Don't Mention The War.(Arts; FLASHBACK)(Yasukuni)

Byline: Christian Caryl and Akiko Kashiwagi

A new documentary on Japan's wartime past has provoked a conservative campaign to ban the film.

Sooner or later, anyone who wants to understand Japan's tortured relationship with its past will end up at the Yasukuni Shrine. Part religious site and part war memorial, Yasukuni, in downtown Tokyo, has become a political battleground. Controversies involving the shrine--which Shintos consider the home to the souls of 2.46 million dead soldiers, including 14 convicted Class A World War II war criminals--have sparked fury among Japan's former victims.

Given this history, and Japan's difficulties fully atoning for its past, Li Ying figured it was time to provoke a public debate about the shrine. The Chinese film director and 19-year Japan resident has just released "Yasukuni," which won the best-documentary prize at the Hong Kong Film Festival last month. It's a remarkable, well-balanced work. Yet if powerful right-wing forces in Japan get their way, many Japanese will never see the movie.

On March 12, after a magazine described the film as "anti-Japan," conservative lawmakers demanded a special screening, following which one prominent archconservative criticized its "ideological message." A few days later, citing threats from the right-wing speaker trucks that had gathered outside, a Tokyo theater declared that it was canceling plans to screen "Yasukuni." Other cinemas around the country have since followed suit, and none in Tokyo are daring to screen it (though a few outside the capital have vowed to do so).

The Asahi Shimbun has warned that "freedom of expression is under threat," and even the archconservative Sankei Shimbun has called the mess "disappointing." Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has made some vaguely disapproving remarks. But the public has been largely silent. "People would demonstrate if this happened in Europe," says Hidemi Suzuki, a professor of constitutional law at Osaka University Graduate School. "Today, there are hardly any signs" of that in Japan.

The conservative lawmakers who criticized "Yasukuni" insist they never meant to censor it, but argue that tax money shouldn't go to "political" works. ("Yasukuni" got a modest government grant.)