In Seijigiri for September 9, 2006, we talk quite a bit about the Yasukuni Shrine （靖国神社） and its relevance to current Japanese politics. Here are some links with further reading that you might find of interest:

Yasukuni Shrine - English homepage: Annoyingly, the site is built in frames, making it impossible to link to individual pages from the outside (well, not impossible, but pretty much useless). If you have time, the Yushukan (War Memorial) link is worth checking out. Yushukan page without the frames.

靖国神社　－　日本語のホー� ページ (the Japanese homepage): If you can read Japanese, the difference between the English and Japanese texts is striking. Actually, if you go here, you can see the site’s really bad flash intro. The Japanese flashing across the page says, “Yasukuni Jinja…Tokyo Shokonsha, built in the second year of the Meiji era…Meiji…Taisho…Showa…Heisei (the names of the successive emperors who have reigned since the shrine was built; Showa is the posthumous name of Hirohito).

Wikipedia’s page on the Yasukuni Shrine

Japanguide.com has some info and photos

This page has some pictures

Selected media artciles:

Where war ciminals are venerated (cnn.com)

Japan’s controversial shrine (BBC)

Chief Yasukuni priest brings business savvy to shrine (Japan Times)

Japanese ‘oppose PM shrine visists’ (BBC)

69% in favor of Koizumi’s visit to Yaukuni Shrine (Kyodo)

Why Japan’s neighbors secretly love the Yasukuni Shrine (The New Republic)

Koizumi says his Yasukuni Shrine visits did not fan nationalism (MSN/Mainichi)

Yasukuni Shrine to revise museum’s claims of US provocation in WWII (MSN/Mainichi)

Media role helps inflame the Yasukuni issue (The Daily Yomiuri)

Change needed at Yasukuni (The Japan Times)