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History Compass 11/12 (2013): 10471058, 10.1111/hic3.12108 War and Peace: War Memories and Museums in Japan Matthew Allen 1 * and Rumi Sakamoto 2 1 Cairns Institute, James Cook University 2 Asian Studies, University of Auckland Abstract How is war remembered in public places in Japan? The high prole peacemuseums of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Yushukan, the museum that is attached to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, have dominated both the English and Japanese language literature about sites of remembrance since the 1990s. The thrust of much of the literature emphasises the divide between Japans recognition of its place as a victim of atomic bombing in war, and its recognition or denial of its aggression in East and Southeast Asia. In the 21st century, other less well-known public institutions in Japan (Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots, Shokeikan Museum for Wounded Soldiers, Showakan, Okinawa Prefectural Peace Park and Memorial Museum, and Himeyuri Memorial and Museum) have produced different perspectives of Japans wartime history. By briey examining these lesser-known museums, we demonstrate how the concept of peacehas been recast in various ways to provide legitimating contexts in which to rehabilitate Japanese peoples experiences during the war. This research suggests that beyond the binary of victim-victimiseranalyses of Japanese war memory there is room for research in this eld that recognises and engages the complexity of how Japans controversial wartime past is presented in the Japanese public domain. Introduction The Museum of the Pacic War, Americas only museum of the Pacic War, is located in Fredericksburg, Texas, the birthplace of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the former Commander in Chief of the US Pacic Fleet. Its motto is: We inspire our youth by honouring our heroes. Such views are consonant with many museums of war, in many nations. Built into the process of honouring heroes is the importance of memory, and of not repeating the same mistakes1 : In Japan, such celebration of Japanese war heroesis largely proscribed. Losing a regime-changing war is a signicant factor in determining how to describe the actions of those who died in Japans 20th century conicts. Yet, this does not stop people from remembering; currently in Japan there are over 80 museums of Japans 20th century wars. 2 In most, the message is that we must never let this happen again. 3 As a subeld of public memory studies, Japanese war memory has attracted substantial scholarly attention since the mid-1990s. 4 The study of public memory sites such as history museums and war memorials has been central in this, with one recent trend being a shift away from examining ofcial, dominant or national collective memory-making towards recognising smaller-scale sites of memory and competing war memories. 5 Much of the current scholarship views Japans sites of memory in terms of either peacemuseums or warand/or nationalisticmuseums. 6 This reects a larger concern over Japans failure to acknowledge its war responsibilitythat is, scholars often study museums and memorials primarily from the perspective of whether they accept or deny Japans war atrocities and responsibility. 7 While certainly valid and useful, this dichotomy does not fully engage the diversity and complexity of war memory in contemporary Japan. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Page 1: War and Peace: War Memories and Museums in Japan

History Compass 11/12 (2013): 1047–1058, 10.1111/hic3.12108

War and Peace: War Memories and Museums in Japan

Matthew Allen1* and Rumi Sakamoto21Cairns Institute, James Cook University2Asian Studies, University of Auckland

AbstractHow is war remembered in public places in Japan? The high profile ‘peace’ museums of Hiroshimaand Nagasaki, and Yushukan, the museum that is attached to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, havedominated both the English and Japanese language literature about sites of remembrance since the1990s. The thrust of much of the literature emphasises the divide between Japan’s recognition of itsplace as a victim of atomic bombing in war, and its recognition or denial of its aggression in Eastand Southeast Asia. In the 21st century, other less well-known public institutions in Japan (ChiranPeace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots, Shokeikan Museum for Wounded Soldiers, Showakan, OkinawaPrefectural Peace Park and Memorial Museum, and Himeyuri Memorial and Museum) haveproduced different perspectives of Japan’s wartime history. By briefly examining these lesser-knownmuseums, we demonstrate how the concept of ‘peace’ has been recast in various ways to providelegitimating contexts in which to rehabilitate Japanese people’s experiences during the war. Thisresearch suggests that beyond the binary of ‘victim-victimiser’ analyses of Japanese war memory thereis room for research in this field that recognises and engages the complexity of how Japan’scontroversial wartime past is presented in the Japanese public domain.

Introduction

The Museum of the Pacific War, America’s only museum of the Pacific War, is located inFredericksburg, Texas, the birthplace of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the former Commanderin Chief of the US Pacific Fleet. Its motto is: ‘We inspire our youth by honouring ourheroes’. Such views are consonant with many museums of war, in many nations. Built intothe process of honouring heroes is the importance of memory, and of not repeating the same‘mistakes’1: In Japan, such celebration of Japanese war ‘heroes’ is largely proscribed. Losing aregime-changing war is a significant factor in determining how to describe the actions ofthose who died in Japan’s 20th century conflicts. Yet, this does not stop people fromremembering; currently in Japan there are over 80 museums of Japan’s 20th century wars.2

