History

Yasukuni Jinja is unique among Japanese jinja in that it is a essentially a war memorial, honouring all those people who have lost their lives in serving the Japanese state. While the number of kami enshrined at even the most important shrines can be numbered in the tens there are more than 2,460,000 kami at Yasukuni.

The shrine's origin dates to June 29, 1869, when it was founded as Shōkonsha (招魂社 lit. “invocation souls shrine” ). Shokonsha should perhaps be prefaced by the indefinite article as it is actually a generic term for shrines dedicated to Japan's war dead. It was apparently founded at the request of Emperor Meiji, and in 1879 was renamed Yasukuni Jinja. The deities enshrined are those people who lost their life in modern Japan's wars. These are listed on the shrine's home page as “the Boshin War, the Seinan War, the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, World War I, the Manchurian Incident, the China Incident, and the Greater East Asian War (World War II).” Some of these are known by different names in other countries' histories.

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