The History Problem: The Politics of War Commemoration in East Asia by Hiro Saito (review)

The intractable history problem (rekishi mondai) in East Asia seems to get ever more complicated as the Asia-Pacific War slips further into the past. With each unsuccessful attempt at “finally resolving” issues of historical understanding, promoting reconciliation, and forging forward-looking relations among Japan, China, and South Korea, the prospects for an end to the disputes seem to dim. The History Problem, by Hiro Saito of Singapore Management University, is a timely and well-written book that offers both a historical overview of the topic and a proposal for extricating the region from the deadlock.

Following an introduction that establishes the author’s theoretical framework, the remainder of the book divides into three parts. Chapters 1 to 4 give a chronological overview of the development of the history problem with a particular focus on party politics in Japan. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the legacy of the Tokyo Trial and the role of historians in the history problem. Finally, the concluding chapter presents Saito’s concrete proposals for resolution.

Saito’s theoretical framework utilizes “field theory,” and he conceptualizes the history problem as “a political field wherein relevant actors compete over the legitimate commemoration of the Asia-Pacific War” (p. 10). The book focuses on party politics in Japan, meaning that popular commemorations of the war away from government circles are not discussed unless they have a direct impact on government policy. Within this political field, responses to the war and colonialism are categorized in two main ways: nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Nationalism is unapologetic and prioritizes the interests and positions of the nation, while cosmopolitanism is self-reflective and uses a values-based perspective on history to forge common commemorations across national borders. While some people are exclusively nationalist or cosmopolitan, most actors combine the logics to a degree (p. 10); to me this “nationalism–cosmopolitanism” spectrum feels close to the “conservative–liberal” spectrum of political thought as presented by scholars such as George Lakoff. In concrete terms, Saito’s analysis centers on shifting degrees of nationalism and cosmopolitanism within three “dimensions” of Japanese official commemoration at the national level: “speech and action” by the prime minister and senior government officials, compensation policy, and education (pp. 12–13).

This theoretical framework offers a neat and useful approach that complements the growing number of studies on Japanese responses to the war. It is now received wisdom that there exists a wide range of views regarding Japan’s wars of the 1930s and 1940s. My own research used just war theory to place memories on a spectrum of “nationalist–conservative–progressive-leaning–progressive” views.¹ Whereas I prioritized personal/collective memories, their cultural representation, and their effects on Japan’s official narrative, Saito bypasses the social/cultural sphere to focus on the resulting political positions. I feel that our approaches, while quite different, are complementary, and while reading the book I enjoyed revisiting much of my own past research from a new vantage point.

In terms of its position within the literature, I see Saito’s work as being like a linchpin that connects the work of scholars focusing on domestic cultural and social dimensions in Japan (including Yoshikuni Igarashi, Franziska Seraphim, Kamila Szczepanska, and Akiko Hashimoto) with that of others dealing more with the international relations context (such as Jane Yamazaki, Jennifer Lind, and Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel Sneider) or with particular aspects of the history problem, such as the debates surrounding Yasukuni Shrine (John Breen and Akiko Takenaka) or textbooks (Caroline Rose, Sven Saaler, Julian Dierkes, and Yoshiko Nozaki). The contributions of all these scholars overlap with Saito’s analysis of the Japanese government’s official stance on war history and responsibility. Saito’s approach, however, reduces the history problem to its barest party-political bones, leaving most domestic cultural and social contestation within the proverbial “black box” of the nation unless those debates impact on national politics. The analysis, therefore, is...