Recommended today
The Long Defeat
By Akiko Hashimoto
Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore 2021
At noon on August 15, 1945, Emperor Showa broadcast the Edict of the End of the War to the whole country of Japan, agreeing to unconditional surrender, and World War II ended. More than seventy years later, the culture of defeat became an indelible part of Japan's collective life. However, there has been a protracted division within Japanese society over who is responsible for the war and who is guilty, and beneath the cracks are two fundamental questions: Why fight an unwinnable war? Why kill and sacrifice for a doomed war?
In this book, Akiko Hashimoto explores three conflicting memories of war: "victims," "perpetrators," and "heroic memories." This disagreement shaped and influenced the postwar generation's understanding of history and itself. With the help of ethnography, interviews, and video analysis, Akiko Hashimoto recreates the process of constructing the traumatic memory of Japan's defeat with rich historical materials and rigorous analysis: What roles did the government, the media, and the state play in it? What are the reasons behind the silence of individuals, the silence of future generations, and the silence of the media? Nationalism, pacifism, and reconciliationism, which is the right way to face this dark history? Only by honestly answering these questions, whether individuals or countries, and drawing on their historical experience, can we transcend differences and traumas and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Deeply understand the key to the historical problems of post-war Japan, understand how the Japanese government prevaricated the responsibility for the war, and how ordinary people evaded the responsibility for the war.
After the end of the war, in the face of cultural wounds that are difficult to heal, three distinct memories of the war have emerged within Japanese society, which regard Japan as the victim, victim and perpetrator of the war, and thus extend three ways of dealing with historical issues: nationalism, pacifism and reconciliationism. Only by clarifying the ins and outs of war memory and delving into its social and political roots can we understand why postwar Japan has been caught between the three options and has never been able to face up to its war responsibilities and historical problems.
Commemorative events, film and television works, newspapers and cartoons, who is shaping Japan's war history?
The author explores first-hand the shaping process of Japan's war history: official commemorations and political performances that seek to rebuild national dignity; the use of documentaries, readers' letters, editorials, etc., to restart the verification of war responsibility in the form of newspapers and media in the hope that Japan can assume responsibility for war; the tragic experiences of individuals and families in the war, and animated films calling for pacifism as victims... The memory of war is not a monolith, but the result of a delicate game in which countries, individuals, and the media speak in history.
When basic education serves political demands, why do textbooks become a new battlefield for war memory?
The author deeply analyzes 15 high school textbooks on history and civics from 5 publishing houses, and explores the position and perspective of mainstream Japanese textbooks to interpret the history of war: a consciously chosen war of aggression. Or is it a necessary battle due to political and economic pressures? The different choices of wording and narrative framework implie very different values and moral judgments.
The famous scholar Sha Qingqing introduced the reading, and was sincerely recommended by Sun Ge, Eiji Koogo, and Ian Bruma.