In most, the message is that ‘we must never let this happen again’.3

As a subfield of public memory studies, Japanese war memory has attracted substantialscholarly attention since the mid-1990s.4 The study of public memory sites such as historymuseums and war memorials has been central in this, with one recent trend being a shiftaway from examining official, dominant or national collective memory-making towardsrecognising smaller-scale sites of memory and competing war memories.5 Much of thecurrent scholarship views Japan’s sites of memory in terms of either ‘peace’ museums or‘war’ and/or ‘nationalistic’ museums.6 This reflects a larger concern over Japan’s failure toacknowledge its war responsibility–that is, scholars often study museums and memorialsprimarily from the perspective of whether they accept or deny Japan’s war atrocities andresponsibility.7 While certainly valid and useful, this dichotomy does not fully engage thediversity and complexity of war memory in contemporary Japan.

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By examining how the concept of ‘peace’ is employed by six quite different sites ofremembrance and memory–Yushukan, Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots,Showakan, Shokeikan Museum for Wounded Soldiers, Okinawa Prefectural Peace ParkMemorial Museum, and the Himeyuri Memorial and Museum–this paper seeks to add anew dimension to the study of Japan’s war memories. We demonstrate that in theseinstitutions today, peace is used to frame events of the Pacific War, allowing people’s roles inthese events to be acknowledged publicly and enabling these experiences to be rehabilitatedin the public domain. Such approaches, that emphasise the importance of learning from our‘suffering’ (rouku), simultaneously emphasise the importance of peace in the world. Thecorollary of this is that we take the position that the museums we assess are not simply museumsof either ‘peace’ or ‘war/nationalism’; in fact they are museums of both war and peace.The public places of war memory in Japan we have identified for this paper represent a

range of well-known and lesser-known sites, public and private, and popular and lesspopular. We have decided to exclude Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace parks and museums,because there has already been a very substantive body of research done on these sites.8

We have, however, used Yushukan as a point of departure, largely due to its high politicalprofile, and its extreme and often publicly critiqued approach to Japanese military history.

USING PEACE TO UNDERSTAND WAR

Yushukan stands within the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine, which houses all the spirits ofJapan’s military dead, its entrance is a gentle 2-minute walk from the main shrine. Managedby the Shinto religious organisation, it was originally created in 1882 as Japan’s first militarymuseum. In 1945, US occupation authorities closed it along with the shrine, and it reopenedin 1961 in a limited format. In 1986, the entire complex was reopened under the new nameof Yushukan, and in 2002, was refurbished and extended, following a number of criticisms ofits exhibits.9 The new Yushukan has subsequently looked to attract younger Japanese andmore international visitors.10

As the Yushukan catalogue states: ‘Yushukan is a museum that inherits the sincerity andrecords of the divinities enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine by displaying their historicallyimportant wills and relics’.11 The politics of Yasukuni then are inextricably linked withYushukan.12 And equally, the controversies associated with the interment of 2.5 million eirei(divine spirits of the war dead who gave their lives for Japan, including a number ofconvicted war criminals) have certainly not disappeared. The catalogue explains that ‘eacharticle displayed in the museum embodies . . . the sincerity of the enshrined divinities whowere devoted to building a peaceful nation’.13 The rhetoric of peace and the legitimatesacrifice of those represented in the museum are thus fundamental to Yushukan, though itsunvoiced subtext is that most of these divinities died in a war, which Japan lost.Faced with the conundrum of how to memorialise people’s sacrifice for a defeated nation

in a climate of imposed peace, Yushukan today remains something of an anachronism, and inmany ways is an oxymoron. Formally embracing peace, the museum celebrates the sacrificesmade by Japanese soldiers during war.14 It is not anti-war, but it is pro-peace.15 Seventy yearsafter the end of the war, the significance of Yushukan is challenged, as new generations ofJapanese are bewildered by the concept of Japan being at war with the US, given that muchof society is increasingly influenced by and influences global (and American) culture. Indeed,the museum is conscious of this issue, and has been directing its attention to producing betterquality, high technology displays, video and anime presentations, and special days forchildren and young people.16 These are to attempt to make the institution appear relevantto people’s lives as the museum struggles to maintain visitor numbers.

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The texts of the Greater East Asia War Exhibit present a Japan that was always willing tonegotiate with the West, always wanting to avoid war and direct confrontation, but beingincreasingly prepared for conflict as the untrustworthy and aggressive Western nations closedin on Japan. Throughout the Greater East Asia War section are the dual representativeframeworks that dominate the earlier parts of the exhibit; that is, the rationale to be at warwith the West, and the bravery and sacrifice with which the people of Japan fought this justwar. On top of this, the rhetoric of peace is applied–that is, that Japan wanted a peacefulresolution to the conflict, without a direct confrontation with the West, but that it wasunavoidable. The subtext here is that it was a just war, and that Japan was forced into awar it did not want.Given that the museum is a repository of memorabilia, letters, possessions, wills etc. of

servicemen and women who died for the state, and that Yushukan serves as a visualrepresentation of those who have become eirei (divine spirits), the sense of being engagedwith the individuals’ pasts dominates the exhibits. This is particularly so in the gallery ofletters, complete with portraits of the letter writers, written by those on duty in foreign landswhose letters to families, particularly their mothers, are graphic illustrations of the hardships(rouku) they suffered for the state. These artefacts are closely linked to the raison d’etre ofYushukan: people’s sacrifice for the good of the nation. Implicit in this idea is the conceptthat we must learn from the past, and appreciate the efforts these people have made to ensurethat our lives today are peaceful. This effectively sees the rehabilitation of the past throughthe rhetoric of peace in the present.

