War and Visual Culture
Hong Kal and Jooyeon Rhee
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Course Reader no. 1
2012War and Visual Culture

1

VOLUME EDITORSHONG KAL AND JOOYEON RHEE
York University and Wittenberg University

SERIES EDITORLAURA HEIN
Northwestern University

EDITORIAL BOARD
Mark Caprio
Lonny Carlile
Parks Coble
Sabine Frühstück
Tom Grunfeld
Laura HeinJames Huffman
Jeffrey Kingston
Susan Long
Laura Miller
Mark Ravina
Mark Selden
Stephen Vlastos

War and Visual Culture2

The copyright of all material in this course reader is held by the respective authors, except whereotherwise noted.

The editors of this volume can be reached at hongkal@yorku.ca and rheej@wittenberg.edu.

War and Visual Culture3
War and Visual Culture

Introduction

5

Andrea Germer

8

Andrea Germer, “Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia – The Case of
Natori Yōnosuke,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 9.20.3, May 16, 2011.
Hong Kal

38

Hong Kal, “Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism: War
Memorial Museums in Korea and Japan.” This is a revised and expanded
version of a chapter that was published in Rethinking Historical Injusticeand Reconciliation in Northeast Asia, edited by Soon-Won Park, Gi-Wook
Shin, and Daqing Yang. New York: Routledge, 2007. Posted at The AsiaPacific Journal on September 6, 2008.
Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka

68

Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, “Exhibiting World War II in Japan andthe United States.” This essay is an abridged version of “Exhibiting WorldWar II in Japan and the United States Since 1995.” Pacific Historical
Review 76.1, February 2007: 61-94. Posted at The Asia-Pacific Journal on
July 20, 2007.
Jeff Kingston

93

Jeff Kingston, “Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial: Renovating War Memory in
Nanjing and Tokyo,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, August 22, 2008.
Rebecca Jennison and Laura Hein

121

Rebecca Jennison and Laura Hein, “Against Forgetting: Three Generationsof Artists in Japan in Dialogue about the Legacies of World War II,” The
Asia-Pacific Journal 9.30.1, July 25, 2011.
David McNeill, John Junkerman, and Li Ying
David McNeill, John Junkerman, and Li Ying, “Freedom Next Time:Japanese Neonationalists Seek to Silence Yasukuni Film,” The Asia-Pacific
Journal, April 1, 2008 and updated May 1, 2008.

140

War and Visual Culture
Susan J. Napier

4
153

Susan J. Napier, “World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy inJapanese Animation,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 31, 2005.
Yuki Tanaka

161

Yuki Tanaka, “War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu: The Humanismof his Epic Manga,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10.38.1, September 20, 2010.
Hong-An Truong and Elin O'Hara Slavick

176

Hong-An Truong and Elin O’Hara Slavick, “War, Memory, the Artist and
the Politics of Language,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10.31.2, August 2, 2010.
Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim

192

Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim, “Disarming Japan’s Cannons with
Hollywood’s Cameras: Cinema in Korea Under U.S. Occupation, 19451948,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10.44.3, November 1, 2010.
Asato Ikeda

213

Asato Ikeda, “Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State:
Reassessing the Art of Ogawara Shū and Fujita Tsuguharu,” The AsiaPacific Journal 10.43.2, October 25, 2010.
Recommended Further Reading227

War and Visual Culture

5

Introduction
War and Visual Representation
This course reader explores representations of war, the most violent form of humandisaster, in visual culture ranging from fine art to popular film. It gathers essays that deal
with war as it is defined by individuals, institutions, and nations; and critically engage withthe ways in which experiences and memories of war are interpreted, exhibited andchallenged in various visual terms and methods. The essays not only concern the questionof historical truth but also pay attention to the ways in which narratives and images of war
are constructed and how they in turn produce meanings and effects in particular political,
social and cultural contexts. In this reader representation refers to the process throughwhich we create meaning of the world around us. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright pointout that “The world is not simply reflected back to us … but we actually construct themeaning of the material world through these systems (of representation)”; our values,
opinions and beliefs are not simply shaped by re-presentation of some aspects of the realworld but by representation of it.1 As our surroundings have been increasingly dominatedby visual media, it is crucial to understand how visual images convey messages and how
they help us make sense of our society.
The traumatic experience of war—destruction, dislocation and loss—both in aphysical and emotional sense is deeply inscribed in individual and collective psyches. The
selected essays, with a focus on Asia, explore the question of how war violence affects
people’s lives and how it formed and transformed identities. Representations of war are
also crucial to private mourning of war victims because they create meaning for them. War
memorials, for instance, convert the pointlessness of death by war into a narrative of selfsacrifice to fulfill national destiny. Here the war dead has tied citizens to the nation as
individual memories meet collective memories in the form of national museums,
monuments and rites of commemoration. Representations of war often take the form of aconsolidated national narrative which transforms personal pain into collective sufferingand redemption. However, in many cases national narrative of sacrifice makes death a
conscious choice. We could say that the willingness to die for the nation, as Benedict
Anderson points out, is made possible by the representations of war and the dead.2
Propaganda in visual media and in war museums during both the wartime and the postwar
periods constructs narratives that promote righteousness, victimization and perseveranceof the nation. Yet, national identity is never a complete project. It is a process that needs tobe mediated and managed through a series of representations, which in turn allow thenation-state to create its history, imagine its identity, and legitimize its rule.
Representations of war are far from stable and this contributes to the instability ofnational identity when it involves representations of war that the state engaged in. They
1

Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.13.
2

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism(London: Verso Editions, 1991).

War and Visual Culture

6

are always subject to a challenge. In Asia, the transformation of post–Cold War geopolitics
has opened new possibilities for inter-Asian relations and inevitably has led to a rigorous
interrogation of the region’s recent past. In this context, battles between nations overhistory have become more intense and domestic tensions between official and societal
memories have also become more divisive. The selected essays interrogate controversies,
challenges and negotiations surrounding the question of how to represent war.
Such contestation appears in different forms of visual culture such as anime, manga,
film, photography and painting. The state is not the only source of representations of war:
various members of civil society and different institutions and media industries all
generate images. Popular culture and art often push the boundaries of official narratives of
war and inspire critical and alternative thinking about national community, war memoryand subjectivities. It is also noteworthy that the growing influence of virtual media has
been shaping popular culture in a new direction. Its capacity to connect individuals andgroups on a great scale and with rapid speed allows people to express their ideas andopinions more freely than ever before and provides the potential for them to more fully
participate in public spheres. Yet it must be noted that this media can enhance as well as
challenge hegemonic narratives of war since interest groups or the state may try to
manipulate the virtual media precisely because of its popular appeal. In any case, wecannot dismiss the fact that new media add a vibrant dynamic to popular culture in thevisual field.
This reader includes essays that deal with various visual media such as
photography, film, documentary, anime, manga, painting, drawing, textile art, video,
performance, TV and exhibition displays. Each medium has its own conventions, capacities
and limits in creating meanings and also in soliciting responses from viewers. Despite theirdifferences, it is essential to recognize that visual images convey not only intentions,problems or ambitions of individual artists or producers, but also, more critically, collective
mentalities. The essays locate visual productions within particular historical and politicalcontexts and relate them to larger issues of propaganda, national history, popular memory,
historical injustice, reconciliation and therapeutic dialogue.
Organization of the Reader
The reader consists mainly of the cases related to Japanese involvement andexperience in the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945). It also deals with the Korean War and theVietnam War, which affected, among other places, South Korea, North Korea, China,
Taiwan, Vietnam, all of Southeast Asia, and the USA. The wide coverage of regions,sometimes explicitly comparative, allows readers to recognize similarities and differencesin representations of wars. Contributors look at various sites of representation in theirinvestigations: war memorial museums and history museums (Hein and Takenaka; Kal;
Kingston), anime and manga (Napier; Tanaka), documentary film (Li, Junkerman and
McNeil),and film (Shim and Yecies). Although variations exist across these media in termsof the level of accessibility, these sites of representations can be characterized as having‘popular appeal’ due to their capacity to circulate images of war widely. Exhibits inmuseums, for example, are publicized mostly through educational channels, inviting schoolgroups and families, whereas other media are propelled by the profit-driven industry thataims to reach general populace. Some contributors also consider individual artists’ art-War and Visual Culture

7

making processes as an important site of representation.They elaborate on the roles ofartists in communicating with audiences on the issues of propaganda, memory, history andtrauma of war as a way of reconciling with the past: war propaganda photography(Germer) and painting (Ikeda), dialogues between generations of artists (Jennison andHein) and between two American artists who express their views on history and memory
differently (Truong and Slavick).
Despite their diversity in covering forms, narratives and places, the works of thesecontributors share the following three aspects. First, they situate visual productions andreceptions in political, social and economic conditions. Second, they investigate what the
representation tells us about collective identity in the context of war. Third, they analyze
the distinctiveness of various kinds of visual media, revealing their potentials or limits indealing with contested historical issues. This course reader emphasizes the relationshipbetween war and visual culture as well as the historical significance and impact of war
violence, which continues to affect contemporary politics and culture throughout theregion.

War and Visual Culture

8“Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia – The Case of Natori Yōnosuke”
Andrea Germer
May 16, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrea-Germer/3530
This essay investigates the relationship between art and politics by exploring thewartime activities of a Japanese photographer, Natori Yōnosuke, during the Asia-Pacific
War (1931-1945). Natori was an active participant in the production of propaganda photos
and photo magazines that were aimed particularly at reaching non-Japanese speaking
audiences, such as different groups of Asians living in Asia or Americans and Europeans inNorth America and Europe. Germer analyzes the political significance of Natori’s
aesthetics, his wartime political agency in China, his activities in the contexts of tourism
and imperialism, and his direct involvement in the state’s cultural propaganda. The author
focuses on Natori’s political agency as it is reflected in three particular areas: his creative
work, his visual strategies, and the management of magazines that he edited.
Germer introduces some of the representative state-sponsored photo magazines inwhich Natori was directly involved, such as Shanghai (1937), which justified Japan’s
invasion in China, and Manchukuo (1940), which represented Japan’s rule of Manchuria as
benevolent. This essay discusses the format, visual strategies, and the management of thestate-sponsored magazines and the private Nippon; and problematizes Natori’s postwar
silence about his wartime activities. This essay includes images of photo magazines andprovides Natori’s views on the role of photographs in propagating wartime ideologies.

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

9Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia – The Case of Natori Yōnosuke
Andrea Germer
INTRODUCTION
Visual propaganda that targeted the home-front in wartime Japan has recently been examined byscholars who have drawn attention to such aspects of material culture as clothing and textiles(Atkins 2002; Dower 2002), postcards and ephemera (Barclay 2010; Kishi 2010; Ruoff 2010)
and propagandistic photo magazines (Kanō 2004, 2005; Earhart 2008) that normalize andpopularize colonial and militarist policies by way of aesthetic artefacts of everyday use andconsumption. Others have examined underlying developments in political infrastructure andmass media as channels of propaganda transmission (Kasza 1988; Kushner 2006). Still other
scholars have focussed on visual and other propaganda that targeted Western and later Asian
audiences by way of cultural diplomacy by the Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai (Society forInternational Cultural Relations) affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Shibaoka 2007;
Park 2009) and thereby highlighted the State’s efforts to distribute an alternative image to themilitaristic state portrayed in the West, as well as to enhance its image in the occupied territories.
Propaganda in each of the countries that participated in the Second World War varied with its
own political structures, cultural roots, creative agents and targeted audiences. While propaganda
reception is a generally much understudied subject, it becomes even more difficult to approach inthe case of a dispersed and undifferentiated ‘foreign’ (taigai), ‘Western’ or ‘Asian’ audience. In
order to successfully sway a foreign audience, however, the creative agent must be versed in thementalities and cultural expectations of the receiving side.
One of these creative agents in wartime Japan was Natori Yōnosuke (1910-1962), who can besaid to have started his career proper with the Manchurian invasion of 1931.

