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The View From Japan

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Title: The View From Japan


1
The Asia-Pacific War and Modern Memory
  • The View From Japan

2
  • At 2.45 on the morning of 6th August

3
Scale of the Devastation
  • Total Japanese War Dead 2,694,322 (140,00 in
    Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki from a total of
    393,367 civilian casualties)
  • Destroyed shipping 80 automobiles 36.8
    machine tools 34 structures 24.6
  • 66 Cities bombed destroying 40 of area and
    making 30 homeless

4
Memory
  • Remembering is never a quiet act of
    introspection or retrospection. It is a painful
    remembering, a putting together of the
    dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of
    the present. Homi K Bhaba Interrogating Identity.

5
Collective Memory
  • The act of gathering bits and pieces of the past,
    and joining them together in public. . . . What
    they create is not a cluster of individual
    memories the whole is greater than the sum of
    the parts. Collective memory is constructed
    through the action of groups and individuals in
    the light of day. When people enter the
    public domain, and comment about the past - their
    own personal past, their family past, their
    national past, and so on - they bring with them
    the images and gestures derived from their
    broader social experience. When people come
    together to remember, they enter a domain beyond
    that of individual memory. (Winter and Sivan)

6
Mugonkan Voiceless Museum
Founded 1997 in Ueda, Nagano. Dedicated to
young artists who died during or shortly after
the war.
7
The Occupation and the manipulation of Japanese
historical consciousness
8
A History of the Pacific War The Destruction of
Deceit and Militarism in Japan (Civil Information
and Education Section)
  • Listed Japans war crimes and attacked the
    concealment of the truth by successive Japanese
    wartime governments.
  • Emphasised the crimes resulting from Japanese
    militarism, including those committed during the
    so-called Rape of Nanking, but also portrayed
    Hirohito as working for peace as the leader of a
    moderate faction.
  • Placed the blame for the war on a handful of
    military cliques and depicted the Japanese
    people as deluded victims and the emperor as
    having been deceived by the military.

9
Matters Concerning War Responsibility and Other
Issues (Shidehara Cabinet)
  • The empire was compelled to embark on the Greater
    East Asia War in view of the surrounding
    circumstances.
  • Tojos attack on Pearl Harbor was an act of
    self-defence.
  • The emperor had always been a peace-minded
    constitutionalist who was in kept in ignorance of
    the actual details of the attack.
  • Completely ignored Japanese aggression in China
    after 1931 and in Southeast Asia in 1940.

10
Hiroshima and the Peace Movement
  • 1954 growth of strng pacifist movement centred on
    Hiroshima.
  • Stories of the hibakusha became heard.
  • Lucky Dragon incident causes concern about
    nuclear testing
  • Japanese popular culture Godzilla and Barefoot
    Gen
  • No to revision of Clause 9

11
Honda Katsuichi and the Ghosts of Nanking
  • 1971 journalist Honda Katsuichi serialised
    reports about atrocities committed in Nanking.
  • Caused reverberations in Japan

12
Textbook flap Ienaga Saburo
  • 1965-1970 Japanese Historian Ienaga Saburo
    campaigned in the courts for the truth to be
    told about the war.
  • 2000 Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

13
In summer 1982 the Chinese and South Korean
governments complained to the Japanese government
that the Monbusho was attempting to play down the
brutal behaviour of Japanese troops during the
war by omitting details or softening the
language..
14
Apology?
  • 26 August 1982 the Chief Cabinet Secretary
    Miyazawa in a unified government statement
    referred to past joint statements signed with
    Korea and China expressing Japans contrition and
    deep regret for the suffering inflicted on the
    Chinese and Korean people.
  • Stated that the Japanese government will pay
    full heed to the criticism in promoting
    friendship and good will with neighbouring
    countries, and will undertake on its own
    responsibility to make the necessary amendments.

15
Japanese Prime Ministers and the Yasukuni Shrine
(Nakasone and Koizumi)
16
Fujioka Nobukatsu and the Association for
Advancement of Liberal View of History
  • History is not just a chronological sequencing
    of events, but the story of a people or peoples,
    from their origins, their adventures, their
    successes and failures. This is a site for
    Japan's modern history, a period which some say
    begins in the 16th century.
  • http//www.jiyuu-shikan.org/e/index.html

17
Fujioka Nobukatsu
18
Whats in a name?
  • Announcement "Jiyuu-shugi-shikan Kenkyuu-kai"'s
    English name has been changed to Association for
    Advancement of Unbiased View of History from
    Association for Advancement of Liberal View of
    History. The word "Jiyuu" can denote a number of
    meanings, and it has been pointed out to us that
    what we wish to express by 'jiyuu' is better
    expressed in the English word 'unbiased', rather
    than 'liberal'.

19
Nanking Massacre
20
Pierre Vidal Naquet on replacing the unbearable
truth with a reassuring lie.
  • the use of pseudo-technical arguments to
    demonstrate the physical impossibility of
    atrocities.
  • seizing upon one or two examples of
    propagandistic exaggeration on the part of the
    victims and then through wild extrapolation draw
    the conclusion that entire atrocity is a
    fabrication.
  • linking the atrocity to the ideological causes of
    those who identify with the victims.

21
Conclusion Lieux de memoire (Pierre Nora)
  • Memory is always suspect in the eyes of history,
    whose true mission is to demolish it, to repress
    it.
  • Historicised memory comes to us from without.
    Because it is no longer a social practice, we
    internalize it as an individual constraint.
  • The transition from memory to history requires
    every social group to redefine its identity by
    dredging up the past.
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