REMEMBERING KAMIKAZE

Over the final months of the Pacific War, Chiran airfield in Kagoshima on the southernisland of Kyushu became a base from which the kamikaze took off to attack the US Navyin Okinawa. To commemorate the kamikaze pilots, the town of Chiran opened the ChiranSpecial Attack Forces Memorabilia Hall in 1975 in a rest area in a local park. However, it wasnot large enough to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of visitors, nor theincreasing collection of memorabilia.17 As part of a state-sponsored regional revivalprogramme, Chiran town built the current museum between 1985 and 1987 under thenew name of ‘Peace Museum’, for a cost of 500 million yen. The museum is now managedby Minami-Kyushu Council.18

‘The peace museum has been built to commemorate (kamikaze) pilots and to expose thetragic loss of their lives so that we all might better understand the need for everlasting peaceand hopefully to ensure such tragedies are never repeated’.19 It commemorates the 1036pilots of the Tokkotai (Special Attack Corps) who died attempting to cause as much damageas possible to the US Navy in Japan’s final, desperate offensive in Okinawa between Marchand July 1945. The acts of violence themselves are largely overlooked; rather the narrativetakes a sympathetic view of the actors as individuals, removed from the context of why therewas war. It focuses on their humanity and their individuality, their challenges, their fears,their vulnerabilities and most of all their youth. While the narrative of how the need forkamikaze came about shares many similarities with Yushukan,20 the focus is primarily onthe actual events that took place at Chiran and on the battlefield. The futility of their actions,the lack of success of so many of their missions21 and the inevitability of defeat in the war isabsent from the narratives. Indeed, the exploitation of such young and innocent people todie in the service of the emperor is never questioned.This tragedy of the ‘fireflies’ or ‘cherry blossoms’ (the pilots who ‘fell from the heavens’) is

the theme around which the museum operates, and the admonition that ‘we must never let

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this happen again’ sits uncomfortably with the quasi hero worship that is so evidentthroughout the exhibits. From the A-shaped barracks in which the pilots spent their lastevenings in Chiran, to full-sized replicas of airplanes, and indeed recovered and rebuiltaircraft, photographs and memorabilia of the pilots, the museum covers a very select partof the Chiran kamikaze’s lives. The focus of the exhibits, though, is the letters that the pilotswrote to their families, and in particular the letters they wrote to their mothers. Similar to theexhibits in Yushukan, the exhibits in their sleek display cases draw visitors to them.22

Accompanying at least one photograph of the individual pilot, the memorabilia containedin each case supports the biography of the pilot, whose letter to family is transliterated intoreadable Japanese script.Arguably it is such messages that convince young Japanese that war is not a desirable thing,

and in this, there is a message of peace. But in the process of delivering a meaningful lesson inthe suffering caused by war, the lessons of the past are somewhat blurred through the subtextof the narrative, that of redemption, that encompasses the personal history of these youngmen. That is, the meta-narrative of the war remains mired in the conservative myopia thatdominates Yushukan, that of a ‘necessary sacrifice’, in the case of Chiran, to prolong anunwinnable war, and in doing so to save the lives of those on the mainland.23 The lessonof peace that emerges then is complex in its recognition that the bravery and sacrifice of thesemen has led to the Japan that ‘we are today’, and that these heroic forebears are not all thatdifferent to contemporary youth–their letters and wills confirm this. At the same time, thebrutality of war is almost entirely erased from the museum. Death is a constant theme, butthe manner of death, the violence of the experience, and the visceral pain of both the pilotsand the crews on US ships they attacked are removed from exhibits. Nostalgia, instead,dominates the experience of learning about kamikaze, and it’s an ambiguous nostalgia too.It is nostalgia for some of the old ways24 curiously separated from the experiences of warand the reasons for war.Perhaps, an even more significant omission is that these young men were trained by the

Japanese state to become suicide bombers–1036 of them. How then can this museum benamed a ‘peace museum?’ It celebrates the premature and futile deaths of over 1000 youngmen, living weapons of terror, in the name of imperial ambition. However, as one of themuseum guides said, ‘We need to teach visitors two main things: kokoro no kyōiku (educationof the spirit) and rekishi no kyōiku (education in history). We need to do the former becausepeople have forgotten their love for the country, and they have lost their respect for duty.The latter is because young people today have no education about the war’.25 LikeYushukan, the past experiences are rehabilitated in the context of the peaceful present.

