YASUKUNI SHRINE, HOME for a century and a half to the spirits of Japan's fallen soldiers, has fueled controversy in every decade of my academic career. When I arrived in Tokyo as the 1970s were about to dawn, great numbers of students and young radicals across the nation were working in concert with writers, professors, and Christian theologians of all ages in opposition to the state's ties to the Shinto institution. In the mid-1980s, I attended a dinner at which Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro sought (and received) the support of several prominent American scholars for his much-criticized visits to Yasukuni as prime minister. While I was visiting Beijing several years ago, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō made one of his periodic visits to the shrine, touching off a level of anger that I could only grasp by being in China. And today, as I write this from Tokyo, the Chinese assert that they will judge Japan's next political leader by one issue above all others: whether he visits Yasukuni.

What explains the emotional power of Yasukuni, both for Japanese leaders and war veterans, and for the victims of Japan's colonial rule and invasion more than six decades ago? Few symbols in the East Asian cornucopia have greater potential for working deviltry, both in Japan's domestic and regional politics. Chinese and Korean hyper-sensitivity over this issue, fully matched by the insensitivity of many Japanese leaders, could undo half a century of progress toward regional cooperation.

After decades of controversy, it remains the case that outside a narrow segment of internationalist circles in the West, while young people in particular may know a lot about anime, manga and Toyota, they remain sublimely ignorant of Japanese politics-particularly about something as ostensibly rarefied as the Yasukuni issue. This is regrettable, given the controversy's potential for mischief. This makes John Nelson's 28-minute, teaching-oriented film on Yasukuni, “Spirits of the State,” both welcome and important.

The visually-attractive video makes a serious effort to present a balanced, sensitive interpretation of both the shrine's historical development and the role it plays in Japan's efforts to construct a viable war memory six

Decades after the end of the Pacific War.