Capital-nation-state: A genealogy of Yasukuni Shrine

• Main Author: Baxter, Joshua P
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2016
• Subjects: Asian History; History; Military history
• ISBN: 1369665350; 9781369665352

Japan’s militaristic past continues to haunt the present and often at the center of these debates is the site that commemorates the war dead, Yasukuni Shrine. This dissertation seeks to address the political economy of the shrine and argues that this issue cannot be transcended if the history of the development of capitalism in Japan continues to be bracketed off in favor of narrating the shrine strictly through the discourse of the nation and the state. This claim derives from the observation that Yasukuni Shrine and the development of capitalism in Japan emerge at the same historical moment and thus they must also share an underlying logic. By adding capital to the equation, it becomes evident that the shrine is at the nexus of the operation of Capital-Nation-State and thus played a role in producing the very idea of modern Japan. Using a variety of primary sources, from state documents to personal diaries and newspaper reports, the archival research reveals how the shrine, as a state institution, was shaped by economic interactions just as much as it was by state ideology. In each chapter a different aspect of how the history of capitalism intersects with the space of the shrine is examined through the themes of everyday life, commodity exchange, urban planning, and universal conscription. Key to all of these themes is the relation of political economy to space. Whether it was facilitating commodity exchange on the shrine grounds or making land transactions, Yasukuni Shrine was an active agent in shaping not only the immediate space around it, but also in forming a national space. By examining the political economy of Yasukuni, it becomes evident that the shrine played an important role in propagating various types of exchanges (whether economic, religious or political) that were essential to forming this space. Thus, the results of this project show that Yasukuni was more than just a state institution that fostered the creation of national subjects; it was a space that brought together the three social forms, Capital-Nation-State, which characterizes and dominates our current socio-political landscape.