For the deceased from Hokkaido and other area!

by Kazu

I've never expected Mr. Masujiro Ohmura who proposed the establishment of the “Shokonsha,” the predecessor of Yasukuni Shrine, in order to console the souls of those who died in the Boshin War.

Those who died in the Boshin War did not perish for their respective domains or feudal lords, as had been the case before, but for a new nation that was in the process of being born. For this emerging nation to be regarded as a public entity, it was necessary to define the war dead of the Boshin War as having made a “public sacrifice.” The creation of Shokonsha, the forerunner of Yasukuni Shrine, arose from this context. In that sense, Shokonsha can be seen as a starting point of Japan as a modern state.

As mentioned at the beginning, Omura Masujiro was originally a “village doctor,” in other words, a farmer by birth. As noted above, Shokonsha represented not only a rejection of the feudal domain system but also the starting point of Japan’s transformation into a modern nation-state. It may well be that such a vision could be realized precisely because Omura, unlike the samurai, came from a farming background.