Lee, J. (2018) - Yasukuni and Hiroshima in Clash War and Peace Museums in Contemporary Japan. Pacific Focus, 33 (1), 5-33

Yasukuni and Hiroshima in Clash?
War and Peace

Museums in Contemporary Japan*
Jooyoun Lee
This study investigates the role of museums in collective memory by focus-

ukan
ing on the Yush and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum to exca-
vate the meanings of their visual, narrative, and material constructions of
Japan’s past war. The research found that the museums in Yasukuni and
Hiroshima exhibit markedly contrasting memories in terms of what hap-
pened during World War II, what kind of lessons can be drawn, and how
ukan
the Japanese self-identify. The article demonstrates that the Yush and
the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum not only produce knowledge of
the nation’s past, but also trigger the emotions of contemporary people to
connect them to the war dead, by exhibiting personal stories, photographs,
and belongings of the deceased and thereby generating an affective
national identity that transcends time and space. It argues that the two
museums’ contrasting messages are integrated into the larger, nationally
contested discourse on war and peace in contemporary Japan, beyond
museum narratives, rendering the Yush ukan
and the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum socially constituted institutions. It also argues that,
despite the stark contrast in their portrayals of collective memory, the
museums in Yasukuni and Hiroshima share a commonality in neglecting to
exhibit or draw lessons from Japan’s colonial past in Asia, leaving a pro-
found effect on younger generations. In light of its findings, this article
offers implications for historical reconciliation in East Asia.
ukan,
Key words: museums in Yasukuni and Hiroshima, Yush Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum, collective memory, national identity, war and
peace, historical reconciliation in East Asia.
*The research travel for this article was funded by St. Edward’s University’s Presidential Excel-
lence Summer Research Grant in 2014. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 57th
Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in Atlanta in March 2016 and at the
45th Annual Meeting of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies in San Antonio in October
2016. The author would like to thank Kazuya Fukuoka, Hyung-Gu Lynn, Joel Campbell, B. Bryan
Barber IV, and other participants in these panels for helpful comments. The author would also like
to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Pacific Focus, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1 (April 2018), 5–33.

doi: 10.1111/pafo.12109
© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University
5
6 / Pacific Focus
Introduction
Japanese war memory in the postwar era remains unsettled. The complex
nature of Japan’s role in World War II has galvanized heated debates in Japan as
well as in other parts of the world. No place causes more intense controversy
over Japanese war memory than the Yasukuni Shrine. Enshrining 2.4 million
war dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals, the shrine is often viewed as a site
that promotes Japanese wartime militarism. This has made it into a hot spot of
national contestation over whether it is a proper place for national mourning.1 To
Japan’s Asian neighbors, the shrine invokes the nation’s role as a perpetrator that
inflicted injustices on other Asians. Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi’s unrelenting visits to the controversial commemorative site drew vocif-
erous criticism from China and South Korea. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit
to the shrine in December 2013 also sent a bitter message to the two neighbors.
On 16 August 2016, the 71st anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, he
avoided visiting the shrine, but sent special advisor and Liberal Democratic Party
lawmaker, Yasutoshi Nishimura, to offer a tamagushiryo (cash offering) to honor
the war dead.2 This series of Japanese leaders’ visits to, and support of, the con-
troversial shrine is perceived as the government’s endorsement of Japanese war-
time actions.3
On the other hand, Hiroshima is imbued with a very different meaning of Jap-
anese war experience. As the first atomic-bombed city at the end of World War
II, the site holds the dominant position in representing the Japanese perception of
nuclear victimhood, which defines Japan’s role in the war as a victim.4 On
1. The Japanese public’s preference for an alternative memory site has grown recently, although a
significant number of people still favor Yasukuni as a space of national commemoration of the mil-
itary dead. See Kazuya Fukuoka, “Memory, Nation, and National Commemoration of War Dead:
A Study of Japanese Public Opinion on the Yasukuni Controversy,” Asian Politics & Policy, 5-1
(January 2013), pp. 27–49.
2. Tomohiro Osaki, “Forgoing Visit, Abe Sends Ritual Offering to Yasukuni Shrine on War
Anniversary,” Japan Times (15 August 2016), at <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/15/
national/politics-diplomacy/abe-sends-ritual-offering-yasukuni-shrine-war-anniversary/#.WHVSdLG-
Ku4> (searched date: 19 August 2016).
3. See Phil Deans, “Diminishing Returns? Prime Minister’s Visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in the
Context of East Asian Nationalism,” East Asia, 24-3 (September 2007), pp. 269–294; Mark Selden,
“Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Nationalism: War, Historical Memory and the Future of
the Asia Pacific,” Japan Focus, 6 (September 2008), at <https://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2892/
article.html> (searched date: 23 June 2011); Mike Mochizuki, “The Yasukuni Shrine Conundrum:
Japan’s Contested Identity and Memory,” in Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz, eds., Northeast
Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010),
pp. 31–52; Kei Koga, “The Yasukuni Question: Histories, Logic, and Japan-South Korea
Relations,” Pacific Review, 29-3 (July 2016), pp. 331–359.
4. John Dower, “The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory,” Diplomatic His-
tory, 19-2 (Spring 1995), pp. 275–295; John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of

War and Peace Museums in Japan / 7
27 May 2016, President Barack Obama was the first sitting US president to
visit Hiroshima, which amplified its role as the first city to undergo a nuclear
bombing and Japan’s role as a suffering victim. Nevertheless, while the laying
of a wreath by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe at the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Park was construed as a signal for historical reconciliation
between former enemies, tensions between Japan and Asian neighbors seem-
ingly have not subsided.
Although Yasukuni and Hiroshima have drawn scholarly attention as crucial
emblematic locations for Japanese collective war memory,5 little has been
explored in terms of comparative analysis of what exactly is being exhibited and
remembered in the museums in these two symbolically compelling and seem-
ingly contrasting memory sites. Some studies have investigated museum exhibits
in the Yushukan – the Yasukuni Military and War Museum6 – while others have
explored the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Park.7 However, we still lack a comparative analysis of how war and peace are
exhibited and represented in these museums, what relationship their exhibits
might have with the national discourse on war and peace in contemporary Japan,
World War II (New York: Norton/New Press, 1999); Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Nar-
ratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2000); James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar
Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001); Mikyoung Kim, “Pacifism or Peace Move-
ment? Hiroshima Memory Debates and Political Compromises,” Journal of International and Area
Studies, 15-1 (June 2008), pp. 61–78. For a comprehensive overview of the memory of Hiroshima,
see Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley:
University of California, 1999).
5. There are at least 85 museums and war memorials dedicated to the Asia–Pacific War in Japan.
See Takashi Yoshida, “Whom Should We Remember? Japanese Museums of War and Peace,”
Journal of Museum Education, 29-2/3 (Spring–Summer/Fall 2004), p. 16.
6. See John Nelson, “Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military
Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine,” Journal of Asian Studies, 62-2 (May 2003), pp. 443–467; Jeff
Kingston, “Awkward Talisman: War Memory, Reconciliation and Yasukuni,” East Asia: An Inter-
national Quarterly, 24-3 (September 2007), pp. 295–318; John Breen, “Introduction: A Yasukuni
Genealogy,” in John Breen, ed., Yasukuni, The War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), pp. 1–22; Matthew Allen and Rumi Sakamoto,
“War and Peace: War Memories and Museums in Japan,” History Compass, 11-12 (December
2013), pp. 1047–1058; Takashi Yoshida, From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace: War and
Peace Museums in Japan, China, and South Korea (Maine: MerwinAsia, 2014); Matthew Allen,
“Ghostly Remains and Converging Memories: Yushukan and the Australian War Memorial Exhibit
the Pacific War,” Asian Studies Review, 39-3 (September 2015), pp. 430–446; Akiko Takenaka,
Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2015), pp. 170–183.
7. See Lisa Yoneyama, op. cit.; Benedict Giamo, “The Myth of the Vanquished: The Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum,” American Quarterly, 55-4 (December 2003), pp. 703–728; Stefanie
Schäfer, “The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and its Exhibition,” in Sven Saaler and Wolf-
gang Schwentker, eds., The Power of Memory in Modern Japan (Folkestone: Brill/Global Oriental
Ltd., 2008), pp. 155–170; Takashi Yoshida, From Cultures of War, op. cit.