Natori Yōnosuke (1910-1962)

War and Visual Culture

10

The invasion ignited the interest of foreign media in the subject ‘Japan’, which is why Natori,
who was working as a contract photo journalist with Ullstein Press in Germany at the time, wassent to Japan to create an extensive photo documentary. Natori's photo documentary of Japanlaid the groundwork for his international recognition as a photographer as well as making him
financially independent. Natori’s various activities after relocating to Japan in 1933 until the endof World War II included producing the photo and design magazine NIPPON (1934-1944),
publishing photographs and albums on Japan, the United States, and Germany, developing his‘workshop’ Nippon Kōbō into a limited company with branches in occupied East and South East
Asia, and publishing a number of propaganda magazines financed by the Japanese Imperial
Army, Navy and the semi-governmental Society for International Cultural Relations (Kokusai
Bunka Shinkōkai, KBS). After the war, Natori continued his career as publisher of an illustrated
magazine, lead editor of the 286-volume Iwanami Shashin Bunko, award-winning photographer(1953, 1954) and influential photo critic.
Until recently, Natori’s work has been mainly appreciated from the standpoint of aesthetics anddesign, and he won his highest praise in the context of the history of photography.1 The
recollections of Natori's former students and his staff (the so-called ‘Natori School’), and ofcolleagues in the postwar worlds of publishing, editing, photography, and design, abound in
admiration of their former mentor and boss.2 Another approach to Natori’s legacy started with an
exhibition on his photo book Grosses Japan. Dai Nippon (Great Japan, Natori 1937) in 1978,
followed by publications that included Natori’s contribution to the wartime regime. The
resurfacing of these works helped to demystify Natori's previously one-sided image as thecreator of monumental aesthetic works.3 The reprint of his first illustrated magazine NIPPON(2002-2005) laid the basis for a broader re-evaluation of the political significance of Natori’s
aesthetics (Kaneko 2005: 3). Shibaoka’s (2007) erudite study examined the state’s culturalpropaganda strategies through KBS and Natori’s involvement, while Gennifer Weisenfeld’sarticle (2000) shed light on the nexus of tourism and imperialism in NIPPON’s editorial
strategies. Lastly, Koyanagi Tsuguichi’s reflections (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993) enabled acloser look at Natori’s wartime political agency in China, for which Shirayama and Hori (2006)
provided the visual material. Drawing on the above studies, in this paper, I focus on Natori thephotographer and editor-cum-artist from an angle that interrogates his political agency as seen in
his creative work and his visual strategies, as well as in his management of the various
magazines he edited during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945). Moreover, I discuss the extent towhich Natori's legacy of Japanese wartime propaganda has been critically reflected or obscured
in his own postwar writings, in those of his disciples, as well as in scholarly literature on
photojournalism. While even some of the critical scholarship on Natori shows apologetic
tendencies and fails to sufficiently address his agency in the production of wartime propaganda, I
argue that Natori’s legacy and its treatment provide a showcase for the unresolved ways ofcoming to terms with the wartime past in Japan.
THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER IN PHOTOJOURNALISM
Natori was born into a wealthy and influential family associated with the Mitsui Conglomerate
and the insurance company Teikoku Seimei. When ‘bad boy’ (furyō shōnen) Natori (2004: 98)
repeatedly failed to enter the preparatory school for Keio University, he was sent to Germany tostudy German at the age of 18. Subsequently, he studied design at an arts and crafts school in
Munich and became acquainted with new trends in the emerging field of photojournalism. At thetime, the portable, lightweight and high-quality German cameras Ermanox and Leica greatlyGermer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

11

facilitated the emergence of the profession (Gidal 1972). Natori equipped himself with thenewest model compact camera, a 35mm Leica. With the help of his wife and partner Erna
Mecklenburg (1901-1979) and his friend Hermann Landshoff, Natori became affiliated first with
the Münchner Illustrierte Zeitung (Munich Illustrated News) and was later hired as a contract
photographer for the competitor of the Munich paper, the Berliner Illustrirte Presse (sic!) (Berlin
Illustrated Press; published by Ullstein Press) in November 1931.4
Just two months earlier, on 19 September 1931, the Kwantung Army had invaded Manchuria,
which could have been one reason for Natori’s employment. Only three months later, inFebruary 1932 and at the age of 22, he was sent to Japan. On his three-month stay in Japan,
Natori took approximately 7000 photos on 30 themes, such as Japanese family life, Japanese inns
(ryokan), beer factories, geisha schools, Yasukuni Shrine, tea ceremony, festivals, and Germansin Tokyo. According to Natori, photos of this journey had been published at least 270 times by1939.5 He established his reputation as a photo journalist through this collection of photographs
and earned enough money to finance himself for the next 10 years (Natori 2004: 121). Natori's
mission was to present Japan as respectable, modern and at the same time rich in cultural
tradition, in order to ameliorate Japan’s international isolation after its withdrawal from the
League of Nations (1933) and to work for its international recognition as a ‘normal’ modern
nation-state. He worked ‘from home’, so to speak, and only later would travel to China andeventually settle there in order to pursue his propagandistic work of covering up Japanesecolonialist and imperialist warfare.
After returning from Japan to Berlin, Natori was asked by Ullstein Press to cover the JapaneseArmy in Manchuria and he spent February through May 1933 there. When back in Japan for abreak, Ullstein informed him that political conditions in Germany had changed such that it was
impossible for German media to employ ‘non-Aryan’ staff.6 Nonetheless, they offered him
affiliation as a foreign correspondent. Uncertain of the future but financially independent, Natori
declined the offer and decided to establish his own business in Japan. The timing was good as thephoto magazine Kōga (Photograph) had just been founded the previous year and thephotographic avant-garde was looking for ways to express itself. In 1933, Natori thus founded
Nippon Kōbō together with photographer Kimura Ihei (1901-1974), designer Hara Hiromu(1903-1986), photo and art critic Ina Nobuo (1898-1978), and the very influential producer, actor
and photographer Okada Sōzō (1903-1983; stage name Yamanouchi Hikaru). Supporting
members were poet and writer Takada Tamotsu (1895-1952), journalist and critic Ōya Sōichi
(1900-1970) and journalist Ōta Hideshige (1892-1994).7
NIPPON KŌBŌ: FROM WORKSHOP TO CORPORATE BUSINESSThe artists and writers who would come to be associated with Nippon Kōbō were interested in
the modern trend of 'new vision' and the German Bauhaus concept of Neue Sachlichkeit (newobjectivity) that was to influence arts and crafts worldwide.They were attracted by the technicaland conceptual knowledge of photojournalism, arts, crafts and design that Natori had broughtback with him from Germany and they aimed to start a practical movement along the lines of
Neue Sachlichkeit in Japan. The first two Nippon Kōbō exhibitions were both successful. The
team planned to run a photo news agency to send photographs from Japan to other countries andto produce commercial photo art. Due to differences in thinking and financial difficulties,
however, the group that had been formed by professionals on an ‘equal level’ dissolved less thana year after it had been founded. Natori (2004: 137) explained this as ‘a matter of course as thisWar and Visual Culture12

was a group of very strong individuals.’ However, the fact that Kimura, Ina and Hara
subsequently founded Chūō Kōbō together suggests that the reason for the break-up was aconflict between Natori and the other members. Natori and Erna Mecklenburg meanwhile reestablished the second Nippon Kōbō with new, younger and less experienced staff.
The second Nippon Kōbō published a quarterly illustrated review NIPPON for foreign audiencesin English, German, French and Spanish. It appeared in 41 issues, including five Japaneseeditions, between 1934 and 1944.

The cover of NIPPON’s first issue (1934) visualises the combination of modernity and tradition, or the Westand Japan, through a colourful and highly stylised female paper doll in traditional Japanese attire
superimposed on a photograph of modern architecture’s functional style in black and white.

NIPPON claimed to represent ‘actual life and events in modern Japan and the Far East’(NIPPON 1, 1934).

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

13

Cover page of NIPPON 4. The claim to represent ‘actual life and events in modern Japan and the Far East’ isa claim for truth and authenticity that is made and asserted on the front cover of the magazine. This is the
only issue of NIPPON that does not provide a visual on its cover. All the same, the choice of the colours red
and white and the red Japanese title in the centre of the scriptural design refer to the colours and thestructural design of the national flag.

Clearly influenced by the modern trend of 'new vision' and Bauhaus aesthetics, it was masterfulin terms of layout, design and photography. Rather than a review, however, it was a propaganda
tool similar to later propagandistic journals and photo magazines, such as Shūhō (Weekly
Report, established in 1936) or Shashin Shūhō (Photographic Weekly Report, founded in 1938)(Kanō 2005: 35, Earhart 2008, Weisenfeld 2005). Natori’s magazine was supported by corporate
advertising and by the Foreign Ministry from 1934 (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 91). Its main
advertisers were Kanebo, Mitsui and Mitsubishi conglomerates, and various other large
companies in printing, insurance, textile, export and technical equipment. NIPPON was thus astate directed propaganda organ, the first of its kind in Japan, reflecting political and financial
circles’ anxiety about the isolation that ensued with Japan’s withdrawal from the League of
Nations in 1933. The first feature story of the first issue introduced foreign diplomats and theirspouses in a ‘private’ relaxed setting during a weekend outing to the hot springs and resorts of
Karuizawa and Nikko.

NIPPON 1, 1934: 4-5. These are some of the visuals that appear in a photo story on European, American andChinese ambassadors and their wives on outings to Karuizawa and Nikko. The visuals depict more womenthan men and connote a feminised sphere of recreation, culture and friendship that is in stark contrast to thepolitical world of diplomatic affairs.

Thus NIPPON set the stage for presenting an image of Japan that was neither militaristic andaggressive nor quaint and old-fashioned. By visually inviting foreign readers to join Western
diplomats and their spouses on their joyful and relaxed trips to scenic spots of the country, itWar and Visual Culture

14

cleverly combined ‘semi-official’ representation with a private, personal, cultural and peacefulcontext, displaying a community of friends hosted by the Japanese.
Although NIPPON was the product of Natori’s whole team at Nippon Kōbō, his influence as
editor, art director, photographer and producer was so overwhelming that according to Kaneko
Ryūichi (2005: 2) it reflected the world view of one man and needs to be treated as such. Indeed,neither in Natori’s own writings nor in those of his staff or his disciples is there any indication ofpressure or intervention from the magazine’s sponsors. Rather, as Koyanagi repeatedly noted,
Natori actively proposed strategies to advertise ‘Japan’, Japanese politics and Japanese products
to foreign audiences (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 91-94).
The model for NIPPON was the German magazine Die Böttcherstrasse. Internationale
Zeitschrift (The Böttcher Street. International Journal, 1928-1930).8 This magazine assembled
high ranking international scholars, artists, intellectuals and politicians and carried völkischracist ideas combined with highly aesthetic design, luxurious layout and high quality print. Half
cultural review and half advertisement paper (Schlawe 1962: 50), it was financed by the coffeeindustrialist Gerhard Ludwig Wilhelm Roselius (1874-1943). Natori, together with graphic
designer Kōno Takashi (1906-1999) and the editor of the German magazine Albert Theile,
produced a model for NIPPON. Natori took this blueprint to the chief executive of Kanebo,
Tsuda Shingo, and explained its underlying ideas (Natori 2004: 139). Aware of the low image ofJapanese products worldwide, Tsuda fully supported the plan and agreed to finance the first issueof NIPPON.9 In the same way that Roselius’ company Kaffee Hag had become the main sponsor
and main advertiser for Die Böttcherstrasse, Kanebo became the main sponsor and advertiser forthe magazine NIPPON.
The aim of Natori’s magazine was to present Japan as a country that was not reducible to‘Fujiyama, cherry blossoms, geisha and maiko [apprentice geisha]’ (Natori 2004: 130), but as
one that excelled as a modern nation-state. This aim is repeatedly asserted in the recollections of
his staff (Fukkokuban NIPPON bessatsu 2005). Rather than deconstructing the stereotypes of‘oriental’ Japan, NIPPON reconfirmed other established tropes such as its unique family system,
the high value of tradition and the unbroken line of emperors, and simply added anothertechnically advanced and modern image to it.

