The Emperor Meiji tried to draw a line under the seditious leanings of some of those in his service. Pointedly, in 1879, he changed the name of the “Tokyo Shrine to Summon the Spirits” to the “Shrine to Quiet the State” (Yasukuni Jinja). Like many of the other classical Chinese allusions in 19th-century Japanese politics, this reference tends to be cited out of context, without much consideration of the text being quoted. In the original Chinese, the term is found in an official’s defence of his decision to put a soldier into a government position:

“I have done it to secure the quiet of the State. When you have men who have rendered great service, and you do not give them the noblest offices, are they likely to remain quiet? There are few who can do so.”

Amid the songs of the 1930s, one stands out not for its musical or lyrical achievement, but for its tone. “Mother at the Nine Steps” (Kudan no Haha, 1939) was written for the spring ceremony at the Yasukuni Shrine, where the newest war dead would be ceremonially accepted into its halls. The song tells the story of a lady from the provinces, coming to the Nine-stepped Hill (Kudanzaka) that leads to the venue:

It seems oddly ungracious to ridicule a bereaved mother for being a “yokel”, like she hasn’t suffered enough. But for music historian Osada Gyoji, that is part of the song’s subversive appeal. We have gone, in the space of two years, from the unlikely sight of mothers waving off their sons “without tears,” to this broken old woman in the big city shedding tears that are plainly not “of joy” at all, but continuing to put a brave face on her personal desolation.

Extracted from Japan at War in the Pacific: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire in Asia 1868-1945, by Jonathan Clements.

“The verb for beheading, in this context, retains a visceral sense of the battlefield – it is not the stark, slashing kiru of a ritual execution, but the unpleasant, gritty kubinejikiru, literally, ‘head twisting off and cutting’, wrenching the head from the neck with the aid of a dagger or butcher’s knife.”

The Rest is History podcast gets to grips with medieval Japan, including a reading from my Brief History of the Samurai.

Sorry if it’s a bit quiet on the blog at the moment, but I am literally all at sea, onboard the MS Westerdam on a two-week circumnavigation of Japan. I’m this voyage’s designated expert with Road Scholar, a company that “enriches” travellers’ experiences by forcing them to spend time with me, something that readers of this blog get for free. I’ve been lecturing about the samurai and the history of Japanese food, and squiring people around castles and tea farms, sake breweries and museums. This week alone, I’ve soaked in the hot springs at Arima, shouted myself hoarse at a sumo wrestling match, and joined in the celebrations in Kochi when the locals discovered they’d struck the tourist jackpot by becoming the subject of the just-announced 2028 NHK taiga drama.