8 / Pacific Focus
and how museum displays offer implications for Japan’s relations with other
Asian countries, particularly China and Korea.8
This article seeks to excavate the meanings of exhibits presented in the
Yushukan and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/Park by drawing on
fieldwork conducted at these sites in July 2014, materials gathered from them,
and scholarly sources. An investigation of their visual, narrative, and material
constructions of the past war will offer a comparative analysis of how war and
peace are imagined, remembered, and communicated to the present generation.
This analysis serves to determine the role of museums in constructing Japanese
war memory and identity, and its broad implications for Japan’s relations
with Asia.
This article demonstrates that the Yushukan and the Hiroshima Peace Memo-
rial Museum not only produce knowledge of the nation’s past, but also trigger
the emotions of contemporary people to connect them to the war dead, by exhi-
biting personal stories, photographs, and belongings of the deceased and thereby
generating an affective identity that transcends time and space. My findings
reveal that the military nationalism that the Yushukan promotes is not based on
violence committed by the Japanese military, as a conventional understanding of
the link between Yasukuni and militarism would predict. Instead, the Yushukan
visualizes war as a step toward peace, producing the idea that Japan’s past war
was just one that benefitted other Asian countries, in which the precious lives of
the fallen were sacrificed to protect the nation and Asia in a heroic way. On the
other hand, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum evokes national sorrow to
portray war as evil, creating the notion that the bombed city is at the forefront of
international peace as a source of national pride and as an indisputable lesson on
war. I argue that the two museums’ contrasting messages are integrated into the
larger, nationally contested discourse on war and peace in contemporary Japan,
beyond museum narratives, rendering the Yushukan and the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum socially constituted institutions. I also argue that, despite the
stark contrast in their portrayals of collective memory, the two museums share a
commonality in neglecting to exhibit or draw lessons from Japan’s colonial past
in Asia, leaving a profound effect on younger generations.
This article is organized in five sections. The first section provides an over-
view of the role of museums in collective memory. The second section offers an
8. Buruma briefly touches on the two sites in his work, but not from a comparative perspective;
the museums are discussed in separate chapters. See Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of
War in Germany and Japan (New York: New York Review of Books, 1994). Jeans incorporates
both the Yushukan and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum into his broad discussion of the
war debate, but his analysis of the Hiroshima Museum is largely based on secondary sources on
the historical evolution of the museum’s incorporation of an “Aggressor’s Corner,” rather than on
museum exhibits. See Rogers B. Jeans, “Victims or Victimizers? Museums, Textbooks, and the
War Debate in Contemporary Japan,” Journal of Military History, 69-1 (January 2005),
pp. 149–195.

analysis of the Yushukan’s exhibits, along with background information in con-

nection with the Yasukuni Shrine. The third section investigates the displays of
the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/Park. The fourth section compares the
two museums in order to explore their roles in crafting collective war memory
and contemporary national discourse. The conclusion brings together the analysis
to provide broad implications for historical reconciliation in East Asia, drawing
on the two museums’ roles in attracting the young.
Collective Memory and Museums in International Relations

The scholarship of collective memory has grown in the last decades in
diverse disciplines in the social sciences as a way to understand the role of
the past in present societies. The past is not always visible in a straightfor-
ward or transparent way to contemporary people. Rather, people understand
their nation’s past through collective memory.9 Maurice Halbwachs, a pioneer
in the scholarship of collective memory, notes that collective memory is a
social construction. He holds that memories have lost “the form and the
appearance they once had” and that they “are not intact vertebra of fossil ani-
mals which would in themselves permit reconstruction of the entities of which
they were once a part.”10 He argues that memories are continually reproduced
and reconstructed under the pressure of the present. Forsberg notes that collec-
tives have the ability to choose what is publicly remembered and what is
forgotten.11
In recent years, the discipline of international relations has witnessed an
expanding interest in the concept of collective memory. The ways in which
national elites and societies perceive their past have had a profound effect on
their role in the world.12 The construction of a nation’s history is central to
national building.13 Collective identities are produced out of collective memories
9. Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to the
Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices,” Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998),
pp. 105–140; Barbara Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead: Open University
Press, 2003).
10. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory. Edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 47.
11. Tuomas Forsberg, “The Philosophy and Practice of Dealing with the Past: Some Conceptual
and Normative Issues,” in Nigel Biggar, ed., Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice
after Civil Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2001), pp. 65–85.
12. Duncan Bell, “Introduction: Memory, Trauma and World Politics,” in Duncan Bell, ed., Mem-
ory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), pp. 1–29.
13. Thomas U. Berger, “Of Shrines and Hooligans: The Structure of the History Problem in East
Asia after 9/11,” in Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain, eds., Power and the Past: Collective Mem-
ory and International Relations (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2010),
pp. 189–202.

10 / Pacific Focus
as much as individual memories and identities are dependent on each other.14 The
construction of nationhood heavily depends on shared ideas held by the public.
Sharing ideas of the past is a crucial component of identity by offering the idea of
“who we are,” as well as an image of “who we were.”15 The remembered past helps
explain what people are today as well as “what people stand for, thereby generating
emotional bonds, solidarity, and trust.”16 In addition, the way that a country remem-
bers its past misdeeds has an important effect on reconciliation in international rela-
tions. Lind argues that “denials elevate threat perception, and thus some contrition
is necessary for reconciliation.”17 Importantly, she makes a point for the potential
dangers of contrition, arguing that expression of contrition can cause domestic back-
lash, which can worsen relations between nations and could potentially make recon-
ciliation even more difficult.18 Her findings demonstrate the complexity of domestic
remembrance and reconciliation in international relations.
Domestically, the collective nature of remembrance has the power to transcend
time and space. In examinations of this process, increasing attention is being paid
to the role played by museums, monuments, and war memorials as institutions
preserving and disseminating memories. Since the 19th century, museums have
become vital institutions displaying and highlighting the features of a nation
through which national cohesiveness is created.19 Historically, monuments have
functioned as a means of disseminating collective memory to a general public
when a sizable portion of the population has been illiterate. The Latin term mon-
umentum originates from the verb monere, to recall.20 Similarly, war memorials
offer messages about the stories of past wars in a given society, serving as crucial
vehicles through which a nation’s past is known to present and future genera-
tions. War memorials also present visual images about how a nation fought the
wars and what happened in them. Often, the practice of remembering wars
invokes a heroic narrative of sacrifice.21 The narration and illustration of a
14. Jens Bartelson, “We Could Remember It for You Wholesale: Myths, Monuments and the Con-
stitution of National Memories,” in Duncan Bell, ed., Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflec-
tions on the Relationship Between Past and Present (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 37.
15. Larry Ray, “Mourning, Melancholia and Violence,” in Duncan Bell, ed., Memory, Trauma
and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present (New York: Pal-
grave MacMillan, 2010), p. 140.
16. Eric Langenbacher, “Collective Memory as a Factor in Political Culture and International
Relations,” in Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain, eds., Power and the Past: Collective Memory
and International Relations (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, 2010), p. 22.
17. Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2008), p. 186.
18. Ibid., pp. 3–4, 186.
19. Vera L. Zolberg, “Contested Remembrance: The Hiroshima Exhibit Controversy,” Theory and
Society, 27-4 (August 1998), p. 583.
20. Jens Bartelson, op. cit., p. 48.
21. Jenny Edkins, “Remembering Relationality: Trauma Time and Politics,” in Duncan Bell, ed.,
Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 107.

nation’s history in its museums to some extent depend on contributions from the
national state, state governments, and city governments.22
In his seminal article, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de
Mémoire,” Pierre Nora introduces the concept of lieux de mémoire, sites of mem-
ory, such as museums and war memorials, where past events are experienced
and emotionalized. He notes that these places are functional because “memories
are crystalized and transmitted from one generation to the next” and symbolic,
since the place “characterizes by referring to events or experiences shared by a
small minority, a larger group that may not have participated in them.”23 In sites
of memory, past events are embodied through narratives and physical artifacts.
Personal stories humanize the dead. Photographs represent “an encounter with
the real and the imaginary in one.”24 Material objects are organized to provide
socially mediated meanings, and the interplay of various objects and narratives
guides the visitor in experiencing and understanding the past.25
Various feelings can be elicited by the ways in which museums provide an envi-
ronment where visitors can come to an understanding of past events. Visitors’ emo-
tions reach out to the past by responding to stories of national conflicts represented
by material markers.26 Exhibit stories and narratives are plotted in sequence along a
manipulated path and accompanied by visual demonstrations in the form of photo-
graphs and maps, which operate as a central part of the storytelling. Museum routes
are arranged to lead the visitor to particular educational and emotional effects and
conclusions, in order to give the visitor “a point from which to view” a certain
event. Visitors are led to adopt this point of view as an educational and emotional
process that ultimately leads them to view the war dead as human beings.27
It is important to note that museums and war memorials create a community
of the living and the dead by inviting visitors to join with an imagined commu-
nity, where the lives and deaths of the dead are commemorated and experienced,
and contemporary people are emotionally bonded to the war dead.28 Through this
process, these locations have the power to bring communities, societies, and a
nation together in the present.29 National identity emerges and becomes
22. Vera L. Zolberg, op. cit.

23. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Lex Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations,
26 (Spring 1989), p. 19.
24. Jenny Edkins, “Politics and Personhood: Reflections on the Portrait,” Alternatives, 38-2 (May
2013), p. 144.
25. Zachary Beckstead, Gabriel Twose, Emily Levesque-Gottlieb, and Julia Rizzo, “Collective
Remembering Through the Materiality and Organization of War Memorials,” Journal of Material
Culture, 16-2 (May 2011), pp. 193–213.
26. Ibid., p. 199.
27. Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), p. 158.
28. Larry Ray, op. cit., pp. 142–143.
29. Sara McDowell and Máire Braniff, Commemoration as Conflict: Space, Memory and Identity
in Peace Processes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 14.

