War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945 3031239172, 9783031239175

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ENTANGLED MEMORIES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945

Edited by Eveline Buchheim · Jennifer Coates

Entangled Memories in the Global South

Series Editors Jie-Hyun Lim, Department of History and the Critical Global Studies Institute, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Eve Rosenhaft, School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

In the third millennium, the space in which collective memories take shape is no longer national but global, and memories have become entangled, contested and negotiated across borders, connecting historical actors and events across time and space in new ways. A generation of scholars has devised terms such as “multidirectional memory”, “travelling memory”, “cosmopolitan memory” and “entangled memory” to characterize this process. As part of the same process, memorial practices and memory contests outside of Europe have developed dynamics and languages of their own, though often in dialogue with or borrowing from the paradigms established in the wake of World War Two. In Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and the spaces that connect them, vernacular and institutionalized memories of past traumas are being shaped in conversations within and across national borders. And the European experience which was for so long the touchstone for critical study and practice is being increasingly de-centred. What is the Global South – understood not only in a geographical sense but also in terms of insurgent voices in the Global North – bringing to these conversations? What happens to memory as practice and experience, and what happens to Memory Studies as a field, when European experience and categories are de-centred? And how far do developments outside of Europe offer models of memory activism that can promote productive dialogue between the subjects of memory? The series welcomes proposals that address these questions from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and also from practitioners, including translations of works originally published in nonEuropean languages.

Eveline Buchheim · Jennifer Coates Editors

War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945

Editors Eveline Buchheim NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Jennifer Coates University of Sheffield Sheffield, UK

ISSN 2662-5687 ISSN 2662-5695 (electronic) Entangled Memories in the Global South ISBN 978-3-031-23917-5 ISBN 978-3-031-23918-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Peter Lamm/GettyImages This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This project has a long history. It started when Eveline Buchheim, Jennifer Coates, and Mark Pendleton, at the time based in Amsterdam, Kyoto, and Sheffield, held a panel on life histories of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific at the 2017 Berkshire Conference on the Histories of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. We analysed reminiscences and (re)constructions of wartime encounters in the aftermath of conflict. Under the trees on campus, we were inspired to write a grant application for a project focused on internationalization in the humanities. We envisioned three meetings in Hiroshima, Hong Kong, and Amsterdam, in which we would explore how memories of the Second World War are represented in narratives, visual representations, museums, and heritage sites. Unfortunately, the grant application was not successful. But we were determined to pursue the collaboration further. We decided to limit ourselves to one meeting in Amsterdam, with colleagues from Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and the UK. Early spring 2019 brought us all together in Amsterdam where we could discuss face to face and socialize for several days. This turned out to be extremely productive, although we have to admit that there is quite some hindsight knowledge at play here. At that time, we did not know how valuable the meeting really was, and the worth of this time together only became clear after having experienced a pandemic in which communication was limited to online meetings. We would like to thank all our NIOD colleagues who facilitated the Amsterdam meeting. Monique van v

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Kessel and Helen Koekenbier organized all the practicalities and as we say in Dutch, ‘nourished our inner men.’ Thanks to Ralf Futselaar who gave us an entertaining tour of the idiosyncratic building with its burden of histories of war and suppression. A special word of thanks goes to the participants of the workshop, both those who appear in this volume and those who do not. Their engagement in the lively discussions and their perceptive comments shaped the direction of this work. The authors deserve most of our gratitude. A large part of the conceptualization and writing of the chapters took place during the pandemic, a period in which personal and family circumstances are challenging enough in themselves. Still the authors managed to deliver on time, responded admirably to the peer reviewers and worked within strict deadlines. We would like to express our appreciation to the peer reviewers for their generous and helpful commentaries. Unfortunately, they have to remain anonymous here, but their interventions hugely improved the chapters and thereby the volume. We are indebted to the editors of the series ‘Entangled Memories in the Global South,’ Jie-Hyun Lim and Eve Rosenhaft, who reacted enthusiastically when we pitched the idea for this volume and supported us through the whole process. Thanks to the staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their management of the production process, copy-editing, and professional assistance in producing this volume. Finally, the editors would like to thank their families, especially for their patience during the Easter weekend of 2022 when we finalized this volume. Like the conference and Amsterdam meeting which began this project, our ad-hoc ‘writing retreat’ in Friesland further emphasized the intangible value of coming together in person to discuss ideas and collaborate on the conceptualization of complicated and sensitive topics such as those covered within this volume. For their creativity and good humour, the editors would like to thank each other.

Note on the Preparation of the Text

Chinese and Japanese names are given in the Chinese and Japanese format of family name first, followed by given name. Where a Chinese or Japanese academic publishes in English and uses the Anglophone convention of a given name followed by a family name, we have written their name in the same order. In the romanization of Japanese words in the text, macrons indicate long vowels but are not given in words commonly used in English (for example, ‘Tokyo’ rather than ‘T¯oky¯o’). All translations are the author’s own unless otherwise indicated. We have used the standard English translations of the titles of novels, biographies, and films under discussion; where a work was distributed under an alternate English title, we have cited it as ‘a.k.a.’ The original title is given at the first mention of each work, alongside the date of release in the country of production. Birth and death dates (where known) of artists, filmmakers, actors, and prominent individuals are similarly given in brackets after their first mention in each chapter. Where the known dates are unclear, they are cited as ‘c.’

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Contents

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Introduction: Engaging with War Memory and the Legacies of East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945 Eveline Buchheim and Jennifer Coates

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Part I Narrating War Memory 2

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National Narratives and Individual Agency: Negotiating Power Relations in Kamioka POW Camp Ernestine Hoegen

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Beyond the “Hell-Ship” Experience: Former Okinawan POWs Visit Hawai’i After 72 Years Kaori Akiyama

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Part II Localizing War Memory 4

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Toward a Borderless Memory of Hiroshima: From Victimhood to Witness Culture in the 75 Years of Peace Declarations Luli van der Does Camouflaged War Heritage: Brecciated War Heritage Sites in Kyoto Oliver Moxham

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CONTENTS

Part III Exhibiting War Memory 6

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Encountering Stories: “Ordinary” Voices Reflecting on Japanese Wartime Aggression in Japan in the Early 1990s Aomi Mochida Exhibitions and Their Afterlives: Dutch Exhibitions of the Second World War in Indonesia, 1946–2000 Caroline Drieënhuizen

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Part IV Visualising War Memory 8

Reimagining Japan: Tintin, Hergé and the Enemy Kees Ribbens

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A Sense of a Memory: Prosthetic War Memories Among the Japanese Cinema Audience Jennifer Coates

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Contextualizing Cow: War Atrocities in Twenty-First-Century Chinese Movies of the Second Sino–Japanese War Timothy Yun Hui Tsu

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Kaori Akiyama Ph.D. is Lecturer in the School of International Studies at the Kwansei Gakuin University and the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Doshisha University. She is the author of The History of Japanese Internment in Hawai’i: Changes in the Camps and Camp Life during the Pacific War (2020; in Japanese). She received a Grant-In-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKEN) to conduct research on the topic of ‘Study on History of Prisoner of War Camps in the Territory of Hawaii: Transportation and Labour Works of Japanese and Okinawan POWs.’ Eveline Buchheim is Senior Researcher at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. In 2022 she published Sporen vol betekenis/Meniti Arti. In gesprek met getuigen en tijdgenoten over de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog/Bertukar Makna bersama ‘Saksi & Rekan Sezaman’ tentang Perang Kemerdekaan Indonesia. Her research interests include intimate relationships in colonial Indonesia and changing gender relations as a result of the Pacific War. Jennifer Coates is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Sheffield, author of Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945–1964 (2016) and Film Viewing in Postwar Japan, 1945–1968: An Ethnographic Study (2022), and coeditor of Japanese Visual Media: Politicizing the Screen (2021) and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (2019).

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Caroline Drieënhuizen is Assistant Professor of Cultural History at the Open University of the Netherlands. Her Ph.D. thesis discussed the creation of the Dutch colonial elite by investigating its material collections. She has done provenance research on Dutch colonial heritage for PPROCE and is presently working on the European cultural dimension of colonialism and Indonesia’s decolonization in both Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Europe from a museological and material object-driven approach. Luli van der Does (Ph.D. in Social Sciences) is an Associate Professor at the Center for Peace and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University. She also serves as a member of the ICOM-ICMEMO and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum steering committee. Her research explores the nexus of mind and society by looking closely at transient linguistic, visual, and sensory representations of memory. Ernestine Hoegen is an independent scholar, writer, translator, and editor. In her research and writing she focuses on the experience of prisoners of war and civilians held in Japanese internment camps during WWII, and on the decolonization of Indonesia. She is currently writing a novel about the Dutch judicial system and is an editor of the Yearbook of Women’s History. Aomi Mochida is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Radboud University and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Netherlands. She completed her bachelor’s degree in History and Political Studies at Colby-Sawyer College in the United States. In 2017 she obtained a research master’s degree in Historical Studies at Radboud University. Her research interests include WWII heritage, public history, and WWII memory culture, especially in relation to the Asia-Pacific theatre. Since 2018, she has been working on her current Ph.D. project, funded by The Dutch Research Council (NWO). Her forthcoming dissertation investigates the interplay of remembering and forgetting surrounding WWII sites in Japan with connections to Japanese wartime perpetration. The two war heritage sites explored in her Ph.D. dissertation are the Noborito Institute (ill-famed wartime science institute) in Kawasaki and the Urakami Prison ruins in Nagasaki. Oliver Moxham is a Ph.D. candidate in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, supported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

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as a 2022 Daiwa Scholar in Japanese Studies. He gained his BA in Japanese Studies & History at the University of Sheffield in 2019 before completing a M.A. in Cultural Heritage & Museum Studies at the University of East Anglia in 2021. He is an Academic Associate of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures where he was employed as a Research Projects Coordinator, leading public-facing research dissemination through seminars and lectures, as well as through hosting and producing the Beyond Japan podcast series. Kees Ribbens Ph.D. is Senior Researcher at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam and Endowed Professor of Popular Historical Culture of Global Conflicts and Mass Violence at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His interests include both the history of the Second World War and the memories and popular representations of war, genocide, and mass violence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Among his recent publications are ‘Picturing antiSemitism in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands: Anti-Jewish Stereotyping in a racist Second World War Comic Strip’ in E. Stanczyk (ed.), Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust: Beyond Maus (Routledge, 2018) and ‘The Past as Popular Culture: Interpreting History through Graphic Novels’ in: J. B. Gardner & P. Hamilton (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Public History (Oxford University Press, 2017). Timothy Yun Hui Tsu is a professor in the School of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. His main research interests include Chinese-Japanese cultural interactions, modern Chinese immigration to Japan, Japanese immigration to colonial Southeast Asia, and culture and society in late imperial China. His most recent publication is ‘Who Cooked for Townsend Harris: Chinese and the Introduction of Western Foodways to Bakumatsu and Meiji Japan.’ Journal of Japanese Studies 47(1): 29–59.

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6

Fig. 5.7

Changing textual length in peace declarations over time Comparison of the characteristic semantic trends in mayoral declarations by correspondence analysis: Original Japanese version Comparison of the characteristic semantic trends in mayoral declarations by correspondence analysis: English translation Map of Kyoto with case study locations. Made by author with Google Maps (2020) Close up of central sites. Made by author with Google Maps (2020) Kamigy¯ o air raid memorial. Photograph by author (June 2018) A couple stands in the ruins of their home in the Kamigy¯o ward, 27th July 1945 (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 1) Bomb fragments-turned-memorial in the Kamigy¯o ward (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, p. 1) A homemade memorial in the Kamigy¯ o ward with fresh flower offerings indicates active memorialization at a local level. Photograph by author (2018) Higashiyama Air Raid Memorial. Photograph by author (2018)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.8

Fig. 5.9 Fig. 5.10

Fig. 5.11 Fig. 5.12 Fig. 5.13

Fig. 5.14

Fig. 5.15

Fig. 5.16

Fig. 5.17

Fig. 5.18

Fig. 5.19

The Umamachi Air Raid was the most destructive bombing of Kyoto (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 1) Unveiling ceremony of Higashiyama memorial (Kyoto Shimbun 2017) A replica of the flack-damaged chimney stack and accompanying description make up the Nagaokaky¯o memorial. Photograph by author (2018) Mayor Isozumi Tatsuo unveils the Nagaokaky¯ o Peace Memorial (Kyoto Shimbun 1989) The enormous concrete Kannon statue at Ry¯ ozen Kannon. Photograph by author (2018) The English sign at the entrance presents Ry¯ozen Kannon as a transnational war heritage site through its tomb to the unknown soldier. Photograph by author (2018) Urns containing soil from military cemeteries around the world stand in the glow of the Memorial Hall’s stained-glass windows. Photograph by author (2018) A filing cabinet containing names of “Allied Personnel who Perished in Territory under Japanese jurisdiction during World War II”. Photograph by author (2018) The “Thousand Year’s Radiance Memorial” is not obviously affiliated with an imperial Japanese military corps to an international, monolingual visitor. Photograph by author (2018) The description of the “Thousand Year’s Radiance Memorial” commemorates the service of an imperial military corps in the Sino-Japanese War, Burma, and Imphal. Locations highlighted by author. Photograph by author (2018) Collage of untranslated war-related memorials at Ry¯ ozen Kannon. Left-to-Right Clockwise: Kawasaki Ki-61 “Flying Swallow” fighter diagram at Swallow Club War Comrade’s Memorial; Memorial to K¯ okash¯ o military school; engraving of imperial pilots in uniform at the 18th’s Memorial. Photographs by author (2018) Memorial to the 200,000 Koreans who served in the imperial Japanese army. Photograph by author (2018)

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List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 5.1

Mayors of Hiroshima City and their years in office Extracted and unique morphemes subjected to further analyses List of translated and untranslated points of interest at Ry¯ ozen Kannon

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Engaging with War Memory and the Legacies of East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945 Eveline Buchheim and Jennifer Coates

Engaging with War Memory This interdisciplinary volume brings together new scholarship from the fields of History, Museums and Heritage Studies, Cultural Studies, and Anthropology to offer a unique exploration of transnational war memory formation. With a focus on how grassroots communities and everyday viewers and audiences engage with war memory, the volume offers a cross-cultural account of how war memory is shaped by practical and contextual factors, which in turn inform the formation of future memories. In drawing from the voices of survivors, authors, curators, memory

E. Buchheim NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, Netherlands J. Coates (B) School of East Asian Studies, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_1

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mediators, and creative practitioners, as well as everyday readers, viewers, museum visitors, and cinema audiences, we explore the tensions and fissures that emerge when war memories are shared in public communications. Throughout this volume, we collectivise these readers, viewers, visitors, and audiences as “interlocutors” with war memory narratives in order to emphasise the multi-layered process in which communications about war shape everyday war memories, which then evolve and inform the shape of future communications about war and conflict. In this way, memory-shaping processes are cyclical, revolving through creative intention and engaged reception, continually changing in a coeval process. Analysing the practices of engaging with war memory, we specifically focus on taking questions of “engagement” seriously. The chapters collected here examine individual case studies of engagement with war memory, and at the same time, we collectively insist on the necessity of remaining aware of the researcher as participating in another kind of engagement with war memory. Following Judith Mayne’s reminder that the audience and reception studies researcher is at the same time an audience member (1993, 84), we are committed to investigating the researcher’s own engagement with war memory as part of the process of researching grassroots engagements with war memory. We practice a reflexive approach to the study of war memory, taking the general public’s engagements with war memory as our research object, while examining our own engagement with this topic as part of a reflective attitude to our research practice. Affect and empathy become central issues in this approach, as we contrast the sense of becoming jaded that researchers of war memories may experience with the element of surprise introduced by truly unimaginable representations and commemorations of war. From the all-too-predictable to the genuinely shocking, we explore a range of modes of commemorating war, and at the same time, consider the meanings of the range of emotions and mediations that these modes inspire. The innovation of this edited volume lies in this reflexive approach. Our interdisciplinary contributions showcase a number of ways of doing research on war memory, alongside case studies from diverse regions of the world. Original archival research, site visits, interviews, and ethnographic materials add detail and nuance to our understanding of the formation and adaptations of war memory, while the inclusion of chapters offering visual analysis, exhibition studies, and analysis of memoir

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and biography contributes a new hybrid methodology that combines Cultural Studies, History, Literature, Heritage Studies, and Anthropological approaches. This contributes a fresh perspective to scholarship on war memory, which has tended to focus on space, text, exhibition, or personal narrative, rather than bringing these elements into dialogue with one another. The volume is structured into four main sections: Narrating War Memory; Localising War Memory; Exhibiting War Memory; and Visualising War Memory, which chart key trends in the communication of war narratives, and the creation of war memory.

Transnational Memory and the Global South This volume takes a transnational approach, following the “transnational turn” in memory studies, which somewhat disallows any concrete focus on the Global South, as traditionally defined. Instead, we sketch a series of shifting engagements with war memory across, between, and among nations, including China and Indonesia, their neighbours, and antagonists. As a post-cold war alternative to the term “Third World,” the “Global South” was conceptualised after the time period in which the conflicts discussed within this volume took place. Had the term been proposed earlier, many of the geographical areas discussed within this volume may well have been included within the designation “Global South” due to their subjugated and impoverished states from 1930 to 1945 and immediately after. In developing a shifting paradigm for understanding engagement with war memory, wherein memory actors toggle between historical moments and their associated global and national positionings, the chapters in this volume, when taken together, caution against any easy categorisation of national experiences and attitudes, insisting instead on a multi-layered global memory structure in which periods of poverty, subjugation, occupation, and colonisation continue to exist in the memories of those living in areas which today are wealthy and independent.

History of the Project The impetus for this volume began with an international seminar titled “Crossing Borders, Pushing Boundaries: Rethinking Transnational Memories of War in Asia and the Pacific” that Eveline Buchheim and Jennifer Coates co-organised together with Mark Pendleton at NIOD

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Institute for War-, Holocaust-, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam in spring 2019. Our initial interest was triggered by how memory narratives of war in Asia and the Pacific continued to be framed through competing national victimhoods (Lim 2010). We brought together a multidisciplinary and international group of researchers from China, Japan, Korea, the UK, and the Netherlands that could collectively investigate transnational memories of war in Asia and the Pacific. Both Asian and European societies continue to struggle with the legacies of mass violence committed in the contexts of the Second World War and contested pasts continue to fuel persisting tensions in the Asia/Pacific region and also impact global politics. Bringing together researchers from different professional backgrounds and distinct locations to work with a shared conceptual framework turned out to be a means of shedding new light on this period. Meeting at NIOD and visiting the archive with a vast and diverse collection of material from the Second World War in Europe and Asia inspired discussions on the various ways in which different disciplines relate to such material and how it can be used to enhance a further understanding of conflict and its legacies. We discussed what makes sources archivable and in what way they can contribute to a further understanding of war history. Although most of the material in the archive constitutes quite traditional sources, several presenters pushed the boundaries of what can be seen as relevant material for their research, or commonly accepted academic sources. For the chapters in this volume, new material, sometimes used for the first time and often used in an innovative way has been deployed. The chapters by Akiyama, Coates, Hoegen, Mochida, Moxham, and Tsu contain original data collected by the authors for particular purposes. Yet our conversations during the symposium also emphasised that “newness” is often relative to the researcher’s specific field, and that to be truly and extensively significant, not only the material but also the mode of engagement and analysis must be innovative and interdisciplinary. These conversations have informed the shape of this volume and the individual chapters within.

Methodologies of Engagement Each chapter in this volume introduces a significant degree of new content, from discussion of recent films and published texts to analysis of original interview materials, social media data, recently uncovered archival

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materials, or visits to little-known memorial sites. This has necessitated the use of some non-traditional sources, including online discussion of texts with cult popularity (see Ribbens on Tintin), social media responses to new cinema (see Tsu on Cow), blog and micro-site materials (see Drieënhuizen on exhibitions), and participant observation of everyday conversations in movie theatres (see Coates on cinema audiences). In this sense, the research collected here indicates the ever-evolving frontiers on which memory narratives continue to unfold, and the necessary development of new skills and methods for the study of these conversations about memory, which shift in both content and platform. While the events discussed are historical, the discussion itself moves into new online spaces, emerging platforms, and changing technologies. The researcher of war memory must then become an interdisciplinary practitioner in order to trace these evolving memory narratives across both physical and digital spaces, through generations, and across languages and other modes of expression. As discussed above, this volume aims to take the concept of engagement seriously, but as the volume sections indicate, the gerund form of this engagement is also core to our conceptualisation. “Engaging” with war memory, and the study of that engagement, is an ongoing process. In traditional approaches to the study of war memory, the historical event which is memorialised often takes precedence in both the scholarship on the evolution of the war memory, and within the memories themselves. Queries about factual evidence for dominant interpretations or narratives tend to overshadow analysis of the evolution of those interpretations or narratives in themselves. The further from the original event that we travel in time, the greater the imperative to “fix” aspects of that event or individual actions within that historical moment in some indisputable and factually correct narrative, imagined to endure for all time once confirmed by evidence. In everyday life however, memories rarely work this way— local histories, popular narratives, recurring tropes, and rumour shade, nuance, or embellish even the most impeccably fact-checked history over time. As researchers of war memory, we must distinguish between the research object (war memory) and the historical event that precipitated it (war or conflict). In this sense, moving further away from the historical event in time does not mean moving further away from the research object. In fact, the research object (war memory) becomes larger and more complicated the further we move from the precipitating event. Our use of the gerund verb forms “engaging,” “narrating,” “localising,”

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“exhibiting,” and “visualising” is designed to evoke this sense of a layered experience of war memory evolving across time, space, and degree of distance from the event memorialised. The historical events, the ways they are mediated, and the resulting memories are constantly negotiating alternative ways of looking at this process.

Theoretical Frameworks A multi-layered approach to developing a theoretical framework is therefore necessary in order to study engagements with war memory in everyday life. And so, we brought together the chapters in this volume, which range across disciplines, time periods, and geographical locations by authors of different generations, genders, and different academic backgrounds. While individual authors draw from a range of established and emerging theories to explore particular case studies, a uniting theme across the volume is writing against easy binary categorisations, especially the assumed clearcut division between victim and perpetrator which stimulates thinking in hierarchies of victimhood. For example, Hoegen and Tsu demonstrate how the chaotic circumstances of war often blur the line between victims and perpetrators and the existing power relations. In this sense, many individual actors in the case studies collected in this volume behave as Mire Koikari observed of women in US Occupied Japan: “stepping in and out of the dominant apparatus of power, sometimes reinforcing and at other times undermining an emerging structure of hegemony” (2011, 4). The binaries challenged in the following chapters are of the kinds which often make a memory narrative immediately recognisable and translatable. Arguing that the use of such binaries collapses complication and nuance into caricature—a dangerous move for any critical thinking project but particularly undesirable in discussions of war memory—we trouble the perceived boundaries between genres, platforms, and “types” of war memory. Moxham’s chapter on Kyoto war memorial sites follows Philip Seaton (2007) in dealing with the categorisation of tourism at war memory sites into “dark” and “light” modes of touristic engagement, while Mochida’s chapter on exhibitions about Japanese war aggression troubles divisions between “local” and “national” memory narratives. Coates’ chapter on cinema audiences’ memories questions genre distinctions of “high” and “low” culture in the blending of narratives about art and popular cinemas, while her interviewees’ personal narratives also

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call into question the common division of generations into “wartime” or “postwar” categories, with the experience or lack of experience implied therein. In popular culture products like comics, such conventional categorisations shade into stereotype, as discussed in Ribben’s chapter on Tintin. Stereotyping and caricature recur in the cross-cultural materials analysed in several chapters, particularly in Hoegen and Akiyama’s studies of narratives about POW experiences, and in Drieënhuizen’s chapter on Dutch exhibitions on war in Indonesia. Stereotypes and preconceived ideas about types of people (in relation to nationality, ethnic background, gender, and class) emerging in narratives that seek to memorialise war and conflict demonstrate the use of easily recognisable or understandable “short-hand” images and tropes to translate the unimaginable for an imagined audience lacking direct experience of or particular interest in the conflict under discussion. In many cases, such stereotyped images and tropes become iconic through repetition, and in turn begin to shape the memory narratives in which they appear. This is why a robust understanding of how stereotypes emerge and are deployed is crucial to understanding how mediating relates to the formation of war memory. In both popular discussion and scholarship, we can easily fall into the assumption that a historical media object is a record of its time. This one-directional understanding of the role of media objects obscures the coeval operation of media production and consumption. Blending critical media studies approaches with anthropological and art historical research methods, we can see how media objects shape representational practices in an evolving context in which audience response feeds back into production, supporting the continuation or discontinuation of a particular trope. Several chapters address the popular use of imaginary characterisations, or character tropes, to engage with war memory (see Ribbens, Tsu, and Coates). Taken together, these chapters explore what happens when audiences and media producers attempt to communicate across geographical boundaries by creating characters from imagined (rather than directly engaged) nations and countries (Ribbens), and when audiences attempt to connect with an earlier time or generation through the media productions of that era (Coates, Tsu). Taking into account marketing strategies and critical responses as well as visual imagery and audience reaction creates a fuller picture of the role of media objects in crafting an evolving war memory narrative.

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The angle this volume takes is also designed to acknowledge the commercial role that war memory increasingly plays in everyday life, from the media industry to tourism and merchandising. As the transnational diffusion of war memory narratives increases across platforms which both proliferate and speed up channels of communication, the “multidirectional” nature of memory (see Drieënhuizen and Mochida) is also increasing as a greater number of “small people” (see Tsu) than ever before can not only view or read war memory narratives, but also communicate their responses directly to memory mediators and to other everyday people. This volume seeks to make an intervention in how we understand the formation of war memory at this crucial moment, when a boom in grassroots engagement is taking place through social media and other developing platforms. At this point in the evolution of war memory narratives and their public communication, we must attend not only to practices of memorialising, but to their counter, forgetting. It is often taken for granted that war memory initiatives exist because forgetting is bad, even reprehensible in the context of war and conflict (see Tsu). The chapters in this volume explore a range of “levels” of memory outside the national, state-sanctioned, often adult-oriented master narrative of commemoration, analysing local memory narratives and practices (Mochida, Moxham, Coates, Van der Does), transnational memory narratives (Hoegen, Drieënhuizen, Akiyama), and media targeted at children and young people within the general public (Ribbens, Tsu). Analysing memory narratives and their construction on these levels, we must ask what remembering, or forgetting, means, and for whom? In other words, what level of memorialisation constitutes not forgetting? If an event is commemorated in the local area in which it occurred, but not at the national level or even international level, is that event forgotten or remembered? If an event is commemorated in one or two languages only, is it forgotten by those without access to the memory narrative, or remembered by those with access? When can we call an event “forgotten,” particularly if there are still survivors, scholars, or memory-keepers available to assess the degree of forgetting? And what does the use of common terms and phrases that claim a forgetting, such as “Indies Silence” or “Japanese people don’t talk about war,” do to our understanding of where memory and forgetting is taking place? These are important considerations not only in the chapters that follow, but for our interdisciplinary field of memory studies more broadly. As

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the often cited (and now almost automatic or stereotypical) injunction to “never forget” the cruelty and atrocities of war become a popular mantra as well as a scholarly principle, where is this mandatory memorialising being applied without due attention to context? Who can we, or should we, allow to be forgotten? In what circumstances can, or should, we share the personal details and intimate particularities of those who suffered during war or conflict, and what relation does this bear to questions of ethics and consent? We noted above that online communications and materials are becoming increasingly central to the study of how historical events are memorialised and discussed. Online platforms also broaden the circles within which scholarship is published and shared, increasing the opportunity for the everyday people engaged in this volume to access that scholarship. Now more than ever we must seriously consider the limits of remembering and forgetting, when almost anything can be downloaded and kept indefinitely, recycled into new narrative forms, and re-shared with an almost infinite audience. In the chapters that follow, we consider the ethical implications of the particular modes of remembering, and of refusing to forget, that form our case studies. Addressing the personal use of public memory narratives for individual purposes as well as the commercial use of particular memory narratives for economic or civic purposes, we assess “remembering” and “forgetting” as two points on a spectrum across which our personal and collective consciousnesses roam over time.

Organisation of the Chapters As noted above, the volume is organised into four main sections: Narrating War Memory; Localising War Memory; Exhibiting War Memory; and Visualising War Memory. These sections not only deal with the different sensory levels at which memory is formed, but also consider the modes or registers through which these experiences are accessible. In Chapter 2, “National Narratives and Individual Agency: Negotiating Power Relations in Kamioka POW Camp,” Ernestine Hoegen explores how during WWII, approximately three hundred Dutch, three hundred and fifty American and a handful of British military personnel held in the Kamioka POW camp were used as forced labourers in the Mitsui lead mines, where they worked alongside local Japanese miners as well as conscripted Japanese civilians. In this microcosm the prisoners perceived skills cut through existing power relations. Analysing the perspectives of

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the American, British, Dutch, and Japanese groups on victimhood, perpetrators, war, and the “other,” Hoegen takes a biographical approach to examine the personal experiences and agency of several individuals. With its focus on the interactions of various forms of social stratification, the biographical serves as the focal point where national narratives, individual experiences, and power relations meet. Kaori Akiyama’s analysis of another POW camp in Hawai’i follows in Chapter 3, “Beyond the ‘Hell-ship’ Experience: Former Okinawan POWs Visit Hawai’i after 72 Years.” Here Akiyama explores the narratives of POWs from the Battle of Okinawa (March 23–June 23, 1945), which attracted widespread public attention in Okinawa when a commemoration called “Memorial Service for the Deceased Okinawan POWs” was held in Hawai’i in June 2017. This chapter examines the narratives of some of the Okinawan POWs who were transported by ship in chaotic conditions and were subjected to dehumanising experiences, which were not included in the Memorial Service in Hawai’i 72 years after the incident. Analysing these POW accounts which were on the periphery of the dominant narratives of the Battle of Okinawa, Akiyama argues that this “fragmented commemoration” made it possible for the younger generation in Okinawa and some civic bodies in Hawai’i to hear the narratives of the “hell-ship” survivors, demonstrating that narratives of principals with different experiences and perspectives can fill in gaps in our historical understanding. Following Akiyama’s identification of Okinawa-Hawai’i connections in war memory narratives, the next section looks at the local contexts of specific war memory tropes and stories. Luli van der Does outlines key themes in the 75 years of Hiroshima city’s annual peace declarations in Chapter 4, “Towards a Borderless Memory of Hiroshima: From Victimhood to Witness Culture in the 75 years of Peace Declarations,” the historical role of which is to both reflect citizens’ sentiments and communicate with domestic and international audiences. Utilising quantitative and qualitative text analytics, this empirical study considers these declarations as a lens through which to examine and understand the changing position of the survivors and their city towards the concepts of war, victimhood, and peace. Based on the empirical evidence, van der Does argues that the so-called “Japanese” sense of victimhood is far from homogenous and static but, rather, has been contested, constantly negotiated, and is in permanent transition.

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Moving to the Kansai region of Western Japan, in Chapter 5, Oliver Moxham explores a means of assessing the visibility of war-related heritage sites by their geographical location, the choice and limitations of translated languages available and the history the site represents. “Camouflaged War Heritage: Brecciated War Heritage Sites in Kyoto” analyses three case studies of Kyoto’s transnational war-related heritage sites, drawing attention to the role of language and translation at these sites. These cases demonstrate how the signage found at these sites factors into filtering access by language knowledge to varying narratives of war. This study of public memorialisation leads into our third section, Exhibiting War Memory. In Chapter 6, “Encountering Stories: ‘Ordinary’ Voices Reflecting on Japanese Wartime Aggression in Japan in the Early 1990s,” Aomi Mochida focuses on the interaction of memories at the individual level by analysing the reactions of visitors who attended an exhibition in the early 1990s that discussed Japanese wartime aggression. One of several local exhibitions of the nation-wide travelling exhibition on Unit 731, a troop that was responsible for Japan’s biological warfare in China, the travelling exhibition was held in more than 60 cities in Japan in 1993 and 1994, with some cities adding a “local” twist to the main exhibition. Mochida focuses on the exhibition in Kawasaki held in July 1993, where displays on the unit were exhibited alongside displays of the Noborito Institute, a local site of memory that represents Japan’s wartime aggression. Through focusing on visitors’ reactions on encountering stories of Japan’s wartime aggression at this exhibition, Mochida challenges how ordinary people interacted with memories of Japanese aggression in the early 1990s and the effect of such mnemonic encounters on their understanding of Japan’s past. Chapter 7, “Exhibitions and Their Afterlives: Dutch Exhibitions of the Second World War in Indonesia, 1946–2000” analyses the exhibition “The Indies under Japanese Occupation” (1946/1947) in the context of Dutch collective memories of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. Caroline Drieënhuizen argues that contrary to common belief (in which a profound silence of Dutch people from former colonial Indonesia on their Second World War experiences is said to dominate), people in the Netherlands shared their memories of the war in the Pacific in public from 1946 on—only one year after the end of the German Occupation. The first section of this chapter traces the social-political and intellectual traditions, circumstances, and motivations of representing the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in the Netherlands in exhibitions. A case study

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exhibition titled “The Indies under Japanese Occupation” is then analysed in depth, and the afterlives of this exhibition and the evolving of the collective memories of the war in Indonesia in relation to changing social and political conditions are addressed. Moving from the public museum environment to more private visual depictions of war and war memory, Chapter 8 introduces the unusual case of “Reimagining Japan: Tintin, Hergé and the Japanese Enemy.” Kees Ribbens analyses Hergé’s depiction of Japanese characters in the iconic comic book series on Tintin and later work. The relatively strong presence of Chinese culture and society in Hergé’s oeuvre reflects the author’s fascination with China and personal acquaintances with Chinese people. This has resulted in a growing body of academic and fan-based literature on Hergé and China, yet a structural analysis of the role of Japan in Hergé’s oeuvre is largely missing. Ribbens explores Hergé’s world view, including the political context in which he operated, in order to understand how representations of Japanese people related to the political and military events of the 1930s and 1940s, in particular the Japanese occupation of China and its position during World War II. In Chapter 9, the focus of the volume shifts to considering how audiences incorporate popular culture imagery into their personal memory narratives. Jennifer Coates contributes an account of audiences’ “prosthetic memory” developing around cinema culture in postwar Japan in “A Sense of a Memory: Prosthetic War Memories Among the Japanese Cinema Audience.” Engaging with the cinema has shaped many individuals’ understandings of Japan’s war history, demonstrating the major role that popular culture can play in evoking, embedding, and rearranging memories. This chapter explores how repeated engagements with film texts and cinema spaces can build prosthetic war memory among elderly audience members in Japan today. In the ethnographic materials analysed in this chapter, a sense of having war memories emerges from affectively charged recollections of going to the cinema, engaging with film culture, and sharing film spaces with others. Finally, Timothy Y. Tsu offers a close reading of a contemporary war film in Chapter 10: “Contextualizing Cow: War Atrocities in Twenty-First-Century Chinese Movies of the Second Sino-Japanese War,” bringing us back to our initial focus on complicating easy binaries of victimhood and perpetrators. By comparing this movie with three from the first decade of the twenty-first century—The Flowers of War (Jinling shisanchai, Zhang Yimou, 2011), City of Life and Death (Nanjing!

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Nanjing!, Lu Chuan, 2009), and Devils on the Doorstep (Guizi laile, Jiang Wen, 2000), Tsu demonstrates that Cow takes an exceptional approach to representing the war. Linking the traumas of Nanjing and the Holocaust, Tsu argues that historical wartime atrocities should not be weaponised to support contemporary nationalistic agendas. Exploring how recent popular culture productions of war memory echo core themes found within recent survivor statements and critical journalism, Tsu reveals a building discourse that reimagines the role of forgetting in the legacies of war and conflict, and proposes forgetting as a safer, and more humane option than continually remembering, and re-memorialising war. In this wide-ranging array of chapters from a generationally, disciplinary, and nationally diverse group of scholars, we contribute to a critical development in memory studies: global memory formation. Exploring how tropes, stereotypes, and conventions in the formation and discussion of particular memory narratives “leak” across geographical and historical boundaries, we map an entangled and often conflicted or contested terrain of remembering, forgetting, and the various states in between. In our contemporary era of always-on connection, the positions and histories of memory actors, memory mediators, and the everyday people who act as interlocutors for memory narratives inform newly arising contested areas and elements in memorialisation practices. As Jie-Hyun Lim and Eve Rosenhaft observe, that which we once considered “de-territorialized” in global memory formation has become “re-territorialized – deployed in the service of nationalist projects” (2021). In this moment, we must consider the fundamental assumptions and instincts underlying memorymaking practices and consider where areas of solidarity or productive extension can be distinguished from competition or conformity.

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Works Cited Koikari, Mire. 2011. Feminism and the Cold War in the US Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952. Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 9 (7). Lim, Jie-Hyun. 2010. Victimhood Nationalism and History Reconciliation in East Asia. History Compass 8 (1): 1–10. Lim, Jie-Hyun., and Eve Rosenhaft. 2021. Mnemonic Solidarity: Global Interventions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mayne, Judith. 1993. Cinema and Spectatorship. London: Routledge. Seaton, Philip A. 2007. Japan’s Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ in Historical Consciousness of World War II . London: Routledge.

PART I

Narrating War Memory

CHAPTER 2

National Narratives and Individual Agency: Negotiating Power Relations in Kamioka POW Camp Ernestine Hoegen

Introduction Diaries written by Far Eastern Prisoners of War (FEPOWs) are rich repositories of memories of war and captivity. Of the approximately 140,000 allied prisoners of war interned by the Japanese in POW camps spread throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific,1 only a small percentage managed to keep such a journal. Writing in secret, on any paper that was

1 Estimates vary, according to the source, ranging anywhere from 142,766 (Kemperman and Broers 2003, 10) to 140,433 (Quinones 2021, 495) to 132,134 (official Japanese government figures as quoted by Quinones 2021, 408 footnote 39).

E. Hoegen (B) Utrecht, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] Independent scholar, Ede, Netherlands © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_2

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available—notebooks, the backs of letters from home, cigarette papers— the FEPOWs recorded their day-to-day experiences, their hopes and fears, their longings for family and home and their dreams for the future. This chapter focuses on the writings of FEPOWs held in Kamioka on Honshu Island. In this camp, Dutch, American and a few British prisoners were used as forced labourers in the local Mitsui lead mines, where they worked alongside Korean labourers, local Japanese miners as well as conscripted Japanese civilians. At least six journals are known to have survived the camp. Four of these were by Dutch FEPOWs, one by a British prisoner and one by an American. There are brief references to Kamioka in two other dairies kept by Dutch officers P.J.C. Meijs and M. van der Vlerk (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Archive nr. 401:216 and 401:15, respectively). These men spent most of the war in the Zentsuji camp and only arrived in Kamioka in June 1945. After liberation, another three Dutchmen wrote their memoirs. These life writing documents offer a fertile source for research on the experience of war, perpetrators, victimhood and the “other”. The power relations between guards and inmates in the semiautonomous environment of a POW camp were to a large extent determined by the course of the war raging in the outside world. Although the prisoners shared a “common enemy”, their national identities were often reaffirmed and consolidated by living in close proximity to, yet segregated from, other national groups. A closer look at the individual accounts of life in the Kamioka camp, as commemorated in the journals and memoirs, reveals how the boundaries and power relations among the prisoners, but also between the prisoners and their captors, were reinforced but also constantly crossed and re-negotiated. Each journal contains a unique and personal account of the shared experience of captivity in Kamioka. Where one prisoner of war was overwhelmed by the desperate circumstances in which he found himself, another in a seemingly identical situation appeared to acquire agency and establish meaningful relationships, even with the enemy. This chapter seeks to understand these differing accounts of war and imprisonment by examining the social mechanisms that were at play in the camp. What were the forces and factors that determined an individual prisoner’s position along the socio-economic grids of power that developed within the camp gates? A brief description of the camp is followed by an overview of the Kamioka diary corpus, and the other sources used for this research. The

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main part of the chapter examines the reflections of the life writers on the make-up of the national factions and the attitudes within, and relations between, the different groups. As the socio-economic grids of power within which the individual men found themselves are reconstructed, both the situation above ground, in the camp, and below ground, in the mine, are addressed.

The Kamioka Camp Established by the Japanese as the Osaka Kamioka Branch camp in late 1942, the name of this camp changed several times: besides Osaka Kamioka branch camp, it was also known as Osaka 7-B, Nagoya POW camp 1-B and Nagoya 7-B. The camp was commanded by a Japanese lieutenant, Furushima, assisted by three junior officers and about thirty Japanese guards, many of whom had been wounded on the frontline, or who had been recruited locally. The first prisoners of war to be transported to the small and isolated compound—formerly a holiday camp—located at 1600 metres in the Japanese Alps were a group of three hundred Dutch and six English soldiers and airmen captured in March 1942 on Java in what was then still the Dutch East Indies—now Indonesia. Upon their arrival in freezing conditions in December 1942, the FEPOWs were housed in wooden barracks and put to work in the local Mitsui lead mine. Except for an English doctor, there were no additions to the camp population until May 1944, when a detachment of 152 American soldiers arrived from Mukden, Manchuria (now Shenyang in China), followed by a second group of 194 American FEPOWS from Manilla in August 1944. More than a year later, in June 1945, a further forty Dutch army officers who had been held at the Zentsuji officers’ camp were added. The camp was liberated on 6 September 1945. All able-bodied prisoners—except for officers—were forced to work in the mine. As a result of malnutrition, accidents in the mine, illnesses (beriberi, pneumonia) and torture, 85 men were to die, i.e., 14 per cent of the total camp population (Hoegen 2022, 253). Although this compares favourably with the estimated average death rate of 27 per cent of Western prisoners of the Japanese forces (Sturma 2020, 514–515; Quinones 2021, 495–496), most of the deaths occurred in the first winter of 1943, and consequently the Dutch troops made up the largest part of the dead.

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The Kamioka Corpus Diary writing in FEPOW camps was extremely limited, because of the many hazards involved. The Japanese authorities forbade keeping journals (Buchheim 2009, 113; Captain 2002, 68) and anyone caught in the act risked severe punishment or even death. In a study of life writing produced by FEPOWs forced to work on the Pakan Baroe railway in Sumatra, Oliver notes: “Owing to their scarcity, the diaries that did survive the long years of captivity and the voyage home become a significant genre for identifying the minutiae of everyday life in a POW camp” (38). ‘In his study entitled Diaries of the Second World War, Aldrich found “how little connection there is between the major contours of a global conflict and the everyday experiences of individuals as revealed through their diaries” (2004, 3). The comparatively large Kamioka corpus offers a unique opportunity to analyse and compare the “minutiae” of camp life, and the alternative narratives or memories of war and captivity that they offer. The four Dutch diarists were well-educated men who all already lived and worked in colonial Java before the war broke out. Herman A. Bouman (1909–1968) was a lawyer from Semarang and “Flip” J.P.M. Stouten (1902–1991) was a maths teacher. Stouten’s diary is a reconstruction from memory, as he destroyed his original Kamioka war diary for fear of discovery (H. Stouten 2008, 33). The reconstruction was made while still in Kamioka, right after the capitulation of Japan, but before the arrival of the American liberation troops. Stouten’s diary was privately published in 2007. Ben P. Rüphan (1913–1985) worked as a staff member at an administration office and Gerben J. Wassenaar (1912–1997) was a businessman from Surabaya. By contrast, Englishman Stephen R. Harle (1921–1970), from Durham, in the Northeast of the UK, left school at 14 to work in a mine. Finally, American staff sergeant Joseph G. Pase (date of birth unknown, presumed to have died in 1945 after liberation), was a professional soldier from Georgetown, Delaware. Men belonging to the same social class as the Dutch diarists wrote the three memoirs. Louis F.M. Busselaar (1895–1981) was a government official from Semarang; Johan A. Wormser (1907–1999) was a journalist and Jan Honing (1899–1986) was an engineer. Diaries, journals and memoirs need to be approached with care (Havers 2003, 9–10). They contain highly personal views and perspectives, and memoirs, in particular, are written with the added wisdom of hindsight.

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Busselaar finished his personal recollections of the war and his imprisonment in Kamioka on 2 January 1955. Wormser chose a third-person perspective for his memoirs, which first appeared in print in 1965 and was republished in 1989. Honing’s Memories of Life in the Indies (Herinneringen aan het leven in Indië ), which includes several chapters on his time in Kamioka, were completed in November 1971 and published posthumously in 2014. Yet it is only through these personal narratives, these individual reflections and recorded memories, that we can discover “the physical, psychological and affective experiences of the people involved” in historical events (Oliver 2019, 37). If any of the Indo-European, Ambonese or Menadonese troops who made up the greater part of the Dutch FEPOWs in Kamioka wrote diaries, letters or memoirs, and these survived the war, I have not been able to locate them. Neither did I have access to life writing by Japanese guards, miners or civilians. For this latter group, interviews formed the most important alternative source. These were conducted in April 2016 in Kamioka, Japan, with Japanese journalist, researcher and film producer Nishisato Fuyuko, who acted as the main interviewer and translator. The Japanese POW network provided a transcript of an interview with camp commander Furushima Ch¯otar¯o and former guards Shimode Ry¯oichi and Hosoi Sotoemon, who were interviewed on 21 July 1968 by university lecturer Sasaki T¯oru and assistant Sakamaki Sabur¯o. Other primary sources included Dutch and English language rosters, camp records, POW registration cards and newspaper articles. The families of Bouman, Rüphan and Harle provided additional biographical information.

The Dutch The group of Dutch FEPOWs reflected the colonial stratifications of the Dutch East Indies. At the top of the social pyramid stood a group of twenty-six officers, most of them reservists who had been called up for the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army KNIL at the start of hostilities. This included a group of thirteen ensigns, a junior rank of commissioned officers, of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force ML-KNIL. Except for a handful of professional soldiers, most of these men held jobs as judges or lawyers, engineers, journalists and company directors in pre-war Java. One rung down the camp hierarchy came men who held comparable civilian posts to the first group but were over thirty-two years of age and had therefore been conscripted into

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the home guard (landstorm). A small number of these were “IndoEuropean” men of mixed Dutch-Indonesian heritage who held European legal status and had been educated in the West. The bulk of the Dutch FEPOWs consisted of the regular troops of the KNIL: Indo-Europeans, Ambonese and Menadonese men, mostly of Christian denomination. This third and largest group was either looked down upon or pitied by the “full-blooded” Dutch, and the Indo-Europeans with a European education higher up the hierarchy. “We generally call them peanut-men,” wrote ensign Bouman in his diary. They are Indo-Europeans, who speak a lingo that is almost impossible to understand for the outsider, a mixture of Malaysian, Javanese, Madurian and a little bit of Dutch. Their mental horizon ends at the coconut tree at the end of their garden and the different dishes making up the rice table,2 which amounts to 75 percent of their conversation. (…) Here it has brought me to the conviction that, however much I hate generalisations based on race, the Indo-European is inferior. (Bouman 15 March 1944)

Home guard sergeant Rüphan observed, “I feel particularly sorry for the Indonesian lads, almost 98 percent [of our troop], who don’t know what to do from suffering; in normal circumstances the transition [from Indonesia to Japan] would have been fast, but without sufficient heating, food or clothing, and the fact that the sun no longer shines for us, the situation is desperate” (Rüphan 6 June 1943). Honing, an IndoEuropean engineer with a Javanese mother and a Dutch father, who had studied in Delft, the Netherlands, notes in his memoirs that he had tried to convince “our Indonesian lads, who had never been outside Java” to put on warm clothing on their arrival in the freezing temperatures of Japan, but “You can’t talk sense into them” (Honing 2014, 184). There were plenty of complaints among the lower-ranking Dutch and Indo-European men about the Dutch officers, in particular the ensigns, a group of non-commissioned officers who had managed to get an exemption from working in the mine (which was later rescinded). Wassenaar, of the home guard, fulminated in his diary against his own officers after being punished by them for possession of some spare medicine.

2 Rijsttafel: A Dutch reference to a selection of Indonesian dishes served with white rice.

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They called me “mincemeat” and other things. When you’re a soldier, you have to take this sort of thing without reacting. If we ever have a son, he will become a lieutenant at least, because of all of this! … If you were to see the officers, you wouldn’t think that we were all starving. (Wassenaar 24 October 1943)

Rüphan wrote, “Quite a few smugglers have been caught of late, who are then told off [by our own officers]. The officers, even though they forbade the smuggling, buy the most.” As a survival strategy, it made sense to keep on the right side of the officers, in the hope of benefitting from some of their privileges. In his memoirs, home guard member Busselaar describes his delight at being appointed as toban (watcher) to serve the Dutch officers. “Consequently, I didn’t have to go down the mine and enjoyed the fresh air, when I accompanied our officers to their work in the fields. I prepared their food; I also tended the young tomatoes” (Busselaar 1955). Ensign Bouman wrote about being the best of friends with the Dutch commanding officer, as well as the kitchen staff, resulting in extra portions of food. “These means are not the most attractive, but one is not concerned with that when your life is at stake.”

The Americans The first group of Americans to arrive in May 1944 had experienced particular hardships. The fighting between American troops and the Japanese in the Philippines had been bitter and prolonged, and after being captured, hundreds of American troops had died during the infamous Bataan death march. In the Mukden FEPOW camp, the men were put to work building a huge tool and die factory, the MKK factory. Some of the men were beaten and tortured, and others were subjected to medical experiments with biological warfare. The American prisoners offered resistance in keeping with article 3 of the United States Armed Forces Code of Conduct, which reads: “If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make any effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy” (Van Waterford 1994, 359). The men committed sabotage in the factory and attempted numerous escapes, but this came at a steep price. Three FEPOWs who escaped were recaptured and then executed, and this had a profound effect on the men from Mukden. In an interview with American scholar Linda Goetz Holmes, Corporal Joseph Petak recounted how

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the “effect of the executions left a mark on us. We became vindictive, vengeful and surly. We became uncooperative at the factory and slowed down the work tremendously. Sabotage increased tenfold. Sabotage went on a rampage” (Holmes 2010, 65). The 150 worst saboteurs were sent to the Kamioka camp in Japan, “deliberately chosen because the senior FEPOWs there were British [sic, Dutch], known to keep stricter discipline among their own ranks and to cooperate with the Japanese more than the Americans were willing to do” (Holmes 2010, 50). One of the Americans, Robert Vogler jr., later described himself as one of this group of “troublemakers”, expert saboteurs (Holmes 2010, 124). Another American FEPOW, Robert Dow, who was among those transferred out of Mukden to Kamioka, reported in an interview with Holmes that, due to their combative reputation, “We had to wear red armbands the whole time we worked at Kamioka” (Holmes 2001, 87). Those at the top of the Dutch contingent eyed the Americans warily. Ensign Bouman wrote in his diary: “They are all of lower ranks primarily professional soldiers. There is no-one among them of any education and so, after they had confessed their war stories, I lost interest in and contact with the new residents.” Honing wrote: “These Americans were mostly from the Southern American States and many of them were of mixed heritage (Indian)…Conversation was limited, because they were of primary school level, most of them being volunteers who had signed up at a young age, so not the later G.I.’s (government issue, i.e., belonging to the State)” (Honing 2014, 205). Personal effects started disappearing from the Dutch barracks, only to be offered for sale by the Americans, prompting Dutch mathematics teacher Flip Stouten to write, “they are an unreliable, thieving and quarrelsome bunch.” When the second detachment of Americans arrived in August 1944, Bouman noted, “They were more disciplined than the first group, who were almost wanton.” It brought Bouman to the following conclusion: …it is striking that the three hundred and fifty US citizens who are present here demonstrate a complete lack of morals and morality. Besides a sort of external brutality, which manifests itself in bad manners and an instant readiness to settle a dispute by fist, they are as far as their character is concerned, weak, unreliable, anti-social, without self-discipline, and so on with a list of bad qualities. (Bouman 28 August 1945)

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Lower down the ranks, among the enlisted men, some of the Dutch made friends with the Americans. “We were surprised at the friendly relations between many of those lads from Texas and our humble lads from the backwoods [of the Indies],” reported Honing. “Ours soon learnt some simple American, supported by sign language. They swapped many yarns, among other things about cockfighting, something they apparently also do – in secret – there in the South…” (Honing 2014, 206). The relations with the Americans were often established for economic purposes, to trade goods. As was common in POW camps (compare Radford 1945 on the camps in Germany and Italy; Robertson 2015 on the Changi camp in Singapore) there was a flourishing black market in the Kamioka camp, not just between the prisoners but also with the Japanese and Korean guards, as well as the local miners. Wassenaar reported that, “the relationship with the Americans is good. I made a friend to whom I can give my own as well as bought miso sambal [spicy paste]. This way I can keep the delivery of beans and sambal going and get rid of the miso, which seems to disagree with me anyway” (Wassenaar 11 June 1944). When rumours started circulating about the possible arrival of new inmates, Rüphan commented, “[My friend] Pete and I would prefer Americans for several reasons” (Rüphan 28 November 1943). Conversely, the Americans, for the most part of professional soldiers, were not impressed by the Dutch and their poor fighting record. Of the Kamioka population, most of the Dutch FEPOWs—with a few notable exceptions—hadn’t fired a single shot or even seen a Japanese soldier prior to their internment in the POW camps. In Kamioka, the Americans—embittered by what had befallen their nation in Pearl Harbour in December 1941, and their own desperate last stand against the Japanese in the Philippines—continued to live by article 3 of their Code of Conduct, offering resistance to the Japanese whenever and wherever possible, whether by sabotage or other means. Sgt Pase recorded several attempted escapes of American FEPOWs in his diary, all unsuccessful. The Dutch generally adopted a much less confrontational style, and all the Dutch diarists recorded the gruesome treatment of the Americans for (perceived) transgressions in shocked tones. As with the Dutch, there were strong divisions within, and between, the two American groups. In the course of the war, the men of the first detachment had lost all respect for their commanding officers. “One feature in particular is unique to Mukden: the disdain American enlisted personnel felt toward their officers, especially toward their senior officer

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…” (Holmes 2001, 51). As a result, 1st Sergeant Joseph G. Pase, an experienced enlisted man, took the lead. At the arrival of the second detachment, commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Leonard E. Goldsmith, the first detachment refused to acknowledge Goldsmith’s command. The result was an open power-struggle. “My leaders consider themselves betrayed by 2nd company and relations are strained between the two groups,” wrote Pase in December 1944. There was also a fight brewing between the second detachment and the Dutch, noted Pase. From my own observations I believe that an open conflict between the Hollanders and 2nd company is inevitable; such a clash may result in useless sacrifice of personnel, and since Lt. Goldsmith and the Hollanders leader are not on speaking terms, I must take the responsibility of promoting an understanding. (Pase 24 December 1944)

In February 1945 he added: Private Louis Myers, while working in the cobbler’s shop adjoining Jap Headquarters, overheard Lt. Goldsmith promise Japs that if they would remove me from my command and join my men with his, he could increase the number of men working in the mine considerably. (Pase 3 February 1945)

With the support of his own men, Pase confronted Goldsmith and the affair was eventually dropped. Lower down the ranks, the men of the first and second detachments also kept their distance from each other. Ray Makepiece, of the second detachment, later wrote: I am pretty sure that Kamioka was a penal camp as there were some hard characters sent down from Mukden and they were in the camp when we arrived there in Aug. ‘44. You will be amazed at some of the stories that came out of those hell holes.” (Makepiece, Ray. 2001 Personal communication with Centre for Research Allied POWS under the Japanese, email)

The British There was only a tiny British delegation in Kamioka, just six men, of whom two died in February 1943. Rüphan had remarked in his diary about his time at POW camp Changi in Singapore, a huge transit

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camp, that the British had expressed surprise at the lack of discipline among the Dutch, and had adopted a superior attitude, withholding food and medicine. “This discredits the British,” wrote Rüphan (7 November 1942). In Kamioka, the only Britain to command a position of authority was a doctor, surgeon lt. Jackson, who arrived on 26 March 1944. According to Harle, “he has been sent here as punishment for stealing extra rations for his patients” (Harle 26 March 1944). Harle had witnessed the deaths of two of his compatriots in the first winter in Kamioka, and he welcomed the arrival of the first American detachment. “Quite a change to hear English spoken all around you again” (Harle 11 June 1944). Being such a tiny delegation meant that, before the arrival of the Americans, there was no choice for the British but to fraternise with the Dutch, and Harle established some firm relations. “Old van Erp, a good friend of ours, died today,” he noted on 14 February 1943. Part of his diary consists of personal thoughts and tributes written for him by the Dutch FEPOWs he had befriended. Wassenaar exploited a small smuggling network with two of the English men, which ended in disagreement. Now [the smuggling] is all over. Anyway, I’d already given up, as the two Englishmen had too much to say about everything I did, though they did none of the buying or the selling. So, I might as well keep the profit myself, instead of dividing it into three. (Wassenaar 8 December 1943)

There was one recurring event, during which the frictions between the different factions were temporarily forgotten, and that was at the regular music nights. Using whatever material they could lay their hands on, the FEPOWs had made their own musical instruments. These included ukuleles and guitars, and even a full-sized double bass of which the strings were made of parachute chords (Honing 2014, 207). The Japanese provided a violin and a guitar, and a band was soon formed. Timid Stephen Harle and Dutch officer lieutenant Semmelink, second in command to Dutch camp commander first lieutenant Theunissen, proved to be particularly talented as cabaret artists, and this gave them a certain prestige in the camp. The same went for the musicians—the lead violinist was a tailor from Surabaya (Honing 2014, 207).