REMEMBERING SUFFERING

An alternative to the above museums’ focus on sacrifice and heroism is found in two state-owned museums in Tokyo: Showakan and Shokeikan.26 They are museums of wartimesuffering, rather than of the war itself, reflecting the common Japanese perception that waritself was the enemy, and the Japanese were the victims.27 By focusing exclusively on the‘hardship and suffering’ (rouku) of Japanese people, they avoid the thorny issue of warresponsibility, but also maintain a clear distance from Yushukan-style patriotic war memory.Showakan was originally conceptualised as the first Japanese national war memorial.

Following a high profile dispute over its proposed content, however, it opened in 1999 witha new focus on the ‘life of citizens during and immediately after the war’, in particular,mothers and children.28 At a time of heated public debate over Japan’s wartime role asvictimiser, Showakan kept its distance from both the Japanese Right, which advocated the

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celebration of military sacrifice and glory,29 and the Left, which called for acknowledgementof Japan’s wartime atrocities,30 by removing any ‘evaluations of history’ from its exhibits.31 Itshighly visual and experiential displays tell stories thick with nostalgia of wartime lives at thehome front. However, they are devoid of soldiers, weapons or any historical background tothe war. It certainly deserves the criticism it has received that it ignores the victims of theJapanese military.Yet, while silence obliquely deflects the issue of war responsibility, Showakan’s focus on

people’s daily lives sets its war memories apart from those based on ‘heroism’ of self-sacrifice for the nation. It does not so much commemorate or memorialise as it tries to passon aspects of the past to the next generations. Its message of peace is a quiet one. Showakan’sobjective was not ‘peace education’ but ‘therapeutic effect’ for the generation of bereavedchildren.32 Unlike Yasukuni or Chiran, it does not tell visitors that suffering citizens providedthe foundation of today’s peace. Neither does it promote the image of national victimhoodthat Hiroshima symbolises, which in turn is equated with the message of world peace.33

Focusing on war’s devastating effect on everyday lives, it acknowledges the voluntarysacrifice for the nation, while the idea that citizens were victims of the military, andgovernment lingers in the background. In this context, peace is presented as the antithesisof human suffering.Shokeikan34 is a small museum housed in an office building near Yushukan and

Showakan. It was built by the government in 2006 as part of a special programme toacknowledge sick and wounded servicemen and attracts around 100,000 visitors a year.While Yasukuni focuses on the military dead, Chiran on kamikaze and Showakan oncivilians on the home front; Shokeikan highlights yet another group: wounded and sicksoldiers. It tells numerous utterly inglorious stories without redemption, the sort rarelyplaced under the spotlight in public discourses of Japan’s war memory. The exhibitionconsists of narrative and visual displays, memorabilia, soldiers’ testimonials, as well as vividdescriptions of soldiers’ horrible personal experiences such as a diorama of an amputationperformed without anaesthetics.While ‘hardship and suffering (rouku)’is absolutely central to its exhibits,35 in Shokeikan,

just like in the other museums, the causes of suffering go largely unmentioned. In fact, the‘basic principle’ behind the exhibitions is said to be to treat the war as ‘historical context’for the hardship and suffering of the wounded and sick, so ‘there will be no exhibition ofmaterials about individual historical events’.36 What makes Shokeikan unique is itsattempt to communicate the brutal reality of war from the perspective of the individualsoldiers who experienced the war and lived to tell the tales of inhumane, violent andpainful experiences, in contrast to the dead soldiers enshrined at Yasukuni, who are mute.Every story of pain and suffering seems visceral and personal, often accompanied withindividual names and personal histories. The singularity of each account of horror andpain refutes both the heroic stories of wartime bravery promoted by the Right-wingersand the abstract principle of ‘anti-war and peace’ promoted by the Left. Its firmcommitment to the register of the personal, bodily and psychological suffering resistsbeing subsumed into the national suffering.Shokeikan aims to ‘transmit messages of world peace’,37 and one of the exhibits–‘A

Corner for Messages of Peace’–consists of a display of extracts from the testimonials of thewounded and sick, as well as their family members. It is designed to communicate theirhardship and their wish that ‘this should never be repeated’ in their own words, withoutinterpretation or explanation. This approach reflects a simple optimism that learning abouttheir horrible plight is itself a ‘message of peace’; if we know how appalling the reality ofwar was/is, we would surely choose peace – there is no other option. This is a similar

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perspective to the principle behind postwar Japan’s ‘peace education’.38 Tell the story, showthe reality and trust the next generation. Thus, as with Showakan, peace is construed as theantithesis to suffering. In that, Shokeikan unequivocally says ‘no’ to the violence andsenselessness of war; it can be considered a ‘peace’ museum, despite its almost completesilence about Japan’s war responsibility.