12 / Pacific Focus
transmitted from generation to generation by preserving museums, monuments,

and war memorials, where collective historical experience is expressed and
shared in a defined spatial context.30
Although a growing interest in collective memory in the field of international
relations is noticeable, the role played by museums in the workings of memory is
still underexplored. Sylvester poses a connection between museums and interna-
tional relations by noting that museums are “intricate, multivalent, internationally
implicated/socially situated social institutions” as well as “heavily political.”31 It
needs to be recognized that museums are institutions that are inseparable from
society. The analysis that follows examines the narrative, visual, and material
constructions of Japan’s war as it is articulated and imagined in the museums in
Yasukuni and Hiroshima, in order to explore how theses museums and their
exhibits are integrated into the larger national discourse in contemporary Japan,
and offers insights into the international implications of war and peace museums
by focusing on the East Asian region.
The Y
ush
ukan
The Y ushukan is the Military and War Museum of the Yasukuni Shrine; it
stands within the grounds of the shrine, which is located in the center of Tokyo
on Kudan Hill, overlooking the Imperial Palace. The museum displays records
and articles of Japan’s wars, including materials relating to the First Sino–
Japanese War, the Russo–Japanese War, the World War I, the Second Sino–
Japanese War, and World War II, commemorating the war dead who sacrificed
their lives for the nation.
ukan
Historical Background of the Yasukuni Shrine and the Yush
The predecessor of the Yasukuni Shrine was the Tokyo Shokonsha, which
was founded in 1869, following an announcement of its establishment by the
Bureau of Military Affairs after the Meiji Restoration. In 1879, the Tokyo
Shokonsha was renamed the “Yasukuni Jinja (Shrine)” meaning the Shrine of
the Peaceful Country.32 This occurred after the Ministries of the Army and the
Navy were established in 1872 and after a national conscription system was insti-
tuted for Japan’s modern armed forces. The shrine came under the jurisdiction of
the Ministries of the Army and the Navy, and subsequently, close relationships
30. Jens Bartelson, op. cit., p. 51.

31. Christine Sylvester, Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It (Boulder:
Paradigm, 2009), p. 3.
32. Yasukuni Shrine, Record in Pictures of Yasukuni Jinja: Yush ukan
(Tokyo: Kindai,
2009), p. 17.

were fostered among the military, the emperor, and the shrine.33 During the
Russo–Japanese War, the number of the war dead noticeably increased. At the
end of the war, 88,000 war dead were added to the shrine.34 It was not until
1911 that the war dead were recognized and honored as “departed heroes (eirei)”
by the emperor, when Emperor Meiji visited it shortly before his death to pay his
respects for the first time to the collective dead.35 During the period leading up
to World War II, and during the war itself, the shrine became a symbol of nation-
alism and served as the linchpin of:
[T]urning the grief of bereaved families into the patriotic exhilaration of the enshrinement of
the war dead as deities with the stamp of official recognition of personal sacrifice and honor by
the emperor.36
Although the shrine was privatized after the war, the connection between the
shrine and the state did not end. In the spring of 1979, it was revealed that
14 Class-A war criminals had been secretly enshrined at Yasukuni in October
1978. Given that such enshrinement required collaboration between shrine
authorities and government ministries, the shrine once again came to symbolize
the state’s support for military nationalism.37
In the context of the nation’s modernization and its subsequent militarization,
the Y ukan, Japan’s first war museum, was built in 1882, its construction
ush
based on European-style architecture.38 Yush u means “to associate with and to
learn from high-principled people,” reflecting the shrine authorities’ wishes that
“visitors to the museum touch and learn about the relics of enshrined divinities
who dedicated their precious lives to their nation.”39 When the museum opened,
it displayed weaponry, swords, uniforms, and other articles left behind from the
Satsuma Rebellion; however, hit by a massive earthquake in Tokyo in 1923, the
memorial lost many of its displays.40 During times of war, the Yushukan enjoyed
popularity as the heart of militarism and patriotic education for the young.41 It
witnessed an increase in visitors, from 4.25 million in 1903 to more than 10 mil-
lion in 1904 in the wake of the Russo–Japanese War.42 After Japan’s defeat in
1945, the museum was closed under the order of the Supreme Commander of
Allied Powers. A small portion of the displays was reopened to the public in
33. Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Asia Center, 2006), p. 231.
34. John Breen, op. cit., p. 17.
35. Franziska Seraphim, op. cit., p. 232.
36. Mark Selden, op. cit., p. 3.
37. Franziska Seraphim, op. cit., p. 227.
38. John Nelson, op. cit., p. 454.
39. Yasukuni Shrine, op. cit., pp. 2–3.
40. John Breen, op. cit., pp. 17–18.
41. Takashi Yoshida, From Cultures of War, op. cit., pp. 6–8.
42. Akiko Takenaka, op. cit., p. 67.

14 / Pacific Focus
1961, but it was not until 1986 that the whole of the museum was made
accessible.43
In 2002, the Yushukan was renovated and expanded. The current renovated
Yushukan exhibits, designed to attract the younger generation, represent attempts
by the shrine management to popularize a revisionist history of modern Japan.44
In the first postwar museum, objects associated with Japan’s modern wars were
chronologically displayed, but a coherent narrative was lacking.45 The current
museum offers elaborate narratives, delivered throughout 19 exhibition rooms.
The first two rooms display artifacts representing Japanese military traditions,
showing diverse swords and armor used by samurais. The next three rooms com-
memorate the Meiji Restoration and various domestic military conflicts, includ-
ing the Satsuma Rebellion. Exhibition rooms 6 through 15 display material on
Japan’s modern military history and its embroilment in regional and global wars,
with five rooms dedicated to the controversial war, which it refers to as the
“Greater East Asia War.”46 The renovated museum brings back memories of the
time when Japanese militarism predominated. As of 2014, approximately
300,000 people had visited it every year, an average of 821 people a day, indicat-
ing that the museum is reaching out to a substantial number of people.47
Just War’s Benevolent Effects on Asia as a Source of National Pride

In the spacious entrance hall on the first floor of the museum, visitors are
greeted with life-sized military materials on display, including a cannon, an air-
craft, a steam locomotive, and a howitzer. The Zero fighter plane, a fighter air-
craft manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was operated by the Imperial
Japanese Navy Air Services. It is introduced as the “best carrier-based fighter in
the world,” which shot down enemy airplanes, including Chinese pilots, in a bat-
tle over Chongqing. The English version of the text reads, “The Type 0 carrier-
based fighter, Model 11, was formally adopted for Navy use in 1940 (or the Year
2600 according to the Imperial Calendar, which commences with the accession
of Emperor Jimmu).” By invoking Emperor Jimmu, the Yushukan produces an
intimate link between the war, the emperor, and the Japanese nation. The role of
the Zero fighter is articulated within the national myth evoking the creation of
43. Takashi Yoshida, “Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum
in Modern Japanese History,” Japan Focus, 5 (December 2007), at <https://apjjf.org/-Takashi-
YOSHIDA/2594/article.html> (searched date: 27 December 2016), p. 3.
44. Akiko Takenaka, op. cit., p. 170
45. Ibid., p. 172.
46. The term was banned during the American occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952. See Rog-
ers B. Jeans, op. cit., p. 153.
47. Lily Kuo, “The Story of World War II according to Japan’s Controversial War Museum,”
Quartz (15 August 2014), at <https://qz.com/223897/the-story-of-world-war-ii-according-to-japans-
controversial-war-museum> (searched date: 27 December 2016).

the imperial line. It was “a flying suicide machine,” and Japanese kamikaze pilots
“flew Zeros more than any other aircraft” to destroy enemy ships.48 Importantly,
the museum is silent on the fact that these fighters played a central role in
Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941,49 when more than
2,300 Americans died and 1,000 others were wounded.50 This silence omits the
crucial fact that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor eventually dragged the country
deeper into the war, ultimately bringing a painful defeat to the nation.
Steam locomotive number C5631 (Model C56 Locomotive No. 31), which
travelled the Thailand–Burma railroad, on exhibit in the entrance hall, is another
reminder of the war. A bilingual sign, in both Japanese and English, states that
the locomotive was:
[C]ommandeered to the south for the Greater East Asian War where, as one of 90 cars that
played an important role in Thailand, this Locomotive No. 31 took part in the opening cere-
mony of the Thai–Burma Railroad.
The machine continued to run after the war and was donated to Yasukuni in
1979. According to Breen, “there is no mention that 90,000 men, prisoners of
war and local labourers, were sacrificed in the building of the railway along
which the C56 plied its way.”51 At the time of my visit in 2014, there was men-
tion written only in Japanese, not in English, that 170,000 locals and prisoners of
war were involved in the construction of the 415-mile railway. For visitors who
cannot read Japanese, the locomotive is perceived simply as a proud product of
Japanese modernization, as a technologically advanced machine that aided the
Japanese war project conducted outside the nation. The Japanese-only text also
reads that although the British military had a plan to construct the railway in that
location, they gave up on this plan due to the steep topography and tropical cli-
mate. The superiority of the Japanese is thus transmitted to the Japanese audi-
ence. Simultaneously, the sacrifice made by people in Southeast Asia and
prisoners of war who had to endure such adverse conditions under Japan as a
colonizer is muted. Although it was these people in Southeast Asia and prisoners
48. Thom Patterson, “Once-feared ‘Zero’ Fighter Flies Again Over Japan,” CNN (29 January
2016), at <http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/28/world/restored-japanese-zero-fighter-plane-flies-over-
japan> (searched date: 27 December 2016).
49. Magdalena Osumi, “Zero Fighter Plane Being Prepped for First Flight since WWII,” Japan
Times (13 July 2015), at <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/13/national/zero-fighter-
plane-prepped-first-flight-since-wwii/ - .Vqgw5XiBXww> (searched date: 26 January 2016).
50. Eric Johnston, “Abe Offers ‘Everlasting Condolences’ at Pearl Harbor as Obama Praises Part-
ners in Peace,” Japan Times (28 December 2016), at <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/
12/28/national/politics-diplomacy/abe-offers-everlasting-condolences-pearl-harbor-obama-praises-
partnership-peace/ - .WGPhMrG-Ku5> (searched date: 28 December 2016).
51. John Breen, “Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory,” in John Breen, ed., Yasukuni, the
War Dead and the Struggle (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 152.