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The Japanese Both the Dutch and the Americans held the view that the Japanese had only recently emerged from the Middle Ages. Ensign Bouman, who was impressed by the discipline in the Japanese army, wrote extensively about how “the Westerner and the West are the ideal the Japanese seeks to achieve,” and about “the innate reverence that the Jap has for the West and in particular America… In essence the Japanese are in many respects a medieval people, that underwent an only partly successful, Western reconstruction.” This essentially Western ethno-centric view of the world, with its accompanying position of moral superiority, is echoed in the memoirs of American marine Charles R. Jackson writing about his experiences in a Mitsubishi Company copper mine some 400 miles to the northwest of Tokyo: Remember that these people were but ninety years removed from a medieval society; considering that, we were lucky not to have been killed when we surrendered. …apart from systematically starving us, there was a strange mix of kindness and cruelty, with the former predominating. (Jackson 2000, 3)

In time, the FEPOWs started to distinguish between on the one hand the Japanese camp commander and the guards, and on the other hand the local Japanese mine workers, villagers and finally Japanese civilians conscripted for work in the mines. Underground, the Japanese civilian conscripts and mine workers shared the same fate as the FEPOWs, all of them suffering from claustrophobia and fear, the cold and damp and the potential dangers of the mine. “Two Dutchmen killed in mine, also two Japs. Fall of stone,” wrote Harle on 12 January 1943. It led to a certain degree of fraternisation. Bouman noted: The relations with the miners are very good. The attitude of the citizenry is very friendly and benevolent. I imagine, that the prisoners of war in the big cities in that respect are less well off than we are. Especially now that we, albeit haltingly, can gradually have a conversation, the relations are bit by bit becoming definitely comradely. (Bouman 18 March 1944)

In July 1943, Wassenaar wrote the following in his diary:

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Made friends with some civilian conscripts yesterday. A couple of decent Japs, office workers and lawyers etc. They feel just as miserable as we do. Invited me to sit with them in the [mine] shaft today. Actually, I managed to scrape a decent meal together from the six of them. One speaks a little English – helps the conversation. (Wassenaar 15 July 1943)

Wassenaar went to some lengths to establish a relationship. I told them my name and explained its meaning through the coat of arms on my ring. Seems to have made a bit of an impression. The best thing is that every day they invite me back for the next day. (Wassenaar 15 July 1943)

Rüphan wrote several entries about the local Japanese villagers, including this one in March 1943: The Japs are, as far as Japs go, very very decent; fraternisation all round. These simple villagers are a lot less unpleasant than the soldiers on Java… The locals buy cigarettes for us, especially when we’re at work in the village street [digging ditches] …. we can now appreciate a few of the civilians, some miners are the personification of kindness, especially the elders… (Rüphan 4 March 1943)

Civilian camp guard Okada regularly took Dutch prisoners out to his farm as a work detail, allowing them to rest and eat after their work. One of them was Busselaar, who was set to weeding the garden and harvesting potatoes. Afterwards, he was served a meal before being sent back to the camp. “The women were very friendly and often gave me something to take with me; I used to be escorted back to the camp in the evening with my pockets full of hard plums.” Even Stouten, who was generally very derogatory about the Japanese (“The men are almost all ugly, with bow legs and skewed eyes, and completely untrustworthy…. Most Japanese are without character and they’re all corrupt” [2007, 34]), concluded that the Japanese civilians were “not at all hostile, with the exception of some fanatical guys. The women often slip our lads some food and the children beg for chewing gum and soon make friends” (Stouten 2007, 33). Some of the relations established in the camp lasted after liberation. One of the Dutch ensigns, T. De Cock Buning, visited Japan ten years

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after the war ended, for a reunion with camp translator, Ikeda Tosjijasoe, five Japanese miners and two former camp guards. In a newspaper article he was quoted as saying, “I came back to thank those people who constantly tried to make our lives easier” (Heerenveensche Koerier, 1 November 1955). One of the most enduring relationships was the friendship between American FEPOW Robert Vogler Jr. and civilian guard Okada, who occasionally managed to slip him some extra food. Vogler and Okada corresponded after the war, Vogler came back to Kamioka to visit Okada’s widow and sons, and the Okada family eventually visited him in the US (Okada Masaaki and Okada Yumiko 2016, interview with Nishisato Fuyuko and Ernestine Hoegen; Chicago Tribune, 8 June 2018). What about the Japanese themselves, how did they regard the FEPOWs? Two interviews conducted in Kamioka in April 2016, allow for the tentative observation that the Americans, in particular, were viewed with extreme suspicion. “The Americans were treated like a vicious mob, they were under constant surveillance,” Okada Masaaki, son of Okada, the Japanese guard, recalled his father’s account, “(…) everybody understood, the Americans were the kind of vicious guys sent over to Kamioka from Mukden, they were treated very harshly. The British and Dutch were not under that kind of severe surveillance, they could walk around quite freely” (interview 2016). It was for this reason that Okada could only take Dutch FEPOWs with him as a work detail to his farm, for the Americans were considered too dangerous. Sato Nobuyasu, who was a schoolboy at the start of the war, but soon dropped out to help his father on the farm, recalled: “I was afraid of the POWs, well, not so much the POWs but the Korean miners. My impression of the Dutch POWs was that they were quiet, gentle” (interview 11 April 2016 with Nishisato Fuyuko and Ernestine Hoegen). Bouman noticed the preferential treatment that the Dutch were duly accorded: “I am proud in this camp to belong to the Dutch. The Jap, also, noted this and all positions of confidence, such as the distribution of provisions from the village of Kamioka (with ample opportunity for theft) were taken not only from the Americans but also from the Japs, and are filled by Dutch” (Bouman 22 August 1945).

Concepts of ‘Skill’ The above analysis of the different factions living in, or involved with, the Kamioka POW camp shows how this small society was much more stratified than at first meets the eye. An intricate hierarchy within and

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between the groups established itself along the lines of nationality, ethnic background, military ranking and type and level of education, as well as age and life experience. But perhaps the most influential factor of all was that of “skills”. We have already seen how a talent for music and entertaining brought a certain prestige to individual FEPOWs. Language skills were another form of social capital that could be put to good use, for example in communicating with the guards or the locals, often to wheedle food or medicine, or barter goods. Of particular significance were the successful attempts of some of the Dutch ensigns and officers to master the Japanese language. In time, they were able to decipher newspapers smuggled to them by a Korean guard, enabling them to put together a daily news bulletin. The regular updates on the progress the allied forces were making against Japan were an incredibly important boost to the morale of the prisoners. In the 1968 interview with researcher Sasaki T¯oru, camp commander Furushima offered his own conceptions of the skills of the various factions of FEPOWs: The Indonesians brought plenty of kitchen equipment with them, including large pots, and they were very good at cooking. … In the mine it was very much up to the drillers. There were plenty of men who had previously worked in coal or other types of mines, and they were people from mechanised, developed countries, so they were good at using the power drills, and it was the Japanese who had to learn from them. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Mitsui mining company was in those days run by POWs. (Sasaki 1968)

Furushima’s remarks about the Indonesians being “very good at cooking” and the ones from “mechanised, developed countries” being “good at using the power drills” are examples of the racialised concepts of skills that were prevalent during the war. As the Japanese forces began taking thousands of allied prisoners of war, Japanese companies started requesting skilled white labour to man their factory plants and their mines. FEPOWs were made to fill out lists with their skills, and those who claimed technical ability were selected for forced labour in mainland Japan. Among the companies requesting such skilled labourers were Mitsubishi, for its plant in Mukden, and Mitsui, for its mines, which included the one in Kamioka. Some of the Mitsui mines, most notably the Miiki mine at Omuta, had

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been built at the beginning of the twentieth century by American engineers, but now that most of their highly qualified personnel had been drafted into the Japanese armed forces, there was a huge deficit in skilled workers. American FEPOWs were sent to Mukden on the strength of their self-reported skills, and the same went for the Dutch prisoners in Kamioka. But Mitsubishi was disappointed that in actual fact, “only about 60 percent of the Americans sent to Mukden had really useful manufacturing skills” (Holmes 2001, 41). Likewise, besides a handful of engineers and mechanics, the Dutch “technicians” included “experts on the Indies, civil servants, newspaper men, a pharmacist, professional military men, …teachers and educators” (Honing 2014, 185). The racialised concept of the white man’s skill—part fact, part fiction—was carefully nurtured by the FEPOWs themselves. At Kamioka, although a certain number of FEPOWs certainly had technical abilities, and some even experience as mechanics or engineers, most of them came from desk jobs in civilian life and had never operated a power drill, never mind the huge drills used in the Kamioka mine. However, none of them were about to confess to that fact, and the men just learnt on the job. “Still drilling,” wrote Rüphan in his diary, “and now, after about nine months, we’ve mastered that craft.” Underground, drilling skills were of paramount importance because they brought a form of agency. Down the mine, skilled FEPOWs had the upper hand over unskilled local miners, the Japanese civilian conscripts and even over their Japanese mining bosses, who “were in effect a little afraid of us in the dark, because a large stone [on the head] could always be put down to a badly inspected ceiling” (Honing 2014, 201). In time, the FEPOWs operating the biggest power drills even worked without supervision. The (acquired) drilling skills were a form of social capital that the FEPOWs put to good use. If, for example, the Japanese civilian conscripts refused to share their food, the drillers simply raised the speed of their drilling, meaning the Japanese civilians—fresh from the city, and struggling to adapt to hard physical labour—had to shovel more ore. Conversely, if they complied, the drillers worked a little less hard, making life easier all around. Underground, this shift in power relations gave the FEPOWs confidence and leverage, which was reinforced by bribing their Japanese mining bosses with gifts of Western watches, belts and wallets. Bouman even wrote a lengthy section about an incident in which he and

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three other FEPOWs cornered their Japanese mining boss on a tiny platform in an isolated mine chamber and reclaimed a watch. The mining boss did not dare report the incident, and the FEPOWs went unpunished.

Conclusions Although each group appears to have considered themselves morally superior to the other national factions, there were significant nuances in the perception of the “other”. The American, British and Dutch groups shared a perspective of the Japanese as the common enemy, but a distinction was made between the military personnel commanding and guarding the camp, civilians in auxiliary roles (such as camp guard Okada), local mineworkers, conscripted civilian office workers, lawyers and civil servants from the city and finally the local villagers (“simple” but friendly people). With the conscripted civilians, in particular, meaningful contacts were established, and connections made. Likewise, from the Japanese perspective, the allied FEPOWs were the enemy, but of those, the Americans were the most “vicious”, and the Dutch the “gentlest”. In this way, each group constructed its own national notion of victimhood (Lim 2010, 138), of the victim/perpetrator split and of their own group’s experiences of the war and the Kamioka camp, off-set against—and therefore different from—those of the other factions. This meant that the sense of belonging to a particular national group was reinforced, but that at the same time, the circumstances of imprisonment and forced labour led to empathy and alliances between subsets of these national groups. The personal narratives embodied in the life writing that emerged from Kamioka reveals “the interstices or cracks” (Loriga 2017, 38) between the groups and the opportunities for bridging the divides. They show how boundaries between the factions were crossed and how the victim/ perpetrator split was modified: in time, not all Japanese were considered to be the enemy, and not all FEPOWs were victimised to the same degree. They also reveal how individuals managed to “shape and modify [the prevalent] power relations” (Loriga 2017, 39), even in the isolated, hierarchical environment of a prisoner of war camp. There were individuals of all denominations who procured agency. Economic networks were established that transgressed the national, race and class divisions, but other forms of feeling connected as a result of interpersonal wartime encounters also began to emerge. Below ground, where mining skills (in particular,

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drilling) were a form of social capital, a set of power relations evolved that differed from those above ground. The focus on the interplay between different forms of stratification reveals how the Indonesian troops and the group of Indo-Europeans without a Western education were structurally positioned at the bottom of the camp hierarchy. These men were disdained by those who called the shots in the Dutch faction, by the battle-hardened Americans but also by the Japanese military for their collaboration with the Dutch colonisers. They also had little social capital that they could draw on in camp life (i.e., a higher education, language skills, travel experience, drilling skills, possessions they could trade), and they therefore had all power systems firing against them. By contrast, the already privileged Dutch officers were much better placed to develop a form of agency, to strike allegiances with members of other factions, to set up a smuggling network and to man the drills. There were, of course, many other factors influencing the individual experience of camp life such as personal disposition, age, general health, life experience and plain old luck. As a result, against the backdrop of the national narratives of victimhood, war and imprisonment, there was a kaleidoscope of personal perceptions and reactions. Bouman, for example, noted: You will surely be tempted to believe, that I am condemned to a miserable existence. Yet this is not the case at all. At this time, I laugh just as loudly and heartfelt as I used to and am periodically just as cheerful or irritated and optimistic or downtrodden as before. (Bouman 18 March 1944)

The general tone of Harle’s journal is completely different: “How much longer, Oh Lord, How much longer. This place is driving me nuts…. can’t stand this much longer…am very depressed…sometimes think my mind is going…..” (Harle 10 September, 3 October and 10 December 1943). The lived experience and the recollections of war and captivity will always be highly personal. One POW camp, so many men, so many memories. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the editors Eveline Buchheim and Jennifer Coates, and the anonymous peer reviewers of this volume, for their support and suggestions during the development of this chapter. Special

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thanks to the families of POWs Herman Bouman, Stephen Harle and Ben Rüphan, who were so generous in sharing information about their loved ones.

Works Cited Aldrich, Richard. 2004. Witness to War. Diaries of the Second World War in Europe and the Middle East. London Toronto Sydney Auckland Johannesburg: Doubleday. Buchheim, Eveline. 2009. Passie en missie. Huwelijken van Europeanen in Nederlands-Indië en Indonesië 1920–1958. [Passion and Purpose: Marriages of Europeans in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia 1920–1958] Amsterdam: NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Captain, Esther. 2002. Achter het Kawat was Nederland. Indische oorlogservaringen en -herinneringen 1942–1995. [Behind the Bamboo Fencing were the Netherlands: Indies’ war experiences and recollections 1942–1995] Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok. Havers, R.P.W. 2003. Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience. The Changi POW Camp, Singapore, 1942–5. London: Routledge Curzon. Hoegen, Ernestine. 2022. Narrating the Imprisoned Body in Life Writing from the Kamioka POW Camp. Life Writing 19 (2): 241–258. Holmes, Linda Goetz. 2001. Unjust Enrichment. How Japan’s Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books. Holmes, Linda Goetz. 2010. Guests of the Emperor: The Secret History of Japan’s Mukden POW Camp. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. Kemperman, Jeroen and Elisabeth Broers. 2003. De Japanse bezetting in dagboeken. Dagboeken geschreven in krijgsgevangenkampen in Fukuoka. [The Japanese Occupation in Diaries. Diaries Written in POW Camps in Fukuoka]. Amsterdam: NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Lim, Jie-Hyun. 2010. “Victimhood Nationalism in Contested Memories: National Mourning and Global Accountability.” In Memory in a Global Age. Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, eds. A. Assmann and S. Conrad, pp. 138–162. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Loriga, Sabina. 2017. “The Plurality of the Past: Historical Time and the Rediscovery of Biography.” In The Biographical Turn. Lives in history, eds. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan and Jonne Harmsma, pp. 31–41. London and New York: Routledge. Oliver, Lizzie. 2019. Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway. Narratives of History and Memory. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Quinones, C. Kenneth. 2021. Imperial Japan’s Allied Prisoners of War in the Pacific: Surviving Paradise. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Radford, R.A. 1945. “The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp.” Economica 12 (48): 189–201. Robertson, Lucy. 2015. “Discipline at Changi: Crime, punishment and keeping order inside the prison camp.” In Beyond surrender’, Australian Prisoners of War in the Twentieth Century, eds. Joan Beaumont, Lachlan Grant, and Aaron Pegram. Melbourne: MUP Academic. Stouten, Hanna. 2008. “Noodrantsoen moet je doen. Hoe de geest overleeft; voor, in en na Japan, 1942–1981” [Living on Emergency Rations. How the soul survives; Before, In and After Japan, 1942–1981]. Tijdschrift Indische Letteren 23: 23–47. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_ind004200801_01/_ind 004200801_01_0004.php. Accessed 15 Apr 2022. Sturma, Michael. 2020. Japanese Treatment of Allied Prisoners During the Second World War: Evaluating the Death Toll. Journal of Contemporary History 55 (3): 514–534. Van Waterford (pseudonym Willem F. Wanrooy). 1994. Prisoners of the Japanese in World War I: Statistical History, Personal Narratives and Memorials Concerning POWs in Camps and on Hellships, Civilian Internees, Asian Slave Laborers and Others Captured in the Pacific Theatre. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Diaries, Memoirs and Letters Bouman, H.A. 1 March 1944-2 August 1945. “Kamioka War Diary in the Form of Letters to his Elder Brother” (transcript). Archives of Groningen, 2553 Bouman family, nr. 19. Original in private collection Bouman family (translation: E. Hoegen). Busselaar, L.F.M. 1955. Belevenissen van een Landstormsoldaat gedurende en na afloop van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. [Adventures of a Home Guard soldier during and after the Second World War]. NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide studies, archive nr. 401:1409 (originals) and 401:5440 (typescript). Harle, S.R. 8 December 1941-7 September 1945. Diaries and notes from Kamioka, Imperial War Museum, London, Catalogue number Documents.8460. Honing, Jan. 2014. Herinneringen aan het leven in Indië. [Memories of Life in the Indies] Santpoort: Brave New Books. Jackson, Charles R. (edited by Bruce Norton). 2000. I am Alive. San Diego: Endpapers Press. Makepiece, Ray. 2001. Personal Communication to Centre for Research Allied Prisoners Under the Japanese, Email, 10 December. http://www.mansell. com/pow_resources/camplists/Nagoya/kamioka_1/makepiece.html. Copyright Roger Mansell. Accessed 15 April 2022.

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Pase, Joseph G. “Record of Events” and transcript. http://www.mansell.com/ pow_resources/camplists/nagoya/kamioka_1/NAG-01_Pase_Diary-s.pdf. Accessed 15 Apr 2022. Rüphan, Ben. 21 July 1942-13 September 1945. “War Diaries in the Form of a Letter to his Wife” (transcript). Private collection Rüphan family (translation: Ernestine Hoegen). Stouten, J.P.M. 2007. “Diary: Kamioka POW nr 102: 1942-October 1945.” Private Publication. NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (translation: Ernestine Hoegen). Wassenaar, Gerben Jan. 26 December 1942- September 1945. “War diaries in the form of a letter to his wife and children” (transcript). Private collection Wassenaar family (translation: by his granddaughter).

Interviews Okada Masaaki and Okada Yumiko. 2016. Interview with Nishisato Fuyuko and Ernestine Hoegen, Kamioka, 11 April. Furushima Ch¯ otar¯o, Shimode Ry¯ oichi, and Hosoi Sotoemon. 1968. Interview with Sasaki T¯ oru and Sakamaki Sabur¯ o, Kamioka-chou, 21 July (translation: Jan Bongenaar). Sato Nobuyasu. 2016. Interview with Nishisato Fuyuko and Ernestine Hoegen, Kamioka, 11 April.

Newspaper Articles Chicago Tribune. 2018. “Robert Vogler Jr., Bataan Death March Survivor Who Made Peace with the Japanese, Dies at 97.” Chicago Tribune (8 June). https://www.chicagotribune.com/sd-me-obit-vogler-20180607-story. html. Accessed 15 Apr 2022. Heerenveensche Koerier. 1955. “Reunie in dorpje in Japan. Nederlander drukte de hand van vroegere kampbewakers.” Heerenveensche Koerier (1 November).

CHAPTER 3

Beyond the “Hell-Ship” Experience: Former Okinawan POWs Visit Hawai’i After 72 Years Kaori Akiyama

Introduction The stories of the prisoners of war (POWs) from the Battle of Okinawa (23 March–23 June 1945) attracted widespread public attention in Okinawa when a commemoration called the “Memorial Service for the Deceased Okinawan POWs” (hereafter “Memorial Service”) was held in Hawai’i in June 2017, 72 years after the POWs were transported to Hawai’i. The purpose of the service was to commemorate the 12 POWs who died during the confinement and whose remains have not been located. Understandably, the POWs who experienced confinement

K. Akiyama (B) International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_3

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expressed pity for their deceased fellow POWs on realizing that their remains were missing (Okinawa Times 20 February 1982).1 This chapter examines the narratives of some of the Okinawan POWs who were transported by ship in chaotic conditions and were subjected to dehumanizing experiences, a memory narrative that was not included in the Memorial Service in Hawai’i 72 years after the incident. The commemoration did lead to a wider audience acknowledging the existence of confined Okinawan POWs during and after World War II, yet this aspect was largely missing. Those POWs who experienced harsh treatment during the journey to Hawai’i were later called hadaka-gumi (naked-group) by other POWs because they were kept naked in the ship for approximately 20 days. For 70 years following the end of the war, Okinawan public history did not pay significant attention to these people, although some of the POWs wrote memoirs. The news of the commemoration service brought the group’s history into public discourse, thereby creating a new awareness of this aspect of the Battle of Okinawa and serving to bring more inclusive narratives into the public history of the conflict. Extant studies mention the “naked-group” of the victimized Okinawan POWs only briefly (Shimabukuro 2016; Nakamura and Higa 2019) but these narratives are present in the interview testimonies of two former POWs who participated in the Memorial Service. Yet it is not easy to see a clear relationship between these “hell-ship” ( jigoku-bune) experiences and the Memorial Service. The existence of the “hell-ship” was deemphasized in the Memorial Service, while the Hawaiian-Okinawan relationship was emphasized. This conforms to the dominant mode of memorializing Okinawan POW experiences in Hawai’i. For example, histories of the camp life of Okinawan POWs in Hawai’i emphasized the friendship between Okinawan POWs and Okinawan immigrants and their descendants (hereafter “residents”) in Hawai’i during the postwar period (Nakahodo 2013; Chinen 2014; Nakamura and Higa 2019). However, the memorial service did achieve a general awareness raising of Okinawan POWs experiences in Hawai’i, and we can understand

1 Some oral histories indicate that survivors from the Battle of Okinawa felt survivor’s guilt in relation to the families of their deceased fellow soldiers. In the case of Himeyuri Student Corps, whose wounded classmates were often left on the battlefields, this type of memory has been described as “a guilty feeling for ‘happening to survive’” (Himeyuri Peace Museum 2016, 63).

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subsequent communications about the “naked-group” and “hell-ship” experiences as building on this enhanced awareness. Local newspaper articles in Okinawa about the Memorial Service described the experiences of those former POWs (Ryukyu Shimpo 6 April and 30 May (Toguchi 2017a; T¯ome and Shimabukuro 2017). Preparations in Okinawa for the Memorial Service afforded the opportunity for surviving POWs to indirectly discuss their experiences of being victimized in the “hell-ship” before they visited Hawai’i. However, at the Memorial Service in Hawai’i, the memory narratives shared in public were mostly collective memories of the generosity of Okinawan residents in Hawai’i toward the Okinawan POWs during their confinement, as this chapter will discuss later. As sociologist Vinitzky-Seroussi (2002) argues, one of the challenges involved in commemorating a response to “difficult pasts” is the tendency for “fragmented commemoration,” in which multiple commemorations in various spaces and times aim diverse discourses of the past at disparate audiences. This differs from “multivocal commemoration,” which features shared space, time, and texts that carry diverse meanings for specific groups with different interpretations of the same past (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002, 31–32). Vinitzky-Seroussi’s analysis of the three components of commemoration (protagonists, event, and context) that shape the dimensions of remembrance is useful to understand this Memorial Service as a “fragmented commemoration” of “difficult pasts.” The “context” includes the places and times at which the narratives and memories have been created by POWs, since they were forced to undergo a round trip between Okinawa and Hawai’i during and after World War II, and later visited Hawai’i of their own volition. Since 2016 August, I have conducted personal interviews in Japanese with nine former POWs in Okinawa. The interview testimonies of Toguchi Hikoshin, a leading figure in the planning of the commemoration, and Furugen Saneyoshi have been selected for close analysis in this chapter, as they both experienced the “hell-ship.” Assistance in locating interviewees was provided by local agents and journalists. I recorded interviews and later asked interviewees follow-up questions. In addition, I assisted with filmed interviews conducted by the US National Park Service (NPS) when the same two former POWs visited Hawai’i

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for the Memorial Service in June 2017.2 The NPS later translated the interviews into English. Thus, the interviews analyzed in this chapter consist of various translations of original interviews conducted in different locations (Okinawa and the Island of Oahu). Other methods were participant observation at pilgrimages to the locations of confinement and at a party held during the Memorial Service, and analysis of municipal documents, newspaper articles, and museum exhibitions in Okinawa. I also accessed materials from the Memorial Service Committee for the Deceased Okinawan POWs in Hawaii (hereafter MCOPH). This chapter begins with a description of the Battle of Okinawa that was communicated in an exhibition at the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, showing one example of how the Battle is publicly discussed. The next section provides historical background about the capture of POWs and their transport to Hawai’i, focusing on the “nakedgroup.” This is followed by a comparison of the dominant narratives and less common, or “minority” narratives among Okinawan POWs which reflect their experiences. The analysis in this last section focuses on the Memorial Service as a response to these “difficult pasts” using the model developed by Vinitzky-Seroussi. I conclude with a discussion of some of the motivations behind the lack of emphasis on the victimization of the “naked-group,” including efforts to attract a wider audience.

Narratives and Background of the Battle of Okinawa Capturing the whole story of the Battle of Okinawa is an arduous task, but representations in public history give some clues to understand civilian experiences in the war. The Battle of Okinawa is well-known for its ferocity and the extreme hardships that it caused to civilians. Since the 1970s, the field of Japanese history has recognized the value of “testimony” in depicting the history of Okinawa (Narita 2006, 6). Historical investigations of Okinawa were hampered by the severe devastation of the land as a result of the war. Due to the lack of municipal records 2 The Honouliuli Internment Camp was originally confirmed by volunteers in 2002 and was designated a National Monument in 2015 by former US President Barack Obama. It was renamed Honouliuli National Monument and upgraded to the Honouliuli Historic Site in 2019. Protection and interpretation planning is underway by the National Park Service, US Department of the Interior.

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describing the Battle, historians acknowledged oral histories as acceptable and considered them to be valuable resources that fill in missing parts of the history of the conflict. On the other hand, statistics are available to provide a macro understanding of the Battle of Okinawa. The battle was fought between the Allies (US Navy and Army Forces with British Forces) and the Japanese Imperial Army, during the final stages of the Asia–Pacific War in 1945. The Japanese Imperial Army used Okinawa to delay the landing of the Allies on the Japanese mainland. The battle is notable for the large number of casualties: more than 200,000 casualties including 188,136 Japanese (civilians and soldiers) and 12,520 Allies were recorded (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications 2009). The number of Japanese civilian casualties was 94,000, which was approximately a quarter of the entire Okinawan population at that time. Some villages even lost nearly 50 percent of their population (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications). The massive mobilization of civilians led to this enormous number of civilian losses: adult home guards (Boei-tai), units of middle school boys aged 14–17 called Tekketsu-kino tai (Blood and Iron Student Corps), and girls in nurse units called Himeyuri gakuto tai (Himeyuri Student Corps) were all pressed into service.3 Furthermore, the time of the battle coincided exactly with the rainy season in Okinawa, and the spread of malaria and food shortages were also a factor in the harsh war conditions. The Japanese Imperial Army’s wrongdoings toward civilians have since been documented in numerous scholarly and publicly accessible works which emphasize the brutality of the Battle of Okinawa (see Nakandari 1995). In order to compare a “top-down” or master memory narrative of civilian experiences with the unique experiences of Okinawan POWs in Hawai’i, I will briefly analyze the representation of the Battle at the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, which organized contentious discussions between prefectural officials and civilian groups about appropriate or fair representation of civilian experiences, leading to the first renovation of the museum in 1978 (Nakayama 2011 [1978], 197–207). The gallery entitled “The Battle of Okinawa as witnessed by local residents: A hell on earth” features the natural caves called gama that 3 Himeyuri literally means “princess lily” and is a nickname given to female students at the Okinawa Female Normal School and the First Girls’ High School.

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were used as shelters during the war. The four scenes in the diorama cave are as follows: (a) “Refugees and Japanese Army” shows civilians taking refuge in a cave, where a mother presses her hand over her baby’s mouth to prevent it from crying under the eyes of a Japanese solder; (b) “Field Hospital and Cyanide” shows immobile wounded soldiers poisoned and abandoned while withdrawing from the field hospital; and the Himeyuri Student Corps forced to aid in the murders; (c) “Council of War ‘Shock Troops’” shows boys as young as 14 who were ordered to attack tanks by carrying bombs; (d) “Surrender Leaflets and Suspicion of Spying” explains that any persons possessing propaganda leaflets from the United States urging surrender were suspected of espionage (Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum). Okinawans had a native language (Ryukyuan), but experienced assimilation by the Meiji government of Japan (1868–1912) which included the requirement that Okinawan citizens use standard Japanese language. In the chaotic situation in 1945, Japanese Imperial soldiers could react to languages or dialects that sounded unfamiliar, and this often triggered the murder of civilians by Japanese soldiers. Moreover, being taken prisoner by the US or Allied forces was banned by the Japanese Imperial Army, so many soldiers and civilians committed suicide, often in caves, or soldiers killed civilians, to avoid capture (Nakandari 1995). Within this context, most of the stories told by Okinawan civilians focus heavily on losing lives, student mobilization, and dealing with cold-blooded Japanese Imperial soldiers. Comparing the dominant narratives of the Battle and those of Okinawan POWs’ personal experiences, the stories of POW camp lives in Hawai’i are accompanied by much less tension. Generally, POWs who found themselves in camps in Hawai’i soon realized that the US military would provide food, clothes, and often demanded no hard labor, treatment that was very different from that of the Imperial Japanese Army. Okinawan POWs were separated from the Japanese Army soldiers who were captured in Okinawa. Captured soldiers and civilian personnel were classified as either Okinawan or Japanese. Selected Okinawan soldiers and servicemen and Korean POWs were sent to Hawai’i, so they did not see the full extent of the devastation in Okinawa until they were repatriated under the US-led Allied Occupation in 1946. In this sense, the experiences of the POWs are in the minority among the narratives of those who suffered in the Battle of Okinawa. Similarly, the POWs who experienced the “hell-ship” were a minority among the POWs who were sent to Hawai’i.

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The “Hell-Ship” Experience: Hadaka-Gumi (“Naked-Group”) and the Transfer of POWs to Hawai’i Hadaka-gumi, or “naked-group” is the colloquial term used for the POWs who experienced mistreatment in the transport known as the “hellship.” This mistreatment included being kept naked in the hold of the ship and being given food without bowls or eating implements on the way to Hawai’i. The US Forces handled captured and surrendered people in the field as follows: First, they were housed in nearby internment camps and classified into two groups, civilians and servicemen. The servicemen were further classified as combatant or non-combatant, both of which were POWs. The local home guards and units of middle school boys as well as Korean laborers were classified as “non-combatant POWs” while enlisted soldiers from all over Japan including Okinawa Prefecture were classified as “combatant POWs.” These POWs were housed in camps and, later, selected POWs were transferred to Hawai’i in three trips. Municipal and local history books are compiled by editorial offices in individual local governments in Japan. These history books usually include sections with testimonies relating to the Battle of Okinawa. They can be found in both public libraries (such as the Okinawa Prefectural Library) and university libraries. In Okinawa, Kincho-shi (The History of Kin-town 2002) has been relied on for estimates of the numbers of POWs transferred to Hawai’i and the dates of their transport. The first transport of 180 people from the Kadena Camp (the present town of Kadena) took place on or around 10 June 1945. The second transport of 1500 people, Okinawan and Korean, from the Yaka Camp (the present town of Kin) occurred on or around 27 June. The third transport took place on or around 3 July in the same manner as the second transport (Kincho-shi 2002, 354). The total number of POWs in the book is noted as 3180, while US military records kept for registration purposes by the Headquarters Prisoner of War Base Camp in the Territory of Hawai’i show that about 3600 Okinawan Prisoners of War landed in Hawai’i between 5 August and 16 October 1945 (Headquarters Prisoner of War Base Camp 1945).4

4 The exact dates of these transports and their arrival in Hawai’i could not be fully determined based on the military documents.

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Okinawan author Kay¯o Yasuo provides a clue as to how common the “hell-ship” experiences were among those POWs. In a novel based on his experience, Kay¯o notes that there were about 60 people in the hold of the ship (1995, 11). He described his harsh experience in the “hell-ship,” becoming ill in the unsanitary hold and being hospitalized in Hawai’i after landing. If such a ship was the only “hell-ship,” at least 60 Okinawan POWs were mistreated during their transport to Hawai’i. Presumably, the “naked-group” POWs were a minority among the 36,000 Okinawan POWs who were registered in Hawai’i. The experiences of the “naked-group” have also been documented in memoirs by other fellow POWs (such as Tokuyama 1994, 64–75). This indicates that the existence of the “naked-group” POWs was acknowledged to a certain degree in the collective memory of the postwar local community. Furthermore, a US document that indicates that US forces had concerns about managing the population density of camps in Okinawa during the battle due to hygiene considerations indicates a possible reason for transport (Shimabukuro 23 June 2018). Yet these materials constitute only a small portion of the historical record. Documents regarding POW transport from Okinawa to Hawai’i have not been discovered by historians either in the United States or Japan. As POW mistreatment was not reported extensively outside of Okinawa, it is possible that this particular case has not been a priority for scholars, with most of the scholarly attention on severe cases in the Battle, such as group suicides. Accordingly, an examination of the details of the harsh experiences as described in oral histories will be instrumental in determining the scope of the maltreatment of POWs. While the Memorial Service generally did not emphasize this mistreatment, the report on the Memorial Service published by MCOPH includes some of the details of the “hell-ship” experiences based on testimonies. The treatment of the prisoners on the way to Hawai’i seems to have varied depending on the ship. On the “hell-ship,” the US Army ordered the prisoners to shave their body hair and wash themselves with seawater; they disinfected them with DDT before boarding and kept them naked until they arrived at Hawai’i. No announcement of the destination of the ship was provided, the POWs were kept in the hold and passed their stools in a bucket in an open space with no partition, and meals were served without any eating implements (MCOPH June 2017a). Furugen, one of the former POWs who visited Hawai’i, provided critical details of this experience in his NPS interview in Hawai’i. A

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long-time activist and a former politician, Furugen was a member of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly for 16 years and a Diet member representing Okinawa for the Japan Communist Party for 10 years. He was 88 years old at the time of his visit to Hawai’i for the NPS interview, his first visit to the islands in the postwar period. In the Battle, he was mobilized into student corps at the age of 15. During an interview conducted by the NPS Honolulu office and the author in June 2017 at one of the NPS facilities inside the Pearl Harbour National Memorial, he described his underlying fears and discomfort. The transport ship had come to Okinawa carrying powdered cement. On the deck, we were stripped completely […]. We showered with salt water on the deck and were gestured to go below deck. Around 30 of us were there […]. The floor was covered in cement powder. The powder stuck to our feet. It was too uncomfortable to sit down […]. There was no window in the hold. 3 July was usually one of the hottest days in Okinawa. You may not believe this, but it was so hot in the hold, and we sweated so much. Beads of sweat dripped down to the floor from our bodies then to the drain on the floor. The amount of our sweat was enough to wash away the powder -cement covered floor in a day or two. We were given two meals a day. The hold had an opening at the top. That part would open, and two buckets were lowered down on a rope. One had white rice; the other had a side dish […]. The buckets were pulled up after each meal. We had one bucket for a toilet with a wooden plate for a lid. It was about 50 cm in diameter. Another for potable water. We had the water bucket refilled as much as we wanted. Because there was no window, it was too dark to know day and night. […] We showered with salt water on the deck every 3 days. I thought to myself that it was exactly like we had been told and we were taken as slaves. (S. Furugen, personal interview 5 June 2017)

The tremendous fear of becoming a slave was apparent in Furugen’s narrative even after 72 years. Yet he was able to describe his recollections calmly in front of the US governmental officials in the facility for the memorial. In interviews both in Hawai’i and in Okinawa, Furugen has described his experiences in much the same manner. However, in the office of the NPS in Honolulu, Toguchi told me that his feelings about this experience were a mixture of a sense of unfairness and anger. Toguchi, who was 93 years old at the time of the interview, was conscripted at the age of 18. He later established a successful gas company and served as a Kadena City assembly member from 1961

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to 1985 and a chairperson of the Chamber of Commerce in 1971. In contrast to Furugen, who was willing to talk to the media about his “hellship” experiences in Okinawa in the same manner as with the NPS staff and the media, Toguchi showed some reluctance to share his experiences with NPS (H. Toguchi, personal interview 3 June 2017b).5 He later shared his awareness that, “Japan [the Japanese army] also did terrible things to Asian countries in the war,” suggesting that his identity as a citizen of a victimizer country prevented him from making claims or even complaints about his experiences at the hands of the US soldiers (H. Toguchi, personal interview 12 May 2018). Nevertheless, these accounts share some common elements that verify the details of maltreatment. The Geneva Convention of July 27, 1929 relative to the treatment of Prisoners of War lays down the general principle that captives must be treated humanely. The rules state that POWs must be protected from violence, insults, and public curiosity and mandate appropriate food and clothing for prisoners, hygiene, and other matters (International Committee of the Red Cross 2019). The treatment of POWs by the United States was generally considered to have complied with the Convention (Hata 1998, 183–184), but this was not so in the case of the “naked-group.” (It is well known that the Japanese Imperial Army did not follow the Geneva Convention of 1929 regarding the treatment of POWs.)

Camp Lives of Okinawan POWs in Hawai’i as a Dominant Narrative Although the “hell-ship” experiences were shared among only a small group of Okinawan POWs, camp life was experienced by all POWs, and this became the dominant narrative. The confinement of Okinawan POWs in Hawai’i continued after the end of WWII and ended in December 1946. After arriving at Oahu from Okinawa, many of the Okinawan POWs were transferred to the Honouliuli Camp, the largest camp in the Hawaiian Islands, which was isolated from residential areas. During the war, Honouliuli was used as a POW Camp and Civilian Internment 5 These venues were located in US government or military facilities and were surrounded by uniformed NPS staff members (except main interviewer R. Rinas). The setting of the interviews may also have affected interviewees’ willingness or hesitation to share their experiences.

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Camp. The camp was operated initially for Japanese civilian internment in Hawai’i and Japanese civilian internees called the place “Hell Valley” ( jigoku-dani). It is ironic that while their journey as POWs included a “hell-ship” journey, the “Hell Valley” was a place where Okinawan POWs were well fed. The Japanese, Italian, and Korean prisoners were kept in separate quarters. Later, some Okinawan POWs were transferred to the US mainland, and some who were diagnosed as carriers of “filarial parasite,” an endemic disease in Okinawa, were sent back to Okinawa, reducing the number of POWs in Hawai’i from approximately 3600 to 2300 by June 1946 (Akiyama 2018, 122). The last group of Okinawan POWs returned home at the very end of 1946, so they were confined for about one and a half years. This period led to an open and peaceful atmosphere of exchange between Okinawan POWs and Okinawan immigrants on the streets and in their workplaces (Nakahodo 2013; Chinen 2014; Nakamura and Higa 2019). After the end of the Asia–Pacific War, most of the POWs were moved to other camps in town that were more accessible to places that required labor. The detainees engaged in miscellaneous jobs such as construction and cleaning work. They were paid 80 cents per day for their labor, and a 5-dollar coupon was given to them each month for necessary items (Akiyama 2018, 121). The POWs received considerable attention from Okinawan residents. In the same interview by NPS, Furugen recalled his experiences and analyzed his emotions regarding the situation. When I was doing my tasks, I was in uniform. That uniform said POW everywhere, on the chest, back, sleeves, front and back of the pants. A US soldier always escorted and monitored me. Because we did not have a common language, he sometimes manhandled me instead of giving me verbal instructions. Some of the Okinawan residents in Hawai’i saw these interactions between US soldiers and POWs, and others only heard about them. Okinawans have tough historical backgrounds. Maybe, that made those Okinawans in Hawai’i more sympathetic to us. They brought me delicious food in Okinawan-style bento boxes while I was picking weeds behind the fence. These people were not my relatives nor friends. (S. Furugen personal interview 5 June 2017)

Many Okinawan residents in Hawai’i attempted to get in contact with Okinawan POWs at their workplaces. The Headquarters Prisoner of War Base Camp in the Territory of Hawai’i tried to control these meetings, but the exchanges with residents continued (Nakahodo 2013; Akiyama

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2018; Nakamura and Higa 2019). Nakamura and Higa suggest that this could be a reflection of the “Aloha Spirit” to forge yuimaaru, the Okinawan concept of “community spirit of working together” (2019, 345). Indeed, Nakahodo (2013) notes that many Okinawan residents in Hawai’i contacted Okinawan POWs after the war seeking information about relatives who may have survived. In the camp, POWs were allowed to perform Okinawan stage shows and play baseball when they were not working. They had hand-made instruments for playing Okinawan music, and there were even several strikes in the camps. A master or dominant narrative to the effect that POWs had an easier time in Hawai’i than those who stayed in devastated Okinawa developed, and this narrative has tended to take precedence over their dehumanizing experience on the “hell-ship.” Many of the POWs recalled that the food was good at the camp, especially after the months of fighting in Okinawa without enough to eat. This became a relatively non-traumatic memory of their camp lives that they carried into the postwar period. Toguchi describes the early days of his confinement at the Honouliuli Camp. Because I was mentally and physically weak, even getting up and going to sleep were painful. I had spent 3 months in a bunker before I was taken as a POW. I had not eaten much and had lost weight. During my time in the camp, I rested […]. Japanese education had taught us that POWs would be killed or enslaved. I had believed that because there had not been any other information. When I was a POW, I was treated humanely. I realized that Japanese education had been wrong about this. (H. Toguchi, personal interview 3 June 2017b)

His impression of having a “rest” might seem contradictory considering the reality of his status as a captured POW. Yet the final part of his comment, which relates to his changed view of Americans, suggests that he was inclined to emphasize positive aspects, and indicates why he had been reluctant to talk about the “hell-ship” experience.

Commemoration for the Deceased Twelve In Okinawa, the stories of former POWs who were in Hawai’i have attracted public attention since the media started to report the planning of the Memorial Service for the deceased POWs in Hawai’i in

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2016. Prior to this, a series of newspaper articles in Ryukyu Shimpo entitled “Honryu-no kanata e: Sengo nanaju-nen Okinawa hishi” (Across the torrent: The hidden history in Okinawa in the 70-year postwar period) by Shimabukuro Sadaharu had been published, shedding light on the personal lives of some Okinawans who had experienced drastic life changes due to the war. One of the people featured, Gima Noboru, was born and raised on the island of Maui, Hawai’i, and went to Okinawa when he was adopted by a relative. He was captured in the Battle of Okinawa and sent back to Hawai’i as a POW. He was released and later served as an officer of the Counterintelligence Corps in Okinawa under the US-led Allied Occupation (Shimabukuro 2016 [2015]). Due to stories like Gima’s, we can assume that the general public in Okinawa had gained at least basic background knowledge about the histories of people who became prisoners of war in the battle 70 years ago and were transported to Hawai’i and confined. Okinawan newspapers and other media have also highlighted the story of Toguchi, who has spent his time and funds searching for the remains of deceased POWs in Hawai’i since 1981. In his initial visit to Hawai’i to search for the remains with other fellow POWs, he noticed that the Schofield Barracks on the Island of Oahu, where former POWs were believed to be buried, had no grave markers. This trip motivated him to search for the records of the dead and for their remains, to bring them back to their families. He sent letters to politicians and lawyers in Hawai’i requesting their help in obtaining relevant data and information to search for the missing remains and acquired the medical charts of the twelve deceased POWs, which he gave to the bereaved families. Together, Toguchi and the families appealed to both the central and prefectural governments in Japan and visited Hawai’i several times but did not find any clues that would lead to a resolution. When he turned 90 years old, he reached the conclusion that at least he and his supporters should hold a memorial service in Hawai’i to console the souls of the deceased POWs (H. Toguchi, personal interview 3 February 2017c). The memorial service was therefore conceived to commemorate the twelve POWs as an alternative to bringing them back home to Okinawa. Planning for the event began in late October 2016 with the establishment of a Memorial Service Committee. The Memorial Service Committee co-chairman Takayama Ch¯ok¯o related that it was after the 6th WorldWide Uchinanchu (Okinawan) Festival in Okinawa that Toguchi and Takayama made an appeal to the Executive Director of the Hawai’i

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United Okinawan Association and the president of the Okinawa Hawai’i Association. Ultimately the Memorial Service was supported by Okinawan communities in Okinawa and Hawai’i. Toguchi’s appeal via media in Okinawa as a former POW was also effective. The November 4, 2016 Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper featured his announcement: “Memorial Service in Hawai’i: For those captured in the Battle of Okinawa and deceased overseas,” which included Toguchi’s statement that, “At least, we should have the ceremony in Hawai’i” (Ryukyu Shimpo 4 November 2016). A total of 80 participants from Okinawa attended the commemoration, including the two former POWs Toguchi and Furugen, Memorial Service Committee members, family members and relatives of former POWs, politicians and administrative officers from Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawan classical musicians, and media representatives. I also attended as a participant observer (MCOPH, December 2017b). The visit by Okinawans for the commemoration on the island of Oahu, Hawai’i was scheduled from 2 to 7 June 2017. The group from Okinawa carried out the two-day memorial service with the support of Okinawan associations in Hawai’i. The island of Oahu is the place where most of the Okinawan POWs were confined (Akiyama 2018, 123). The program included visits to three former POW confinement sites and one Buddhist temple, focusing on a one-day central service on 4 June. The first memorial service was held at the US Army Schofield Barracks, where the remains of POWs were initially buried and where they later went missing. Buddhist memorial services were held at Sand Island where one of the former POW camps was located, and at the Jik¯oen Hongwan Mission temple, which has served the Okinawan community in Hawai’i for many years. In the evening, a big party called the “Hawaii-Okinawa ALOHA Party” was held at a local restaurant. The party featured a requiem song for the POWs performed on sanshin (an Okinawan stringed instrument) as well as ukulele and both Hula and Ryukyuan dance performances (see Nakamura and Higa 2019, 346–367). As previously mentioned, Toguchi was one of the leaders of the commemoration. In his speech, he expressed gratitude to the Okinawan community. He spoke with emotion of how Okinawan residents gave him food when he was forced to work as a POW in Hawai’i, saying, “Because of you folks, we were able to survive and went back to Okinawa.” On the second day, some of the attendees made an optional tour to the Honouliuli Historic Site (the former Honouliuli Internment and POW Camp). The Japanese Cultural Centre of Hawai’i also arranged for an

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Okinawan folk song to be performed by a local musician for Toguchi and Furugen when they visited the site (participant observation by author, 2–4 June 2017). The commemoration did not include any discussion or sharing of memories by Toguchi and Furugen regarding their “hell-ship” experiences. The focus was not on dehumanized treatment, but rather on the fact that the remains were missing, as well as emphasizing the strong bonds between Okinawan groups in Okinawa and Hawai’i.

Dealing with “Difficult Pasts” Narratives of the Battle of Okinawa seem to be becoming broader and increasingly diverse, with new narratives appearing every year. A series of Tokyo Shimbun newspaper articles by Sato Naoko entitled “M¯ o hitotsu no Okinawasen” (The Other Battle of Okinawa) which included the “hellship” experiences indicate that the existence of the POWs on the ship was not in the mainstream narrative of the Battle. The articles remind readers that the sphere of influence of the Battle on victims was wider than had been previously considered, and that many POWs still suffer due to a lack of understanding of the reasons for their treatment (Sato 2018, 1). Yet this type of memory directly connects to the collective memories of the Battle, the original source of the painful experiences. The “hell-ship” experiences are difficult for people to talk about, as the person relating the experience is forced to recall humiliation and painful memories, and in this sense, they could be considered “difficult pasts.” Vinitzky-Seroussi (2002) uses the example of the assassination of Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995 to indicate three components (protagonist, event, and context) that make up commemorative narratives in societies which have “difficult pasts.” According to Vinitzky-Seroussi, the challenge of commemorating such “difficult pasts” is the possibility that a “fragmented commemoration” may be created, meaning that the number of different narratives of commemoration may be reduced to embrace a larger audience (33). In observing Israeli political leader Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, she further suggests that the framing process of mnemonic narratives of difficult pasts is accomplished by “emphasis of one or more of the three components of the narrative” (2002, 35). Rabin was acknowledged for his political achievement in leading his country toward peace with its Palestinian and Arab neighbors, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. When he was Prime Minister

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of Israel (1974–1977 and 1992–1995), his government successfully conducted negotiations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, culminating in the agreement on the gradual implementation of limited self-rule for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan signed a full peace treaty between their two countries in 1993. Rabin sought a peace process to end the long-standing conflict between Jews and Arabs, however, he was labeled a traitor by the Israeli right. An entire series of commemorative events were held, and monuments were established in Israel after his death (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002, 30–34). In this case study, the three components of commemorative narratives are as follows: (1) The protagonist(s) being commemorated (e.g., Yitzhak Rabin); (2) The event itself (e.g., Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination); (3) The event’s context (e.g., the notion of democracy in Israel in general and the various solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular) (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002, 35). This model seems to be a useful one for analyzing how “difficult pasts” are transformed into commemorations. Applying this model to the central topic of this chapter, Component (1), the protagonist(s) being commemorated, would be “the 12 deceased POWs.” Component (2), the event itself, would be “the confinement and transport of Okinawan POWs.” Component (3), the event’s context, would be “the time and place of the experiences” and “the US policy on treatment of POWs.” If the commemoration emphasized Component (1) the protagonists, “the deceased POWs,” it would force the audience to face a type of pain because one out of the twelve deceased could not even be identified (MCOPH, September 2017a, 64). In addition, the two POWs who died on the ship to Hawai’i were not included in the twelve; one of the two was on the “hell-ship” and jumped into the ocean in despair on the way to Hawai’i before the ship stopped in Saipan (H. Toguchi, personal interview, 3 June 2017b). Therefore, the scope of “protagonists” was reduced for the commemoration. Component (3), the event’s context—“the time and place of the experiences” and “the US treatment of the POWs”— were deemphasized in the process of making the commemoration because the dehumanizing experiences on the ship were excluded from the Memorial Service. “The event’s context” was strongly affected by the location in which the commemoration was held. Even former POWs who had experienced the “hell-ship” could not bring themselves to talk about the experience when they were face to face with people in Hawai’i.

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However, Component (2), the event itself—“the confinement and transport of Okinawan POWs”—was partially adapted in the Memorial Service by emphasizing POWs’ good memories of the camp life, such as the help provided by Okinawan residents. This narrative appealed to more people, including the relatives of the deceased and residents in both Okinawa and Hawai’i. For Toguchi, this commemoration practice was an alternative way of relating the existence of POWs and, possibly, one way of holding in check the emotions which arose from recalling the victimization. For Furugen, the Memorial Service was an opportunity to revisit his “hell-ship” experiences and confinement, but like the other participants his focus was on praying for the deceased. In short, the experience of being victimized as POWs was not emphasized in the overall commemoration in order to show appreciation for the friendship of the Okinawan community in Hawai’i. In particular, “the protagonists” and “the event’s context” were limited and controlled. Thus, not all of the components of Vinitzky-Seroussi’s model were visible in the Memorial Service, and the result was a “fragmented commemoration.”

Conclusion: Beyond the “Hell-Ship” Experiences This chapter has examined how the “hell-ship” experiences of some Okinawan POWs in 1945 were not emphasized in the commemoration held in 2017 in Hawai’i but were present beneath the surface in the collective memories of the Battle of Okinawa. The news and reports regarding the Memorial Service brought an opportunity for people in Okinawa to learn about the experiences of POWs in the “hell-ship.” However, this opportunity was limited for the attendees of the Memorial Service in Hawai’i, since the former POWs, MCOPH, and Okinawan groups in Hawai’i carried out the service together but did not emphasize the dehumanizing “hell-ship” incident. There are several factors behind the deemphasis of the “hell-ship” narrative in the Memorial Service. One factor is that the “hell-ship” POWs were a minority of all POWs, and a tiny group in comparison to Okinawan civilians during the war. Narratives of the Battle have focused primarily on the experiences of civilians on Okinawan soil during the fighting, and there has been a lack of academic interest in the “nakedgroup” as well as the treatment of POWs. Moreover, the “hell-ship” experiences are difficult to discuss in Hawai’i, a place with memorial sites

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and descendants of the Okinawan immigrants who gave POWs support and assistance during their confinement. The testimony of the two former POWs, Toguchi and Furugen, was successfully brought into the public discourse and acknowledged in Okinawa, but the “hell-ship” memory in particular was not discussed in the Memorial Service, even though at least one of the deaths related to the “hell-ship.” The service avoided details regarding the causes of death for these POWs. It was focused strictly on the twelve deceased Okinawan POWs as “protagonists” for the commemoration. Therefore, the Memorial Service can be considered a type of “fragmented commemoration” as described in the Vinitzky-Seroussi model. However, from one perspective, the omission of the “hell-ship” experience in the Memorial Service was tactical: There was a need to reduce the third component of the commemorative narrative, “the US policy of treatment of POWs,” in order to attract a wider audience and increase the public attention from Hawai’i and possibly the United States as a whole, which might provide some clues to finding the remains of the missing POWs in the future. In order to make the commemoration more accessible for Okinawans in Hawai’i, as well as the POWs and their relatives, the focus on the deceased twelve was a “reduced narrative” representing the existence of POWs in the Battle of Okinawa and those who died outside of their homeland. The context of “place”—the visit to “Hawai’i” for this commemoration by the survivors from the “naked-group”— served to deter accusations regarding the treatment by the United States 72 years ago. Although the narratives of the Okinawan POWs including the “nakedgroup” were on the periphery of the dominant narratives of the Battle of Okinawa, the holding of the Memorial Service in Hawai’i in 2017 brought attention to the mistreatment of these POWs in the US ship in Okinawa. In other words, the “fragmented commemoration” made it possible for the younger generation in Okinawa and some entities in Hawai’i such as the NPS to listen to narratives of the “hell-ship” survivors. In this sense, the Memorial Service was significant in ways that extend beyond the simple commemoration ceremony.

Works Cited Akiyama, Kaori. 2018. Okinawajin horyo no id¯o kara miru hawai junsh¯u horyo sh¯ uy¯ ojoshi: Honouriuri kara sandoairando e [The History of Prisoner-of-War

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Camps in the Territory of Hawaii as Revealed by the Movement of Okinawan POWs: From Honouliuli to Sand Island]. Journal of the Americas Studies 23: 119–137. http://www.tenri-u.ac.jp/tngai/americas/journal/23/. Chinen, N. Joyce. 2014. Transnational Identities, Communities, and the Experiences of Okinawan Internees and Prisoners of War. In Breaking the Silence: Lessons of Democracy and Social Justice from the World War II Honouliuli Internment and POW Camp in Hawai’i, ed. S. Falgout, and L. Nishigaya, 148–172. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Furugen, Saneyoshi. 2017. Personal Interview with Rinas, R., US National Park Service Honolulu Office and Akiyama. K., 5 June, trans. US National Park Service Honolulu Office. Hata, Ikuhiko. 1998. Nihonjin-horyo: Hakusukinoe kara shiberia yokury¯ u made [Japanese Prisoners of War: From the Battle of Baekgang to Siberian Detention]. Tokyo: Hara Shob¯o. Headquarters Prisoner of War Base Camp, APO 950. 1945. Rosters of Okinawan Prisoners of War (16 October 1945 through 5 August 1945), Okinawa Prefectural Archive [microfilm]. Originally Located in RG 389, Entry 466B: Enemy Prisoner of War Information Bureau, Records Relating to Japanese Prisoners of War during World War II, 1942–1948. Maryland: National Archives and Administration Records. Himeyuri Peace Foundation. 2016. Himeyuri Peace Museum: The Guidebook. Naha: Forest. International Committee of the Red Cross. 2019. Kay¯ o, Yasuo. 1995. Horyotachi no shima: Kay¯ o Yasuo sanbusaku [Islands of Captives: Trilogy by Yasuo Kay¯ o], Naha: Okinawa Times. Kinch¯ o-shi Editorial Board. 2002. Sens¯o-honpen [War: Main Chapter]. In Kinch¯ o-shi dainikan [History of Kin-Town], ed. Kinch¯ o-shi Ky¯ oiku iinkai, vol. 2. Kunigami-gun: Kinch¯ o-shi Editorial Board. Memorial Service Committee for the Deceased Okinawan POWs in Hawaii ed. 2017a. Pathway to Peace: Documents of Experiences by Former Okinawan POWs. Memorial Service Committee for the Deceased Okinawan POWs in Hawaii, June. Memorial Service Committee for the Deceased Okinawan POWs in Hawaii ed. 2017b. Pathway to Peace II: Report and Photographs on Memorial Service for the Deceased Okinawan POWs. Memorial Service Committee for the Deceased Okinawan POWs in Hawaii, December. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. 2009. Okinawasen ni okeru sensai no jy¯ oky¯ o [Condition Report for War Damage in the Battle of Okinawa]. http://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/daijinkanbou/sensai/sit uation/state/okinawa_04.html. Accessed 11 Aug 2020. Nakahodo, Masanori. 2013. Hawai ni okurareta horyotachi: Shimbun nishi ni mirareru horyu kankei kiji shoukai [Prisoner of Wars Who Were Sent

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to Hawai’i: Introducing Articles in Two Newspapers]. In Yakud¯ o-suru okinawakeiimin: burajiru, hawai wo ch¯ ushin ni [Lively Okinawa Residents: Focusing on Brazil and Hawai’i], ed. Human Migration and 21st Century Global Society Project X, 215–252. Okinawa: University of the Ryukyus. Nakamura, Kelli Y., and Brandon Marc T. Higa. 2019. Yuimaaru: Okinawan Prisoners of War Shape Okinawan Identity and Transnational Connection. Amerasia Journal 45 (3): 336–351. Nakandari, Osamu ed. 1995. Shogen Okinawa-sen: Senka wo horu [Testimony of the Battle of Okinawa: Digging through the Vestiges of War]. In Ryukyu Shimpo. Naha: Ryukyu Shimposha. Nakayama, Yoshihiko. 2011 [1978]. Heiwa shiry¯ okan no arikata [Principles of Peace Museums]. In Sengo okinawa o purody¯ usu: Bunkaund¯ o to shite no “minshuka” o mezashite, Nakayama Yoshihiko beiju kinen essei sh¯ u [Producing Postwar Okinawa: Aiming at “Democratization” as Cultural Movement, Essays by Yoshihiko Nakayama for his 88th Anniversary], 191–196. Naha: Private Publication. Narita, Ryuichi. 2006. Kioku to imeiji ‘Shogen’ no jidai no rekishigaku [Memories and Images: Historical Science in the Era of “Testimony”]. In Kioku ga katari hajimeru [Memories Start Telling You], ed. T. Ichiro, 3–32. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan. Okinawa Times. 1982. Hawai de ikotsusagashi wo [We need to search for remains in Hawaii]. In Okinawa Times, February 20. Sato, Naoko. 2018. M¯ o hitotsu no okinawasen (1) [The Other Battle of Okinawa], vol. 1, 1. Tokyo Shimbun (Evening issue, May 29). Shimabukuro, Sadaharu. 2016 [2015]. Honryu-no kanata e: Sengo nanaju-nen Okinawa hishi [Across the Torrent: The Hidden History in Okinawa in the 70-Year Postwar Period. In Ryukyu Shimpo. Naha: Ryukyu Shimposha. Shimabukuro, Sadaharu. 2016. Hawai de ireisai-wo [Memorial Service in Hawai’i: For Those Captured in the Battle of Okinawa and Deceased Overseas]. In Ryukyu Shimpo, 1, November 4. Shimabukuro, Sadaharu. 2018. Kankyo kenen, hawai is¯ o [Environmental Concern Made Transportation to Hawai’i]. Ryukyu Shimpo, 1, June 25. Toguchi, Hikoshin. 2017a. Sengo nanaj¯ uninen no chinkon (j¯ o) [Requiem after 72 years of the war], vol. 1, Ryukyu Simpo, (April 6). Toguchi, Hikoshin. 2017b. Personal Interview by Rinas, R., US National Park Service Honolulu Office and Akiyama, K., June 3, 2017a, Pearl City, Hawai’i, trans. US National Park Service Honolulu office. Toguchi, Hikoshin. 2017c. Personal Interview by Akiyama, K., February 3. Kadena-cho, Okinawa. Toguchi, Hikoshin. 2018. Personal Interview by Akiyama, K., May 12. Kadenacho, Okinawa.