OKINAWA AND WAR MEMORY

As we have seen in the above examples, the concept of peace is exploited mostly torehabilitate Japanese personal experiences at war. While Shokeikan avoids directlyconfronting the issue of Japan’s war responsibility, it does manage to problematise both themilitarists’ actions and the implications for wounded Japanese.39 The Okinawa memorials,we now turn our attention to, develop the critique of the Japanese Army in the name ofpeace.40 The narratives at the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Park Memorial Museum (OPP)and the Himeyuri Memorial and Museum are brutally direct about the cowardice andcoercion of the Japanese military during the Battle of Okinawa.41 Reasons for emphasisingthe outrageous and dismissive attitude of mainland Japan toward Okinawa (privileging thecentre) revolve around the same mantra as that used by Chiran–‘that we must never repeatthe same mistakes’. However unlike Chiran, in this case, the nature of the mistakes andthe perpetrators of those mistakes are clearly identified.The OPP Memorial Museum is located at Itoman City, Okinawa. It is the largest war

memorial/museum in Okinawa and was opened in its current form in 2000, following amajor expansion and renovation programme. The new museum is five times the size ofthe institution it replaced. Although it is designated a ‘peace museum’ like the othermuseums we have seen, it too focuses on the messages of war and of peace, and it does sounflinchingly. From the first room in the OPP, there is a powerful, dissonant history evidentthat stands in contradistinction to the histories on display in the museums we have discussedabove. Specifically addressing the reasons for the war erupting in terms of the politicaleconomic nature of Japanese imperialism, Japan’s immature grasp of Asian ‘support’ forJapan, and the intense hardships visited upon Okinawans and other peoples of Asia subjectedto Japanese domination, the narrative is direct, critical and clear in where it placesresponsibility. Unlike the above museums, and quite unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki too,the OPP goes beyond motherhood statements like ‘we should never let this happen again’without addressing the cause of the conflict. Identifying Japan as the major antagonist isconfronting to visitors, but provides a specific context to understand what it is that ‘weshould never let happen again’. In this case, it is the system of Imperial controls, led by theJapanese military.A powerful subtext of the museum is that Okinawa has a distinctive non-Japanese identity.

In the prologue to the museum’s catalogue is a quote, typeset as a poem:

Long ago our Ryukyuan ancestors, a truly peace-loving people, crossed the ocean and engaged intrade with Asian nations. The ocean, a source of golden life, a bridge of peace and friendship, stilllives in the hearts of our people.42

This locates current Okinawa within its rich, independent and peaceful history,43 and setsthe context for the shocking reality of the final and decisive battle of what the museum calls‘Japan’s Fifteen Year War’. From a powerful and highly critical reading of Japan’s imperialhistory, which incorporates many of the more notorious episodes of Japanese military crueltytowards civilians, in particular to women and children, to its condemnation of Okinawans

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who would not speak Japanese as part of the Japanese assimilation process,44 the museumpursues its antagonists with relentless logic. And its message is unambiguous: that ‘weshould learn from our mistakes’–and the most significant mistake made by Okinawanswas to submit to the tender mercies of Japanese annexation, and later assimilation intothe Japanese empire.45

Like the other museums, OPP makes the connection between others’ peace museums anditself, and highlights the nature of the violence that its people have suffered at the hands ofboth the Japanese and the Americans in this case. And although the museum exhibits speakof peace, what they demonstrate is war, and the impacts of war on innocent civilians. If theother museums are able to rehabilitate aspects of Japanese people’s experiences during war,the OPP does exactly the opposite; it condemns the Japanese people’s war.Himeyuri is the second of the Okinawan peace museums of interest to this paper. Created

in 1983 by the Himeyuri Alumni Association, it tells the story of a group of girl high schoolstudents, the Himeyuri Student Corps, who were drafted by the Japanese military intoperforming front-line duties during the murderous Battle of Okinawa. Like the OPP,Himeyuri condemns the actions of the Japanese Army and war in all its guises. And also likethe OPP, the rhetoric of peace is based on the notion that this must never happen again; thatis, the violence directed at young girls who were naïve and innocent should be a powerfulmotivator in preventing war. The museum’s directors state that by continuing to tell thestory of the nurses’ suffering at the hands of both a heartless and inhumane Japanese army,and at the hands of the invading US military, they can expose ‘the brutality and insanity ofwar, to never allow it to happen again in the future’.46

