This summer, as the Japanese people prepare to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, all eyes will be turned towards the Yasukuni Shrine. On the face of it, this is the natural venue to hold a commemoration service on 15 August. The shrine is dedicated to all those Japanese soldiers who sacrificed their lives on the battlefield since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the vast majority of them during the Second World War. It is more than just a memorial site. Although no bodies are buried here, according to the Shinto religion this is where the souls of the dead are enshrined. Their names and other details are hand-written on rolls of paper, which are stored in a repository behind the main sancutary. Visitors who wish to pay their respects will stand before the shrine, bow deeply, clap their hands twice in order to draw the attention of the deities, and pray.

Among the souls venerated here are 984 men known to have been involved in the mass killing, exploitation and torture of innocent civilians during the war. They were enshrined here during the 1960s without the official permission of either the government or the families involved, some of whom were deeply ashamed of the crimes that their relatives had committed.

In 1978 another 14 souls were also enshrined here. This was an even more serious matter, because these men had all been Class A war criminals: senior wartime leaders, who had been convicted of ‘crimes against peace’ at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in the 1940s. Once again, the enshrinement ceremony took place in secret and without official government approval.

It is tempting to dismiss these events as the actions of a particular group of men at a particular time in history. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of the priests at the Yasukuni Shrine were ex-military men who had been staunch supporters of the wartime regime. They did not accept the verdicts of the Tokyo Trials, and wanted to make a symbolic gesture of defiance.

Unfortunately, however, the culture of denial at the shrine persisted long after the 1970s. In 2005 a monument was erected on the grounds to Dr Radhabinod Pal, one of the judges at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Pal was the only judge to suggest that all of the Japanese defendants should be found not guilty. By erecting a memorial to Pal, while ignoring the judgement of the other ten judges, the shrine authorities have effectively declared their belief that the trials were null and void.

An equally controversial monument was also erected here to the Kenpeitai, the much-feared military police force who terrorised the people of Asia and the Pacific throughout the war. The Kenpeitai were responsible for the prison camps where hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war were worked and starved to death. It also ran military brothels where tens of thousands of ‘comfort women’ were forced into lives of sexual slavery. Kenpeitai officers were often as brutal towards their own countrymen as they were towards those they conquered, and ruthlessly pursued any Japanese citizens who expressed anti-war sentiments. Erecting a monument to them is akin to the Germans erecting a monument to the Gestapo or the SS.

Also on the site is a military museum, which is owned and maintained by the shrine authorities. The Yūshūskan museum was opened in the 1980s, and displays a deeply distorted history of the war. To this day, there is no mention of ‘comfort women’ here. There are no exhibits related to the medical experiments carried out on Chinese civilians, or the starvation of people in Indonesia, or the systematic massacre of women and children in Manila. The overall message of the museum is that the Second World War in the Pacific was started by America, not Japan. Likewise, it states that the Japanese invasion of South-East Asia was conducted out of a selfless desire to liberate Asian people from European rule, rather than a purely selfish desire to colonise those people for themselves.

These distorted views are not generally held by Japanese historians, or by the majority of Japanese people, but they play to a minority of right-wing conservatives who persist in denying Japan’s wartime crimes – or worse, glorifying them.

The actions and attitudes of the authorities at the Yasukuni Shrine have created a real problem for Japan’s politicians, particularly as the 80th anniversary of the end of the war draws near. Every nation needs a place to remember its war dead, and Japan is no exception, but the use of the shrine for such occasions is now politically impossible. Instead, the official ceremony will take place at the Nippon Budokan, a sporting arena just a few hundred metres away. This is where commemorations of the war have taken place for the last 60 years, precisely because the Yasukuni Shrine is too politically sensitive.

Nevertheless, there will still be great pressure for politicians to visit the shrine itself and pay their respects to those who died for the sake of their country. When they do – and there are always some politicians who give in to the temptation – they will effectively also be paying tribute to some of the world’s most notorious war criminals. This does not look good to Japan’s neighbours, who suffered greatly under occupation. Each time a politician visits the Yasukuni Shrine, Chinese and South Korean diplomats complain loudly and indignantly.

It is difficult to know what can be done to remedy this situation. Some people have suggested ‘de-enshrining’ the spirits of Japan’s war criminals or moving them to another location. This, they argue, would draw the poison out of the site, and allow ordinary Japanese people to pay tribute to their ancestors without upsetting their friends and allies in other parts of Asia. But the priests at the shrine insist that such a move is impossible for theological reasons: once the souls of the dead have been ‘merged’ here they cannot be separated again.

If the authorities at the shrine wanted to draw a line under this subject it is theoretically possible that they could do so. If they were to denounce the actions of their predecessors, and explicitly embrace a new spirit of reconciliation, then perhaps the controversies that have always plagued this site could finally be brought to an end.

At the very least, they could remove the monuments to Justice Pal and the Kenpeitai, and correct the dodgy history on display at the Yūshūkan museum. Without even these simple gestures towards historical truths, they risk poisoning the future just as much as they have already poisoned the past.