NIPPON 20, 1939: 23. This photograph illustrates the article ‘Family — Base of the Nation’ by Nakagawa
Zennosuke. Neither the photographer's nor the family’s name are noted. In its line-up in traditional Japanesewear with the tall male figure in the visual (though not numerical) centre, it serves to illustrate the concept or
essence of the ‘Japanese family’ rather than individual and identifiable people.

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

15

NIPPON 9, 1936. The presentation of Japan as an equal technical and commercial partner to the West isemphasised repeatedly throughout the magazine. The close stylistic emulation of Bauhaus aesthetics and 'newvision' photography is particularly evident in this photograph.

NIPPON 20, 1939, has one of the most densely designed covers. It displays Japan as industrialised withmodern land, sea and air infrastructure for commerce and travel, with an intact agricultural sector andscenic rural beauty. Superimposed is a shrine gate that resembles that of Yasukuni but could be any shrine.
The image signifies the nexus of Shinto, family, and nation that is visualised and propagated inside themagazine.

As such it promoted Japan as a modern commercial partner as well as an attractive touristic site.
As Weisenfeld (2000: 750) summed up, ‘NIPPON was both an attempt by state-sanctioned

War and Visual Culture

16

representatives of the Japanese empire at self-representation and an invocation to the Westernviewer to colonize the country through a kind of touristic gaze.’ With its use of montage andcaptioning – techniques that were also employed at the World Fairs that were covered in
NIPPON – it self-reflexively presented ‘Japan-as-Museum’, displaying Japan’s ‘“national
strength, national character and national significance” for Western consumption’ (NIPPON 17,
1939: 48; Weisenfeld 2000: 774). Offering ‘a means of “specular dominance” over Japan’ as
Weisenfeld (2000: 750) observed, did not, however, imply or engender the panopticist power ofthe viewer. Rather, the illusion of a specular dominance was created by means of clever, highly
elaborate and aesthetic visual compositions that served to veil political interests. Natori, as art
director and designer of the magazine, put the utmost care in its presentation. He was also
recognized by the government and by the military as an expert in state propaganda and wassought after as a partner in subsequent propaganda strategies.
Natori approached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Imperial Army to lobby for his projectof advertising Japan to the West. While he did not find support from the Ministry at first, Natori(2004: 140) mentioned that it was ‘ironically the Press Unit of the Army Ministry (Rikugunshō
no shinbunhan) that showed keen interest’. Soon, however, the civilian government would
follow and from 1935 orders for stock photos came in from Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai (Society
for International Cultural Relations). KBS was established in April 1934 as an extragovernmental organisation affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the first organisationof this kind in Japan.10 Natori presumably had already aimed at a sponsorship by KBS, as
NIPPON issues 1 and 3 carried articles that introduced KBS in detail (Shirayama 2005: 10-11).
Cooperation with KBS intensified after the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, when
Natori became an associate (shokutaku) of KBS. Thereafter, production costs of NIPPON wereborne by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Army and the Navy and the inter-Ministerial
Information Committee (Gaimushō, Rikukaigun, Jōhō Iinkai) (Shirayama 2005: 15). Japanese
officials had discussed using media for war propaganda since the end of World War I, but the
Army did not request a ministry of propaganda until 1934 (Kanō 2005), following the Nazi
model.11 Natori, because of his knowledge and skills acquired in Germany, can be seen as aforerunner of such direct propagandistic efforts.
The Asia-Pacific War as propaganda war
From the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Natori became very busy on two fronts. In Nazi
Germany he published a German photo album on ‘Great Japan’ (Grosses Japan. Dai-Nippon) in
1937 (second edition 1942) and organised two exhibits of Japanese arts and crafts there for KBS
in 1938. Natori was even more active in occupied China. From his travels to Germany and theUnited States in 1936-1937 and on an assignment for LIFE magazine, he went straight from San
Francisco to Shanghai after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (July 1937) and spent the restof the war there. The 1937 October 4 issue of LIFE magazine published the famous press photoby H.S.Wong that became the most influential visual of anti-Japanese propaganda. The photo
depicts a crying baby in rags sitting on a platform of the Southern Train Station of Shanghai that
had been destroyed by the Japanese Army during their invasion of the city.

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

17

After the Japanese bombing of the South Railway Station Shanghai on 28 August 1937. This photograph byH.S. Wong became the most influential visual image of anti-Japanese propaganda.

Koyanagi Tsuguichi (1907-1992),12 who joined Nippon Kōbō in October 1937, suggested thatthe photo looked staged,13 but reported that everyone at Nippon Kōbō was stunned. Natori
commented that the photo was very well taken and an excellent example of Chiang Kai-shek’s
anti-Japanese propaganda. He stressed that Japan needed the same kind of photographic
propaganda to find allies on the international level, and he told the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and the Army that he wanted to contribute to the war by making war propaganda (Koyanagi and
Ishikawa 1993: 93-94). Natori went as far as travelling to visit the Shanghai Expeditionary
Army14 where he persuaded the Group Leader of the Special Assignments Unit, Major Kaneko
Shunji, that propaganda was needed against Chiang Kai-shek.15 In December 1937, Natori went
to Shanghai with Koyanagi to join the Shanghai Expeditionary Army Special Assignments Press
Unit. The deal that Natori struck with the Army was that three staff from Nippon Kōbō would besent to Shanghai to serve as photographers for the Army and that the Army provide three cars
and finance a service that would sell photographs to foreign publishers. The photos themselves
were to be Nippon Kōbō’s property yet the negatives would belong to the Army (Nakanishi
1980: 231).
Of course, censorship was in effect. Immediately after the China incident, the Home Ministry
issued pre-publication warnings. The Army Ministry, the Navy Ministry and the Foreign
Ministry also banned items, culminating in so-called consultation meetings (kondankai), theinstitutionalised feature of top-down press controls that also served to blacklist writers and drivepress organs out of business (Kasza 1988: 168-172). Natori, in contrast, took the initiative toserve the interests of the Army in China and actively and creatively pursued cooperation. Within
two months in Shanghai, he had set up a press agency ‘Press Union Photo Service’ and proved
himself as a professional in the propaganda war. As foreign media were not allowed toWar and Visual Culture18

accompany the Army, Natori had many requests for visual material from international
publishers, which he also provided (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 99).
Camouflaged as a private institution, his press office was in fact completely financed by theJapanese Army. None of the pictures that Natori sold showed any trace of massacres or war
crimes.16 Natori himself never went to the battle front, indeed, he reportedly said that he would
not go where bullets fly (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 116). He would visit areas the JapaneseArmy controlled and have himself photographed by Koyanagi. Natori sent these kinen shashin(commemorative photos) off to foreign publishers to convey the impression that he was afrontline reporter (ibid.).
From November 1938, Natori also published the English language magazine SHANGHAI which
was distributed in Shanghai.

The magazine SHANGHAI (image in Shirayama and Hori 2006: 82) presented as a Chinese production by aChinese editor, was actually designed and produced by Nippon Kōbō in Tokyo and fully financed by theJapanese Army.

It was camouflaged as a Chinese cultural magazine produced and published in Shanghai by
producer and editor Ching Cong Kan (Nakanishi 1980: 227-228; 1981: 56). In fact, Natori
brought photographic material from China to Tokyo and had Nippon Kōbō produce the issues.
SHANGHAI is thus a prime example of ‘black propaganda’ that either intentionally falsifies ordoes not reveal the identification of the sender (Bussemer 2008: 36). It carried the message thatJapan brought peace and development to China and that only the Japanese Army could liberate
China from communism and from the military clique of Chiang Kai-shek. The financial means
for this magazine was provided by the Army Press Unit (Gun Hōdōbu) (Koyanagi and Ishikawa
1993: 144-145). Nippon Kōbō editor Iijima Minoru called SHANGHAI an aggressive propaganda
magazine (kōgekiteki senden zasshi, quoted in Nakanishi 1980: 228; Nakanishi 1981: 56, 68) andco-worker Koyanagi quotes Natori as proposing that Koyanagi take foreign photographers out toGermer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

19

get them drunk while Natori would meanwhile search their rooms for material that could be
detrimental to the image of the Imperial Army (quoted ibid.). According to this account, Natori
was an active plotter in a conspiracy, not only on the level of profitable and productive
cooperation with the Army and KBS, but also on the level of suppressing any evidence thatwould record a story different from his own propaganda.
By 1944, Natori is said to have witnessed war crimes by the Japanese Army in China (Nakanishi
1981: 82, Shirayama and Ishii 1998: 69). Nippon Kōbō staff and Army photographer Koyanagi
also said he witnessed a young Chinese woman who was accused of being a spy being raped andmurdered by a Japanese soldier.17 According to some accounts, Natori discussed the wartime
state with Japanese intellectuals he invited to Shanghai, wrote a letter of protest (ikensho) against
wrongdoings of the Japanese Army stationed in China, and created posters carrying the appeal‘Don’t burn, don’t steal, don’t rape (yakuna, nusumuna, okasuna)’.18 However, there is no traceof such posters or record of a protest letter. In any event, Natori himself kept silent about his
activities in China.
Natori also established branch operations. Around the time of the Canton operation, in
September 1938, two more members of Nippon Kōbō were sent to China, this time to the Press
Unit of the Army in South China (Nan-Shi Hakengun Hōdōbu) in Canton. There, they
established a sister company to the Press Union Photo Service, the South China Photo Service.
There, Natori created the English language photo magazine CANTON, which was sponsored by
the Army Press Unit and produced by Nippon Kōbō in Canton itself. Natori argued for a similar
propaganda magazine in Manchuria and eventually founded the Manchurian Photo Service andthe magazine MANCHOUKUO in 1940. The orders from government agencies to Nippon Kōbō
increased dramatically between 1938 and 1939, making Natori’s company one of the manybusinesses that profited from the occupation of China. Kobayashi Masashi, who during Natori’s
frequent absences from Tokyo was in charge of several of the new magazines (Kobayashi 2005:
90), called the three years between 1936 and 1938 ‘the golden years of development’ for theteam of Nippon Kōbō. In the course of the war, income generated through commercial
advertisements decreased while income and activities associated with the newly founded foreign
propaganda magazines as well as the number of overseas branches steadily rose.
In an interview published in the photography journal Shashin Bunka in September 1941, Natoristressed that war was not only fought by weapons but also by ideologies, and thatphotojournalism everywhere expressed national ideology (quoted in Shirayama 2005: 25).
Therefore, he said, it does not make sense to copy the West. Instead, Japanese must develop its
own photojournalistic expression of Japanese ideas. He went on to stress the need for active
expansion and indoctrination in East Asia, maintaining that,[…] to say ‘we advance to Bangkok’, go over there, take photos and bring them back tointroduce them to Japan is not enough. Is not rather the most imminent task for Japanesephotojournalists to actively and relentlessly pursue their work in magazines published overthere? I really think the only way to do it is for Japanese photojournalists to go over there, installthemselves and work from the standpoint of Japanese thinking. (Natori 1941, quoted in
Shirayama 2005: 26)
This is precisely what he did, first when he commuted between Tokyo and Shanghai from late1937, then when he and Mecklenburg relocated to Shanghai in 1940.19 After the outbreak of the
Pacific War, Natori would become even more explicit regarding his conviction that Japan should