Similar to the other museums, we have briefly surveyed above, Himeyuri’s appeal tovisitors is based on the personal identification with the victims of war. Letters, photographs,diary entries, personal belongings and other artefacts are presented in historical context,enabling the girls’ stories to have significant power. Of the approximately 300 girls and theirteachers who were drafted into the Haebaru Field Hospital and into other field hospitals inMarch, 1945, 219 died in the fighting, many either at the hands of Japanese soldiers orejected from the hospital caves in which Japanese soldiers were hiding from the enemyand mowed down in the ‘typhoon of fire and steel’. Survivors tell of the privations theyand their patients suffered–on large screens strategically located within the museum–emphasising not so much their own suffering but that of their comrades and the woundedJapanese soldiers.As this museum, like the Chiran museum, focuses on young people’s sacrifice for the state,

there is a narrative that asks the visitor to identify with the children–the ‘best and brightest’–forced to serve, in this case, the discriminating Japanese, and forced to die in terrorperforming their duty in attempting to reduce the pain of those caught up in the violence.And also like Chiran, many of the visitors are high school and junior high school studentgroups. The messages in Himeyuri though are much more pointed when it comes toresponsibility for the war. There is no flinching from the message that Japan was the problem;and it was the Japanese education system and the system of emperor worship that led to themass sacrifice of these young girls.There is no attempt to rehabilitate Japanese war memory in the sense that it is

employed elsewhere; rather the two Okinawan museums above condemn Japanese mili-tarism and imperial history. In fact, if there is any rehabilitation, it is of local identityand of the need to be constantly vigilant about global issues. The irony that Okinawa stillhouses the US’s largest overseas military bases–through negotiation with the Japanese gov-ernment–should not be forgotten in this context, and both museums emphasise the ongo-ing US Marine presence in their homeland.

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Conclusion

Unlike those nations that won the Pacific War, Japan’s ability to represent its war experiencesis blunted by its defeat. Hence, as we have seen, Japan’s public war memories are framedwithin the discourse of ‘peace’, regardless of the political persuasion of the institution; thiscontext provides a means for each institution to rehabilitate its subjects, in the sense that theyare brought into public view. In our brief survey of the six museums that engage war above,it is clear that ‘peace’ is a term that has multiple meanings and is deployed in different ways.Each institution employs the concept to bring into focus the experiences of Japanese at war,and does so in ways that speak to current generations. Messages of suffering and traumapermeate all the museums we have discussed above, and there is a poignant engagement withreal people too.It is noticeable too that as one moves away from the centre–in terms of the museums’

discourses–the expressions of peace and of war responsibility become more critical, evenradical. Chiran and Yushukan at the centre, the former state-run and the latter a private,albeit highly visible institution share perceptions about the lessons we can learn throughpeace; the sacrifice of Japanese in war was unavoidable, it was done with pride in the‘motherland’, and these sacrifices led us to where we are today. Showakan and Shokeikanalso share a discursive register about peace; they both point to the suffering of Japanese duringthe conflict and encourage a visitor to think about the personal cost of wars. Throughunderstanding this pain and suffering, current generations will learn that war is bad; that allsuffer in a war. The reasons for war remain silent. At the most extreme discursive positionis the Okinawan museums. Both also point to the suffering of the people, but do so tohighlight both the extreme expectations of an overstretched empire to force so many youngpeople to die to ‘save the mainland’, and to acknowledge that Japan was, and remains, at faultfor dragging Okinawa into a punitive war of attrition. This suggests that not only is war bad,so too was Japan.We hope that in this short essay, we have been able to convince readers that the issue of

peace does not always sit comfortably with war or with war responsibility in Japan, and thatthere is room to understand better the relationship between war and peace in sites of publicmemory. Japan’s rehabilitation of the past in public forums is complex and political, and itresists being pigeonholed as either ‘ultra nationalist’ or ‘pacifist’. Indeed, these brief examplesonly skim the surface of some of the levels of complexity involved in coming to terms withevents of seventy or eighty years ago. Given the many peace museums in Japan today, furtherresearch into the role of ‘peace’ in these places of public memory would help develop moresophisticated understandings of the nature of Japan’s public war memories. (4709 words)

Short Biographies

Matthew Allen is a researcher at the Cairns Institute at James Cook University, Queensland.He has conducted research on political history, cultural history and identity politics in Japan,and has recently completed a project with Rumi on popular culture and culinaryglobalisation. He has written books on identity and violence in Japan (Undermining theJapanese Miracle, Cambridge, 1994 and 2009), on Okinawan identity (Identity andResistance in Okinawa, 2002, Rowman and Littlefield), and is currently co-editing a four-volume series with Rumi on Japanese popular culture for Routledge.Rumi Sakamoto is a senior lecturer in Japanese at School of Asian Studies, The

University of Auckland. Her research focuses on nationalism and national identity inpost-1990s Japan, especially in popular culture and new media. With Matt Allen, sheco-edited Popular Culture, Globalisation and Japan (Routledge 2006). As a part of

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another project with Matt on Japanese war memory, she is currently completing a piecethat examines the role of affect in Yushukan’s kamikaze exhibition.

Notes

* Correspondence: Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland 4870, Australia. Email: [email protected].