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Tokuyama, Ch¯ osh¯ o. 1994. Aloha, uchinnaanchu PW: juunanasai no hawaihoryo gy¯ oj¯ o-ki [Aloha, Okinawan POWs: A Report of a 17-Year-Old POWs’ Journey in Hawai’i]. Naha: Hirugisha. T¯ ome Chie and Shimabukuro Sadaharu. 2017. Washiraran (2) [Unforgettable] vol. 2, Ryukyu Simpo (May 30). Vinitsky-Seroussi, Vered. 2002. Commemoration of a Difficult Past: Yitshak Rabin’s Memorials. American Sociological Review 67 (1): 30–51.

PART II

Localizing War Memory

CHAPTER 4

Toward a Borderless Memory of Hiroshima: From Victimhood to Witness Culture in the 75 Years of Peace Declarations Luli van der Does

Introduction Every year, at eight o’clock on the morning of 6 August, a solemn ceremony is broadcast nationwide in Japan. The Hiroshima Peace Ceremony evokes the memories of those who perished in the world’s first nuclear attack. The television program opens with a long view of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and its beautiful, lush green trees shining in the fresh morning light of high summer. Fifty thousand people gather in front of the cenotaph located in the center of the park. Promises to not repeat historic mistakes are made by the families of atomicbomb victims, school children, international and domestic dignitaries, the governor of Hiroshima, and the prime minister of Japan. One of these

L. van der Does (B) Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_4

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speeches defines the Peace Ceremony: The Peace Declaration, which is read out by the current mayor of Hiroshima and calls for the total abolition of nuclear weapons to help achieve universal peace. In response to the mayor’s words, the audience expresses their multi-layered emotions: silent anger and resignation, long-term suffering, and determination to avoid another nuclear war alongside hope for redemption by creating peace. A flock of white doves fly over the Peace Memorial Park symbolizing the release of victims’ souls into the heavens. The image of the departing doves also represents citizens’ hope and faith in universal peace worldwide. Underscored by solemn music and with a long shot of the peace park, the ceremony concludes, leaving an image of “Peace City Hiroshima” founded on the heritage of atomic-bomb experience etched in the viewers’ minds. This globalized image of Hiroshima is a far cry from the first Peace Ceremony in 1946, when the mayor of Hiroshima gave a speech on the first anniversary of the atomic explosion. Its contemporary incarnation as Peace City Hiroshima represents the city’s hard-won social identity. However, the path to recovery has not been smooth: Hiroshima’s citizens began this journey with nothing, lacking even a sense of self-worth, as the hibakusha, or atomic-bomb survivors, Numata Suzuko, Moritomi Shigeo, Hamai Tokuso, Matsumuro Masayuki, and many others recall.1 Over the last 75 years, mayors of Hiroshima have used the peace declarations as an annual opportunity to communicate with the public, balancing the diverse needs of domestic and international audiences, each of whom has had aspirations for Hiroshima in its process of recovery and reinvention. Therefore, I argue that the narrative transitions in the Hiroshima Peace Declarations reflect the process of identity-building for the city and its people: their transition from helpless victims to advocates for peace, and from guardians of an exclusive memory of victimhood to communicators of aspirations for borderless peace as a collective consciousness based on first-hand atomic-bomb experiences. Thus, in this empirical chapter I employ a triangulation method to analyze how the peace declarations have mirrored the changing perceptions of Hiroshima and its citizens over time. All Hiroshima Peace Declaration texts since its inception in 1946, both in Japanese original 1 This view is drawn from personal communications and testimonies, some of which are available at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

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and English translations, were subjected to statistical content analyses to reveal semantic and structural textual patterns, which were then qualitatively analyzed against relevant historical events. The results reveal the shifting self-representations of the city, the hibakusha and the citizens from an attitude of exclusive victimhood following the Second World War to the attitude of inclusive advocates for universal peace through memorial solidarity and denuclearization. As its identity as a peace city evolved, the public’s sense of self and other was challenged, undermining ideological, cultural, psychological, national, and international borders in a shift toward a borderless memory of the atomic experiences. Notably, however, the English translations, whose purpose is to facilitate communication with the international audience, have not emphasized such dramatic shifts as clearly as the original declarations in Japanese, for reasons that will be discussed below. Consequently, Japan’s victimhood has become a static feature in English translations while, over the years, declarations in Japanese have increasingly addressed the entangled memories of victimhood.

Victimhood and Victim Consciousness Memories of Hiroshima differ in Japan, the United States, and the former Allied Powers. While survivors’ associations, NGOs, and citizen groups have collaborated in promoting a multi-layered collective memory of the atomic bomb experiences in Japan (Fukuda 2003, 248), the dominant discourse in the United States has been largely based on Truman’s statement regarding the military necessity to save lives (Jones 2010, 23). Those who endured the Japanese occupation along with the second generation still suffer the painful consequences even today (Buchheim 2015, 119). Victimhood is, therefore, claimed and contested by both parties. The war memories of Japan are loaded with controversy. Japan, considered as a collective entity, has been criticized for sanitizing the wartime past by failing to officially apologize to the victims of its wartime aggressions. Instead, Japan has claimed victimhood for itself, and is therefore regarded as evading blame for the countless deaths and atrocities suffered by people in East and South-Pacific Asia as well as the military personnel of the Allied nations (Hein and Selden 2000, 10; Dower 2010, 316). Objections to representing the Japanese as victims of war are also directed at films, literature, and museum exhibitions, among other targets.

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According to Orr (2001), Hiroshima’s anti-nuclear campaigns are a sign of “victim consciousness,” where “different groups of victims pushed their agenda as victims for the purpose of compensation and political advantage and thus led to the early creation of the cultural trope of the ‘victim-hero’ in Japan” (Zwigenberg 2014, 7–8). Dower (2012, 119) explains that the Japanese victim consciousness is bound up with the “traumatic recollection of shattering defeat – with memory of futile death, and the destruction by air raids of some sixty-six cities, culminating in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Starting from the total collapse of national identity, Japan has walked the path of “long defeat” toward the reconstruction of its identity (Hashimoto 2015). Through the daily struggle for survival, it was possible to rebuild a sense of “self” within the void created by the absence of the wartime state that used to define national identity. Likewise, survivors in Hiroshima have continued for over 70 years to search for and to redefine their purpose in life, and their relations to other states and people. Their sentiments are reflected in the texts of the annual Hiroshima Peace Declaration, which began as a citizen-led effort of collective, though deeply personal, remembrance.

Emergence of the Declaration for Peace On August 6, 1946, a wooden pillar was erected to comfort the victims’ souls near the T-shaped Aioi Bridge that had been the target of nuclear attack on that same day the previous year. Next to this makeshift memorial, Hamada, the first democratically elected postwar mayor of Hiroshima, addressed the survivors with a passionate speech filled with anger, remorse, and, most importantly, encouragement to the citizens to rebuild their lives. Therefore, on the one hand, peace declarations began as collective lamentations and, on the other hand, as a call for survivors to rebuild their lives and livelihoods by supporting the 1949 Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law. These declarations can thereby be understood to reflect on the city’s path toward reconstruction and survival (Ubuki 1992). Due to their importance, the texts of declarations have been carefully composed and then embargoed until their official delivery by the mayor on 6 August each year. Thus, the Peace Declarations have been regarded as a barometer of the city’s antinuclear policy pledge and of the A-bomb survivors’ welfare, while they

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also serve as a tool for hibakusha to negotiate with the central government for improvements in social security.

General Characteristics of the Contents of the Peace Declarations and Working Hypothesis Despite the importance placed on the peace declarations, studies on their contents remain scarce. This chapter will address the following aspects of peace declarations: the textual features of their content; how they represent the policies of different mayors; and whether such features have changed from year to year and, if so, how under what historical and political circumstances. The results will reveal how the positions of Hiroshima’s survivors have changed from that of exclusive victimhood to a position as the guardians of global witness culture, and how the peace declarations can be understood as a barometer and propagator of that change. A study by Izumi et al. (2015) applied a mixed methods model to estimate a semiparametric coefficient of changes in the frequencies of keywords in the texts of peace declarations and studied the trends over a period of time. Among the frequently occurring words, they counted the content words and attempted to identify the theme of each year’s peace declaration. They extracted 51 keywords (content words) from the texts and plotted them using multidimensional scaling.2 The resulting graphical representation illustrates that the number of times these keywords have been used in each year’s declaration has changed from year to year. However, Izumi, Satoh, and Kawano’s study does not account for the role of discourse—that is, how the words are employed to express a message. Analyses by Matsuura et al. (2013, 2014) of the texts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Declarations revealed that the declarations are constructed around combinations of three conceptual elements: (1) descriptions of peace, (2) efforts to promote peace, and (3) environments where peace can materialize. Matsuura et al. (2013, 2014) conclude that the social

2 Content words are the lexical items that contain semantic features (e.g., nouns), in contrast to functional words whose principal role is to indicate grammatical functions (e.g., particles). Izumi et al. (2015) show that frequencies of a specific set of words in the Hiroshima Peace Declarations have changed over time.

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climate of a given year may have influenced word choices and frequencies in the mayor’s declarations, and this trend aligns with issues in current affairs, such as international conflicts and nuclear-testing sites. Thus, Matsui et al. suggested that the basic word usages in the declarations’ texts are consistent, but some yearly variations in the word usage may signify the city’s changing political agenda. These previous studies examined keywords rather than discourse and did not specify the timeline and specific semantic shifts present in the peace declarations. Consequently, the characteristics of each mayor’s message were left unidentified. To fill this gap, this chapter introduces the first holistic study to identify the features of each mayor’s declaration and how these features changed from one mayor to another, reflecting how the city (or mayor) and the citizens represented themselves in the practice of memorialization. I argue that changes in the declarations signify the fluid, rather than concrete, nature of memories of Hiroshima, and that self-representations of the hibakusha, the citizens, and the city are always in transition. This also applies to their attitudes toward the interpretation of war, victimhood, and peace. Therefore, this study sets out to investigate the following: the changes that have taken place in the representations of the hibakusha and the city; when these changes occurred and under what circumstances; how this shift may be characterized; and how such processes may be theorized.

Materials and Methods Data The original Japanese texts of peace declarations and their English translations from 1947 to 2020 were collected from the city of Hiroshima website. A database of the textual contents and associated information was then built. The first mayor’s speech was delivered during the first peace festival in 1946, which was organized by civilian groups. The Peace Reconstruction Festival was the first postwar peace festival, held on August 6, 1946, and hosted by the Association of Town Assemblies in Hiroshima. Mayor Kihara Shichir¯o gave the first speech to comfort the souls of atomic-bomb victims. This was not an official peace declaration by the city; accordingly, this study excludes the 1946 text. Also, there was no declaration in 1950 out of respect for the Korean War, during which time Japan was still under the Allied Occupation (1945–1952).

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Table 4.1 Mayors of Hiroshima City and their years in office Years in office (Gregorian)

Years in office (Japanese Imperial)

1947–1955 1955–1959

Showa 22–Showa 30 Showa 30–Showa 34

1959–1967 1967–1975 1975–1991 1991–1999

Showa 34–Showa 42 Showa 42–Showa 50 Showa 50–Hesei 3 Heisei 3–Heisei 11

1999–2011 2011–current

Heisei 11–Heisei 23 Heisei 23–current

Names of the postwar Mayors of Hiroshima HAMAI Shinzo WATANABE Tadao HAMAI Shinzo YAMADA Setsuo ARAKI Takeshi HIRAOKA Takashi AKIBA Tadatoshi MATSUI Kazumi

Number of peace declarations

6 4 9 8 16 8 12 10

NB Hamai Shinzo served twice—before and after Watanabe Tadao Declarations made in each of the eight mayoral terms were analyzed in the context of the period’s socio-political climate. An abridged historical timetable is provided in the appendix

Similarly, the 1951 declaration was called the “Mayor’s Speech” rather than a Peace Declaration. This leaves a total of 73 declarations for analysis, and the number of declarations given in each of the eight successive mayoral terms and the years in office are given in Table 4.1. Methods Each text was initially morphologically analyzed and, to enhance the semantic accuracy of the analysis, the outputs were denoised before processing. From the processed output, only the content morphemes were extracted. (Content morphemes, also known as contentive morphemes, are roots that form the semantic core of a major class word.) Frequently occurring morphemes and those characterizing a particular corpus (i.e., keywords) were listed. The former are morphemes that appear often in the texts and the latter are those characterizing a specific set of texts, such as a set given by a particular mayor. The list of frequently occurring morphemes and the list of characteristic morphemes were analyzed quantitatively using combined statistical methods to identify the textual similarities (or distances) between specific morphemes in

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Table 4.2 Extracted and unique morphemes subjected to further analyses

抽出語数 Total extracted morphemes 異なり語数 Unique morphemes

Language

Total morphemes

Used morphemes

Japanese English

46,340 43,475

15,377 18,675

Japanese English

3,851 3,890

2,707 3,467

the texts. This procedure revealed which morphemes and/or groups of morphemes characterize the semantic contents of a defined set of texts. The package KH Coder was used for the text analytics. In addition to R and other relevant R packages, MeCab and IPADIC (modern Japanese language corpus) were used for Japanese text analyses and FreeLing for the English texts. Sentence boundaries in Japanese data were determined by the presence of the symbol “.” and were marked by a line break. Texts were converted into plain Shift-JIS (or ANSI) encoding without a byte-order-mark (BOM).3 For the English data, all phrases, spaces, and paragraphs boundaries were defined by a space “ ” and a period “.” The text was then analyzed in order to break it down into morphemes, which were then converted and saved in UTF-8 encoding. The morphemic analyses returned the volumes of total (including overlaps) and unique (without overlaps) morphemes as listed in Table 4.2. Text Analytics The analytical and interpretative methods used in this study were crossdisciplinary, combining statistics, corpus linguistics, text-mining, and critical discourse analysis (van der Does-Ishikawa and Hook 2017). The textual features of peace declarations were statistically analyzed and interpreted in the context of relevant socio-political events of the time. Firstly, the keywords characterizing each mayoral term’s set of declarations were identified. They were then mapped, introducing temporal and agency dimensions. Thus, the data were analyzed not only for the 3 BOM: Bite Order Mark. In English, POS (part-of-speech) delimiters are spaces for words/morphemes, periods for sentences, and other punctuations for clauses. The analysis reverts to ROOT after a line feed.

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frequency but also for the patterns of co-occurrence in a specific textual structure and context, using quantitive and qualitative analytical tools. For example, this study combined correspondence analysis (CA) to visualize general trends, and similarities and differences among featured keywords.4 The relationships between the keywords and the concepts they form were explored within a specified text corpus. The results were further analyzed using a critical discourse analysis framework to contextualize the interpretation. The number of words plotted on the graph is defined by the minimum document frequency and/or the minimum word (or morpheme) frequency thresholds, which filter out elements that are unlikely to convey concepts that are emphasized or persistent. The size of the bubble around each morpheme shows how frequently the morpheme occurs in the texts. Noting the structural and conceptual variance in the linguistic characteristics of Japanese and English, this study used morphemes rather than words for statistical analyses. In order to represent features of declarations both by mayor and by historical period, the frequently occurring words and the words that characterize specific texts were calculated according to the tf–idf (text frequency–inverse document frequency).5

Results6 General Trends a. Changes in the length of declarations Descriptive results reveal that texts of peace declarations have increased in length, with increasing numbers of words year on year, as shown in Fig. 4.1. The earliest declaration, made by Mayor Hamai in 1947, contained 830 words, whereas declarations in recent years reach 2000 words. The figure shows that text length and the year of declaration are strongly correlated. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient ρ was 0.958 (p < 0.0001). The steady increase in text length indicates that the 4 These are, in fact, “key-morphemes” strictly speaking, but the generally more familiar term “keywords” is used for the sake of readability throughout this paper. 5 A more linguistically accurate definition is “key morphemes.” 6 The source for all graphs is the author.

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Fig. 4.1 Changing textual length in peace declarations over time

declarations became increasingly complex lexically, and, perhaps, also semantically and structurally. This increase in length may also reflect a change in the declaration’s purpose over the years: what began as a short statement commemorating the disaster may have gradually turned into a more extensive political speech. b. Detecting keywords in each mayor’s declaration The tf–idf of keywords was calculated and analyzed for each mayor’s set of declarations, both in the original Japanese and in English. This clarifies the overall characteristics of each mayor’s declarations by extracting a set of frequently appearing keywords that are unique to each mayoral term. Appendix 1 provides a list of keywords extracted from the Japanese and English versions of the declarations.

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Comparing Trends in the Underlying Semantic Features: Japanese Version vs. English Translation Semantic characteristics of the declaration texts from each of the eight mayoral terms were visualized using correspondence analysis (CA). In the original Japanese versions, morphemes representing the concept of “an aspiration for peace” have been conveyed from the very beginning of the history of Hiroshima’s Peace Declarations in 1947, which came only two years after the atomic bombing of the city. This finding is consistent with Matsuura et al’s (2014) three major themes of peace declarations, but in particular, this study found that over time, the concept of “peace” becomes associated with “lasting/eternal” and is most prominently featured in Mayor Hiraoka’s term, as illustrated by the central localization of the mayor on the bi-dimensional plot in Fig. 4.2. This implies a marked thematic shift toward “lasting peace” during Mayor Hiraoka’s administration. Notably, the results provide evidence for historian Ubuki’s impression of the declarations. Hiraoka’s declarations convey the essence of Peace Declarations, but at the same time, they are unique in expressing direct, universal notions of peace (1992, 2015). Additionally, morphemes that indicate the concept of “appealing” to “humanity” for “lasting peace” are also clustered near the plot’s origin (i.e., the “0,0” point), between Mayors Hiraoka (1991–1999) and Yamada (1967–1975), and close to Araki (1975–1991), Watanabe (1955–1959), and Hamai (1947–1955; 1959–1967). There are notable similarities between the underlying textual features of the declarations by Mayors Hiraoka (1991–1999) and Araki (1975–1991). The latter’s declarations mentioned the “nuclear balance” and “tests” by “superpowers” that had impacted on the chances of the “survival” of “humanity,” and called for “states” to “establish” peaceful world “order.” Mayors Hamai (1947–1955; 1959–1967), Watanabe (1955–1959), and Yamada (1967– 1975) depicted the damage caused by the atomic bombing and advocated the abolition of nuclear weapons. In particular, Yamada (1967–1975) and Watanabe (1955–1959) raised awareness of the “calamities” brought about by the atomic bombs, emphasizing that “war” impacts “all” “mankind.” Yamada (1967–1975), in particular, mentions the effects of “radiation.” Hamai (1947–1955; 1959–1967) and Yamada (1967–1975) referred to the “Vietnam War” that was ongoing during their terms. The declarations of Yamada (1967–1975), Watanabe (1955–1959), and Hamai (1947–1955; 1959–1967) clearly conveyed “condolences” to the

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Fig. 4.2 Comparison of the characteristic semantic trends in mayoral declarations by correspondence analysis: Original Japanese version

“victims” souls. Hamai (1947–1955; 1959–1967) and Watanabe (1955– 1959) also spoke of the “tragedy” in which the “inhumane” “bomb” “instantly” “wiped” “precious” “lives” from the “face of this world,” reducing Hiroshima to a “scorched barren land.” They also appealed for the “truth” to be told and made the threat of “atomic/ hydrogen bombs” the core message of their declarations. Two major thematic features are identifiable in Araki’s declarations (1975–1991): firstly, the “international” aspect of the endeavor toward “disarmament” that involves the “United Nations” and “heads of states;” and secondly, the “measures” put in place to support the survivors. He related both themes to “public opinion” and the “people.” International concepts such as the “United Nations” and “mayor” of the “peace” “city” are also prominent in the declarations of Akiba (1999– 2011) and Araki (1975–1991). Their declarations link the international

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concepts with the UN session on “disarmament” (Araki) and the “conviction” to “abolish” “nuclear weapons” (Akiba). These two mayors, as well as Hiraoka, raise current issues in “Asia,” with Akiba emphasizing the need for “reconciliation.” Matsui’s declarations (2011–present) discuss the physical effects of “radiation.” Words such as “family,” “people,” “citizen,” and “statesmen,” as well as directly addressing the audience with the term “you” may indicate the mayor’s emphasis on a personal approach to disseminating the message of peace. Among the six main themes of the Peace Declarations, the concepts of the “absence and abolition of war” and “nuclear abolition” have changed over time. Hamai (1947–1955; 1959–1967), Watanabe (1955–1959), and Yamada (1947–1975) warned that humanity is driving the “life” “on earth” toward “self-destruction” with “atomic and hydrogen bombs.” This message was crystallized in the concepts of “disarmament” and a ban on “nuclear testing” during Araki’s term (1975–1991), when the survivors’ associations and the city of Hiroshima began to reach out to international organizations, including the UN, to disseminate the peace message. Later, during the terms of Hiraoka and Akiba (1991–2011), these concepts became a slogan. During the terms of Hamai (1947– 1955; 1959–1967), Watanabe (1955–1959), and Yamada (1947–1975), the concepts of “horror,” “tragedy,” and the effects of “radiation” simultaneously emerged to express the “atomic-bomb experience” and the need for a system of “support to atomic-bomb victims.” This was taken up in Araki’s declarations (1975–1991) and expressed in legal terms as “compensation” for all victims of the atomic bombing. These results revealed a clear semantic shift in the textual contents from domestic to international concerns. The main theme of early declarations was the victimization of the people of Hiroshima and the suffering caused by the atomic bombings; however, by the end of the 1950s and into the 1970s, the thematic referents of “people’s” sufferings began to diversify: “Vietnam” and “Asia” had been affected by wars, and all of humanity lived with the nuclear threat, for example. In this context, there was a prominent discourse shift from victimhood to witness culture and activism, or from a passive to a proactive position. For example, the survivors and the city began to be associated with actions to support victims of nuclear disasters and the dissemination of warnings about the nuclear threat to all humanity. This discourse transformation was punctuated by a notable shift

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toward globalization from Araki’s term in office (1975–1991). It coincides with what Levy and Sznaider (2010) calls “cosmopolitanization” of war memories such as the Holocaust from the 1990s onward. Figure 4.3 illustrates the results of the analysis of the English translations of the declarations, which exhibit similar trends to those seen in the original Japanese, though with some notable differences. Every peace declaration is official and was professionally translated with great accuracy, almost word for word. Most of the keywords resulting from the CA of the Japanese originals have equivalents in the CA of the English translations. Additionally, the overall spatial relationships between clusters of keywords for each mayor in the English versions are similar to those in the Japanese, although the automated process coincidentally plotted the two graphs transposed across the vertical axis.

Fig. 4.3 Comparison of the characteristic semantic trends in mayoral declarations by correspondence analysis: English translation

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However, a closer look reveals some clear discrepancies between the originals and the translations. Mayor Araki’s declarations in English are similar to the Japanese versions, demonstrating a marked departure from his predecessors in terms of keywords relating to international activism at the UN “General Assembly” and the special sessions on “disarmament” at the “United Nations,” as well as protests against nuclear testing by nuclear states such as the “Soviet Union.” In the original texts, Araki’s keywords (1975–1991) are aggregated near the origin of the orthogonal space, indicating underlying semantic connections to the declarations of mayors before and after him. However, Araki’s well-known campaign for “relief” and “compensation” for victims is not present in the English version. Similarly, Hiraoka’s declarations in Japanese feature “lasting peace” as the core message, which relates to the declarations made by each of the mayors, as the message’s proximity to the 0-point shows. In English version, however, Hiraoka’s texts (1991–1999) are no different from his predecessors’ and are less overarching in both semantic depth and breadth. The notion of “lasting peace” is attenuated in the English version, whereas more local notions of “Hiroshima” and “nuclear” are more prominent. From the mayoral terms of Akiba (1999–2011) and Matsui (2011– present), the concepts “abolition of nuclear weapons” and “reconciliation” between nations appear to ensure the continuity of the mayors’ global peace message in Japanese. However, this continuity is not apparent in the English version; instead, the differences between the textual features of Akiba and Matsui’s declarations are magnified in the English translation, with one mayor located in the positive area and the other in the negative area relative to the component 2 axis. In the English translations, continuity from one mayor to the next was observed for the first and second terms of Hamai (1947–1955; 1959– 1967), Watanabe (1955–1959), and Yamada (1947–1975), with all three mayors using keywords on the threat to “humanity” by the “war” and the “atomic bomb.” In contrast, Araki’s textual features (1975–1999) add an international dimension to these keywords (e.g., “United Nations” and “disarmament”). Building on these notions, the texts of Araki (1975–1999), Hiraoka (1991–1999), and Akiba (1999–2011) discuss international issues relating to “nuclear” “weapons.” Domestically, Akiba (1999–2011) and Matsui (2011–present) share keywords relating to the “suffering” of the “hibakusha” and their “family.” Together, the original

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Japanese declarations represent the sufferings of the hibakusha, which, over the years, sublimated into two parallel campaigns: the domestic campaign to secure medical and financial support for the survivors as a basic human right, and the international campaign to save humanity from the atrocities of nuclear weapons. The two campaigns were intimately linked by the hibakusha’s desire for “everlasting peace.” While “lasting peace” is the core and featured concept in the original Japanese texts, the same cannot be said of the English translations. Instead, “Hiroshima and peace” or “Hiroshima and nuclear” are the most prominent concepts, rather than the hibakusha’s plea for basic human rights—that is, for health and sustenance without the threat of genocide—which is the core message in the original Japanese version. Correspondence analysis revealed not only textual contrasts between mayors’ declarations but also a continuum that culminates in the notion of “lasting peace for all.” The results also uncovered differences in discourse features between the original Japanese and the English translations. The Japanese version depicts a process of transition in the hibakusha’s domestic campaigns from the local to the global, shown in a shift from exclusive victimhood to an inclusive acknowledgment of suffering worldwide and a call for action. It depicts how the parallel campaigns for compensation and nuclear abolition gradually became international, inclusive, and universal that continue to evolve today. In contrast, the English version truncates the picture of Hiroshima’s identity as one of permanent victimhood and aspirations for peace. Therefore, while the Japanese declarations progressively broaden to include international issues, express remorse for past wars, appeal for more inclusive relief for all hibakusha, and call for a total ban on nuclear weapons, the English versions give an exclusive and insular impression. This somewhat static and simplistic picture of Hiroshima presented in the English versions may have contributed, at least partially, to the images of perpetual victimhood: a Hiroshima locked into victim consciousness. Shifting Sense of Victimhood and Mission in the Mayors’ Declarations Referring to the list of the top 15 keywords for each mayor (Appendix 1), I will now employ critical discourse analysis (Wodak and Meyer 2009) to explicate how each mayor incorporated key socio-political events of their time into their texts.

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1. HAMAI, Shinz¯ o (1947–1955) When local citizens organized their first commemoration on August 6, 1946, more than 7000 people gathered near the hypocenter. The public mood was one of “grudge and burning anger (onsh¯ u moyu)” (Chugoku News 31 July 1946). As a civil servant, Hamai witnessed the peoples’ need to express their sorrow and unite to rebuild their lives. The following year, he became the first democratically elected mayor of Hiroshima, and, on the second commemoration day, he delivered the first official Peace Declaration. Conscious of the presence of representatives from the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP GHQ), Hamai chose his words carefully and the declaration was translated into English. He opened the speech with words “expressing our burning desire for peace (Hamai 1946).” As a hibakusha himself, his speech empathized with the victims but reminded people to accept their fate and move on, noting, “The slight consolation for this horror, the dropping of the atomic bomb became a factor in ending the war and calling a halt to the fighting. In this sense, mankind must remember that August 6 was a day that brought a chance for world peace (Hamai 1946).” This echoed the Allied forces’ justification for using the atomic bombs as first announced by Truman 16 hours after the bombing of Hiroshima. From its inception, Hiroshima’s Peace Declaration had two target audiences: those who were bombed and those who supervised the demilitarization and democratization of the bombed. The writers of Peace Declarations have always been aware of the international gaze, which affected what was said and how it was said according to the political climate of the time. Hamai’s speech did not quench the “anger of Hiroshima” (Yoneyama 1999) but helped subdue it. Under the Allied Occupation, which lasted until 1952, no mayor used the word “anger” or “grudge” because a strict press code prohibited free speech (Hook 1991/2019). Instead, Hamai used his declarations to promote the idea of reconstructing Hiroshima as a peace city by repeatedly referring to “building peace” “on this earth” through a “city of peace.” In March 1949, Hamai, together with city council chairman, Tsukasa Nitoguri and member of the House of Representatives, Takizo Matsumoto (Jungk 1961, 98) met with Justine Williams, Chief of the Parliamentary and Political Division of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) GHQ and succeeded

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in securing permission and funding for the reconstruction of the city’s infrastructure under the 1949 “Hiroshima Peace City Construction Law” (Ishii 2018, 116–120). Therefore, the international identity of Peace City Hiroshima was established for pragmatic reasons. Notably, Hamai inserted the phrase “citizens’ souls under the ground” only into the Japanese version as a coded expression to acknowledge the emotional turmoil of the hibakusha, whose loved ones and former dwellings would never be found. The reconstruction of Hiroshima buried all such traces, including the ashes of bones mixed with burned houses, under several feet of soil to level the ground for reconstruction, resulting in the aforementioned “burning anger”; however, this would not be translated into the English declarations. While Hamai’s Japanese declarations contrast “peace on the earth” and “lost souls under the ground,” its English version emphasizes only peaceful rebuilding. Thus, the sanitized memories of the atomic-bombing experiences became mainstream,7 and details were lost from the very beginning of the peace declarations. 2. WATANABE, Tadao (1955–1958) The Treaty of San Francisco came into effect on April 28, 1952, ending the Allied Occupation of Japan, but the nuclear arms race continued to intensify. In 1954, following the news of the Daigo Fukuryu-maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5) incident, in which a tuna fishing boat crew fell victim to radioactive fallout from the US Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, the public would no longer remain silent. On the 10th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the first World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs was held in Hiroshima, pitted against the city’s annual Peace Ceremony. The newly elected Mayor Watanabe (1955–58) swiftly responded with statements emphasizing providing “medical treatment,” and acknowledging the “threat of radioactive substances” whose clinical impacts were still unknown. In his declarations, the strong association between the nuclear threat and Hiroshima was established both in the original Japanese and the English translation texts. However, his

7 Hoskins and O’Loughlin (2010, 99) discuss the process of sanitization of war memories.

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strong emphasis on burning anger, respect, and offering condolences to the victims—for example, “we will continue to shout aloud: never again should the tragedy of Hiroshima be repeated!” (Watanabe 1955) in the Japanese original version—was not present in the English version. 3. HAMAI, Shinz¯ o (1959–1966) Hamai’s second term in office began during mass demonstrations that took place across the nation against the adoption of the revised Japan– US Security Treaty. His term, ending in 1966, was a period marked by globalization and the intensification of the Cold War as well as increasingly frequent nuclear testing. As citizens’ anti-nuclear campaigns gained momentum, Hamai’s declarations in Japanese increasingly featured the reality of “atomic war” that could lead to “the demise of humanity” and eradicate “all races,” which was translated into English as “an atomic war guarantees no victory, but only means self-destruction to mankind” (1961). Therefore, during Hamai’s second term, the group of potential victims of nuclear war became inclusive, extending to everyone around the world. 4. YAMADA, Setsuo (1967–1975) Yamada served as mayor during the height of Vietnam War. At the international level, the nuclear arms race continued while domestically there was increasing public concern about the long-lasting health damage from the atomic bomb and campaigns by survivors to preserve the memories of their atomic bomb experiences. Yamada oversaw the first preservation work carried out on the atomic bomb dome in 1967. In December of the same year, Prime Minister Sato enacted the “three non-nuclear principles” to appease strong public sentiment against the presence of nuclear weapons within Japanese territory as part of the US–Japan Security Treaty. The keywords of Yamada’s declarations included “raising public awareness” about the nuclear threat, and he introduced the concept of “world citizenship” (1974) to “build a peaceful world.” Drawing attention to the “Vietnam War” (1970–1973), Yamada defined two roles for Hiroshima: to warn the world to “not repeat Hiroshima” and to “appeal to the United Nations to convene an emergent international conference for an early conclusion of a total nuclear ban agreement” (1974). He was also

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the first mayor to include “human rights” in his declaration (1971), and he also defined “peace education” and “research” as part of “the heritage of Hiroshima’s soul” (1973). Mayor Yamada’s declarations encouraged the citizens of Hiroshima to free themselves from victimhood and become a proactive partner to the world in creating lasting peace. Yamada used an evidence-based approach to define Hiroshima’s international role. In 1967 he compiled the “Chronicle of the Atomic-Bomb Disaster in Hiroshima” (Hiroshima City 1971), in which the existence of “Foreign National Hibakusha” was recorded officially for the first time: “We must not forget that there are a great number of foreign nationals, such as people from the Korean peninsula, China, Americas, White Russia, Western Germany, as well as overseas students from Indonesia, Murray, and so forth, who were exposed to the atomic bomb” (1971, v). Thus inspired, various citizen-led projects uncovered the extent and scope of atomic-bomb damage, which included reaching out to the foreign national hibakusha (Tamura 2016). 5. ARAKI, Takeshi (1975–1990) UN and Relief Araki became mayor at the height of civilian activism against nuclear weapons and cultural interest in international relations. As represented in the keywords of his declarations (e.g., “UN,” “disarmament,” “relief,” “measure,” and “public opinion”), Araki’s mission was two-fold: (1) to make the reality of atomic-bomb devastation known and extend the message of peace globally, and (2) to secure medical and financial support for the survivors. Importantly, he saw these two missions as inseparable. He joined forces with the mayor of Nagasaki to appeal to the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security. Araki’s declaration reflected his international vision, stating that “before the opening of the second Special Session of the UN General Assembly devoted to Disarmament, there should be a World Summit Conference on Peace, with the participation of the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union” (1980). Araki’s terms of office coincided with the Cold War and heightened public awareness of nuclear danger due to the ever-escalating nuclear arms race. A partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania on 28 March the previous year also drew public attention. As large-scale protests against the nuclear arms race erupted across the world, hibakusha associations collaborated with international partners

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in raising awareness, culminating in sending their representative, Mayor Araki, who was a survivor himself, to the UN. Araki’s office internationalized the knowledge of the physical and emotional reality of the atomic bombings and legitimized the legal necessity for “relief” and “support” for the hibakusha. For example, Hiroshima invited the UN General Secretary and Korean survivors to be special guests at the 1977 Peace Ceremony and on February 25, 1981, Pope John Paul II made his Appeal for Peace at Hiroshima in front of the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Then, in June of 1982, upward of one million people demonstrated in New York City’s Central Park, calling for a ban on nuclear weapons and for an end to the Cold War arms race. Furthermore, the first World Peace Solidarity City Mayors’ Conference was held in 1985, an annual event which continues today. 6. HIRAOKA, Takashi (1991–1998) Hiraoka is best known for his work to turn the City of Peace into an active participant in efforts to abolish nuclear weapons and in international peacebuilding, particularly in the Asia–Pacific region. Hiraoka was a former journalist for Chugoku News, a local broadsheet publishing company that had worked closely with survivors to provide reports from ground zero. He spent his adolescence in the occupied territory in Korea during the Second World War, and as a journalist he conducted research in Korea in the 1960s and published numerous articles on Korean atomic-bomb survivors. Hiraoka became one of the leading advocates of extending support for foreign and overseas hibakusha, and for considering the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a global historical context. Hiraoka followed in the footsteps of Yamada and Araki in pursuing international solidarity against war and nuclear weapons. He also raised awareness of Japan’s need to acknowledge its wartime wrongs, and work toward a sincere reconciliation and “disarmament and confidencebuilding measures in the Asia–Pacific region” (1992). On the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Mayor Hiraoka touched on the subject of Japan’s war responsibility, declaring (as translated in English), “At this 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, it is important to look at the stark reality of war in terms both the aggrieved and aggrieving parties so as to develop a common understanding of history

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(1995).” With this, he became the first mayor of Hiroshima who went beyond the victimhood discourse; in fact, his original Japanese speech contained much stronger allusions to “sin” or “illegality” than the English translation (1995). Hiraoka also stated that “nuclear weapons are clearly inhumane weapons in obvious violation of international law” (1995) and challenged the Japanese government to condemn these as illegal in a written statement to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On December 15, 1994, the United Nations General Assembly had adopted resolution 49/ 75 K to request an advisory opinion from the ICJ regarding the case on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons. Subsequently, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki requested that the Japanese government submit a written statement to the ICJ; however, they were cautioned to adhere to the government’s official stance. Hiraoka and Hitoshi Motoshima, who was then mayor of Nagasaki, jointly requested permission from the ICJ to make a statement at an atomic bombing hearing, but their request was refused because they did not represent a nation. Subsequently, the Republic of Nauru invited Hiraoka to join them at the ICJ and, in response, the Japanese government made Hiraoka and Ito, who had become the mayor of Nagasaki in April 1995, national representatives enabling them to attend the hearing. Hiraoka, a survivor himself, was active in disseminating knowledge of the nuclear threat and supporting victims of the world’s nuclear disasters, including those at Semipalatinsk and Chernobyl. He established the understanding that “abolition and elimination of nuclear weapons,” attempts to “cease war,” and “support for hibakusha” are interconnected and essential to Hiroshima’s identity. He portrayed Hiroshima as a responsible city of peace that regrets the “great hardship and suffering of the peoples of the Asia–Pacific region during its long period of war and colonization” and made a fresh pledge to defend “the ideal of nonbelligerence embodied in the Constitution of Japan and to continuing to inform young people everywhere of Hiroshima’s central significance for peace” (1992). 7. AKIBA, Tadatoshi (1999–2010) Internationalization of the Peace City and Mayors for Peace Like his predecessor, Mayor Akiba highlighted the importance of disseminating knowledge about the atomic-bomb experiences but with a greater

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emphasis on policies and international alliances. He also changed the style of delivery from a direct declarative form to something with a polite and conversational but emotionally distant tone. In addition, since Akiba, declarations have become politically less controversial. His keywords were “dedicate,” “overseas,” “responsibility,” and “affiliation.” He “dedicated” peace declarations to “commemorate” the atomic-bomb victims (1999), and, in so doing, portrayed the atomic-bombing experience as belonging to the past, making his declarations less personal and emotional than those of his predecessors. Like Hiraoka, Akiba used the word “responsibility” in relation to war and its consequences; however, unlike Hiraoka, he referred in a much broader sense to the responsibility of anyone involved in any war (2000, 2001, and 2002). Throughout his term in office, Akiba concentrated his efforts on the Executive Cities of Mayors for Peace” organization and served as the president of its world conference. Mayors for Peace was established in 1982 in Hiroshima under the initiative of Mayor Araki. Akiba’s approach was to consolidate a worldwide network of affiliated mayors from across the political spectrum to unequivocally appeal for a nuclear-free world. He mentioned this in eight consecutive declarations between 2003 and 2010. Akiba introduced the word hibakusha as a technical term into the English-language lexicon; through statements such as, “The first step is to listen humbly to the hibakusha of the world” (2002). He also declared his political intention to “expand the scope of support for the atomic bomb survivors who were exposed to “black rain” and those who live overseas” (2003). He established the three core messages from Hiroshima: an aspiration for peace, the abolition of nuclear weapons, and support for the hibakusha, all of which are based on Hiroshima’s atomic-bomb experience. 8. MATSUI, Kazumi (2011–current) Matsui assumed the office in 2011, the year of the Great Northern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, which occurred in March. The disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant led more cities to join the League of Mayors for Peace, which reached a membership of 5000 cities. Hidehiko Yuzaki, governor of Hiroshima, joined efforts to declare a slogan, “Hiroshima the International Hub of Peace,” and held an International Round Table in Hiroshima. Then in 2014, the Non-Proliferation

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and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI) Ministerial Meeting was held in Hiroshima and the Hiroshima Declaration was adopted. In 2016, Barack Obama, the then US president, became the first US head of state to visit Hiroshima. The following year, the UN General Assembly adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an organization that was instrumental in realizing the adoption of the treaty, received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. During a joint acceptance of the prize at the award ceremony, Setsuko Thurlow, a hibakusha from Hiroshima, gave a powerful speech. These international events have been reflected in Mayor Matsui’s peace declarations. He is also known for including excerpts from testimonies by hibakusha. Keywords for Matsui are “statesmen,” “support,” “you” (indicating the audience), “devote,” and “empathize.” Matsui’s texts promise the abolition of nuclear weapons, the prevention of war, and the realization of peace. Furthermore, rather than confronting the central government to secure support for the hibakusha, Matsui’s texts “empathize” with them, acknowledging the need to improve relevant policies. In the English translation, his keywords are “pacifism,” “average,” “ask,” “policymaker,” and “aftereffect” (of radiation). Matsui observed “that we have avoided war for 69 years thanks to the noble pacifism of the Japanese Constitution” (2014), which Hiroshima “embodies” (2013). Matsui has been particularly conscious of the passing of time as it relates to the unrelenting pain from “aftereffects and social prejudice” (2012, 2014), and the advanced age of the hibakusha (2017), which means that direct experiences and memories of the atomic bombing will soon be lost.

Discussion The quantitative and qualitative analyses above reveal that the contents of declarations have transformed over time. Transformations in terms of the identity and role of the “victims” was particularly notable within the original Japanese declarations but less apparent in the English translations. The following three core concepts remained constant throughout the Japanese declarations: (1) the devastating human toll of the atomicbomb attack and the survivors’ ongoing suffering, (2) calls to abolish all wars and nuclear weapons to attain lasting world peace, and (3) the continued appeal for relief for the hibakusha. These three concepts are interwoven to create the central narrative of peace declaration in Japanese;

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however, the issue of relief for the hibakusha has been less prominent in the English translations. This differential emphasis on the hibakusha in each language has led to a divergence in the narratives of the Japanese and English peace declarations. The key concepts expressed in the peace declarations evolved over time according to each mayor’s policy priorities, meaning the texts of the declarations portray the collective identity of the city and her citizens in the corresponding period. Although the textual contents of the English translations match the Japanese originals, the impressions the two elicited in their respective audiences differed. The English declarations primarily focus on the devastation of Hiroshima and anti-nuclear activism, and the connection between the need for laws to support hibakusha and Hiroshima’s commitment to achieve universal peace has been de-emphasized. In addition, the original focus on the hibakusha’s involvement in constructing Hiroshima’s postwar identity in the Japanese text is markedly reduced in the English translations. The English translations give the impression that the atomic devastation was an event confined to the past and highlight Hiroshima’s current commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons in solidarity with its international partners. Two narrative strands can be identified in the original Japanese texts: firstly, a narrative on how the devastating atomic-bomb experience gives rise to the “no-war, no nuclear” pledge of Hiroshima’s citizens, on the basis of which the people and the city aspire for world peace; secondly, a narrative depicting the inhumanity of nuclear weapons as exemplified by the long-term psychological and physical damage caused by the atomic bombing, which is coupled with an appeal to assist the hibakusha. These two strands (namely, the survivors’ mission to abolish nuclear weapons and measures to support the survivors) are indivisible and intrinsically related to universal peace. Additionally, Hiroshima in Japanese has several connotations, each having a distinct orthography: the bustling cultural center before the bomb (廣島), the city that continues to feel the devastating pains from the bomb (ヒロシマ), and the city that has rebuilt itself with aspirations to lead efforts toward a universal non-nuclear peace (広島). These different connotations cannot be expressed in the English equivalent, “Hiroshima.” Additionally, historical, contextual, and cultural information embedded in various proper nouns complicate the intended meanings for translation. For these reasons, English translations were bound

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to involve limitations in terms of their ability to convey multi-layered meanings, no matter how accurate and thoughtful the translation may have been. Furthermore, the repeated attenuation of domestic issues in the English translations causes the Japanese and English versions to diverge in terms of the impressions they offer of victimhood and victim consciousness. Hiroshima peace declarations began with a double purpose: consoling the bereaved and reassuring the struggling victims through a statement describing how the city would provide them with long-overdue support while mobilizing them to rebuild their city. However, to secure political and financial support for the reconstruction of the city, the city needed a just cause to reassure SCAP GHQ that the newly built city would showcase Japan’s democratization and demilitarization. Consequently, Hiroshima’s identity as the City of Peace became a mantra in early peace declarations and, although it was prompted by the municipality’s pragmatism, this new identity caught the imagination of struggling citizens. The bomb had destroyed everything, leaving a void in survivors’ lives that needed to be filled and the identity of a city of peace achieved this by providing hope and a sense of mission. It mobilized the citizens in the reconstruction efforts and led them to prioritize the greater good over self-interest. In this way, Hiroshima’s Peace Declaration became a powerful political instrument to promote the municipality’s policies. The hibakusha’s angry denouncements of the US bombings were turned into a call for the abolition of nuclear weapons in an early peace declaration, which then became an officially disseminated public sentiment. Subsequent peace declarations echoed this by incorporating anti-nuclear policies. At the same time, the hibakusha raised their voices, calling for adequate medical and financial relief, and subsequent peace declarations responded with repeated promises on these issues. Thus, hibakusha relief and hibakusha’s anti-nuclear efforts became entwined in the peace declarations, giving rise to the narrative of justice and rights for the hibakusha. The discourse gave Hiroshima city an identity of peace and provided the hibakusha with a meaning in life and sense of direction, carrying them into an uncharted area of international anti-nuclear activism. Through this activism, both the hibakusha and Hiroshima began a process of international exchange and became exposed to memories of sufferings other than those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a consequence, a new memorial culture of Hiroshima began to form, and her citizens began to recognize and accept victimhood other than their own.

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Instead of a zero-sum approach to defining victimhood according to geopolitical boundaries, layers of “multidirectional” memories associated with the atomic bombing have emerged in the sense advocated by Rothberg (2009). These include memories from non-Japanese victims and survivors of the bombs living abroad. Further, as Zwigenberg demonstrated with his study of the 1962 Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March, the Hibakusha and the Holocaust victims reached out to each other with a shared personal and political conviction that the inhumanity and atrocity of genocide shall never be repeated. Thus, through international exchange, the Hibakusha began to accept the role of witnesses to atrocity while becoming incorporated as symbols of a “peace city.” The local memorial narratives of Hibakusha were propelled into a global discourse of anti-nuclear weapons. This phenomenon echoes Carol Gluck’s discussion: “just as the Holocaust became a global example of genocide, so did the comfort women become a touchstone for new international law relating to the violence against women in war” (2021, 79). Likewise, the memories of Hibakusha became a reminder of the past nuclear disaster, a symbol of conscience in the atomic age that guides international and domestic initiatives to develop legal frameworks for nuclear issues and resolve other conflicts, including the victims of Japan’s aggression.

Conclusion Hiroshima’s Peace Declaration is a powerful political communication tool and has established the image of Hiroshima as miracle city reconstructed from a nuclear desert. However, the messages conveyed by the Japanese declarations and their English translations have diverged. The professionally translated and textually accurate English versions have succeeded in creating a positive image of Hiroshima, City of Peace. Nonetheless, over the years, the English versions have failed to provide an effective account of the original messages in terms of the unresolved issues of hibakusha relief, hibakusha encounters with sufferings other than their own, and shifting understandings of victimhood. These three issues are domestic and narrated from the viewpoint of the hibakusha, while the English translations are narrated predominantly from the Mayor’s viewpoint. The constant and repeated minimizing of these domestic issues in the English translations has resulted in the different impressions presented by the Japanese and English peace declarations.

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Furthermore, English translations narrate the atomic-bomb experience in the past tense as a historical incident. In this account, the city of Hiroshima is re-born with a newly acquired peaceful identity and the hibakusha are depicted through a simpler, sanitized image of longsuffering “victim-heroes” (Orr 2001) who have spearheaded the nuclear disarmament mission. In contrast, the Japanese originals emphasize the continuum: this account describes the ongoing struggles of people who remain constant but whose identities have evolved from victims into a symbolic community of witnesses sharing a borderless memory of the atomic-bomb experiences. Indeed, the Japanese declarations have emphasized the continuity of the hibakusha’s memories of the atomic bombing over time. Hibakusha’s perceptual transitions are apparent in the original declarations. At the early stage of peace declarations, the concept of “victims” referred only to the local and Japanese hibakusha. However, during the struggle to obtain basic relief and medical aid, the hibakusha reached out to the international community for support. In so doing, they encountered other forms of suffering, which led them to revise their concept of victimhood to include all people regardless of geographical or socio-political borders. This globalized notion of hibakusha, combined with anger toward nuclear weapons, gave rise to the hibakusha’s global campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. The transition from an insular notion of victimhood to a global notion of hibakusha—a community of witnesses of nuclear atrocity engaged in peace activism—was a consequence of survival through international solidarity, rather than a “victim-hero” strategy to achieve individual economic or political goals. The nuclear threat is borderless. Therefore, united under shared memories of the atomic-bomb experiences, the audiences of the original Peace Declarations have been shifting away from competing victimhood and moving toward mnemonic solidarity (Lim and Rosenhaft 2021). On that path, victims have become empowered witnesses. Acknowledgement This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 19K23247, 21KK0032 and 22H00905.

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Appendix 1: Keywords in Each Mayor’s Peace Declarations in the Japanese and English Versions 濱井信三 1

渡辺忠 雄

濱井信三 2

山田節 夫

荒木 武

平岡敬

秋葉忠 利

松井一實

1

罪悪

何もの

均衡

戦略

植民

捧げ

為政者

2 3

地下 暗黒

おごそ か 指摘 医療

民族 遂げる

対策 米

表明 大量

海外 含める

支援 皆さん

4 5

営む 示唆

救う 徐々に

完全 勝利

意識 ベトナ ム 抗議 協定

補償 世論

開く 責任

尽くす 寄り添う

6 7 8 9

戦災 尊い まい進 愛好

原水爆 漸く 悲劇 謹んで

目ざす 新た 各所 見込み

大国 秩序 一体 主権

軍縮 理念 特別 本年

物質 語り継 ぐ 技術 アジア 太平洋 抱く

加盟 果す 創 充実

10

一掃

見える

小異

許す

方策

子ども

11

貴い

大同

共同

内外

今年

首長

12 13 14 15

謹しむ 実に 招来 創意

ひろし ま 遺伝 一方 家並 回顧

基づ く 総会

暮らし 年齢 平均 生き延び る 外相

当時 要務 傾注 弔う

自滅 地上 断じて 去る

原則 開催 首脳 実験

築く あり方 覚える 阻む

多数 即す 講座 全米

家族 心身 全力 降雨

remember terrible ash warn welfare instantly

convince darkness fellow guilt sacrifice precious citizen reduce eternal

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

forward gratification minor partial suicide victor observe age apprehension

homage mean belief lay grave distinction

HAMAI Shinzo 2

socialist man completely strongly china knowledge protest republics diplomatic

destiny balance vietnam order armament modern

YAMADA Setsuo

arm states hold nations disarament initiative relief principle summit

soviet union special general session assembly

ARAKI Takeshi

nuclear free technology imperative poverty conflict colonial domination wawrtime horror

commemorate anew asia–pacific material hope imdemnification

HIRAOKA Takashi

role course represent responsibility constitution mayors hell rain hibakusha

hiroshima-nagasaki majority humbly child nuclear weapon study

AKIBA Tadatoshi

pacifism average ask a.m. boy policy maker after-effect want physical accident rain woman innocent manage nuclear arm

MATSUI Kazumi

VAN DER

dreadful affluence annal audible beautifully behoove calmness contact costly

gradually premature release treatment medical point

WATANABE Tadao

L.

1 2 3 4 5 6

HAMAI Shinzo 1

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Works Cited Buchheim, Eveline. 2015. Enabling Remembrance: Japanese-Indisch Descendants Visit Japan. History and Memory 27 (2): 107–128. Dower, John. 2010. Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9–11/Iraq. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., Inc. Dower, John. 2012. Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering Japan in the Modern World. New York; London: The New Press. Fukuda, Seiji. 2003. Senso no kioku: Hiroshima [War and Memory: Hiroshima]. In Kioku no Bunkaron: Senso, Funso to Kokumin, Gender, Ethnicity [Cultural Theory of Memory: Thinking War/Conflict in the Light of Nationalism, Gender and Ethnicity], ed. Tsurubunka Daigaku Hikakubunka Gakka, 209– 248. Tokyo: Kashiwa-shobo. Gluck, Carol. 2021. What the World Owes the Comfort Women. In Mnemonic Solidarity, ed. Jie-Hyun Lim and Even Rosenhaft, 73–104. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hashimoto, Akiko. 2015. The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hein, Laura E., and Selden Mark. 2000. The Lessons of War, Global Power, and Social Change. In Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. M. Selden and L.E. Hein. M.E. Sharpe. Hiroshima City (ed.). 1971. Hiroshima Genbaku Sensai-shi [Chronicle of Atomic-Bomb Damages in Hiroshima]. Hiroshima City. Hook, Glenn D. 1991/2019. Censorship and Reportage of Atomic Damage and Casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 23 (1): 13–25. Hoskins, Andrew, and Ben O’Loughlin. 2010. War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ishii, K¯ ota. 2018. Genbaku: Hiroshima o Fukko-saseta Hitobito [The AtomicBomb and the People who Reconstructed Hiroshima]. Tokyo: Shuei-sha. Izumi, Shizue, Kenichi Satoh, and Noriyuki Kawano. 2015. Keiji teki ni kansokusareta text data ni taisuru henka keisu model ni motozuku tokei teki na bunrui hoho to shikakuka ni tsuite [Statistical Classification and Visualization Based on Varying Coefficients Model for Longitudinal Text Data]. Keisan kikai tokeigaku [Computation Machinery Studies] 28 (1): 81–92. Jones, Matthew. 2010. After Hiroshima: The United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jungk, Robert. 1961/1985. Children of the Ashes: The People of Hiroshima. London: Flamingo. Levy, Daniel, and Natan Sznaider. 2010. Human Rights and Memory. Penn State University Press. Lim, Jie-Hyun, and Eve Rosenhaft. 2021. Mnemonic Solidarity: Global Interventions. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Matsuura, Yoko, Kenichi Satoh, and Noriyuki Kawano. 2013. Hiroshima no heiwa-kan—Heiwa sengen hinshutsu-tango no kaiseki wo toshite [Concept of Peace in Hiroshima: Analysis of Hiroshima Peace Declaration ]. Hiroshima Heiwa Kagaku [Hiroshima Peace Research] 35: 67–101. Matsuura, Yoko, Kenichi Satoh, and Noriyuki Kawano. 2014. Nagasaki no heiwa-kan—Heiwa sengen hinshutsu-tango no kaiseki wo toshite [Concept of Peace in Nagasaki: Analysis of Nagasaki Peace Declaration]. Hiroshima Heiwa Kagaku [Hiroshima Peace Research] 36: 75–100. Orr, James Joseph. 2001. The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Tamura, Kazuyuki. 2016. Zaigai Hibakusha Saiban (Overseas Hibakusha Lawsuits). Tokyo: Shinzansha. Ubuki, Satoru. 1992. Heiwa-Shikiten no Ayumi. Heiwa-sasshi [Peace: The History of the Ceremony], vol. 8. Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. Ubuki, Satoru. 2015. Hiroshima Sengo-shi [Postwar History of Hiroshima]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. van der Does, L., and D.G. Hook. 2017. Mediating Risk Communication and the Shifting Locus of Responsibility: Japanese Adaptation Policy in Response to Cross-border Atmospheric Pollution. In Media and Environmental Sustainability: An Empirical Study of National Media Reporting of Environmental Issues in China and Japan, ed. G. Hook, L. Lester, M. Ji, K. Edney, and L. van der Does-Ishikawa. London: Routledge. Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer. 2009. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. Yoneyama, Lisa. 1999. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Zwigenberg, Ran. 2014. Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Camouflaged War Heritage: Brecciated War Heritage Sites in Kyoto Oliver Moxham

A double process of identification is contained in the difference between the past death that is recalled and the visual interpretation that a war memorial offers. Over the course of time … the intended identity … eludes the control of those who established the memorial. All political and social identifications that try to visually capture and permanently fix the “dying for . . .” vanish in the course of time. (Koselleck 2002, 288–289)

The evasive position of a number of Japan’s politicians and government actors on the nation’s role in the Asia–Pacific War (1931–1945) has been well documented within academia and the international media. The ambiguity of the state’s official conservative narrative of the war has long

O. Moxham (B) University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] URL: https://dajf.org.uk/ Daiwa Scholar in Japanese Studies 2022, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Tokyo, Japan © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_5

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drawn regular criticism from neighbouring nations. These former victims of the empire’s aggressive expansion raise this contentious historical issue through damaging diplomatic policy and nationalist propaganda (Reilly 2011, 471). Annual visits by prime ministers to the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, where Japanese soldiers including Class A war criminals are enshrined, draw accusations of hypocrisy from victims of the Japanese empire over any past apologies for wartime aggression (Hatch 2014, 371–373). Even the wounds of more historically distant conflicts such as sixteenth-century samurai invasions of Joseon Korea are reopened in the blistering debate (Moxham 2021). In East Asia, the war remains an explosive no-man’s-land of divergence over how it is remembered in the national history of each nation. This makes tangible sites of related war heritage and their management a contentious matter, especially when located in areas of mass tourism. Within the national context of Japan, widespread revision of the historical war record has produced conflicting war narratives for both domestic and international audiences at war heritage sites across the nation. From a transnational perspective, there is a strong, consistent precedent in modern Japan of the use of heritage and its corresponding tourism as a political tool to shape the international view of Japan from the Meiji era in the mid-1800s through the militarism of the early Showa period in the 1930s, up to the modern day (Uesugi 2019, 220; Zwigenberg 2019, 199–200). Specifically, we see contested and conflicting war histories being retold through traditional mediums of historical authority such as museums and memorials. However, debate and research around warrelated heritage sites in Japan has tended to be the focus of tourism studies, particularly around the contentious field of “dark tourism,” which presents significant obstacles in analysing war heritage sites in the diverse heritage landscapes of major urban centres, as well as limiting the scope of research to domestic tourism (Seaton and Yamamura 2015, 98; Seaton 2019a, b, 309). This chapter develops a means of assessing the prominence and accessibility of war-related heritage sites in the heritage landscape of major cities by their geographical location, the choice and limitations of translated languages available, and the history the site represents. Comparing case studies of Kyoto’s transnational war-related heritage sites—sites which commemorate casualties of international war—can help us to understand how and why they produce conflicting narratives of war history. By drawing attention to the role of language and translation at these sites, we

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can see how the signage found at these sites factors into filtering access by nationality to varying narratives of war. The case studies include memorials to three aerial attacks on the city of Kyoto in 1945 and Asia–Pacific war dead memorials at Ry¯ozen Kannon. These sites demonstrate how their predetermined locations, dark histories and managed translations reconcile with the broader authorized heritage discourse of their municipality, shaping their historical representation and accessibility in the city’s heritage landscape. This research offers an international and interdisciplinary framework through which researchers of heritage studies, tourism studies, and memory studies can collaborate in assessing the significance of war heritage sites in their respective fields.