16 / Pacific Focus
of war who actually built the railway, their role is neither articulated nor
credited.
Before visitors reach the exhibits on the “Greater East Asia War,” the museum
devotes two exhibition rooms to the Russo–Japanese War. In portraying the war,
the exhibition text narrates:
Journalists representing the world’s leading news agencies who traveled with the Japanese wit-
nessed their bravery and tactical brilliance, and praised them in detailed reports. The effect of
these victories on Asian youth changed the world in the 20th century.
A set of illustrated panels constructs the benevolent effects of the Russo–

Japanese War on Asia. These are contextualized in a panel entitled “Postwar
Independence Movements,” with a visual map illustrating the Asian and African
countries that gained their independence. Photographs of independence leaders in
India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Burma are shown. The label
reads:
Japan’s victory in the Russo–Japanese War inspired other oppressed peoples, particularly Asian
peoples, to dream of achieving independence. Many future leaders of independence movements
visited Japan as a model for independence and modernization.52
The narrative conveys that the Japanese occupation of Asian nations allowed
them to dream about their independence, without any clear evidence. This is at
odds with the reality that millions of Chinese and Koreans under Japanese rule
were far from liberating themselves; instead, they experienced harsh colonial-
ism.53 For example, in 1919, Japanese police forces cracked down on Korea’s
March First Independence Movement, which was an attempt to liberate the coun-
try from Japanese occupation.54 The fact that Asian people’s wishes for indepen-
dence were crushed is buried.
Economic hardship is highlighted as the main driver of Japan’s embarkation
on the path toward the “Greater East Asia War.” An exhibit notes that Japan was
highly dependent on foreign oil and other energy sources for its economic activ-
ity, indicating that 70 percent of Japan’s energy sources came from the United
States. This suggests that Japan waged the war not to expand its political and
economic influence in the region and in the world, but to survive. However, this
line of argument is problematic because it causes inherent conflict with another
dominant narrative that the Yushukan promotes – that the war was fought to
liberate Asia.
The beginning of Japan’s military actions in China in 1931 is described as “an
attempt to support the Chinese Nationalist government in its civil war against the
52. This narrative was not only displayed in the exhibition room, but also appeared in Yasukuni
Shrine, op. cit., p. 78.
53. Thomas U. Berger, op. cit., p. 192.
54. Adrian Buzo, The Making of Modern Korea (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), pp. 20–21.

Communist Party, led at the time by Chiang Kai-shek,” implying that the military
action was “not because Japan wanted to control territory in northern China
because of its abundant natural resources.”55 Japanese military actions in Asia
are described as “campaigns,” such as the Malay Campaign, the Philippines
Campaign, the Hong Kong and Central Pacific Campaigns, the Burma Cam-
paign, and the Imphal Campaign. In describing the Imphal Campaign, the
English text attached to the map of India and Burma reads: “The objective of the
Imphal Campaign was the defense of Burma.” This argument is the dominant
idea that the museum constructs: The war was fought to liberate Asia. This gives
an impression that the Japanese war was fought to help Burma specifically, and
Asia broadly, to gain independence, rather than to build and maintain Japan’s
influence and defend its national interests in the region. One of the most impor-
tant aspects of why the war was fought there and how important Burma was for
Japan’s national interests is completely omitted from the museum narratives. The
descriptions of the campaigns are made effective with colorful maps depicting
the traces of Japanese military inroads in each area.
In this portrayal of war, Japanese wartime actions committed in Asia are elab-
orately removed from the museum presentations. Facts about violence committed
against other Asians, such as the Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese injustices in
the Philippines, the sexual enslavement of women, mostly Koreans, for the Japa-
nese military, to name a few, are omitted. The museum constructs a past through
what Kingston refers to as “sanitized remembrance.”56
Personified Stories, Nationalized Spirits, and Glorified War

One of the key aspects of the Yushukan exhibits is the recounting of personal
stories relating to war. Photographs of soldiers who participated in each campaign
are introduced with descriptions about when and where they died. Fallen soldiers’
personal articles, such as uniforms, steel helmets, military caps, and banners com-
memorating their departure for the campaign, are exhibited as well. Matched with
colorfully illustrated maps where individual military actions were carried out, the
solders’ photographs invoke their bravery and their sacrifice to the nation.
Individual solders’ letters to their families, including parents, wives, and chil-
dren, personify the war. For example, one of the displays concerns Japan’s bat-
tles on the islands of Attu and Kiska, a group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska,
located in the North Pacific. The islands were occupied by Japan, and the battles
were fought against the United States from 12 May to 29 July 1943, as the US
Army was trying to win them back. Yamazaki Yasuyo Mikoto, Lieutenant Gen-
eral of the Japanese Army, who served as commander of the Attu Island garrison,

56. Jeff Kingston, “Review: Record in Pictures of Yasukuni Jinja: Yushukan,” Critical Asian Stud-
ies, 42-3 (September 2010), p. 498.

18 / Pacific Focus
is introduced, and notes that he wrote to his wife and children are shown. He
wrote to his wife, Eiko:
As a commander of my troops I set foot in a far away barren land and bury my bones in the
battlefield of the north sea to become a cornerstone to defeat America and Britain. This is truly
my long cherished desire; let alone the fact that I will live the eternal noble cause as the guard-
ian divine spirit of the state. I am most happy.57
As Allen observes, personal stories are infused into the national story, human-
izing soldiers as people and as devoted citizens of the nation. This produces an
emotional connection between the visitor and the stories of the exhibit, leading
the visitor to mourn the soldiers’ sacrifices and humanity.58 Nelson also notes
that the Y ush
ukan’s narrative has a crucial emotional impact on visitors’ percep-
tions of the past. In an interview with a Japanese male visitor in his late twenties,
he observed that the visitor, after looking around the museum exhibits, was
impressed by the courage of the kamikaze fighters and wanted to “know more
about the young people’s thoughts and feelings of that time.”59
What is particularly worthy of note is the fact that the museum makes no mention
of the Japanese people’s suffering during the war, although the term, “defeat,” is
occasionally used in narrative descriptions. Information about the nuclear bombing
is briefly introduced, but without elaboration or visual images, which stands in
marked contrast to other, colorfully visual panels. Descriptions and visual represen-
tations of the Japanese people’s suffering under air strikes and nuclear bombings are
absent. As Breen notes, “the historical facts of Japanese war crimes, of Japanese
colonialism and aggression, and of Japanese defeat,” as well as the horror of the
war, are deftly obliterated from the memory of the Yushukan.60 A set of panels vin-
dicates the war as a just one, fought by innocent soldiers who cared about their fam-
ilies and the nation,61 highlighting how it brought benevolent effects to Japan and
Asia, using carefully embellished narratives and visual images that celebrate and
rationalize the war without any serious account of the sufferings that it inflicted
upon the Japanese people, or upon Japan’s Asian neighbors.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Peace

Memorial Park
As the first city in human history to endure a nuclear disaster (on 6

August 1945), Hiroshima stands firmly as the premier icon of Japanese
57. This is also illustrated in Yasukuni Shrine, op. cit., p. 60.

58. Matthew Allen, op. cit., pp. 438–439.
59. John Nelson, op. cit., p. 456.
60. John Breen, “Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory,” op. cit., pp. 154–155.
61. Yasukuni Jinja, “Yushukan,” Japanese-language brochure, n.d.

victimization.62 Located in the center of the city of Hiroshima, the Peace Memo-
rial Museum and the Peace Memorial Park commemorate Hiroshima’s horrifying
experience. The overall message is presented in terms of the national trauma
beyond the city’s struggle over the nuclear blast. The site is a famous location
for school field trips for students.
Historical Background
Hiroshima, once a military city, was transformed into the Peace Memorial City
through the 1948 Peace Memorial City Construction Law. The members of the
Japanese Diet thought that the reconstruction of Hiroshima as a peace memorial
city would support the Peace Constitution, which renounces war.63 The law was
enacted by the Diet and put into effect in 1949. Article I of the law reads as fol-
lows: “The law aims at the construction of Hiroshima as a Peace Memorial City,
a symbol of the ideal of making lasting peace a reality.”64 The design for a
memorial place was selected after a public competition in 1949. The Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum/Park opened in 1955. The park was built on ruins close
to the site of the atomic bomb blast, in the heart of the city, which was once the
prosperous commercial and residential district of a bustling downtown.65
In 1985, the city of Hiroshima announced plans to renovate and expand the
Peace Memorial Museum and Peace Memorial Hall. The city worked with the
Exhibit-Planning Committee, which consisted of opinion leaders from local uni-
versities, media, and the Board of Education, to decide on new content to include
in the exhibits of Hiroshima’s experience of the atomic bomb and its pursuit of
world peace. Several progressive groups, among them Hiroshima for World
Peace, called for including mention of the role of Hiroshima as a military city
before the dropping of the bomb. After a heated debate, the proposal was
accepted in 1987.66 In May 1989, the fund-raising campaign for the renovation
and permanent preservation of the Atomic Bomb Dome began. In less than
100 days, the campaign reached its target of 100 million yen, half of the entire
expected cost of restoration. By the beginning of 1990, more than 390 million
yen had been donated from various sectors.67
In June 1994, the renovated Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum opened to
the public in two buildings. The East Building displays the exhibit “Hiroshima’s
62. Nagasaki underwent atomic destruction 3 days later on 9 August, but the physical and human
damage in Hiroshima was greater than that suffered in Nagasaki, which was spared the worst. Also,
Nagasaki had produced more military armaments than Hiroshima. See Ian Buruma, op. cit., p. 100.
63. Hiro Saito, “Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma,” Sociological The-
ory, 24-4 (December 2006), p. 361.
64. Benedict Giamo, op. cit., p. 710.
65. Lisa Yoneyama, op. cit., p. 1.
66. Mikyoung Kim, op. cit., p. 70.
67. Lisa Yoneyama, op. cit., pp. 70–71.

