Praying for the dead

Sweden has waged lot of wars, a long time ago. As vikings, we traded along major rivers in Russia and our boats went as far west as Greenland and even Canada. Then, we had the era when we, as Protestants, were probably among the worst in terms of waging wars on the European continent, against the Catholic armies.

Our era of the Swedish Empire lasted from 1611 to 1718.

"Her vigorous intervention had saved the cause of religious liberty in Europe; and this remains, for all time, her greatest political achievement."
- from the Encyclopædia Britannica

Yet, we don't have a "national shrine" or a place like Arlington in the US, where presidents or people go to pray. And we certainly do not have a place like Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Japan's Prime Minister went there today, on the anniversary of Japan's surrender in WW2, and predictably China and South Korea protested.

Wikipedia has a link where you can listen to Hirohito's speech on August 15, 1945.

Comments

Kai said…
But Sweden does not have a "national shrine' where 14 Class A criminals are enshrined either, and neither does the US. Perhaps if you were Chinese or Korean, or you had ancestors who were on the receiving end of the Japanese swords, or were forced to watch your daughter or mother being raped by Japanese soldiers, and had to suffer the enduring images since, you would feel otherwise about Koizumi's shrine visits.

Btw, it's not just China or S'Korea that protested the visits. Count the whole of South East Asia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong as well. Dosmetic issue? I don't think so.
3:00 am, August 16, 2006
Pandabonium said…
Take a look at the Yasukuni website and you can see exactly what that place has become.

The visits by Koizumi are a message to Japan's neighbors about what Japan thinks of them and that the LDP now feels powerful enough to ignore them. (Keep in mind that all of the living previous PMs collectively asked Koizumi not to do this and he ignored them.) It is also an acknolegement of the debt to and connection with right wing fascism and the LDP.

I've been planning a long post about Yasukuni and its meaning for a long time. Such a hot button issue, I've held back.

My question is "what do we have to do so that war memorials are no longer necessary?"
5:17 pm, August 17, 2006
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