1 As Garner informs us, the museum goes on to say ‘the story of the war in the Pacific . . . needs to be remembered . . .to avoid repeating history’s errors’ (Garner, ‘Museum of the Pacific War’, 69.)2 Yoshida, ‘Whom Should We Remember? Japanese Museums of War and Peace’, 16.3 As we see below, what it is that must never happen again varies depending on the orientation of the specificmuseum.4 For example, Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan; Hicks, Japan’s War Memories: AmnesiaOr Concealment?; Hein and Selden, (eds) Censoring History; Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar JapaneseCulture, 1945–1970; Seaton, Japan’s Contested War Memories; Seraphim, War Memories and Social Politics in Japan;Takahashi, Rekishi ninshiki ronsō [Debate over historical perspective]; Fujiwara, K. Sensō o kioku-suru [Rememberingthe War] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2001).5 For example, Karacas, ‘Place, Public Memory, and the Tokyo Air Raids’; Tanaka, Y., ‘Songs of Nippon: the YamatoMuseum and the Inculcation of Japanese Nationalism’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 8 May 2008 http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yuki-TANAKA/2746, accessed 7 May 2003; Nishino, R., ‘The Women’s Active Museum on Warand Peace: Its Role in Public Education’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 16 Dec. 2007 http://www.japanfocus.org/-Rumiko-NISHINO/2604, accessed 7 May 2003.6 See, for example, Jeans, ‘Victims or Victimizers? Museums, Textbooks, and the War Debate in Contemporary Japan’;Yamane, ‘Moving Beyond the War Memorial Museum’; Hein and Takenaka, ‘Exhibiting World War II in Japan andthe United States since 1995’; Miyamoto, ‘The Ethics of Commemoration: Religion and Politics in Nanjing,Hiroshima, and Yasukuni’.7 Examples of this writing are Han, ‘Conserving the Heritage of Shame: War Remembrance and War-related Sites inContemporary Japan’; Lim, ’Victimhood Nationalism and History Reconciliation in East Asia’; Lisle, ‘Sublime Lessons:Education and Ambivalence in War Exhibitions’; Murakami, ‘Okinawa no sensō iseki to heiwa gakushū’ [War-Related Sitesin Okinawa and Peace Education]; Yamane, ’Moving Beyond the War Memorial Museum’.8 See, for example, Shono, ‘Mute Reminders of Hiroshima’s Atomic Bombing’; Utaka, ‘The Hiroshima “PeaceMemorial”: Transforming Legacy, Memories, and Landscapes’; Yoneyama, ‘Memory Matters: Hiroshima’s KoreanAtom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity’; Benedict, ‘The Myth of the Vanquished: The Hirsoshima PeaceMemorial Museum’.9 Breen’s Yasukuni, the War Dead, and the Struggle for Japan’s Past provides a succinct summary of the nature of thestruggle over what should and should not be included in the museum. See also Yoshida, Nihonjin no Sensōkan: Sengoshino naka no henyō [Japanese Views on War] and in English, Yoshida, ‘Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: TheYushukan War Museum in Modern Japanese History’, The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus, 2 Dec. 2007 http://www.japanfocus.org/2594, Accessed 7 May 2013.10 Yoshida, Ibid.11 Yasukuni Shrine, Record in Pictures of Yushukan 2009, 3.12 See Okuyama, ‘Disputes over Yasukuni Shrine and its War Dead in Contemporary Japan’, 58–71, for a succinctsummary of the controversy surrounding Yasukuni, and by extension, Yushukan. Breen, Ibid. also provides an excellentorientation to both the Yasukuni controversy and to the place of Yushukan within this context. See also Yongwook,‘The Yasukuni Controversy: Divergent Perspectives from the Japanese Political Elite’, Asian Survey; Shibuichi, ‘TheYasukuni Shrine Dispute and the Politics of Identity in Japan’; Kingston, ‘Awkward Talisman: War Memory,Reconciliation and Yasukuni’; Deans, ‘Diminishing Returns? Prime Minister Koizumi’s Visits to the Yasukuni Shrinein the Context of East Asian Nationalisms’. There are also works that examines Yasukuni primarily from a religious,rather than political, perspective such as Nelson, ‘Social Memory and Ritual Practice: Commemorating the MilitaryDead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine’.13 Yasukuni Shrine, Ibid.14 See in particular, Breen, ‘Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory’, in his own edited volume, Breen, Ibid.15 This comment was made by officials of the museum on two separate occasions, in November 2011, and in March2013 in interviews with the authors.16 Visitor numbers to Yushukan have fluctuated considerably over the 21st century, reaching a peak of almost 500,000in 2005, the year after PM Koizumi’s last visit to Yasukuni Shrine. On average, annual visitor numbers are around300,000 a year across the past ten years. A senior curatorial official from the museum was concerned that Yushukanneeded to lift its game to appeal to younger people (interview, March 2013).