20 / Pacific Focus
Journey,” focusing on the city’s history before and after the bombing. The Main
Building exhibits a full-sized replica of the atomic bomb “Little Boy,” artifacts
left behind by victims, and the history of the development of nuclear weapons.68
More than 1 million visitors had made pilgrimages to the museum/park, even
before the 1985 renovation project began.69 The complex attracted 1.55 million
visitors in 1995.70 In 2015, the year that marked the 70th anniversary of the
nuclear bombing, 1.495 million people visited the museum, the fifth largest num-
ber since the museum opened in 1955. Foreign visitors hit a record high of
338,891 in 2015.71 This attests to the fact that the museum/park continues to
attract domestic and international tourists as a key site of Japanese war memory.
The Power of the Nuclear Bomb and the Evil of War

The Peace Memorial Park stretches from the entrance of the museum all the
way to the Atomic Bomb Dome, through the Memorial Cenotaph of the A-bomb
victims and the Pond of Peace. Various monuments, such as the Children’s Peace
Monument, the Monument of Prayer, the Flame of Peace, and the Statue of
Mother and Child in the Storm, bring back the memory of sufferings endured by
victims and their prayers for peace. Diverse stones, temples, and fountains com-
memorate the dead. These monuments promote the link between the memory of
atomic victimhood and aspirations for peace by recollecting the city’s ordeal and
those who lost their lives.
Visitors can see the ruin of the Atomic Bomb Dome in the distance through
the cenotaph covered by the saddle-shaped memorial.72 The Dome, called the
Genbaku Domu in Japan, consists of some remains of the brick walls and the
iron frame of the dome-shaped top, as a crucial reminder of the ruins left by the
atomic detonation. The Dome was once the Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall.
The structure, designed by Jan Letzel, an architect from Czechoslovakia, was
built in 1915.73 Although the Dome stands as one of the most representative
icons of Hiroshima’s destruction, the public was divided on its preservation when
the city first began to prevent the decaying structure from crumbling between
1966 and 1968. While the city administration attempted to preserve this building,
68. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, The Spirit of Hiroshima: An Introduction to the
Atomic Bomb Tragedy (Hiroshima: City of Hiroshima, 2013), p. 5.
69. When the museum opened in 1955, visitors were mostly from Hiroshima. See Stefanie Schä-
fer, op. cit., p. 158.
70. Mikyoung Kim, op. cit., p. 74.
71. The Hiroshima Peace Media Center, “Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Attracts Record
Number of International Visitors in Fiscal 2015” (21 April 2016), at <http://www.
hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=59354> (searched date: 4 January 2017).
72. The cenotaph’s shape is designed to shelter victims’ souls. See Benedict Giamo,
op. cit., p. 705.
73. Lisa Yoneyama, op. cit., p. 2.

acknowledging its emblematic value, survivors were less enthusiastic about keep-
ing it because the building reminded them of the agonizing trauma. Against the
backdrop of a movement in the 1980s to refashion national and regional images
of the city, Hiroshima promoted a vision of itself as an international peace and
cultural city.74 After decades of maintaining the Dome, public reactions in the
late 1980s became overwhelmingly supportive of preserving the ruin.
The East Building of the museum reflects the initiative to include Hiroshima’s
history as a military city before the bombing by incorporating the information
that the First Sino–Japanese War in 1894 brought the city into a period of eco-
nomic development and prosperity. Hiroshima is introduced as a city where vari-
ous military facilities were established and which was developed as part of
Japanese modernization. Ujina Port, established in 1890, served as a crucial mili-
tary base for sending soldiers and war materials to China. Throughout the Second
Sino–Japanese War, Hiroshima continued to prosper as a military city, housing
military shipbuilding and metalworking industries. The text reads as follows:
With the tide clearly turning against Japan, in April 1945, the Second General Army Headquar-
ters was established in Hiroshima to prepare for the possibility of warfare on the Japanese
mainland. This enhanced Hiroshima’s importance as a military base.75
The museum also displays a photograph and description of the “Lantern

Parade to Celebrate the Capture of Nanking,” which Hiroshima’s residents orga-
nized in front of the Hiroshima City Hall in 1937. The text relates that the cele-
bration was to honor “a holy crusade” and adds:
In Nanking, however, Chinese were being slaughtered by the Japanese army. Reports of the
number killed vary depending on the area and the time studied. Some estimates are in the tens
of thousands, while others put the figure at well over 100,000. In China, the most common esti-
mate is 300,000.76
The museum juxtaposes how the city responded to the capture of Nanking,
then China’s capital, with what happened there.
Passing through the exhibits on the history of Hiroshima before the bombing,
the visitor is led to the horror of the nuclear devastation. Indeed, one of the main
themes of the museum is the destructive effect that the atomic bomb brought to
the city and its people. Replicas of the wrecked city and the shelled Atomic
Bomb Dome inside the museum reinforce an image of the ruins caused by the
nuclear blast. An exhibit on the fire in the Ujina-machi, 4,200 m away from the
hypocenter, on 6 August 1945, shows the expanding effect of the bomb. The
steel roof frame of the Yaguranoshita substation of the Hiroshima Electric Rail-
way Company, 280 m from the hypocenter, is seen still twisted in the fall of
74. Ibid., p. 45.

75. See also The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, op. cit., p. 13.
76. Ibid., p. 15.

22 / Pacific Focus
1946, a year after the tragedy. The physical damage of the whole city in flames
and in ruins showcases the destructive effects of the bomb. The museum also
evidences the fact that the bomb disrupted the societal order, stalling institutional
and societal activities in Hiroshima.
In the Main Building, the museum devotes a substantial amount of space to
exhibiting the global history of the development of nuclear bombs, their techno-
logical effects, and the danger of nuclear proliferation. It locates the cause of Hir-
oshima’s devastation in the technological development and proliferation of
nuclear weapons. At the same time, this causal relationship suggests that nuclear
weapons could cause war at any time in the future. Hiroshima’s mission for
peace is to prevent the evil of war from erupting because of the proliferation of
nuclear weapons.
Personalized Stories, Nationalized Sorrow, and Peace as an Incontestable

Lesson
The consequences of the detonation of the bomb do not end with the physical
damage to the buildings and the landscape. All this caused painful effects on
humans and subsequent scars. People are shown with burns and other injuries.
Photographs of a schoolgirl with burns all over her face and a man with burns
over his entire body convey vividly how the city turned into a living hell envel-
oped in flames. Photographs of young students are displayed to tell the story of
how most of 353 first- and second-grade students of the Municipal Middle
School fell victim to the bomb. Burned materials left behind, including student
uniforms, shirts, notebooks, and a carbonized lunch, add a personal touch to the
story of the victims and bring to light the deep sadness of mothers who lost their
children.
The traumatic imagery is intensified by visual and narrative representations of
the long-term after-effects of nuclear fallout and radiation sickness. A-bomb-
related disorders, such as cancer, leukemia, and keloids, endured by survivors,
added to the unspeakable long-term human suffering. Kiyoshi Kikkawa, “A-
bomb victim No. 1,” suffered severe burns to his arms and back when he was
exposed to the bomb blast, 1.5 km from the hypocenter. He went through a total
of 16 skin transplants from 1946 to 1961. When he was interviewed by a group
of US journalists in April 1947, he stated: “What I want is for this body to be a
cornerstone for peace among humankind.”77 The link between the bomb and
peace is exactly the main theme that the museum exhibits as the identity of Hiro-
shima, and as a lesson from the war. The museum devotes the most attention to
the horror of nuclear weapons, embodied in physical and human suffering. Visi-
tors become pain-stricken and heartbroken after being exposed to these stories of
77. Ibid., p. 75.

human agony. In this way, personal experiences are elevated to the level of a
national trauma.78
The museum recognizes other Asian victims as well. When the bomb was
dropped, it fell also on people from China, Korea, and Taiwan who had been
conscripted and forcibly brought to Hiroshima as part of the labor force. One of
the panels recounts that, among the 350,000 residents in Hiroshima, there were
also students from China and Southeast Asia, as well as US prisoners of war.
Yoneyama notes that among these residents who were attacked and victimized
by the atomic bomb, at least 50,000 were Koreans.79 Korean victims were dis-
criminated against “when it came to medical treatment and even cremation and
burial.”80 However, this detailed information is absent from the exhibition narra-
tives within the museum regarding how many foreigners were in the city and
how many of them were victims.81
Human suffering and its transformation into national trauma, exhibited in the
East Building, transfer to the lesson of the war articulated in the Main Building,
where visitors are guided to an exhibit on the “Nuclear Age,” which focuses on a
world living under the threat of nuclear weapons, their technological advance-
ment, and their proliferation. One of the panels sends out a clear message:
The magnitude of the tragedy inflicted by the atomic bomb convinced the people of Hiroshima
that the human race and nuclear weapons cannot coexist indefinitely. Thus, the city of Hiro-
shima became a global symbol, a city striving to eliminate nuclear weapons and bring about
genuine and lasting world peace.
The museum offers the lessons of history in a conclusive way; nuclear

weapons cause unspeakable physical and human suffering, experienced by no
city other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is the mission of Hiroshima and
humankind to eradicate nuclear weapons to prevent horrible devastation and
destruction. Not until the world eradicates nuclear threats will a genuine world
peace be attainable.
A victim mentality is the fundamental backbone of Japan’s pacifist ideology.82
The bomb and peace are conflated and intimately associated.83 This connection
78. Although Hiroshima serves as an image of national trauma, there was no organized form of
government aid to rescue the devastated city. Rescue efforts relied largely on local resources. See
John Dower, “The Bombed,” op. cit., p. 283.
79. Lisa Yoneyama, “Memory Matters: Hiroshima’s Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Poli-
tics of Ethnicity,” Public Culture, 7 (Spring 1995), p. 502.
80. John Dower, “The Bombed,” p. 294.
81. In the park, a description carved in stone on the Monument in Memory of the Korean Victims
of the A-bomb, written both in English and Korean, but not in Japanese, notes that approximately
10 percent of the victims were Koreans. For the complex process of the relocation of the monument
from outside the park and its contestation, see Lisa Yoneyama, “Memory Matters,” op. cit.
82. John Dower, Embracing Defeat, op. cit.; Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces, op. cit.; James
J. Orr, op. cit.; Mikyoung Kim, op. cit.
83. Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces, op. cit.

