Editing Hirohito (section)

===Yasukuni Shrine===
Hirohito maintained an official boycott of the [[Yasukuni Shrine]] after it was revealed to him that Class-A war criminals had secretly been enshrined after its post-war rededication. This boycott lasted from 1978 until his death and has been continued by his successors, [[Akihito]] and [[Naruhito]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Explainer: Why Yasukuni shrine is a controversial symbol of Japan's war legacy |url=https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/why-yasukuni-shrine-is-controversial-symbol-japans-war-legacy-2021-08-13/ |publisher=Reuters |date=15 August 2021 |access-date=11 July 2023}}</ref>

On 20 July 2006, ''[[Nihon Keizai Shimbun]]'' published a front-page article about the discovery of a memorandum detailing the reason that Hirohito stopped visiting Yasukuni. The memorandum, kept by former chief of [[Imperial Household Agency]] Tomohiko Tomita, confirms for the first time that the enshrinement of 14 [[Class-A war criminal]]s in Yasukuni was the reason for the boycott. Tomita recorded in detail the contents of his conversations with Hirohito in his diaries and notebooks. According to the memorandum, in 1988, Hirohito expressed his strong displeasure at the decision made by Yasukuni Shrine to include Class-A war criminals in the list of war dead honored there by saying, "At some point, Class-A criminals became enshrined, including [[Yōsuke Matsuoka|Matsuoka]] and [[Toshio Shiratori|Shiratori]]. I heard Tsukuba acted cautiously." Tsukuba is believed to refer to Fujimaro Tsukuba, the former chief Yasukuni priest at the time, who decided not to enshrine the war criminals despite having received in 1966 the list of war dead compiled by the government. "What's on the mind of Matsudaira's son, who is the current head priest?" "Matsudaira had a strong wish for peace, but the child didn't know the parent's heart. That's why I have not visited the shrine since. This is my heart." Matsudaira is believed to refer to Yoshitami Matsudaira, who was the grand steward of the Imperial Household immediately after the end of World War II. His son, Nagayoshi, succeeded Fujimaro Tsukuba as the chief priest of Yasukuni and decided to enshrine the war criminals in 1978.<ref>{{cite news |title=Hirohito visits to Yasukuni stopped over war criminals |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060721a1.html |publisher=Search.japantimes.co.jp |newspaper=The Japan Times Online |date=21 July 2006 |access-date=3 October 2010}}</ref>