Session Abstract

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, memories of World War II were everywhere in the social and political life of Japan, from TV programs to education curricula, and from arts and literature to political debates. Such widely shared and available memories of war, however, have unique characteristics that are quite distinct from individuals’ memories; while a personal memory of an event is normally most vivid and forceful immediately following the event, fading away as time passes, public memories of war follow a different pattern. They remained fluid and indefinite immediately after the war, but are recalled, selected, or reconstructed far more clearly decades, or even more than half a century, later. How does this happen? What political factors exist behind retaining and forgetting memories of war?

This panel addresses these questions through examining three powerful sites of meaning-making, where stories intended to make sense of the war emerged and collided: the arts, museum projects, and election campaigns. Masuda will examine the years circa 1950, the time of the Korean War, when waves of memories of war emerged suddenly. Looking into the first few sets of elections campaigns following the American occupation, the paper traces how dominant versions of public war memories emerged, and why. Hoaglund will introduce Japanese memories of war and organized resistance to the American military presence in Japan, which culminated in a national democratic uprising in 1960. Much as historians work with texts and oral histories to assert their interpretations, she, as a filmmaker, will address the topic through iconic oil paintings, photographs, and film clips, arguing that such art forms provide a portal into the subjective experience of millions of Japanese, representing their struggles to make sense of their lives. Pennington will explore contemporary reconstructions of memories of war through investigating a museum established in Tokyo in 2006 that focuses on experiences of injured servicemen, who have largely been marginalized in narratives of war. Why have they been excluded from dominant discourses? Why have they come to light so suddenly? The paper traces the establishment of this memory space, examining the collusion between official and private actors in situating individuals in public war memories.

Taken together, these three panelists offer a view of memory and politics in postwar and contemporary Japan. While looking at different sites and means—art and film, a museum project, and election campaigns—all three explore Japanese efforts to make sense of themselves and their national identity through choosing, recalling, reconstructing, or forgetting memories of World War II. Furthermore, each panelist addresses issues of collision and collusion between personal and public narratives of war, examining how individual and collective memories affect each other. Also, taking advantage of the distinctive approaches of each panelist, we would like to discuss how different approaches affect the ways we look at past events. Commenting on this panel will be Franziska Seraphim, a leading scholar in memory studies, who has been working on the social politics of war memories in postwar Japan.