A group of Japanese lawmakers visit the Yasukuni Shrine after they paid respect to war deads during the annual spring festival in Tokyo, Japan, April 22, 2015. [Photo/IC]

Thanks to foreigners' poor knowledge of what Yasukuni Shrine actually represents, the Japanese government has become used to defending the practice of paying homage to the war dead at the site, which among others honors 14 Class-A war criminals of World War II. The Japanese government claims "to mourn the war dead is common in other parts of the world and thus it is not wrong for Japan to do the same in accordance with its tradition".

In 2006, then Japanese chief Cabinet secretary and current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe argued in his book that, to pay homage to the war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine is an observance of one of the country's traditional folk customs and not a religious ritual in contravention of the principle of not mixing religion with politics. To legitimize Japanese politicians' visits to the shrine, Abe has also compared them to the homage paid by the presidents of the United States at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

His contention is a blatant attempt to mislead world opinion.

To understand what actually the Yasukuni Shrine represents, it is important to know what is Shintoism. Shinto is an ideology that advocates aggression and expansion, and was propounded as the national religion to counter the spread of Catholicism in Japan. The impact of Western thoughts and the spread of Catholicism in Japan in the late 16th century prompted Toyotomi Hideyoshi to promote Shintism as the means to strangle Catholicism.

Toyotomi used Shintoism to assign Japanese "deities" to all things on Earth and promote Japan as the "center" of Asia to confront Catholicism, which advocates universal value. Thus the Shinto religion became a tool to promote the legitimacy of Toyotomi 's rule and legitimize his expansionist policies. Using the Shinto ideology, Japan soon launched two all-out but failed attacks on the Korean Peninsula. But despite Toyotomi's failed military adventures, the expansionist ideology took deep roots in Japan.