Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 483, Passion and Prejudice, Part 1.

If you make your way to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, you might notice something odd.

Well, okay, in truth, you'll notice a lot of odd things.

The shrine, founded in the early Meiji years to commemorate Japan's war dead, has been an

independent entity since the 1945 decree forbidding government support for religious institutions.

Today, it is a hotbed of right-wing historical revisionism in Japan.

I've written about the museum on the site, the Yushu Khan, for our Patrian supporters,

and even the grounds themselves, make it very clear what kind of place you are in.

For example, towards the east entrance, there's a monument to the sufferings of Japanese nationals

imprisoned by the Soviet Union after World War II, which, fair enough,

but, funnily enough, said monument makes no mention of how all those Japanese nationals

happened to be on the Asian mainland at the end of World War II.

Funny that, I guess they just got lost in Manchuria for several years.

Anywho, tucked in among all this right across from a series of monuments to the dogs, pigeons,

and horses which died for Japan, which I'm not sure they'd see it that way, but whatever,

is another monument that might catch your eye.

The monument, a simple stone with a photo and some text, is not devoted to a hero of Japan's military

past, but to a judge. And not even to a Japanese one at that, to an Indian jurist by the name

of Radhabanad Paul. Judge Paul is, of course, famous primarily for one thing. He was one of the judges chosen to help direct

the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the only one when it came time

for the final judgment who judged every Japanese defendant to be not guilty. The Yasakuni

Monument, which was set up in 2005, was created in order to, in the shrine's own words,

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