Theoretical Framework This chapter takes an interdisciplinary approach, building on Philip Seaton’s categories of war-related tourism, in particular his suggested definition of the sub-category of heritage tourism, where sites of war-related heritage are divided by their nationalistic, inspirational “light” narrative and their progressive counterparts which explore the “dark” sides of war history (Seaton 2019b, 306). To be clear, this is not a means to study the motives of tourists but the representation of war-related heritage sites, hence this chapter does not seek to further studies of dark tourism, but that of heritage studies and memory studies. Nevertheless, while Seaton has voiced valid concerns regarding the binary light/dark dichotomy often associated with dark tourism, I believe this is useful terminology in determining whether war heritage sites are canonized and incorporated into the tourist landscape based on the histories they represent (Seaton 2019b, 306). For the purposes of this chapter, I build on Seaton’s definitions of “dark” and “light/lite” (hereon abbreviated to dark and light) war-related heritage, which classifies the war history the site presents rather than the nature of tourism to the site (Seaton 2019b, 306). Dark war history references stark, unromanticized and often gory aspects of war history, such as air raids, genocides, and other atrocities. On the other end of the spectrum, light war history focuses on acts of heroism, national pride, and “inspirational stories that enhance the national identity,” tropes found at such iconic sites as Yasukuni Shrine (Seaton 2019b, 306). However, the narratives attributed to these histories are not fixed from the unveiling of the memorial, a point raised by Reinhart Koselleck in the opening quotation. Instead, such narratives are continually adapted

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over time to meet the contemporary context of the memorial and its environs (Koselleck 2002, 288–89). This chapter aims to build on this theory in a globalized context, where war heritage sites can find their narratives changed once tourism brings them under the international gaze. With this in mind, I acknowledge suggestions in Seaton’s earlier work that visitor trends caused by war-related tourism cannot be determined in large tourist cities due to the wide range of factors that might drive tourist interest in the area (Seaton and Yamamura 2015, 98). Research on war-related tourism has tended to focus on geographically isolated warrelated heritage sites in Japan, as the remote towns and islands typically lack significant alternative heritage which could interfere in assessing the relationship between tourism trends and war heritage sites (Fukuma 2019, 247; Seaton 2019a, b, 299; Uesugi 2019, 219). Seaton also states that international tourism can further muddy the waters of analysing tourism trends at war heritage sites as they may interpret dark Japanese war history as light due to differences in cultural backgrounds (Seaton 2019a, b, 309). While agreeing that this negates using tourism trends to determine how these sites are interpreted, an alternative approach of assessing the narratives and interpretations at war heritage sites in major cities is a necessity given the wider international audience exposed to such sites, and the prominent geopolitical position they occupy. I propose that by drawing upon theories from heritage studies, we can determine how the linguistic access at, and location of, heritage sites in major cities impacts their presence and the narratives they produce. This is the focus of this chapter, providing a basis for future research to determine how far narratives analysed at these sites corroborate the interpretations of visitors from varying nationalities. In this sense, Nadia Bartolini’s theory of brecciated heritage is pertinent here. She applies the metaphor of breccia rocks—many different fragments being contained unevenly in a whole rock—to heritage sites within the landscape of Rome, where sites from cultures spanning millennia “resurface in the most innocuous positions and awkward spaces” where it “may not always be welcome” and as a result “complicates … memorial narratives” (Bartolini 2014, 524). The history of Kyoto itself spans well over a thousand years with a long history as the political and religious capital of Japan. Applying Bartolini’s breccia metaphor, the majority of heritage “fragments” in Kyoto consist of temples, shrines, and political residences, with war heritage making up a small yet distinct cluster of shards. However, war heritage sites are

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sometimes situated in areas dense with prominent heritage sites and thus disrupt the surrounding heritage narrative. As the case studies show, war heritage does not make up the majority of Kyoto’s historical narrative, as the atomic bombings do in Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the kamikaze pilots in Chiran. This suggests that war heritage narratives would need creative reinterpretation in order to be incorporated into the religious or political canon of Kyoto’s heritage (Fukuma 2019, 247). Religious war-related heritage sites can be found across Japan, including kannon temples and gokoku shrines which commemorate the Japanese war dead of the Asia–Pacific War and contain “light history”-style, often nationalist narratives, politicizing all war dead who are memorialized there. This can ultimately eclipse local memorial practices, as demonstrated in Chiran where the kamikaze narrative saw the memory of local non-kamikaze soldiers marginalized (Fukuma 2019, 251–252). In the case of dark war heritage, while these uncomfortable and complicated sites cannot simply be removed, I argue that their histories can become camouflaged, close in proximity to canonized heritage sites, and yet accessible only to those with the appropriate language skills and knowledge of local history. I suggest that war heritage sites in Kyoto that do not adhere to the authorized heritage discourse can find their accessibility diminished even to the point of being camouflaged, the darkness of their histories rendered unnoticeable to all but specific visitor groups. Laurajane Smith’s concept of “authorized heritage discourse” is a discourse “which is reliant on the power/knowledge claims of technical and aesthetic experts and institutionalized instate cultural agencies and amenity societies” (2006, 11). Japan’s national authorized heritage discourse is defined by Japan Heritage, a subsidiary of the Japanese government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, which in their mission statement do not recognize war heritage that falls outside of the category of “[samurai] armour,” “castle,” or “shrines and temples” (Japan Heritage Online Portal 2019). This provides a sense of what is required of warrelated heritage to fit within the authorized heritage discourse of Japan: it must either have a link to pre-industrial, domestic warfare or alternatively be incorporated into shrines and temple grounds to fit the canon of the Japanese authorized heritage discourse. The last section of this chapter considers the role of language at these heritage sites, particularly given the growing number of international visitors to Japan in pre-COVID-19 times, 63 per cent of whom visited from Korea, China, and Taiwan, areas which share a transnational war history

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with Japan (JTB Tourism Research and Consulting Co. Website 2020). Visitors to Japan who do not speak an East Asian language rely heavily on English translations at heritage sites where their native language is not available, whereas those whose first languages incorporate Chinese characters, or “kanji,” may be able to understand a portion of the Japanese texts (Chen and Liao 2017, 57). At the multilingual site of Ry¯ozen Kannon, I make the case that there is a significant divide in how the sites are interpreted between English-reading visitors and kanji-reading visitors. As different narratives are created at the same site based on language, it must be acknowledged that one language is not uniquely accessed by one nationality. A 2018 lexicostatistical review of language kinship between Mandarin, Hokkien Chinese, and Japanese found that 29 per cent of the traditional Chinese kanji characters used in modern Japanese remains understandable to Mandarin Chinese speakers, suggesting that Japanese texts at the sites are not exclusively accessible to Japanese speakers (Gapur et al. 2018, 312). Furthermore, multilingualism negates any possible argument that language is a universally impenetrable barrier between narratives. However, Chia-Li Chen and Min-Hsiu Liao indicate the significance of language barriers at heritage sites in their study of translations at the 228 Memorial Museum in Taipei, Taiwan. By analysing the discrepancies between Chinese texts and their English counterparts, they hypothesize that the decision process behind texts and translations is informed by the preconceptions of the site managers (Chen and Liao 2017, 57). While we cannot assume that this is the result of a deliberate effort to segregate interpretation by nationality, their case study indicates a significant difference in interpretation depending on what language was read. Nonetheless, Chen and Liao showed how discrepancies in translation can lead to a vastly different interpretation, and indeed the creation of a wholly different narrative at a heritage site whilst suggesting that the ideology being conveyed can be more readily determined by what is not said rather than what is said (2017, 58, 65). I propose that different narratives are created based on what is and is not translated at heritage sites and that this corresponds with the perceived “darkness” and perceived “lightness” of the historical narrative they represent.

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Methodology I first learnt of the aerial bombing of Kyoto in the Asia–Pacific War when reading the war diary of Tamura Tsunejiro, an elderly citizen living through the war in Kyoto, who commented on an air raid, despite the translator of the diary indicating that no such raid was recorded (Yamashita 2005, 114). This further contradicted the narrative I had heard on many occasions portraying Kyoto as a “city spared from war” (hisensaitoshi) due to the comparatively little bombing of the city and its legendary escape from being the preferred test site of the atomic bomb (Nishikawa 2017, 222–23). The account led me to research the Asia– Pacific War history of Kyoto further, leading to my research on three separate bombings which had occurred in the city (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 141, 170, 214). Informed by old maps of the bombing sites drawn by survivors and what little information there was available online, I spent six weeks funded by the University of Sheffield’s GLOSS programme between June and July 2018 visiting the areas in search of memorials. Having found one central memorial at each site, I searched for other war-related heritage sites in central Kyoto and identified the Ry¯ozen Kannon and Ry¯ozen Gokoku Shrine complex as the main memorial site for victims of the Asia–Pacific War. While Ry¯ ozen Gokoku Shrine presents intriguing war narratives, it has been excluded from this chapter as it was founded in the 1800s and consequently commemorates multiple wars in one site, which would divert from the Asia–Pacific focus of this chapter. I then visited the sites to see if the history of the air raids was included in the war narrative there. After determining the dedication of all publicly accessible memorials at the two sites, I observed that none were dedicated to the victims of the air raid memorials. I took photos of all relevant memorials and collected the tourist handouts available at the sites before researching the social impact each individual heritage site had through the media coverage and attendance of their unveiling ceremonies, accessed in microfilm copies of Kyoto Newspaper, or Kyoto Shimbun, archives at the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives. I also tried to see what information could be gained from local tourism officials and site managers where applicable, but unfortunately little was yielded either due to a lack of knowledge by staff—tourism officials were surprised to be informed of monuments a mere hundred metres from their office—or due to refusal to share the information as in the case of Ry¯ ozen Kannon.

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By the end of the six-week research project, I had identified a number of documented war heritage sites of the Asia–Pacific War in the city of Kyoto and its immediate environs, as well as recorded evidence of the immediate social impact each site had had on unveiling, where applicable. This was the best evidence available to me on these memorial sites, in the absence of recorded statistics available on current attendance numbers. I also photographed the signage found at these sites to compare the narratives produced when read exclusively in English or Japanese. Finally, the digital presence of these heritage sites, where applicable, further exposes discrepancies in narratives through translations available online. I had intended to conduct interviews with local residents, tourism bodies, and on-site workers during a research trip in April 2020, but unfortunately due to the COVID-19 crisis, this trip was not possible. Using these materials, I analysed the accessibility of war-related heritage sites in the heritage landscape of Kyoto. The key factors in conducting this analysis were the history of the site, the domestic and international narrative (where applicable), and whether it complied with the Japanese government’s authorized heritage discourse (AHD). While the darkness or lightness of the history of the site is significant, it is the narrative that articulates the history that determines its accessibility, as explained in each case. From these factors, I define three forms of accessibility of war heritage sites in an urban context: national war heritage, which complies with the authorized heritage discourse and has a narrative seen at war heritage sites across the nation; communal war heritage, which is not part of the city’s authorized heritage discourse, but has a narrative which focusses on, and is maintained by, the local community within a small, geographical subsection of the city; and finally camouflaged war heritage, which is part of the authorized heritage discourse yet has a narrative that actively hides its history and bears no indication of being actively memorialized in any notable way by domestic actors.

Researching War Heritage and Tourism in Japan Research into the management of Japan’s international image through tourism has suggested that such practices are not limited to the postwar period, but in fact extend from the nineteenth century to today. Andrew Elliott points to specifically English language tourist materials as an example of the Japanese imperial government attempting to “change hearts and minds in the Anglophone world” in the 1930s, indicating

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an historical precedent for government tourism initiatives being aware of the international gaze and manipulating tourist materials in European languages to impact the perceived narrative held by Europeans of the Japanese empire (Elliott 2019, 122; Pai 2013, 194). It is likely that this same awareness remains today. Certain case studies suggest a much more aggressive method is used in the careful maintenance of the authorized heritage discourse in Japan. In her text on heritage management in Korea and Japan, Hyung Il Pai goes so far as to suggest there is widespread “suppression of public discourse” at war museums and heritage sites perpetuated by nationalist politicians in Japan in order to “[erase] memories of wartime atrocities” and “propagate the master narrative” (Pai 2013, 170). This claim is supported by case studies such as Peace Osaka, which removed a section on Japanese atrocities on the Asian mainland from the museum’s narrative following the replacement of its progressive managers with nationalist sympathizers (Seaton 2015, 10). Peace Osaka’s ideological “renewal” is a rare, extreme example of a war-related site undergoing a radical change, yet it is important to note that while the progressive “hard-hitting displays about Japanese aggression” were removed, the ideology of the site did not go to the other extreme of political spectrum; rather, its narrative became neutral, limited to what is deemed undisputable historical fact by the official narrative (Seaton 2015, 5, 9). This suggests that the narrative of a war-related heritage site with a dark, hard-hitting narrative is at risk of either neutralization or persecution by political bodies for deviating from the light heritage canon. While such aggressive rewriting of historical narratives is not presented here, this confirms an atmosphere of sensitivity around constructing war narratives which can draw hostile attention and political action. While it is a relatively simple task to change the narrative of a museum exhibition, structural, and architectural monuments are not so easily altered to conform with political ideologies. Their content cannot be radically altered, and, in the case of local memorials, they are tied to the local population who have clashed in the past with impositions of the authorized heritage discourse and official war narrative. This divergence between grassroots and state-authorized heritage discourse can be seen in the air raid memorials in this chapter. However, while their material permanence and local significance lends a degree of protection from wider shifts in the politics of war memory, national tourism trends can greatly impact the memorialization of local war heritage. This was demonstrated

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in Chiran, Kyushu, where the kamikaze pilot narrative came to dominate the town’s tourist image and memorial ceremonies (Fukuma 2019, 252). Fukuma claims that “the replacement of local memories by others has devalued local citizens’ own war experiences and resulted in the loss of local histories of war” (2019, 261). Considering the geographical isolation of Chiran from major urban centres, this puts into perspective the potential impact of tourism on the narratives of war memory in any town, let alone a major tourist city like Kyoto. As such, while the “political and social identifications” of memorials are naturally prone to “vanish in the course of time,” the memories that they transmit can also become rapidly eclipsed and obscured by social shifts such as tourism trends (Koselleck 2002, 289). The air raid memorials presented in this chapter demonstrate war heritage on the cusp of being forgotten from collective memory as a result of falling outside of authorized heritage discourse.

War Memorials of Kyoto The war-related heritage sites investigated in this chapter include three air raid memorials documented in Hidden Bombings and the local Kyoto Shimbun newspaper: (1a) one in Kamigy¯o ward where 56 were injured and 41 killed on 26 June 1945; (1b) another in Higashiyama ward where 186 were injured and 50 killed on 16 January 1945; (1c) and finally the Nagaokaky¯o Peace Memorial where five were injured and one killed by machine gun fire on 20 July 1945. (Kakusareteita K¯ ush¯ u, Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 140–141, 170–171, 214–215; “Stone Monument Unveiling Ceremony at Nishijin” 2005; “Passing on the Umamachi Air Raid: Stone Monument Unveiled in Higashiyama by Resident’s Association” 2014; “The Chimney that saw the Tragedy of War: Traces of Attack Vividly Restored by Peace Memorial” 1989). The final case study will be (2) Ry¯ozen Kannon, a Buddhist kannon temple established on 8 August 1955 primarily to memorialize various war dead (Ry¯ozen Kannon Website 2011) (see Figs. 5.1 and 5.2). These sites commemorate different groups affiliated with the Asia– Pacific War yet in comparison we can see how the national and regional authorized heritage discourse has impacted the accessibility of each site, in some cases camouflaging them within Kyoto’s impressive heritage landscape. Most sites are within areas of high international and domestic tourist traffic, a factor in shaping the accessibility afforded to war heritage sites and their narratives. The second part of this chapter analyses the

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Fig. 5.1 Map of Kyoto with case study locations. Made by author with Google Maps (2020)

circumstances, source materials, and signage of each site to show how these case studies can be understood as examples of camouflaged war heritage.

Kamigyo¯ Air Raid Memorial The Kamigy¯o Air Raid Memorial recounts the night of an air raid which occurred on 15 July 1945, erected 15 July 2005, marking the number of dead and injured as well as the locations of the blasts (see Fig. 5.3). This episode in which civilians were indiscriminately killed in wartime violence has been commemorated in a narrative that condemns the violence of war and calls for the incident not to be forgotten, although the only language

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Fig. 5.2 Close up of central sites. Made by author with Google Maps (2020)

available is Japanese which limits linguistic access to a domestic audience only (“Stone Monument Unveiling Ceremony at Nishijin” 2005). The memorial consists of a stone plaque in a small park in the Kamigy¯o ward with no qualities to place it within the aforementioned authorized heritage discourse prescribed by Japan Heritage. As such, I determine its accessibility level to be that of communal heritage.

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Known locally as the Nishijin Air Raid Memorial after the local textile factory, it is located north of Nij¯ o Castle and west of the Imperial Palace (see Fig. 5.2). It commemorates the bombing of a 1400-metre area by American B-29 bombers two months before the surrender of Japan. Historians argue that this was not the primary target of the bombers, but rather the result of bombers becoming separated from the squadron and dropping off the rest of their load as they returned to base from the intended target of a nearby industrial city (Cary 1975, 337–338). However arbitrary the reasons for the attack, the damage was severe, and the eyewitness accounts recorded by the Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society speak of the local trauma generated by the event (1979, 170–197). 56 were killed and 41 injured, and the destruction is captured in a photograph in the title page of their record of the bombings, Hidden Bombings (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 1). The numbers relating to casualties shown in Fig. 5.3 are estimates made by the Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society, although eyewitness accounts state more than 300 were injured, which reveals the conflicted nature of official data collecting in the immediate aftermath (1979, 171). Otis Cary indicates that news of bombings in Kyoto was suppressed in the media until the 1970s, which is supported by research conducted by local air raid memorial societies who claim that gag orders on news reports were issued by authorities (Cary 1975, 337–338; “Passing on the Umamachi Air Raid” 2014). These measures resulted in conflicting information in the aftermath of bombings and suppressed nationwide knowledge of them. This suggests that other war heritage sites may have suffered a similar loss of accessibility as national war heritage, enduring instead as communal heritage. The memorialization process since the bombing has resulted in a number of tangible memorial texts, most prominently the Hidden Bombings text as a collaboration between survivors of all Kyoto air raids, and the Kamigy¯o Air Raid Memorial itself. According to a Kyoto Shimbun article covering the unveiling, 120 residents primarily consisting of bombing survivors attended the event in order to “pass on the fact that even Kyoto had been bombed to the next generation” (“Stone Monument Unveiling Ceremony at Nishijin” 2005). The article quotes one survivor by the name of Isozaki who wished to “convey the tragedy of war through the memorial.” These accounts of the bombing itself and the unveiling ceremony of its memorial present a dark war history

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Fig. 5.3 Kamigy¯ o air raid memorial. Photograph by author (June 2018)

being memorialized; no national heroes can be drawn from the arbitrary bombing of civilians and the memorial has been expressly built to commemorate tragedy and preserve a narrative at risk of being forgotten. Furthermore, this local desire to preserve the memory of the Kamigy¯ o air raid can be seen in the fragmented grassroots memorials dotted around the Kamigy¯o ward (see Fig. 5.4). While the abundance of tangible memorials in the area indicates that the memory of the bombing is incorporated into the local memory of the Kamigy¯o ward, suppression of the bombing in contemporary media has isolated memory of the incident to the survivor community who frequently state passing on the facts of the bombing as their motivation for memorialization. Furthermore, as the heritage site is unavoidably warrelated and commemorates a dark history of war, it falls firmly outside of the authorized heritage discourse and the framework for national war memorials. This categorizes the Kamigy¯ o Air Raid Memorial as a communal heritage site, a site of war-related heritage which is actively

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Fig. 5.4 A couple stands in the ruins of their home in the Kamigy¯ o ward, 27th July 1945 (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 1)

Fig. 5.5 Bomb fragments-turnedmemorial in the Kamigy¯ o ward (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, p. 1)

memorialized and integrated into local memory, albeit within a small locality of the wider city and excluded from the city’s historical narrative and authorized heritage discourse.

Higashiyama Air Raid Memorial The Higashiyama Air Raid Memorial was established on 17 January 2014 to commemorate an air raid which occurred on 16 January 1945, marking the number of dead and injured as well as the names of those who died (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 140–141). It has much in common with the Kamigy¯ o memorial: its history of civilian death is commemorated with a narrative of condemnation and vigilance; linguistic access is limited to a domestic audience; and it lacks any qualities to fit

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Fig. 5.6 A homemade memorial in the Kamigy¯ o ward with fresh flower offerings indicates active memorialization at a local level. Photograph by author (2018)

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the AHD of Kyoto, making it a site of communal heritage (“Passing on the Umamachi Air Raid” 2014). Also known as the Umamachi Air Raid Memorial, it is located in the Higashiyama ward in close proximity to such major tourist sites as Kiyomizu-dera and the Gion district (see Fig. 5.2). The memorial itself, however, was the most difficult to physically find of the three air raid memorials as it is tucked away in a side street off the main road. This is surprising given that it was the largest and most destructive bombing to take place in Kyoto during the Asia–Pacific War, with 186 injured and 50 dead. The stone on the left reads “Site of the Umamachi Air Raid,” while the one on the right states the details of the event, ending, “We will pass on these facts to future generations” (see Fig. 5.5). The relatively recent date of the memorial’s unveiling ceremony and the outpouring of donations given to the Umamachi K¯ ush¯ u o Kataritsugu Kai [Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid Society] indicates that the bombing is still a living memory of the community. The ¥1.3 million made in donations towards its construction—worth $12,480 at the time—is further testament to the significance this monument bore within the locality at the time of its inception (“Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid”). The Kyoto Shimbun article documenting the unveiling ceremony further reinforces the significance of the memorial by indicating plans for an annual memorial service to take place at the site (“Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid”). A laminated sign at the site confirmed this, but unlike the Kamigy¯ o memorial it directs people to their website, full of detailed information of the bombing and the activities of the society. According to the website, the final memorial event in 2017 was the last of four ceremonies and the end of any activities conducted by the group (Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid Society website 2019). The website, however, serves to preserve their efforts as a form of digital heritage, albeit exclusively in Japanese. The Higashiyama memorial presents an interesting adaptation of war heritage in Kyoto. We can see that the physical memorial itself is no longer used for ritualized memorial ceremonies, either by the society which founded it or by the school where it stands—the last mention of the memorial on their blog is in 2017 (Kyoto Municipal Higashiyama S¯og¯oshien School Website 2017). However, the Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid Society has branched out beyond tangible heritage to digital heritage, using the virtual world as a means of preserving the sum of their efforts and increasing accessibility. This appears to be

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an effective means of sharing their war narrative despite its dark war history if their online visitor count of over 12,000 is anything to go by (Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid Society Website 2019). Furthermore, despite an official cessation of memorial services, the memorial itself was enhanced in 2019 with a permanent plaque naming victims of the bombing, and remaining funding is being invested into compiling the society’s research into a book and maintaining the floral display (Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid Society Website 2019). Therefore, while annual memorial services are no longer held at the site, the local community is still visibly engaged with the memorial and the dark war history it encompasses, allowing the site to be categorized as a site of communal heritage. As with the Kamigy¯ o memorial, however, the Higashiyama memorial’s singular focus on the dark war history of bombing victims prevents it from being incorporated into the authorized heritage discourse of Kyoto, explaining the need for the society to raise funds in the absence of government support.

Fig. 5.7 Higashiyama Air Raid Memorial. Photograph by author (2018)

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Fig. 5.8 The Umamachi Air Raid was the most destructive bombing of Kyoto (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 1)

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Fig. 5.9 Unveiling ceremony of Higashiyama memorial (Kyoto Shimbun 2017)

Nagaokakyo¯ Peace Memorial The Nagaokaky¯o Peace Memorial was established on 19 January 1989, well before the other two memorials, to commemorate an air raid which occurred on 20 July 1945 (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 214– 215). It strongly contrasts the previous memorials discussed in several ways. While it commemorates a dark history of civilian death, as there was just one death it has been articulated as a lighter narrative focused on positive aspects such as desire for peace (“The Chimney that saw the Tragedy of War” 1989). The violence of war fades into the background as the generic prayers for peace take precedent in the inscription over the suffering that took place there. This, along with its exemption from the political boundaries of Kyoto proper, allows it to fit into the national AHD of peace memorials. Consequently, while this alternative war narrative is also linguistically limited to a domestic audience, it can be categorized as a site of national war memory.

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Fig. 5.10 A replica of the flack-damaged chimney stack and accompanying description make up the Nagaokaky¯o memorial. Photograph by author (2018)

At 10:30am on 20 July 1945, a factory next to the local K¯otaki station—now renamed Nagaokaky¯o station—came under machine gun fire from two US Mustang P-51 fighter planes (Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society 1979, 214). The damage was minimal compared with the two bombings discussed earlier in this chapter due to the nature of the attack, leaving four with light injuries, one dead, and a factory chimney riddled with bullets (1979, 214–215). This makes the Nagaokaky¯o memorial distinctly different from the other two air raid memorials in Kyoto, and so offers intriguing points of comparison regarding the accessibility of war heritage in the city (see Fig. 5.6). A first point of comparison is the position of the memorial. Unlike the other two memorials, which are located off the main thoroughfares in central Kyoto, the Nagaokaky¯ o memorial stands outside the main railway station for the locality. Although Nagaokaky¯o is firmly part of the Kyoto municipality, it is also its own city which sets its own authorized heritage

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Fig. 5.11 Mayor Isozumi Tatsuo unveils the Nagaokaky¯ o Peace Memorial (Kyoto Shimbun 1989)

discourse. This geographical and political removal from central Kyoto allows for this example of a war-related heritage site to circumvent the carefully curated authorized heritage discourse of the city of Kyoto and become a defining piece of the Nagaokaky¯o identity, as can be seen from its prominence on the city’s website (Nagaoka City Website 2020). Secondly, the memorial was, and still is, afforded much official attention, with the Mayor Isozumi Tatsuo unveiling the memorial himself and announcing the anniversary of the attack as the official “Peace Day” for the city (“The Chimney that saw the Tragedy of War” 1989). The memorial was funded by the city itself and was unveiled with what appears to be a much grander ceremony than the unveilings of the

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Kamigy¯o and Higashiyama, which were the sole effort of fundraising by survivor communities. When compared with the previous two heritage sites, this equates to a great difference in the significance given to the Nagaokaky¯o Peace Memorial when considering the low number of casualties it commemorates. It was the first air raid memorial to be established in the region, 15 years prior to the Kamigy¯o memorial, and it continues to be a central heritage site of Nagaokaky¯o’s image. This could again be interpreted as the result of the memorial being sufficiently distant from central Kyoto, although another factor could be the tangible heritage that remained after the attack. Unlike the demolished and rebuilt homes of Kamigy¯o and Higashiyama, the damaged chimney the monument recreates remained standing in a prominent position of the city by the station, serving as a constant reminder of the war. Finally, the narrative of the Nagaokaky¯o Peace Memorial is different from the other two war heritage sites discussed. Both the plaque accompanying the memorial, the Kyoto Shimbun article reporting, and its official online page heavily emphasize “peace” as its purpose (“The Chimney that saw the Tragedy of War” 1989). The casualties are hardly mentioned at all with the one death attributed to “a girl doing transport work at the factory,” a stark contrast with the plaque at Higashiyama recounting the name of every victim (“The Chimney that saw the Tragedy of War” 1989). This is reminiscent of the wider peace narrative found at such famous sites as the atomic bomb museums of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the damaged chimney acting as a microcosm of the ruins of the Hiroshima A-Bomb Dome. Unlike the previous two memorials discussed in this chapter, which are communal heritage sites of dark war history, the minimal loss of life and fixation on tangible heritage in the case of Nagaokaky¯o have allowed the dark history it represents to be reinterpreted into a light peace narrative. I argue that this, along with its removed location from central Kyoto, has allowed the death associated with the site to be minimized in favour of raising the image of Nagaokaky¯o as a city of peace with the anniversary of the attack being commemorated as a “Peace Day” (“The Chimney that saw the Tragedy of War” 1989). The site therefore engages with the national peace narrative, thereby placing it within the category of a national war heritage site. Whereas the Kamigy¯o and Higashiyama memorials were established with great effort by the local community to ensure the dead were not forgotten, the Nagaokaky¯o Peace Memorial has been

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incorporated into the heritage landscape of its city perhaps by way of the minimal death it commemorates and the chance location of the attack. Despite their differences, the three sites covered above all commemorate the violent deaths of Japanese civilians, an important factor in determining their dark narratives and the way they have come to be memorialized. For example, all three are only accessible in the Japanese language. This indicates that a non-Japanese audience has not been considered in their construction and has interesting implications for the messages they convey. The Kamigy¯ o and Higashiyama memorials, which cry out for the facts they represent to be remembered, are very unlikely to be accessed, let alone remembered, by a non-Japanese tourist, nor would most such tourists hear the call for supposedly “global peace” etched into the Nagaokaky¯o Peace Memorial. The next case study, Ry¯ozen Kannon, analyses how a war heritage site in Kyoto which provides linguistic access beyond the domestic audience produces different narratives by nationality as a transnational war heritage site.

¯ Ryozen Kannon Ry¯ozen Kannon was established on 8 June 1955 by Ishikawa Hirosuke, founder of the Teisan Kanko Bus Company, “for the repose of souls of soldiers who died in battle for the sake of maintaining peace in Japan and to protect the country, and the other victims of World War II” (Ry¯ozen Kannon Website 2011). The site consequently has many memorials to various groups of soldiers and civilians centred around an enormous Kannon statue, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. Ry¯ ozen Kannon today presents itself as transnational in its self-promotion as a memorial to “the world’s unknown soldier,” as well as fitting in to the AHD of Kyoto with its stylings as a Buddhist temple, which classifies it by the criteria here as a site of national war heritage (see Fig. 5.7). Indeed, it occupies prime position for international tourist foot traffic as it is located adjacent to some of Kyoto’s most famous temples such as Kiyomizu-dera and the picturesque Gion entertainment district (see Fig. 5.2). This is reflected in the broad range of languages that can be found there, with large amounts of Japanese translated into English as well as limited Korean and Chinese. However, I argue that there are multiple narratives at the site based on the two factors raised by Chen and Liao: (1) different narratives are created based on what language is accessed by the visitor and (2) the narrative and ideology of the site is shaped by what is and is not translated

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(Chen and Liao 2017, 58, 65). As a result, there is one light narrative of the unknown soldier accessible by an international audience and another domestic-facing light narrative which venerates soldiers of the Japanese imperial army. Looking at the site guide, of 27 total points of interest listed in Japanese only eleven have been translated into English and another five into Korean (see Table 5.1; Ry¯ozen Kannon Website 2011) (Fig. 5.8). As a native English speaker, I will instinctively consume information in English when presented with a choice between that or Japanese, whereas the latter requires conscious engagement before being understood. While I would never otherwise consider this handicap an advantage, in this case it allows me to easily separate what I am being told in one language as opposed to another. When visiting Ry¯ozen Kannon for the first time as a visitor, my impression of the site was that it was primarily a temple, highlighting its Buddhist elements. These included encouraging such activities as incense burning, touching the wishing stone, and walking the halls decorated with bodhisattvas and zodiacs. The left-hand column of Table 5.1 describes the religious imagery presented to an Englishspeaking visitor, with the memorial hall presented as the only war-related point of interest (Fig. 5.9). The religious elements extend to the hall itself, although the stainedglass windows and pseudo-Christian iconography lend the hall a churchlike quality juxtaposed with the surrounding Buddhist temple. An English-language memorial dominates the room upon entering the hall with a section to the left filled with locked filing cabinets containing names of “Allied Personnel who Perished in Territory under Japanese Jurisdiction during World War II.” No Japanese flags or names are present in the hall, indicating that no space has been dedicated to the imperial Japanese soldier. Despite the transnational element of the memorial, all these factors combined suggest that this is a space designed for the nonJapanese visitor. After perusing the Buddhist elements of the site and the memorial hall, the English-speaking visitor will have exhausted all translated points of interest at Ry¯ ozen Kannon. There is much more to be seen, but the accessible text-based information ends here. In summary, if an English-reliant visitor were to reasonably stop their visit here, they would leave with an impression of the site as a Buddhist temple which also commemorates the unknown soldier. The analysis here is limited to this point of reasonable conjecture, and how widespread this impression is

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Table 5.1 List of translated and untranslated points of interest at Ry¯ ozen Kannon Translated points of interest Translations by Ry¯ozen Kannon

Untranslated points of interest Translations by author

Monument to Hirosuke Ishikawa (The founder of Ry¯ ozen Kannon) Main Hall (Kannon with eleven faces)

常楽堂—J¯oraku Hall

Hall to memorial tablet

Aizen Myouou hall (pray to find good partner) Principal image of the zodiac (womb of the kannon) Buddha’s footprint-stone Wishing precious stone Memorial Hall to the second world war’s unknown soldier Homa Hall (an apotropaic Acaia) Guardian deity to Miscarried foetus Lotus flower Hall (Cinerarium Hall)

京料理供養塔—Kyoto Cuisine Memorial Tower 京都府原爆死没者慰霊—Kyoto Prefecture Atomic Bomb Victim Memorial ふぐ塔—Fugu Tower 新納骨堂—New Ossuary 大香炉—Great Incense Hearth 全国交通事故物故者供養塔—National Memorial to Victims of Traffic Accidents ハワイ大百大隊碑—Club 100 Hawaii Memorial Stone 留魂碑—Repose of Souls Memorial つばさ会慰霊碑—‘Wings Club’ Memorial Stone 千歳輝碑—Thousand Year’s Radiance Memorial 高射砲第二十二逆隊戦友之碑—Memorial to the 22nd Anti-Aircraft Corp Comrades in Arms 韓国人犠牲者慰霊塔—Memorial to Korean Victims 工華鍾魂之碑—Memorial to K¯okash¯o military school 飛燕会戦友之碑—Swallow Club War Comrade’s Memorial 十八期之碑—The 18th’s Memorial

War-related sites are highlighted in bold by author Sources Ry¯ozen Kannon Website (2011)

will be explored in future research surveying visitors to the site by nationality and linguistic access. To fully access the remaining content of the site, however, a visitor would need a working knowledge of Japanese.

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The next section explores how the narrative changes when the untranslated Japanese memorials are made accessible by the visitor’s linguistic capabilities (Fig. 5.10). The right column of Table 5.1, showing information that has not been translated on the Ry¯ozen Kannon guide map or by onsite signage, suggests that during the process of translating points of interest certain elements were not considered of interest, relevance, or priority for nonJapanese visitors. Some of these memorials appear to be of relevance only to the immediate Kyoto community, such as the Kyoto Cuisine Memorial Tower which commemorates the chefs who continue the culture of the city’s traditional cuisine. However, of the 16 untranslated entries, 10 are directly related to the Asia–Pacific War, seven of which commemorate imperial military regiments or other organizations. These memorials are not only linguistically separated but also physically removed from central features of the temple in a cluster to the northeast of the compound. While there are no physical barriers to these monuments, the language barrier keeps potentially controversial details concealed from most international visitors. For example, the “Thousand Year’s Radiance Memorial” is not obviously affiliated with a military corps—without an understanding of the Japanese language, it could be another memorial to local cultural practitioners. It is only from the description—again only in Japanese— that we understand that it commemorates imperial soldiers who fought and died in the invasion of Manchuria and in Burma (Figs. 5.11–5.19). As noted earlier with the case of Peace Osaka, historical narratives of Japanese military aggression in Asia can be seen as a sensitive subject to be handled delicately by heritage management. A key difference here, however, is that the narrative commemorates and honours imperial Japanese soldiers, appearing to adopt a delicate approach to the representation of this controversial historical moment. In excluding such military memorials from the translation process, two separate narratives have been created at the site; a light transnational narrative honouring the unknown soldier for the international gaze and a light domestic-facing narrative which celebrates the imperial Japanese soldier separately. It has been acknowledged that the language barrier is not insurmountable and other elements, such as strong military imagery of other memorials onsite allude to a glorifying image of the Japanese imperial military. For monolingual visitors, however, there would be a large discrepancy in the historical narrative of the war heritage sites at Ry¯ ozen Kannon should they solely access information in English or Japanese.

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Fig. 5.12 The enormous concrete Kannon statue at Ry¯ ozen Kannon. Photograph by author (2018)

Not all war-related memorials are limited to Japanese nationals, however. A key exception in this trend is a memorial dedicated to 200,000 Koreans who served in the imperial Japanese army during the Asia–Pacific War, 8861 of whom died fighting for the Japanese empire (General Memorial Catalogue). While this memorial is explicitly transnational in its commemoration of Koreans, it was not included in the points of interest translated into Korean in the site map. This reflects the sensitivity surrounding the painful history of Koreans living a subordinate existence under the Japanese empire and their 800,000 naturalized descendants— Zainichi Koreans—who live in Japan at the time of writing (Weiner 1996, 162; Cho 2020, 453). That Korean translations have been made for some points of interest and the memorial for Koreans was excluded in the selection of these sites suggests a reluctance to call the attention of

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Fig. 5.13 The English sign at the entrance presents Ry¯ozen Kannon as a transnational war heritage site through its tomb to the unknown soldier. Photograph by author (2018)

Korean-speaking visitors to this memorial. How effective this is in camouflaging the memorial from Korean visitors remains to be determined by future research. In summary, discrepancies in the translation of signage and memorials at Ry¯ozen Kannon suggest that there are two distinctly different narratives at the site separated by language. The English-based experience depicts the site as primarily a Buddhist temple with transnational war memorial elements, whereas the Japanese-based experience reveals sites dedicated to imperial military units engaged in battle overseas, including the memorial to Korean conscripts. While the decision process behind translations at Ry¯ ozen Kannon cannot be ascertained, we can apply Chen and Liao’s assertion that what is and is not included in heritage translation reveals the ideology of the site. From this we can draw three facts regarding translation, and lack thereof, at Ry¯ozen Kannon: (1) from the multilingual signage, we can tell that the management believes that international tourists, including Korean-speaking tourists, visit the site; (2) separate narratives of the Asia–Pacific War have been created when

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Fig. 5.14 Urns containing soil from military cemeteries around the world stand in the glow of the Memorial Hall’s stained-glass windows. Photograph by author (2018)

information access is limited to a single language; (3) a memorial that is relevant to the national history of a non-Japanese visitor group has not been translated into the language of that group, where other points of interest have been translated (Chen and Liao 2017, 65). From this I suggest that memorials at Ry¯ozen Kannon commemorating war history which is potentially contentious to an international audience have been camouflaged as a result of limitations imposed on linguistic access. As with the Nagaokaky¯o memorial, I propose that the international narrative presents a light national peace narrative through the selection of translated points of interest while keeping the dark memorials beyond the linguistic accessibility of the average international visitor. I also suggest that the site further distracts from its ‘darker’ memorials by emphasizing its Buddhist elements, thereby causing it to blend further with Kyoto’s wider authorized heritage discourse of temples and shrines. This arguably allows the

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Fig. 5.15 A filing cabinet containing names of “Allied Personnel who Perished in Territory under Japanese jurisdiction during World War II”. Photograph by author (2018)

Fig. 5.16 The “Thousand Year’s Radiance Memorial” is not obviously affiliated with an imperial Japanese military corps to an international, monolingual visitor. Photograph by author (2018)

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Fig. 5.17 The description of the “Thousand Year’s Radiance Memorial” commemorates the service of an imperial military corps in the Sino-Japanese War, Burma, and Imphal. Locations highlighted by author. Photograph by author (2018)

site to enjoy the benefits of the nearby flow of international tourism without alienating certain nationalities with contentious memorials found onsite. Domestic War Narratives in a Transnational Context In this chapter, I have explored how in the heritage-rich city of Kyoto the narratives applied to war heritage sites by the site management are affected by brecciation, the choice and limitations of translated languages available, and the history the site represents. The way that brecciation of war heritage sites can clash with the authorized heritage discourse of a city determines which histories of war are favoured by government funds and which survive through the struggle of survivors and their relatives. In the case of the Kamigy¯ o and Higashiyama memorials, active memorialization on the part of survivors has been central in keeping the record of their dark war history alive and known. However, their monolingual nature and incompatibility with the authorized heritage discourse

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Fig. 5.18 Collage of untranslated war-related memorials at Ry¯ ozen Kannon. Left-to-Right Clockwise: Kawasaki Ki-61 “Flying Swallow” fighter diagram at Swallow Club War Comrade’s Memorial; Memorial to K¯okash¯ o military school; engraving of imperial pilots in uniform at the 18th’s Memorial. Photographs by author (2018)

of Kyoto raises the question of who will visit, commemorate and maintain these war heritage sites once their history is no longer part of living memory. In the context of transnational war memory, Ry¯ozen Kannon shows how different approaches to translations at war heritage sites can drastically alter the narrative of the site. The site demonstrates how two very different narratives of war can be simultaneously presented yet made imperceptible to monolingual visitors. By limiting linguistic access or even omitting it all together, conflicting war narratives can be created even at the same heritage site. Analysing such war heritage sites in a city famous for its tourism also provides the

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Fig. 5.19 Memorial to the 200,000 Koreans who served in the imperial Japanese army. Photograph by author (2018)

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opportunity to compare narratives at a variety of sites where the management appears to be aware of the many nationalities that may be passing through its grounds. While it is not possible to say to what extent discrepancies in narratives have been consciously created by the management, we can gain an insight into what information appears to be considered relevant or appropriate to certain groups, and which should, or should not, be made available to people reliant on the lingua franca of English, or the dominant languages of nationalities whose national history potentially conflicts with the war history of the heritage site. My PhD research addresses this directly, as I interview English- and Japanese-speaking visitors to these sites before comparing discourse analyses of respondents by language group to determine discrepancies in individual interpretations (Moxham 2022). While Japan presents an ideal case study in the limited international use of its language and the wide number of nationalities it shares its recent transnational war history with, I would also argue that this is not a phenomenon unique to Japan. The narratives created around past conflict, especially in languages not commonly spoken outside their host nation, can foster hostility towards other nationalities and lay the seeds for future conflicts, as seen through the insular propaganda of the Russian Federation around their 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Such narratives are years in the making and researching them and their impact is the first step towards addressing such distortion of the past and may prevent dark histories of war from repeating themselves.

References Bartolini, Nadia. 2014. Critical Urban Heritage: From Palimpsest to Brecciation. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (5): 519–533. Cary, Otis. 1975. The Sparing of Kyoto – Mr. Stimson’s ‘Pet City.’ Japan Quarterly 22 (4): 337–347. Chen, Chia-Li, and Min-Hsui Liao. 2017. National Identity, International Visitors: Narration and Translation of the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum. Museums and Society 15 (1): 56–68. Cho, Kyung Hee. 2020. Politics of Identification of Zainichi Koreans Under the Divided System. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 21 (3): 452–464. Elliott, Andrew. 2019. ‘Orient Calls’: Anglophone Travel Writing and Tourism as Propaganda during the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941. Japan Review 33: 117–42.

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Fukuma, Yoshiaki. 2019. The Construction of Tokk¯ o Memorial Sites in Chiran and the Politics of “Risk-Free” Memories. Japan Review 33: 247–270. Gapur, Abdul, Dina Shabrina Putri Siregar, and Mhd Pujiono. 2018. Language Kinship between Mandarin, Hokkien Chinese, and Japanese (Lexicostatistics Review). Aksara 30 (2): 301–318. Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid Society. 2019. Handing Down the Umamachi Air Raid Society Website. http://vinaccia.jp/umamachi/. Accessed 19 Aug 2020. Hatch, Walter. 2014. Bloody Memories: Affect and Effect of World War II Museums in China and Japan. Peace and Change 39 (3): 366–394. Japan Heritage Online Portal. 2019. Japan Heritage Online Portal. https:// japan-heritage.bunka.go.jp/en/index.html. Accessed 5 May 2020. JTB Tourism Research and Consulting Co. 2020. JTB Tourism Research and Consulting Co. Website. https://www.tourism.jp/en/tourism-database/ stats/inbound/#region-courtry. Accessed 21 Jul 2020. Koselleck, Reinhart. 2002. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. California: Stanford University Press. Kyoto K¯ ush¯ u o Kiroku Suru Kai [Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society]. 1979. Kakusareteita K¯ ush¯ u [Hidden Bombings]. Kyoto: Kyoto Air Raid Memorial Society. Kyoto Municipal Higashiyama S¯og¯ oshien School. 2017. Kyoto Municipal Higashiyama S¯ og¯ oshien School Website. http://cms.edu.city.kyoto.jp/web log/index.php?id=400251anddate=20170117. Accessed 18 Aug 2020. Kyoto Shimbun. 1989. Entotsu wa Mita Sens¯ o no Higeki: J¯ ugeki no Seki Namanamashiku Heiwakinenhi ni Fukugen [The Chimney that Saw the Tragedy of War: Traces of Attack Vividly Restored by Peace Memorial]. Kyoto Shimbun, July 19. Kyoto Shimbun. 2005. Nishijin de Sekihi J¯omakushiki [Stone Monument Unveiling Ceremony at Nishijin]. Kyoto Shimbun, October 15. Kyoto Shimbun. 2014. Umamachi K¯ ush¯ u Kataritsugu: Higashiyama ni Sekihi J¯ umin no Kai ga J¯ omaku. Kyoto Shimbun, January 17. Moxham, Oliver. 2021. Reinterpreting Difficult Heritage: Mimizuka, “Hill of Ears” with Oliver Moxham. Beyond Japan Podcast. https://anchor.fm/ beyond-japan/episodes/S2E1--Reinterpreting-Difficult-Heritage-Mimizuka-Hill-of-Ears-with-Oliver-Moxham-e171dr5. Accessed 3 Apr 2022. Moxham, Oliver. 2022. Preparing for a PhD, Oliver Moxham website, https:// olivermoxham.wordpress.com/2022/04/30/preparing-fora-phd/. Nagaoka City. 2020. Nagaoka City Website. http://www.city.nagaokakyo.lg.jp/ 0000007783.html. Accessed 20 Aug 2020. Nishikawa, Y¯ uko. 2017. Koto no Senry¯ o: Seikatsushi kara Miru Kyoto 1945–1952 [Occupation of the Old Capital: The Life History of Kyoto, 1945–1952]. Tokyo: Heibonsha.

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Pai, Hyung Il. 2013. Heritage Management in Korea and Japan: The Politics of Antiquity and Identity. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Reilly, James. 2011. Remember History, Not Hatred: Collective Remembrance of China’s War of Resistance to Japan. Modern Asian Studies 45 (2): 463–490. Ry¯ ozen Kannon. 2011. Ry¯ ozen Kannon Website. www.ryozen-kwannon.jp. Accessed 10 May 2020. Seaton, Philip. 2015. The Nationalist Assault on Japan’s Local Peace Museums: The Conversion of Peace Osaka. The Asia-Pacific Journal 30 (3): 1–21. Seaton, Philip, and Takayoshi Yamamura. 2015. Japanese Popular Culture and Contents Tourism. Japan Forum 27 (1): 1–11. Seaton, Philip. 2019a. War, Popular Culture, and Contents Tourism in East Asia. Journal of War and Culture Studies 12 (1): 1–7. Seaton, Philip. 2019b. Islands of “Dark” and “Light/Lite” Tourism: War-Related Contents Tourism around the Seto Inland Sea. Japan Review 33: 299–327. Smith, Laurajane. 2006. Uses of Heritage. New York: Routledge. Uesugi, Kazuhiro. 2019. Selling the Naval Ports: Modern-Day Maizuru and Tourism. Japan Review 33: 219–246. Weiner, Michael. 1996. Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. Yamashita, Samuel Hideo. 2005. Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the War Diaries of Ordinary Japanese. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Zwigenberg, Ran. 2019. Hiroshima Castle and the Long Shadow of Militarism in Postwar Japan. Japan Review 33: 195–218.

PART III

Exhibiting War Memory

CHAPTER 6

Encountering Stories: “Ordinary” Voices Reflecting on Japanese Wartime Aggression in Japan in the Early 1990s Aomi Mochida

“I am speechless. The fact that these acts were committed without hesitation, is this the abnormal nature of wars? As someone living in the modern age, [we] have to make sure these things never take place again.” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993). So wrote one visitor after attending an exhibition on Unit 731 and the Noborito Institute held in Kawasaki city, Japan, in July 1993. This was a local exhibition organized as part of a nation-wide traveling exhibition on Unit 731, the unit that is most notorious for its role in Japan’s biological and chemical warfare in China. The traveling exhibition was held in more than 60 cities in Japan in 1993 and 1994, with

A. Mochida (B) Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_6

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some cities adding a local twist to the main exhibition. One such city was Kawasaki, where displays on the unit were exhibited alongside displays of the Noborito Institute, a wartime covert science institute in the local area that had close connections with Japan’s aggressive warfare in Asia. One of the approximately 4000 people who attended this five-day local exhibition that shed light on the “dark” side of Japan’s and Kawasaki’s wartime history (Koike 2013, 61), the visitor quoted above expressed their shock in seeing the exhibit. The episodes of Japanese wartime aggression that the visitor witnessed were then connected to the perceived “abnormal” nature of wars in general, leading to the visitor’s determination to “never again” allow such events to take place. This visitor’s comment is one of the 125 comments listed in a report on the exhibition compiled by the local organizers in December 1993. The report is the only source available that provides insights into how visitors reacted and responded to this specific local exhibition. Moreover, it is a unique and rare source that provides an interesting lens for the study of war memories in Japan. It enhances our understanding of how “ordinary” people in Japan talked about and engaged with stories of their nation’s wartime aggression, using their own words and expressing their own voices. The comments of visitors who reflected on their visit to the exhibition on Unit 731 and Noborito show that ordinary individuals in Japan were talking about their nation’s wartime atrocities, reflecting on what they saw, and contemplating on the meaning of what they saw. This stands in contrast to what Philip A. Seaton calls the “‘orthodox’ interpretation of Japanese war memories” that is prevalent in international media and certain parts of academia (2007, 2–7). This interpretation portrays the Japanese government and people as having failed to properly acknowledge Japanese aggression and war responsibility, and it often depicts ordinary people in Japan as ignorant and in denial of their nation’s wartime atrocities (Seaton 2007, 2–7). Through focusing on visitors’ reactions on encountering stories of Unit 731 and the Noborito Institute at this local exhibition, this chapter examines the relatively unexplored question of how ordinary people in Japan interacted with stories of Japanese aggression and examines the effects of such an interaction. A close reading of a selection of visitor comments reveals that, for some visitors, the stories of Japanese wartime aggression that they encountered became a framework through which they interpreted Japan’s past and present. In this process, their understanding of Japan’s wartime past and present was complicated and their

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own standing in history was reconsidered. Some other visitors engaged with the exhibition quite differently: stories of Japanese aggression were subsumed under, and interpreted through, visitors’ already existing frameworks, most notably the notion of peace. As such, this chapter illustrates the diverse and flexible manners through which these “ordinary” visitors worked through and made sense of episodes of Japanese aggression as well as the complicated effects of such a process. In what follows, I first briefly map out the landscape of Japanese war memory studies, highlighting the relative lack of research concerning ordinary individuals in Japan. The local exhibition and the source material are then discussed, followed by an analysis of how visitors articulated their experience at the exhibition.

In Search of the “Ordinary” Voices Historiography on postwar Japanese memories has shown that there have always been different ways of remembering the war in Japan (see Seraphim 2006; Seaton 2007; Fukuma 2009, 2011; Shin and Sneider 2016). The different terms that are used to refer to “the war” in Japan, for instance, reflect this variety of interpretations that exist regarding Japan’s wartime past. The most commonly used and well-known term, “The Pacific War” is understood by many people in Japan to have started with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 and ended with Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945. This understanding of Japan’s past puts a strong emphasis on the battles between Japan and the United States and does not include in its temporal and conceptual frame the series of battles, invasions, and wars in Asia that Japan waged before 1941. In contrast, “The Fifteen Years War,” a term that is often used by progressive intellectuals, began in 1931 with imperial Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and ended with Japan’s defeat in 1945. The term was coined in order to highlight Japan’s imperial ambitions and wartime aggression in China, and to pay attention to the interconnected nature and continuity of a series of wars and conflicts that Japan waged in the 1930s and 1940s (Yasui 2016, 84–90). While some prefer to use this more encompassing and critical term, others (mainly nationalists) prefer the term “The Greater East Asia War”. This was the official name used by imperial Japan and connotes the wartime ideology of establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and liberating Asia from Western imperialism. These different names reflect the diverse interpretations of Japan’s war(s) and highlight the basic historical issue of

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timeline. They also signify the existence of multiple ways of remembering the war in postwar Japan. In this chapter, I use the term “The Asia–Pacific War.” This term was coined in the mid-1980s and is considered to be more neutral compared to others that often convey certain ideological implications. The term also captures the wide geographic area within which Japan engaged in wars and conflicts, not limited to the Pacific area or China. While scholars continue to debate the exact timeline of the Asia–Pacific War, in this chapter, the term is used to refer to a series of battles and conflicts that started with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and ended with the Japanese capitulation in 1945. In mapping out this diversity and complexity of war memories in Japan, previous studies have highlighted how various groups of actors promote different views of the war. In particular, disputes regarding the representation of Japan’s wartime past in history textbooks and museums, as well as debates surrounding the Nanjing Massacre and the so-called “comfort women” have been portrayed as “memory wars” where groups with nationalistic, revisionist views on the one side, and groups with a progressive viewpoint on the other fiercely collide and compete to dominate the public sphere with their particular versions of how Japan should remember its wartime past (see Seraphim 2008; Schneider 2008; Yoshida 2006; Jeans 2005; Kamata 1996). This need to focus on the “memory wars” between conservatives and progressives most likely stems from scholars’ wish to correct what Seaton terms the “‘orthodox’ interpretation of Japanese war memories” (2007, 2–7). Although previous studies have helped add nuance to this stereotypical view by showing the diversity and complexity of war memories in Japan, by illustrating the landscape of war memories as a “conflict” and a “battle” between two main opposing groups that are often led by high-profile intellectuals, politicians, and activists, they have been less successful in showing the voices of ordinary individuals, who are no less important in the landscape of Japanese war memories. Visitors’ comments that are listed in the report of the local exhibition of Unit 731 and the Noborito Institute in Kawasaki offer a fruitful opportunity to explore the views and thoughts of these relatively unexplored “ordinary” individuals. In trying to add further nuance to the orthodox interpretation of war memories in Japan, this chapter focuses on this unique source and explores how ordinary individuals discussed their encounters with stories of Japanese wartime aggression at the exhibit, how

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they made sense of them, and what effects such encounters and interactions achieved. Although this chapter focuses on a specific exhibition in a specific local area, the “localness” sets a suitable stage for an in-depth exploration of ordinary voices. Previous studies have skilfully shown that investigations at the local level offer much more diverse expressions of war memories than shown in studies focusing on the national level, such as the government or national memory activist groups (see Yoneyama 1999; Fukaya 2014). As Seaton convincingly argues in Japan’s Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ in Historical Consciousness of World War II , when studies of Japan’s war memories go beyond the nation, they can uncover a range of expressions concerning Japan’s wartime past (2007). The recent “transcultural turn” in memory studies (Bond and Rapson 2014) focuses on how memories travel between and across various borders and highlights the processes, movements, and encounters of different memories. Important works that have contributed to the conceptualization of transcultural memories include Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider’s The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (2006), and Astrid Erll’s article, “Travelling Memory” (2011). Inspired by this body of work, this chapter focuses on the diverse ways that visitors at a local exhibition interacted with, processed, and reflected on the stories of Japanese wartime aggression with which they came into contact. This material not only shows the raw voices of ordinary individuals, but also underscores the diversity, flexibility, and complexity that existed in the ways that these interlocutors made sense of stories of Japanese aggression.

Local Exhibition on Unit 731 and the Noborito Institute in Kawasaki From July 1993 until the end of 1994, a traveling exhibition on Unit 731 was organized in over 60 Japanese cities, attracting more than 230 thousand visitors nationwide (Shimbun Akahata 2013). Unit 731 of the imperial Japanese army was based in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and operated from 1936 until the end of the Asia–Pacific War in 1945. This covert unit was responsible for the research, development, production, and deployment of biological and chemical weapons in China. It is infamous for conducting human experiments on more than 3000 people, mostly from China, the Soviet Union, and Korea. The unit

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also produced biological weapons and conducted multiple field experiments on these weapons, infecting the land and water reservoirs and causing a number of casualties among the Chinese populace. At the end of the war, members of the unit were ordered not to keep in touch with each other and “to take the secret of the unit to their graves” by Ishii Shir¯ o, the director of the unit (Matsumura 1998, 256). Ishii and other top officers and researchers of the unit received full immunity from the United States after the war in exchange for sharing the data from their research and experiments and were never prosecuted in the Tokyo Tribunals. As a result, the unit remained relatively unknown for decades after the war. The existence and the nature of the unit started to be discussed in novels and television programs from the 1970s. In 1981, Morimura Seiichi published The Devil’s Gluttony (Akuma no H¯ oshoku), and the cruelties of the unit became widely known to many people in Japan. Quickly becoming a best-seller, the book detailed the cruel activities of the unit, primarily drawing from interviews with former members. It has played an influential role in spreading knowledge about the unit, its biological warfare and its human experimentations. A little over a decade after the publication of this seminal book, a traveling exhibition on Unit 731 was organized. This was the first time a large-scale exhibition on the unit using panels and models was ever organized in Japan. From a report by one of the organizers, it becomes clear that this event originated from a Japanese civic initiative that conducted field research on the unit’s victims in China in the late 1980s and the early years of the 1990s (1993, 3). Through their activities there, the civic group got in touch with the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Unit 731 Museum. With their support, they organized the nation-wide traveling exhibition in Japan. For the exhibition in Kawasaki, the local committee for the traveling exhibition collaborated with some of the preservation activists of the Noborito Institute. The Noborito Institute is a local site of memory with connections to Japan’s wartime aggression. It was one of the nine science institutes of the imperial Japanese army in operation during the second half (1939–) of the Asia–Pacific War. Noborito specialized in four main fields of intelligence, counterintelligence, covert action, and propaganda (Mercado 2004). The researchers and workers, most of whom were from the local area, conducted research and developed a wide variety of weapons, such as balloon bombs, spying tools, poisons, chemical and

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biological weapons, and Chinese counterfeit money and other fake documents, some of which were used at the Asian war front (Mercado 2004, 289). The Institute is said to have had connections with Unit 731. In order to test the effects of a new poison they had developed, some top members of the Institute conducted human experiments on around 15 Chinese POWs in Nanjing, China, in 1941, in cooperation with the unit (Saito 2011, 110–111). Due to the nature of its research, a veil of secrecy and silence surrounded the Institute during the war years. This silence continued into the postwar years, as a large amount of evidence of Noborito’s research was burned, the Institute closed down, and the local employees moved on and never openly talked about their wartime experiences for decades. As a result, the Institute almost completely disappeared from local public war memories. Stories about the Noborito Institute started to circulate in the local area from the late 1980s, when a group of citizens interested in local history published a book about the Institute in 1989 (Kawasaki City Nakahara District Peace Education Classroom 1989). In 1990, a small number of local activists and interested citizens established an association to preserve the few remaining buildings of the Institute (Asahi Shimbun 1990). They began taking action to further disseminate stories and memories relating to the Institute to the local public. In collaboration with these activists, the organizers of the Kawasaki version of the traveling exhibition of Unit 731 developed an exhibition where materials related to Unit 731—such as explanation panels about the unit’s activities in China, models of barracks where the unit members stayed, and a model reproducing the scenes of human experiments— were displayed alongside documents and artifacts related to Noborito (Asahi Shimbun 1993). As one newspaper article explained, this exhibition showed that Japan’s postwar advancement in the fields of science and medicine took place at the expense of many lives (Asahi Shimbun 1993). During this five-day event, a speech was given by then-director of Unit 731 Museum and a lecture was delivered by a prominent Noborito activist on the Institute’s relation to the unit (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993). The decision to include the Noborito Institute in Unit 731 exhibition derives from the local organizers’ wish to give the exhibition a local twist (Asahi Shimbun 1993). On the part of the Noborito activists, this event was most likely seen as an opportunity to disseminate stories about Noborito to the local public and ask for their support in preserving the remaining buildings. The visitors

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who attended this local exhibition therefore not only encountered stories about Unit 731, but also stories about the Noborito Institute, whose history of wartime aggression had just recently started to be discussed openly in the local area.

