Yasukuni Shrine in the context of "Second Sino-Japanese War"

Chiyoda (Japanese: 千代田区, Hepburn: Chiyoda-ku; IPA: [tɕijoda] ), a.k.a. Chiyoda City in English, is a special ward of Tokyo, Japan. Located in the heart of Tokyo's 23 special wards, Chiyoda consists of the Imperial Palace and a surrounding radius of about a kilometer (1000 yards), and is known as the political and financial center of Japan. As of October 2020, the ward has a population of 66,680, and a population density of 5,709 people per km (14,786 per sq. mi.), making it by far the least populated of the special wards. The residential part of Chiyoda is at the heart of Yamanote, Tokyo's traditional upper-class residential area, with Banchō, Kōjimachi, and Kioichō considered the most exclusive neighbourhoods in the entire city. The total area is 11.66 km (4½ sq. mi.), of which the Imperial Palace, Hibiya Park, National Museum of Modern Art, and Yasukuni Shrine take up approximately 2.6 km (1 sq. mi.), or 22%.

Chiyoda is known as the economic center of Japan; the districts of Otemachi, Marunouchi and Yurakucho east of the palace (an area colloquially known as "Daimaruyu") house the headquarters of 19 Fortune 500 companies, is the source of roughly 10% of the combined revenue of all Japanese companies, and produced the equivalent of around a quarter of the country's GDP in 2017. With a day population of around 850,000, its day/night population ratio is by far the highest of all municipalities in Japan. Tokyo Station, Tokyo's main inter-city rail terminal and the busiest train station in Japan in terms of scheduled trains, is also located in Chiyoda.

Yasuhiro Nakasone (中曽根 康弘, Nakasone Yasuhiro; 27 May 1918 – 29 November 2019) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1982 to 1987. His political term was best known for pushing through the privatization of state-owned companies and pursuing a hawkish and pro-United States foreign policy.

Born in Gunma Prefecture, Nakasone graduated from Tokyo Imperial University and served in the imperial navy during the Pacific War. After the war, he entered the National Diet in 1947 and rose through the ranks of the Liberal Democratic Party, serving as chief of the Defense Agency from 1970 to 1971 under Eisaku Satō, international trade and industry minister from 1972 to 1974 under Kakuei Tanaka, and administration minister from 1980 to 1982 under Zenkō Suzuki. As prime minister, he passed large defense budgets and controversially visited the Yasukuni Shrine. A conservative contemporary of U.S. president Ronald Reagan, Nakasone privatized the Japanese National Railways and telephone systems, and favored closer ties with the U.S., once calling Japan an "unsinkable aircraft carrier". After leaving office in 1987, he was implicated in the Recruit scandal, causing the influence of his LDP faction to wane before he retired from the Diet in 2004.

Kudankita (九段北) is a district of Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan, consisting of four chōme. It was a part of the former ward of Kōjimachi. As of March 1, 2007, its population is 1,404. Kudankita is a luxury and prestigious residential and business zone.

The Yasukuni Shrine is situated near the center of the district.

A war memorial is a building, monument, statue, or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or (predominating in modern times) to commemorate those who died or were injured in a war.

Junichiro Koizumi (/kɔɪˈzuːmi/ koy-ZOO-mee; 小泉 純一郎, Koizumi Jun'ichirō [ko.iꜜzɯmi (d)ʑɯɰ̃.iꜜtɕiɾoː]; born 8 January 1942) is a Japanese retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009. He is the sixth-longest serving Prime Minister in Japanese history.

Widely seen as a maverick leader of the LDP upon his election to the position in 2001, Koizumi became known as a neoliberal economic reformer, focusing on reducing Japan's government debt and the privatisation of its postal service. In the 2005 election, Koizumi led the LDP to win one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern Japanese history. Koizumi also attracted international attention through his deployment of the Japan Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, and through his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine that fueled diplomatic tensions with neighbouring China and South Korea. Koizumi resigned as prime minister in 2006.

State Shintō (国家神道 or 國家神道, Kokka Shintō) was Imperial Japan's ideological use of the Japanese folk religion and traditions of Shinto. The state exercised control of shrine finances and training regimes for priests to strongly encourage Shinto practices that emphasized the Emperor as a divine being.

The State Shinto ideology emerged at the start of the Meiji era, after government officials defined freedom of religion within the Meiji Constitution. Imperial scholars believed Shinto reflected the historical fact of the Emperor's divine origins rather than a religious belief, and argued that it should enjoy a privileged relationship with the Japanese state. The government argued that Shinto was a non-religious moral tradition and patriotic practice, to give the impression that they supported religious freedom. Though early Meiji-era attempts to unite Shinto and the state failed, this non-religious concept of ideological Shinto was incorporated into state bureaucracy. Shrines were defined as patriotic, not religious, institutions, which served state purposes such as honoring the war dead; this is known as Secular Shrine Theory.

The Nanbu clan (南部氏, Nanbu-shi) was a Japanese samurai clan who ruled most of northeastern Honshū in the Tōhoku region of Japan for over 700 years, from the Kamakura period through the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The Nanbu claimed descent from the Seiwa Genji of Kai Province and were thus related to the Takeda clan. The clan moved its seat from Kai to Mutsu Province in the early Muromachi period, and were confirmed as daimyō of Morioka Domain under the Edo-period Tokugawa shogunate. The domain was in constant conflict with neighboring Hirosaki Domain, whose ruling Tsugaru clan were once Nanbu retainers.

During the Boshin War of 1868–69, the Nanbu clan fought on the side of the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei, supporting the Tokugawa regime. After the Meiji Restoration, the Nanbu clan had much of its land confiscated, and in 1871, the heads of its branches were relieved of office. In the Meiji period, the former daimyō became part of the kazoku peerage, with Nanbu Toshiyuki receiving the title of hakushaku (count). The main Nanbu line survives to the present day; Toshiaki Nanbu served as the chief priest of Yasukuni Shrine.