Where Emperors dare not tread

State Shinto refers to them as "kami" (divine, godlike) as in kamikaze. The souls are worshipped as deities.

General Hideki Tojo, Japan's prime minister from 1941-44, as one of the 14 inscribed in the Book of Souls, but the other 13 seem strangely in the shadows.

Tojo was tried in 1948 for war crimes on 54 counts, found guilty, and hanged. Only afterwards was it revealed that he had approved anatomical experiments on prisoners without anesthetic. Another six were found guilty and hanged, four received life imprisonment, one got 20 years, and two died before sentencing.

General Iwane Matsui, commander-in-chief of the Nanking army, and his chief-of-staff, Akira Mutou, deserve special mention.

Both were executed on Dec. 23 , 1948 after being found guilty of perpetuating the massive slaughter of civilians.

They were far from contrite.

After the massacre, Matsui erected a large white statue in the seaside spa town of Atami, his birthplace. The statue depicted Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy looking benigngly in the direction of Nanking.

The horrendous extent of the rampage of Matsui's forces is still denied by many in Japan today. Yasukuni is the ultimate symbol of those in denial and strengthens their determination to cover up. The shrine is not just about the hijacking of history; it is about setting the agenda.

It is about keeping the flame of militarism alive. Sadly, and shamefully, it is working.

The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a nationalist who wants to revise Japan's pacifist constitution to give its military a bigger role overseas, voiced support this year for altering a 1993 apol ogy issued by the then chief cabinet secretary, Yohei Kono, for the forced recruitment of the so-called comfort women In 1995, the then socialist prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, issued a more general expression of remorse over Japan's wartime conduct.

The Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura wants to scrap this apology immediately.

Abe recently questioned whether Japan's wartime conduct in Asia could be described as aggression.