War and Visual Culture

20

turn away from Western models and aggressively propagate its agenda in its own way in theoccupied territories.
As part of its growth strategy in East Asia, Nippon Kōbō was renamed and restructured in 1939
as a corporation, the Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei Kabushiki Kaisha. Four years later it was renamed the
Kokusai Hōdō Kabushiki Kaisha. In 1940, the Tokyo-based firm had branches in Ōsaka,
Nanjing, Shanghai, Canton and Shinkyō (today’s Changchun), the capital of the Manchurian
puppet state. It employed around 80 photographers and designers, producing several openly
propagandistic or ‘propagandistically interspersed’ cultural magazines,20 all of them of highquality and combining arts, culture, photos and illustrations. The magazines Natori initiated andNippon Kōbō produced were NIPPON (from 1934, KBS, Imperial Army), COMMERCE JAPAN(April 1938, Bōeki Kumiai Chūōkai), SHANGHAI (November 1938, Naka Shina Hakengun),CANTON (April 1939, Nan-Shi Hakengun), SOUTH CHINA GRAPHIC (April 1939),
MANCHOUKUO (April 1940, South Manchurian Railways), EASTERN ASIA (1940, South
Manchurian Railways), CHUNHA (Naka Shina Hakengun), KAUPĀPU KAWANŌKU [TōaGahō, East Asia Picture Post] (December 1941, in Thai language) and others.21

Covers of some of the propaganda magazines initiated and produced by Natori Yōnosuke’s company (imagesin Shirayama and Hori, 2006: 100-127). MANCHOUKUO’s front cover visually connotes the ideology of the‘empty’ Manchurian territory, the wide, open, and fertile lands awaiting the Japanese settlers. Its back cover
carries an advertisement by the main sponsor, the South Manchurian Railway. The veins of a leaf indicate
the railway tracks and traffic infrastructure that signify S.M.R. as the ‘carrier of civilization into
Manchuria’, using natural structures to in effect naturalise colonial expansion. S.M.R. also sponsoredGermer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

21

EASTERN ASIA that propagated the ideology of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere’. Publishedmainly in English, summaries were in French and German, and the captions appeared in all three languages.
The propaganda magazine KAUPĀPU KAWANŌKU [Tōa Gahō, East Asia Picture Post] appeared in theThai language with some English and katakana captions. It advertised Japan and propagated the Japaneseadvances in South East Asia.

Other press-related companies that Natori established between 1938 and 1944 included apublishing company in Tokyo called Natori Shoten (1940) and a printing company that theJapanese Army had requisitioned in Nanking and for which Natori received the managing rights
in 1941, renaming it Taihei Insatsu Shuppan Kōshi (Pacific Press Publishing Company). In
Shanghai, he established the publisher Taihei Shokyoku (1942) that produced propaganda
publications in Chinese for KBS and the Imperial Army. Apart from magazines, his company
designed and produced propaganda photo exhibitions that were presented in China as well as
photo albums for the Imperial Army (Jūgun kiroku shashinshū). From 1944, it published Chinesetranslations of Japanese literature as part of the cultural propaganda strategy. This may have beena product of Natori’s connections to Iwanami Shoten. The Publishing Business Decree,announced in February 1943, effected another round of consolidation in the publishing business(Kasza 1988: 223), including the forced merger of Kokusai Hōdō (and one other company) with
Iwanami (Shirayama and Hori 2006: 155). Natori was also asked to run an office in Nanjing for
the South China Expeditionary Army Press Unit (1944) as he fervently supported Wang
Jingwei’s collaborationist government in Nanjing. In 1944, his company became an officiallyaffiliated organisation of KBS, and Natori thus ran a major organisation for the production ofstate propaganda (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 146).
‘Manchoukuo’ as propaganda
The Japanese term most often used for illustrated magazines during the 15 year war is senden
zasshi, a highly ambiguous term that can be rendered as ‘advertisement magazine’ as well as‘propaganda magazine’. The term blurs the borders between advertisement, business and politics
and at the same time obscures their intimate connections. On the other hand, as Bussemer (2008:25) noted in his study on propaganda, it is indeed difficult to distinguish propaganda fromadvertisement, public relations, persuasion, and political communication. Nazi strategies, forinstance, attempted to control not only all means of political expression but also non-political
popular mass communication for propagandistic purposes – not least in order to suppress older
competing discourses in youth and workers’ movements (Bussemer 2005: 56).
The topic of Manchuria lends itself to a clarification of the question of how and when NIPPON
developed from an international advertising magazine presenting Japan and Japanese products toan aggressive organ of wartime pan-Asian propaganda. With regard to its political stancetowards Japan and East Asia, one can observe a continuum rather than any break in the course of
NIPPON’s existence. In the very first issue (NIPPON 1934), Japan’s amicable foreign relations,modern industry, and traditional culture form the overarching themes, and the colonies rather
casually appear as part of the advertisement for tea produced in ‘Formosa, Japan’ (p.31), of Kirin
Beer‘s branch in Seoul (p.39) and as the scientific examination of the sun’s total eclipse from
Lasop Island (part of the Caroline Islands) identified as under Japanese control (p.38).22 In thethird issue,

War and Visual Culture

22

The cover of NIPPON’s third issue reflects the mixed messages that visuals and accompanying texts within
the issue convey: Harmonious cultural background in impressionist colours and technological advancementin black and white -- Peace and at the same time the readiness for war.

the portrayal of several politicians marks NIPPON as a full-fledged propaganda magazine.
Foreign Minister Hirota Kōki (1878-1948)23 is introduced as the ‘maker of Oriental peace’(NIPPON 1935, 3: 4-5, no page numbers) and Araki Sadao (1877-1966), Minister of War during
the Manchurian invasion and supporter of the secret biowarfare Unit 731, authors an article inwhich he asserts that Japan is the guarantor of ‘peace and humanity’ (Araki 1935: 10).

Foreign Minister Hirota Kōki (NIPPON 3, 1935), ‘Maker of Oriental Peace’Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

23

Minister of War Araki Sadao (NIPPON 3, 1935), ‘For Peace and Humanity’.

The political tension surrounding the Manchurian puppet state was a major reason for the
existence of NIPPON, and NIPPON’s treatment of this state renders it a propagandistic tool fromthe journal’s very inception. With the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, abelligerent tone takes over and reflects a sense of wartime crisis. While this forms anaccommodation to wartime rhetoric, it does not represent a break in the general character of themagazine as a propaganda tool justifying and naturalising Japan’s colonisation in Asia. A
Japanese edition of NIPPON had already in 1938 displayed military motifs such as Koyanagi
Tsuguichi’s cover photograph of a Japanese soldier in combat in China.

NIPPON, Japanese edition Vol.1, No.2, 1938, photograph by Koyanagi Tsuguichi

War and Visual Culture

24

However, the focus on cultural inclusion and appropriation of East Asia remains a marked
feature, even after the beginning of the Pacific War and issue No 30 (1942),24 when the articles
on military achievements increase and the cover design of every single issue of the foreign
languages edition becomes a military- or war-related visual.

NIPPON 31, 1943, Cover

Weisenfeld (2000: 774) amply demonstrated ‘NIPPON’s subtle interweaving of colonial subjects
into the fabric of Japan’, and her examination of the collage and photomontage cover25 of thespecial issue on ‘Manchoukuo’ (NIPPON 1939, 19) brilliantly outlines the imperialist message
that the issue transmitted (Weisenfeld 2000: 774-781).

A special issue on ‘Manchoukuo’ (NIPPON 19, 1939)

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

25

Both text and image of that issue asserted Japan's benevolent rule in Manchukuo and the special
and harmonious relationship between Japan and the new state. The text stated that, ‘Japan’s
assistance toward Manchoukuo is purely that of a friend, there being no such relationship as
exists between a principal and a tributary state’ (NIPPON 1939, 19: 16-17, no page numbers
printed). Cut-out figures from the interior of the magazine that are identifiable by costume as
Japanese, Western, Korean, Han-Chinese, Mongolian and Manchurian are superimposed on anorange map of Manchukuo and visualize a variation of the ideology of the ‘harmony of the fiveraces’ in Manchuria. The composition of the ‘five races’ was not entirely stable. While theofficial ideology of the five races does not include Westerners, NIPPON’s feature article on
agriculture states ‘In Manchoukuo, with Manchurians as the nucleus, the Mongolians, Koreans,
Japanese, White Russians and various other races combine in mutual harmony to carry on
agriculture’ (NIPPON 19, 1939: 16). The visual and textual inclusion of White Russians can beseen as part of an explicit appeal to Western audiences to accept the Manchurian puppet state.
The colours of the Manchurian flag that represent the ‘five races’ are also reflected in a subdued
tone in the colouring of the cover montage itself. It is instructive to remember what was notcovered in the propaganda magazine NIPPON, such as Unit 731, which began operating in 1932
in the Manchu puppet state (Harris 2002: 37). The Unit tortured and killed several thousand
mostly Korean and Chinese political prisoners, POWs and civilians (men, women and infants). It
also developed germ warfare that killed several hundred thousand people in East Asia (Tanaka
1996, Harris 2002). Natori and his team were actively reproducing and ‘designing’ the lies that
the Japanese Government and Imperial Army invented.
There is an interesting twist particularly in the issue on the Manchu state, which carried mostly
material that Natori had brought back to Tokyo from the puppet state. The cover montage’s cutout figures of various inhabitants and settlers in Manchuria shows only one figure standing
outside the frame of the Manchurian map and pointing to it with great purpose. According toNakanishi (1980: 231; Nakanishi 1981: 62), this male figure wearing the Manchu state’s
uniform, the so called harmony-clothes (kyōwafuku), is none other than Natori himself. This
staging highlights the production of propaganda as a creative invention of de-contextualised cutand-paste elements and visually underscores Natori’s personal complicity and active
involvement in this fabrication of lies.
POSTWAR CAREER – A NEW BEGINNING OR ARTICULATE SILENCE?
Iizawa Kōtarō’s 1993 history of postwar Japanese photography begins with an account of thepersonal fate of Natori Yōnosuke and his new magazine Shūkan San Nyūsu (Weekly Sun News).
Iizawa's book illustrates the central position that Natori inhabits in the historiography of postwar
Japanese photography and the importance of the so-called Natori School. By the time of Japan’s
capitulation, Natori had returned to Nanking. Following an order of the Army, he destroyed his
negatives and other material accumulated during the war. The same was done with any
compromising material (all except cultural photographs) in the main Tokyo branch. Because
Natori had to have an emergency operation and his new wife Tama was giving birth just at thattime, it was not until April 1946 that they returned to Japan via Nagasaki. Natori apparently still
had the excretion pipe extending from his stomach from the surgery. Nevertheless he resumed
his activities straight away, drawing on the old network. With Matsuoka Ken’ichirō (1914-1994)
from Sun News Photo Company (San Nyūsu Fotosha) he discussed plans to create a ‘LIFE
magazine of Japan’.26 Matsuoka was the eldest son of former Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yōsuke
(1880-1946) who had been a major advocate of the Tripartite Pact and President of the SouthWar and Visual Culture