Organizers’ Report and Visitor Comments In exploring how visitors to this exhibition interacted with stories about Japanese aggression that they witnessed, and the effects of this interaction, I analyze visitor comments listed in a report about the exhibition compiled by the local organizers in December 1993. This 52-page report consists of abstracts of speeches and lectures given during the event, comments by the organizers, pictures of the unit’s former site, and a list of donors, but its main content is the visitor comments (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993). The report lists a total of 125 comments, spanning over 19 pages, or a little over 30 percent of the entire report. On the introduction page, one of the main organizers refers to the report as “a booklet of [visitors’] impressions and thoughts” (kans¯ o bunsh¯ u ), suggesting the nature of the report as understood by the organizing group (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 1). The comments suggest that many of them were written at the time of the visits, and some others were sent to the organizers afterward. As for those comments that were written during the exhibition, there is no information about how they were collected. They could have been taken from a visitor book where visitors wrote their own impressions alongside other people’s comments. They could have also been collected in a more discrete manner, for instance, where the visitors wrote their comments down on a paper and put them in an enclosed box. Information about who wrote the comments is not complete either, as about 20 percent do not have the names of those who wrote the comments, and around 15 percent do not contain information about the age of the writers (some comments lack both names and ages, while some others lack one or the other). Where ages are given, they appear to vary greatly, with the youngest being a child in fourth grade (9–10 years old) and the oldest in their 80s. The gender of the visitors is not specified, but it can be reasonably estimated from their names. Among those visitors who left their names with their comments, around 55 percent were female and 45 percent were male. It can also be reasonably assumed

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that most of these visitors who wrote the comments belonged somewhere in the progressive spectrum of Japanese society. For instance, a small number of comments specifically mentioned that the writers were part of civic groups and movements with a known progressive stance on war memory issues. For instance, one visitor introduced himself as a member of Ch¯ukiren (The Association of Returnees from China, formed on September 24, 1957, and associated with anti-war principles) and another mentioned that they participated in a movement that supports textbook trials (following the lawsuits against the Japanese Ministry of Education brought by Ienaga Sabur¯ o from 1965 onward). Many others thanked the organizers, looked back positively on their visits, and/or expressed the view that many more people should come to see the exhibition (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 23–41). In fact, nationalists and conservatives would have most likely not attended an event that showcased Japan’s wartime aggression. Even if they did, they would have articulated the comments in a considerably different, easily identifiable manner, for instance, by defending the cause of the war or by questioning and even denying stories of Japan’s wartime atrocities. At the same time, the existence of a number of comments that frankly admitted to having no or little previous knowledge on the unit, on Japan’s wartime atrocities, or even on Japan’s war itself, cautions the researcher against categorizing all of these visitors as passionate progressives. Instead, most of these visitors appear, albeit possibly loosely, of a progressive disposition, although it is impossible to know their exact positionality and political stances. In terms of methodology, there are some issues in using this source. First, it is unclear whether these 125 comments were all the comments that the organizers received from their visitors, or whether they were selected to be put on their report. In either case, it raises the issue of representation. If these comments were all that were submitted, it would mean that they only provide insight into around three percent of the entire visitors. Thinking about these comments as a matter of articulation, it is clear that the visitors who wrote the comments had strong enough opinions, thoughts, and feelings to have made them want to express their views. They were most likely not average visitors who just came and went. If these comments were selected by the local organizers themselves for inclusion in the report, it raises questions about curatorial decisions and bias on the part of the organizers. The report does not mention any selection criteria used by the organizers in making certain comments public.

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It also remains unclear why this report was created. Was it a report with a simple aim to archive the organizers’ activities, or was the report intended to be delivered to (financial) supporters as proof of how funds were used, with the comments indicating the results of the exhibition? Depending on the intended purpose of this report, the selection of comments could have been different, with the organizers favoring certain types of comments over others. In any case, it is difficult to argue that the comments listed on the report are representative of the full range of comments and reactions of the visitors. The second methodological issue concerning the report is that the visitors’ comments and reflections differ greatly in length and content. The comments range from a few sentences up to around 25 sentences, and content differs as well, with, for instance, some visitors reflecting on Japan’s aggressive past while others simply thank the organizers for the exhibition. In order to effectively analyze how the visitors engaged with the records of Japanese wartime aggression that they witnessed, I selected only those comments that sufficiently show the reflection and thoughts of the visitors. This meant excluding those that merely express gratitude to the organizers, wish for the success of the exhibition, and/or those written in a too brief or vague manner to allow for an in-depth analysis. Fourteen such comments were excluded, amounting to a total of 111 comments. As such, this study is not necessarily representative of all visitors, but it is not representative of the 125 comments that were listed by the organizers either. Notwithstanding this issue of representation, the report remains a unique document. It is difficult to find sources that contain raw and rich information on ordinary people’s reactions and reflections on Japan’s wartime aggression—this report that lists visitors’ reactions is one such rare source. Despite its flaws and limitations, it provides a unique window into the exploration of how these ordinary individuals made sense of Japanese aggression. Through a close examination of a selected number of visitor comments, therefore, my aim here is not to claim that the results of the analysis represent the entire range of opinions and views among the visitors. Moreover, given the progressive spectrum across which the visitors are positioned, I do not aim to present the views of these visitors as representative of the full spectrum of positions and opinions regarding war memories in Japan. Rather, this chapter aims to illuminate some prominent themes and certain strands of thoughts articulated by these visitors at that time.

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Encountering Stories: Analysis of Visitor Comments Shock and Disbelief Although stories about Unit 731 and the Noborito Institute had already circulated in the local area, visitor comments reveal that not everyone had previous knowledge about them. In fact, 20 comments explicitly admitted that the writers did not know anything about them or had only heard about them in passing before coming to the exhibition. Many of these visitors were young students, but not exclusively. For those with limited knowledge, what they saw at the exhibition struck them as a huge shock: I saw something really horrible. Until now I have avoided anything related to the war. But through reading the articles [probably refers to articles displayed at the exhibition], I understood how dreadful wars are. I never imagined Japanese people would do such terrible things. Because humans can think with brains, we have done such awful things, I suppose. Even sacrificing innocent animals and humans. I did not even know about the existence of the Noborito Institute although I live close by. This was a very shocking experience for me. [gender and age unknown]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 32) My father once told me that “Japan did human experiments too.” I could not believe it back then, but I lost words today looking at the newspaper articles, pictures, and the scale [of the experiments]. I was also astonished by the fact that members of Unit 731 have assumed important positions in postwar Japan while hiding about their human experiments. Is this really what Japan has done? To be honest, I cannot imagine it from the perspective of today … [male, 17 years old]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 26)

These comments both noted the shock that the viewers felt on seeing the exhibition, but the two viewers seem to differ in terms of the cause of that shock. The first visitor conveyed their shock on learning how horrible wars, in general, are and reflected on how human intelligence makes such dreadful events possible. This visitor’s shock also seems related to never having heard about the Noborito Institute despite living in the neighborhood, and perhaps never expecting anything to have happened in that neighborhood during the war, given that the visitor, “never imagined Japanese people would do such terrible things.” On the other hand, the

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second visitor seems more stunned at the human experiments committed by the unit and by hearing that the members were not held accountable afterward and continued to build impressive careers in the postwar years. He seems to be quite in disbelief at what he saw, as his comment, “Is this really what Japan has done?” implies. These feelings of shock and disbelief were not exclusive to those with limited knowledge about Unit 731 and/or the Noborito Institute, but also expressed by those with some previous knowledge. For instance, a 40-year-old male who read Morimura’s The Devil’s Gluttony before visiting the exhibition wrote that he was shocked at seeing the models that realistically reproduced scenes of human experiments (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 28). A female visitor, 45 years old, also expressed that she was very surprised at the extent of the inhumane actions that were committed, even though she had known about Unit 731 before (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 33). Another female visitor in her twenties wrote: Unit 731 has become unforgettable since I came across The Devil’s Gluttony when I was an elementary school student. While listening to the stories of people who had connections to the unit and looking at the display panels, I am astonished by the brutality and cruelty that almost seem unbelievable. I conduct bacteria experiments as part of my work. How these horrible acts were committed using basic procedures (such as bacteria culture and isolation) that I use at work … [27 years old]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 24)

As her comment indicates, the shock that she felt not only originated from engaging with more evidence and stories from the unit, but also from realizing that the brutal and cruel acts that she witnessed at the exhibition were conducted using procedures that she herself used in her daily work. This realization most likely brought the unit, its scientists, and its acts into a closer and more personal relation than before. Many comments like these describing visitors’ astonishment despite having some previous knowledge about the unit suggest that what these visitors saw at the exhibition exceeded their previous understanding and imagination. Just like those visitors with little knowledge, they were confronted with various new pieces of information and discoveries at the exhibition. The

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following sections explore a variety of ways that these visitors, whether they had previous knowledge about the unit and/or Noborito or not, processed what they saw at the exhibition and reflected on it. Between Victimhood and Aggression Prompted by their encounters with stories of Japan’s wartime transgression, some visitors reflected on the dual role of Japan as both victim and aggressor. One female visitor who claimed she was “terribly shocked” at the human experiments of Unit 731 wrote, “We Japanese people always have a strong sense of victimhood, but I guess we do not often think of ourselves as aggressors” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 29). A 45-year-old female visitor who described Unit 731 as “the work of the devil” also acknowledged that “suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is widely covered by the media in Japan, but it should also not be forgotten that Japan was an aggressor as well” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 33). A 22-year-old female visitor who only had a vague idea about Unit 731 before wrote, “Through seeing the exhibition today, I realized that people who were sent to the warfront and who now regret what they have done there are both aggressors and victims” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 32). They are aggressors because they caused harm toward other people, but they are also victims as the war made them “feel nothing towards hurting others” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 32). What these comments make clear is the visitors’ consciousness that Japan was both a victim and an aggressor at the same time. This view, however, is different from saying that Japan was first an aggressor and then became a victim. The visitors did not elaborate further on how Japan being an aggressor in the war might have led to its suffering and victimhood. The statuses of victim and aggressor, in their minds, seem to be equated. There is also a difference between the three comments in the sense that the first and second comments expressed that Japan as a collective was both a victim and an aggressor during the war (with the first comment using the pronoun “we”), while the third comment specifically reflected on the dual position of the soldiers and military personnel in the war front. Notwithstanding this difference, what is common across these visitors’ comments is that they contemplated the fact that there

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were multiple sides to the war and that Japan was also a perpetrator. This is significant as it shows that stories of Japanese aggression encountered at the exhibition did not erase the viewpoint that people in Japan suffered during the war, but instead, added nuance to such a view. The exhibition provided a framework to (re)interpret Japan’s role and position in the war and facilitated understandings of Japan’s wartime past that are more complicated than just saying “Japan was foremost a victim in the war.” Placing Aggression, Placing Atomic Bombings (and Other Episodes of Personal Suffering) In the process of reflecting on what they saw at the exhibition, some visitors mentioned the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For example, a 69-year-old male visitor stated that “the scars [of the war] run deep in our family” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 23). He explained how he lost his older brother in New Guinea during the war and also lost his parents in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. “However …,” he continued, “we were aggressors! This should not be forgotten” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 23). This comment is fundamentally different from the previous comments that explored the dual role of Japan as both a victim and an aggressor in that this visitor did not say that Japan was also an aggressor. Instead, the comment suggests his understanding, most likely formed or reinforced by his visit to the exhibition, that Japan was foremost an aggressor. The loss of his brother, as well as of his parents, is placed in a bigger picture. In other words, his visit to the exhibition prompted him to put his personal memories and experiences of suffering into context. Another visitor also mentioned the atomic bombings in a separate comment. However, unlike the previous comment, in which stories of Japanese aggression prompted the visitor to place the atomic bombings and other episodes of personal pain into context, in this second comment, the atomic bombings were used as a framework to make sense of stories about Unit 731 and Noborito. As someone with no personal experience of the war, this person admitted that they had not imagined these horrible events to have taken place before (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 37). Seeing the exhibition and learning about the horrible acts committed by Japan for the first time, this visitor wrote that they were shocked at the sheer cruelty (Report on

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the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 37). This cruelty, the visitor continued, resembled the cruelty that they had witnessed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 37). Here, we can see that the visitor made sense of new information that they encountered at the exhibition through their existing framework of the cruelty of the atomic bombings. In other words, the atomic bombings were a reference point or a platform to understand and express the brutality of Unit 731 and Noborito. Although this framework seemed to have assisted this visitor in digesting and comprehending what they saw at the exhibition, there may also be a danger in equating Japan’s victimhood and Asian victims’ experiences as this risks appropriating the suffering of the Asian victims and instead reinforcing Japan’s victimhood status. The Past is not Past Yet Notably, some visitors strongly expressed how the exhibition made them realize that the legacies of Japan’s wartime aggression have continued in postwar Japanese society. A 24-year-old male visitor wrote, “I have read Morimura Seiichi’s The Devil’s Gluttony before, so I thought I knew about Unit 731. But I was disgusted by the sheer scale of crimes committed by Unit 731 and Japan’s medical world” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 25). He continued, “What also surprised me was how this legacy has continued into the postwar years … There is no guarantee that the current medical world will never commit new crimes. We have to keep our eyes on them” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 25). Two other visitors expressed similar sentiments: I knew about the unit before, but the pictures and models made me realize the cruelty of the unit again. At the same time, I was at a loss for words realizing that part of the medical technology that we enjoy today is built upon the victims of the unit. When we only pursue effectiveness, only seek convenient and comfortable lifestyles, and lose our humanity, that is when science and technology blossom upon human sacrifices … I realized that I cannot simply rejoice at the recent advancement in science. [female, 68 years old]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 35).

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… I knew about the unit as a fact, and I thought I knew, through reading a book, about their unimaginable crimes that could only be described as the work of the “devil.” Still, what I have failed to notice before was how the unit was not tried in the Tokyo Trials, how some members went on to assume important positions in the medical world such as a dean of Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, a dean of the medical faculty of Kyoto University, and a founder of the Japanese Green Cross Organization, and how postwar Japanese society did not hold those people accountable for their wartime activities … After all this time, I realized that Japan essentially never attempted to reflect on its past and atone for the fact that we were aggressors ... We rarely fundamentally pursued the issue of Japan’s responsibility for its wartime aggression, and I am feeling embarrassed to realize it just now … [female, 43 years old]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 38)

What these three comments express is that, even though the visitors already had some knowledge about Unit 731, they were unaware of how the legacy of the unit had lived on in contemporary Japanese society through its medical and scientific worlds. The first visitor’s surprise and the second visitor’s shock in learning about such an aspect, and the third visitor’s honest confession about failing to notice it, all suggest that these visitors had thought of Unit 731 as a thing of the past. They did not think that the legacies of the unit lingered on in contemporary Japanese society. Their visits to the exhibition, however, seemed to have changed their views. As the latter two comments implied, people living in contemporary Japanese society cannot be completely separated from the war crimes committed by Unit 731 as: (1) they have benefitted from the legacy of Japan’s wartime aggression through today’s medical and scientific advancements as the second comment mentioned, and; (2) they are part of contemporary Japanese society that let the unit members thrive after the war and never atoned for its wartime aggression, as the third comment reflected. In the popular perception of twentieth-century Japan, the year 1945 is often a turning point, with pre-1945 imagined as wartime, militaristic Japan and post-1945 as a postwar Japan reborn as a peace-loving and democratic nation. The exhibition, however, seemed to have complicated this popular perception of a clear divide between wartime Japan and postwar Japan in some visitors’ minds. What the comments above show is that through learning about Unit 731’s legacy, the visitors realized that postwar Japan had not completely broken free from wartime,

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either because contemporary Japanese society had been built upon the suffering of wartime victims as the second comment stated, because it had not sincerely atoned for its crimes as the third comment suggested, or because there was still a possibility that it might let something similar happen again in the future, as the first comment suggested. The exhibition, therefore, made them realize that Japan’s war past is not past yet: Japan’s wartime past lives on in the present in the form of medical and scientific advancement. The exhibition complicated visitors’ temporal understanding of Japan’s past as well as prompted reflections on how visitors were also part of the living legacies of Japan’s aggression. Reign of Peace? Analysis of visitor comments reveals an overarching idea of “peace.” In fact, 34 comments explicitly conveyed the writers’ pacifist sentiment. These comments were written by both adults and young students. One visitor stated, “The ruthlessness of wars, and things I did not know about, were shown right into my eyes and I was frightened. I hope that no matter what happens we never take part in wars again” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 33). A 15year-old female student wrote, “… Until today, I did not know much about Japan’s aggressive war, let alone about Unit 731. The things that Japanese people have committed in the past are not something we can ever atone for, but I still think more people should learn about them and do something. It goes without saying, but we should never ever wage war again …” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 25). Other visitors did not simply express their anti-war sentiment, but also expressed their intention to take concrete actions, in particular, in peace movements: I did not experience the war myself, but I am filled with anger and sadness after seeing the exhibition. I cannot believe humans could do such things … we should not let this truth be a thing of the past, and we have to make sure more people learn about it. The power of individuals might be small, but I want to start with something I can do. In order to protect children from foolish wars! [age unknown]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 35)

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I have read a little about Unit 731 in books and documents, but seeing detailed documents, panels, and movies made me realize the dreadful evils of the war again … We need to come together and continue the movements to protect peace so that we will never go to war and never commit anything like this again in the future … [female, 66 years old]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 27) I knew that Unit 731 conducted “human experimentations” on people in China, but I was surprised at how detailed the exhibition was. I feel anger and sadness towards the sinfulness of the Japanese military and doctors. As someone born in the “postwar” years, I will engage in the study of peace and peace movements (and later peace education) so that Japan will never commit such wrongs again. [male, 25 years old]. (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 33)

The prevalence of pacifist statements and expressions among these visitors itself is not surprising, given how ubiquitous the idea of peace is in discussions and discourses on the Asia–Pacific War and its aftermath in Japan. It is deeply rooted in the peace and democracy mantra of the early postwar years when Japan sought rebirth and reconstruction of its imperialistic, war-torn nation. Article 9 of the postwar Japanese Constitution, which renounces war and prohibits Japan from having an active military, has been considered the cornerstone of postwar Japanese pacifism.1 The idea of peace is indeed an overarching theme in Japanese memories of the Asia–Pacific War that can be found in museums, memorials, commemorations, memoirs, movies, and political statements. In such a cultural and social context, expressions of war memories frequently relate to this notion. What is notable in the case of visitor comments, however, is that their strong sense of anti-war, pacifist sentiments was harbored through their encounters with vivid stories of Japan’s aggression. In Japanese war discourses, the word “peace” has often been associated with the atomic bombings and other civilian suffering. In particular,

1 In recent decades, Article 9 has been under attack by the conservative government, led most prominently by nationalist Abe Shinz¯ o who occupied the post of Prime Minister between 2006–2007 and 2012–2020. In 2014, Abe’s cabinet re-interpreted the Constitution to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective defense. He also openly expressed his wish to explicitly state the existence and role of Japan’s Self Defense Force in the Constitution. These initiatives by the government have led to strong opposition movements involving activists, politicians, intellectuals, and a number of ordinary citizens.

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the role of Hiroshima in forging a strong link between Japanese victimhood and the notion of peace has been noted repeatedly by scholars (see Yoneyama 1999; Orr 2001; Fujiwara, 2010 [2001]; and Dower 2012). On the second anniversary of the atomic bombing in 1947, Hiroshima’s mayor Hamai Shinz¯o stressed the unique nature of Hiroshima, claiming that people in the city experienced the worst misery and destruction of the war, and that, only such people could truly deny wars and passionately pursue world peace (Hamai 1947). This is a narrative of Hiroshima as an ultimate and universal victim, pursuing world peace to prevent another atrocity like the atomic bombings. The widespread circulation of reports, images, and literature about the atomic bombings after the end of the Occupation of Japan in 1952 and the nation-wide anti-nuclear movements that were triggered by the Lucky Dragon Incident in 1954 (in which Japanese fishermen were irradiated by an American hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll) led to the national adoption of this narrative: Hiroshima became a symbol of a unique suffering experienced by the Japanese, and a narrative was constructed that reasoned that as the only nation that experienced atomic bombings, people in Japan should strive for peace. The Japanese rhetoric of peace in the context of the Asia–Pacific War is thus based on a victimhood mentality; the feeling that Japanese civilians suffered tremendously during the war, especially in the atomic bombings, and their suffering should never be repeated, hence the need for peace. This rhetoric of peace stemming from memories of Japanese victimhood has firmly been adopted in Japanese society, and it has been prevalent in numerous museums, memorials, and commemorations of the Asia–Pacific War. With a strong connection between the notion of peace and memories of Japanese suffering, however, Japan’s own atrocities disappeared from view. Remembering the war in such a manner, thus, “easily became a way of forgetting Nanking, Bataan, the Burma-Siam railway, Manila, and the countless Japanese atrocities these and other place names signified to non-Japanese” (Dower 2012, 144). What the comments above illustrate, however, is that visitors’ pacifist sentiments seem to have been harbored through the stories and memories of Japan’s aggression in Asia. Rather than saying “we need peace so we will never suffer again,” the rhetoric expressed by many visitors is that “we need peace so we will never inflict harm upon others.” The prominence of “peace” in the aforementioned visitor comments could be interpreted in two different ways. On one hand, these comments

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illustrate how memories of Japanese aggression were subsumed under the powerful rhetoric of peace. This is most clearly seen in comments that attributed cruel acts by Unit 731 and Noborito to the nature of wars in general. For instance, two female visitors (most likely sisters or a parent and a child) jointly wrote, “[We] wonder whether all of this was made possible by the extreme situation, which was war. ‘People kill each other.’ We need to remember this horrible reality, and we need to make effort to create a peaceful world where people and people, nations and nations respect and help each other …” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 29). A 39-year-old female visitor also noted, “Acts that even the word ‘cruel’ does not adequately capture. I again realized how wars drive people insane. How can we stop the evilness of wars, where hatred begets hatred …” (Report on the Joint Exhibition on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731 1993, 31). The common understanding underlying these comments is that wars are extreme, evil, and horrible, and that they enabled the cruel acts of Unit 731 and the Noborito Institute to take place. Comments like these illustrate that the idea of war as evil worked as a framework for these visitors to digest and comprehend what they saw at the exhibition. The exhibition, at the same time, seemed to have reinforced their anti-war sentiment. These comments demonstrate how stories of Japanese aggression were interpreted through the powerful pacifist narrative. At the same time, and this is the second interpretation of the prominence of “peace” in the visitor comments, it could also be said that memories of aggression brought (back) different shades and nuances into the peace discourse that had historically been strongly associated with memories of Japanese victimhood. This was not the first time that memories of Japanese aggression and the notion of peace have been combined. In the early 1950s, alerted by Japan’s rearmament as part of the US Cold War military strategies, progressive intellectuals and politicians initiated one of the earliest forms of the postwar peace movements in order to “lobby against what they perceived to be the government’s relapse into the prewar sins of militarism and the police state” (Orr 2001, 3). According to James J. Orr, these progressive activists did not promote pacifism by appealing only to people’s personal experience of suffering and victimhood, but they also tried to appeal to their experience as victimizers who contributed to Japan’s aggressive warfare (2001, 3). The peace movement in the early postwar years, therefore, was based both on the notions of “peace, so we will never be victims again” and “peace, so we

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will never be victimizers again.” However, as Orr mentions, by the 1960s, this peace movement “had come to rely increasingly on images of the Japanese people as war victims” (2001, 3) and the connection between peace and aggression dropped out of public view. The visitor comments that made links between Japanese aggression and peace, therefore, could be seen as a popular re-emergence of an old rhetoric. At this point, it is difficult to indicate which of the two interpretations sounds more credible. Rather, the most probable explanation might be that the prominence of “peace” in visitors’ comments is due to a combination of these two interpretations. It is clear that the notion of peace provided an overarching framework through which many visitors interpreted stories of Japan’s aggression that they encountered at the exhibition. These comments also show that instances of Japanese aggression were compatible with the notion of peace that has historically been strongly connected with memories of victimhood in Japan. As such, they worked to diversify the types of memories that could be connected to the idea of peace. The links that visitors made between Japanese aggression and peace in fact echoed the old rhetoric of postwar progressive activists. This analysis shows that the peace rhetoric that could be seen in visitor comments is multi-layered and complicated.

Making Sense of Japanese Wartime Aggression, Making Sense of Visitor Comments As the analysis of comments illustrates, visitors to the local exhibition on Unit 731 and the Noborito Institute worked through and made sense of Japanese aggression in a diverse and flexible manner. For some, stories of Japanese wartime aggression were used as a context through which Japan’s past and present were viewed. Encounters with these stories facilitated an understanding among some visitors that there were multiple sides and stories to Japan’s war and added nuance to the claim of Japanese victimhood. These stories also made some others realize that the legacies of Japan’s wartime aggression lingered on in the present. This also meant seeing their own standing in history in a different light as they realized their own positions as individuals who had benefitted from the legacies of Japan’s wartime atrocities, and who had been part of a Japanese society that they viewed had not atoned for its crimes. For some other visitors, stories of Japanese aggression were interpreted and understood through their already existing frameworks. As shown, the notion of

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peace worked as an overarching context. By connecting Japanese aggression to the notion of peace that has traditionally been associated with Japanese victimhood, these visitors actually worked to diversify the narratives surrounding the idea of peace. The analysis of visitor comments, therefore, not only highlights the diversity in the ways these ordinary visitors interpreted what they saw at the exhibition, but also underscores the dynamic effects of such a process. This study focused on selected expressions by individuals from a local area, from a specific time period, and from a certain segment of Japanese society. As such, it is not representative of the full range of opinions and positions that have existed in Japan. However, the comments analyzed above do serve as an interesting starting point for further exploration of the hitherto overlooked views and opinions of ordinary people in Japan. The visitor comments made clear that the construction and maintenance of memories of the Asia–Pacific War in Japan are a multilayered, complicated, and fluid process, and a work-in-progress. As people encountered different memories and stories of the past, they worked through them on their own, unique terms and created narratives through which they could make sense of such different memories. The visitor comments analyzed here therefore add nuance to the notion of Japanese war memories as “memory wars” between the two main opposing forces of conservatives and progressives, by showing the diverse processes and expressions of war memories among ordinary individuals who are no less important in Japan’s memory landscape.

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Fujiwara, Kiichi. 2010 [2001]. Sens¯ o o kioku suru: Hiroshima, horok¯ osuto to genzai [Remembering the War: Hiroshima, Holocaust, and the Present]. Tokyo: K¯ odansha. Fukaya, Naohiro. 2014. Hibaku kenz¯ o-butsu no hozon to kioku no keish¯ o: Nagasaki, Shink¯o-zen sh¯ ogakkou ichibu k¯ osha hozon mondai o jirei ni [Placing Memory and the Preservation of Atomic Ruins: A Study on the Preservation of Shink¯ ozen Elementary School, Nagasaki]. Shakai-gaku hy¯ oron [Japanese Sociological Review] 65 (1): 62–79. Fukuma, Yoshiaki. 2009. ‘Sens¯ o taiken’ no sengo-shi [Postwar History of ‘War Experiences’]. Tokyo: Ch¯ u-¯ o-k¯ oron Shinsha, Inc. Fukuma, Yoshiaki. 2011. Sh¯ odo no kioku: Okinawa, Hiroshima, Nagasaki ni utsuru sengo [Memories of the Burned Land: Okinawa, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki’s Postwar]. Tokyo: Shiny¯ osha. Hamai, Shinzo. 1947. Heiwa sengen [Peace Declaration] The City of Hiroshima website. Available at: http://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/www/contents/111 1795443652/index.html. Accessed 24 Oct 2019. Jeans, Roger B. 2005. Victims or Victimizers? Museums, Textbooks, and the War Debate in Contemporary Japan. The Journal of Military History 69 (1): 149–195. Kamata, Sadao. 1996. Nagasaki genbaku shiry¯okan no kagai tenji mondai [Controversy Surrounding the Displays of Japanese Aggression in Nagasaki A-Bomb Museum]. Sens¯ o sekinin kenky¯ u [The Report on Japan’s War Responsibility] 14: 22–31. Kawasaki-shi Nakahara heiwa ky¯ oiku gakky¯ u (Kawasaki City Nakahara District Peace Education Classroom). 1989. Watashi no machi kara sens¯ o ga mieta: b¯ oryaku himitsu kichi Noborito kenky¯ ujo no nazo o ou [The War Seen Through Our Town: Exploring the Mystery of the Noborito Institute, the Covert Action Base]. Tokyo: Ky¯ oiku Shiry¯ o Shuppankai. Koike, Ou. 2013. ‘Noborito kenky¯ujo to 731 butai-ten’ Nihon ni bukky¯ o o tsutae Nihon ga senj¯ o ni shita kuni Ch¯ ugoku [Exhibitions on the Noborito Institute and Unit 731: China, the Country that Spread Buddhism to Japan and the Country that Japan Turned into a Warzone]. In Heiwa o kizuku shimin no tsudoi 30-nen no Ayumi [Citizens’ Gathering for Peace: 30 Years of History], ed. Board of Citizens’ Meeting for Peace, 30-year Anniversary Publication (Not Sold; Given to Aomi Mochida by Chusei Morita), 61. Kawasaki: Publishing company unknown. Levy, Daniel, and Natan Sznaider. 2006. The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Translated by Assenka Oksiloff. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Matsumura, Takao. 1998. 731 butai to saikin-sen: Nihon gendai shi no oten [Unit 731 and Germ Warfare: A Stain on Modern Japanese History]. Keio Journal of Economics 91 (2): 239–269.

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CHAPTER 7

Exhibitions and Their Afterlives: Dutch Exhibitions of the Second World War in Indonesia, 1946–2000 Caroline Drieënhuizen

Introduction “Hoping to be able to publish an untainted image of our time of internment by the Japs later on and when I can’t have that, [I hope] someone else will continue or publish this”, wrote Dutchman Jack Scholte in his diary after his interment by the Japanese forces in colonial Indonesia on 20 August 1942 (Heijmans-van Bruggen 2002, 31). As historian Esther Captain pointed out, after the Second World War survivors like Jack Scholte had to share their memories of the war in the former Dutch colony of Indonesia in order to psychologically survive in the Netherlands (2002, 70). From 1946 onwards, just one year after the liberation of Indonesia from the Japanese, many former internees made their experiences public in the Netherlands by publishing their memoirs

C. Drieënhuizen (B) Cultural Sciences, Open Universiteit, Heerlen, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_7

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in various exhibitions and magazines. In the Dutch collective memory of the war, however, these wartime experiences in the (former) colony have never acquired a prominent place. Dubbed by many as the “Indies Silence” (Indisch zwijgen)—referring to the profound silence of Dutch people from the former colony on their wartime experiences—this silence dominated Dutch memories of the Second World War and its aftermath in Indonesia. Even in historiography, this idea took root. Many historians, like Elsbeth Locher-Scholten and Erik Somers, stated that after a long period of Dutch indifference to the history of the Japanese occupation in the former colony, greater interest in the period was only shown from the 1970s (Locher-Scholten 2002, 661–671,1999, 192–222, 205; Somers 2014, 164). The remembrance of the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands was understood in the same vein, forgotten and silenced until the 1960s (Bank 1983; van Vree 1995). As for the remembrance of the persecution of Jews, in recent decades historians have shown that this understanding is no longer tenable. Already from 1946 onwards, diaries and modest studies were published (See, for example: Van Vree 1995; de Haan 1997, 1998, 196–217; Romijn et al. 2014; Duindam 2016). The same is true for the Dutch remembrance of the Second World War in Indonesia. In 2008, historian Remco Raben observed a discrepancy between the number of times memories of the war had been expressed in the Pacific and the Dutch collective memory, in which the war in Indonesia was considered underrepresented (2008, 96). He explained this by stating that the war in the former colony had “always fitted awkwardly into Dutch memory”, as the colonies have never been central in Dutch identity formations, and the war itself suffered from a “moral ambiguity” that the German occupation never had (2008, 108). Elsbeth Locher-Scholten stated that memories of the war in Indonesia only became part of the Dutch memory of the Second World War in the last quarter of the twentieth century. She doubts if this “colonial” memory can ever be fully integrated into the Dutch collective memory because of the transnational character of these memories, the painful decolonisation process and the limited scope of the wartime memories (after all, it only concerns small groups in Dutch society) (1999, 2002). These historiographical observations give a general impression of the difficult relationship between the memories of the war in Indonesia and the Dutch collective memory of the Second World War. A better, more detailed and more nuanced understanding of the process that is remembering (and thus memory) and its relation

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to sociopolitical events and stakeholders is obtained by looking at one of the media in which those memories of the war were propagated and produced: museum exhibitions. In museums and exhibitions, the past is constructed, produced, negotiated and communicated. Exhibitions are manifestations expressed by people with a specific past in a certain moment and place. They are representations framed by intellectual and cultural traditions that speak to visitors, people locating themselves in relations to others, situating themselves in a collective narrative and constructing their national selfunderstandings in a specific time. As such, exhibitions are very political “contact zones” and are, to quote historian James Clifford, “an ongoing historical, political, moral relationship; a power charged set of exchanges, of push and pull” (1997, 193). The outcome of this interaction between the organisers and curators of those displays (the memory mediators), and their visitors (the memory consumers), to use historian and collective memory studies expert Wulf Kansteiner’s heuristic model, along with the existing intellectual and cultural discourses that frame those particular representations of the past are what creates collective memory (Kansteiner 2002, 179–197). We can understand collective memory as the process through which collectives, for instance, a nation-state but also groups of people, “engage in acts of remembrance together” (Winter 2006, 27). Kansteiner points out that although this is a collective phenomenon, it “manifests itself in the actions and statements of individuals” (2002, 180). Memories are thus almost always mediated and dynamic. They form an integral part of society’s memory culture; the way communities deal with the past. Exhibitions as representations of memories give insight into how collective memories in specific intellectual and cultural traditions and social–political realities come into existence and evolve. Furthermore, they shed light on contemporary historiographical contexts and debates on exclusion and identities (de Bruijn and Hogervorst 2019). In this Chapter I, explore the intellectual and cultural traditions that framed our representations of the Second World War, the memory makers that manipulated those traditions and memory consumers that used, ignored and transformed those traditions to suit their own needs. By analysing exhibitions, the evolution of collective memories of the war in Indonesia can be pinpointed and the abovementioned discrepancy between the collective memory of the Dutch Second World War and the number of existing expressions and perspectives of this war can be explained.

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The exhibition at the centre of this analysis, the first exhibition on the war in Indonesia, will function as a counterpoint for all others that were organised next. I believe this first show is a benchmark for all others that came afterwards. The people that initiated that first exhibition, the social groups central to the exhibition, the way they were represented and the exhibition’s narratives all resonated to a greater or lesser extent in the exhibitions that came afterwards and are embedded in the evolution of Dutch collective memories of the Second World War. Although many others, often smaller exhibitions on this topic have been organised, I analysed those that were relatively large and were advertised and discussed in newspapers and magazines such as Tong Tong. This chapter is therefore divided into two, seemingly unbalanced, parts: the first part analyses the first Dutch exhibition on the Second World War in Indonesia in connection with simultaneous exhibitions on the war in the Netherlands, and the second part is devoted to a large cluster of different Dutch exhibitions on the war in Indonesia in the decades after 1947 in order to outline the evolution of the memories of the war in Indonesia.

Reinventing the Nation: Exhibition on the War in the Netherlands, 1946–1947 Several exhibitions on Dutch wartime experiences were organised in 1945 and 1946, just months after the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945. In August of that year, for example, the Amsterdam department store De Bijenkorf staged an exhibition on Dutch resistance organisations and their “underground battle” during and after the German occupation. The exhibition was called “The underground battle in images and documents” (De ondergrondse strijd in beeld en document ). Another exhibition, “Empowered democracy” (Weerbare democratie), was organised in the spring of 1946 around the country by the Great Advice Committee of Illegality (GAC), a committee that united Dutch resistance organisations of importance. In every city it reached, the exhibition was remodelled in accordance with the different wartime experiences of that specific place (Hogervorst and Ribbens 2018, 104). The GAC wanted to show the “mental resistance of the Dutch people” represented in the paintings of ten artists. But while the persecution of the Jews was illustrated in those artworks, they did not (by far) form the central part of the exhibition. Furthermore, not one newspaper criticised the exhibition

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in this aspect, all were full of praise except De Volkskrant, which considered the paintings “too trivial” (Pach 2016), and none of the newspapers expressed criticism of the choice of the subjects. Established in May 1945, the Dutch RIOD (Rijksbureau voor Oorlogsdocumentatie/National Bureau for War Documentation) organised another travelling exhibition in the Netherlands during the war of autumn 1946. “The Netherlands in Wartime” (Nederland in Oorlogstijd) was set up to bring the activities of the bureau to the public’s attention and to encourage people to hand over their personal war archives (Somers 2014, 127). Like the two exhibitions mentioned above, this exhibition focussed on how “our people have experienced the occupation and how they have resisted against it” (Het Parool, 6 May 1947). Newspapers informed visitors that their visit to the exhibition and the “terrible experiences of our people” served a greater purpose, namely the “resurrection of our dear Fatherland” (Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden, 9 December 1946). A small section of the exhibition was dedicated to the activities of Dutchmen in the (according to a newspaper) “Free World” that, apart from Great Britain and the United States, also mysteriously included the occupied former Dutch colony Indonesia (Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden, 17 February 1947). Only one picture of the Battle of the Java Sea, some Japanese declarations and documents concerning deportations were shown. These three exhibitions, organised by different institutions with diverging interests and, given that period, huge visitor numbers, did not claim to be political or ideological, but all implicitly provided the Netherlands with a “polished collective identity”—as historians Susan Hogervorst and Kees Ribbens pointed out in the case of the exhibition “Empowered democracy”—an identity that influenced the postwar Dutch society that had to be rebuilt (2018). The persecution of the Jews, doubts about the actual scale of the Dutch resistance and the rightfulness of Dutch military actions in their former colony were not mentioned and covered up behind the illusion of one unanimous, resisting and rightful nation-state. This conscious and unconscious manipulation of the collective memory on the Second World War prioritised certain groups of people, and even right after its ending, the interests of the contemporary. Some small groups of people who had different memories of that period reacted negatively to this formation of a collective national memory that emerged right after the end of the Second World War. In particular, the exhibition “The Netherlands in Wartime” hit a nerve for many who had just returned from Southeast Asia where they had spent

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the war under Japanese occupation. The people who fled Indonesia to the Netherlands right after Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 were mostly Europeans with strong bonds with the Netherlands, who had been interned in Japanese camps during the war and mostly did not belong to the group of colonial Europeans that had Asian ancestors (Raben 2008, 96). The first groups—predominantly made up of women, children, the sick, as well as a few employees of Dutch firms—arrived at the end of 1945 and beginning of 1946 in the Netherlands, just in time to see the “Netherlands in Wartime” exhibition in which they felt their experiences of the war in the former colony were underrepresented.

“The Indies Under Japanese Occupation”, 1946–1947: The First Dutch Exhibition on the War in Indonesia Two employees of the Dutch Trade Museum, part of the former Colonial Institute in Amsterdam and renamed Indisch Institute at the time, also attested to the underrepresentation of the Second World War in Indonesia in the “The Netherlands in Wartime” exhibition. They also found that the “European mental resistance” was lacking in the representation (1946) of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia (KIT [Royal Tropical Institute] Archive inv. nr. 3151–1). In the late summer or beginning of September 1946, W.S. Bitter (perhaps, Wim Bitter, 1891–1956) and B. Lulofs (1925/1926–2008), employees of the Institute, set up a meeting with the RIOD to discuss the possibility of organising an exhibition together. But rather than waiting for the RIOD’s approval of the co-operation, they organised the exhibition on their own, and on 20 December 1946, they opened “The Indies under Japanese occupation” at the Indisch Institute in Amsterdam. In the run-up to the exhibition being held in Rotterdam (this exhibition also travelled), RIOD and the Indisch Institute continued their conversation, but the RIOD remained reluctant. It seemed that they did not want to be associated with a “purely Indisch exhibition” and insisted that only their Indisch department and the name “War Documentation” should be mentioned. It appears RIOD’s focus at the time was intentionally national and the war in the Pacific was a conscious “side note” (KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151–19). Only the last two shows in The Hague and Utrecht came into being with the co-operation of the RIOD.

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More than any of the other exhibitions on the Second World War, the exhibition on the Japanese occupation of Indonesia relied on the material contributions of individuals who had experienced the war in the former colony. More than a hundred people—of which, over 40 percent were women approximately—sent in objects from their time in the Japanese camps including items such as embroidered oven mitts, drawings and self-made card games (KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151–49). Each time the exhibition was set up in a new city, people were invited to contribute by donating objects. In Rotterdam and The Hague, several ex-internees also acted as guides by showing visitors around (KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151– 47). In this way, the exhibition was borne by a select group of people across the whole country, whose memories were created and supported by the exhibition and that acted as a counter-narrative against the dominant Dutch national narrative on the Second World War. Due to the lack of adequate gallery-type spaces, the exhibition was also staged in department stores like Gerzon in The Hague and Galeries Modernes in Utrecht, enabling a huge reach. For example, 10,000 people visited the exhibition in The Hague in just one month (KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151–47), resulting in the exhibition being perceived as much more personal, much less a matter of fact and much more focussed on the experiences of women than the other exhibitions that had been organised so far on the Second World War. In this aspect, individual memories can become collective once they are structured, represented and used in a social setting like exhibitions. The composition of the postwar migration community in the Netherlands at the time resulted in a rather monolithic, one-dimensional memory of the experiences of the war in Indonesia, which can be said to be a white, Eurocentric, camp-focussed narrative in which no room existed for the sensitivities of colonial social relations (van Vree 1999, 206; Locher-Scholten 1999, 205). The stories of the many buitenkampers —mainly European women, children and elderly who were not interned in camps because of their partly Asian descent—and of the Indonesian people during the war were not told as these people were either not (yet) in the Netherlands or remained unseen due to persisting hierarchical colonial social relations. Some of these people formed part of the later waves of migrants that would arrive in the Netherlands or chose to stay in Indonesia because of their strong attachment to the country, and as a result, had no voice in how their history was communicated. This particular social background of both the memory mediators and

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consumers of the exhibition meant that a specific memory of the Japanese occupation would be established and dominate for decades to come. The story that the mnemonic community, as expressed by the exhibition, aimed to demonstrate was the “economic and social consequences of the Japanese occupation for the Dutch East Indies and the life of Europeans under the Japanese terror” (Algemeen Indisch dagblad, 1 February 1947). Another newspaper called it “the ghastly circumstances in which the internees lived and… died” (Dagblad van het Noorden, 5 February 1947). The exhibition painted a picture of colonial Indonesia as an economic and social paradise under the influence of the Dutch that had been destroyed by the “depraved Japanese” who could not however break the people’s spirit or their willingness to restore their colony. This optimistic view of colonial Indonesia in which the “benevolent” Dutch played the leading role was conveyed to visitors at the start of the exhibition using a replica of the famous Hindu-Javanese statue Prajnaparamita and the tropical products surrounding her. The installation symbolised a country rich in natural resources that greatly benefitted from its Dutch colonial rule. The Dutch brought medical care, law and order and agricultural innovations to Indonesia, so the catalogue reads. To visitors, it communicated a Dutch “paradise” that was in peril due to Japan’s threat and which, implicitly, still had and could have been saved just like the Canadians and Americans had liberated the Netherlands about one year earlier. In the next section, visitors were confronted with a narrative of the Japanese economic “penetration” in Indonesia, the German invasion of the Netherlands, negotiations with the Japanese and eventually their invasion, as well as the Dutch defeat and occupation of the colony, in which the internment camps played a central role. The personal belongings of internees in the exhibitions, like the abovementioned oven mitts, communicated very personal stories of victimhood during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. These were, however, stories that were related to the overall theme of the suffering of a specific European group and solidified that specific narrative, one of the people suffering intensely and still offering resistance and remaining positive. The oven mitts, self-made card games, fabricated trousers, wallets and toys were exhibited as proof of people’s victimhood, “courage” and resilience of the Dutch women in particular (Het Vrije Volk, June 1947). The Dutch, according to the catalogue, remained courageous and had faith in the future while dealing with the humiliation of being oppressed by Asian people.

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This was an image that exemplified the Dutch, mainly white experience of the war in Indonesia, as a traumatic, painful and shocking experience that stemmed from the reversal of old, colonial, hierarchies between Europeans and Asians, as Esther Captain so aptly puts it (2002, 345). It was how white Europeans had experienced this particular past in colonial Indonesia and wished to communicate it to Dutch society. To make their specific story comprehensible for the Dutch, they tapped into the meaning of the war as it had been anchored in Dutch society. The narrative in the exhibition was largely similar to the Dutch narrative of the German occupation at that time. As Kansteiner pointed out, exhibitions are always part of cultural schemes in society that make these shows comprehensible and meaningful. In this case, because the story of the Japanese occupation of Indonesia was framed in the same way as the history of the German occupation of the Netherlands, it was recognisable to many Dutch citizens and made them receptive to that “other” Second World War story. This was done both implicitly and explicitly. In a review article on the exhibition, the journalist Jan Ubbink described how the exhibition brought him “back to the time of humiliation, when we were even enslaved and beaten” (Dagblad van het Noorden, 5 February 1947). The time he referred to was the period of the German occupation of the Netherlands. He compared the Japanese Kempeitai to the German Gestapo, calling them “equally cruel and bloodthirsty, in some ways surpassing their European masters in refined torment” (Dagblad van het Noorden, 5 February 1947.). Other newspapers emphasised people’s suffering, their ability to stand up to oppression and their resilience in both the nation-state and the colony (Het Parool, 6 May 1947). Some even spoke of the misery in “the extermination camps” thereby putting the internment camps in Asia on equal footing with those of the Nazis (Raben 2008, 98). The comparison with the German occupation acted as the enforcement of acknowledgement of people’s suffering (Oostindie 2005, 7–9). Considering the war in Indonesia as analogous to the one in the Netherlands also benefitted the remembrance of the Japanese occupation, as Remco Raben stated (2008, 94). In order to stress Dutch victimhood even more, the Japanese were consequently stereotyped as a “diabolical” threat, just like the Germans were conceived. They were described in the exhibition as “devilishly smart”, “foreign” and already a “dangerous” enclave in colonial times. None of them had a name. They were just generalised, flat characters, a monolithic representation of the enemy, acting as counterpoint to Dutch

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victimhood. All this evil was personified in one mannequin representing a Japanese camp guard, which was displayed in all versions of the travelling exhibition, sometimes in front of a reproduction of a “kawat ” (wired) gate, other times elsewhere in the exhibition. It was a life-size, nameless mannequin with a harsh, mean-looking face and was a caricatured portrayal of the Japanese in the way many Dutchmen saw them (Captain 1999, 185). The development of the caricatured portrayal of “the” Japanese also affected the historical narrative in a political manner. The mannequin represented the people that influenced the Indonesian youth in a “devastating” and “rotten” way, according to newspapers and the exhibition’s catalogue (Algemeen Indisch Dagblad, 1 February 1947; KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151–21). Thus, the purpose of the exhibition came together in the mannequin and its meaning: one of the main objectives of the exhibition was to give an impression of the “perverse influence of the Japanese propaganda on the Indonesian/Indies youth”. This had some urgency, as at the time the exhibition was on show, Java was the scene of bloody massacres. The exhibition spoke of “chaos and misery”, which could only be restored by the “joint reconstruction” of the country, thereby talking to the continued presence of the Dutch, in co-operation with Indonesians (KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151–21). The first Dutch soldiers had been shipped to Indonesia in September 1946 to “restore order”, as it was called. In this light, the exhibition was far from being apolitical in this period, as has sometimes been said about the Dutch Indonesian wartime memories in the late 1940s and 1950s (Locher-Scholten 1999, 58). Although the organisers stressed their neutral and objective aims with the exhibition, the catalogue makes clear how the exhibition was imbedded in the social–political situation at the time and served contemporary social-political interests. The booklet mentioned how the Japanese were the cause of the then-contemporary “chaos and devastation” (KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151–21) in Indonesia. Journalist Jan Ubbink even ended his review of the exhibition with a call to arms. In his eyes, the exhibition made clear how the Dutch should “liberate” Indonesia and “reconstruct” the country, together with “the inhabitants of the East Indies” (KIT Archive inv. nr. 3151–21). Another journalist mentioned how the Japanese had brought the “unstable Indonesians” into confusion and that “we therefore should help them” (Leeuwarder Koerier, 5 April 1946). This opinion was very much tied to a persistent self-image of the Dutch as a benevolent coloniser with a sacred civilisation mission. The Japanese

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were the enemy. The Indonesian youth were, just like the Dutch, the victims. And so, the exhibition legitimatised the Dutch war in Indonesia between 1945 and 1950. Indeed, the visions expressed in the exhibition met with the political objectives of large groups within the Dutch social and political elite at that time. The exhibition strengthened their ideas and indirectly was able to increase public acceptance of military actions between 1945 and 1949 in Indonesia. By referring to the war in the nation-state—that had become the dominant narrative on the war in the Netherlands—the exhibition turned out to be a tool in politically repositioning the Dutch nation-state as it recovered from its traumatic experience with the German occupation, and in its attempts to regain the Netherlands’ former status as a colonial power. At the same time, the exhibition was a chance for war victims, and predominantly for the women in the camps, to express their (gendered) visions of the war, thereby seeking recognition of their suffering. It also helped shape their own identities across the country. As Kansteiner pointed out, when visions meet with compatible social or political objectives in society, they are able to shape national collective memory on a particular past. In this case, this meant that the visions of the exhibitions and social and political objectives at the time were aligned for only a short period. After all, political and social objectives amongst Dutch elites changed after 1949 when the Netherlands recognised Indonesia’s independence; sociologist Andreas Wimmer and anthropologist Nina Glick Schiller have contended that after the Second World War, and the decolonisation of many former imperial possessions that took place, the nation-state became the dominant natural social and political form of the modern world Wimmer and Schiller 2002). Since then, colonies and their past faced difficulties fitting in the new historical narratives focussed on the nation-state, especially concerning the Second World War. After 1949, the Dutch memories of the war in Indonesia never met with national social and political objectives. In particular, the Indonesian Revolution from 1945 until 1949 resulted in a fundamental moral ambiguity during this period, to which Raben pointed, troubled the inclusion of these memories from the war in Indonesia into Dutch national memory (Raben 2008, 108). However, on another more local level, the specific memories of the war in Indonesia, as expressed in the 1946 exhibition, were shared amongst several mnemonic communities and transcended time and space when they were recalled and appropriated again and again in collective settings like exhibitions or

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memorials. As such, this exhibition formed the specific collective memory of several mnemonic communities. A specific collective memory that would eventually shape national collective memory of the Second World War in Asia and this first exhibition set the standard.

From One Story of National Unity to Personal Suffering: 1950–1980 How much the memories of European war victims from Indonesia clashed with the Dutch socio-political reality at the end of the 1940s, and how much this impeded the inclusion of their history in the Dutch national narrative of the Second World War, is shown by the story of the Indonesian urn in the National Monument in Amsterdam. Ex-prisoners of war, former internees and high-ranking military officers made efforts to have an Indonesian urn placed in the monument to the makeshift National Monument in Amsterdam of 1947. In 1950, an urn was added, featuring soil from cemeteries in Indonesia in order to also include the European war victims from the former colony in Dutch national commemoration (Locher-Scholten 2002, 665, 1999, 196–206; Raaijmakers 2018, 101). The soil was collected in the spring of 1949 in Indonesia and flown to the Netherlands in December 1949, just some days before the transfer/ recognition of Indonesia’s sovereignty. For those war victims, the urn was a recognition of their sufferings generated by the war. A small group of representatives, four presumably white women formerly interned in Japanese camps, and four decorated war veterans, carried the urn to the Dam (Het Vrije Volk, 2 May 1950). Although initially attempts were made to avoid this, in adding the urn to the National Monument, a link was made with the then political present in which Dutch soldiers fought in Indonesia: the certificate accompanying the urn referred to those who “fell in the battle against Japan and for peace and justice” (Raaijmakers 2018, 79–80). The last phrase referred to a different war than the Second World War in Indonesia, namely the war that followed after Indonesia declared its independence. Again, collective memories of the Second World War privileged both social and political interests of the contemporary. Locher-Scholten therefore concluded: “politics determined the politics of memory” (1999, 204). She also stated that after 1949, a twenty-year silence on colonial memories in Dutch culture had begun (1999, 205). Looking at the exhibitions, this does not seem to be the case. In 1955, an exhibition

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on photographs of the Japanese internment camps was organised (De Tijd, 17 September 1955) and in 1957, the magazine Tong Tong was established as the voice of a predominantly Eurasian community in the Netherlands trying to come to terms with their past—the Second World War was a much-discussed topic. During the 1960s, notable Dutch comedian Wim Kan reissued his colonial wartime memoirs and spoke about them on television and on stage (Raben 2008, 101). After 1960, more and more Dutch victims of the Japanese occupation raised their voices in newspapers and on radio, and they were given the space to do so. They connected to and appropriated the dominant memories of the war in Indonesia by stressing their “authentic” individual experiences. More and more victimhood represented itself in a narrative of resistance and resilience (Locher-Scholten 1999, 212). Although these memories could not connect to Dutch national collective memories of the war, the continuous flow of memories shared publicly made it clear that the collective nation-centred narrative of the Second World War that had once offered a sense of unity and guidance, became more and more untenable as a result of the ongoing process of democratisation (Van Vree 1999 212; Raben 2008, 103–107; Hogervorst and Ribbens 2018). Multidirectionality of memories is after all a structural feature of collective memory, as Michael Rothberg pointed out. And as a result, counter-memories that challenged hegemonic memories were powerful tools for marginalised groups to utilise and thus, be heard (Rothberg 2009). In 1975–1976, 30 years after the end of the war and 29 years after the first exhibition, another important exhibition on the Second World War in the former colony took place in the Netherlands. It was organised by stakeholders, in this case, one individual, a former internee and colonial civil servant called P.M. Adriaanse (1898–unknown). Adriaanse had called on people from the former colony to donate objects relating to their period in the Japanese camps and in 1972, he was approached by the widow of an old fellow internee, who asked him what she should do with the drawings and watercolor paintings of her late husband. Additionally, 120 people sent in more than 2000 drawings and Adriaanse approached the Foundation Cultural History of Dutchmen Overseas to ask whether they would be willing to organise an exhibition together, and they agreed (Leeuwarder Courant, 28 February 1976). The resulting exhibition “Dutchmen in Japanese camps” also travelled to different big cities in the country and appealed mainly to a large audience of war

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victims and their relatives. Yet “fellow countrymen” who had experienced the war in the Netherlands as well as people who were born after the war also visited the show (Adriaanse 1976, 26). Like earlier exhibitions, the displays focussed on the “sad”, “miserable” “circumstances” and “problems” the internees had experienced. It was framed however as “a unique exhibition”, which was granted, in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam at least, insufficient room for display (Tong Tong, 15 July 1975, 5). The journalist from Tong Tong immediately wondered whether this was the result of a “distaste for the colonial past which people did not know anything about” (Tong Tong, 15 July 1975, 5), thereby connecting the available space of communication to the public space of expression and thus the diminished importance that social institutions as the Rijksmuseum attached to this particular history. Other stakeholders underlined the deep-rooted belief of its underrepresentation. For example, writer, journalist and war victim Willem Brandt (1905–1981) considered the exhibition as breaking the silence about the war history and as a testimony of “the spirit” in the former colony that now finally came to light (Brandt De Telegraaf, 19 July 1975). Once again in the exhibition, what was emphasised was the prisoners’ ingenuity in crafting objects with little resources (a lot of dresses, spoons, trousers and other handicrafts were exhibited) and their “cunning” ways to “trick” their Japanese guards (Leeuwarder Courant, 28 February 1976). Women and children also once more played an important role in the narrative, but just like in other exhibitions, no attention was paid to the role of people’s social, cultural or ethnic background in wartime experiences. In short, the overall narrative of a specific people’s suffering and resilience of twenty-five years earlier was highlighted but detached from the framework of Dutch national suffering and the Netherlands’ colonial mission of bringing civilisation and welfare. The wartime experiences in Indonesia were more and more isolated and set apart from the Dutch national narrative of the Second World War. And when these memories were integrated in this national narrative, the war in Indonesia between 1942 and 1945 was considered separately from the morally and politically sensitive Indonesian Revolution of 1945 and 1949, although historically, the two were inextricably linked. This trend is reflected in the exhibitions that took place in this period and in the treatment of the material resonance of people’s experiences: the drawings, oven mitts and other objects became products of museality because of their historical value, but this did not happen automatically.

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When the exhibition ended in 1976, a large part of the collection was added to the museum collection of the Museum voor het Onderwijs (later Museon), the Dutch museum for education in The Hague. No other museum was willing to take care of the collection, which is I believe, aligned with the alleged attitude of the Rijksmuseum, and indicative of the lack of importance the Second World War in the former colony held in the Dutch national narrative. Although in the Army Museum in Delft at that moment, as before, the history of the Second World War in Indonesia was linked to the war in the Netherlands, the way this was done was indicative of the increasingly marginal role the war in Indonesia seemed to play in the memory of the Netherlands. Around 1975, an exhibition called “1821 days lack of freedom” was held to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. As the title suggests—also noting that in this calculation the ending of the war took place in September 1945 upon the signing of Japan’s capitulation—the “battle in the Far East”, as it was called, was part of the exhibition. It was, however, only discussed in a very small section at the end of this large exhibition and in a very factual manner (Catalogue Army Museum Delft 1975). The focus on the nationstate after 1945 and the separation of the memories of the Second World War in Indonesia from the experiences during the Indonesian Revolution after 1945 could possibly explain this development. To conclude, in the overall Dutch narrative of the Second World War, the war in Indonesia played just a minor and somewhat isolated part of the overall conflict and became more and more detached from the Dutch national story of individual suffering and heroic resilience for (socio-) political and moral reasons. Amongst the mnemonic communities, the memory of the war became more and more individualised as a result of the increasing psychologisation of people’s wartime experiences from the 1960s onwards (Locher-Scholten 1999, 212), but remained focussed on the experiences of one fairly homogeneous group.

