YASUKUNI: The War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past, edited by John Breen. London: Hurst Publishers, 2007, 202 pp., £25 (cloth)

Yasukuni Shrine resonates powerfully in contemporary Asia, dividing Japanese and alienating regional neighbors. In April, some conservative Japanese politicians' criticisms of the controversial documentary about Yasukuni by a Chinese filmmaker created an intimidating atmosphere that led several movie theaters to cancel showings of the film. Thanks to the publicity unwittingly generated by these conservatives, the film played to packed houses.

This fine collection of nine essays under review helps explain why Yasukuni is so controversial. John Breen from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London provides readers with a range of views about Yasukuni, including three contributions that are sympathetic to official visits by the prime minister and critical of the way that the Shinto shrine has been used to hammer Japan over its shared history with Asia. These essays are the weakest in the volume, but do give readers a chance to explore some of the feeble, fatuous and contradictory arguments often invoked by Yasukuni's apologists.

The international controversy over Yasukuni reached a feverish pitch under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006), who visited the shrine six times. Breen examines revelations in 2006 that the Showa Emperor stopped visiting Yasukuni because of the enshrinement of 14 Class "A" war criminals in 1978. This imperial initiative undermines the apologists' arguments, who all fail to come to terms with this renunciation of Yasukuni by its erstwhile head priest.