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War Remembrance in Japan's Buddhist Cemeteries, Part II: Transforming War Criminals into Martyrs: “True Words” on Mt. Kōya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Brian Victoria
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As discussed in Part I, Buddhist temples in Japan have, at least until recently, had a near monopoly on the conduct of funerary rites, including memorial services for the deceased lasting over many years, even generations. Additionally, cemeteries with family, not individual, graves are typically located on temple grounds. Thus, temples play a significant role in the manner in which the deceased are remembered if not eulogized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 34 , August 2015 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2015

References

Notes

1 Peter L. Berger, The Social Reality of Religion, p. 53.

2 Quoted on the following Web page (accessed 14 July 2015).

3 Slim, Defeat into Victory, p. 584.

4 In point of fact there is no single “Mt Kōya temple.” Today Mt. Koya is home to over one hundred larger and smaller temples.

5 Strictly speaking, “Showa” is the name for the period of Emperor Hirohito's reign, i.e., 1926-1989. Thus, in this instance “Showa” simply signifies the period in which these war criminals/martyrs died.

6 Available on the Web here (accessed 1 May 2015).

7 Bhikkhu Bodhi, “War and Peace: A Buddhist Perspective” in Inquiring Mind, p. 5.

8 The main meaning of this phase is that the death of any person diminishes us all. However, a secondary meaning is that inasmuch as all of us will die one day, the bell tolls for each of us. Applied to this article, the meaning is that the difficulties both Buddhism and Shinto encounter in war remembrance in Japan are difficulties that all of the world's main religions encounter in war remembrance, most especially in remembering soldiers who died in wars that, if only in hindsight, are now recognized as wars fought in whole or in part for national self-aggrandizement rather than genuine defense of the nation.