26

Manchurian Railway. Incidentally, the elder Matsuoka was portrayed by Sugiyama Heisuke(1940: 12-15) in a feature article in NIPPON 24, in which he was hailed for his role in Japan’s
withdrawal from the League of Nations and his foresight in demanding the dissolution of thepolitical parties.
Immediately after the war, a true magazine boom ensued,27 including a host of photomagazines.28 In this context of restarting or newly developing magazines and media, Natori
produced Shūkan San Nyūsu (Sun News Weekly). This magazine, which came out on 13 January
1947, was first published in B4 format. It consisted of only 24 pages of poor paper quality andcost 20 Yen. The cover page showed photos taken by Kimura Ihei of three women’s faces in
profile next to each other. This differed from the norm for cover portraits, of frontal shots ofsmiling female faces. It was also unusual that the magazine used horizontal script (yokomoji)
instead of the common vertical script. The magazine’s first issue carried an article titled ‘The
human population increases with the speed of 2.6 people per minute’ with illustrations, photos,
and captions that dealt with the so-called population problem (jinkō mondai). Although 30,000
copies of Shūkan San Nyūsu’s first issue were printed, only 10,000 sold. According to Iizawa(1993: 7), with its political and economic topics it was meant to be a magazine of enlightenment,
but the German functional style, layout, and the horizontal script did not meet the expectations of
the mass audience it targeted. However, I would argue that Natori was continuing the same stylethat he had developed before and during the war, in terms of both content and form. The topic ofworldwide overpopulation connects to the wartime ideology of Japan as an overcrowded country
that needed the ‘empty spaces’ of Manchuria for its surplus population. During the war, Natori
had created several magazines to please the Imperial Army and KBS, which financed his
propaganda. That the Japanese readership he targeted with Shūkan San Nyūsu was different fromthe one he had targeted before, and did not appreciate his continuation in style and content,
seems hardly surprising. In the eighth issue, the form, style and content of the magazine waschanged towards a more popular appearance. Colour photographs, manga by artists Okabe
Fuyuhiko (1922-2005) and Nemoto Susumu (1916-2002), and a serial novel by Ibuse Masuji(1898-1993), who had previously contributed to NIPPON, appeared. Nevertheless, the magazine
was not successful. Publication stopped after 5 March 1949, the 41st issue.
Shūkan San Nyūsu was a commercial failure but nevertheless highly influential in the publishingindustry of postwar Japan, as many writers, photographers, designers and manga artists who had
been active during the war published there. This group-- the ‘Natori School’ – eventually becamevery influential and successful in postwar photojournalism and the media economy. Among its
members were Koyanagi Tsuguichi, Kimura Ihei, Kojima Toshiko, Miki Jun, Sonobe Kiyoshi,
Fujimoto Shihachi, Inamura Takamasa, Nagano Shigeichi,29 Tagawa Seiichi,30 and Kojima
Toshiko. The Natori School thus comprised a host of photographers and editors who would
shape the postwar Japanese photographic profession, some as professors and presidents of photosocieties who would even lend their names to photography awards (Miki Jun award, Kimura Iheiaward; Ina Nobuo award).31
Natori himself remained influential in photojournalism and photo criticism. In a debate with
Tōmatsu Shōmei (born 1930), winner of the 1958 Japan Association of Photo Critics Debut Prizefor ‘Local Politicans’ (Chihō seijika), he criticised Tōmatsu’s photos as having left the realm ofphotojournalism or hōdō shashin:Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

27

Photojournalism values a certain fact (jijitsu) and a certain time (jikan). Tōmatsu has disposed ofthis high value that photojournalism places in a certain fact. He attempted to move in a directionin which there is no limit to time or location. To put it differently, by his detachment from timeand location, he severed his photos from photojournalism.32
Tōmatsu rebutted that he was not of the Natori School and that he did not see himself as aphotojournalist in the first place, ‘the heavy feeling (jūryōkan) that is associated withphotojournalism [in Natori’s sense] is a thing of the past’ (quoted in Kishi 1974: 83).
A rare debate in photographic circles, the critique of Natori could have gone further. It could
have led to question the ‘factuality’ of Natori’s own practice of propaganda photography andcould have sparked a discussion on wartime imbrications of the photographic and publishingprofession. But it did not. The silences continued. Photographer Domon Ken (1909-1990) who
had worked for Nippon Kōbō from 1935 until 1939 and then for KBS started a new movement inpostwar Japan with his proclamation of ‘realism in photography’ (riarizumu shashin undō).
However, Julia Thomas (2008) critically discusses Domon's postwar photography as acontinuation rather than as a break with his wartime style in that he sought to capture an‘authentic’ Japan; Kishi suggests that this ‘realism’ was in effect just what photojournalism had
always claimed to be, but that Domon wanted to disassociate himself from the kind ofphotojournalism that was tainted by the smell of the Army.33 Kishi comments that ‘there should
be many wartime photographers who will sense an ache in their hearts when they hear the word“photojournalism”’(Kishi 1974: 16), indicating that they might feel shame for their co-operationin the wartime propaganda.
Natori’s lack of reflection about his wartime role in Japanese Army propaganda is extraordinary.
In the introduction to his posthumously published book Shashin no yomikata (Natori 2004: iiii),34 Natori mused about the various advantages that photography had brought him. Full ofpraise for the limitless possibilities of creating stories by the means of photography, he also
cautioned that one can create lies via the assemblage of photos, captions and text. In a chapter
titled Shashin no uso to shinjitsu (The lies and truths of photographs), he chose the example ofthe Hungarian revolt against the Soviets as it was covered by LIFE magazine in 1956.35 While
this was certainly a timely example when he wrote (around 1958), he fails to even hint at his own
active production of so many lies about benevolent Japanese rule and harmonious co-existence inManchuria and the rest of East Asia over the many years he spent in China. Nor does he mention
his active involvement in destroying an archive of photo material that could have served as
evidence for the activities or even atrocities of the Japanese Army in mainland China, some ofwhich Natori may have witnessed himself. Instead, Natori started his discussion of ‘lies’ with thetheoretical observations that the technology of photography itself bears ‘major lies’ when it turns
the coloured object into black and white or when it reflects a three-dimensional reality in a twodimensional photograph (Natori 2004: 36-37). He concluded his paragraph on lies by noting thatthe photographs we see are the result of the triangular relationship of the photographer’s
intention, the editor’s choice and the reader’s expectation as presumed by the editor, and thatthese images are constituted by, as he put it, ‘the lies that they all need,’ making the veiledargument that the photographer and editor were responding to the as-yet-unstated demands of theviewer. (Natori 2004: 45). Hailed as a photographic theory that for the first time takes into
account the ‘standpoint of the viewer’ (miru hito no tachiba kara) (Kimura and Inubushi, in
Natori 2004: 204), it seems to me that with regard to Natori’s wartime practice ofphotojournalism, ‘the viewer’ must take an undue share of the responsibility for the choices theWar and Visual Culture

28

photographer/editor makes. In the wartime situation of government-controlled publishing andincreasingly severe paper rationing, it makes more sense to exchange ‘the viewer’ with Natori’s
financial and political ‘patron,’ the Army and KBS.
Natori’s observations, arguments and examples seem carefully constructed manoeuvres todivert/deflect attention from the role of his own ever-growing business of war propaganda fromthe late 1930s until the end of the war. The personal agency he displayed in persuading themilitary, the state (KBS) and the business community of the need for propaganda, and the tools
he created, shows that wartime propaganda was not only produced as a result of systematic or
fateful structural changes in the wartime bureaucracy but was championed and produced byindividual human activity. This leaves one wanting more investigation into these human politicaldecisions, and into the costs, the gratifications and victimisations they involved. With the
exception of a very brief mention by former Nippon Kōbō staff Inada Tomi,36 hardly any ofNatori’s disciples have questioned his (or their own) role in producing the propagandistic
fabrications in NIPPON and other overseas propaganda magazines or assessed their contribution
to the wartime regime. Neither do we find one word of regret for recognition of the East Asian
victims in this war that, according to Natori (1941, in Shirayama 2005: 25) was ‘also a thought
war’ fought with ideological weapons.37 This may be because they were all implicated and chosesilence to cover their shame (Kishi 1974: 16; Shibaoka 2007: 137) – it is at any rate indicative of
the broader ‘alchemy of amnesia … forgetting atrocities and war crimes’ that Mark Selden(2008) attests not only to Japan but to the war nationalisms of all combatant powers including the
U.S. Some have suggested that Natori reflected on his wartime activities by giving up
photography for several years after the war and engaging in editorial work instead (Ishikawa
1991: 243; Shibaoka 2007: 137). Yet, this claim does not seem convincing because his years
affiliated with the Japanese Army in China were marked more by the creation, editing andmanagement of new propaganda magazines than by his work as a photographer. Rather, Natori’s
biographers have abetted the silence about his wartime activities. In Iwanami’s 41 volume series
on Japanese photographers, volume 18 on Natori (Nagano 1998) carries an introduction by
Iizawa Kōtarō focusing on Natori’s accomplishments as a photographer who understood‘photographs as signs (kigō)’ (Iizawa 1998: 3).38 The introduction includes only one shortparagraph that comments on Natori’s wartime work:
Of course, as editor and art director his talents in dealing with photographs had become
conspicuous before [the war], but one cannot deny that unfortunately when all of Japan was
swallowed in the great wave of war he involuntarily was made to participate in militarypropaganda. (Iizawa 1998: 5)
This is indicative of the way in which, against considerable evidence, Natori is repeatedly
portrayed as a passive actor, as someone who unwillingly had to go along with the tide of thetime and who bears no responsibility for the choices he made. The image and underlying
message of passive natural metaphors such as being ‘swallowed in the great wave’ excuses him
and at the same time ‘all of Japan’ as victims of a natural disaster. When it comes to wartime
agency and responsibility, the otherwise outstanding genius Natori suddenly becomes a passivecommoner, one of ‘all of Japan’.
Nakanishi Teruo provides rare explicit criticism of Natori’s political stance:
Natori Yōnosuke gradually drifted away from photojournalism and leaned too much towards
propaganda that targeted foreign audiences. He became absorbed with the demands of the timeGermer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

29

(jikyoku no yōsei) and accommodated his own wavelength too much to the advances of theJapanese Army. The strategy to expand his business by adjusting his wavelength was expressedin the change of format that came about with the reorganisation [of Nippon Kōbō] into [the stockcompany] Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei [or Nippon Studio, LTD] (Nakanishi 1980: 231)
But Natori initiated this accommodation of his ‘wavelength’ with the advances of the JapaneseArmy in order to expand his own business. In the same way, Natori’s case must be seen not only
as an example of how someone formed a mutually useful connection with KBS and the Army
(Shirayama 2005: 30) but of how one individual encouraged this alliance of aesthetics, business,
politics and the military to advance the wartime colonisation of China and make a profit.
Natori’s case raises issues of wartime responsibility and of ways of coming to terms with theJapanese imperial, colonial and ultra-nationalist past that are yet to be examined in depth.
Placing beauty and aesthetics in the centre of his drive for perfection, Natori not only shared theregime’s colonial and ultra-nationalist goals but initiated and devised propagandistic means ofconcealing them. While other wartime artists who have become infamous for their art-aspropaganda, such as Fujita Tsuguharu (also known as Léonard Foujita, 1886-1968) in Japan39 or
Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) in Germany, were repeatedly confronted with their wartime
activities, Natori faced hardly any trace of such charges in his lifetime. For one thing, he diedyoung, at the age of 52, in 1962. Also he did not occupy any official position, unlike Fujita, who
had served as President of the Army Art Association during the war. In addition, the personal
influence of the ‘Natori School’, which started in the 1930s as a network of people who were
mostly in their early twenties and who grew to be influential in photography and graphic designin postwar Japan, cannot be underestimated. This group’s own implication in wartime activities
would have made it difficult to criticize Natori. Also, Natori’s wartime propaganda primarily
targeted foreign audiences and peoples in the occupied countries, and was little known in Japan
until recently. But other facts suggest that the photography world was aware of Natori’s wartime
activities. It was only in 2005 that the Japan Professional Photographers Society established theNatori Yōnosuke Award for young photographers under the age of 30. Given the fact that otherof his contemporaries were honoured much earlier by awards that bear their names, the latenessof the establishment of the Award can be seen as an indicator of the particularly troubled legacy
that Natori represented. At the same time, the Award and a number of publications andexhibitions of his work in the twenty-first century indicate the kind of ‘rehabilitation’ that Susan
Sontag (1974) diagnosed for Leni Riefenstahl in the 1970s and that Ikeda Asato (2010) describedfor Fujita Tsuguharu in recent exhibitions in Japan.40 Natori’s rehabilitation may also be
indicative of a general intellectual move to a more right-wing political culture in contemporary
Japan (McCormack 2010) and a neo-nationalist revival in the context of the US-Japan security
relationship (Selden 2008). At any rate, it serves as a showcase for the still unresolved ways ofcoming to terms with Japan’s ultranationalist and colonialist past.
Andrea Germer is Associate Professor at Kyushu University with previous positions at
Newcastle University (UK) and the German Institute for Japanese Studies (Tokyo). She has been
conducting research in gender studies, history, visual and cultural studies. She published a bookon women’s history in Japan and the lay historian and controversial feminist Takamure Itsue (inGerman). Essays in English have appeared in Social Science Japan Journal and Intersection. She
is currently working on a book project on Visual Propaganda in Wartime Japan and Germany.
Forthcoming is also an essay collection, co-edited with V. Mackie and U. Woehr, Gender, Nationand State in Modern Japan.