24 / Pacific Focus
was articulated in the city’s hosting of a UN Conference on Disarmament Issues

in July 1992.84 The design of the museum leads the visitor through the exhibit
by controlling the route and manipulating their emotions.85 The marriage
between Hiroshima’s experience of the atomic bomb and its mission to achieve
world peace is presented and naturalized as an incontestable lesson through a dis-
cursive and visual construction of personal stories juxtaposed with victims’ per-
sonal belongings, and through the design of the museum, which directs the
visitor to arrive at this linkage. The indisputable lesson of the war, that peace is
attainable by eradicating nuclear weapons, renders invisible how peace can be
attained in other ways. In particular, the ways that peace can be facilitated and
achieved with other Asian neighbors by reflecting on Japan’s wartime history is
muted.
Museumizing Imagination and the Political

Benedict Anderson notes that “museums, and the museumizing imagination,
are both profoundly political.”86 Museum displays produce knowledge, and the
“production, distribution and consumption of knowledge are always political.”87
The Y ushukan and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/Park produce knowl-
edge about the nation by remembering and forgetting the war in markedly con-
trasting ways. Yasukuni justifies, honors, and rationalizes Japan’s wars, while
Hiroshima condemns the evils of war. By vindicating war, Yasukuni promotes
the idea that the spirit of war should be passed down to future generations as a
way to preserve national pride. On the other hand, Hiroshima reminds visitors of
the dark, destructive effect that war brought to innocent people in the city and to
the whole nation. The Yushukan imagines that war is a heroic enterprise that not
only fuels national self-esteem, but also enabled other Asian countries to gain
their independence; that war is a step toward peace. In contrast, Hiroshima illus-
trates that war cripples peace, warning that war should be avoided in order for
humanity to sustain and accomplish peace. All these contrasting messages are
communicated through a variety of pictorial and narrative inscriptions that make
the past known to the contemporary generation.
These effects are due to the fact that the past is often represented through
“strategic highlighting, selecting samples and multiplying examples.”88 The
84. Ian Buruma, op. cit., p. 105.

85. Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, op. cit., p. 156.
86. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of National-
ism (London: Verso, 1983), p. 178.
87. Sharon Macdonald, “Exhibitions of Power and Powers of Exhibition: An Introduction to the
Politics of Display,” in Sheila Watson, ed., Museums and Their Communities (London: Routledge,
2007), p. 178.
88. Pierre Nora, op. cit., p. 17.

Yushukan selectively chooses to remember heroism and victory without paying

due attention to the disastrous effects that war has brought to the nation, or to the
military actions inflicted on other Asian countries. The Hiroshima Peace Memo-
rial Museum carefully chooses to hark back to the city’s experience as the repre-
sentative memory of the Japanese war and to emphasize peace and the
eradication of nuclear weapons as the primary lessons to be drawn from the war.
In Yasukuni, visitors commemorate fallen soldiers as heroic martyrs by remem-
bering their honorable behavior, whereas viewers in Hiroshima memorialize the
martyrdom of the innocent people sacrificed to the atomic bomb.
In interrogating the role of museums as bearers of collective memory and
national identity, it is also crucial to point out that exhibitions are deliberately
and intentionally organized to evoke feelings from visitors to get them to empa-
thize, through stories, with the lives of war dead. Personal stories of the deceased
are presented with their photos, articles, belongings, and handwritten notes in
colorfully organized panels. Visitors experience the past and learn about the
nation through personal stories, and this has a profound effect on the construction
of a national identity infused with affection. At the same time, the two museums’
selective representation of the past showcases contested Japanese war memory
and identity. The Yushukan and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum draw
on contemporary people to bond them emotionally to the different groups of war
dead, thereby constructing distinctively imagined communities that transcend
time and space. This suggests that contestation over the collective memory of the
nation involves more than perceptual differences.
An analysis of the personal stories of the war dead reveals an important find-
ing that the military nationalism that the Yushukan promotes is not based on the
violence that was committed by the Japanese military. As mentioned earlier, acts
of past injustice are omitted from the Yushukan exhibits. Instead, by focusing on
fallen soldiers’ specific personal stories, the exhibits lead visitors to feel that Jap-
anese wartime militarism was a heroic enterprise enabled by soldiers’ sacrifices,
promoting the idea that Japan’s war contributed to the liberation of Asian coun-
tries from Western imperialism, as a step toward stability and peace in the
region.
Importantly, museum discourses are integrated into the larger Japanese
national discourse on war and peace. The contestation of Japanese war memory
has been manifested in a Japanese history textbook controversy and in newspaper
narratives with the resurgence of a nationalist view of Japan’s role in the war.89
89. For the history textbook controversy, see Yoshiko Nozaki, War Memory, Nationalism and
Education in Postwar Japan, 1945–2007 (New York: Routledge, 2008); Yangmo Ku, “Japanese
History Textbook Controversies, 1995–2010: Transnational Activism Versus Neo-nationalist
Movement,” Pacific Focus, 29-2 (August 2014), pp. 260–283. For more information on the con-
trasting discourses of Japan’s war memory in Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun, see Jooyoun
Lee, “Narrating War: Newspaper Editorials on Japan’s Defense and Security Policy between Mili-
tarism and Peace,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, 28-3 (September 2016), pp. 365–382.

26 / Pacific Focus
Contemporary Japan is witnessing an increase of audiences who are receptive to

the vision that the Yushukan promotes, particularly of the younger generation.90
This reception of a nationalist view extends beyond the museum exhibits to Japa-
nese society. In other words, the conflicting messages stemming from the
museums in Yasukuni and Hiroshima play into the contestation over war mem-
ory articulated throughout the society. Museums and society are co-constitutive;
museums are a reflection of society, and the exhibits in museums shape societal
discourse as well.
The two museums’ selective exhibits reflect intense political battles involv-
ing social groups. The revisionist exhibits of the 2002 renovated Yushukan
have been significantly influenced by the Yasukuni Jinja Sukei Hosankai
(Association for the Support and Reverence of Yasukuni Shrine; hereafter
Hosankai). Established in 1998, the organization has operated to support the
shrine, seeking to overcome the financial challenges posed by a decrease in
the number of war-bereaved families. Hosankai reinvigorated the museum by
renovating the exhibits with the goal of attracting the young.91 Also, the Japan
League for the Welfare of War-Bereaved Families (Nihon Izokukai Kosei
Renmei) has played a key role in making decisions about exhibits in the reno-
vated museum.92 Similarly, the curatorial decisions of the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum have been subject to political considerations and group
pressures. As noted earlier, the Mayor’s Office of Hiroshima City, pressured
by some progressive social groups, agreed in 1987 to museum renovation pro-
jects that represented Hiroshima as a military city. The City also considered
referring to Japan’s past injustices in exhibits in the renovated museum upon
demands of non-governmental organizations, but faced intense nationalist and
conservative opposition as well as resistance from the Japanese Hibakusha
Association and the Association of Bereaved Hibakusha Families. As a result,
the City rescinded the initial plan to install Japan’s aggression in the new
museum.93
Ultimately, the memories inscribed in the Yushukan and Hiroshima obfuscate
Japanese colonial practices conducted outside the country. Japan’s prewar and
wartime legacy of colonialism and imperialism, and its military actions, are in
danger of being obliterated from the Japanese understanding of war and peace.
Despite contestation about their exhibits, the two museums neglect Japan’s past
relations with Asia.

91. Ibid., p. 166.
92. Ibid. The group is associated with the shrine and the Liberal Democratic Party. See Jennifer
Lind, op. cit., pp. 67–68.
93. For more information on the contestation over the museum’s exhibits involving social groups
and the city of Hiroshima, see Roger B. Jeans, op. cit.; Mikyoung Kim, op. cit.; Stefanie Schäfer,
op. cit.

