The Japanese entertainment franchise Pokémon issued a formal apology on Friday after “Chinese netizens” launched an outrage campaign against it over an unofficial event allegedly scheduled to take place at the Yasukuni Shrine, a Japanese site that honors, among others, World War II war criminals.
While coverage of the controversy claims that unaffiliated “Chinese netizens” were behind the condemnations of Pokémon — an international video game, television, and film sensation centered around collecting fictional animals — most major coverage of the incident has surfaced in the Global Times and the People’s Daily, Chinese government propaganda newspapers. The Times noted repeatedly in its coverage that the companies responsible for the Pokémon brand — Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and Game Freak — were not responsible for the alleged Yasukuni Shrine event, though the event briefly appeared on the official Pokémon website. The Global Times also effusively praised alleged Communist Party-affiliated “patriots” for publicly condemning Pokémon.
The Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto house of worship established in 1869 to honor Japan’s fallen in war. Given its age, many of the 2.5 million people enshrined there as spirits are unrelated to World War II, but the shrine honors Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and 13 other World War II figures classified as war criminals. The most immediate victims of these war crimes, China and South Korea, regularly object to Japanese political figures and others sending offerings to honor the spirits of the war criminals, urging the Japanese to repent for their crimes. Defenders of the shrine argue that only a portion of those honored there are war criminals and that it is a legitimate religious site.
The event allegedly taking place at the shrine was a Pokémon Trading Card Game event reportedly posted on the official Pokémon website by an individual not employed by the brand or its parent companies.
“Although the official organizer of the event was not Pokémon, and the event page was quickly taken down amid questioning from both Chinese and foreign netizens, neither Pokémon nor its parent company, Nintendo, has so far offered any explanation,” the Global Times reported before the publication of the official apology.
The Times declared the shrine a “symbol of Japanese militarism,” now promoted through Pikachu and his fellow Nintendo personalities.
“Any entertainment or leisure activities held at such a site constitute an open affront to historical truth, and staging events aimed at children there is even more egregious,” the Chinese outlet declared. “Now, people are compelled to ask: As a game company with global influence, what values is Pokémon actually projecting to the world?”
“Commercial success in no way justifies hurting the feelings of the Chinese people,” the Communist Party publication concluded, demanding an apology.
The Seoul Economic Daily reported on Friday that Chinese regime-approved social media had flooded with angry posts condemning Pokémon after knowledge of the Yasukuni Shrine event spread.
“As the post spread rapidly, the hashtag ‘#PokémonYasukuniShrine’ recorded nearly 20 million views on Weibo,” the newspaper observed. “Chinese users responded with outrage, posting comments such as, ‘This ignores historical truth’ and ‘They’re trying to glorify militarism.’”
The apology came on Friday.
“The event search page on our Pokémon Card Game Trainers website contained information about events scheduled to be held at Yasukuni Shrine,” the company admitted in a corporate statement. “The website in question operates a system that posts information about events hosted by individuals certified in the Pokémon card game. However, this time, even though it was an event that should not have been held, it was mistakenly listed due to lack of confirmation.”
“We sincerely apologize for the mixed reactions and opinions that have resulted from this publication,” the statement continued. “In order to prevent a similar situation from happening again in the future, we will fundamentally review and strengthen our event information checking system and approval process to prevent it from happening again.”
Pokémon corporate defended itself by noting that it immediately removed the event listing after it was brought to their attention.
The Yasukuni Shrine has been the source of controversy for Pokémon on multiple occasions in the past. In 2019, Creatures, Inc., one of the companies with a stake in the brand, published photos on social media of its employees happily touring the Yasukuni Shrine, prompting widespread outrage in China and South Korea.
“We are worshiping at the Yasukuni Shrine to celebrate the year’s first day of work,” the caption on the photos read.
The company ultimately deleted the photo post, which was uploaded to Twitter at the time, but the Global Times was quick to recall the incident on Friday.
Prior to that, the debut of the mobile phone game Pokémon Go unleashed a turf war between Japanese users and Chinese users masking their location to control the Shrine, which appeared as a “Pokémon Gym” in the original version of the game. Pokémon gyms in the game are stations where players, all assigned to one of three teams upon opening an account, battle other teams for control of the spot. Control offered access to game resources and experience points to strengthen the player’s gaming ability. According to reports from 2016, the Yasukuni “gym” was fraught with incessant fighting between locals and users with “Chinese-sounding nicknames” such as “Long Live China!!!!” attempting to take over the shrine in the game and place pro-Chinese messages on it.
The Chinese government regularly attempts to marginalize or silence entertainment personalities and brands that it considers to run afoul of Communist Party dogma. While the Yasukuni Shrine often comes up as a point of contention — the Chinese government has censored Canadian singer Justin Bieber for years after a visit in 2014 that he apologized for — the perceived slights come in a large number of varieties. Several companies have been pressured to apologize after recognizing Taiwan as a country or listing it as a separate location from China on their websites.
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