Visitors holds white doves, dozens of which are set free as a symbol of peace at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan. very year on August 15, the day Japan officially surrendered in WWII, tens of thousands of Japanese visit the controversial shrine to pay their respects to the 2.46 million war dead enshrined there, the majority of which are soldiers and others killed in WWII and including 14 Class A convicted war criminals, such as Japan's war-time prime minister Hideki Tojo. Each year speculation escalates as to whether the country's political leaders will visit the shrine, the last to do so being Junichiro Koizumi in 2005. Nationalism in Japan is reportedly on the rise, while sentiment against the nation by countries that suffered from Japan's wartime brutality, such as China, has been further aggravated by Japan's insistence on glossing over its wartime atrocities in school text books...Photographer:Robert Gilhooly..
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