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17 Today, the museum is visited by over 600,000 people a year, such is the pull of the drama of the kamikaze story, andmany of these visitors are junior high school and high school students on group tours.18 Chiran town became part of the administrative responsibility of Minami-Kyushu city in 2000.19 Kawatoko T., The Mind of the Kamikaze: The Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots, 5.20 In particular, the position that Japan had fought a war to liberate the nations of Southeast Asia from Westernimperialism21 Arguably, fewer than 10 percent of the pilots even sighted the US ships off the coast of Okinawa, let alone were ableto hit their targets (interview with curatorial staff, Yushukan, March 2013).22 The exhibits are arranged in the chronological order of the deaths of each pilot, from the first to die to the lastto die.23 Interestingly, the civilians and army people on Okinawa are almost entirely absent from the discourse.24 When young people respected their elders, when families were tied together in impermeable bonds, whenJapan as a nation was an eminent world power–these are the contexts explained by the Chiran director(interview, March 2013).25 Interview, Chiran, March 2013.26 http://www.showakan.go.jp/; http://www.shokeikan.go.jp/27 Cook and Cook, ‘A lost War in Living Memory: Japan’s Second World War’, Jiyū 573.28 For the controversy over Showakan, see Smith, ‘The Shōwa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home’ andHammond, ‘Commemoration Controversies: The War, the Peace and Democracy in Japan’.29 Some examples of Japanese Rightist readings of war history are Fujioka, Jiyū shugi shikan towa nanika [what isthe liberal history perspective?]; Watanabe, ‘Hokori no moteru kuni wa Tokyo saiban shi kan no jubaku o toitekoso[A nation with pride requires escaping from Tokyo Trial’s historical perspective]’; Kaihara’s ‘ContemporaryConservative Thoughts in Japan: Conservative views on Morality, History, and Social Issues’ analyses theRightist leanings in such literature.30 Two of the more significant writers who articulate Japanese Leftist readings of war history are Ienaga, ‘TheGlorification of War in Japanese Education’ and Takahashi, Ibid.31 The rational for its focus on the hardship on the home front was that ‘since different historical perspectives exist todayregarding the last war . . . [Showakan] will not engage a standard exhibition that could possibly include historicalevaluations’. Akasawa, ‘Sengo nihon ni okeru senbotsusha no irei to tsuitō [Mourning and commemoration of thewar dead in postwar Japan]’, 125.32 Hein and Takenaka, Ibid.33 For the postwar notion of Japan as a victim, see Orr, The Victim as hero: ideologies of peace and national identity inpostwar Japan; Bukh, ‘Japan’s History Textbooks Debate: National Identity in Narratives of Victimhood andVictimization’.34 Shokei in Japanese literally means passing on memory and experience to the next generations.35 Occasionally, Shokeikan points to the agents behind the ‘hardship and suffering’; for example, in the explanation thatwhen the occupation stopped the pension for wounded soldiers, this made it harder for them to get food and jobs; butnothing at all on the root causes of Japan’s foreign wars.36 The word rouku (‘hardship and suffering’), used repeatedly in Shokeikan, is unlike other words like higai (damage),higai-sha (victim), kigai (harm), or gisei (sacrifice)–in that rouku does not assume the perpetrator who inflicted the sufferingor the object of sacrifice.37 ‘Message from Shokeikan Director’, Shokeikan website, http://www.shokeikan.go.jp/sub_menu/hall.html,Accessed 7 May 2013.38 Terence Duffy’s assessment of the nature of Japanese ‘peace’museums is a good introduction to some of the variety ofpeace museums that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Duffy, ‘The Peace Museums of Japan’Museum International, 4. Seealso Yoshida, ‘Whom Should we Remember?’.39 Shokeikan’s representation of the hardship suffered by Japanese servicemen and women in the field carries with it asense that these circumstances were manufactured by the Japanese military.40 In recent years, a number of works have appeared on war tourism in Okinawa, including Gerald Figal’s insightfulbook, Beachheads: War, Peace, and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa.41 For direct assessments of the nature of Japanese treatment of Okinawans during the war, see for example, Allen,Identity and Resistance in Okinawa, (chapter 1); Hein and Selden, Islands of Discontent: Okinawans Responses to Japaneseand American Power; Kinjo, ‘Now They Call it Group Suicide’; Ota, ‘Re-examining the History of the Battle ofOkinawa’; Tomiyama, ‘“Spy”: Mobilization and Identity in Wartime Okinawa’.42 Okinawa-ken Heiwa Kinen Shiryōkan, 18.43 Okinawa was known as the Ryūkyū Kingdom before it was annexed by Japan in 1879. For an assessment of thenature of the Kingdom, and its close links with Imperial China, see Kinjo, S. Chūgokū Kindaishi to Ryukyu Shobun[Modern Chinese History and the Ryukyu Disposition].

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44 See Tomiyama, Ibid and Allen, Ibid.45 Ota Masahide, the former governor of Okinawa Prefecture, and a renowned Leftist academic, was a powerfulinfluence behind the establishment of the OPP. His views on Okinawa’s plight have become mainstream in Okinawa,and invariably hold a highly critical line on Japanese Imperialism, particularly during the Pacific War. See forexample (in English) Essays on Okinawa Problems.46 Himeyuri Alumni Association, Himeyuri: Peace Museum, 7.

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