War and Visual Culture30

Acknowledgements. Research for this article was undertaken during my fellowship generously
granted by Japan Foundation, 2010-2011. I would also like to thank the editors of Japan Focus,
Laura Hein and Mark Selden, as well as Paul Barclay, Yuki Tanaka and one anonymous referee
for their invaluable comments and suggestions. I am grateful for discussions on the subject with
Ulrike Wӧhr and Yulia Mikhailova and students from Hiroshima City University where I had theopportunity to present a version of this paper in the Special Colloquium Series on 17 December
2010.
Bibliography
Araki, Sadao (1935): Für Frieden und Humanität [For peace and humanity]. In: NIPPON 3, pp.
10-11.
Atkins, Jacqueline M. (2002): Propaganda on the Home Fronts: Clothing and Textiles as
Message. In: Atkins, Jacqueline M. (ed.): Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Homefront, inJapan, Britain and the United States, 1931-1945. New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, pp. 51-73.
Barclay, Paul D. (2010): Peddling Postcards and Selling Empire: Image-Making in Taiwan underJapanese Colonial Rule. In: Japanese Studies 30,1 (May), pp. 81-110.
Barthes, Roland (2009 [1957]): Mythologies. London: Vintage.
Boyle, John H. (1972): China and Japan at War, 1937-1945: The Politics of Collaboration.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Bussemer, Thymian (2008): Propaganda: Konzepte und Theorien [Propaganda: Concepts andtheories]. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Bussemer, Thymian (2005): “Űber Propaganda zu diskutieren, hat wenig Zweck”: Zur Medienund Propagandapolitik von Joseph Goebbels [‘To discuss propaganda is not very useful’: On
Joseph Goebbel’s media and propaganda politics]. In: Hachmeister, Lutz and Michael Kloft(eds.): Das Goebbels-Experiment: Propaganda und Politik. Munich: Deutsche VerlagsGesellschaft, pp. 49-63 and 118-119.
Dower, John (2002): Japan’s Beautiful Modern War. In: Atkins, Jacqueline M. (ed.): Wearing
Propaganda: Textiles on the Homefront, in Japan, Britain and the United States, 1931-1945.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, pp. 93-113.
Earhart, David (2008), Certain Victory: Images of World War II in Japanese Media. Armonk,
N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.
Fukkokuban NIPPON bessatsu (2005) [NIPPON facsimile supplement].Tokyo: KokushoKankōkai.
Gidal, Tim N. (1972): Deutschland – Beginn des modernen Photojournalismus [Germany –Thebeginning of modern photojournalism]. Luzern, Frankfurt am Main: Bucher.
Harris, Sheldon H. (2002): Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and
the American Cover-up. New York, London: Routledge.

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

31

Iijima, Minoru (2005): ‘Nippon Kōbō‘ sōsetzu kara ‘Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei‘ kaisan made [Fromthe start of Nippon Kōbō to the dissolution of Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei]. In: Fukkokuban NIPPON
bessatsu. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, pp. 36-55.
Iizawa, Kōtarō (1993): Sengo shashinshi nōto [Notes on postwar photographic history]. Tokyo:Chūō Kōronsha.
Iizawa, Kōtarō (1998): Kigō toshite no shashin [Photographs as signs]. In:Nagano, Shigeichi etal. (eds.): Natori Yōnosuke (=Nihon no shashinka Vol. 18).Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp.3-6.
Ikeda, Asato (2010): Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State: Reassessing the Art
of Ogawara Shū and Fujita Tsuguharu. In: The Asia-Pacific Journal 43, 2, 10 (October 25), link.
Ishikawa, Yasumasa (1991): Hōdō shashin no seishun jidai: Natori Yōnosuke to nakamatachi.
[Photojournalism in its youth: the group around Natori Yōnosuke].Tokyo: Kōdansha.
Kaneko, Ryūichi (2005): ‘NIPPON’ to wa nan data no ka: Fukkokuban kanketsu ni atatte [Whatwas NIPPON? Notes on the occasion of the conclusion of the reprinted edition]. In: Fukkokuban
NIPPON bessatsu. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, pp.2-4.
Kanō, Mikiyo (2004): Sensō puropaganda to jendā hyōshō [War propaganda and gender
representation]. In: Jinmin no Rekishigaku 61, 10, pp. 13-24.
Kanō, Mikiyo (2005): Shashin Shūhō ni miru jendā to esunishiti [Gender and ethnicity in
Shashin Shūhō].In: Image & Gender 5, 3, pp. 35-41.
Kasza, Gregory J. (1988): The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918-1945. Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London: University of California Press.
Kishi, Tetsuo (1974): Shashin jānarizumu [Photojournalism]. Tokyo: Dabiddosha.
Kishi, Toshihiko (2010): Manshūkoku no bijuaru-media: Postā, ehagaki, kitte [Colonial
Manchuria's visual media: Posters, pictorial postcards, postal stamps]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa
Kōbunkan.
Kobayashi, Masashi (2005): Wakai taiyō to akai sekiyō [The young sun and the red setting sun].
In: Fukkokuban NIPPON bessatsu. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, pp. 78-93.
Koyanagi, Tsuguichi and Ishikawa Yasumasa (1993): Jūgun kameraman no sensō [The war as
seen by a photographer in the Japanese Army]. Tokyo: Shinchōsha.
Kushner, Barak (2006): The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda. Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press.
Kuwabara, Suzushi: Sengo gurafu zasshi to… [Illustrated magazines in the postwar period…].
(Link; accessed 11 November 2010).
McCormack, Gavan (2010): Ideas, Identity and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: The Sato
Masaru Phenomenon. In: The Asia-Pacific Journal, 44, 1, 10 (November 1), link.
Mikami, Masahiko (1988): Wagamama ippai Natori Yōnosuke [The very self-centred Natori
Yōnosuke]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō.
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (2005): The Past Within US: Media, Memory, History. London: Verso.

War and Visual Culture

32

Nagano Shigeichi et al. (eds.) (1998): Natori Yōnosuke (Nihon no shashinka, Vol. 18). Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten.
Nakanishi, Teruo (1980): Natori Yōnosuke wa nani o nokoshitaka (6): Chūgoku de Nihongun notaigai senden ni nettchū [What did Natori Yōnosuke leave behind? (6): Becoming passionate for
the Japanese Army’s foreign propaganda in China]. In: ASAHI CAMERA 6, pp. 227-231.
Nakanishi, Teruo (1981): Natori Yōnosuke no jidai [The era of Natori Yōnosuke]. Tokyo: Asahi
Shinbunsha.
Natori, Yōnosuke (1937): Grosses Japan. Dai Nippon [Great Japan]. Berlin: Specht.
Natori, Yōnosuke (1941): Kao to koe 1 Hōdō shashinka wa kaku aru beshi Natori Yōnosukehōmon [Faces and voices 1. Photojournalists’ opinion - Natori Yōnosuke]. In: Shashin Bunka,
No 9 (September).
Natori, Yōnosuke (1992): Amerika 1937. Natori Yōnosuke shashinshū [America 1937. Natori
Yōnosuke photo collection]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
Natori, Yōnosuke (2004 [1962]): Shashin no yomikata [How to read photographs]. Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten.
Natori, Yōnosuke (2006): Doitsu 1936. Natori Yōnosuke shashinshū [Germany 1936. Natori
Yōnosuke photo collection]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
NIPPON. Facsimile. 3 Vols (2003-2005). Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai.
Nippon Kōbō no Kai (ed.) (1980): Senku no seishun – Natori Yōnosuke to sono sutaffu tachi no
kiroku [Pioneering youth – Records of Natori Yōnosuke and his staff]. Tokyo: Nippon Kōbō no
Kai.
Nobuta, Tomio (2005): Natori Yōnosuke san to watashi [Natori Yōnosuke and I]. In:
Fukkokuban NIPPON bessatsu. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, pp.56-62.
Park, Sang Mi (2009): Wartime Japan’s Cultural Diplomacy and the Establishment of Culture
Bureaus. WIAS Discussion Paper No.2008-09.
Ruoff, Kenneth J. (2010): Imperial Japan at its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire's
2,600 Anniversary. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Sandler, Mark H. (2001): A Painter of the “Holy War”: Fujita Tsuguji and the Japanese Military.
In: Mayo, Marlene J. and J. Thomas Rimer with H. Eleanor Kerkham (eds.): War, Occupation
and Creativity: Japan and East Asia 1920-1960. Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, pp. 188211.
Sachsse, Rolf (2000): “Dieses Atelier ist sofort zu vermieten”: Von der “Entjudung” eines
Berufsstandes [‘This photo studio is now to let’: On the ‘De-Jewdification’ of a profession]. In:
Fritz-Bauer-Institut (ed.): “Arisierung” im Nationalsozialismus: Volksgemeinschaft, Raub undGedächtnis. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, pp. 269-286.
Schlawe, Fritz (1962): Literarische Zeitschriften. Teil 2 (1910-1933) [Literary Magazines.Part 2(1910-1933)]. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler.

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

33

Selden, Mark (2008): Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Nationalism: War, Historical
Memory and the Future of the Asia Pacific. In: The Asia-Pacific Journal 43, 2, 10 (September10), link.
Shibaoka, Shinichirō (2007): Hōdō shashin to taigai senden: 15nen sensōki no shashinkai[Photojournalism and propaganda targeted at foreign audiences: Photographic circles and the 15
years war]. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha.
Shirayama, Mari (2005): Natori Yōnosuke no shigoto 1931-45 [Natori Yōnosuke’s work 193145]. In: NIPPON. Fukkokuban bessatsu. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, pp. 5-33.
Shirayama, Mari (2006): Nippon Kōbō o hikiita Natori Yōnosuke [Natori Yōnosuke – Head of
Nippon Kōbō]. In: Shirayama, Mari and Hori Yoshio (eds.): Natori Yōnosuke to Nippon Kōbō.
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp.vi-xv.
Shirayama, Mari and Hori Yoshio (eds.)(2006): Natori Yōnosuke to Nippon Kōbō [Natori
Yōnosuke and Nippon Kōbō].Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten
Shirayama, Mari and Ishii Ayako (1998): Natori Yōnosuke ryaku nenpyō [Short table of life
dates of Natori Yōnosuke]. In: Nagano, Shigeichi et al. (eds.): Natori Yōnosuke (=Nihon no
shashinka Vol. 18). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp.68-69.
Shirayama, Mari and Motohashi Masayoshi (2005) (eds.): ‘Shūkan San Nyūsu’ no jidai – Hōdō
shashin to ‘Natori Gakkō’ [The era of ‘Weekly Sun News’ – Photojournalism and the ‘Natori
School’]. Tokyo: JCII Photo Salon.
Sontag, Susan (1974): Fascinating Fascism. In: The New York Review of Books. (Link; accessed
16 October 2010).
Sugiyama, Heisuke (1940): Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka. In: NIPPON 24, pp. 12-15.
Tagawa, Seiichi (2003): Kōkoku wa waga shōgai ni arazu. Shōwa senden kōkoku no senkusha
Ōta Hideshige. Tokyo: Heibonsha.
Tagawa, Seiichi (2005): Yakeato no gurafizumu. ‘FRONT’ kara ‘Shūkan San Nyūsu’ e [Graphics
of burnt-out lands: From FRONT to Shūkan San Nyūsu]. Tokyo: Heibonsha.
Takenaka, Tomi (2002): Nippon Kōbō no omoide [Remembering Nippon Kōbō]. In:
Fukkokuban NIPPON geppō, dai 2 ki-November 2002, no page numbers.
Tanaka, Yuki (1966): Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Boulder:
Westview Press.
Thomas, Julia A. (1998): Photography, National Identity, and the “Cataract of Times”: Wartime
Images and the Case of Japan. In: American Historical Review, 103, 3 (December), pp. 14751501.
Thomas, Julia A. (2008): Power Made Visible: Photography and Postwar Japan’s Elusive
Reality. In: The Journal of Asian Studies, 67, 2 (May), pp. 365-394.
Watanabe, Yoshio (1977): Shinbi no anguru 6 [The angle of true beauty 6]. In: Niigata Nippō,
Evening edition of May 9.