Conclusion and Implications for Historical Reconciliation in East Asia

This analysis has demonstrated that the exhibits of the Yushukan and the Hiro-
shima Peace Memorial Museum/Park memorialize war and portray peace in
starkly different ways regarding: (i) what happened during World War II;
(ii) what national pride should stem from; (iii) what kinds of lessons can be
drawn; and (iv) how the Japanese self-identify. The contested collective memory
of the war is not limited to museum exhibits and narratives. The two museums’
contrasting messages both reflect and constitute growing societal contestation
within the nation over Japan’s wartime history.
Despite the sharp mnemonic distinctions between the two commemorative
sites, the analysis here nevertheless reveals a common thread underlying their
visual, material, and narrative presentations. Both elide Japan’s colonial past in
Asia. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum does incorporate the role of Hiro-
shima as a military base before and during the war, and its efforts to acknowl-
edge the suffering of other Asian victims should be recognized. However, the
narrative becomes murky when it comes to the roles Hiroshima and Japan played
in causing Asian people pain. The process of constructing Hiroshima as a victim
of the ravages of war and a mecca of peace entails glossing over Japan’s role as
a colonizer that inflicted agony on Asian countries.94 Although Hiroshima suc-
cessfully transformed its experience to represent national suffering and produce a
historical lesson for a mission to achieve international peace, the nation’s war-
time role in Asia is obscured. This omission is undoubtedly pronounced in the
Yushukan. The museum’s view that the Japanese military helped other Asian
countries achieve their independence not only creates profound tension with
other Asian people who suffered under the Japanese military actions, but also
leaves victims’ scars unhealed and festering.
An important implication of the findings is that, increasingly, museum exhibi-
tions are being designed to appeal to younger generations. As noted earlier, the
Yushukan’s revisionist history is gaining popularity among youth. Patriotic edu-
cation through the promotion of military nationalism is re-encouraged and
resurging in the site. The Association for the Friends of the Yushukan
(Y ush
ukan Tomo no Kai) was established by Hosankai to provide incentives to
the young. With an annual fee of 1,000 yen,95 those who are 25 years old or
younger can purchase a pass to the museum with privileges to “attend symposia,
study groups, and nature camps geared to themes associated with Yasukuni.”96
In 2004, the shrine initiated programs for elementary schoolchildren as well.97
94. Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces, op. cit.; Tomoko Ichitani, “Town of Evening Calm, Coun-
try of Cherry Blossoms: The Renarrativation of Hiroshima Memories,” Journal of Narrative The-
ory, 40-3 (Fall 2010), pp. 364–390.
95. Equivalent to approximately $US9.
97. Ibid.

28 / Pacific Focus
The postwar generation, particularly the young who have never experienced the
war, rely on second-hand sources to understand the nation’s history. Those who
subscribe to the view of the Yushukan see war as a step toward peace. In con-
trast, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/Park, a popular site for school
field trips, contemporary students are exposed to stories, photographs, and arti-
cles of sacrificed victims (including the young ones), empathize with them, and
become determined not to re-engage in war. They experience the nation’s history
in connection with atomic bombing and learn lessons to promote peace. Students
are also active participants in the museum/park exhibits. Colorful paper cranes
sent in by students are collected and exhibited as a wish for peace in the area of
the Children’s Peace Monument. The City of Hiroshima hosts the Kids’ Peace
Camp for elementary and middle-school students during summer vacation and
organize a Peace Club for middle- and high-school students to provide lectures,
workshops, and exchange activities with young people from other cities. The
main goal of these programs is to provide opportunities for students to learn
about the atomic bombing and peace,98 the lesson that the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum advocates. The museums in Yasukuni and Hiroshima are no
longer isolated institutions, nor simply places for exhibiting war and peace. They
are crucial sites for educating the young. The knowledge and emotional effects
that these museums transfer to contemporary visitors, including young ones, may
be transmitted to future generations, leading to continuing national contestation.
At the same time, the very reality that these museums are drawing increasing
attention, empathy, and participation from the young may help to perpetuate the
chasm in memory between Japan’s youths and those in other Asian countries,
particularly China and Korea. The Yushukan constructs Japan’s role as a libera-
tor of Asia, which is at odds with other Asian people’s experiences and remem-
brances. H osankai’s attempts to appeal to youth could deepen the gulf of
memory in the region, leading to a worrisome future. In Hiroshima, space for
reflecting on the wartime relationship between Japan and other Asian neighbors
is limited. The idea that peace is possible through the eradication of nuclear
weapons is imbued into every corner of the museum/park as a dominant lesson
of the war. In this worldview, various possible ways through which peace is pos-
sible with other Asian peoples are shrunken or rendered invisible. Berger notes
that “[y]oung Chinese and Koreans can become as incensed over historical injus-
tices as their parents or grandparents were, if not even more so.”99 The major
challenge for the future will be to nurture a mutually acceptable national history
among the young in the context of the East Asian regional identity.100
98. City of Hiroshima, “Hiroshima City’s Initiative for Peace,” at <http://www.city.hiroshima.lg.

jp/www/contents/1418094048249/index.html> (searched date: 5 June 2017).
99. Thomas U. Berger, op. cit., p. 198.
100. Soon-Won Park, Daqing Yang, and Gi-Wook Shin, “Epilogue: Lessons and Future Agenda
for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia,” in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park, and Daqing Yang, eds.,

A lesson can be drawn from memorials and museums in Germany. The

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is also called the Holocaust
Memorial, was erected in Berlin in 2005, after long-heated public debates since
1988.101 The site of the memorial fills some eight acres in the heart of Berlin.
Although there is nothing recognizably Jewish, 2,711 columns of differing
height in the memorial resemble the tombstones of Prague’s ancient Jewish
cemetery. Victims’ photographs, letters, and stories are also shown. This signals
“a stark expression of a nation’s shame,” sitting “at the centre of things, not on
the periphery.”102 The site, in fact, represents unified Germany’s memorials and
museums that “candidly confront past violence.”103 A few blocks away, the
Jewish Museum of Berlin is another demonstration of Germany’s “will to
remember.”104 The German government embarked on “a new culture of
remembrance” in 2000 to bind memorials to promote a more democratic
national identity.105 The Jewish Museum received funding for this mission and
opened in 2001. Since then, the museum has been integrated into the process
of German identity-building, drawing on German–Jewish history. Moreover, the
museum has become a venue where young minority groups can connect to Ger-
man history.106 In addition, the German Historical Museum, which reopened in
Berlin in 2006 after 5 years of renovation, offers a far-reaching account of the
Nazis over the period of two millennia.107 These cases suggest that the Hiro-
shima Peace Memorial Museum does have room to integrate other Asian vic-
tims’ stories more fully into developing Japan’s national identity in a way to
foster various possible ways of promoting peace and reconciliation with other
Asian nations.
It needs to be remembered that reducing discrepancies in historical awareness
is key to moving forward towards trust-building among Asian neighbors, creating
stepping-stones to peace, and preventing historically charged tensions from
becoming perennial in future generations. Museums are not in the margins for
this task.
Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience
(Oxon: Routledge, 2007), p. 257.
101. Lisa J. Krieg, “It Was Horrible, But We Live Now: The Experience of Young German Adults
in Everyday Encounters with the Holocaust,” Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropol-
ogy, 74 (2016), p. 98.
102. Andrew Cohen, “Memory and History in Germany,” International Journal, 63-3 (Summer
2008), pp. 548–549.
103. Jennifer Lind, op. cit., p. 145.
104. Andrew Cohen, op. cit., p. 549.
105. Bettina Warburg, “Germany’s National Identity, Collective Memory, and Role Abroad,” in
Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain, eds., Power and the Past: Collective Memory and Interna-
tional Relations (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, 2010), p. 59.
106. Ibid., pp. 60–61.
107. Andrew Cohen, op. cit., p. 550.

30 / Pacific Focus
References
Allen, Matthew, “Ghostly Remains and Converging Memories: Yushukan and the
Australian War Memorial Exhibit the Pacific War,” Asian Studies Review, 39-3
(September 2015), pp. 430–46.
Allen, Matthew and Rumi Sakamoto, “War and Peace: War Memories and Museums in
Japan,” History Compass, 11-12 (December 2013), pp. 1047–58.
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
Bartelson, Jens, “We Could Remember It for You Wholesale: Myths, Monuments and
the Constitution of National Memories,” in Duncan Bell, ed., Memory, Trauma
and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), pp. 33–53.
Beckstead, Zachary, Gabriel Twose, Emily Levesque-Gottlieb, Julia Rizzo, “Collective
Remembering through the Materiality and Organization of War Memorials,” Jour-
nal of Material Culture, 16-2 (May 2011), pp. 193–213.
Bell, Duncan, “Introduction: Memory, Trauma and World Politics,” in Duncan Bell, ed.,
Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past
and Present (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), pp. 1–29.
Berger, Thomas U., “Of Shrines and Hooligans: The Structure of the History Problem in
East Asia after 9/11,” in Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain, eds., Power and the
Past: Collective Memory and International Relations (Washington, D.C.: George-
town University Press, 2010), pp. 189–202.
Breen, John, “Introduction: A Yasukuni Genealogy,” in John Breen, ed., Yasukuni, The
War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2008), pp. 1–22.
——, “Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory,” in John Breen, ed., Yasukuni, The
War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2008), pp. 143–62.
Buruma, Ian, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York:
Farrar Straus, and Giroux, 1994).
Buzo, Adrian, The Making of Modern Korea (Oxon: Routledge, 2007).
Cohen, Andrew, “Memory and History in Germany,” International Journal, 63-3 (Sum-
mer 2008), pp. 547–52.
Deans, Phil, “Diminishing Returns? Prime Minister’s Visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in
the Context of East Asian Nationalism,” East Asia, 24-3 (September 2007),
pp. 269–94.
Dower, John, “The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory,” Diplomatic
History, 19-2 (Spring 1995), pp. 275–95.
——, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton/New
Press, 1999).
Edkins, Jenny, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
——, “Remembering Relationality: Trauma Time and Politics,” in Duncan Bell, ed.,
Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship between Past
and Present (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), pp. 99–115.

