Japan's PM stopped ten minutes' walk from Yasukuni Shrine and prayed from a parking lot. The comment section split almost down the middle — which never happens here.

August 15 is the day Japan's war ended. On the 81st anniversary, at noon, the National Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead was held at the Nippon Budokan hall in Tokyo — the Emperor and Empress in attendance, a minute of silence with the bereaved families, the quietest official hour this country keeps.

Prime Minister Takaichi attended the ceremony. Before it began, she stood in the Budokan's parking lot, faced the direction of Yasukuni Shrine, and performed the formal sequence used when praying at a shrine: two bows, two claps, one bow. Praying toward a shrine from a distance is called yōhai. Yasukuni's gate is about a ten-minute walk from that parking lot. She sent the shrine a ritual monetary offering, paid out of her own pocket under her title as party leader — and did not enter the shrine itself. The same day, four of her cabinet ministers, including the defense minister, walked in and prayed.

Why would someone come within a ten-minute walk and stop? That question needs background, so here it is.

What Yasukuni Shrine is. It is a Shinto shrine founded in 1869 by the Meiji government to honor its civil-war dead. Since then it has come to enshrine roughly 2.46 million people who died for the country — each one registered by name and venerated as a deity. The trouble dates to 1978. That year, fourteen men convicted as Class-A war criminals at the postwar Tokyo trials were quietly added to the rolls. Ever since, China and South Korea have protested that a Japanese prime minister praying at Yasukuni amounts to justifying the war itself. Emperor Hirohito had visited eight times after the war; he stopped in 1975, and no emperor has visited since the war criminals were enshrined. The last sitting prime minister to walk through the gate was Shinzo Abe in 2013 — and on that occasion, not only Beijing and Seoul protested, but the United States government said it was "disappointed."

So Yasukuni is two things at once: the place where Japan's war dead are honored by name, and a place where one particular person's footsteps become a diplomatic incident.

Takaichi spent her political career visiting Yasukuni on this date, year after year, as a cabinet minister. So the question running through the morning news was simple: now that she is Prime Minister, will she walk in? The answer turned out to be a parking lot.

How I counted — read this part first

The following morning, August 16, I read all 1,567 parent comments under the news story (2,432 including replies).

Under every comment on Yahoo! News Japan, readers can press one of two main buttons: 共感した — "I relate" — and うーん — "hmm...", which is about the politest way this country has of saying "no, I don't think so." Throughout this page, "I relate" means agreement with the comment, and "hmm" means disagreement.

Adding up the buttons pressed on all 1,567 comments: 23,169 "I relate" against 13,797 "hmm" — a ratio of 63 to 37.

To see why that is remarkable, you need to know how Japanese comment sections usually behave: they line up. In an earlier thread I counted, under a story about the national broadcaster's licence fee, 98 percent of all votes pointed the same way — nearly every reader nodding at the same opinions. A 63-to-37 split means the readers of this thread are divided nearly down the middle, which almost never happens here.

There is a second way to count. Take the comments one at a time, and ask of each: did it receive more disagreement than agreement — was this opinion rejected by the people who read it? Today, 533 comments out of 1,567 were. One in three. That is the highest share in the seventeen threads this site has counted. The previous highest was this month's thread about the atomic bombings. Only the threads about the war, in August, divide like this.

What the comments say, in order of support

The most-supported comment does not say "she should have walked in." It does not say "she was right to stay out." It points somewhere else entirely.

3,753 "I relate" against 736 "hmm" — the top of the thread. Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery sits a few minutes from Yasukuni. It is a secular site the state built for the remains of some 370,000 war dead who could never be identified. No religion is involved and no war criminals are enshrined, so no one's visit there causes a diplomatic incident. Thirty-eight comments make this same move — looking for a door outside Yasukuni — and in a thread this divided, that was the largest agreement on the page.

Third place holds the question everyone in Japan was privately asking that day.

"Who exactly is she deferring to?" — 1,776 "I relate" votes. The question has a backstory, and the thread documents it. Before her party's leadership election, Takaichi said "I will visit." During the election: "I will consider it." After winning: no visit. One comment lays out exactly that timeline (52 "I relate," 8 "hmm"). Another, high in the thread with 494 against 192, says: she had pledged to keep visiting, so naturally some people will feel this is not what was promised — an explanation is required.

