Every time I've tried to visit the Imperial palace, it's been closed. This was my second time in Tokyo, and second time trying to visit it, but since it was closed I decided to take a walk before stumbling upon this shrine. The grounds here are massive and so well thought out. It was a snowy afternoon on my final day and it was so amazingly complex. As someone that doesn't know much of Japans imperial/colonial history, I was just happy that many of the landmarks and statues leading up to the shrine were from the 1800s and pre-WW2.
Once I got to the shrine building itself, I saw that they had a soldier's final letter printed out for visitors to take, and they talked about how the letters are changed each week or month. I don't specifically remember the time horizon, but it was frequent. These letters were in Japanese and English, which was nice so I didn't have to take out my phone to take a picture and translate, but this letter was of course from a WW2 soldier so that's when I knew things would get problematic. I continued walking and collected my goshuin stamp, before seeing the museum and reluctantly entering to learn some history, since it was my final day and I had two hours to spare before I needed to go to the airport.
The Yasukuni museum is very high quality. Like I would consider it on par with the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC, due to the extensiveness of the exhibits, the ease of understanding the information as a foreigner who doesn't speak the native language, and the quality of the exhibits. The layout is also very well thought out, with interesting areas that break off into tangents without distracting much from the topic/time period at hand.
Again, since I don't know the history, I can't make any claims about anything before WW2, but once we got to that section of the museum, it became pretty obvious that so many things were selectively ignored. For example, when discussing Japan's entry into WW2, they framed it entirely on resource needs due to US blockades and embargoes, without ever mentioning why the US and European powers were doing these things in the first place. Don't get me wrong. I know that history, war, and politics are not black and white, especially when it comes to the U.S. But without that context, plus the many signs prohibiting taking pictures of the exhibits or their contents, and the signs prohibiting visitors from discussing or explaining what is being shown, it was a very obvious sign of denial and censorship surrounding Japan's entry into WW2. I also noticed multiple references to a "China incident" without any explanation or exhibit granted to that moment, which was disappointing because if they had to mention it in the exhibits it must have been a pivotal moment of the two countries' histories that couldn't be avoided like other topics selectively ignored.
Last, it was really frustrating and pretty angering that at the end of the museum they had one of the final exhibits talking about how Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war was an inspiration for independence for nations and peoples all over Asia, with a list of Asian nations that have become independent since the Russo-Japanese war. Many of the countries on this list had been colonized or directly experienced aggression from Japan during WW2, so the fact that, again, no context was given to Japan's involvement in these histories, yet the museum wanted to pat Japan's military history on the back as some type of inspiration, was so hypocritical and ridiculous.
But overall, the elaborate design of the shrine's grounds and the attention to detail of the accompanying museum make this a very interesting and educational place to visit in Tokyo. It certainly made me want to take a deeper dive into Japan's history.