War and Visual Culture

34

Weisenfeld, Gennifer (2000): Touring Japan-as Museum: Nippon and other Japanese Imperialist
Travelogues. In: positions 8, 3 (Winter), pp. 747-793.
Notes
1 See for example the commentary articles in Natori’s photo albums that were publishedposthumously, Amerika 1937 (Natori 1992); Doitsu 1936 (Natori 2006) as well as Iizawa (1993,
1998) and Ishikawa (1991).
2

See Nippon Kōbō no Kai (1980), some of these are reprinted in the separate volume withcommentaries on the reprinted edition of NIPPON (Fukkokuban NIPPON bessatsu 2005); seealso Ishikawa (1991).
3

See Nakanishi Teruo’s article (1980) and book (1981), Mikami Masahiko (1988) as well as amonograph by Koyanagi and Ishikawa (1993). Recently, Shirayama Mari (2005, 2006) has
provided a closer examination of the trajectory of Natori’s artistic and political career.
4

This meant that Natori’s income would depend on the photo stories he could produce and sell
which at first left Natori and Mecklenburg who had given up her post in Munich in an extremely
tight financial state (Natori 2004: 115-117).
5

Natori in the article Hōdō shashin dangi 3, (in: Kamera, April 1952) quoted in Shirayama(2005: 6).
6

In October 1933, Joseph Goebbels’ ‘Schriftleitergesetz’ (Journalists’ Law) § 5,3 stipulated that
‘only those who are of Aryan decent and not married to a non-Aryan spouse’ were allowed towork in the journalistic profession. The Law went into effect 1 January 1934 (Sachsse 2000:
274).
7

See Natori (2004: 131). Okada helped establish the publisher Tōhōsha, which produced the
propaganda magazine FRONT. Ōta would later also contribute to this propaganda magazine(Tagawa 2003).
8

The magazine was published by the Angelsachsen Verlag in Bremen. Its name derived from thestreet Böttcherstraße in which coffee industrialist Gerhard Roselius bought the houses in a street
and then turned them into an open air museum. It included the house of Paula BeckerModersohn.
9With a print runof 10 000, Natori (2004: 140) estimated production costs of 6000 to 7000 Yen,
which proved to be far too low.
10

On KBS see Shibaoka 2007: 77-89. The successor to KBS in postwar Japan is JapanFoundation (established in 1972).
11

The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium fürVolksaufklärung und Propaganda or Propagandaministerium) was the Nazi ministry dedicated to
enforcing Nazi ideology in Germany and regulating its culture and society. Founded on 13
March 1933, the ministry was headed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels and was responsible forcontrolling the press and culture of Nazi Germany.
12

Koyanagi became a photographer of the Imperial Army Press Unit just three months after
joining Nippon Kōbō in 1937 and served from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War

Germer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

35

throughout the Pacific War. He was one of the few who was not primarily dispatched by anewspaper or magazine publisher but directly served the Japanese army in China, Manchuria, thePhilippines and various places in Japan (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 19).
13

Koyanagi mentions that he met H.S. Wong after the war and asked him straightforwardly
whether the photograph was staged. He reports that Wong simply answered the question with asmile (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 94). For a discussion of the ongoing dispute on theauthenticityof the photograph see Morris-Suzuki (2005: 72-74).
14

The Shanhai Hakengun was renamed Naka Shina Hakengun (Central China ExpeditionaryArmy) in February 1938.
15

See Koyanagi and Ishikawa (1993: 94). Natori asked Koyanagi to accompany him to Shanghai
and for the first three months there, they joined the Japanese Army without pay, as Natori
thought he had more freedom in taking pictures if he stayed independent. However, later,
Koyanagi earned around 120 Yen per month from the Army (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 98).
16

Koyanagi took the pictures while Natori selected the material for sale. Koyanagi’s photographs
did not document the Nanking massacre. Photographs of war dead or war injured were off limits
for both international and domestic use as it was assumed that they would weaken the fighting
morale of the home front (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 100). Some of the photographs later
reproduced in Koyanagi’s book of 1993 had been censored at the time, such as a visual ofsoldiers praying at the graves of their comrades who died in China (Koyanagi and Ishikawa
1993: 62-63).
17

The questions remain whether Koyanagi took pictures of this incident since at least the killingof the woman was something he witnessed (Koyanagi and Ishikawa 1993: 122).
18

For reference to the posters see Nakanishi (1981: 83), Mikami (1988: 304-305), Shirayama(2006: xiv), Shibaoka (2007: 129-130).
19

Erna Mecklenburg‘s expertise in design and bookmaking and her cooperation in the creative
projects and organisation of Nippon Kōbō are repeatedly mentioned in the reminiscences offormer Nippon Kōbō staff (NIPPON bessatsu 2003-2005). Her particular role and contribution
during Natori’s time in China is unclear.
20

Examining Goebbels’ ideas on propaganda, Bussemer (2005: 55) notes that popular media andseemingly non-political popular culture that met the tastes of mass audiences were used tostabilize the political system and the result was a ‘propagandistically interspersed popular
culture’.
21

See Nobuta (2005: 60) and Koyanagi and Ishikawa (1993: 146). For listings see the tables in
Nakanishi (1981: 126-127), Shirayama and Ishii (1998: 68-69), Mikami (1988) and Ishikawa(1991: 252-253). A detailed annotated chronological listing with visuals is provided in the
exhibition catalogue Natori Yōnosuke to Nippon Kōbō 1931-1945 edited by Shirayama and Hori
(2006).
22

After the defeat of the German Empire in World War I the German colony Caroline Islands
was occupied by the Japanese Navy in 1914 and formally handed over to Japan as a Class C
League of Nations Mandate to administer in 1920. The Mandates themselves were a cover up forWar and Visual Culture36

the division of the spoils of war between the major powers. In violation of the Washington Naval
Treaty, Japan began with the construction of military sites on the islands in the 1930s.
23

Hirota can be counted as a member of the expansionist camp in the Second Sino-Japanese War(Boyle 1972: 44).
24

The size of NIPPON changed from A3 to A4 with issue 29 (1942), an issue depicting the mapof East Asia with the tracks of ‘The Greater East Asia Railway’ and carrying a photo essay on
Japan’s youthful and vigorous Air Force.
25

The cover was designed by Kamekura Yūsaku (NIPPON 19, 1939: impressum; Nakanishi
1980: 230; Weisenfeld 2000: 775).
26

See Iizawa (1993: 9) and the introduction to the exhibition on Shūkan San Nyūsu (in 2006)
found here, accessed 10 November 2010) and Shirayama and Motohashi (2006) for theexhibition catalogue. LIFE magazine can be said to have been the model and aspiration of many
popular magazines that were established in Japan in the immediate postwar period. The layout
and contents of the magazines Hōpu (Hope, first published January 1946) or Asahi Gurafu(Asahi Graph, first published July 1948) are seen to be particularly close emulations of LIFE
(Kuwabara Suzushi; accessed 11 November 2010).
27

The new magazine Shinsei (New Life) published in November 1945 sold out within threedays. In 1946, the magazines Fujin Gahō, Bungei Shunjū, Chūō Kōron, Kaizō and others were
published again, while Sekai, Tenbō, Chōryū, Heibon and others were newly founded (Iizawa
1993: 3).
28

In January 1946, Kamera (Camera) was re-published and the first issue was completely soldout. It had started in 1921 and was targeted at an amateur photo audience. When it was publishedagain in the postwar, it advertised itself as a magazine that was now able to publish underpolitically liberated conditions. 1946 also saw the publication of Sekai Gahō (World Illustrated),
which was a continuation of the prewar magazine Gurafikku (Graphic) with its focus on photo
documentaries. Asahi Kamera (Asahi camera), which targeted amateur art photographers, wasre-published in 1949 (Iizawa 1993: 4-5).
29

Nagano (1998) is one of the editors of the album on Natori (vol. 18 of the Iwanami series on
Japanese photographers).
30

Tagawa previously worked for the propaganda magazine FRONT that appeared between 1942
and 1945 (altogether 10 issues). He wrote a book on his experiences in which he maintains thatthe expertise gained while producing propaganda was still valuable today (Tagawa 2005).
31

See Iizawa (1993: 8) and the exhibition Shūkan San Nyūsu no jidai: Hōdō shashin to Natorigakkō (The time of Shūkan San Nyūsu: Press photography and the Natori school) in Tokyo in2006 (Link, accessed 6 October 2010)32

See Natori (1960) in the October issue of Asahi Kamera, quoted in Kishi (1974: 81).

33

See Kishi 1974:16; on postwar discussions on ‘realism’ in Japan’s photographic circles withparticular attention to Domon Ken and Kimura Ihei, see Thomas (2008).
34

The posthumous publication is based on Natori’s writings, mostly from the postwar period.
Collected and arranged by Kimura Ihei and Inubushi Hideyuki into a loosely connected text ofGermer: Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia

37

book format, the compilers concede that had Natori lived to see the compilation he might havecorrected and added to the format (Natori 2004: 204). Therefore, the silences of this book may tosome extent be also the product of, or concurrent with, the silence produced by the specificchoices that the compilers made.
35

While the photos in the LIFE report showed mainly Soviet forces and members of the
Hungarian Security Police Force as victims of Hungarian rage over the invasion, the photos
along with the captions and the explanation were read as the cruelty and pain that communists
inflicted on another people (Natori 2004: 31).
36

In the collection of commentaries published with the reprints of NIPPON (Fukkokuban
NIPPON bessatsu, 2005), only one member of the team, Takenaka [formerly Inada] Tomi, points
briefly to ‘the lies’ that Nippon Kōbō reproduced with regard to Manchuria (Takenaka 2002: nopage numbers). Incidentally, this editorial staff member was, apart from Mecklenburg (and twocontract translators), the only female editorial staff in the young boys’ network. Rather thanpointing to a sexual differentiation in the capacity to face up to one’s past, I assume that she had
a greater distance from her work because she left Nippon Kōbō when she married in 1945 anddid not pursue a professional career in the postwar publishing business. Watanabe Yoshio,
another previous Nippon Kōbō staff unable to continue a professional career after the end of thewar commented of his involvement in propaganda in 1977, ‘that I co-operated with the regime –albeit not actively but indirectly - remained somewhere at the bottom of my consciousness and,spending my days depressed and suicidal, I did not feel like working again’ (Watanabe 1977
quoted in Shibaoka 2007: 137).
37

Kobayashi Masashi’s recollections in particular seem an extension of the ideologicaljustification for propaganda magazines as he praises their expertise and exceptionally highquality and continues to claim that their function was simply to present Japan to an international
audience. Kobayashi had in fact acted as the editor in chief of NIPPON from the 9th issue on,when Natori was travelling between Germany, the United States, China and Japan, and was busy
setting up new branches in East Asia. Kobayashi also oversaw the editions of COMMERCE
JAPAN and CANTON (Kobayashi 2005: 90)
38

Natori (2004 [1963]) introduced the concept of semiology, the functioning of signs in theinterpretation of photography without mentioning Barthes’ name. Barthes had published on
semiotics in the 1950s and his Mythologies in which he discusses the iconography of Abbé Pierre(Barthes 2009: 49-51) appeared in book form in 1954, of which the earliest translation into
Japanese I could find appeared with Shinchōsha in 1967.
39

Fujita’s monumental war paintings were also published in NIPPON 27, 1941. For a discussionof Fujita’s war art see Sandler (2001) and Ikeda (2010)..
40

In this context, see also Thomas’ critical essay on a photography exhibition in a Japanesepublic art museum and its role in the making of a ‘usable past’ in Japan at the turn of themillennium (Thomas 1998).