She said she would go, and she did not. So who stopped her? The thread offered three suspects. "Japan is so economically dependent on China that even a PM who swore she would go, cannot" — 327 "I relate," 216 "hmm." "The media relays the neighbors' anger every year until 'safer not to visit' becomes the atmosphere" — 654 against 292. "Did her coalition partner talk her out of it?" — 177 against 200, meaning this one was more rejected than supported. The question itself drew 1,776 votes of agreement. Not one of the proposed answers won a clear majority.

One highly-placed comment (425 "I relate," 178 "hmm") brings up the Emperor, and it is the best short explanation of Yasukuni on the page. Its argument: mourning the war dead and paying respects at Yasukuni — one specific religious institution — are two different acts. Emperor Hirohito visited eight times after the war, stopped once the war criminals were enshrined, and the present imperial family has kept that restraint: not out of disrespect for the dead, but so that the symbol of the nation does not endorse one particular reading of history. Consider what that means: the shrine at the center of this argument is one that Japan's own emperors no longer enter — and the country is divided over whether its prime minister should.

Did the parking-lot compromise itself win anyone over, then? It did not. One comment (148 "I relate," 65 "hmm") points out that the word yōhai has its own history: during the war, subjects were made to bow toward the Imperial Palace from wherever in the empire they stood. Using that loaded word for a prayer performed ten minutes' walk from the actual gate, the commenter writes, shows a startling lack of judgment. Another (406 against 118): "from a helicopter, from a parking lot... half-hearted as performances go." Across the 163 comments that discuss the parking-lot prayer itself, the totals come to 2,569 "I relate" against 2,780 "hmm" — the only large group of comments in this thread where disagreement outweighs agreement. The gesture designed to anger neither side satisfied neither side.

Now the most telling part of the page. Here is the strongest comment defending the Prime Minister, followed by the strongest comment attacking her.

The first comment defends her: disappointed, but the gesture was worth something. Its votes: 487 "I relate" against 625 "hmm." More readers rejected it than agreed with it.

The second comment attacks her: she raised the expectation and betrayed it. Its votes: 165 "I relate" against 508 "hmm." Also rejected.

They are not alone. "Choose A or choose B, a prime minister gets attacked either way — this was fine": 298 against 346. "So she turns out the same as every PM before her; a hard wheel to steer, I take my hat off": 247 against 431. "A Shinto prayer performed on official duty violates the constitutional separation of religion and state": 123 against 297. Sympathy, accusation, resignation, constitutional law — the more clearly a comment picked a side, the more disagreement it collected.

What I make of it

First, in this thread, every stated opinion drew fire. One comment in three received more disagreement than agreement — the highest share in this site's seventeen threads. Remember, this is the country whose comment sections agreed 98 percent about a licence fee, and about 90 percent in praise of a flood map. In my ledger, Japanese readers have split down the middle exactly twice — over the atomic bombings earlier this month, and over Yasukuni now. Both times, the subject was the war, in August. Eighty-one years on, these are the only questions on which this country still has no single answer.

Second, the comments that did win support share one feature: they take no position on the shrine. First place looks for another door — Chidorigafuchi (3,753). Second place is a family memory: uncles who came back from the war and never spoke of it, and a household that still carries offerings to the temple's war memorial every year (3,014). Fourth place: "do not make the dead into ammunition for political argument" (1,205). On mourning itself, this thread does not divide at all. It divides only over the place called Yasukuni.

Third, "but she said she would go" splits the readers exactly in half — the 98 comments on the broken pledge total 1,626 in agreement against 1,583 in disagreement, the closest to a coin flip I have measured in a thread this size. Only the question "who stopped her?" wins broad support, at 1,776; each proposed answer — economic dependence on China, an atmosphere manufactured by the media, pressure from the coalition partner — remains contested. Everyone can feel that something stopped the Prime Minister. No one can get the thread to agree on its name.

Fourth, for the foreign reader. Yasukuni is not a dispute about whether to mourn the war dead — mourning alone starts no argument here, and Chidorigafuchi is the proof. It is a dispute about how the war itself is to be remembered, and 81 years have not settled it. The Prime Minister stopped in a parking lot, ten minutes' walk from the gate. Those ten minutes are the distance between today's Japan and its war.

I will keep counting, and I will keep watching.