——, “Politics and Personhood: Reflections on the Portrait,” Alternatives, 38-2 (May
2013), pp. 139–54.
Forsberg, Tuomas, “The Philosophy and Practice of Dealing with the Past: Some Con-
ceptual and Normative Issues,” in Nigel Biggar, ed., Burying the Past: Making
Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Uni-
versity Press, 2001), pp. 65–85.
Fukuoka, Kazuya, “Memory, Nation, and National Commemoration of War Dead: A
Study of Japanese Public Opinion on the Yasukuni Controversy,” Asian Politics &
Policy, 5-1 (January 2013), pp. 27–49.
Giamo, Benedict, “The Myth of the Vanquished: The Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum,” American Quarterly, 55-4 (December 2013), pp. 703–28.
Halbwachs, Maurice, On Collective Memory. Edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Hiroshima Peace Media Center, “Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Attracts Record
Number of International Visitors in Fiscal 2015” (21 April 2016), at <http://www.
hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=59354> (searched date: 4 January 2017).
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, The Spirit of Hiroshima: An Introduction to the
Atomic Bomb Tragedy (Hiroshima: City of Hiroshima, 2013).
Ichitani, Tomoko, “Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms: The Renarrati-
vation of Hiroshima Memories,” Journal of Narrative Theory, 40-3 (Fall 2010),
pp. 364–90.
Igarashi, Yoshikuni, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture,
1945–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
Jeans, Rogers B., “Victims or Victimizers? Museums, Textbooks, and the War Debate in
Contemporary Japan,” Journal of Military History, 69 (January 2005), pp. 149–95.
Kim, Mikyoung, “Pacifism or Peace Movement? Hiroshima Memory Debates and Politi-
cal Compromises,” Journal of International and Area Studies, 15-1 (June 2008),
pp. 61–78.
Kingston, Jeff, “Awkward Talisman: War Memory, Reconciliation and Yasukuni,” East
Asia, 24-3 (September 2007), pp. 295–318.
——, “Review: Record in Pictures of Yasukuni Jinja: Yushukan,” Critical Asian Studies,
42-3 (September 2010), pp. 497–9.
Koga, Kei, “The Yasukuni Question: Histories, Logic, and Japan-South Korea
Relations,” Pacific Review, 29-3 (September 2016), pp. 331–59.
Krieg, Lisa J., “It was Horrible, But we Live Now: The Experience of Young German
Adults in Everyday Encounters with the Holocaust,” Focaal: Journal of Global
and Historical Anthropology, 74 (2016), pp. 97–110.
Ku, Yangmo, “Japanese History Textbook Controversies, 1995-2010: Transnational
Activism versus Neo-nationalist Movement,” Pacific Focus, 29-2 (August 2014),
pp. 260–83.
Kuo, Lily, “The Story of World War II According to Japan’s Controversial War
Museum,” Quartz (15 August 2014), at <https://qz.com/223897/the-story-of-world-
war-ii-according-to-japans-controversial-war-museum> (searched date: 27 December
2016).
Langenbacher, Eric, “Collective Memory as a Factor in Political Culture and Interna-
tional Relations,” in Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain, eds., Power and the Past:

32 / Pacific Focus
Collective Memory and International Relations (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown

University, 2010), pp. 13–49.
Lee, Jooyoun, “Narrating War: Newspaper Editorials on Japan’s Defense and Security
Policy between Militarism and Peace,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, 28-3
(September 2016), pp. 365–82.
Lind, Jennifer, Sorry States: Apologies in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 2008).
Macdonald, Sharon, “Exhibitions of Power and Powers of Exhibition: An Introduction to
the Politics of Display,” in Sheila Watson, ed., Museums and Their Communities
(London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 176–96.
McDowell, Sara and Máire Braniff, Commemoration as Conflict: Space, Memory and
Identity in Peace Processes (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014).
Misztal, Barbara A., Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead: Open University
Press, 2003).
Mochizuki, Mike, “The Yasukuni Shrine Conundrum: Japan’s Contested Identity and
Memory,” in Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz, eds., Northeast Asia’s Difficult
Past: Essays in Collective Memory (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010),
pp. 31–52.
Nelson, John, “Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military
Dead at Yasukuni Shinto Shrine,” Journal of Asian Studies, 62-2 (May 2003),
pp. 443–67.
Nora, Pierre, “Between Memory and History: Lex Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations,
26 (Spring 1989), pp. 7–24.
Nozaki, Yoshiko, War Memory, Nationalism and Education in Postwar Japan,
1945–2007 (New York: Routledge, 2008).
Olick, Jeffrey K. and Joyce Robbins, “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Mem-
ory’ to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices,” Annual Review of Sociol-
ogy, 24 (1998), pp. 105–40.
Orr, James J., The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar
Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001).
Park, Soon-Won, Daqing Yang, Gi-Wook Shin, “Epilogue: Lessons and Future Agenda
for Reconciliation in Northeast Asia,” in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park, and
Daqing Yang, eds., Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast
Asia: The Korean Experience (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), pp. 254–60.
Ray, Larry, “Mourning, Melancholia and Violence,” in Duncan Bell, ed., Memory,
Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Pre-
sent (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), pp. 135–54.
Saito, Hiro, “Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma,” Sociological
Theory, 24-4 (December 2006), pp. 353–76.
Schäfer, Stefanie, “The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and its Exhibition,” in
Sven Saaler and Wolfgang Schwentker, eds., The Power of Memory in Modern
Japan (Folkestone: Brill/Global Oriental Ltd., 2008), pp. 155–70.
Selden, Mark, “Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Nationalism: War, Historical
Memory and the Future of the Asia Pacific,” Japan Focus, 6 (September 2008), at
<https://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2892/article.html> (searched date: 23 June 2011),
pp. 1–22.

Seraphim, Franziska, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005

(Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006).
Sylvester, Christine, Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It
(Boulder: Paradigm Publisher, 2009).
Takenaka, Akiko, Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan's Unending Postwar
(Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015).
Warburg, Bettina, “Germany’s National Identity, Collective Memory, and Role Abroad,”
in Eric Langenbacher and Yossi Shain, eds., Power and the Past: Collective Mem-
ory and International Relations (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, 2010),
pp. 51–70.
Yasukuni Shrine, Record in Pictures of Yasukuni Jinja: Yush ukan
(Tokyo: Kindai,
2009).
Yoneyama, Lisa, “Memory Matters: Hiroshima’s Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the
Politics of Ethnicity,” Public Culture, 7 (Spring 1995), pp. 499–526.
——, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California, 1999).
Yoshida, Takashi, “Whom Should We Remember? Japanese Museums of War and
Peace,” Journal of Museum Education, 29-2/3 (Spring-Summer/Fall (2004),
pp. 16–20.
——, “Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum in Mod-
ern Japanese History,” Japan Focus, 5 (December 2007), at <https://apjjf.org/-
Takashi-YOSHIDA/2594/article.html> (searched date: 27 December 2016), pp. 1–8.
——, From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace: War and Peace Museums in Japan,
China, and South Korea (Maine: MerwinAsia, 2014).
Zolberg, Vera L., “Contested Remembrance: The Hiroshima Exhibit Controversy,” The-
ory and Society, 27-4 (August 1998), pp. 565–90.

Lee, J. (2018) - Yasukuni and Hiroshima in Clash War and Peace Museums in Contemporary Japan. Pacific Focus, 33 (1), 5-33

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Lee, J. (2018) - Yasukuni and Hiroshima in Clash War and Peace Museums in Contemporary Japan. Pacific Focus, 33 (1), 5-33

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Yasukuni and Hiroshima in Clash?

War and Peace

This study investigates the role of museums in collective memory by focus-

Paciﬁc Focus, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1 (April 2018), 5–33.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

analysis of the Yushukan’s exhibits, along with background information in con-

Collective Memory and Museums in International Relations

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

22. Vera L. Zolberg, op. cit.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

transmitted from generation to generation by preserving museums, monuments,

30. Jens Bartelson, op. cit., p. 51.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Just War’s Benevolent Effects on Asia as a Source of National Pride

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

A set of illustrated panels constructs the benevolent effects of the Russo–

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Personiﬁed Stories, Nationalized Spirits, and Gloriﬁed War

55. Akiko Takenaka, op. cit., p. 175.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Peace

As the ﬁrst city in human history to endure a nuclear disaster (on 6

57. This is also illustrated in Yasukuni Shrine, op. cit., p. 60.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

The Power of the Nuclear Bomb and the Evil of War

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

The museum also displays a photograph and description of the “Lantern

74. Ibid., p. 45.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Personalized Stories, Nationalized Sorrow, and Peace as an Incontestable

77. Ibid., p. 75.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

The museum offers the lessons of history in a conclusive way; nuclear

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

was articulated in the city’s hosting of a UN Conference on Disarmament Issues

Museumizing Imagination and the Political

84. Ian Buruma, op. cit., p. 105.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Yushukan selectively chooses to remember heroism and victory without paying

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Contemporary Japan is witnessing an increase of audiences who are receptive to

90. Akiko Takenaka, op. cit., p. 21.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Conclusion and Implications for Historical Reconciliation in East Asia

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

98. City of Hiroshima, “Hiroshima City’s Initiative for Peace,” at <http://www.city.hiroshima.lg.

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

A lesson can be drawn from memorials and museums in Germany. The

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Collective Memory and International Relations (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

Seraphim, Franziska, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005

© 2018 Center for International Studies, Inha University

You might also like

analysis of the Yushukan’s exhibits, along with background information in con-

Yushukan selectively chooses to remember heroism and victory without paying