More Cracks in the Collective Narrative of the Japanese Occupation, 1980–2000 Elsbeth Locher-Scholten observed how in the Netherlands, in the 1980s, recognition grew for the wartime experiences of Dutch people from Indonesia. The memories also became more diverse, because there was

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more room for other group of people’s experiences. (Locher-Scholten 1999, 213–219). This development is reflected in the exhibitions organised at the time. Between 1980 and 1982, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of Japan’s capitulation and the 40th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, two exhibitions on the Japanese occupation of Indonesia were on show in the Netherlands. In 1980, the exhibition titled “The Netherlands-Indies in the Second World War” was organised by a former internee, Adolf Winkler Sr. (1917–2009), and travelled to several Dutch cities that the exhibition of 1975–1977 did not visit (Stichting Herdenking 1980, 10). For the first time, the exhibitions gave rise to a plea for a more multifaceted perspective on the war. For example, in 1980, the communist newspaper De Waarheid criticised the exhibitions’ narrative. The newspaper condemned the perspectives portrayed in this exhibition as being “too narrow” and lamented the curator’s choice not to include “the battle against fascism”, the atomic bomb and the beginning of the nuclear age, the occlusion of Indonesia’s readiness for independence and the development of the political relations between the Netherlands and Indonesia. The newspaper believed there was too much emphasis on the suffering of Europeans working at notorious railways like the Burma Railway and those who interned in Japanese camps (De Waarheid, 21 August 1980). By criticising the visions of a specific, small community of war victims, the newspaper made it perfectly clear how hard it was to shape national memory as their visions did not meet current social and political objectives (Kansteiner 2002, 187–188). Most memory interlocutors were, however, part of the most vocal memory community of stakeholders, the dominantly white, Dutch former internees and these people could identify with the stories being told (Van der Linden 2001, 365–374). For instance, former internee and journalist Wim Ensing wrote in the newspaper Nederlands Dagblad about how visiting an exhibition on the Japanese occupation in Kampen in 1988 awakened memories of the “things” he had experienced himself (Nederlands Dagblad, 4 May 1988). At the same time, it became clear that the dominant memory of the Japanese occupation in Indonesia was being challenged. In 1981, forty years after the attack on Pearl Harbour, a follow-up exhibition of the 1975 show “Dutchmen in Japanese camps” was held. It was organised by the same Adriaanse and supported by many former internees who heeded Adriaanse’s call, amongst others in the Moesson

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periodical,1 to donate objects from the Japanese occupation (Moesson, 15 December 1980, 28). This exhibition was on display in the institution where most material was housed, The Hague’s Museum voor het Onderwijs. Although Locher-Scholten stated that the war experiences of women only came to the fore in this period (1999, 208–212), I see a continuation: in the first exhibitions, the suffering and resilience of women and children in camps played a major role in the larger story about the war in Indonesia, and that was still the case forty years later (Catalogue Nederlands-Indië in oorlogstijd. De Japanse bezetting [Delft, Museum voor het Onderwijs, 1981–1982]). The exhibition was necessary, according to newspapers and Loe de Jong, director of RIOD who opened the exhibition agreed to this. In his speech, he claimed that the experiences of the “Dutchmen in Indonesia (…) always played second fiddle to the (…) occupation of the Netherlands” (De Waarheid, 9 December 1981). Again (and against the trend of the time), the war in Indonesia was consciously mirrored by Dutch wartime experiences and, as had been done for years in magazines such as Tong Tong and The Indische Pensioen Bond, lamented being underrepresented in the national narrative of the Second World War. Yet, here too, we discern the separation of histories of the Second World War in Indonesia and in the Netherlands. The narrative of the exhibition now gave less attention to the Dutch wartime experiences; only minor references were made to the situation in the Netherlands. The separation of histories is reflected in the founding of a special “Indies Monument”. In 1988, a monument apart from the National Monument in Amsterdam, devoted to the Dutch experiences of the war in Indonesia, came into existence in The Hague. While these experiences had always been tied to the history of the war in the Netherlands, the main focus of the remembrance of the war in Indonesia was also now “officially” isolated from memories of the Second World War in the Netherlands (Locher-Scholten 1999, 216–220; Raben 2008, 105). And although the monument was devoted to all diverging wartime experiences of the Dutch in Indonesia, the most vocal voices in communicating the war in Indonesia had always belonged to those who had been interned. Yet, other voices than theirs had grown more vociferous, as we have 1 Moesson was the renamed Tong Tong Magazine, founded by Indo-European Tjalie Robinson and primarily targeting at the Indo-European community in the Netherlands. It still exists.

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seen, and which are now further evidenced by the exhibitions that were organised in this period. Between 1985 and 1987, the exhibition “Djojobojo: war and occupation in the Netherlands-Indies, 1940–1946” was held in the National War and Resistance Museum in Overloon, and for the first time, attention was paid to those who stayed outside of the Japanese camps (Nederlands Dagblad, 5 September 1985), involving the majority of Dutch civilians who were mainly people from Eurasian descent (Locher-Scholten 1999, 56). Some attention was also paid to the faith of the Indonesian people living during the occupation, and the chaotic period that the Dutch called “bersiap”, in which many Europeans and alleged pro-Dutch civilians—like Indo-Europeans, Chinese-Indonesians, Christian indigenous people and indigenous aristocracy—were killed. For the first time a Dutch exhibition on the war in Indonesia shed light on the impact of the war on diverse social groups. Not only was the perspective widened, but the intentions of the curators altered as well. Instead of trying to enhance Dutch understanding of the war in the former colony and “the good the Dutch did over there” (Stichting Herdenking 15 August 1945 [1980], 10), (as still was the case in 1980), the exhibition focussed on the future. The curators hoped the exhibition would enhance some understanding of “current developments” like “neonazism, racism, dictatorship” (de Vries 1985). But, some aspects of the representation of the war in Indonesia remained the same over the years and had become topoi. The exhibition of 1986–1987 drew on an image of Japanese soldiers that had become established since 1946, including a mannequin of a grim-looking Japanese camp guard placed in front of a reconstructed camp like in the first exhibition. The idea that the war in Indonesia did not receive much attention in the Netherlands was repeated over and over again well until 1995 (Claassen and Van Grootheest 1995, 16). The 1990s brought forth even more exhibitions on the Japanese occupation. In 1995 there were three important commemorations: the end of the Second World War and the independence of Indonesia fifty years earlier and the arrival of the first Dutch ships on Java 400 years before (Houben 1997, 47–66). Museon, the former Museum voor het Onderwijs, organised exhibitions on the Second World War in 1992, 1995 and 1997, with a special collection assembled by Adriaanse in the 1970s. The Dutch Pelita foundation, dedicated to Europeans from colonial Indonesia, organised an exhibition in 1992 as well as the notable

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Foundation Indies Memorial in Amstelveen in 1993. The exhibition “The distant war and its consequences, 1942–1949” (“De verre oorlog en zijn gevolgen, 1942–1949)”, was organised in the summer of 1992 in several Dutch cities (Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, 3 August 1992; Het Parool, 4 March 1993). And they were many more smaller exhibitions devoted to the subject. Until this moment, the memory mediators and memory consumers of the war in Indonesia were mainly stakeholders (Locher-Scholten 1999, 220). In 1999, the NIOD (the successor of the RIOD), and the Rijksmuseum, instead of interest groups or persons with a direct interest, initiated a large exhibition for the first time. They teamed up to create a large exhibition on the Japanese occupation that broke up the national narrative that had dominated until then. In the exhibition titled “Dutchmen, Japanese, Indonesians: The Japanese occupation of the NetherlandsIndies remembered” three perspectives, from Japan, the Netherlands and Indonesia were offered from an individual point of view (Somers 2002). Nationalities, however, remained the point of departure and acted as dividing lines. There was little room for hybrid stories, changes of nationalities and transnational stories. Race was discussed but did not play a major role. The representation of the war in Indonesia in the Netherlands continued to be reduced to the main national divide. Other groups within the large number of, by then elderly, war victims raised their voices. There were visitors who criticised the lack of attention to the history of those who stayed outside the Japanese camps (buitenkampers ) and the people from the Moluccas fighting as KNILsoldiers for the Netherlands and the overall history of the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL). One person even wrote in the visitors’ book that the exhibition was a “disgusting example of the falsification of history” (Boeijen 1999, 34–35), referring to how the history of the war in Indonesia became more and more fragmented in specific racial and ethnic war experiences. All those diverse visions were incompatible with social or political objectives amongst different social groups. The memories were unable to assume collective relevance as the war in Indonesia fell outside the national narrative as a result of nation-state processes. And that is still the case today.

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Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated how exhibitions were involved in the construction and evolution of a Dutch collective memory on the Second World War in Indonesia (Kansteiner 2002, 195). The exhibitions show how the memories of the Second World War in the former colony were immediately shared with the general public but have never become part of the Dutch national collective memory as people’s visions only met the social and political objectives of political elites and parties for a very short period of time (between 1946 and 1949). After the Indonesian Revolution and the Dutch recognising Indonesia’s independence in 1949, the resulting fixation on the nation state and the moral ambiguity of the colonial past and especially the Dutch role in the Indonesian Revolution of 1945–1949, meant that the Dutch memories of the Japanese occupation of former Indonesia did not fit within the new national historical narrative of the Second World War that emerged. This does not mean that a collective memory on the war in Indonesia was unable to come into existence. It did, but it was simply not a national collective memory. Groups of people engaged “in acts of remembrance together” (Winter 2006, 4) and formed, in interaction with other people, with cultural artefacts like the ones on display in exhibitions and in relation to past and present events their own collective memory. Collective memory is therefore a process, a “matter of activity” (Winter 2006, 4) and highly dynamic in the course of time. Analysing the exhibitions, we see how a collective memory originated from the shared communications of a select social group of war victims, came into existence right after the first exhibition, organised in 1946, and continued to exist with minor adaptions in the decades that followed. Initially, the experiences of the war victims of the Second World War in Indonesia were subsumed under the mainstream wartime experiences of the people in the Netherlands, but later became disconnected, and the individual experiences of predominantly women, children and prisoners of war in the Japanese internment camps in Indonesia became more and more foregrounded. This particular group of war victims was initially both the makers and consumers of those exhibitions, thereby blurring Kansteiner’s theoretical differentiation. The exhibitions, almost always organised by victims, suited their needs well: they were people trying to seek recognition from the outside world for the suffering and injustice they had endured during the war. In this “reworking” of memory or mobilising of “counter-memories”

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that challenged hegemonic memories, identities were created by recognition and acknowledgement. This tendency is in line with Michael Rothberg’s views: he considered memory’s multidirectionality, a resource that marginalised social groups self-consciously could deploy (2009). Consumers of these exhibitions were mainly victims, and their families circulated their experiences within their own group and a small group of other interested persons. Their memories did not fit within a framework of national contemporary interests, which could only lead to the feeling of “social forgetting” and the myth of the “Indies’ Silence” even in historiography. And when their memories were included in the Dutch national memory of Second World War, this was only possible if their war memories were separated from the morally “difficult” Indonesian Revolution. The fact that it was just one mnemonic community that dominated made the representations of the war in Indonesia rather one-dimensional, European white, class-bound and, with its focus on the representation of women and children, very gendered. This colonial Eurocentric view excluded many other people. Only after the 1980s did other victims of the war living in the Netherlands, like the many buitenkampers or Moluccan soldiers and their families, raise their voices and demand that their stories also be heard. For the first time since the 1940s, drastic reconstructions of the collective memory took place. Indonesians, and their hardships during the war, however, remained out of the picture. This process of mobilising memories has not ceased to this day and has resulted in a certain “memory war” within the various groups of stakeholders. Perhaps, this will lead to the fragmentation of memory or a reconstruction of this existing collective memory on the war, but it certainly complicates a possible inclusion of this troubled past in one Dutch national collective memory.

Works Cited Adriaanse, P.M. 1976. “Aan de inzenders(-sters) van bijdragen aan de tentoonstelling “Nederlanders in Japanse kampen.” Tong Tong (15 July): 26–27. Algemeen Indisch dagblad, 1 February 1947. Bank, Jan. 1983. Oorlogsverleden in Nederland. [Wartime past in the Netherlands] Baarn. Boeijen, Riny. 1999. De vlag hangt uit, maar wel halfstok. Moesson 44 (4): 34–35. Brandt, Willem. 1975. “Kamp.” De Telegraaf, 19 July.

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Captain, Esther. 1999. “Herschrijven en herdichten. Ervaring, feit en fictie in Nederlands-Indische kampliteratuur.” In Beelden van de Japanse bezetting van Indonesië. Persoonlijke getuigenissen en publieke beeldvorming in Indonesië, Japan en Nederland, [Representing the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia: Personal Testimonies and Public Images in Indonesia, Japan and the Netherlands], ed. Remco Raben, 183–201. Zwolle. Captain, Esther. 2002. Achter het kawat was Nederland: Indische oorlogservaringen en -herinneringen 1942–1995[Behind the kawat was the Netherlands: Indies War Experiences and War Memories]. Kampen. Ch. M., 1975. “‘Nederlanders in Japanse kampen. Een menswaardige expositie uit een onmenselijke tijd.” Tong Tong (15 July): 5. Claassen, Rob, and Joke van Grootheest. 1995. Getekend: Nederlanders in Japanse kampen. [Drawn: Dutch People in Japanese Camps]. ‘s-Gravenhage. Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge. Dagblad van het Noorden, 1947. Jan Ubbink. “Indië onder de Jappen. Een tentoonstelling, die elke Nederlander moet zien.” Dagblad van het Noorden, 5 February 1947. de Bruijn, Pieter and Susan Hogervorst. 2019. “Dossier historici en musea. Een reflectie op de uitgangspunten van tentoonstellingskritiek.” Historici.nl, 31 https://www.historici.nl/dossier-historici-en-musea-een-reflectieOctober. op-de-uitgangspunten-van-tentoonstellingskritiek/?type=bijdrageandfbclid= IwAR2M4412VUfsHgZFDfLjn4HvrSj6yZmgbEoekrybtdDApOSPtz6hODu 9yEM. Accessed 23 Dec 2019. de Haan, Ido. 1997. Na de ondergang. De herinnering aan de Jodenvervolging in Nederland 1945–1995. [After the Downfall. Remembering the Holocaust in the Netherlands]. The Hague. de Haan, Ido. 1998. The Construction of a National Trauma: The Memory of the Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands. Netherlands Journal of Social Sciences 34 (2): 196–217. De Tijd. 1955. “Foto’s uit Jappenkampen.” De Tijd, 17 September. De Vries, Peter G.B. 1985. “Djojobojo, - of: de Legende vervuld.” Nederlands Dagblad, 19 September. De Waarheid. 1980. “Japan, de capitulatie en de Indonesische bevrijdingsbeweging.” De Waarheid, 21 August. De Waarheid. 1981. “Tentoonstelling over Japanse bezetting Indonesië.” De Waarheid, 9 December. Delft, Museum voor het Onderwijs. 1981–1982. Catalogue Nederlands-Indië in oorlogstijd. De Japanse bezetting. Delft. 1975. Catalogue 1821 dagen onvrijheid. Duindam, David. 2016. Signs of the Shoah: The Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam.

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Heijmans-van Bruggen, M. ed. 2002. De Japanse bezetting in dagboeken: kamp Tjimahi 4. [The Japanese Occupation in Diaries: Tjimahi 4 Camp]. Amsterdam. Het Parool. 1947. “‘Nederland in oorlogstijd’ thans in Den Haag.” Het Parool, 6 May. Het Parool. 1993. “Amstelveen herdenkt oorlog in de Pacific.” Het Parool, 4 March. Het Vrije Volk. 1947. “Indië onder Japanse bezetting. Burgermeester Visser opent tentoonstelling bij Gerzon.” Het Vrije Volk, 18 June. Het Vrije Volk. 1950. “Aarde van Indonesische erevelden rust nu in de hoofdstad.” Het Vrije Volk, 2 May. Hogervorst, Susan and Ribbens, Kees. 2018. “Een aandeel in de verzetsidentiteit: De tentoonstelling “Weerbare democratie” en de toeëigening van het oorlogsverleden.” Histories of Encounters: History @ Erasmus, eds. A. van Stipriaan, G. Oonk, and S. Manickam, 104–107. Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. Houben, Vincent. 1997. A Torn Soul: The Dutch Public Discussion on the Colonial Past in 1995. Indonesia 63: 47–66. Kansteiner, Wulf. 2002. Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies. History and Theory 41: 179–197. Leeuwarder Courant. 1976. “‘Nederlanders in Japanse kampen.’ Historische Expositie in het Princessehof.” Leeuwarder Courant, 28 February. Leeuwarder Koerier, 5 April 1946. Locher-Scholten, Elsbeth. 1999. Van Indonesische urn tot Indisch monument. Vijftig jaar Nederlandse herinnering aan de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Azië. BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review 114 (2): 192–222. Locher-Scholten, Elsbeth. 2002. Land van ooit, land van nu. Koloniale herinneringen in Nederland 1980–2001. Ons Erfdeel 45: 661–671. Moesson, 15 December 1980, 28. National Museum of World Cultures (NMWC). 1946–1947. National Museum of World Cultures, archives KIT Royal Tropical Institute, inv.nr. 3151–19. “Stukken betreffende verlening van medewerking aan tentoonstellingen (…) Indië onder Japanse bezetting, 1946–1947, 1956. Letter from E.E. de Jong Keesing, head of the Indisch department of the RIOD to H. Offerhaus, Indisch Instituut, d.d. Amsterdam, 15 April 1947. National Museum of World Cultures (NMWC). 1946. National Museum of World Cultures, archives KIT Royal Tropical Institute, inv.nr. 3151–1. Discussion with Mr. Voorstad, Lulofs and Bitter on the preparation of a possible exhibition in our museum, d.d. Enschede, 25 September. National Museum of World Cultures (NMWC). 1947a. National Museum of World Cultures, archives KIT Royal Tropical Institute, inv.nr. 3151–49. List

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of individuals and their objects that have been given in loan for the exhibition “The Indies under Japanese occupation. National Museum of World Cultures (NMWC). 1947b. National Museum of World Cultures, archives KIT Royal Tropical Institute, inv.nr. 3151–47. Report “Tentoonstelling “Indië onder Japanse bezetting” in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, Amsterdam, October 1947. National Museum of World Cultures (NMWC). 1947c. National Museum of World Cultures, archives KIT Royal Tropical Institute, inv.nr. 3151–21. Leaflet “Indië onder Japanse bezetting.” Nederlands dagblad, 4 May 1988. Nederlands Dagblad. 1985. “Oorlogsmuseum: Indië van 1940–1946.” Nederlands Dagblad, 5 September. Nieuwsblad van het Noorden. 1992. “‘Verre oorlog’ uit vergetelheid.” Nieuwsblad van het Noorden, 3 August. Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden. 1946. “Een historische tentoonstelling.” Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden, 9 December. Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden. 1947. “Nederland in oorlogstijd. Unieke geschiedenis der bezetting.” Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden, 17 February. Oostindie, Gert. 2005. Historische gebaren. Indische geschiedenis, postkoloniaal trauma en identiteitspolitiek. De Academische Boekengids 50 (May): 7–9. Pach, Hilde. 2016. “Tentoonstelling over het verzet in 1946. Kunstenaars over de oorlogsjaren.” Historisch Nieuwsblad 5. https://www.historischnieuw sblad.nl/tweedewereldoorlog/artikelen/tentoonstelling-over-het-verzet-in1946.html. Accessed 20 Nov 2019. Raaijmakers, Ilse. 2018. De stilte en de storm: 4 en 5 mei sinds 1945. Amsterdam. Raben, Remco. 2008. Dutch Memories of Captivity in the Pacific War. In Forgotten Captives in Japanese-Occupied Asia, ed. Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn, 94–110. Abingdon. Romijn, Peter et.al. eds. 2014. The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945. Amsterdam. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. 2009. Somers, Erik. 2002. Nederlanders, Japanners, Indonesiërs: een opmerkelijke tentoonstelling. [Representing the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia: Personal Testimonies and Public Images in Indonesia, Japan and the Netherlands]. Zwolle/Amsterdam. Somers, Erik. 2014. De oorlog in het museum: herinnering en verbeelding. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam. Stichting Herdenking. 1945 [1980]. Catalogue Nederlands-Indië in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (15 August 1945): 10. van der Linden, Liane. 2001. “Cultureel erfgoed van minderheden in hun eigen recht.” Boekman: tijdschrift voor kunst, cultuur en beleid. 49: 365–374.

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Van Vree, Frank. 1995. In de schaduw van Auschwitz. Herinneringen, beelden, geschiedenis. [In the Shadow of Auschwitz: Memories, Representations, History]. Groningen. Van Vree, Frank. 1999. “‘Onze gemartelde bruid.’ De Japanse bezetting van Indonesië in Nederlandse films en documentaires.” In Beelden van de Japanse bezetting van Indonesië. Persoonlijke getuigenissen en publieke beeldvorming in Indonesië, Japan en Nederland, [Representing the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia: Personal Testimonies and Public Images in Indonesia, Japan and the Netherlands], ed. Remco Raben, 202–217. Zwolle. Wimmer, Andreas, and Nina Glick Schiller. 2002. “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-state Building, Migration and the Social Sciences.” Global Networks. Winter, Jay. 2006. Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century. New Haven.

PART IV

Visualising War Memory

CHAPTER 8

Reimagining Japan: Tintin, Hergé and the Enemy Kees Ribbens

Introduction Tintin is one of the most famous European comic book characters, and “almost certainly the best-known Belgian comics series on a global level” (Pellegrin 2016, 157). This young reporter, created by the Belgian comic artist Hergé (pseudonym of Georges Remi, 1907–1983), is characterized as a mixture of adventurer and detective, travelling around the world in order to fight various guises of evil—from communists to criminals (Flic 2020, 100). Tintin first appeared in January 1929 in the children’s section of the right-wing Catholic Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century) when the story Tintin au pays des Soviets (Tintin in the land of the Soviets) began. From then till the mid-1970s, Tintin, his dog Snowy, his future companion Captain Haddock, and various

K. Ribbens (B) NIOD, KNAW, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] ESHCC, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_8

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other characters in his entourage, would experience adventures around the world. These stories were first published in newspapers and magazines before being edited and compiled in book form, initially in black and white, and from 1942, in colour by Casterman publishers (Thompson 1991, 7). This resulted in no less than 23 albums with Tintin stories. Hergé’s work had a great artistic influence on the development of comic strips in Europe; Thompson calls Hergé “the father of the European comic strip” (Thompson 1991, 176) based on his so-called ligne claire (clear line): a style of drawing limited to outlining contours, while the narrative restricts itself as much as possible to images. The drawn creations became a great commercial success, especially from the late 1940s onwards. The Tintin stories not only reached a French-speaking audience in Belgium, but, thanks to many different translations, also attracted readers far beyond his country of origin. In 1930, the first foreign readers were reached in France, followed by Switzerland in 1932. Portuguese translations appeared from 1936 onwards, and Dutch translations, four years later. Many other languages would follow after World War II, including non-European languages on various continents. Japanese translations started to appear in 1968, after an animated cartoon appeared on Fuji Television Network from 1964. The current readership, based on sales in the millions, comprises “at least as many adults as children” (Thompson 1991, 10; 12; Iwamoto 2016, 341). Hergé’s oeuvre has resulted in an impressive, ever-increasing bibliography, as Peeters, one of Hergé’s biographers, observed in 2002 (Peeters 2003, 12. Cf. Sanders 2016a, b, c, 9–18). From 1959 onwards, these works have dealt with the characters in the comic strip and with their creator and have provided the work with interpretations corresponding to the ideas of Freud, Heidegger and many others. They address his drawing style, the themes depicted, as well as the biographical, political and religious aspects of his work (Peeters 2003, 12–13). This increased interest in Hergé has become part of the emerging field of comics studies since the last decade of the twentieth century, reflecting “the increased status and awareness of comics as an expressive medium and as part of the historical record” (Heer and Worcester 2009, xi). Four themes are predominant in comics scholarship: “the history and genealogy of comics, the inner workings of comics, the social significance of comics, and the close scrutiny and evaluation of comics” (Heer and Worcester 2009, xi). As Mountfort observed, the Adventures of Tintin received significant critical attention in these emerging discourses on graphic novels and comics,

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and have been interpreted by mainly Western scholars from a variety of theoretical perspectives and in the context of Hergé’s ideological positions (Mountfort 2011, 35). Comics studies have increased the awareness of how graphic sequential narratives came into their modern form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when various centres of comics culture could be identified, such as the United States and Japan, but also France and Belgium. Academic literature on comics has focussed on these centres, including the dominant Franco-Belgian comics industry (Prorokova and Tal 2018, 2–4). Comics created here often dealt with domestic events, both contemporary and historical, including violent conflicts and Western colonialism. Prorokova and Tal recently pointed out that comics scholars have regularly focused on comics about war but often in a selective way: “the studies tend to focus on major conflicts, privileging those that were fought in the twentieth century and that involved western powers” (Prorokova and Tal 2018, 6). While there is an increasing academic interest in comics about World War II and the Holocaust in particular, studies about the Second Sino–Japanese War and the preceding years in comics are still rare. Against this background, this chapter will analyse Hergé’s view of Japan and the Japanese people. The relatively strong presence of Chinese culture and society in Hergé’s oeuvre, underlined in two of his most famous comic books, Le Lotus bleu (The Blue Lotus, 1936) and Tintin au Tibet (Tintin in Tibet, 1960), reflects the author’s fascination with China and has resulted in a growing body of academic and fan-based literature on Hergé and China. However, a more structural analysis of the role of Japan in Hergé’s oeuvre, his view of the Japanese people in wartime, with an eye for personal involvement, political positions and commercial considerations, is largely missing, with the exception of the work by Paul Mountfort, who focussed on Hergé’s Orientalist representations in the Tintin series, and Idesbald Goddeeris, who analysed the racist constructions of Chinese characters in Belgian comics while including relevant stereotyping of Japanese characters in those visual narratives (Mountfort 2011; Goddeeris 2013). I will look at Hergé’s worldview, including the political context in which he operated, to explore how his ideas about and representations of the Japanese people relate to the political and military events of the 1930s and 1940s, in particular, the Japanese occupation of China and its position during World War II. This may help to illustrate to what extent Tintin’s encounters with Japanese people (not with Japan itself, as his adventures never brought him there) depend

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on Hergé’s position vis-à-vis China and his later tendency towards an apparently less outspoken stance. By doing so, I will clarify how the medium of comics—a mass medium often considered light-hearted that can nonetheless express strong political views—contributes to a specific representation of war experiences and national stereotypes, which has a long-term impact across cultural borders and various generations of readers and thus influences popular memory culture more strongly than is often recognized.

A Catholic Comic Character Discovers the World For many young readers, the worldwide adventures of Tintin, and their remediation in many forms of merchandising, was a visual introduction to other societies and cultures in an era in which the visual impact of television was still limited. The Belgian critic Michel Serres underlines Hergé’s world-wide spectrum (with adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America) with Tintin, the righteous, unwavering comrade always at the centre (Thompson 1991, 11). Raised in a conservative Catholic environment, Hergé expressed the views of the community in which he grew up, as his biographers and other scholars emphasise (Assouline 1996; Peeters 2003; Thompson 1991; De Groot 2016). Hergé had joined the Boy Scouts to escape the everyday dullness of his bourgeois environment and was strongly attracted by the Belgian Scouts’ idealisation of the North American Indians. He was a Scout “in heart and soul” (Peeters 2003, 30), which is how, in his own words, he discovered the world by making trips to several European countries and learned to make use of his drawing talents (Thompson 1991, 18–19). In 1927 he was hired as an illustrator for the Catholic daily newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle by abbé Norbert Wallez, priest and admirer of Mussolini, more interested in politics than religion. In early 1929, he published the first episode of a new bande dessinée (comic strip) in the weekly youth supplement that mixed scouting tips, religious articles and knitting patterns. The episode introduced a journalist, Tintin, who travels to the Soviet Union, in an undisguised attack on communism in which Soviet representatives, Bolsheviks and terrorists were considered equally evil (Assouline 1996, 47). It is an early example of how Hergé’s view of “the other” was often biased and selective. Yet, opinions differ as to whether Hergé’s work was structurally xenophobic in general. According to Assouline, the tractability with which

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Hergé confirmed the prevailing morals was irrefutable in these years, also with regard to the colonial paternalism expressed in Tintin’s subsequent adventures in Congo. Here “Hergé unthinkingly reproduces the dehumanizing racist stereotypes used to justify Belgian colonialism” (Mountfort 2011, 37). Nevertheless, Tintin acted in principle as a noble knight fighting against evil and standing up for the underdog, strongly based in a perceived duality between good and evil. This is visible too in the third series of adventures in which he defended the exploited Native Americans in the United States. Although Hergé would not completely escape from the anti-Semitism apparent in Le Petit Vingtième, some authors believe he gradually abandoned his more explicit right-wing character (Assouline 1996, 59–62; Thompson 1991, 13, 162; Peeters 2003, 93). However, De Groot convincingly emphasizes that the mixture of anti-communism, anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism (as well as missionary colonialism) fits within the rather utopian ideology of a reactionary social Catholicism, which breaks through thinking in terms of left and right, as can also be deducted from his frequently expressed fear of “secret societies” and conspiracies (De Groot 2016, 372; 384; 386; 395). After previous adventures across three continents, it was no surprise that Tintin’s next destination was East Asia, with its recent political turmoil. His fourth adventure began on 8 December 1932 under the title Tintin en Orient (Tintin in the Orient), which later became Les Cigars du Pharaon (Cigars of the Pharaoh). From there on, the adventures of Tintin have developed from a burlesque succession of coincidences into a coherent story with built-up tension and plausible conclusions, also reflecting a greater understanding and more positive view of foreign cultures (Thompson 1991, 43; Peeters 2003, 88). The representation of China may illustrate this, but the question remains whether that is also the case for Japan. To answer this question, I will analyse six publications: a magazine comic strip, four comic books and one collectors album, spanning a period from 1933 to 1968: De la musique…avant tout chose (Music…first and foremost, 1933); Les Cigares du Pharaon (Cigars of the Pharaoh, Tintin vol. 4, 1934); Le Lotus bleu (The Blue Lotus, Tintin vol. 5, 1936); Le Crabe aux pinces d’or (The Crab with the Golden Claws, Tintin vol. 9, 1941); L’Aviation. Guerre 1939 – 1945 (Aviation. World War II , Collection Voir et Savoir, 1953); Vol 714 pour Sydney (Flight 714 to Sydney, Tintin vol. 22, 1968).

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Evil Japanese Against a Chinese Background: Political and Diplomatic Turmoil in the 1930s The first Japanese character appears in 1933. In the summer of this year, not long after the Nazis had come to power in Germany and Japan had withdrawn from the League of Nations, Quick and Flupke, the characters in a short gag comic published in Le Petit Vingtième, listened to the radio in the hope of hearing a concert. Constantly switching channels, all they could find were political speeches, except for one unexpected physics presentation. Patriotism, war rhetoric, longing for peace and references to turbulent times predominated in the radio fragments represented by Hergé. The young protagonists finally decided to silence the radio and went outside to listen to a barrel organ. In this two-page narrative, Hergé not only portrayed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, but also British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, his French colleague Édouard Herriot (who had actually left office a few months before), and the Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Hymans (Hergé 1933; Assouline 1996, 100; Braun 2019, 130–144). With some effort, Stalin might be identified in the caricatured Soviet leader. However, the unnamed Japanese politician, recognizable by the Japanese flag on his papers and by the seemingly (though mostly fictitious) Japanese characters in his speech balloon, did not resemble Prime Minister Sait¯o Makoto or foreign minister Uchida K¯osai. Yet, the physical representation of this Japanese man did not appear to be overtly racist or otherwise derogatory (although the eyes, unlike those of the western politicians represented, were shown as narrow stripes). The incorporation of a Japanese politician in this line-up reflected Hergé’s awareness of Japan’s increased political status, yet the anonymous character with his inaccessible speech also illustrated an obvious lack of familiarity with Japanese politics. The main source of depictions of Japanese people among Hergé’s comics is The Blue Lotus. Pre-publication in Le Petit Vingtième (The Little Twentieth, a weekly youth supplement in Le Vingtième Siècle) started in August 1934 and lasted till October 1935. This adventure continued a storyline started in Cigars of the Pharaoh, pre-published between 1932 and 1934, which revealed the secrets of an international drug smuggling enterprise. One of these drug smugglers was a Japanese man, who remains nameless, but his involvement connected Japan directly to themes of crime and secrecy.

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In The Blue Lotus, Tintin continues his adventures in China where he manages to uncover a drug-smuggling ring. The background for this story was the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which took place after the Mukden Incident in September 1931. Tintin criticized the action of the Japanese invaders and revealed the machinations of Japanese spies in China. In doing so, Hergé denounced Tokyo as the instigator of the railway attack, pointing to Japanese double-dealing at the same time that the Japanese government was attempting to claim innocence to the outside world (Assouline 1996, 108). It appears Hergé tried to avoid drawing on traditional Western stereotypes, misconceptions and ignorance of China, as becomes evident when Tintin’s new story was announced on 8 March 1934 in Le Petit Vingtième. There Tintin makes it explicitly clear that it’s a mistake “to believe that all Chinese are false and cruel and such” (Peeters 2003, 102). In the story of The Blue Lotus, Tintin befriends Chang, a boy he has saved from drowning, “and helps him to overcome prejudices about Western culture”. Tintin stresses the lack of knowledge among Chinese and Europeans about each other’s cultures and questions the perception of Chinese culture as inferior to Western culture (Rösch 2014, 230). As Goddeeris observes, the Chinese characters, supported by Tintin, are represented as “friendly people who have become the victims” not only of Japanese imperialists but also of their Western collaborators who are portrayed as “brutes who do not show any respect for Chinese yet claim to represent a superb western civilization” (Goddeeris 2013, 233). However, his creator didn’t have a problem portraying Japanese as untrustworthy and violent creatures—even though “truly gruesome acts are rare” in the Tintin stories (Tarbox 2016, 146). The main antagonist and obviously the main evil character in The Blue Lotus is Japanese businessman Mr. Mitsuhirato (no first name given), the owner of a women’s clothing store in Shanghai, who turns out to be involved in a drug trafficking ring but also works as an agent spying for the Japanese government. Mitsuhirato is a deceitful character who exploits political turmoil in China both to his personal advantage and to the advantage of his imperialistic government. He is presented as the mastermind of the Mukden Incident, sparking the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and escalating the (undeclared) war between China and Japan. To pursue his goals, he tries to have Tintin killed but doesn’t succeed. In the end, he is captured and arrested, after which he commits suicide by hara-kiri.

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In The Blue Lotus, Hergé presented the Japanese characters, as Thompson puts it, as “ugly, ruthless, military guys, with short legs and long teeth” (Thompson 1991, 52–53). Tara Jacob summarizes the Japanese characters as “bullying, superior, selfish, and cleverly malicious”, as villains taking advantage of the Chinese characters (Jacob 2006). They are “even more blackened than Western imperialists” as Goddeeris notes. In addition, among the frequently depicted slogans in the streets, various anti-Japanese slogans could be found such as “Don’t buy Japanese goods”. The slogan “Get rid of imperialism!” however, not only addressed the Japanese occupiers, but also the British and Americans who were in charge of the International Concession in Shanghai (Goddeeris 2013, 233, 236).1 Hergé’s sources of inspiration for his portrayal of Japanese characters have not yet been identified. Paul Herman’s research on popular visual representations of Japanese characters in Francophone comics of the preWorld War II decades shows a variety of depictions, as both traditional and modern. Regardless of their positive or negative connotations, these depictions frequently show “slit-eyes” (Herman, 2009, 6–42). However, long teeth were not yet a common element in this imagery—unlike standardized depictions of bucktoothed Japanese people as a stereotypical enemy in many US comic books published during World War II (Woodbury 2017, 25–36). The ideas behind such racist stereotypes can be traced back to the 1870s and 1880s when white Americans, fearing the loss of their jobs, discriminated against Chinese immigrant labourers, described as the “yellow peril”. Related concerns about perceived threats coming from East Asia were also expressed in Europe, for instance in Herman Knackfuß’ painting Völker Europas, wahrt Eure heiligsten Güter (People of Europe, Guard Your Most Sacred Goods, 1895) inspired by the German emperor Wilhelm II. Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, perceived as the unexpected sign of a rising eastern power conquering a western Christian nation, contributed to a more general idea of a violent and heathen “Asian menace”, a threat which,

1 It was not until 1983 that The Blue Lotus was translated into English because

according to Thompson the representation of the English colonials would have been regarded as unfavourable, while Mountfort points out that some of slogans in this Methuen edition were censored: 抵制日貨 (Down with Japanese products!) simply became 大吉路 (Great Luck Road), a move which seemed to reflect “Japan’s growing status as a western ally and industrial powerhouse” (Thompson 1991, 55; Mountfort 2011, 40).

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depending on the situation, could be linked to either China or Japan (Dower 1986, 156–157). In popular culture the yellow peril stereotype was strengthened by British author Sax Rohmer (Arthur Sarsfield Ward), who from 1912 onwards achieved fame as creator of the best-selling Fu Manchu novels— translated into French from 1931 onwards and also remediated in film—about a Chinese character of mysterious malignance, labelled as “that Yellow Peril fiend incarnate” (Witchard 2014, [99]) who hated westerners and wanted to dominate the world, situated amidst fantasies about ruthless international Chinese conspiracies (Frayling 2014; Mayer 2013). Although these popular narratives constitute a clear example of Sinophobia, the sentiments expressed were not solely directed at China. John Dower stresses that the American yellow peril “derived not from concern with any one country or people in particular, but from a vague and ominous sense of the vast, faceless, nameless yellow horde: the rising tide, indeed, of colour” (Dower 1986, 156–157). The negative, evil associations were easily extended to Japan once its military expansion threatened western interests, resulting in “a pan-Asian Yellow Peril” from the late nineteenth century onwards (Witchard 2014, [302, 795]). The interpretation of Japan’s questionable role in Hergé’s comic led to anger among Japanese diplomats in Belgium. Their awareness of the adventures of Tintin confirmed the popularity of this comic strip hero. Hergé’s biographers indicate that the Japanese embassy engaged a high-ranking Belgian army officer, lieutenant general Raoul Pontus, who happened to be chairman of the Chinese–Belgian Friendship Society, to express the Japanese dissatisfaction in person to the editors of Le Vingtième—on the pretext that Japan would be pursuing the stability and prosperity of China, which was supposed to be in a disastrous situation as a result of internal disputes—and to threaten with legal proceedings (Peeters 2003, 108; Assouline 1996, 108; Rémy 2018). In addition to this (undated) protest, to which the editorial staff did not succumb, the ambassador allegedly protested vehemently to the Belgian government, demanding a ban on the comic strip and threatening to take the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague (Thompson 1991, 53). Whether these protests on a diplomatic level, despite their appearance in later biographies, actually took place is doubtful. Not only does Thompson fail to mention any source for this, in the biography of Hergé’s influential Chinese friend Zhang by Coblence and Yifei the reported

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protests remain limited to Potus’ performance (Coblence and Yifei 2003, 75). Despite the protests, the hardcover book edition of The Blue Lotus appeared in 1936, before the start of the full-scale invasion of China by Japan, that previously had already established control over the northeastern region of China where, in 1932, the expansion of Japanese influence had resulted in the creation of Manchukuo, a puppet state supervised by Japan. Once the Second Sino–Japanese War had started in July 1937 and resulted in a rapid Japanese advance, Hergé’s attention, as reflected by Tintin’s latest adventures, had been directed towards Europe where, in a more indirect way, he seemed to make satirical portrayals of the Nazis and other German villains. Hergé was not in favour of the Hitler regime, but his distaste of this particular variant of totalitarianism was less outspoken than his previously expressed repulsion of communism. Peeters describes Hergé’s political outlook in the late 1930’s as characterized by “a sincere anti-Nazism” and a conviction to defend Belgian neutrality, supporting the view of the Belgian King Léopold III (Peeters 2002, 262). Why Hergé had chosen China as the setting for the story remains unclear. His knowledge of the country, which often featured in the news during the 1930s, was initially fragmentary and superficial (Assouline 1996, 99), probably comparable to his lack of familiarity with Japan. Hergé had some Chinese acquaintances, such as Lu Zhengxiang, a former Chinese diplomat who had become a monk in the Belgian monastery of Saint Andrew in Bruges. The Benedictine friar who had introduced the two, Edward Neut, had predicted that Tintin, during his upcoming adventures in China, would encounter Japanese soldiers “who want nothing but to be soldiers and to fight like the Prussians fought in Belgium in 1914”, which recalled the painful experience of Belgium, traumatized by World War I (Thompson 1991, 50; Assouline 1996, 101–103). The counsellor of some Catholic Chinese students at Louvain University, Abbé Gosset, in early 1934 also became aware that Tintin’s adventures would take him to China. Asking Hergé to avoid stereotypical simplifications, he introduced him to Zhang Chongren (1907–1998),2

2 In most French publications, he is referred to as Tchang Tchong-jen, but according to Goddeeris the correct current spelling is Zhang Chongren (although Mountfort uses the name Chang Chong-chen (Goddeeris 2013, 232; Mountfort 2011, 39).

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a student from Shanghai at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. Hergé and Zhang started seeing each other frequently and became close friends, discussing Chinese history while Zhang taught Hergé to draw Chinese characters. Zhang returned to China in September 1935; Hergé really missed him. Of all the nostalgic feelings that Hergé experienced in the postwar years, “not one was as strong as his need for friendship with Zhang” (Thompson 1991, 54, 148). It inspired him to write the story Tintin in Tibet in which the Chinese protagonist Chang (referred to in French in the original comic as Tchang)—“the only one for whom Tintin will ever shed a tear”—appears to have died in a plane crash. In March 1981, Hergé would finally be reunited with Zhang when he returned to Belgium. (Assouline 1996, 457–462). Their friendship resulted in Hergé’s greater involvement with Chinese society, and better understanding of the impact of the Japanese invasion and occupation of China (Thompson 1991, 50–52; Assouline 1996, 11; Peeters 2003, 107), influencing the way in which the Second Sino–Japanese War was portrayed in The Blue Lotus, which clearly illustrates an outspoken pro-Chinese and anti-Japanese political position. It is ambivalent whether Hergé’s approach to the Japanese characters reflects the general Belgian attitude towards Japan in the 1930s. Culturally, there was a certain admiration. From the late nineteenth century onwards, there had been artistic and literary interest in Japan, but it was relatively less intense than the Belgian interest in China. Politically, the Western fear of Japan’s international aspirations was noticeable, especially after Japan’s victory in the Russo–Japanese war, after which Japanese people were increasingly regarded as a “yellow peril” threatening European civilization, or more specifically, the European colonial and geopolitical interests in the Far East. A certain Belgian ambivalence is illustrated by the fact that in the early 1930s, for economic reasons, the Belgian government contemplated recognizing the puppet state Manchukuo, but eventually abandoned this idea (Yamasaki 2011, 15–29; Japanse studies KU Leuven 2019; Vande Walle 2005 and Vande Walle 2016). De Groot’s argument that the Belgian view on China at that time, in particular among Catholics, “tended to favour Japan over China”, and therefore, that “Hergé’s view on international politics started to differ from the usual view in his milieu” (De Groot 2016, 384), should be viewed with some caution, also because China was considered more important as an area for the generally paternalistic Catholic mission (in which no less than 680 Belgian priests were involved between 1865

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and 1948) than Japan, in particular for the well-known Scheut missionaries—founded in 1862 as the Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae (Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (CCIM)) under the leadership of Father Théophile Verbist—who were already active in China before the establishment of an official Belgian representative in Beijing. (Cf. Taveirne 2009, 2016, 204). Once the Lotus narrative had ended in the children’s weekly supplement, East Asia did not disappear from Tintin’s universe. This was illustrated by an appeal by a high-ranking Catholic clergyman, the Apostolic Vicar of Nanjing Paul Yü Pin, published in Le Petit Vingtième just before Christmas 1937. The aim was to collect money by selling a colourful calendar designed by Hergé for the “young Chinese friends” who had become innocent victims of war during the Nanjing massacre. Hergé not only drew the illustration of the victimized Chinese civilians but also had his name written in Chinese characters—underlining his emotional identification with the Chinese (Yü Pin and Hergé 1937, 2; Assouline 1996, 115). Particularly, remarkable here is that Japan’s role is not mentioned at all in the text, nor does the anonymous plane attacking China show any signs of identification. For those who had read The Blue Lotus and had followed the recent news reports, Japan’s role may have been obvious. But it is not impossible that the earlier pressure by Japanese diplomats had resulted in a more cautious editorial policy to bypass political sensitivities.

A Neutral Japanese Character: Representation During World War II In May 1940, the German army invaded Belgium and the publication of Le Vingtièeme Siècle and its children’s supplement ended. Hergé, who financially largely depended on his widely read creation, decided to continue Tintin’s adventures in the leading Belgian Francophone newspaper Le Soir from the autumn of 1940 onwards, more precisely in the children’s supplement Le Soir-Jeunesse, despite the fact that it was placed under censorship and that a new chief editor turned out to be very supportive of the German occupation authorities and their war policies. His aim to reach a wider audience and to make Tintin as familiar as possible—during the war he also started publishing his work in a Flemish newspaper under Nazi control, Het Laatste Nieuws (Sanders 2016a, b, c, 127)—while keeping a certain distance from current affairs in his comics,

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seems to have blinded Hergé to the reaction of those who considered this move during the German occupation anything but patriotic and certainly not neutral. (Peeters 2002, 264–270). In Tintin’s new adventure, Le Crabe aux pinces d’or (The Crab with the Golden Claws ), the story unfolds in Morocco, where Tintin had travelled to pursue a gang of international opium smugglers. A minor role is played by a Japanese character, Bunji Kuraki. He is an undercover police agent from Yokohama, Japan, who is part of an operation to stop the drug ring. Kuraki was kidnapped while trying to warn Tintin and was only freed from his imprisonment onboard the ship Karaboudjan in a Moroccan harbour once the story had almost come to an end. The appearance of this Japanese police officer is remarkable. He looks very different from his compatriot Mitsuhirato. The way in which his face is depicted looks considerably less racist. This is above all due to the omission of the buckteeth which Mitsuhirato and other alleged Japanese villains were provided with as default in The Blue Lotus (Tarbox 2016, 148), while the nose is depicted considerably smaller and less animal-like than that of Mitsuhirato. In a general sense, the facial expression and posture appears less aggressive, more receptive, which is reinforced by the fact that the eyes are more dots than dashes. All this contributes to a more neutral appearance. Moreover, Kuraki’s clothing and posture do not differ much from the way Tintin himself is portrayed. The apparent equivalence of this Japanese official and Tintin seems to be further underlined by the curiosity they share through their investigative activities: Tintin as a journalist and Kuraki as a detective. According to Thompson, this representation in The Crab with the Golden Claws eliminates “the negative, generalizing image of the Japanese in The Blue Lotus ” (Thompson 1991, 82). French historian Charles Daguerre similarly wonders whether the Japanese police officer is intended to compensate for Hergé’s treatment of the Japanese in The Blue Lotus (Daguerre 2004, 70–74). Does this mean that Hergé had deliberately said goodbye to stereotypical racist clichés in his stories? Although theoretically possible, this seems unlikely, looking at the anti-Semitic way in which he portrayed Jewish characters during World War II (Peeters 2002, 265–266; Peeters 2003: 169–173. Cf. Hahn 2021: 250–256). It might be that Hergé, once having joined the German-friendly Le Soir in 1940, had accepted the presence of the German occupation regime and, as a result, considered it wise not to ridicule their Japanese ally, who had recently (27 September 1940) signed the Tripartite pact with Germany and Italy. Though this political

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consideration seems plausible, the outspoken anti-Japanese clichés from The Blue Lotus simply returned to the surface when this story was republished as a book during the war without significant changes (apart from a few colour illustrations). So apparently, there was no urgent need to modify this stereotypical imagery in the new political context. It seems more likely that because Kuraki was shown as an individual Japanese character completely outside the Chinese context with which Hergé had so strongly identified, the anti-Japanese feelings were far less present, or even absent, with regard to this obviously well-meaning foreigner. Therefore, a combination of the second and third option appears most probable, resulting in the transformation of the main Japanese character in these two stories from an opportunistic businessman to a law-abiding police officer—but both serving the government.

Transcending Wartime Contradictions in Transnational Merchandise After the Belgian capital was liberated by the Allied forces in September 1944, Hergé was arrested on the charge of collaboration with the enemy as he had worked for the pro-Nazi newspaper Le Soir. It was not so much the content of his comics that had angered the resistance movement and the authorities, but mostly the fact that he had continued to work for this propagandistic newspaper. For a period, he was not allowed to publish while his civil rights were temporarily withdrawn. This would leave a lifelong mark on his identity; in the words of his biographer Peeters: “The trial which Hergé escaped at the time of the liberation seems destined to be never ending” (Peeters 2002, 261). In a mixture of naiveté and opportunism—Peeters did not consider him an active collaborator but described his behaviour as “in the very least thoughtless” (Peeters 2002, 270)—Hergé did not show remorse for actions he considered innocent, as if his work had not contributed to the popularity of a Nazified medium (Braun 2019, 133–134). His return was underlined in 1946 by the publication of a full-colour edition of The Blue Lotus (followed in 1947 by a Dutch translation) and by launching a weekly children’s magazine. This highly successful comic strip magazine, Le Journal Tintin,—made possible by the support of its publisher, the prominent former Resistance fighter Raymond Leblanc (Braun 2019, 148)—reached enthusiastic audiences in Belgium, France and the Netherlands (who could choose between an edition in French or Dutch) and strongly stimulated Tintin’s fame

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in the Western world. As a result of this increased popularity, merchandise based upon the various Tintin characters started to appear, which was an increasingly relevant source of income for the studio Hergé had founded (Peeters 2003, 328–329; Thompson 1991, 121). Not only dolls, puppets, keyholders, games and other toys were made, but also books in which Tintin’s imagery was connected to historical topics such as the development of cars, ships and airplanes (see Jouret 1991). One of these books, an album from 1953, titled L’Aviation. Guerre 1939–1945 – collection Voir et Savoir (Aviation. War 1939–1945—See and Know Collection) contains some rather distinct examples in which Tintin’s world is connected to Japan. The purpose of such an album, published less than ten years after the end of World War II, was to bring together separate images called chromos, which could be collected using vouchers attached to certain consumer products. The entire collection, made by Hergé and his close collaborator Jacques Martin, consists of sixty pictures chronologically depicting the development of military aviation between 1939 and 1945. Each illustration in the album shows an airplane and a character, inspired by Tintin, dressed in matching clothing and accompanied by his dog Snowy. In most cases, it is a military uniform of one of the warring parties. Every airplane gets a full page with an overview of the development and performance of the aircraft including characteristics such as width, length, maximum speed, types of engines and weaponry. In this way, the album combines a fascination for (aviation) technique with a somewhat playful representation of the Allied and Axis belligerents during the World War II. This album illustrates wartime aviation history from seven different countries. In the introduction, the selected countries are listed in a strictly alphabetical order (in French: German, American, English, French, Italian, Japanese and Russian), suggesting a neutral representation of recent world history, which is further underlined by the fact that Tintin appears in uniforms both from the Allied and the Axis-side, including the outfit of the Hitler Youth and the SS. Japan has a relatively modest share of a total of sixty military aircraft depicted; three are Japanese. But looking more closely at both the images and the texts in the album, references to Japan appear in or next to thirteen different chromos. The introduction emphasizes that scientists and technicians have caused a “fantastic progress” and “tireless improvement” in “the everincreasing capacity” of military airplanes which show “Progress in speed, handling and power”. But they also, as the introduction states, have

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progressed “in the power of extermination”. Military aviation not only has become “the most decisive weapon” but “the most devastating, too” (Hergé 1953, Preface). Remarkably enough, the examples given in this context move the attention of the reader away from the familiar European theatre of war—with its well-known aerial bombings of urban zones—to the Asia–Pacific theatre, focussing on the aerial use of British torpedoes to destroy the Japanese navy and on so-called Japanese “suicide planes” in which “pilots of fanatical self-sacrifice” throw themselves on enemy ships (Hergé 1953, Preface). By doing so, the war narrative becomes more distant, perhaps even more abstract for most European readers, while the focus on military targets ignores civil casualties of Allied aerial warfare. Although bomber planes are included, the introduction focusses on the usually smaller and more flexible fighter aircraft. This is connected to Western European examples from the World War II when French and German pilots were considered “winged archangels, fighting in a duel up […] in […] the sky” like the heroes of Greek mythology (Hergé 1953, Preface). The basic idea presented here is that the airmen shared similar values and “met on equal terms” fighting a fair and chivalric battle. The message seems to be that the colours of the uniform or the ideologies and nations they represented hardly mattered (Goddin 2009, 114–117, 128–129). Remarkably enough, such a neutral approach does not only transcend the historical and ideological contradictions between the Allied and the Axis powers, but it also conveniently ignores the fact that the example chosen here is limited to the alleged solidarity between European pilots, thereby ignoring the question of whether western pilots also considered a similar gentlemen-like attitude applicable to their combat dealings with East-Asian colleagues. Before the first Japanese soldier is visualized halfway through the album (Hergé 1953, chromo 31), other references to the Japanese role in the World War II have already been made, connected to the presentations of American planes. Three US aircrafts (the Grumman F-4 “Wildcat”; the Curtiss P-40 F “Warhawk”, and the Consolidated B-24 J “Liberator” bomber (Hergé 1953, chromo 16, 32, 35)) are linked to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. In that context credit was given to “the terrible Japanese Zero” (Hergé 1953, chromo 32)—though not in positive terms. That is quite different from the language used to describe the performance of the American air force fighting Japanese opponents. The P-40 s “covered themselves with glory by waging numerous battles

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in the Japanese air force”; the Lockheed P-38 “Lightning” was “one of the most extraordinary aircraft of the last war” while the Douglas A-24 “Dauntless”, which delivered “terrible blows to the Japanese navy” was called “one of the best (if not the best) dive bombers” of World War II (Hergé 1953, chromo 32; 24, 28). The presentation of the Grumman TBF-I “Avenger”, described as “the best torpedo bomber in the U.S. Navy” (Hergé 1953, chromo 31), stresses its important contribution to the destruction of the four Japanese aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway. The illustration shows the aircraft in action and is actually the only depicted plane in the album which visualizes the moment in which a missile is being launched. So, the only visualization of actual attack shows an Allied assault on a—presumably—Japanese target, far away from the countries where the postwar European readers are situated. And while the plane radiates calmness and control, it contrasts with the decorated Japanese soldier who aggressively expresses his irritation in his features and sound waves. One very positive description was written for the American B-25H “Mitchell”. The “most sensational achievement” of this “effective” American bomber was the “retaliatory bombardment of Tokyo” on 18 April 1942, which “caused extensive damage” (Hergé 1953, chromo 49). That the long-distance operation was considered a total surprise to the Japanese government and population is strongly expressed by the civilian victim at the right side of the chromo: a bewildered, obviously well-todo civilian wearing traditional Japanese clothes and shoes. Though the tactical long-distance character of this operation was indeed noteworthy from a strategic and technical point of view, the use of the term “sensational” does not suggest much empathy among the comic creators for the impact on Japan’s largest city. This is similar to the way in which the Enola Gay is portrayed as an example of the Boeing B-29 “Superfortress”. The description of its mission to Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, led by lieutenant-colonel Paul Tibbets, tells how the atomic bomb was dropped. “And suddenly, it was the explosion, the apocalyptic spectacle: the first atomic bomb had just smashed the great Japanese city to pieces!” (Hergé 1953, chromo 46). The actual impact of the explosion, in terms of the number of victims and the nature of their injuries and experiences, was not discussed, and thereby sanitized, as if there was no place for human suffering in this seemingly neutral technological approach.

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Three Japanese planes get full attention in the war aviation album, two of which—the Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” and Mitsubishi J2 M2 “Raiden-11” (Hergé 1953, nr.33, 56)—are presented as having some good qualities. But this praise was mixed with criticism that both aircrafts were not sufficiently equipped with armour or shielding—unlike “a solidly protected American fighter [that] could withstand terrible damage”. In the case of the Zero, it “tore like silk paper under the impact of projectiles” (Hergé 1953, chromo 33)—framing the vulnerability as a specifically Asian phenomenon. This vulnerability contrasts with the portrayal of the accompanying Japanese officer. Standing rigidly, he expresses pride and even haughty self-confidence. His traditional sword, the gunt¯ o, combines the modern look of the plane and the uniform with a traditional element, a combination lacking in the representation of the western armed forces. The depiction of the Japanese Raiden pilot happens to be the only representation in the album of a Japanese person in which no traditional element can be distinguished. A final aspect linked to two of the three Japanese planes were the Kamikaze actions towards the end of the war. This was not only referenced in the description of the Zero, but even more centrally, in the entry on the Yokosuka MXY 7 Jinrai from 1945. The development of a specific suicide aircraft named Jinrai (thunderclap) at a time when the US Navy was approaching the coast was connected to a perceived Japanese “contempt for death” that was explicitly considered “typically Asian” (Hergé 1953, chromo 59). The suicidal element, somehow reminding the reader of The Blue Lotus where a modern, westernized Japanese character finds his end in a traditional way, can also be seen in the character on the right depicted in a traditional robe, largely hiding his military uniform, contrasting with the modern technology of Yokosuka MXY 7 Jinrai, the suicide aircraft from 1945. The position in which the traditional sword is held in front of his chest, in combination with the closed eyes and the serene and contemplative facial expression, suggests that the moment of suicide has arrived.

A Japanese Bunker in Asia as a Random Legacy of War A sixth and final explicit reference to Japan in Hergé’s oeuvre appears in one of Tintin’s last adventures, Vol 714 pour Sydney (Flight 714 to Sidney), pre-published in 1966–1967 in Tintin magazine and appearing as a book

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in 1968. In this narrative, Tintin and his friends Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus fail to catch their flight from Jakarta to Sydney, ending up in a plot by their archnemesis Roberto Rastapopoulus to kidnap the eccentric millionaire and aircraft industrialist Laszlo Carreidas in his business jet, an adventure which ends due to the active role of extra-terrestrial life. Coincidentally Rastapopoulos happened to be the one who, at the end of The Blue Lotus, had been exposed as the leader of the international opium smuggling gang that Tintin had previously battled. The reference in Flight 714 consists of a wartime Japanese bunker on the fictional volcanic island of Pulau-Pulau Bompa somewhere between Indonesia and the Philippines. This is the place where Tintin is being held hostage after the plane was hijacked. Though the origin of the bunker is not emphasized in the story, it inevitably connects Japan to World War II and to Tintin’s tragic fate, though eventually he manages to escape. This adventure contains a few more brief references to World War II, but only the presence of the bunker relates to the war in Asia. While there is a reasonably broad consensus that Hergé in his postwar albums kept himself fairly distanced from subjects that could lead to political controversy, Hugo Frey believes that Flight 714 illustrates Tintin’s creator reverting to ideologically inspired stereotypes in this story in which big business is portrayed negatively (Frey 2008, 31). Frey regards the character Rastapopoulos as an anti-Semitic cliché of another stereotypical Jewish villain—as had occurred several times in the adventures created before and during World War II. Although Hergé explicitly denied that this nemesis was Jewish, describing him as “a shady Greek Levantine” who happened to be stateless (Assouline 1996, 125–126, quoted in Frey 2008, 34), Frey insists on “racist cartooning techniques” relying “on an underlying narrative of conspiracy that reinforces anti-Semitic notions of Jewish plots” (Frey 2008, 28, 31; Hahn 2021, 256–260). The Japanese bunker is the location where a truth serum is administered to the kidnapped millionaire and, accidentally, also to Rastapopoulos, after which these characters bid against each other to claim which one of them is the worst human being. The injections in this context remind Frey of the torture of Jews in concentration camps (Frey 2008, 37) but his interpretation is hardly convincing. More relevant is his observation “that, when images of Second World War Japanese bunkers appear in the middle of the book, lost in the tropical jungle vegetation of Pulau-Pulau Bompa, the reader almost unquestioningly accepts them as part of the exotic, Pacific Island scenery” (Frey 2008, 39). While

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the Japanese and, by extension, the wider Asian war history is presented from Hergé’s Belgian perspective as almost natural and meaningless, as a past that does not evoke questions or sensitivities, European war history is largely kept out of view here. Japan’s significance from a western perspective had been reduced to a curious example of its World War II legacy abroad, a concrete building overgrown in the jungle by natural vegetation, just as Hergé preferred to leave his war past in the shadow of his success.

