recorded surrender address was broadcast over the radio; it is merely a date that politicians designated by Cabinet decision as a day for mourning the war dead and praying for peace. It is not the day on which the lives of some 3.1 million military personnel and civilians were lost.

There was the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 1945, which claimed 100,000 lives in a single night; the Battle of Okinawa from March to June of that year, in which one in four of the prefecture’s residents is said to have died; and the two atomic bombings, which together claimed more than 210,000 lives. I would suggest to them that each of these periods might also be an appropriate time to visit the shrine. That way, they could avoid causing an uproar among people in neighboring countries as well. Their choice to visit on August 15 suggests that, ultimately, they see the war through the eyes of those in power rather than its victims—a distinction of just one character in Japanese.

Why, then, have I gone out of my way to discuss all this? Because of my own personal history with Yasukuni Shrine.
This was about 30 years ago, when I happened to read a book titled Ikusanga (Many Mountains and Rivers). Its author, the late Ryuzo Sejima, was an elite military officer who served on the Imperial Japanese Army’s General Staff during World War II. After being detained in Siberia following the war, he rose to become chairman of Itochu Corporation. He wielded considerable influence in political and business circles, was known as the “Showa-era strategist,” and is also famous as the inspiration for the novel The Barren Zone. At more than 500 pages, Ikusanga is a substantial memoir that chronicles Sejima’s life in minute detail, and it made a profound impression on me as a young man. What I took away from the book was that the prosperity we enjoy today rests on foundations built through tremendous sacrifice by earlier generations of Japanese who lived through the war and its aftermath. That realization prompted me to begin visiting Yasukuni Shrine, feeling that I needed to express my gratitude to those who came before us. People may disagree about whether Yasukuni Shrine was the right place, but since it was close to my home, I chose to pay my respects there.

As I continued visiting almost every day, I came to see it as a place where I could learn a great deal at no cost. It helps me come up with good ideas and maintain a positive frame of mind.

But are these benefits really bestowed by God or spirits? As time passed, the answer gradually became clear to me. I came to understand that God and spirits reside not in the shrine’s worship hall, but within my own brain. I felt I had come to understand why a sacred mirror is placed in the main sanctuary behind the worship hall.

Take the example of a deeply religious cancer patient who fervently prays for divine intervention and a cure. If the cancer were miraculously cured, it would presumably be because the patient had successfully harnessed the brain’s latent capabilities—the potential functions and abilities lying dormant deep within the brain, beyond the reach of ordinary conscious awareness—rather than because of any divine power. It is not faith or God that performs the miracle; rather, faith draws out the brain’s latent powers. In other words, the idea of God helps unlock the brain’s latent functions and abilities. God is not really the important part. If believing in and praying to God can draw out our latent functions and abilities, then that role has a certain value.

What we call religions, denominations, and religious organizations are formed by attaching a particular name—Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and so on—and an accompanying story to this “universal God.” I personally have no faith in any particular religion, but I believe that such religions exist because they serve a certain purpose, and I do not regard them as inherently bad. There are occasionally organizations that exploit religious faith and cause harm to individuals or society, but that is another matter entirely.

To sum up, this is how I see it.
The right question concerning God may not be whether to believe or not, but whether to put God to use or not. Science cannot prove whether God or spirits exist, nor is there any point in proving it. Even so, we are better off living as though they exist.

That is what I have gained from 30 years of visiting the shrine. The latter half of this column may have made no sense to many people. If it made no sense to you, my apologies.

Hirotaka Shimizu
Chairman and CEO
Kamakura Shinsho, Ltd.

Image material：PIXTA