The gods of war China can't forgive
They account for a mere fraction of 1 per cent of the 2.46 million Japanese honoured at the Yasukuni Shrine - 14 entries in the paper files that symbolically enshrine the souls of that nation's war dead.
Few outside Japan would even recognise many of their names - Kiichiro Hiranuma, Koki Hirota, Heitaro Kimura and the others. Fewer still would know details of the war crimes they were convicted of by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (IMTFE) during trials held from 1946 to 1948.
Yet personal obscurity has not stopped these men - and the Yasukuni shrine where they are venerated - from being notorious as a group. They are an increasingly painful irritant between China and Japan.
Visits to Yasukuni by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi since 2001 have resulted in angry protests, especially from China, where memories of Japan's war-time atrocities are kept strong by a government propaganda campaign. Critics such as Premier Wen Jiabao say Mr Koizumi's visits prove Japan has not atoned for its past aggression.
The complaint about Yasukuni is that 1,068 war criminals were secretly enshrined there in 1978 by the private religious foundation that has run the shrine since the Japanese government was forced to give it up after the second world war.
The group of 14 often referred to during condemnations of Mr Koizumi's visits are singled out because they were class-A war criminals. They are senior military and political leaders who conspired to wage war or permitted atrocities to take place under their command. Although these men may not have tortured, raped and murdered themselves, they allowed or encouraged others to do so.
The enshrined class-A war criminals all died in the custody of the Allied powers after the war. Seven were executed in 1948 for their involvement in mass atrocities. Five died while serving prison sentences for lesser crimes and two died while still on trial.
Their names are kept in a card file along with those of 2.46 million war dead enshrined since Yasukuni was built in 1869 by Emperor Meiji. All are venerated as gods.
Japan's wartime premier General Hideki Tojo and General Iwane Matsui are perhaps the best known of the class-A war criminals. Tojo was convicted of leading Japan into war with its neighbours. Matsui commanded the Japanese troops who sacked Nanking in 1937, slaughtering an estimated 300,000 civilians and soldiers and raping tens of thousands of women. Both were sentenced to death.
The others are a cross section of Japan's wartime leadership. Kiichiro Hiranuma was the founder of the nationalist society 'Kokuhonsha' and a government minister. He was convicted of supporting aggression and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in 1952 after being released due to illness.
Koki Hirota was foreign minister during the Rape of Nanking and other carnage perpetrated by the Japanese army. He was convicted of allowing the atrocities to take place and sentenced to death.
General Heitaro Kimura helped plan Japan's attacks on China and in the Pacific. He was found guilty of brutalising prisoners of war and using slave labour to build the Siam-Burma Railway. He was also sentenced to death.
General Seishiro Itagaki was given a death sentence for orchestrating the 1931 Manchurian Incident that Japan used as an excuse to attack China and seize more territory. He also ran prisoner-of-war camps in Indonesia and Malaysia.
General Kenji Doihara and General Akira Muto were also ordered executed for their crimes. Doihara ran prisoner-of-war camps and Muto commanded troops involved in atrocities in Nanking and Manila.
Those sentenced to death were hanged one after the other at Sugamo Prison, beginning just after midnight on December 23, 1948. Their remains were taken to the Yokohama Municipal Crematorium and their ashes scattered to the winds.
Some have suggested that Mr Koizumi could placate Japan's neighbours and keep honouring the war dead by moving the symbolic presence of the class-A war criminals to a new site. But the priests who operate the shrine have rejected this option. Chief priest Toshiaki Nambu said recently it would be impossible to remove the souls of the 14 men.
'There is no class A or class B in Japan,' he said. 'We enshrine them all as war dead.'
The priests who run the shrine have added to the controversy in other ways. They dismiss concerns about it as being a misunderstanding of Japanese culture which, they maintain, forgives people's sins when they die.
'A samurai apologises for his sins by performing hara-kiri,' Mr Nambu told the Japan Times. 'They die to atone for their sins. That's the tradition of Bushido (the way of the samurai), the spiritual culture of Japan.
'Chinese people are different. They would punish even the dead.'
'There were those who gave up their lives after the end of the Great East Asian War, taking upon themselves the responsibility for the war. There were also 1,068 'Martyrs of Showa' who were cruelly and unjustly tried as war criminals by a sham-like tribunal of the Allied forces. These martyrs are also the Kami [gods] of Yasukuni Jinja.'