Conclusion In the mid-1950s, Hergé tried to argue, in a letter to one of his readers, that there was no racism in his work: “You can find any number of unpleasant individuals in my books; English colonists who beat up the Chinese, German killers; double-dealing Japanese; horrible African witch doctors; Chicago gangsters, rotten police of all nationalities. The caricatures I have made of all these types of ‘bad guys’ has never meant that I had anything against the Yellows, Blacks, or Whites as a people….” (Hergé to “Mrs. B.”, 17 March 1954 quoted by Peeters 2003, 171). Hergé himself probably was convinced of what he wrote, but stereotypes played an undeniable role in his comics. However, he was not dismissive of everything Japanese, certainly not in the postwar years. When he published a newly edited, shortened and coloured edition of Cigars of the Pharaoh in 1955, it was striking to see that one of the redrawn frames, showing Tintin and Snowy among rolling waves at sea, clearly referred to the famous work of Hokusai.3 Yet, when Japan comes up more explicitly in the combined universe of Tintin and Hergé, it is most often connected to war or crime. In all cases, the Japanese characters are male, like most identifiable creatures in Tintin’s universe, and are active outside Japan. We only have limited knowledge of the sources that Hergé used to gain an understanding of Japan and the Japanese people. The personal impressions that his friend Zhang shared with him have undoubtedly influenced Hergé’s ideas about a society he must have read about in newspapers, magazines and novels. But it is clear that his focus was primarily on the fate of the Chinese 3 The original frame appeared in Le Petit Vingtième of 9 February 1933. For a contextualisation of the Japanese influences by Katsushika Hokusai and Hiroshige Utagawa see Stoffels (2013).

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population, which meant that information about Japan was only functional in so far as it could helpfully provide contrast to illustrate Chinese suffering. Within the spatial, visual and textual constraints of a comic strip, an additional emphasis on the Japanese seemed superfluous, which may have reinforced the creator’s tendency to rely on recognizable but one-dimensional stereotypes. The image of Japan starts relatively early, at a time when the Second Sino–Japanese War has yet to begin and while the popular interest for these political developments is still rather limited in Western Europe. Next, there is an unmistakable development in the image of Japanese characters. In The Blue Lotus, because of their criminal and aggressive political-military activities, Japanese characters act as evil persons. But afterwards Japanese characters are presented more or less neutrally, or even with a certain amount of sympathy. It is striking that this shift already seems to have taken place in 1940, before the Allied world and Japan went to war against each other. Furthermore, it is remarkable that a few years after World War II, Japan as well as the other former Axis nations could count on a fairly neutral approach. Attention for the underlying ideology of these imperialistic states was hardly present in these comic narratives. It is noteworthy that Hergé’s pre-World War II political engagement seems to have largely disappeared from around 1940 onwards. Whereas Japanese characters were at first odious enemies (of both Tintin and the Chinese characters), they subsequently turned out to be mere opponents who did not evoke any particular feelings in the creator of Tintin, so therefore could be represented in a somewhat similar way to British, Americans or Germans. Yet, the strong sympathy for the Chinese people, as already visible before the war, based on individual friendship, was not extended to the Japanese people in Hergé’s postwar publications. The question remains whether Hergé’s postwar political detachment can primarily be explained by his anger and somewhat naive incomprehension about being officially regarded as a collaborator in 1944 and in subsequent years, as a result of which he must have felt very uncomfortable about speaking out politically. But attention should also be paid to commercial interests that may have played a role. The postwar distribution area of Hergé’s work expanded in the period around 1953 when the remarkably neutral aviation album was released. It was precisely in those years that both the British and German editions of the Tintin stories

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began to appear for the first time. And why would Hergé put his reputation at risk by expressing any kind of judgement concerning the recent war history of one of these countries? Apparently, such considerations did not play a role when Japanese editions of the Tintin stories were introduced to the East Asian book market in the late 1960s. In fact, while various Tintin stories were shortened, colorized and redrawn over time—to increase their attractiveness for new audiences as well as to weaken the racial stereotypes of black characters and Jewish characters—the image of Mitsuhirato, also based on racial stereotypes, remains unchanged to this day, both in reprints and translations, in the popular 1991 animated French–Canadian television series, as well as in various versions of merchandise and fan art. On the other hand, the relatively neutral Aviation album, except for one occasional French-language reprint in 1980, has not been reprinted or translated into any language other than Dutch. The transnational spread of Tintin’s Japanese imagery, and the persistent popularity of the iconic series of adventures now available in 80 languages (Rösch 2014, 225), underlines the importance of questioning their influence on readers in various cultures. Goddeeris assumes that, because of their visual appeal, these popular comics “have had a major impact on the creation of images and the perception of foreign cultures” and may have been “even more influential than novels or newspapers” (Goddeeris 2013, 231–232). Additional research and the innovative use of sources concerning the consumption of popular culture can help to answer new questions about comics’ long-term impact across cultural borders and how readers engage with war memories through these encounters. How did readers over time respond to the comics and comics merchandise they consumed; how did such widely available, relatively accessible narratives, integrating text and images in an attractive and sometimes depoliticized way, spark or strengthen ideas about the role of Japan and the Japanese people in the war-torn history of the twentieth century; and to what extent did it influence the ways in which narratives about these wars were appropriated by comics readers in various countries?

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Works Cited Assouline, Pierre. 1996. Hergé. Biografie [Hergé: Biography]. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff (originally published as: Hergé. Biographie. Paris: PLON). Braun, Alexander. 2019. Nimm das, Adolf! Zweiter Weltkrieg im Comic [Take That Adolf! World War II in Comics]. Dortmund: Kulturbetriebe der Stadt Dortmund. Coblence, Jean-Michel, and Tchang Yifei. 2003. Tchang! Vriendschap Verzet Bergen [Chang! Friendship Moves Mountains]. S.l.: éditions Moulinsart. Daguerre, Charles. 2004. “Reporter dans frontiers.” [Reporter at the Frontiers]. In Tintin, reporter du siècle [Tintin: Reporter of the Century], ed. Patrice Duhamel, pp. 70–74. Paris: Le Figaro. De Groot, Kees. 2016. Tintin as a Catholic Comic: How Catholic Values Went Underground. Implicit Religion 19 (3): 371–400. Dower, John. 1986. War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books. Flic, Dani. 2020. Tintin and Corto Maltese. The European Adventurer Meets the Colonial Other. European Comic Art 13 (1): 95–121. Frayling, Christopher. 2014. The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu and The Rise of Chinaphobia. London: Thames and Hudson. Frey, Hugo. 2008. Trapped in the Past: Anti-Semitism in Hergé’s Flight 714. In History and Politics in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels, ed. Mark McKinney, 27–43. Jackson MI: University Press of Mississippi. Goddeeris, Idesbald. 2013. Racism for Beginners: Constructions of Chinese in Twentieth-Century Belgian Comics. In Race and Racism in Modern East Asia. Western and Eastern Constructions (Brill’s Series on Modern East Asia in a Global Historical Perspective Vol.1), eds. Kowner, Rotem, and Walter Demel, pp. 231–259. Leiden: Brill. Goddin, Philippe. 2009. Hergé. Chronologie d’une Oeuvre. Vol. 6 1950–1957 [Hergé: Chronology of an oeuvre]. S.l.: éditions Moulinsart. Hahn, Hans-Joachim. 2021. Distorted Traces of the Holocaust in Hergé’s Tintin. In Ole Frahm, Hans-Joachim Hahn, Mafkus and Streb, eds., Beyond MAUS. The Legacy of Holocaust Comics, pp. 239–260. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. Heer, Jeet, and Kent Worcester. 2009. Introduction. In A Comics Studies Reader, ed. Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester, xi–xv. Jackson MI: University Press of Mississippi. Hergé. 1933. Quick et Flupke: De la musique… …avant tout chose. [Quick and Flupke: Music… Above All Else]. Le Petit Vingtième [The Little Twentieth] (3 August). Hergé. 1934. Les Cigares du Pharaon [The Cigar of the Pharos]. Tournai: Casterman. Hergé. 1936. Le Lotus bleu [The Blue Lotus]. Tournai: Casterman.

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Hergé. 1941. Le Crabe aux pinces d’or [The Crab with the Golden Claws]. Tournai: Casterman. Hergé. 1953. L’Aviation. Guerre 1939–1945 – Collection Voir et Savoir [Aviation. War 1939–1945 – See and Know Collection]. Paris: Dargaud. Hergé. 1968. Vol 714 pour Sydney [Flight 714 from Sydney]. Tournai: Casterman. Herman, Paul. 2009. Europe Japon. Regards Croisés en Bandes Dessinées [Europe Japan: Perspectives in Comics]. Grenoble: Glénat. Iwamoto, Kazuko. 2016. Tintin in Japan. In Japan and Belgium: An Itinerary of Mutual Inspiration, ed. Willy Vande Walle, pp. 339–347. Tielt: Lannoo. Jacob, Tara. 2006. Great Snakes! The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus – An Analytical Reading. Available at: https://www.tintinologist.org/articles/ greatsnakes.html. Accessed 31 Jul 2020. Japanse Studies KU Leuven. 2019. http://mediawiki.arts.kuleuven.be/geschi edenisjapan/index.php/België-Japan_diplomatieke_relaties. Accessed 30 Sept 2020. Jouret, Jean-Claude. 1991 Tintin et le merchandising. Une gestion stratégique des droits dérivés [Tintin and Merchandising: Strategic Management of Derived Rights]. Louvain La Neuve and Paris: Académia and Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie. Mayer, Ruth. 2013. Serial Fu Manchu. The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology. Philadelphia, PN: Temple University Press. Mountfort, Paul. 2011. Yellow Skin, Black Hair … Careful, Tintin: Hergé and Orientalism. Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 1 (1): 33–49. Peeters, Benoît. 2002. A Never-Ending Trial: Hergé and the Second World War. Rethinking History 6 (3): 261–271. Peeters, Benoît. 2003. Hergé. Zoon van Kuifje [Herge: Son of Tintin]. Amsterdam: Atlas (originally published as: Hergé. Fils de Tintin. Paris: Flammarion). Pellegrin, Annick. 2016. An Unspeakable Filiation. Spirou and the Three Unicorns. In The Comics of Hergé. When the Lines Are Not So Clear, ed. Joe Sutliff Sanders, pp.157–176. Jackson MS: University Press of Mississippi. Prorokova, Tatiana, and Nimrod Tal. 2018. Cultures of War in Graphic Novels. Violence, Trauma, and Memory. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press. Rémy, Jean-Luc. 2018. Le lotus bleu: le premier engagement politique de Hergé. [The Blue Lotus: Herge’s First Political Engagement]. Available at: https:// tintinomania.com/tintin-lotus-bleu-moukden. Accessed 31 Jul 2020. Rösch, Felix. 2014. Hooray! Hooray! The End of the World Has Been Postponed! Politics of Peace in the Adventures of Tintin? Politics 34 (3): 225–236. Sanders, Joe Sutliff, ed. 2016a. The Comics of Hergé. When the Lines Are Not So Clear. Jackson MS: University Press of Mississippi.

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Sanders, Joe Sutliff. 2016b. Introduction. In The Comics of Hergé. When the Lines Are Not So Clear, ed. Joe Sutliff Sanders, pp. 1–18. Jackson MS: University Press of Mississippi. Sanders, Joe Sutliff. 2016c. Hergé’s Occupations. How the Creator of Tintin Made a Deal with the Devil and Became a Better Cartoonist. In The Comics of Hergé. When the Lines Are Not So Clear, ed. Joe Sutliff Sanders, pp. 126–140. Jackson MS: University Press of Mississippi. Stoffels, Broos. 2013. Klare lijn en de kunst [Clear Lines in Art]. Unpublished BA Thesis. Brussels: LUCA. Tarbox, Gwen Athene. 2016. Violence and the Tableau Vivant Effect in the Clear Line Comics of Hergé and Gene Luen Yang. In The Comics of Hergé. When the Lines Are Not So Clear, ed. Joe Sutliff Sanders, pp. 143–156. Jackson MS: University Press of Mississippi. Taveirne, Patrick. 2009. Gateway to Mainland China Development of the Vicariate Apostolic of Inner Mongolia, 1865–1949. In History of Catholic Religious Orders and Missionary Congregations in Hong Kong Vol. I: Historical Materials – CICM Missionaries: Past and Present, 1865–2006, eds., Louis Ha, and Patrick Taveirne (ed.). Hong Kong: Centre for Catholic Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Taveirne, Patrick. 2016. Modern Ethno-National Visions and Missionaries from the Low Countries at China’s Edge (1865–1948). In World Views and Worldly Wisdom. Religion, Ideology and Politics, 1750–2000, eds., Jan De Maeyer and Vincent Viaene, pp. 203–223. Leuven: Leuven University Press (KADOC Studies on Religion, Culture and Society 17). Thompson, Harry. 1991. Hergé – Een dubbelbiografie – Kuifje. Amsterdam: Balans (originally published as Tintin Hergé and His Creation. London: Hodder and Stoughton). Vande Walle, W.F., ed. 2005. Japan and Belgium: Four Centuries of Exchange. Brussels: Commissioners-General of the Belgian Government at the Universal Exposition. Vande Walle, Willy (ed.). 2016. Japan and Belgium: An Itinerary of Mutual Inspiration. Tielt: Lannoo. Witchard, Anne. 2014. England’s Yellow Peril. Sinophobia and the Great War. London: Penguin. [page numbers according to Kindle edition] Woodbury, Margaret Elizabeth. 2017. Superman Says You Can Slap a Jap. Race and Representation in Comics. Unpublished MA Thesis, San Francisco State University. Available at: https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/concern/theses/ bk128c48q. Accessed 1 Apr 2022. Yamasaki, Yukiko. 2011. Représentations françaises du Japon et des Japonais de 1894 à 1940. [French Representations of Japan and the Japanese: 1894 to 1940]. Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin 34 (2): 15–29. Yü Pin, Paul, and Hergé. 1937. Ne feriez-vous rien pour eux…? [Would You Do Anything for Them?] Le Petit Vingtième (23 December): 2.

CHAPTER 9

A Sense of a Memory: Prosthetic War Memories Among the Japanese Cinema Audience Jennifer Coates

Engaging with the cinema has shaped many individuals’ understandings of Japan’s war history, demonstrating the major role that popular culture can play in evoking, embedding, and rearranging memories. This chapter explores how repeated engagements with film texts and cinema spaces can build prosthetic war memory among elderly audience members in Japan today. In the ethnographic materials analysed below, a sense of having war memories emerges from affectively charged recollections of going to the cinema, engaging with film culture, and sharing film spaces with others. While the basis of these perceived memories in fact (or otherwise) is hard to prove or disprove, cinema is discussed as evoking a closeness to wartime and to the generations who experienced Japan’s wars before 1945.

J. Coates (B) School of East Asian Studies, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_9

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The memories discussed in this chapter are not treated as factual historical accounts. Rather, this chapter approaches postwar cinema culture as “enabler of ‘prosthetic memory’” (Keene 2010, 2; Landsberg 2004). Alison Landsberg coined the term “prosthetic memory” to describe “a new form of public cultural memory” located “at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past at an experiential site such as a movie theatre or a museum” (2004, 2). In such encounters, Landsberg suggests that “the person does not simply apprehend a historical narrative but takes on a more personal, deeply felt memory of a past event through which he or she did not live” (2004, 2). Exploring narratives about cinema-going in the early postwar period, this chapter posits engaging with war narratives on film as a means of bringing the cinemagoer closer to an understanding of Japan’s war history, in light of the “enabling modalities” offered by cinema culture (Keene 2010, 10). As such, this chapter does not deal with the narrative contents of war films themselves, but instead approaches the medium of film through ethnography and participant observation of viewership practices among elderly Japanese audience members. In the interviews and informal conversations discussed below, cinema emerges as a means of transporting the viewer back to wartime, affectively and evocatively. To date, the majority of scholarship on Japanese cinema and war memory has focused on defining war film genres and analysing war narratives on film (Salomon 2014; Seaton 2007; Standish 2005; Stegewerns 2014; Watanabe 2001; Wilson 2013), or on related issues like nationalism (Sugimoto 2008). Studies of wartime film productions tend to focus on propaganda efforts and effects, including censorship practices and dissenting audiences (Dower 1987, 2000a, b; High 2003). By contrast, this chapter uses interview and survey materials as well as ethnographic detail from participant observation at retrospective film programmes to consider how an individual’s perception of having war memories, or prosthetic memory, can be formed by repeated and on-going engagement with cinema culture and content related to war and Occupation. The oral histories of cinema watching discussed below are complemented in the broader literary field in Japan by accounts of cinema memory and cinema-going in personal histories ( jibunshi) and other forms of autobiographical writing. While outside the scope of the current chapter, a discussion of these materials can be found in my Film Viewing in Postwar Japan, 1945–1968: An Ethnographic Study (2022), which includes analysis of interviewee-generated materials such as notes, maps, and diaries,

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as well as published jibunshi-style materials like the series Watashi no rirekisho (My Personal History) published in Nihon keizai shinbun (Japan Economics Newspaper). Based on four years of fieldwork in the Kansai region of western Japan, the study on which this chapter is based is comprised of interviews with viewers who regularly attended the cinema from 1945 to 1968; a large-scale questionnaire project with participants born between 1925 and 1955; and participant observation at retrospective film screenings and film clubs specialising in Sh¯ owa era (1926–1989) cinema. The memories shared by now-elderly viewers suggest the value of an ethnographic approach for understanding how cinema culture plays a part in developing prosthetic memory, in this case, fostering a sense of having war memories among generations born at the end of Japan’s various wars.

War and Occupation at the Cinema The Asia–Pacific War, also known as the Fifteen Years War or the Sino– Japanese War and Pacific War, is variously dated from 19 September 1931 on the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, 1 July 1937 on the declaration of the second Sino-Japanese war, or 7 and 8 December 1941 with the Japanese invasion of Thailand and the bombing of Pearl Harbour. This chapter deals with memories (or perceived memories) of the Asia Pacific or Fifteen Years war, understood as dating from 1931 to 1945. Following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, at the end of a protracted and widespread military campaign of fifteen years in East Asia and the Pacific region, historians such as John Dower have argued that the citizens of postwar Japan embraced defeat (2000a, b). Japan was then occupied by US-led Allied forces from 1945 to 1952. Beginning the Occupation of Japan on 2 September 1945, the offices of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (hereafter SCAP) circulated a “Memorandum Concerning Elimination of Japanese Government Control of the Motion Picture Industry” on 16 October 1945 (Hirano 1992, 39), indicating that from the earliest stages of the Occupation, cinema was imagined as a means to “educate” and “reorient” Japanese viewers (Kitamura 2010, 42). The emerging memory narratives of the recently ended war were key targets of Occupation oversight of film production, which focused on removing glorifying narratives about war and aggression in general, and direct references to the recent war and occupation in particular. Cinema was thought to be an ideal mode

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of engaging citizens of all ages, from returning soldiers to housewives, school children, and even those of preschool age. While I agree with Akiko Hashimoto’s argument that “there is no “collective” memory in Japan; rather, multiple memories of war and defeat with different moral frames coexist” (2015, 4), SCAP’s use of cinema and other public media entertainment and news products to shape memories of the recent war ensured that, as Hashimoto observes, “Japan’s war memories are… deeply encoded in the everyday culture” (2015, 4). Landsberg suggests that “the role that mass cultural technologies might play in mediating an individual’s memory” are closely connected to the “plastic” and “visual” nature of childhood memory identified by Sigmund Freud, as well as the “physical trace of how the body acted under past stimulations” noted by Henri Bergson as core to memory formation (2004, 16). Landsberg argues that both this visuality and the “thrill and ‘attraction’ of cinema” render the medium a “catalyst” for memory (2004, 16). The memories of cinema-going and related war memory narratives discussed in this chapter are understood within this polarised framework of enculturation and individual attraction. Cinema theatres offered significant access to the attention and memory formation of a large number of Japanese citizens. Audience attendance was calculated at 733 million (rounded to the nearest million) in 1946, increasing by 3.2 per cent in 1947, 1.7 per cent in 1948, and 3.7 per cent in 1949 (Izbicki 1997, 46). The popularity of film grew rapidly, culminating in a peak admissions rate of 1,127,452,000 viewers in 1958 (Eiren). In interviews, many viewers recall the era as one “without many entertainments” (Koyama, personal communication) and the cinema is remembered as the major attraction for young children in particular, in comparison to radio broadcasts and reading materials. If, as Landsberg suggests, “mass culture technologies make it possible for large numbers of people from a wide range of ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds to create memories of events through which they did not live”, the cinema theatres of postwar Japan are a prime example of “the conditions for a new, prosthetic form of memory” (Landsberg 2004, 16).

Engaging with Retrospective Film Cultures The ethnographic material analysed in this chapter was collected between 2014 and 2018 in the Kansai region of western Japan, specifically Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Nara, Nagaokaky¯o, Amagasaki, and Kabutoyama. Film fans

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from neighbouring areas also travelled to Kyoto to participate in the study. I conducted a large-scale questionnaire project with 87respondents at the Kyoto Culture Museum (Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan) in May 2016. From 2014 to 2018, I practiced participant observation at four sites, including the cinema theatre of the museum, two independent film-viewing clubs in Kyoto, and a cinema in Osaka specialising in Sh¯ owa period cinema (see Coates 2018a). I recorded interviews with 12 participants each running, on average, 2 hours in length for a documentary film on the topic of cinema and memory (Coates 2018b), and conducted multiple follow-up interviews, supported by the exchange of letters and emails, with a core group of 20 participants. Study participants were self-selecting, beginning with interested patrons of the Kyoto Culture Museum cinema and the two Kyoto film clubs, before expanding through word of mouth to over one hundred people living in the Kansai region, all of whom were born between 1925 and 1955. As the major film companies’ secondary studios specialising in period dramas were located in Kansai, there is a significant degree of interest and even insider knowledge of cinema among the residents of these areas, as a number worked in the film industry or volunteered as “extra” performers on location shooting. Fieldwork in Kansai allowed for access to the memories of those with professional, familial, or personal relationships with the cinema industry, as well as fans and dedicated cinemagoers. The average first cinema visit of participants in the study was at six years old, and so these memories largely relate to participants’ early childhood and teenage years. All data has been anonymised using pseudonyms. The voices included in this chapter are those of the study participants who specifically focused on communicating their senses of war memories during our encounters. Other study participants focused on postwar social change, or the ideological or political legacies of the immediate postwar period on their generation, which yet others discussed the role of cinema-going in their attitudes to family, gender, the natural world, and global histories. While almost every participant mentioned Japan’s defeat in 1945 at some point in our communications, the use of cinema memory to explore a sense of war memory in depth was limited to the participants whose memories are discussed in the following sections.

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Wartime Narratives on Postwar Screens After the end of Occupation in 1952, a rush of films revisited the wartime, Occupation, and premodern eras, covering themes as diverse as the revival of the popular 47 Loyal Retainers (Ch¯ ushingura) tale, wartime events, (The Human Condition/Ningen no j¯ oken, Kobayashi Masaki, 1959–1961), Occupation politics and everyday encounters, including Occupation-related sex work (Gate of Hell /Nikutai no mon, 1964), and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their aftermath (Children of the Bomb/Genbaku no ko, Shind¯o Kaneto, 1952; Hiroshima, Sekigawa Hideo, 1953; Twenty Four Eyes /Nij¯ ushi no hitomi, Kinoshita Keisuke, 1954). Much post-Occupation cinema was in this sense already period film, dealing with issues that had occurred almost a decade ago, but which would have been difficult to produce under the strict censorship of the early years of Occupation. We may expect war films, and films featuring war-related narratives, to have had limited popularity in the first decades after the war, given the mass loss of life, structural devastation, and shock of the atomic bombings which Japan had so recently suffered. However, contemporary reviews which mention the “attractive” (miryoku) and “enjoyable” (tanoshimi) qualities of such films attest to their popular reception (Ogawa 1960, 83). In the case of the “war-retro” genre film, made in the 1950s and 1960s but set during wartime, Isolde Standish has argued that commercial cinema logic rearranges traumatic war memories and events “into ordered evidence of empirical historical facts through the imposition of teleological sequences of time and an all-knowing omniscient narration style” (2011, 53). For many study participants, post-Occupation films set during the war or Occupation presented a means of contextualising and exploring their early childhood memories in a retrospective mode and were therefore remembered as popular and enjoyable. Standish argues that this popularity, which extended into the repetition and franchising of well-received themes and stories, has meant that “these films, and by extension the war-retro genre of the second half of the 1950s and 1960s, have stayed fixed within the generational memories of people who experienced the war as a ‘collective memory’” (Standish 2011, 54). As the ethnographic material below illustrates, these generational memories or collective memories are also offered by people who only very tangentially have what we might think of as experience-related war memory. In fact, many people with whom I spoke had been born in the

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later years of the war, and it would be reasonable to doubt that they had concrete personal memories of wartime events. However, the collective memory to which Standish alludes has been so powerfully represented by popular cinema that regular film fans describe a sense of a memory of wartime, whether or not that could be proven to be factually based. Before analysing these recollections to trace how this prosthetic memory develops through cinema-going, I will introduce some historical context by looking at how war-related narratives and themes on film were received between 1945 and 1965, according to archival materials and records. Paul Virilio has written of the “wave of cinema palaces” that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century as a “historical necessity” (1989, 31), positing the cinema as a means of making sense of the two major wars which bookend its peak period of popularity. Between and briefly on either side of these wars, Virilio argues that “the speed effects of light created another form of collective memory in these new temples” (1989, 31). By contrast, Judith Keene locates the memory-building affordances of the cinema, not its visual effects, but in narrative and plot, which “can serve as the container that gives shape to fragmentary, and often inchoate, public and private recollection, while providing the templates of meaning and the language with which to evaluate the wartime past” (2010, 2). While the relation between popular film and collective, or social, memory is complex (Harper 1997, 163), Sue Harper argues for a “relationship between commercially successful films and the mass audience’s sense of national identity and interest” (1997, 164–166). Films relating to war were certainly commercially successful in early postwar Japan. The Tower of Lilies (Himeyuri no t¯ o, Imai Tadashi, 1953), which told the story of a group of young female students in Okinawa forced to serve as nurses at the battlefront at the end of the war, broke box office records by taking 180 million yen (Shimazu 2003, 112). By 1957, it had been overtaken by The Emperor Meiji and the Russo-Japanese War (Meiji tenn¯ o to nichiro sens¯ o, Watanabe Kunio, 1957) which made 542 million yen in its first seven months (Shimazu 2003, 111–112). Critics were not all supportive of the film, which featured a reimagined Emperor shedding tears for his fallen soldiers (Kitagawa 1957, 41). However, ticket sales indicate that critical reviews did not dampen the audience’s enthusiasm. Forty per cent of those surveyed recorded a favourable impression of the film’s version of “old Japan”, whereas 24 per cent complained that the film glorified the Emperor and his role (Kinema Junp¯o 1957, 114– 115). Postwar nostalgia for wartime Japan extended beyond the recent

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wars, and in fact, we might expect that film narratives about the Russo– Japanese war of 1904–1905, which Japan won, would be more popular than stories ending with the defeat of 1945. However, Sandra Wilson notes that, “the Second World War was one of the most prominent of all cinematic themes in the 1950s” (2013, 538). This conflict was featured in 175 fiction films released between 1945 and 1963 (Miyagi 1991, 4). Wilson suggests that war-related films “had a particular appeal for men, who might be seeking to revisit their wartime experiences, or to understand what their older relatives and friends had endured and they themselves might only narrowly have escaped” (2013, 539). At the same time, she argues that war films also informed “what had actually happened at the battlefronts” (2013, 539), given the limited information available to soldiers, who had only their own experiences to draw from, and civilians, whose information had been heavily censored. Representatives of these audience demographics recorded their impressions of early postwar cinema narratives related to the recent wartime in the popular publications of the period. For example, the weekly magazine Sh¯ ukan Asahi devoted the 16 September 1956 cover story to the popular reception of war-related cinema. The story indicates that viewing warrelated films was understood as an occasion to revisit and reshape postwar understandings of wartime conduct. For example, a former soldier cited footage of suicide pilots in Record of the Pacific War: How Japan Fought (Taiheiy¯ o sens¯ o no kiroku: Nihon kaku tatakaeri, 1956) as evidence of the bravery and determination of Japanese soldiers, despite their eventual defeat (1956, 4). Wilson similarly quotes an audience member viewing the US film Task Force (Delmer Daves, 1949, released in Japan as Kid¯ o butai) who reported that, “newsreel footage from earlier stages of the conflict showed that Japanese forces had once been strong” and a “housewife [who] told a journalist that seeing the film had made her proud of what her country had been” (2013, 542). Based on these testimonies, Wilson argues that “Unlikely as it may seem, the war even became something to remember with fondness” (2013, 543). This fondness is often characterised as “nostalgia” (ky¯ osh¯ u ) (Minami 1957, 76; Wilson 2013, 543), a term that reappears frequently in the memories of cinema culture shared by my own interviewees. By the late 1950s, this nostalgia was apparently evident in certain cinema theatres, as audience members applauded images of Japanese soldiers, pilots, and fleets (Wilson 2013, 543), as well as dialogue containing words such as “kamikaze” and “Zerosen” (Sh¯ ukan Asahi 1953, 14). The happy affect

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of this nostalgia was described by Tsurumi Shunsuke (1970, 49–52) who later wrote that hearing wartime songs was a positive experience in the postwar era due to their associations with shared experiences and self-sacrifice (1959). By this point, Wilson argues, “Nostalgia for certain aspects of the war, in other words, had become a commercial proposition” (2013, 543). While war films made money at the box office, and audiences appear to have recorded broadly positive experiences with war narratives at the cinema in the first decades after defeat, the critical reception was mixed. A significant number of films discussing, depicting, or set in the war years were made in Japan between 1946 and 2001. Using the Pia Cinema Club: Japanese Film Database Book 2003–4, Philip Seaton estimates 235 in total, or 4 per year, with the greatest number dating from the 1950s and 1960s (2007, 138). Despite the large number, cross-referencing Postwar Kinema Junp¯ o’s Best Ten and the Pia Cinema Club database, Seaton notes only 30 war films in the critics’ choice of the top ten films (2007, 139). Seaton found 18 war films in the top ten box office high-grossing films of the same period, and 11 films in both categories (2007, 139). Wilson similarly characterises critics as “generally unenthusiastic” about postwar o no washi, war narratives (2013, 554). While Eagle of the Pacific (Taiheiy¯ Honda Ishir¯o, 1953) took third place in box office grossing, the Kinema Junp¯ o Top Ten, chosen by 33 critics, did not feature the film. It should also be noted that the critics and audiences surveyed in national publications were highly gendered. The postwar cinema audience was disproportionately male in many areas of Japan (Coates 2018c). The audience for war narratives seems to have been further polarised. Hikari Hori argues that “it is safe to assume that women viewers were in the minority” during the pre-war and wartime eras, and that “immediate postwar statistics do show that more men saw movies than women in the late 1940s and early 1950s” (2018, 88). A standard estimate for late 1950s audiences falls between 56 per cent male and 44 per cent female (Minami 1957, 76), yet the Sunday Audience Survey conducted by the Six Domestic Film Company Production Materials Survey Group (H¯oga rokusha seisaku shiryo ch¯osa kai no nichiy¯o kankyaku ch¯osa), which sampled audience demographics on selected Sundays, indicates that the total postwar female audience peaked in 1956 with a turnout of 37.4 per cent (Ury¯u 1967, 89). Survey takers found that female viewers were generally students and working women, both with disposable incomes (Hori 2002, 55). Participant observers at war film screenings reported

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that 80 per cent or more of the viewers were men. For example, Tsurumi reported that he saw The War Hero Admiral Yamamoto and the Combined Fleet (Reng¯ o kantai shirei ch¯ okan: Yamamoto Isoroku, Maruyama Seiji, 1968) in a full house that was all male (1970, 49–52). Yet in the interview and survey materials discussed below, a significant number of women report “prosthetic memories” of wartime enabled by cinema culture and film content, suggesting that this was by no means a topic of interest only to men.

Reimagining Wartime and Its Aftermath Through Cinema Let’s see. Well, around the time of the Korean War, conditions in Japan suddenly improved, as if overnight. In the five years before that, the streets were full of injured soldiers, people who had returned from the war playing accordions and shining shoes… In that impoverished Japan, I saw this kind of thing all the time when I went out. I was only a child, and of course I couldn’t see how conditions were everywhere, but when I looked at the state of Japan, well, it just seemed so poor… When I see those stories from my childhood in films, the memories all come back, and I feel nostalgic. (Koyama san, born 1944)

This excerpt from a recorded interview recalls the opening section of Akiko Hashimoto’s The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan, which introduces the same image of “amputated middle-aged men wearing tattered cotton military uniforms” lining the streets near Shinjuku station in Tokyo in the 1960s (2015, 1). The visual imagery of the suffering of the post-defeat era, reiterated by popular media images in cinema and photography, echoed across my interviewee’s memories of a diverse range of places and times in postwar Kansai, and continues to echo through contemporary writing on the era. Hashimoto argues for such predominant images or narratives in “memory culture products” such as film (2015, 65) as offering multiple paths to “moral recovery” through the construction of a coherent collective identity (2015, 140–141). As Koyama san’s recollection quoted above indicates, many of the participants in my study understood their engagements with cinema as a way to connect with or re-organise such memories. This

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second part of this chapter will explore how engagement with war narratives on film can be understood as a means of developing Landsberg’s “prosthetic memory” for both the generation who grew up during the war and Occupation, and for the later generations born after Occupation who wished to establish some connection to that period. Many of the cinemas and screening events recalled by participants in my study are no longer in existence. In this sense, their memories of early postwar cinema-going are sealed in the past, and re-awakened in the encounter of the interview. Yet, my interlocutors continued their lifelong encounters with cinema culture, in fact, their participation in this study was one example of their continued engagement with film. By participating in this study, and attending screenings at the Kyoto Culture Museum, or film clubs and monthly screening groups, participants in my study continued to make new memories of viewership. I therefore position their perceptions of their memories of wartime and the early postwar era in relation to their continued engagement with cinema as an on-going experience rather than a memory sealed in the past. In framing study participants’ accounts of their experiences at the cinema as processes of memory-building, or prosthetic memory-building, I borrow Laura Marks’ description of “film viewing as an exchange between two bodies – that of the viewer and that of the film” (2000, 149). Marks argues that “perception is not an infinite return to the buffet table of lived experiences but a walk through the minefield of embodied memory” (2000, 152). In this respect, the memories related below are not presented as factual accounts of lived experience, but rather as memory-building discourses, in which the embodied memories of cinema viewing blend with the changing narratives of personal history. Jan Campbell suggests that “film ethnography” can reveal the operations of “film spectatorship as a phenomenological and retrospective screen memory” (2005, 164). This chapter frames the testimonies of film viewers in this light, understanding these discursive performances as suggestive of the role of film viewership in evoking memories, fostering a sense of a memory, and extending perception into prosthetic memory. As Annette Kuhn has argued, …memory texts may create, rework, repeat, and re-contextualise the stories people tell each other about the kinds of lives they have led; and these memory-stories can assume a timeless, even a mythic quality which may be

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enhanced with every re-telling. Such everyday myth-making works at the levels of both personal and collective memory and is key, in the production, through memory, of shared identities. (2002, 11)

“I would have thought it wasn’t possible to have such strong memories from the age of only two or three”. (Hashimoto san, born 1943) A significant majority of participants in my study used speaking about the cinema as a way of situating their experiences at a particular time. As a large number were born between 1940 and 1945, with a concentration around 1943, many had a sense of this turning point in Japanese history as an uncertain memory. Several interviewees mentioned viewing films either made or retrospectively set during the war as a means of confirming hazy memories. Many had heard family stories passed down through generations for so long that they were unsure which memories were really their own, if there can be such a thing. For example, Hashimoto san spoke of confirming his memories of air raids with both his older brother and his father, as well as by watching film texts depicting similar scenes. In the excerpt from our interview below, living memory keepers like family members are placed on a par with the memory-building, or prosthetic memory-forming role played by fictional cinema narratives and documentary films alike. As I was born in Sh¯ owa 18 [1943], well, after that I listened to my older brother, and I confirmed that these things really happened. For example, of course we were out in the countryside, but we often had air raid warnings, the siren would sound, and we’d have to run for the bomb shelter. I remember one time falling over on the way – the bomb shelter was at the house next door. Well, I remember that. And on the nights Nagoya was bombed, I remember my father saying “Ah, tonight Nagoya’s being bombed again, I guess.” I saw that the front face of the mountain was all red. Of course, I also remember my father telling me all about it, and later when I saw films about it, I thought “They really did that well (umai).” (Hashimoto, Personal Communication 2016)

Assuming that he wouldn’t have clear memories from his early childhood years, I had asked Hashimoto san whether he thought that watching films set during the war helped him to understand the memories of the wartime generation. I was surprised when his answer focused on his own early memories rather than the experiences of his elder family members. He

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mentioned his father and brother and recalled them telling him about the events of wartime, but he seemed most keen to weave together his family members’ testimonies and the narratives and imagery of certain films, not as a means of reconstructing a past in which he was not present, but as a means of confirming his own early memories, or his sense of those memories existing. In this respect, Hashimoto san’s recollections appeared to be close to those “privately felt public memories that develop after an encounter with a mass cultural representation of the past, when new images and ideas come into contact with a person’s own archive of experience” observed by Landsberg (2004, 19). Hashimoto san appeared to identify himself as a member of the “wartime generation” (sens¯ o jidai), rather than a postwar child, in part by using popular cinema content to “confirm” his sense of his own personal early childhood memories. In this way, cinema content could present a means of temporal emplacement for the generations born in the liminal years at the end of the war, who are not quite the war generation but also not quite the apure (après ) or postwar generation. Temporal and geographical emplacements are not distinct, but rather intimately connected. Here it is important to note the geographical specificity of wartime and postwar experiences across Japan. Okinawa and Tokyo had very different roles in the war effort, for example, and consequently, people in those cities had very different experiences, from the firebombing of central Tokyo to the cave- and beach-based war on the islands of Okinawa. Western Japan and the Kansai area, as a region comprised of very different major cities with rural areas in between, similarly has a diverse range of war experiences. While rural agricultural areas such as Gifu were relatively safe from bombing, food scarcity was a major issue. The port areas of Osaka and Kobe were vulnerable to attack, while Kyoto experienced minimal bombing in comparison to Tokyo, yet was bombed later into wartime in the western area north of Nij¯o castle. Local residents in the northwest Nishijin area of the city maintain that the city government used the war as a convenient excuse to dismantle buraku areas under the guise of fire breaking. Not only are the wartime experiences of older residents in Western Japan quite different according to the local area, but the perpetrators of wartime violence also range from Allied forces to discriminatory city bureaucrats. Western Japan and the Kansai region also have distinctive migration patterns, as travel between rural areas and the city is today very convenient. It is perfectly possible to work in Kyoto and live in Kobe or Osaka,

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as many people do. Many participants in my study moved from one area to another for work or marriage, such as Hashimoto san quoted above, who moved to Kobe later in life, bringing his childhood memories of Nagoya. Despite the relatively small geographical distance of such a move, participants nonetheless had to familiarise themselves with the particularities of their new hometowns, including specialised dialect, produce, cooking, and hospitality styles. A part of this familiarisation in the postwar period involved making oneself aware of what kind of war experiences were particular to one’s new region, as opposed to those distinct to one’s hometown. Cinema content helped to situate many study participants both geographically and temporally in the years after the war, as they explored Western Japan’s diverse range of war memories through film viewing. Like many of my interviewees, Koyama san brought a range of photographs and film materials to each meeting. Unlike others who brought favourite film magazines, star photographs, postcards, and programme handbills from films, they had seen, however, she also brought large printouts of her favourite film posters, and photographs of her local area taken before she was born. Showing me black and white photographs taken in 1942, two years before her birth, she pointed out historical details such as the common practice of writing shop signs from right to left, as opposed to today’s fashion for writing from left to right. She mixed together the photographs and film posters, laying them out in her lap, and the two sets of materials together prompted her recollections of the everyday life of wartime and early postwar Japan. Ah, you know this one! Everyone loved that star back then. Of course, in those days there were no baths in the houses, but there were plenty of big family homes around. Everyone listened to the radio at home and then talked about it at the bathhouse. It was that kind of thing. I hardly saw it, but later at the Bunpaku I could see it [on film]. (Koyama, Personal Communication 2016)

Koyama san wove together the aspirational, in stories of stars and nationwide fame, with the extremely banal, in her recollections of bathhouse conversations, prompted by her collection of film materials. She contextualised her story after its telling by acknowledging that she had only slight memories of this era—“I hardly saw it”. Yet, her experience of seeing films set in this period appeared to give her a feeling of ownership over

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this memory of historical and national change, at least to the extent that she felt comfortable educating a foreign researcher about the era. She also brought photographs of everyday postwar life taken outside her hometown of K¯oshien, in Osaka city centre, and in Kobe. Pointing to a picture of returnee soldiers begging in the street, dressed in the distinctive white clothing of the war injured, she recalled, “They were always in Osaka city, and in Sannomiya in Kobe… You could see them for around ten years after the war. After the Korean war you didn’t really see them anymore though. Of course, they’re the people who came back after defeat in the Second World War” (Koyama, Personal Communication 2016). Though Koyama san grew up in a smaller town that did not have returnees begging in the street, her brief experiences visiting the centres of Osaka and Kobe, and her identification with the era itself as a period in living memory contributed to her desire to incorporate these more iconic aspects of postwar life into her personal story. Koyama san used the photographs that she brought to our interview in a similar mode to the way that all interviewees used their recollections of cinema narratives—as outside confirmation of scenes and events vaguely remembered, or not remembered, but believed to be of historical importance. Producing photographs taken by others of the years immediately before her birth was a means of claiming legitimacy for her role as a memory keeper, shoring up Koyama san’s effort to impart a sense of a historical period, which neither of us had directly experienced. Her possession of and fluency in reading these photographs established the Japanese Koyama san, though born slightly later than the period under discussion, as a legitimate transmitter of the story of the era for a younger, non-Japanese audience such as myself. The photographs became a physical manifestation of the same pattern in our discussions on cinema narratives, serving as confirmation of knowledge about an earlier time, as well as a handy illustration, or appeal to a shared visual language, which eased the communication of these half-remembered events or prosthetic memories. In Koyama san’s spoken memories, cinema and everyday life were tied together, one explaining and contextualising the other. She saw nothing strange in mixing together photographs from her own life, from the time before her birth, and promotional material for films dealing with similar eras and themes. It is important to note that throughout my project these visual aids were used to communicate complicated feelings about the war and its aftermath to “outsider” or non-Japanese audiences, in myself, and the

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imagined readers of my future work. Koyama san’s father did not go to war, but she recalled strong memories of seeing images of American soldiers riding through occupied Japan in their Jeeps, giving out chocolate. She was at pains to point out that her memories do not include any sense of bitterness or hatred directed towards the occupiers from the adults and children around her. “There was absolutely no sense of having lost, I mean, among the children, and we didn’t have any people close to us who had died, so a lot of people felt that that they [the American soldiers] were here to give help. Because we were children, there was absolutely no sense of enmity” (Koyama, Personal Communication 2016). Instead, she remembered her mother making new clothes from old scraps based on the designs they had seen in Hollywood movies. While the imagery of the photographs that she brought communicated a visual sense of the hardship of the end of the war, Koyama san’s stories about imported films and friendships with Americans borrowed from the uplifting affect of much mainstream cinema to present a prosthetic war memory palatable to a non-Japanese audience. While Landsberg imagined prosthetic memory as reaching out across generations and bridging the gap between those who have experienced and event and those who have not, we must also consider its transnational impact, extending across places as well as time to build a memory that works for many sides of a past conflict. “When I watch films from just before I was born, I feel respect and honour” (Inoue san, born 1958) The use of prosthetic memory to build connections across generations was a common theme throughout my study, and particularly, in the testimonies of younger study participants. For many, postwar film content presented a means to connect to the memories of older generations. This was the case both for those who were children during the postwar era, and for those born significantly after the war, such as Inoue san quoted above. In some cases, film was conceptualised as a bridge between generations of a family, echoing Wilson’s argument that war narratives on film allowed viewers “to understand what their older relatives and friends had endured and they themselves might only narrowly have escaped” (2013, 539). Hashimoto san, whose best friend lost his father in the war, approached war films as a means to understand his older friends’ and acquaintances’ experiences. “Well, of course there were people in my close circle of friends who had lost their fathers in the war, and we had

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many friends who died, so of course I felt very sorry for them. But at the same time, I didn’t really know anything about the actual experience of war” (Hashimoto, Personal Communication 2016). From his high school years onward, Hashimoto san felt that he was strongly influenced by the content of pacifist postwar war–retro films such as the box office success Tower of Lilies. At the time of our interview, he also expressed vehement support for the pacifist goals of Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan. Throughout my project, many participants attributed their contemporary political ideologies to the content of specific films made in the postwar years. The generational and family connections in accounts of such viewership experiences seem key to their emotional impact, which has implications for their role in memory formation, or the development of prosthetic memory. While Hashimoto san imagined viewing war films as a means of attaining a greater understanding of the experiences of the elder generations with whom he grew up, his recollections of such movies, and his own emotional response was strongly tied to his memories of his own family. Hashimoto san remembered his elder brothers and sisters teasing him about his emotional reactions to particular war films. As there were many siblings in my family, my elder brother and sister often took me to the cinema. I remember one time, I must have been around eight years old (I’ve checked this with my older sister), and my sister took me to a film with Ishihama Akira playing a character who gets sent to war around high school age. The soldiers have to get up so early and suffer physically. There was that song, I forget the name… (sings) tan tan tan ta ta tan ta ta tan. That music appeared when the soldiers marched out, and when I saw it, I cried a lot. When we got back home, I remember that my sister told everyone “Yo-chan caused me some amount of trouble!” (Hashimoto, Personal Communication 2016)

In Hashimoto san’s accounts, he emphasised his own emotional reaction to war narratives on film, while contextualising his response as unusual in comparison to his elder relatives’ own responses and expectations. His sister joked that his emotional reaction had caused trouble for her, as viewers were disturbed or annoyed by the child, she was escorting crying. At the same time, he also described certain war-related films, such as the teacher’s union-sponsored Hiroshima as “crying films” (nakeru eiga), suggesting that others in the theatre may have been doing the same. In such accounts of viewing war films, crying or otherwise engaging

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emotionally with the narrative appeared to be a way of coming closer to the elder generation and their experiences. Several study participants recalled feeling a similar sense of emotional pity and admiration for those who suffered through the extreme poverty of the wartime and postwar eras in Japan. Almost every survey respondent noted the poverty (mazushii) of the era, and several expressed gratitude to the elder generations including their own parents, for working through this difficult time. Kobayashi san argued that film was an important tool for learning about this era and continues to be so today. Watching war films and films made during wartime, “you can understand the feeling not only of those who died in the war, but also those women who became widows” and that the cumulative effect is something like a “national experience” (kokuminteki keiken) shown on film (Kobayashi, Personal Communication 2016). Despite the differences in regional and geographical experience sketched above, Kobayashi san, who lived all his life in Kobe except his university years spent in Tokyo, conceptualised the time period of the war and Occupation as a kind of national experience, or communal experience (ky¯ otsu keiken) (Kobayashi, Personal Communication 2016). Yet, he worried that not many people were going to see the films that depict this overarching temporal experience. After the period of high economic growth, Japan’s poverty problem didn’t exactly disappear, but things certainly changed. People who had been really poor could now have a middle-class lifestyle. At the same time, as years passed since the end of the war, those experiences quickly faded from film, and were replaced by stuff like violent yakuza films… It’s unfortunate, but there aren’t any really excellent people shown on film anymore. (Kobayashi, Personal Communication 2016)

Kobayashi san connected his respect for the older generation, whose suffering he believed that he understood and contextualised by watching films about the wartime and postwar periods, with a higher standard of filmmaking. The idea of excellence in relation to human qualities is extrapolated to excellence in filmmaking. Inoue san, who approached war and postwar films as a means of historical understanding, similarly expressed as much respect for the craft of filmmaking displayed in the Occupation era as for the character types depicted struggling through difficult historical circumstances, and for their real-life equivalents.

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In that period of cinema, there were so many people gathered together in the theatres, and there were so many really great films too. No matter how many times you watch those films, they’re still interesting. I don’t really know, because these are films from a little before I was born, so I don’t really know about the social situation, but I love these films, I think they’re really great, and when I watch them, I feel so much respect and appreciation. (Inoue, Personal Communication 2016)

Like Kobayashi san, Inoue san’s respect for those elder generations living in a different “social situation” was conflated with his admiration for the craft and technical innovations of postwar Japanese cinema. This conflation was evident in the way a number of participants discussed their memories of watching Kinoshita Keisuke’s Twenty-Four Eyes (Nij¯ ushi no hitomi, 1954), an explicitly anti-war film. Almost everyone who went to school in the 1950s was shown this film either in class or on school trips to the cinema. The suffering of the characters during militarisation and war made a great impact on participants in my study. At the same time, many expressed admiration not only for the ideological content of the film, but for the innovations in filmmaking that it showcases. The twelve pupils of the title grew from five-year-olds to adults over the course of the film, which spans more than twenty years. Kinoshita Keisuke cast non-professional child actors living on the island on which the film is set, with one particular proviso. Only families of siblings were cast, so that younger and elder siblings could play the same character at different moments in the character’s narrative. Inoue san recalled, “At first, I thought the six-year-olds and the twelve-year-olds were the same person, just a few years apart. When I read that they were siblings, I was so surprised! I thought that idea was really interesting” (Inoue, Personal Communication 2016). In coming closer to the elder generations, and a different period in time through watching postwar films, study participants’ statements suggested that they felt that they were not only learning about wartime and Occupation experiences, but also coming closer to a golden age of cinematic artistry and invention. In its ability to transport the viewer back to an earlier period of their life, the encounter with cinema appeared to have some time travel-like qualities for many participants in my study. Several recounted pleasurable feelings of nostalgia when watching films from their younger years. Viewers in the post-1955 generation also spoke of nostalgia in relation to watching film text made before they were born, echoing Landsberg’s

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argument above, that engagement with film, or other mass cultural technologies, can cause the viewer “to create memories of events through which they did not live” (Landsberg 2004, 14). In these instances, the idea of nostalgia appeared to be more of an imagined national concept than a personal one. These viewers were not only attempting to understand earlier periods of Japanese history, and the experiences of older generations through cinema, but they were also attempting to connect to some kind of imagined national sentiment in regard to the difficult wartime and postwar years.

Mediating Memory Through the Cinema In attempting to understand the relation of memory and cinema, we must be wary, as Judith Keene has argued, of “slippage from a discussion about the themes within a film’s content into any straightforward conclusion about the incorporation of these themes into collective memory” (2010, 15–16). Alison Landsberg’s concept of prosthetic memory has been used here to distinguish perceived memories of war and its aftermath prompted or supported by experiences of film viewership from personal memories based on actual lived experience of wartime. Landsberg argues that “through an act of prosthesis enabled by cinematic identification” the memories of events that we did not personally live through “become part of our archive of memory” (2003, 155). In the memories shared by my study participants above, we can see how favourite films and fond recollections of cinema-going can ease even unpleasant narratives such as war and defeat into the “archive of memory” kept by those with no direct personal experience of the events in question. In conclusion, I would like to briefly consider what the activities discussed above seem to mean to my study participants. My own presence as a non-Japanese researcher from a different generation perhaps shaped our encounters significantly, as the majority of participants adopted the role of memory keepers of Japan’s troubled history with an emphasis on smoothing over historic bad feelings. Insistence on a lack of negative feelings towards allied forces during and after the Occupation was combined with expression of an ardent love for Hollywood cinema, weaving the negative narratives of defeat, and Occupation together with a romantic longing for the modes of living glimpsed through imported films. In this way, the prosthetic memories extended through engagement with cinema narratives of war and Occupation appeared to be a kind of bridge

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building, eliding national and cultural differences in a shared nostalgic love of Hollywood. Yet, the most significant aspect of the prosthetic memory work of cinema attendance and recollections of film narratives for my study participants seems to be an effort to bring themselves closer to previous generations of their own families. Almost all participants in the study spoke of their parents at length, attributing a love of cinema to the passion of a mother or father who brought them to film theatres regularly. In their later life commitment to retelling, reworking, and ameliorating the negative emotional valence of war narratives, study participants may be reclaiming their parents’ life stories, removing those parts that may wear less well over time, and substituting wartime politics, ideologies, and suffering for a happier nostalgic image of shared enrapturement at the cinema. While Landsberg is at pains to disavow “anything inherently positive or progressive” about prosthetic memory enabled by technology (2003, 157), she does argue for prosthetic memory as able “to affect people in profound ways – both intellectually and emotionally – in ways that might ultimately change the way they think, and how they act, in the world” (2003, 158). The majority of the participants in my study demonstrated a commitment to anti-war political principles, and explicitly connected this political orientation to the power of cinema to communicate difficult truths and sentiments about Japan’s war and occupation. As Koyama san suggested, Japan’s history and its postwar recovery can be felt though stories on film. It can be a good way to study, and I think that if children can watch good films that touch their hearts, they can become people capable of being moved emotionally. (Koyama, Personal Communication 2016)

Koyama san clearly associates learning from Japan’s past with becoming a person who can be moved emotionally, whose heart can be touched by others’ suffering, and situates cinema as a technology which can develop these feelings. In this respect, her hope converges with Landsberg’s understanding of prosthetic memory fostered by technologies such as cinema as “a utopian dream,” which challenges us to “take seriously these technologies” as a means to construct new political alliances and

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positions based on “collective social responsibility” (2003, 158). Engagement with war narratives in cinema may offer a means to move away from wartime ideologies while coming closer to a sense of a memory of wartime experience.

Works Cited Asahi, Sh¯ ukan. 1953. Sens¯ o eiga to taish¯ u [War films and the masses]. Sh¯ ukan Asahi (26 July): 14. Asahi, Sh¯ ukan. 1956. Eiga ‘Nihon kaku tatakaeri’ o mite [Watching This is How Japan Fought ]. Sh¯ ukan Asahi (16 September): 4–5. Campbell, Jan. 2005. Film and Cinema Spectatorship: Melodrama and Mimesis. Cambridge: Polity. Coates, Jennifer. 2018a. Alternative Viewership Practices in Kyoto, Japan. In The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema, ed. Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park, Gina Marchetti, and See Kam Tan, 221–241. London: Palgrave. Coates, Jennifer. 2018b. When Cinema Was King. Documentary Short. Coates, Jennifer. 2018c. Rethinking the Young Female Cinema Audience: Postwar Cinema-Going in Kansai, 1945–1952. US-Japan Women’s Journal 54 (1): 6–28. Dower, John. 1987. Cinema Goes to War. Japan Society Newsletter (July). Dower, John W. 2000a. ‘Culture’, Theory, and Practice in US-Japan Relations. Diplomatic History 24 (3): 517–528. Dower, John W. 2000b. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II . New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Harper, Sue. 1997. Popular Film, Popular Memory: The Case of the Second World War. In War and Memory in the Twentieth Century, ed. M. Evans and K. Lunn, 163–176. Oxford: Berg. Hashimoto, Akiko. 2015. The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hashimoto, Yoshi. 2016. Personal Interview with Jennifer Coates. Kyoto, public cafe, 24 November. High, Peter B. 2003. The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hirano, Kyoko. 1992. Mr Smith Goes to Tokyo. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press. Hori, Hikari. 2002. Eiga o mirukoto to katarukoto: Mizoguchi Kenji ‘Yoru no onnatachi’ (1948) o meguru hihy¯ o, jend¯a, kankyaku [‘Women of the Night’ (1948) as Framed by the Occupation Era in Japan: Negotiations Between Text, Critics, and Female Spectators]. Eiz¯ ogaku [Japan Society for Image Arts and Sciences] 68: 47–66.

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Hori, Hikari. 2018. Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan, 1926–1945. New York: Cornell University Press. Inoue, Toshi. 2016. Personal Interview with Jennifer Coates. Kyoto, Kyoto University, 7 July. Izbicki, Joanne. 1997. Scorched Cityscapes and Silver Screens: Negotiating Defeat and Democracy Through Cinema in Occupied Japan. PhD diss.: Cornell University. Keene, Judith. 2010. Cinema and Prosthetic Memory: The Case of the Korean War. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 7 (1): 1–18. Kinema, Junp¯ o. 1957. Meiji tenn¯ o to nichiro dai sens¯ o ni okeru kankyaku hann¯ o [The Impressions of the Audience of The Emperor Meiji and the Russo-Japanese War]. Kinema Junp¯ o 177 (June): 114–115. Kitagawa, Fuyuhiko. 1957. Meiji tenn¯o to nichiro dai senso [The Emperor Meiji and the Russo-Japanese War]. Kinema Junp¯ o 176 (May): 41–42. Kitamura, Hiroshi. 2010. Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kobayashi, Ry¯ uichi. 2016. Personal Interview with Jennifer Coates. Kyoto, Kyoto University, 14 August. Koyama, Mitsue. 2016. Personal Interview with Jennifer Coates. Kyoto, domestic address, 17 October. Kuhn, Annette. 2002. Dreaming of Fred and Ginger: Cinema and Cultural Memory. New York: NYU Press. Landsberg, Alison. 2003. Prosthetic Memory: The Ethics and Politics of Memory in an Age of Mass Culture. In Memory and Popular Film, ed. Paul Grainge, 144–161. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Landsberg, Alison. 2004. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Marks, Laura. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press. Minami, Hiroshi. 1957. Meiji tenn¯ o to Nichiro daisens¯ o no kankyaku: ‘furuki yoki jidai’ e no ky¯osh¯ u [The Audience of The Emperor Meiji and the RussoJapanese War: Nostalgia for the ‘Good Old Days’]. Sh¯ ukan Asahi (19 May): 76. Miyagi, Kensh¯ u. 1991. Sengo sens¯ o no eigashi [Film History of the Wartime and Postwar]. Tokyo: Bokuto Shunshusha. Motion Picture Producers’ Association of Japan (Eiren). Statistics of Film Industry in Japan. http://www.eiren.org/statistics_e/index.html. Accessed 14 Feb 2020. Ogawa, Y. 1960. Dokuritsu gurentai nishi-e (Desperado Outpost West). Kinema Junp¯ o 274 (1 December): 83.

