¹ The research for this article was completed with the assistance of a generous Doctoral Scholarship from the Japan Foundation in 2013-2014 under the guidance of Professor Matsumoto Takenori at the University of Tokyo.

² Nagano Uheiji was a Meiji period architect who designed over thirty national banks for Japan. He was born in what is now Niigata prefecture in the city of Jōetsu. In 1893 he graduated from the Engineering Department at the Imperial University (currently the University of Tokyo). He is also well-known for his design of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei which was completed in 1919.

³ Nagano Uheiji, “Meiji Sanjyūnanahachinen Sengo Kinen Kenchikubutsu Setsumei,” Kenchiku Zasshi No. 250, October 1907: 560.

⁴ In 1933 the German architect, Bruno Taut (1880-1938), would later claim Ise Jingu to be Japan's ‘Acropolis’ saying that “(the Parthenon) is the greatest and most aesthetically sublime building in stone as the Ise shrine is in wood.” Bruno Taut, Houses and People of Japan (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1937), 139. While Nagano is thinking more about space and the meaning of the Acropolis, Taut's comparison is based on structure and, more specifically, the material elements that were used.

⁵ For example, John Nelson argues that this was a stage of Yasukuni's development before the state had fully implemented its ideological function. “Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 62, no. 2 (May, 2003), 449.

⁶ Kobori Keiichirō (Yasukuni Jinja to Nihonjin, 1996) is one Japanese scholar who holds this position, which is reiterated by John Breen (Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past, 2008 and The Cultural Politics of Nationalism and Nation-Building, 2014). Also, see the work of John Nelson (“Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine,” 2003) who links the historical presence of entertainment at Yasukuni with other shrines and, most recently, Akiko Takenaka's Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan's Unending Postwar (2015) which dedicates a full chapter to entertainment at the shrine as spectacle.

⁷ Although one can still observe fragments of this past during the Mitama Festival in July which features misemono acts and food stalls.

⁸ Although religious scholars such as John Breen have translated reitaisai as ‘Great Rites’ I'm using the term festival to denote a more popular understanding of the term as it would have been perceived by commoners who attended these events. In Japan festivals already contain a religious connotation, so it does not ignore the religious nature of the event but at the same time enhances the other activities associated with the Annual Great Festivals.

⁹ Yasukuni Jinja Hyakunen Shi Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Yasukuni Jinja, 1983), 47.

¹⁰ Teikoku Keiba Kyōkai, Nihon Baseishi: Teikoku Keiba Kyōkaihen Vol. 4 (Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1982), 602.

¹¹ Ibid., 602.

¹² Yamamoto Shōgetsu, Meiji Sesō Hyakuwa (Tokyo: Daiichi Shobo, 1936), 36-37. This occurred after the construction of the Ōmura statue in 1893 so his account was written sometime between 1893 and 1898.

¹³ The Tokyo Sumo Association and the Osaka Sumo Association merged in 1927 to form what is now today the Japan Sumo Association.

¹⁴ Yasukuni Jinja Shi (Tokyo: Yasukuni Jinja, 1911), 115. The total cost of this specific tournament was around 2800 yen.

¹⁵ The proceeds from this tournament would be put towards the construction of the new Worship Hall (haiden) that was completed in 1901.

¹⁶ Meiji no Engei Vol. 1, edited by Kurata Yoshihiro (Tokyo: Kokuritsu Gekijyō Chōsa Yōseibu Geinō Chōsashitsu, 1980), 156.

¹⁷ At the 1877 festival there were stalls selling paper cranes, there were dancing “ascending dragons” (nobori ryū), carts filled with flowers (hanamiguruma), standing dolls, and a handmade noodles stand (sangokuichi). The festival in November of the same year also featured many stalls that were selling famous local foods.

¹⁸ Tayama Katai, Literary Life in Tokyo, 1885-1915: Tayama Katai's memoirs ‘Thirty years in Tokyo‘ (New York: Brill, 1987), 91.

¹⁹ 1 tsubo=3.3 square meters

²⁰ Nagano, Kenchiku Zasshi, 561.

²¹ Ibid., 561.

²² Yasukuni Jinja Hyakunen Shi Vol. 4 (Tokyo: Yasukuni Jinja, 1987), 169.

²³ Data taken from Shiryō Meiji Hyakunen (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Kaisha, 1966), 651.

²⁴ I think that this is what Tsubouchi's Yasukuni is missing particularly as he laments the turning of the purification garden (yuniwa) into a parking lot in 1985. Consideration of the shrine's political economy would give some historical background to Yasukuni's Chief Priest Matsudaira Nagayoshi's comment on having to be “self-reliant” (pages 336-337) after being cut off from state funds, as the opening of the parking lot also coincides with the reopening of the Yūshūkan. For reasons unknown (despite the fact that it foregrounds his lamenting of Yasukuni's declining prominence in Japanese society), Tsubouchi holds to this sacred space as if it was historically unchanged even though this space was originally used for the sumo ring and later the Noh theater. During the Meiji period the purification ceremony was generally held at the Kagura Hall (for the performance of ancient Shinto music and dance) which was to the south side of the Main Hall. Later it was held next to the Worship Hall.

²⁵ Allan G. Grapard, “The Economics of Ritual Power”, Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami, edited by John Breen and Mark Teeuwen (New York: Routledge, 2000), 89-90.

²⁶ Yasukuni Jinja Shi, 176.

²⁷ The only time where the numbers vary is for December 1895 since a special ceremony was held to commemorate the victory in the Sino-Japanese War. Records for monetary offerings were not kept prior to 1890 as this was when the Yasukuni Shrine Office was constructed.

²⁸ According to Tsurumi's study of workers at the Osaka Cotton-Spinning Mill, this would have been an expensive trip equalling a day's wages for a couple with two children over the age of 10 in 1883. E. Patricia Tsurumi, Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 43.

²⁹ A record of all permits given to temples and shrines from 1733-1868 can be found in the Kyūbaku hikitsugisho under the kaichō sashiyurushichō at the National Diet Library in Tokyo. Of these kaichō 824 of them were igaichō, meaning they took place inside the temple sanctuary. These were meant to showcase religious icons such as statues that were not regularly accessible to common worshippers. The remaining 741 kaichō were degaichō, denoting that they took place outside of the temple grounds.

³⁰ Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe, Practically Religious: worldly benefits and the common religion of Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 85.

³¹ While there are debates regarding the exact number of temples during this period these two figures seem to be the most accurate. Statistics are from McCullin's notes in Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 398.

³² Some shrines would also request money directly from the bakufu while others would only apply for the permit. Roughly 28% of temples were successful in being granted a permit or receiving a subsidy from the bakufu. Hiruma Hisashi, Edo no Kaichō (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1980), 26.