© Columbia University Press
Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past
March, 2008
Cloth, 240 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70042-9
$45.00
"In following Yasukuni over several years, I've come to see in John Breen's work the deepest and most reflective approach to the multiple problems that the shrine has posed: in war and war memory, in Japanese religious praxis, in state-shrine-society relations, and in Japan-China-global relations. Where the literature has spun endlessly around the issue of the Prime Minister's visits to the shrine, Breen's work, and this volume, cut far deeper into all of the above mentioned realms, and offer important new perspectives. Casting Yasukuni in multiple historical, ideological, political, and religious frameworks, this volume contributes much that is fresh and provocative." — Mark Selden, Cornell University, and a coordinator of Japan Focus
"The controversial Yasukuni Shrine has become a barometer of the inclinations of the Japanese political elite, but we have lacked a dispassionate examination of its history and political significance. John Breen has brought his formidable energies as a researcher and his expertise in the history of Japanese religion to bear on a subject of continuing political significance. This splendid book ought to dispel much of the mythmaking and mistaken suppositions that surround this subject." — Peter Kornicki, professor of East Asian studies, University of Cambridge