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Salomon, Harald. 2014. Japan’s Longest Days. In Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, ed. King-fai Tam, Timothy Y. Tsu, and Sandra Wilson Wilson, 121–136. London: Routledge. Seaton, Philip A. 2007. Japan’s Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ In Historical Consciousness of World War II . London: Routledge. Shimazu, Naoko. 2003. Popular Representations of the Past: The Case of Postwar Japan. Journal of Contemporary History 38 (1): 101–116. Standish, Isolde. 2005. A New History of Japanese Cinema. London: Continuum. Standish, Isolde. 2011. Politics, Porn, and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. London: Continuum. Stegewerns, Dick. 2014. Establishing the Genre of the Revisionist War Film. In Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, ed. King-fai Tam, Timothy Y. Tsu, and Sandra Wilson Wilson, 93–107. London: Routledge. Sugimoto, Michael. 2008. The Temporal/Spatial Logic of Japanese Nationalism: The Narrative Structure of Film and Memory. In Violating Time: History, Memory, and Nostalgia in Cinema, ed. Christina Lee, 88–103. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Terasawa, Kanako. 2010. Enduring Encounter: Hollywood Cinema and Japanese Women’s Memory of the Postwar Experience. PhD diss.: Birkbeck, University of London. Tsurumi, Shunsuke. 1970. Sens¯o eiga ni tsuite [On War Film]. In Gendai Nihon eigaron taikei 2: kojin to chikara no kaifuku [A Survey of Japanese Film Theory vol. 2: The Recovery of Individuality and Power], 49–52. Tokyo: T¯ okisha. Ury¯ u, Tadao. 1967. Eiga fukk¯ o wa josei no d¯ oin kara: Josei kankyaku gensh¯o no donsoko wa sugita [Cinema Recovery Begins with Women’s Mobilization: Female Audience Decrease Hits Bottom]. Kinema Junp¯ o [The Movie times] 450: 88–91. Virilio, Paul. 1989. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. London: Verso. Watanabe, Morio. 2001. Imagery and War in Japan: 1995. In Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War, ed. Takashi Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White, and Lisa Yoneyama, 129–154. Durham: Duke University Press. Wilson, Sandra. 2013. Film and Soldier: Japanese War Movies in the 1950s. Journal of Contemporary History 48 (3): 537–555.

CHAPTER 10

Contextualizing Cow: War Atrocities in Twenty-First-Century Chinese Movies of the Second Sino–Japanese War Timothy Yun Hui Tsu

Lest you forget. Deuteronomy 8:11 All these things must come to pass. Matthew 24:6

“Don’t be afraid, all things will come to pass,” says Cowherd (Niu’er, literally “cow two”) to his bovine companion, an impassive Dutch dairy cow, at the end of the movie Cow (Douniu, literally “fighting cow,” Guan Hu 2009). The ragged peasant and the hulky animal have survived against all odds the long and treacherous years of the Second Sino–Japanese War (1937–1945). Cowherd has just arranged with the returning Chinese communist forces for the two to spend the rest of their lives together on the mountain, far away from the selfishness, duplicity, and cruelty of

T. Y. H. Tsu (B) Kwansei Gakuin University, Nishinomiya, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2_10

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human society down below. Cowherd utters the reassuring words quoted above to his bovine soul mate as he surveys the distant landscape from a clifftop perch relaxed and content, even exuding a faint air of optimism. The tranquillity that prevails at the movie’s end is the polar opposite of the terrifying opening sequence where the unsuspecting peasant stumbles upon a field of mangled and smoldering bodies. To his horror, he discovers the blood-soiled hand of his witty and bubbly fiancée sticking out from the jumbled human remains, a distinctive engagement bracelet still attached to her wrist. Apparently, during his absence, Japanese soldiers passed through the village and slaughtered everyone, leaving behind only a grotesque field of mutilated and charred corpses. A massacre has taken place and a village has been eradicated. Through the rest of the movie, we see Cowherd dodge bullets from Japanese soldiers and Chinese guerrillas, foil a scheme by ravenous refugees to kill his companion for food, evade marauding bandits and try in vain to broker a truce between a Chinese and a Japanese soldier, both wounded and separated from their units. In spite of the frequent flashbacks, the movie never once shows how Cowherd’s fellow villagers met with their violent collective end. In fact, the whole movie contains no re-enactment of Japanese atrocities, a feature that is otherwise de rigueur for anti-Japanese War retro movies from the People’s Republic of China (hereafter PRC). Equally unusual is that the narrative shows the rather clumsy Cowherd emerging from the war physically unscathed and emotionally sound. In spite of the killing and suffering he has witnessed in abundance, and his own narrow escapes from bloodthirsty Japanese soldiers, Cowherd is ready to look ahead unencumbered by hate, anger, or self-pity at the end of the war. The harrowing war experience leaves him with neither a blinding desire for revenge nor a debilitating grief. Remarkably, he is equanimous about his country’s hard-won victory. Outwardly, the “return to light” (guangfu) appears to stir up no strong emotional response from him. Like his bovine companion, he displays no discernible signs of pride or joy at the good news. There is no singing, dancing, laughing, or weeping. As the reality of the war’s end sinks in, Cowherd appears content that he has outlived the madness and has found a partner to talk to (and who does not talk back). He is not numb or in denial or jubilant, but calm and mildly hopeful. How are we to understand Cowherd’s underwhelming transition from war to peace, from oppression to liberation, from near-death to unexpected victory? Has he no memory of the terrible things that have only

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so recently taken away his sweetheart and all his neighbors? Does he not need to cope with the evil he has witnessed by means of some commemoration? Has he not gleaned any lesson from the tragedy which he is morally obligated to preserve and share? How can he let go of history so easily? Cowherd’s attitude toward Japanese war atrocities is highly unusual in the tradition of Chinese war movies. One has to search far afield for comparisons, although there are comparable examples. Consider the following statement by Holocaust survivor, educator, and philosopher Yehuda Elkana: [W]e must learn to forget! Today I see no more important political and educational task for the leaders of this nation [Israel] than to take their stand on the side of life, to dedicate themselves to creating our future, and not to be preoccupied from morning to night, with symbols, ceremonies, and lessons of the Holocaust. They must uproot the domination of that historical “remember!” over our lives. (1988, 4)

Elkana’s admonition to his compatriots about the Holocaust would be an apt description of Cowherd’s attitude toward the Second Sino–Japanese War. The Chinese peasant is not trying to forget, as in erasing the memory of the horror of the war with Japan. He is just moving on, getting past the past. Intuitively, he follows the most basic and simple precept of “to live” (huozhe), to borrow the cryptic title of a Zhang Yimou movie about another insignificant Chinese life tossed about by fate in the mid-twentieth century (To Live [Huozhe], 1994).1 In this chapter, I argue that the placid final scene of Cow is the anticlimactic ending of a bold, mold-breaking PRC movie about the country’s prolonged and costly second modern war with Japan. By comparing this movie with three roughly contemporaneous ones—The Flowers of War (Jinling shisanchai, Zhang Yimou, 2011, hereafter Flowers ), City of Life and Death (Nanjing! Nanjing!, Lu Chuan 2009a, b, hereafter City), and Devils on the Doorstep (Guizi laile, Jiang Wen 2000, hereafter Devils )—I seek to demonstrate that Cow takes an exceptional approach to representing the war. Visually, it breaks with PRC cinematic convention by largely dispensing with direct, graphic depictions of Japanese war atrocities. Even more radical is its implied message about the war: the movie’s ending suggests that war survivors could choose to move forward without 1 The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Yu Hua (1993).

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having to carry the burden of their traumatic experience as victims of foreign military aggression indefinitely. By contrast, Cow’s three contemporaries selected for comparison here are haunted by the memory of Japanese war atrocities. They nurse that trauma as an open wound that refuses to heal and continues to hurt; at the same time, they cherish it as a grotesque badge of honor attesting to Chinese virtues. They all contain graphic depictions of Japanese soldiers brutalizing innocent Chinese. In doing so, they collectively carry the ideology-saturated Chinese cinematic tradition established in the 1950s and 1960s into the twenty-first century. However, these films also differ in how they use the recreated images of atrocities. Flowers deploys such imagery as a foil to celebrate Chinese virtues. City strives to convey an inclusive message that affirms the humanity of both Chinese and Japanese people in war. As the most iconoclastic among the three, Devils challenges the premise that there is a simple, coherent, authoritative moral lesson about the war by visualizing atrocities committed by both sides. In spite of these differences, these movies are similar in a significant way: all three are preoccupied with the memory of Japanese war atrocities, which they find profoundly disturbing and yet cannot but relive in graphic detail. Cow alone takes a contrarian approach. On the visual level, the film refrains from the direct portrayal of Japanese brutality. On the discursive level, it suggests that letting bygones be bygones, as opposed to clinging onto traumatic memory, is one way to outlive a war, however devastating it may have been.

Lest We Forget In The Choice: Even in Hell Hope Can Flower, Holocaust survivor and clinical psychologist Edith Eger recalls her extraordinary personal history: a happy and talented teenager suddenly thrown into the hell of Auschwitz, her ordeal in and miraculous survival of the death camp and, thereafter, her long and successful career as a psychotherapist in America (Eger 2017). That incredible journey culminated in the author’s decision to return to Auschwitz to face a part of her past that she had previously refused to confront. Now she felt the need to return for the sake of selfhealing. It was a difficult decision to reach and one that is even harder to follow through. Part of her resisted going, but another part of her wanted to face down the devil—to not let Hitler win the war in her heart, as her supportive husband counselled (Eger 2017, 269). For moral support,

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she called her beloved sister Magda, who had been through Auschwitz with her, to try to convince her to join the trip of remembering and healing. But her sister saw things differently: “Why the hell would I go back there?” was her resolute reply (Eger 2017, 292). Eger went ahead without her sister, although she also accepted her sibling’s decision to stay away. Here, we have two sisters who had survived absolute evil but who have adopted the exact opposite approaches to dealing with their traumatic past. One chose to revisit history in order to move on; the other decided not to look back while moving on. The essential function of memory for the individual is well established (Mace and Rabins 2006; Singer and Salovey 1993; Tulving and Craik 2000). However, the imperative for communities and nations to commemorate the past, especially traumatic pasts, has become widely recognized and put into practice only in the second half of the twentieth century (Assmann and Czaplicka 1995; Confino 1997; Kansteiner 2002; Nikulin 2015; Radstone 2008; Russell 2006; Winter 2001). This “memory turn” has been so complete that countries and peoples nowadays take it for granted that it is necessary to articulate and pay homage to a common history—in most cases some war-related episodes—so that their members may commiserate, commemorate and, most important, renew their allegiance to the collective. The late twentieth century’s collective memory industry—from scholarly and popular writings to museums, memorials, and oral history projects, to commemorative ceremonies big and small—thrives on the assumption that continual invocation of a shared past confers an essential identity to a social group, thus guaranteeing its future viability (Assmann and Czaplicka 1995; Kansteiner 2002). Producers, sponsors, and consumers of the modern memory boom, many of whom invoke Maurice Halbwachs’ (1992) name like a mantra, hold that individuals have no choice but to constitute themselves as members of a community by adopting the latter’s chosen narrative of the past. At the same time, they are emphatic that the absence or erasure of a collective memory will lead to the dreadful social or political disenfranchisement of an individual or a people (Nikulin 2015; Winter 2001). From this perspective, the reproduction, dissemination, and amplification of collective memory are morally and politically mandatory not just to honor the past but, more crucially, to ensure the future. The same dynamic sustains the contemporary Chinese state’s unceasing reinforcement of an official memory of the country’s last war with Japan (Yang 2000; He 2007). The central theme of this government-sanctioned

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and popularly accepted memory is Japanese wartime atrocities. This narrative serves as the foil to the iteration of patriotism and communist legitimacy. There are good reasons for this choice. As Rana Mitter observes, the eight-year war has cost China immensely, at least 14 million people killed and 80 million displaced, not counting other tangible and intangible losses (Mitter 2013, 5). Moreover, during the war, the Japanese military had perpetrated a wide range of brutalities, only some of which resulted in war crime trials in Japan and China after the war (Fujiwara 2006; Kushner 2015; Wilson et al. 2017). Japanese war atrocities—from the execution of POWs and non-combatants to sex crime, deadly human experiments, and enslavement, to torture, pillage, and wanton destruction of property—are synonymous with the rampage of Japanese militarism ( junguo zhuyi) in the Chinese collective memory (Berry 2008, 108– 178). Before the Nanjing Massacre gained international prominence, the “three alls campaigns” (sanguang zhuozhan)—kill all, take all, burn all— served as the signifier of the Japanese military’s reign of terror. Such scorched-earth operations are explicitly referenced in movies from Daughters of China (Zhonghua nüer, Ling Zifeng 1949), one of the earliest war retro films made after the communists took power, to Tunnel Warfare (Didaozhan, Ren Xudong 1965), arguably the most watched and bestremembered war retro film from the period of high socialism in China (1949–1976) (Tsu 2013). Cinematic re-enactment of Japanese war atrocities thus bolsters patriotism while lending legitimacy to the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese government policy since the 1980s—later converging with the international success of Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Chang 1997; Kinney 2012)—has transformed the Nanjing Massacre into a “Chinese holocaust” symbolizing the unfathomable evil that was the eight-year Japanese invasion of China (Berry 2008, 108–178). Generous government funding went toward the construction of a modernist, monumental Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in 1985 (Denton 2014). Other museums and memorials of the war were built or refurbished to form a national infrastructure for the patriotic education programs proliferating in schools and the workplace (Mitter 2003). In 2015, over Japan’s objection, China successfully applied for UNESCO recognition of the records of the Nanjing Massacre as “memory of the world.” In China today, the Nanjing Massacre stands as the prime example of Japanese militarism run amok during the Second World War. More generally, Japanese war atrocities have become the

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default lens through which the war is understood and remembered. There is a continual output of movies, TV dramas, textbooks, fictions, and computer games that feature the “Japanese devil” (Riben guizi) (St. Michel 2015; Taylor 2015). Remembering the war with Japan has been a central mission of the PRC film industry since the founding of the Republic. For more than seventy years, war retro movies have been produced to remind the Chinese audience of the fear, loss, grief, and anger caused by Japanese militarism. At the same time, they continue to valorize the people’s resistance under communist leadership (Tsu 2014). These retrospective cinematic accounts of the Resistance War (Kangzhan) adhered to the Chinese dictum “the past must be remembered to serve as guidance for the future” (qianshi buwang houshi zhishi). Chinese leaders used to intone this saying to admonish their Japanese counterparts to show proper contrition over the war (Kawashima 2012; People 2000, 2006). Since the 1980s, as a by-product of supreme leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, a small number of war retro movies have sought to sublimate rigid nationalism and partisan political message to meditations on more universal topics such as humanity, empathy, anxiety, and hope. None, however, have gone so far as to question the need to rehash the same memory—to re-enact Japanese war atrocities on-screen ad infinitum. Not to recall the brutality of Japanese soldiers has simply been unimaginable in the tradition of PRC war retro films. It was taken for granted that the war had to convey fixed lessons, and for it to do so, images of the enemy’s barbarity had to be reproduced and presented to the nation again and again. Cow’s deviation from this convention separates it from the classical war retro movies of the 1950s–1970s as well as its outstanding twenty-first-century peers. Cow is not alone in taking exception to the “militarization of history,” i.e., the tendency for countries to commemorate selected wars in the past to service present political ends. Historian Marilyn Lake and colleagues argue that Australia’s celebration of the Battle of Gallipoli (1915–1916) valorizes an outdated and wrongheaded national self-definition (Lake et al. 2010).2 Obviously, the specifics of their critique of the myth of Gallipoli—e.g., glorification of imperialism and masculinity—do not apply

2 The book is highly controversial. See McKay (2013) for a critique.

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to the Chinese cinematic construct of the anti-Japanese War. Nevertheless, their caution against a nation defining itself by a particular war is akin in spirit to Cowherd’s treatment of the Japanese occupation as a transient event that should not be used exclusively to determine the future. Unlikely as it may be, a group of critical Australian historians and a character on the Chinese silver screen arrive at the same conclusion, that it might be better if countries and individuals would “move on” from past wars, whether they are remembered as collective trauma or triumph (Lake et al. 2010, 1–23; 157–167).

Embracing Atrocities Even though it is a twenty-first-century movie, Flowers by the worldrenowned director Zhang Yimou conforms to the convention of Chinese socialist war retro cinema. It resolutely exposes the atrocities Japanese soldiers committed in Nanjing from late 1937 to early 1938. It uses Japanese barbarity as a foil to celebrate the virtues—gut patriotism and basic human decency, unmotivated by ideology—of ordinary Chinese. It also features a friendly American—yet another cliché of Nanjing Massacre movies—as a white witness saviour who confers objective authority upon the story told (Yang 2014). True to type, all Japanese characters in the movie appear as incorrigible monstrous others. Flowers presents a simple binary world of foes versus friends, evil versus virtues, Japanese versus Chinese. A group of convent school students and an altar boy find refuge in an abandoned church as Japanese soldiers enter the city and terrorize the local population. By coincidence, a dozen prostitutes and an American drunkard also take shelter there. In spite of their divergent backgrounds and initial mutual distrust, the strangers learn to look out for each other while waiting anxiously for the deadly chaos beyond the church walls to subside. However, what they dread most comes to them soon enough: one day, Japanese soldiers barge into the church and begin to molest the girls. The prostitutes, hiding in the basement, remain undetected. Suddenly finding courage, the American announces himself to be the resident priest and attempts to stop the loutish soldiers. When the soldiers press on with their despicable business, a lone Chinese sniper begins to pick off the predators. Nonetheless, outnumbered and outgunned, he is soon killed. Just in time, a Japanese colonel arrives on the scene. He promises protection for the girls, whom the American priest insists are members of the church choir but demands

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that they go to sing for his troop later at a specified date. Everyone taking refuge in the church is well aware of what terrible fate awaits the girls at the Japanese camp. After some soul searching, the prostitutes and the altar boy volunteer to impersonate the girls and go to entertain the Japanese. On the fateful day, as a military truck carries away the newly constituted choir, the American smuggles the girls out of the occupied city. Prior to its release, commentators had high expectations for what was hyped as China’s answer to Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) (Berra 2012; Jinkinson 2012; Rohter 2011; Zeitchik 2011). Flowers was predicted to be the first Chinese film to win an Academy Award or two as well as becoming an international blockbuster that would crack open the lucrative global market for future Chinese movies (Watts and McCurry 2011). Some Chinese commentators were hopeful that the movie would educate the West on the huge sacrifice its “forgotten ally” had made toward defeating Imperial Japan. It turned out the movie fell far short of such expectations. It neither won any Academy awards nor raked in dollars in the US, although it did become the highest grossing movie of the year in China (Orzeck 2012). Reviews in English and Chinese were mixed too (Morris 2012). Zhang is criticized—not for the first time— for selling out to commercialism, exoticizing China to pander to Western taste, and fetishizing the bodies of Chinese women (Wang et al. 2012). The critic Zhu Dake accuses Zhang of profiting from “erotic nationalism,” i.e., parading alluring Chinese women on screen in the name of China to boost box office receipts (Zhu 2011). Some Western reviewers also find the movie’s juxtaposition of the colorful and sensual (the singing and flirting prostitutes) with the horror of mass rapes and murders objectionable (Gaudiano 2014b; Hale 2011; Morris 2012). Echoing Zhu, one foreign reviewer chastizes Zhang for behaving like “the crassest of Hollywood producers” who “[interject] sex appeal into an event as ghastly [as] the Nanjing Massacre” (McCarthy 2011). Flowers uses Japanese war atrocities as the foundation on which to build a world of black-and-white moral contrasts. By locating the main characters and events inside a church, the camera shuts out most of the ghastly happenings outside to focus on the prostitutes and girl students, indulging the audience in erotic voyeurism. But it makes sure that the audience also receives a dose of the terror raging beyond the church, which threatens to overwhelm its crumbling walls any minute. The movie opens with a sequence showing Japanese soldiers engaging in indiscriminate violence. The girls would have been perfect prey for them but for

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a handful of Chinese soldiers who sacrifice themselves to stall the beasts so that the beauties can escape. After the girls have taken refuge in the church, the precarious nature of their temporary reprieve is accentuated by the tragic fate of two prostitutes who sneak out of the relative safety of the church on some errand. Japanese soldiers kill one of them and sexually abuse the other until she expires. To drive home the point, the camera zooms in on the lifeless, naked, bloodied, and lacerated body of the victim. Predictably, depictions of Japanese atrocities draw out the innate virtues of the Chinese and their American friend. The initially cynical and selfish prostitutes turn out to be generous and brave when they agree to offer their “spoiled” bodies (and lives) to Japanese soldiers to save the virginity of the girls. The lowest of the low of Chinese society reveal themselves to be the noblest of human beings, just as Japanese soldiers sink to the level of brutes. The same moral alchemy works on the American too. Alcoholic and self-destructive in the beginning, he morphs into a “priest” when confronted with the depravity of Japanese soldiers. This “transmutation” is, ironically, hastened by his flirting with the prettiest, intelligent, and sole English-speaking Chinese prostitute in the church. After consummating the relationship, the American completes his moral regeneration as a savior of China’s female chastity from Japanese male predation (Jinkinson 2012; Yang 2014). The worst in the Japanese brings out the best in the Chinese and their accidental American ally. Japanese war atrocities cinema once again reassures the Chinese audience that they are right to keep the fire of their victimhood-fuelled patriotism burning.

Negotiating Atrocities Director Lu Chuan’s City is an experimental re-imagination of the Nanjing Massacre. It tells a complex, emotional story of war that some judge to be, unfortunately, unconvincing if not insulting (Douban 2020). On one level, the movie is entirely conventional (Kraicer 2014). It leans heavily on the memory of Japanese wartime brutality as a foil to glorify the valor of Chinese soldiers and the virtues of ordinary Chinese people. That much is trite, and, in that sense, its similarity to Flowers is unmistakable. On another level, however, the movie breaks new ground by explicitly breaching the divide between good Chinese and evil Japanese held sacrosanct by conventional Chinese war retro movies. It does so by exploring the emotional turmoil experienced by a conscientious Japanese

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soldier and, to a lesser extent, the moral awakening of a Chinese collaborator. Nonetheless, for its introduction of a prominent “good Japanese” character, the movie has been assailed by Chinese netizens on the social media (Douban 2020). In spite of Lu’s lesser fame at the time compared with Zhang Yimou, City met with favorable reception internationally. It took the top Golden Shell prize and the Best Cinematography prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival. In addition to receiving more accolades at the Asian Film Awards, the Golden Horse Film Festival, and the Oslo Film Festival, the movie also did well at the box office at home (Landreth 2011). Most foreign critics were sympathetic to the director’s attempt to offer a more nuanced narrative of the Nanjing Massacre (Dargis 2011; Lee 2010, 2009; Leipzig 2011; Smith 2011). But the same experiment with shades of grey or degrees of culpability did not go down well with some among the Chinese audience (Zhihu 2020a). Generally, Chinese viewers praised the movie for its “realistic” combat sequence, harrowing but non-exploitative depiction of Japanese brutality, sensitive treatment of Chinese characters, and inclusion of a conscience-stricken Japanese soldier (Gaudiano 2014a). However, the “good Japanese” character also attracted the most controversy (Moshovitz 2011). Some Chinese viewers dismissed the character as contrived while others found it downright offensive. The latter group went so far as denouncing the director as a “cultural traitor” (wenhua hanjian) (Xuepoboke 2009). City presents the Nanjing Massacre as a multidimensional, evolving event comprising a number of characters whose experiences of the tragedy only partially overlap. The movie opens with a band of Chinese soldiers who refuse to evacuate the doomed city but continue to resist in the urban wasteland. They fight brilliantly and valiantly, but, overwhelmed, are soon killed or captured. This action-packed sequence ends in the Japanese beheading the captured leader of the recalcitrant Chinese soldiers. The movie then turns its attention to the confusion in the safety zone set up for Chinese refugees by the city’s neutral Western nationals. The audience is introduced to teacher Zhang, the German Rabe, his secretary Tang, the Japanese soldier Kadokawa, and other minor characters such as a selfsacrificing Chinese prostitute and a sickly Japanese comfort woman. As refugees pour into the safety zone, Japanese soldiers insist on entering to search for escaped Chinese soldiers and procure comfort women. Amid the chaos inside and outside the safe haven, teacher Zhang emerges as a courageous leader who risks her personal safety to negotiate with the

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Japanese. Meanwhile, Rabe reveals himself to be a “good Nazi” who takes the lead to rescue Chinese civilians from lawless Japanese soldiers. So far, the plot is largely indistinguishable from Flowers. Two characters take the movie into uncharted territory. The first character, secretary Tang, becomes a rat in a misguided attempt to secure Japanese protection for his family. He is betrayed, of course. But instead of meeting the same fate as his counterpart in Flowers —a summary execution by the Japanese in front of his daughter—Tang gets to regret his mistake and a chance to redeem himself. After ensuring his wife’s safe departure from the occupied city, he gives his precious pass to safety to a colleague. In saving a friend, he condemns himself to death, for now, he joins the stranded refugees caught up by the relentless Japanese execution machine. However, by choosing death over life, he saves his soul. Though reviewers tend to overlook this point, that there can be salvation for a traitor is a noteworthy departure from the convention of Chinese war retro movies. Kadokawa, the second convention-breaching character, is a Japanese soldier who becomes increasingly distressed by the senseless violence raging around him. He has several encounters with teacher Zhang, and the two develop some kind of understanding. Communicating in English, they connect after recognizing basic human decency in each other. However, later in the movie, Kadokawa has no choice but to shoot her to prevent her from being taken away by other soldiers and made a sex slave. By the end of the movie, the guilt-stricken, self-doubting Kadokawa cannot take the stress of war anymore and pulls the trigger on himself. As a final act of kindness, he releases two Chinese POWs before seeking his own liberation. Although most foreign critics give Lu credit for creating the Kadokawa character, Shelly Kraicer (2014) contends that the movie is merely a conventional Chinese war film in disguise. He insists that the movie regales the audience with a well-executed combat sequence (new bottle) while feeding them a soft version of late twentieth-century communist nationalist propaganda (old wine). This reading has some merits, but it is unnecessarily harsh on the director, taking his experiment with new characters for soft propaganda (Rayns 2010). True, the combat sequence is good entertainment, as good as the best that Hollywood has to offer. True too, the sequence incites martial patriotism in the same blatant manner as the opening sequence of Flowers. And true again, the courageous teacher Zhang, the altruistic prostitute who volunteers to go to

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“comfort” Japanese soldiers, and the traitor who dies as a result of his selfish scheming are all familiar characters of Nanjing Massacre movies in particular and Chinese war retro movies in general. Nonetheless, one must admit that the Kadokawa character is something new and bold, whether one finds him credible or not (Kraicer 2014; Lee 2010). This is not the first time a “good” Japanese character has appeared in a Chinese movie (Yau 2013), but City is the first to give a big part to such a character as well as showing so much sympathy for him. Critics and bloggers are right to raise the question of historicity. Nevertheless, the director should be given credit for exploring alternative angles on the Nanjing Massacre with the imagined Kadokawa character. In Lu’s new telling of the war, the tragedy of Nanjing is no longer an absolute moral black hole, but a very dark episode shot through with occasional rays of hope. Although City contains the greatest amount of physical violence, nudity, and sexual content of the four movies under discussion, it feels neither gratuitous nor exploitative. The narrative makes it clear that the explicit depiction of atrocities is necessary, in the director’s own words, for restoring agency and therefore, dignity to Chinese victims while rescuing Japanese soldiers from the stereotype of mindless, unfeeling, sadistic fiends (Lu 2009a, b). Precisely, because the movie strives to treat both Japanese and Chinese as humans and to see the massacre from Chinese and Japanese perspectives, the beheadings and rapes come across as that much more harrowing. Yet, the movie’s heavy reliance on the trope of Japanese war atrocities shows that it remains in substantial agreement with the traumatic-memory-as-moral-lesson convention of Chinese war retro movies. Like Flowers, City accepts the premise that while Japanese brutality is incomprehensibly evil, Chinese victimhood offers, cathartically, an uplifting lesson on patriotism and humanity.

Relativizing Atrocities Actor-director Jiang Wen’s Devils is an iconoclastic war retro movie (Chi 2011; Ward 2004). Under the guise of comedy, it breaches almost all imaginable “rules” of Chinese anti-Japanese War movies: that they are reverential, high-minded, supportive of the Party, affirmative of the patriotism of the masses, denunciatory of Japanese aggression, and above all, unequivocal about Chinese virtues triumphing over Japanese evils. Jiang turns these precepts on their heads by mocking each one of them mercilessly. Sure enough, government censors did not like what they

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saw, and the movie did not receive official approval for cinema release in China (Ding 2011).3 For his offense, Jiang was even banned from making movies for a time (Chi 2011). However, Jiang had the audacity to take his work to the International Film Festival at Cannes (in 2000) where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or and won the Grand Prix (Holden 2002; Ward 2004, 108). Foreign film critics approved of the movie’s farcical treatment of the war, noting how different it was from conventional Chinese retro war movies (Cheng 2002; Elley 2009; Holden 2002). Chinese commentators are generally receptive to its dark humor too. They appreciate the glaring imperfections of its Chinese characters, and how they appear pathetically normal compared to the saintly communist cadres and patriotic peasants typical of the anti-Japanese War genre (Chi 2011). War atrocities assume an even greater importance in Devils than in Flower and City. The story goes like this. Ma Dasan is a peasant living in a desolate village in north China. Above the settlement is a fort guarded by a small unit of Japanese marines. The captain in charge behaves civilly enough to the locals when he takes his soldiers through the village to the riverside to rendezvous with a Japanese gunboat that calls occasionally. One night, a stranger brings two captives to Ma and demands that he take custody of them for a fortnight or so. Ma feels threatened by the stranger, who is armed and who he assumes to be a guerrilla and complies. As days and weeks pass and the presumed resistance fighter fails to return, Ma and his fellow villagers become unwilling care providers as well as captors of the two men, a Japanese soldier and his Chinese interpreter. After trying various ways to get rid of their dangerous burden, all in vain, Ma and his fellow villagers conclude that the only way out of the predicament is to return the soldier and the interpreter to their unit. A surprised Japanese army officer reluctantly takes back his men and agrees to reward the villagers for their trouble. The overjoyed peasants organize a party for the comrades of their former prisoners and the marines from the nearby fort. As the drinking and singing reach a crescendo, a shot is fired, wounding a Japanese soldier. This triggers a killing frenzy by the Japanese until all the villagers are dead. Ma escapes unharmed only because he happens to be away at the time of the party massacre. After the war, he is determined to seek revenge. After tracking down the culprits at

3 According to mainland colleagues, it was later available on DVD and shown on TV.

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a POW camp, Ma charges inside with a cleaver and slashes at anyone and everyone as if mad. He is soon overpowered and taken into custody by the Chinese authority. At a hastily convened show trial, a Chinese officer sentences Ma to death for his murderous rampage. The job of execution ironically falls to Ma’s former Japanese prisoner, who, in great solemnity, dispatches his one-time carer with a swift, practiced swing of the samurai sword. The movie ends with Ma’s head dropping to the ground while blood floods the screen. Such is war according to Devils. The movie offers no simple, coherent moral lesson. There are villains and ambiguous characters aplenty but no unblemished heroes and heroines. The Chinese characters without exception are not just devoid of ideological commitment, but are always ready to cut deals, to make excuses, to bicker with each other, and to seek personal gain. The only person in the village who refuses to compromise is a crippled old man who screams about killing “Japanese devils” all day long but is ignored by all as crazy. The main Japanese characters are similarly ambiguous, if not positively menacing. The Japanese prisoner shifts from being a fanatical warrior of the emperor demanding an honorable death from his captors to a prisoner who bargains for his life, to someone who seems to bond with the villagers and, finally, to a soldier/POW who obediently executes his former Chinese carer. The two Japanese officers are not stereotypical devils either. The marine officer seems to enjoy entertaining the children of the village with magic tricks even as he orders adult villagers around. The muscular, moustached, and abusive army officer better fits the stereotype of the menacing Japanese soldier. Even so, it is unclear if he intends from the outset to carry out a burn-all, kill-all operation against the village. In fact, it is the crazy old man who triggers the massacre by taking a clumsy shot at a Japanese soldier during the Japanese–Chinese party. Thinking they have been lured into an ambush, the Japanese soldiers react in the way they had been trained. The movie thus turns a “typical” Japanese massacre into a bloody confusion where the Chinese victims appear to have contributed to their own death while the Japanese could plausibly claim mitigating circumstances. Devils differs from Flowers and City in another important way. Consistent with its subversive approach, the movie offers up a spectacle of Chinese “atrocity” against Japanese. In addition to resisting, negotiating with and eluding Japanese soldiers, as Chinese characters do in Flowers and City, Ma, the main character of Devils, takes a course of action that

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is unprecedented in Chinese war movies: he perpetrates a one-man minimassacre of Japanese POWs. By taking revenge into his own hands, he breaches the terms of Japan’s surrender: in exchange for Japanese soldiers laying down their arms, the Chinese authority takes them into custody and affords them protection. When Ma charges into a POW camp to administer justice on behalf of his murdered fellow villagers, he becomes a murderer of defenseless former Japanese soldiers. His rampage is as illegal as the killings committed by the Japanese he attacks. While its dark humor is clever and hilarious, Devils is most notable for relativizing the trope of war atrocities, thus questioning its conventional association with the Japanese invasion. The movie’s portrayal of a Japanese massacre of Chinese villagers leaves the lingering doubt—a forbidden thought—that maybe the victims are somehow partly responsible for the bloody mess. Such a suggestion is already a serious affront to the official Chinese memory of the war. But the movie goes further. It introduces a Chinese massacre of Japanese POWs, which brings up more disturbing questions. Are Chinese, too, capable of atrocities if given the opportunity? Is it acceptable to repay atrocity with atrocity? If yes, is there still moral high ground to be claimed by anyone in a war? If not, how can war victims seek satisfaction for their losses and suffering when the guilty ones seem to be getting away with murder? Devils offers a counterfactual memory of the war carefully crafted to avoid projecting any simple moral lesson that would gratify a Chinese audience. Rather, it tells the story of a Japanese massacre that elicits a Chinese massacre that ends in the Chinese hero/murderer being executed by a Japanese POW carrying out the order of a Chinese officer. How to untangle the rights and wrongs of this chain of events? The only lesson, if we insist on finding one, is that war makes no sense for the small people it swallows up. Violence begets violence, innocent people die, victims may become oppressors, and murderers sometimes go free. History, in this sense, neither guarantees justice nor offers positive lessons for the future.

Beyond Atrocities Cow premiered at the 66th Venice International Film Festival to favorable reception. Two months later, it won seven nominations and two awards at the 46th Golden Horse Film Awards in Taiwan, confirming the achievements of the lead actor Huang Bo and director Guan Hu (Lee 2015, 110–113). However, the movie attracted much less attention in the

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English media compared with the three movies discussed above (Elley 2009; Screen Anarchy 2009; Some Words Some Places 2010). Reviews in English, with one or two exceptions, were more polite than rapturous, although it did relatively well at the box office at home. Unlike Flowers and City, particularly the latter, hyper-vigilant Chinese netizens did not rise up in self-righteous criticism of the movie over issues of patriotism, Japanese war crime, Chinese suffering, and historical accuracy. Comments left on popular Internet forums suggest that Chinese viewers have taken the movie’s ironies and parodies as harmless slapstick rather than insults to national dignity (Zhihu 2020b). Cow is similar to Devils in using comedy to approach the tricky task of saying something new about the Second Sino–Japanese War. Like Devils, Cow lampoons the stultifying ideology and awkward characters of Chinese war retro movies. But it goes further than Devils to undermine conventions. The basic difference between the two is that Cow refuses to take itself seriously—it laughs at itself—an attitude embodied by the Cowherd character. Although uneducated and unskilled in the everyday politics of village life, this peasant can be calculating, selfish, cynical, argumentative, and petty—just like Ma Dasan in Devils. But Cowherd is ultimately different from Ma because, midway through the movie, he begins to display an ability to detach himself from his never-ending predicament. Rather than obsessing over personal tragedies and sinking to the same level as the mean people—Japanese and Chinese—around him, he shows sympathy for the weak and unfortunate as well as growing incomprehension of those—again, Japanese and Chinese—who persist in their selfish, malicious, and self-destructive ways. Eventually, his ability to transcend his own traumatic experience enables him to “win” the war, striding hopefully into the future with his sanity and humanity intact. By comparison, Ma’s obsession with past injustice done to him, and his insistence on seeking revenge for his murdered fellow villagers, lead to his own destruction, undeserved though it may be. Cow thus offers a fundamentally different take on the war from Devils, even though the two are often lumped together as black war comedy. As Cow begins, we see a confused and breathless Cowherd running hither and thither before stumbling upon a mass grave, the result of a massacre that has wiped out his village maybe just a few hours earlier. The camera then follows Cowherd as he overcomes one life-threatening situation after another with a stubborn cow in tow until the war’s end. Frequent flashbacks provide additional information about his life up to

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the point of the mass killing. As the story jumps back and forth in time, we gain a deeper understanding of the personality of this simple peasant. Cynical, scheming, and self-serving at times, the somewhat dim-witted Cowherd turns out at heart to be a generous, caring, forgiving, and optimistic person—Forrest Gump-esque, if you like. The further the movie progresses, the more his benevolent qualities outshine his baser impulses. The prolonged and brutal war eventually induces him to fully embrace a “philosophical detachment” (Lee 2015, 113) that not only sees him through the vicissitudes of war but also liberates him from the dead weight of its legacy. In the flashbacks, we learn that Cowherd is a laughingstock in the village even as he strives to get ahead while taking a fancy to a witty, flirtatious, voluptuous young widow. Early on, he displays a healthy scepticism for—or incomprehension of—authority whether personified by the bed-ridden village elder or purposeful communist soldiers. As Japanese soldiers close in, the communists redeploy, leaving their precious cow in the care of the village. The village in turn passes the thankless responsibility to Cowherd with the sweetener that he may marry the widow when the communists return for the cow. Things soon go terribly wrong as Cowherd finds himself alone with an uncooperative animal and everyone else killed. Initially, intent on avenging the murder of his fellow villagers, he plans an ambush on injured Japanese soldiers recuperating in the village. But his clumsiness and improvised weapon result in his swift capture. Rather improbably, he survives the enemy’s attempts to kill him by beheading. But when he later gets the opportunity to take the life of an incapacitated Japanese soldier, his conscience counsels otherwise. After several more near-death encounters with Japanese soldiers as well as Chinese refugees and bandits, Cowherd eventually retreats into the mountains with the cow in search of peace in solitude. Who knows how many months have passed when he observes by chance a column of communist soldiers passing through below his mountain hideout. Rushing down to meet the liberators, he tries to convince a mystified officer to take back the cow. The officer, who cannot care less about the animal, hastily signs over to Cowherd so as not to fall behind. But the illiterate peasant has one more piece of business. He beseeches the officer to write down the characters of his name on pieces of paper so that he can mark his grave properly before his death. The impatient officer scribbles something and takes off. As Cowherd trudges back to his mountain lair, a sudden gust of wind blows away the pieces of paper bearing his

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name. Although he manages to recover them, he cannot arrange them in the correct order because he cannot read. After several futile attempts, he settles for a sequence that reads “the grave of two cows” (erniu zhimu) instead of “the grave of Cowherd” (niu’er zhimu). In my reading, Cow is an astute movie that proposes a contrarian take on the question of how the Chinese people might remember the last war with Japan. It does more than assigning secondary importance to Japanese war atrocities, as Vivian Lee observes (2015, 112), for it portrays them in a completely different way, necessitating a reinterpretation of the war experience itself. Instead of showing Japanese soldiers perpetrating extreme violence on Chinese civilians, the opening sequence conjures up an eerie silence that enshrouds the site of a recent massacre. The lifeless bodies contrast with the hyperventilating, panicking Cowherd. Similarly, though sadistic Japanese soldiers twice attempt to kill Cowherd—once using him for bayonet practice and another time for a ritualized beheading, they fail on both occasions. No head rolls and no guts are spilled. The same avoidance of direct graphic portrayal of violence applies to the Cowherd character too. When the peasant gets his chance to stage a revenge ritual beheading of an incapacitated Japanese soldier, the camera cuts away just as he raises a sword, screaming in a blind rage and about to strike. The next scene transports the audience to a mountain trail where Cowherd is taking the same Japanese soldier on the back of a mule to a secluded place for recuperation. Cowherd did not go through with his act of revenge, and the audience is spared an execution spectacle. The movie does contain fighting scenes, but these do not involve atrocities and the camera does not linger on them either. For example, as soon as Chinese guerrillas begin a frontal assault on the Japanese in the village, Cowherd becomes disoriented and blacks out, depriving the audience the full “enjoyment” of a hand-to-hand combat orgy. In this way, explicit depiction of violence of all kinds by all sides is consistently elided in the movie. Underlying Cow’s minimalist visual representation of war atrocities is its challenge of the first principle of Chinese anti-Japanese War retro movies, i.e., the war contains a coherent, patriotic lesson for all Chinese people and as such must be re-enacted ad infinitum for their benefit. Cow sugarcoats this challenge with a disarmingly funny main character. Cowherd comes across as such a buffoon that his awkward statements and clumsy action appear funnier and more endearing than affronting or blasphemous. How can a fool seriously challenge an established historical

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narrative? In fact, the Cowherd character should be understood more as a Shakespearian fool whose jest disguises stinging truths. To appreciate this, let us take another look at the movie’s ending, where Cowherd loses his name after learning that the war is over. This is the very moment celebrated by conventional retro war movies. In Cow, however, it is the occasion on which the main character gets his name mixed up, metaphorically losing his identity. This loss, like everything else he has lost in the war, is irretrievable. The poor peasant must settle for a name—i.e., the tombstone inscription—the meaning of which he cannot be sure. But he does not dwell on this setback, the latest in a long list of personal tragedies. In the next scene, Cowherd looks ahead to a new dawn not as “cowherd” (niu’er), a lonely man trying to control a cow, but as “two cows” (erniu), a man with a companion, two “cows” in a partnership. By accepting the loss of his old name and all the disasters that have accrued to it during the war, Cowherd is now free to turn a page in his personal life and stride into the future. Losing his name is liberation from the war, or more accurately, from the memory/history of the war. Director Guan has been explicit about his intentions behind making the movie. In an interview reported by Li Dongran (2009), Guan explained that he rejected the framework of the nation for understanding the war and deliberately sidestepped the question of right or wrong. Instead, he chose to tell a war story from the viewpoint of an individual— a nobody—even though such a story may lack narrative coherence or an ideological purpose. His hope, he said, was to show that, in the eye of ordinary folk like Cowherd, China’s war with Japan could appear as little more than a series of clashes between strangers who came and went in unpredictable and incomprehensible ways. As to which side prevailed on a particular day, that was a question devoid of meaning or purpose for the many cowherds among the common folk. Guan admitted that his approach may confuse the Chinese audience, but he was convinced that his experiment was worth the risk. Considering what has happened to City and Devils, it is surprising that neither censors nor netizen vigilantes have found fault with a movie that invites, in the guise of black comedy, the audience to see the war as holding no single, authoritative moral lesson for future generations.

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Conclusion: History, RIP Thirty years after Yehuda Elkana argued for the need to forget the Holocaust, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy reinforced the same message in an essay titled “On This Holocaust Remembrance Day, Let Us Forget” (2019). Levy declares that “Holocaust memory has turned into incitement to hatred” and renews Elkana’s appeal to move beyond the historic tragedy. Invoking Elkana’s rhetorical questions “What are children supposed to do with this experience?” and “Remember for what purpose?” Levy issues again the appeal to forget: “The time has come to get past the past. We needn’t erase it, but put it in its place; it’s over. It cannot serve as a primary guide to present or future […]” (Levy 2019). Moreover, he cautions against “crooked” historical representations that incite militarism and hatred. In his view, endless remembering of a traumatic history runs the risk of promoting collective self-righteousness, justifying aggression by the once oppressed or, more accurately, their descendants (Levy 2019). Reservations about the tenor of Second World War-related remembrance are not confined to the Holocaust. On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, British journalist Simon Jenkins declares, “It’s time to move on from these overblown commemorations of war” (2019). Of course, he does not dispute the historical veracity or the significance of what took place on the beaches of Normandy three-quarters of a century ago. His criticism is directed at the way “the last good war” is being commemorated in the twenty-first century. He points out that “history can be found to teach any lesson you want,” and warns “when it is fuelled by the emotions of war, it is likely to teach the wrong one” (Jenkins 2019). Jenkins is convinced that “memories of past wars” do not “insulate us against their repetition,” and believes that it would be better to “put the twentieth century behind us, and get stuck into the twenty-first” (Jenkins 2019). Jenkins’s concern echoes that of Marilyn Lake and her colleagues, who criticize the “militarization of Australian history” based on a distorted memory of the Battle of Gallipoli. Levy and Elkana are minority voices in Israel. So are Jenkins and the Gallipoli myth-busting historians in their own countries. Cow cuts a lonely figure in the history of Chinese war retro cinema too. However, it is noteworthy that these isolated voices, speaking from vastly different positions, are unified by their unease about war remembrance. Against powerful conventions, they hold that D-Day, the Holocaust, Gallipoli,

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and the Second Sino–Japanese War be allowed to recede into history, no longer objects of obsession. These voices are critical of the appropriation of war-focused collective memory. They are against manipulation of history by the collective for self-serving ends. More fundamentally, they are sceptical of the assumption that inherently selective and reconstructive collective memories offer any objective, authoritative, infallible, or timeless lessons for the future. In this sense, Cow is a refreshing Chinese war retro movie not only because it abstains from replaying scenes of Japanese soldiers beheading and raping Chinese civilians but also because it allows the main Chinese character to transition from war to peace unencumbered by his traumatic war experience. Together with other critics of excessive war remembrance, the movie suggests that next time another “Lest We Forget” plaque is proposed, a sign saying “History, RIP” may be considered instead.

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de qianshi jinsheng: Guizi laile, ed. Chi Zhi, 2–11. Taipei: Xinrui wenchuang chuban. Douban. 2020. Nanjing de yingping [Criticisms of City of Life and Death]. Douban Dianying, February 22. Available at: https://movie.douban.com/ subject/2294568/reviews. Accessed 22 Feb 2020. Eger, Edith. 2017. The Choice: Even in Hell Hope Can Flower. London: Penguin Random House. Elkana, Yehuda. 1988. The Need to Forget. Ha’aretz, March 2. Available at: http://web.ceu.hu/yehuda_the_need_to_forget.pdf. Accessed 20 Feb 2020. Elley, Derek. 2009. City of Life and Death. Variety, May 14. Available at: https://variety.com/2009/film/markets-festivals/city-of-life-anddeath-1200474877/. Accessed 20 Feb 2020. Fujiwara Akira. 2006. Tenn¯ o no guntai to Nit-Ch¯ u sens¯ o [The Emperor’s Army ¯ and the Japan-China War]. Tokyo: Otsuki shob¯o. Gaudiano, Alessandro. 2014a. City of Life and Death by Lu Chuna—Film Review. gbtimes, April 21. Available at: https://gbtimes.com/city-of-life-anddeath-by-lu-chuan-film-review. Accessed 22 Feb 2020. Gaudiano, Alessandro. 2014b. The Flowers of War is Soulless Crass Entertainment. gbtimes, May 30. Available at: https://gbtimes.com/flowers-war-sou lless-crass-entertainment. Accessed 9 July 2019. Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory. Edited, translated, and with an Introduction by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hale, Mike. 2011. A Shady American in the Nanjing Massacre. The New York Times, December 20. Available at: http://nytimes.com/review/the-flowersof-war-film-review-274639. Accessed 23 Jan 2020. He, Yinan. 2007. Remembering and Forgetting the War: Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950–2006. History and Memory 19 (2): 43–74. Holden, Stephen. 2002. Heroics, Horrors and Farce in War-Torn China. The New York Times, December 18. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/ 2002/12/18/movies/film-review-heroics-horrors-and-farce-in-war-tornchina.html. Accessed 20 Feb 2019. Jenkins, Simon. 2019. It’s Time to Move on from These Overblown Commemorations of War. The Guardian, June 6. Available at: https://www.the guardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/06/commemorations-war-d-dayeurope. Accessed 7 July 2019. Jinkinson, Bethan. 2012. The Story Behind Chinese War Epic The Flowers of War. BBC, January 24. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/worldasia-china-16638897. Accessed 7 July 2019. Kansteiner, Wulf. 2002. Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies. History and Theory 41 (2): 179–197.

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Index

A agency, 10, 18, 32–34, 70, 99, 249 Army Museum, Delft, 173 Asia-Pacific War, Fifteen Years’ War, 43, 49, 95, 97, 99, 101, 102, 104, 121–123, 137–140, 152, 153, 156, 215 atom bomb/atomic bomb, 63, 64, 68, 73, 75, 79, 81, 82, 101, 117, 120, 174, 203 audience, 1, 2, 7, 9, 12, 40–42, 53, 54, 56, 64, 75, 79, 86, 87, 90, 96, 171, 188, 198, 200, 208, 213, 214, 216, 219–221, 227, 228, 243, 245–248, 252, 255, 256 cinema audience, 2, 5, 6, 12, 221 domestic audience, 106, 109, 114, 118 international audience, 10, 64, 65, 98, 119, 124

B Belgium, Belgian, 187–192, 195–198, 200, 206 biography/biographical, 3, 10, 21, 188, 195 biological warfare, 11, 23, 140

C censor/censorship, 198, 214, 218, 249, 256 China/Chinese, 3, 4, 11, 12, 19, 82, 99, 135, 137–141, 143, 152, 189–191, 193, 195–198, 238, 242, 245, 246, 250, 256 Chinese-Belgian Friendship Society, 195 cinema/film/movie, 4, 5, 12, 65, 152, 195, 213–233, 237–240, 242–256, 258

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 E. Buchheim and J. Coates (eds.), War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945, Entangled Memories in the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23918-2

265

266

INDEX

City of Life and Death (Nanjing! Nanjing!, Lu Chuan, 2009), 13, 239 colony(ies)/colonisation/colonial, 3, 11, 20, 21, 159, 160, 163–167, 169–173, 176, 178, 179, 191, 197 ‘comfort women’, ianfu, jugun ianfu, 138 commemoration/memorial/memorial service, 2, 8, 10, 40–42, 50–56, 65, 79, 99, 106, 107, 111, 112, 116, 120, 122, 123, 153, 257 Cow (Douniu, Guan Hu, 2009), 237

D Devils on the Doorstep (Guizi laile, Jiang Wen, 2000), 13, 239 diary(ies), 17, 18, 20, 22, 24–26, 28, 101, 160, 214 memoirs, 20, 21 Dutch Trade Museum, 164

E Eger, Edith, 240, 241 ethnography/ethnographic, 2, 12, 213–216, 218, 223 exhibition/museum exhibition, 2, 3, 6, 11, 12, 42, 65, 103, 135, 136, 138, 140–142, 144–149, 151, 154, 155, 161–169, 171–179

F forgetting/forget/forgotten, 8, 9, 13, 27, 105, 108, 147, 148, 160, 179, 239, 245

G Geneva Convention, 48 German Army, 198

H Hawai’i, Hawaiian, 10, 39–41, 44–46, 48–56 Hergé, 12, 188–207 heritage sites, 11, 96–104, 108, 117, 118, 127 hibakusha, atom bomb survivors, 64, 65, 67, 68, 77–80, 82–90 Himeyuri gakuto tai (Himeyuri Student Corps), 43 Himeyuri Peace Museum, 40 Hiroshima, 10, 63, 64, 66–68, 74, 77–89, 99, 148, 153, 218 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 64 Holocaust, 4, 13, 18, 76, 89, 189, 239, 242, 257

I Indies Silence, 8, 160, 179 Indonesia/Indonesian/Indies, 3, 7, 19, 21, 22, 32, 82, 159, 160, 162, 164–166, 168–171, 173, 175–179, 205 International Court of Justice in The Hague, 195 Ishihama Akira, 229 Italy/Italian, 25, 49, 199, 201

J Japan/Japanese, 6, 9, 11, 12, 17–21, 23, 25, 28–34, 41, 43, 44, 49, 51, 64–66, 70, 72, 73, 77, 78, 80, 81, 84, 86–88, 90, 96, 99, 100, 102, 106, 118, 119, 121, 122, 129, 135–139, 143–145, 147, 148, 150–156, 160, 165–168, 171, 172, 174, 176–178, 188, 189, 192–197, 199, 201–208, 213, 215, 219–222, 224, 228, 232,

INDEX

238–240, 242–244, 246–252, 254–256, 258 Japanese Imperial Army, 43, 44, 48, 119 Jiang Wen, 249

K Kamigy¯ o, 104, 105, 107, 108, 111, 117, 118, 126 kamikaze, 99, 104, 204, 220 Kamioka, 9, 18–21, 24–27, 30, 32, 33 Kannon, 97, 99–101, 104, 118, 120, 121, 123, 127 Kansai, Western Japan, 11, 215, 216, 222, 225, 226 Kawasaki, 11, 135, 136, 140, 141 Kinoshita Keisuke, 218, 231 Korea, 4, 83, 96, 99, 103, 139 Kyoto, 6, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 107, 111, 114–118, 121, 126, 150, 217 Kyoto Culture Museum (Kyoto Bunka Hakubutsukan), 217, 223

L Le Soir, 198–200 Le Soir Jeunesse, 198 Le Vingtième, 195 Le Vingtième Siecle, 187, 192 Lu Chuan, 246

M Manchuria, Manchukuo, 19, 121, 137–139, 193, 196, 197, 215 228 Memorial Museum, Taipei, 100 memory collective memory, 46, 65, 104, 160, 161, 163, 169–171, 178, 179, 219, 232, 241, 242

267

fragmented memory/fragmented commemoration, 10, 41, 53, 55, 56 mnemonic, 11, 170, 173 multidirectional memory, 89, 171, 179 prosthetic memory, 12, 214, 215, 219, 223, 228, 229, 233 remembering, 13, 160 transnational memory, 3, 8 war memory, 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 12, 127, 213, 218, 228 merchandise, 201, 208 mine/miner/mining, 9, 18–20, 22, 25, 28–33 Mitsui, 9, 18, 19, 31 Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, 140 museum visitors, 2

N Nagaokaky¯o, 104, 114, 115, 117, 118, 124, 216 Nagasaki, 66, 67, 82–84, 88, 99, 117, 147–149, 215, 218 National War and Resistance Museum, Overloon, 176 Netherlands, Dutch, 4, 11, 159, 162–166, 169, 171–179, 200 Noborito Institute, 11, 135, 136, 138, 140–142, 145–152, 154, 155 nostalgia/nostalgic, 197, 219–222, 231–233

O occupation Allied Occupation of Germany, 199 Allied Occupation of Japan, 80

268

INDEX

German Occupation of the Netherlands, 167 Japanese Occupation of China, 12, 189 Japanese Occupation of Indonesia, 11, 164–167, 174 Okinawa, Okinawan, Battle of Okinawa, hell-ship, 10, 39–56 Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, 42, 44 Onderwijsmuseum (later Museon), 173 P peace declarations, 10, 64, 66–68, 70, 73, 75, 79, 85–90 Philippines, 23, 25, 205 postwar, 7, 12, 40, 46, 47, 50, 51, 66, 68, 69, 87, 102, 137, 138, 141, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 154, 155, 163, 165, 197, 203, 205–207, 214–217, 219–221, 223, 225–231, 233 power, 6, 18, 19, 31, 32, 34, 82, 85, 99, 151, 161, 169, 189, 192, 194, 201, 202, 233, 242 power relations, 6, 9, 10, 18, 32–34 Prisoner of war camp (POW camp), 9, 10, 17–20, 25, 26, 30, 33, 34, 44, 48, 52, 251, 252 prisoners of war (POWs)/FEPOW, 10, 18, 20, 25, 31, 44, 49, 52, 252 propaganda, 44, 96, 129, 140, 168, 214, 248 R refugee(s), 238, 247, 248, 254 Rijksmuseum, 172, 173, 177 Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force ML-KNIL, 21

Royal Netherlands East Indies Army KNIL, 21

S sign, signage, 11, 25, 66, 97, 102, 105, 111, 121, 123, 194, 198, 226, 238, 254, 258 Sino-Japanese War, Anti-Japanese War, 189, 196, 197, 207, 215, 237–239, 244, 249, 250, 253, 255, 258 skill/skilful/enskillment, 5, 9, 31, 32, 34, 99, 139 social media, 4, 5, 8, 247 Soviet Union, 77, 82, 139, 190 stereotype, 7, 13, 190, 191, 193–195, 205–208, 249, 251 Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), 215, 216

T Taiwan, 99, 100, 252 Task Force (Delmer Daves, 1949, released in Japan as Kid¯ o butai), 220 Tekketsu-kino tai (Blood and Iron Student Corps), 43 The Emperor Meiji and the Russo-Japanese War (Meiji tenn¯ o to nichiro sens¯ o, Watanabe Kunio, 1957), 219 The Flowers of War (Jinling shisanchai, Zhang Yimou, 2011), 12, 239 The Indies under Japanese Occupation exhibition, 11, 12, 164 The Tower of Lilies (Himeyuri no t¯ o, Imai Tadashi, 1953), 219 Tintin, 5, 7, 12, 187–191, 193, 196–199, 201, 204–208

INDEX

Tokyo, 28, 53, 96, 140, 150, 193, 203, 222, 225, 230 tourism dark tourism, 96, 97 light tourism, 98 thanatourism, 96–98 translation, 11, 42, 65, 76–81, 83, 84, 86–89, 96, 100, 102, 118–122, 124, 126, 188, 195, 208 Twenty-Four Eyes (Nij¯ ushi no hitomi, Kinoshita Keisuke, 1954), 231

U UK/United Kingdom/British, 4, 9, 10, 18, 24, 26, 27, 30, 43, 192, 194, 195, 202, 207, 257 Unit 731, 11, 135, 136, 138–143, 145–152, 154, 155 Unit 731 Museum, 140, 141 United States Armed Forces Code of Conduct, 23 US Army, 46, 52 US Navy, 43, 204 US/USA/American, 6, 9, 18, 20, 23–25, 28, 30, 32–34, 41, 42,

269

44–46, 48, 56, 65, 86, 88, 140, 153, 166, 191, 194, 195, 201–204, 228, 244–246 V victim victim complex, 101 victimhood, 4, 6, 10, 12, 18, 33, 34, 64, 65, 67, 68, 75, 78, 82, 84, 88–90, 147, 149, 153–155, 166, 167, 171, 249 victim identity, 48, 86, 90 victim narrative, 34, 53, 95, 153, 171 W WWII/World War II/Second World War, 4, 11, 20, 40, 48, 65, 83, 118–120, 159–165, 167, 169–176, 178, 179, 189, 194, 201–203, 205, 207, 220, 227, 242 Z Zhang, Yimou, 239, 244, 247