Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies

2. Interrupted Memories: The Debate over Wartime Memory in Northeast Asia

45 Chapter 2 Interrupted Memories The Debate over Wartime Memory in Northeast Asia Daniel Sneider There are two obstacles to understanding how historical memory about the wartime period has been formed in Northeast Asia. The first is the existence of persistent national myths about war memory—myths created within those nations and perceptions formed from the outside and entrenched through the media and popular culture. The second obstacle is the lack of comparative context. The study of historical memory, until recently, has been focused almost entirely on Japan, without comparison to other principal actors in Asia such as China and Korea or to the United States. And while there has been some exploration of the comparison between Japan and Germany, it has been limited. The existence of distinct historical memories is a central obstacle to the ability of Asian nations to finally reconcile their still profound tensions over the wartime past. Questions about what happened in the past touch upon the most sensitive issues of national identity, the formation of historical memories, and national myths that play a powerful role to this day. Whether it be Japanese atrocities in China or the US decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, no nation is immune to the charge that it has formed a less-than-complete view of the past. All share a reluctance to fully confront the complexity of their own past actions and blame others for their historical fates.1 The existence of multiple and contending memories is hardly an issue for scholars alone. That reality continues to shape current international relations in Northeast Asia, even acting as a source of tension and conflict, Daniel Sneider 46 as Gilbert Rozman forcefully argues elsewhere in this volume. Historical issues remain central to the formation of national identity in all the countries that were principal participants in war in Asia. Narratives about the wartime period are fashioned to serve the needs of regime legitimacy in China, Korea, and Japan, Rozman writes. As a result, as Thomas Berger writes in this volume, it is difficult to be sanguine about the prospect that Asia may be able to achieve even the limited progress toward reconciliation that has been achieved in Europe. Japan remains, as it should, the focus of the discussion of wartime memory in Asia. The central question that has concerned scholars, the media, and, in recent decades, governments has been whether Japan as a nation-state and the Japanese as a people have sufficiently acknowledged, and demonstrated contrition for, their wartime aggression and the war crimes committed during the war. The common perception is that the Japanese see themselves as victims of the war, rather than the perpetrators of aggression. Even worse, Japan tolerates a significant body of opinion, embraced by its political leaders, media, and even scholars, that continues to deny responsibility for aggression and for wartime acts of brutality and criminality. In this view, Japan contrasts unfavorably with its wartime ally Germany, which has confronted its wartime responsibility and is legally and morally intolerant of the public expression of denial of its criminality. This perception of Japan is, in certain respects, undeniable, but it is also simplistic. Japanese war memory is heavily contested ground within the country and has been so since the first days after Japan’s surrender. There are competing narratives regarding the war within Japan—a conservative, or revisionist, narrative that does indeed include those who deny Japan’s aggressive intent and defend its wartime record; a progressive narrative that embraces Japan’s responsibility as the aggressor in both the Asian and Pacific theaters of the war, as well its record of war crimes; and a pacifist narrative that sees war itself as crime, holding both Japanese militarism and the Allied invaders responsible for the destruction wrought by the war. What all three narratives do share is a sense of Japan’s victimization. The massive destruction visited upon the Japanese home islands from American air attacks, culminating in the atomic bombings, is seared into the national memory. But the narratives disagree quite passionately about who is responsible for the destruction of the nation. The widespread perception of Japan as a nation in denial is based largely on the belief that the conservative narrative represents the predom- Wartime Memory in Northeast Asia 47 inant war memory. Given the half century of near monopoly of political power by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), that perception...