A stone's throw away from Yasukuni Shrine, at the heart of Japan's tense ties with its neighbors, two low-key museums are offering an alternative vision of how ordinsary Japanese suffered in World War II.
As critics at home and abroad deride Yasukuni Shrine as a symbol of Japan's past militarism, a growing number of Japanese -- particularly school groups -- are instead experiencing history at less conspicuous sites.
For many of them, the more subtle approach of the National Showa Memorial Museum, or Showa-kan, and the Shoei-kan museums, both of which are funded by the government, are powerful eye-openers.
"As I was born in the 1990s, the reality of the past war never came into my heart until I went to the museum. It was the first time I was moved by the facts of war," 14-year-old schoolboy Ryota Abe said of his visit to Showa-kan.
"I can't bear the thought of the food shortages people suffered at the time," he said.
His classmate Akie Watanabe said the museum for the first time motivated her to learn about the dark period in Japan's history.
"For me, the war which ended 60 years ago had been just an event written in history textbooks," she said.
Yasukuni honors 2.5 million war dead from 11 Japanese wars -- and, controversially, 14 top war criminals from World War II.
Showa-kan, by contrast, focuses not just on soldiers but on the homefront, showing the hardships endured by ordinary people in Japan, although not of countries that suffered under Tokyo's rule.
"The government decided to avoid judging the war in a historical context as such controversy doesn't match the mission of national museums," said Tsuyuki Fujii, an official at the ministry of health, labor and welfare which runs the museums.
Through pictures, film footage and humble artifacts of daily life, Showa-kan explains how Japan's then militarist government imposed a draft, censored mail and publications and encouraged spying among its own citizens to keep tight control.
It also shows the painful food shortages as the war dragged on, along with photographs of children who were evacuated to the countryside as Tokyo was reduced to ashes by US firebombing.
The second museum, which opened on March 21, details the suffering of soldiers who were injured in battle and their families.
Shoei-kan -- which means to hand down from generation to generation -- was set up after lobbying by the 57,000-strong Japanese Disabled Veterans Association.
"This is different from the museum in Yasukuni. Here I can stay as long as I want and feel inner peace," said Yoshinobu Fujita, a 60-year-old former public servant who visited the Showa-kan.
"The museum in Yasu-kuni seems to be propaganda for militarism. Here what you see is the suffering of ordinary people during and after the war," he said.
Paradoxically, Showa-kan was opened in 1999 with the blessing of the Japan War-Bereaved Association.
The group, which carries influence within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has cheered on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual pilgrimage to Yasukuni.
Koizumi's repeated visits have infuriated China and South Korea, which have cut off all one-on-one talks with the premier.
The Supreme Court sided with Koizumi on June 23 in its first ruling on the controversy, rejecting a suit by critics who sought damages for mental anguish over his pilgrimage.
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