War and Visual Culture

38“Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism: War Memorial Museums in
Korea and Japan”
Hong KAL
September 6, 2008
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Hong-KAL/2880
This essay looks at two war memorial museums that commemorate military dead in
their respective nations: the War Memorial of Korea (hereafter WMK) in South Korea andthe Yushukan, the Japanese war museum located in Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, both of whichplay crucial roles in enhancing conservative patriotic nationalisms in the two countries.
Like other war memorial museums, the WMK commemorates the war dead who sacrificed
their lives for the defense of the nation and imbues with patriotic spirit the younger
generations who have no memory of war. Yet it also constructs an “ethnic” lineage of thenation, a sacrifice of forefathers for the children of the nation. It seeks to form a national
subject based on the idea of Korean ethnic nation as originated from ancient times. The
author shows how the museum constructs a tradition of military patriotism in terms ofshared ancestry, ethnic purity, and familial belonging and how this process of making a“we” is closely related to the construction of “others,” namely North Korea, Vietnam, andJapan. For a comparison, it examines how the Yushukan seeks to revive imperial Japan’s
glorification of war based on the idea of the ethnic superiority of the Japanese. Comparing
war museums in Japan and Korea, the author argues that despite their antagonistic
discourses, they display similar strategies of representation: staging a ritual dedicated to
the war dead as an embodiment of national identity. Although embedded in conflicting
historical experiences of colonialism and postwar geopolitics, the two war museums
demonstrate the growing obsession with the ethnic origin of the nation, which may develop
into hostile attitudes towards resident ethnic minorities and foreigners in the increasingly
globalizing contemporary social environment.

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

39

Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism: War Memorial Museums in Korea
and Japan
Hong Kal
Since 1990 both Japan and Korea have experienced “commemoration booms,” in which thenumber of private and public memorial museums and monuments has tripled.[1] These
institutions provide narratives of each nation’s recent past and articulate the ideals of “nation”
and “citizenship.” They recompose tales of a nation in order to make them relevant for public
and private life. Like writing history, the museum collects and assembles fragments of the pastand carefully re-contextualizes them into a narrative of the present. Precisely because of its rolein institutionalizing social norms and values, the museum plays a crucial role in the production ofnational identity. It shapes the manner in which the nation creates its history, imagines its
boundaries, and constitutes its citizenship.
Central to the “autobiography” of the nation is the representation of wars and death, memories ofwhich are considered essential in guaranteeing the immortality of the nation. Benedict Anderson
has written that:
Nations, however, have no clearly identifiable births, and their deaths, if they ever
happen, are never natural. Because there is no originator, the nation’s biography cannot
be written evangelically, ‘down time,’ through a long procreative chain of begettings.
The only alternative is to fashion it ‘up time’ towards Peking Man, Java Man, King
Arthur, wherever the lamp of archeology casts its fitful gleam.[2]Since the nation has no fixed birth certificate, its biography can be written “up time” from its“originally present” toward its unlimited ancient past. The ancestral construction of the nation,according to Anderson, is marked by the narrative of death in reversed genealogy: “World War
II begets World War I; out of Sedan comes Austerlitz; the ancestor of the Warsaw Uprising is thestate of Israel.”[3] The war memorial museum creates a precedent for securing such an inverted
genealogical construction of the nation’s ancient past. It supplies a formal structure for the nation
to fashion itself toward its forefathers who died to guarantee the continuity as well as theimmortality of the nation.[4] It also poses difficult questions. Can the forefathers be wrong when
their wrongdoings secured “the goodness of the nation”? Can our heroes be killers? How should
the enemy dead be represented? Can national war history be relational and plural when it is
supposed to affirm the singularity of the nation?
In Asia, the transformations of post–Cold War geopolitics have opened new possibilities forinter-Asian relations and inevitably led to a rigorous interrogation of the region’s recent past. In
the question of how to represent colonialism and catastrophic wars, war memorial museums
based on the narrative of self-sacrificial death on behalf of a grateful nation have become among
the most controversial sites. Especially as the battles over the history within and between Korea
and Japan have become more intense and divisive, war memorial museums demonstrate thetension between official and societal memories of the past, revealing conflicting yet mutuallyconstitutive assumptions of postcolonial Korea, divided Korea, and postwar Japan. While sharing
much in common with other war museums, those in Korea and Japan led a life of their own
according to particular temporal and geographical conditions.

War and Visual Culture40

I consider two war memorial museums: the War Memorial of Korea (hereafter WMK) and the
Yushukan, a Japanese war memorial museum attached to the Yasukuni shrine, formerly anational sanctuary that enshrined the military dead as divine deities. Located in the center of eachnation’s capital, both play symbolic and socially significant roles in the construction ofnationalism. In Korea, the WMK was built “to commemorate martyrs and their service to thenation” and thus to prepare citizens “to face a future national crisis.”[5] In Japan, located in theshrine complex where conflicting memories meet, the Yushukan aims to nurture a sense of “lost”
pride in being Japanese with a “glorious” history of war, posing a serious political question of
how to come to terms with Japan’s recent past, colonialism, and wars. This essay examines how
they write biographies of the nation with particular historical meaning. It focuses on theimportant role of the war dead in the creation of national immortality, and demonstrates that thesource of this national ethos derives from the enactment of ethnic nationalisms in the twocountries. I argue that the biographies of the nation written “up time” toward its ethnic “origins”
are an attempt not only to create a linkage to the past, but also to produce an image of the futureof the nation for today’s generation, who are experiencing forces of globalization. In doing so,
this essay pays particular attention to the spatial and exhibitionary techniques to show how themuseum stages carefully developed scenarios of the nation’s war histories and how it claims theheritage of patriotism and equates that tradition with the nation.[6]My main concern here is ethnocentric nationalism in the two countries as staged in the war
museums. Clearly they are embedded in different forms of nationalism, for Korea and Japan
have mutually antagonistic historical trajectories—one the colonized and the other the colonizer.
The conflicting experience of colonialism has harnessed them with different burdens over how todeal with histories. Even within national boundaries of each country, a discourse of the nationand nationalism has evolved in various ways in changing geopolitical and international contexts.
In particular, Japan has experienced a shift in the dominant discourse of “Japan,” from the multiethnic empire to the mono-ethnic nation. [7] However, as Harumi Befu has elaborated, what hasremained intact is a sense of Japanese ethnic homogeneity, uniqueness and superiority,
enunciated as “nihonjinron.”[8] Also, while the WMK is a state-sponsored public museum, since
the American occupation, the Yushukan has been an ostensibly private institution. However,given that the Yushukan attachment to the prewar State Shinto shrine, which is still strongly
associated with the linked images of emperor, state, and nation,[9] the two museums arecomparable in their political significance. Both demonstrate a growing obsession withethnocentric nationalism. My contention is that the question of reconciliation with historicalinjustice cannot be seriously dealt with without problematizing ethnocentric nationalism, which
is defensive, exclusive, and thus constraining. The self-reflection of nationalism is indeed at thecore of the issue of reconciliation within as well as between nations.
I. The War Memorial of Korea (WMK)The WMK, conceived in 1988 under the Roh Tae Woo government, was opened at the site of theformer Korean Army Headquarters in downtown Seoul in 1994.[10] Despite public discomfort
over its military appearance, the WMK survived the demise of the military dictatorship and wasembraced by the civilian regime headed by President Kim Young Sam as a reminder to Koreansof the ongoing threat posed by North Korea.[11]Like other war memorial museums, the WMK commemorates the war dead who sacrificed theirlives for the defense of the nation and imbues the younger generations who have no memory ofKal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

41

war with patriotic spirit. It provides historical grounds for safeguarding the country with“awareness of national security.”[12] However, there is something particular about the museum.
It not only constructs a narrative of patriotism but also, more problematically, an “ethnic” lineageof the nation, a sacrifice of forefathers for the children of the nation: the Koreans. By doing so, itseeks to form a national subject based on the idea of Korean ethnic nation as originated fromancient times. The discourse of ethnic nationalism posits the state, nation, and ethnicity as
identical categories. Ethnic nationalism has been a key organizing principle in Korea, yet its
historicity, eternity, and naturalness have not been seriously questioned.[13] In the following, I
explore a narrative construction of ethnic nationalism by analyzing the architectural and visualmechanisms of the museum. I focus on the ways in which the museum constructs the Korean
ethnic nation in terms of war, kinship, and familial sacrifice and how this process of making“we” is closely related to the construction of “others,” namely North Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
The spatial order of the memorial hall: national ritual in the ancestral temple
The WMK is designed like a temple secluded from the secular world outside. It neverthelessoverpowers its surroundings with its perfect symmetry in classical Greco-Romanic style (Figure1).[14](1) War Memorial of Korea

Despite this Western façade, however, I would argue that the organizing principle of the museum
space is that of a Confucian temple. The WMK memorial site is organized in the spatial
sequence of the pathway, the steps, the moat, and the plaza. The spatial sequence of WMKcreates a formal temporal sequence for visitors to follow. [15]Upon entering the main gate, people embark on a ritual passage programmed by the museum.
The spatial and temporal sequence heightens a sense of solemnity. Passing the pathway, thesteps, the moat, and the plaza, all organized along the North-South axis, visitors are drawn to themuseum building. They continue the procession by ascending to the Central Hall, a round roomwith a skylight in its domed ceiling. The Central Hall opens onto a long corridor lined on bothWar and Visual Culture

42sides with half-body statues of heroic warriors. This corridor ends at the hemispherical domedMemorial Hall, the innermost “shrine,” located at the north end of the museum (Figure 2).

(2) Memorial Hall at War Memorial of Korea

Concealed behind the layers of space along the axial line, the Memorial Hall recalls the ancestral
inner shrine. At the apex of the dome, a blue beam is projected straight down onto a bowl. With
the concentrated light from the sky, the bowl resembles an ancestral altar where visitors cancontemplate and perhaps communicate with the war dead. The bowl and the light are the focal
point where the spirit of the war dead meets with the living.
The movement from the exterior to the interior is thus a journey back to the “origin.” The trip
from the present to the past is a search for a linkage with tradition to legitimize the current
regime. Yet there is more to it than that. The logic of reversed genealogy is designed in the
Confucian order of time, space, and origin. It is in the scenario that the patriotic present pays
tribute to its ancestral past where it was born and to where it should return. The journey to theinnermost shrine is not only for the living, but also for the dead. Like the living, the spirit of thedead returns to, and becomes part of, the family of ancestors from whom they came. Both thedead and living find themselves returning to the ancestor from whence they came and where
their sacrificial life for the nation is legitimized.

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

43

The WMK seeks to produce a national subject based on ethnicity by encouraging people torecognize their shared origin and not to forget those to whom they owe their being. The museum
suggests that as long as visitors identify with the dead, they will recognize their sacrifice, as wellas their blood relationship, and therefore be united in a national community. In following theorder of the exhibition, people pay tribute to the dead and reaffirm the shared ancestral heritage
to which “we” all belong. Like an ancestral temple, the museum represents the origins of alineage by reminding people of the historical existence of their ancestor and their duty to keepsuch a memory alive.
The war history room: constructing the living war deadThe museum tells of the linkage of the national dead and the national living. The dead and theliving mirror each other to ensure the continuity of the nation within which ethnic Koreans areembedded. The exhibition sequence from exterior to interior and from secular to sacred isprogrammed to awaken the national dead to interpolate the living, demanding the cooperation of
all the war dead to perform as the ancestors of the living. As an apparatus for the production of
ethnic nationalism, the museum claims to speak for “Korean” war dead who did not know
themselves to be such. By bringing together wars from the Great Victory at Salsu (612) to the
Korean War (1950-53), the museum provides coherence for a larger historical context of alineage of patriotic Korean ancestors. Speaking on behalf of the ancestors, the museum also
speaks subtly to visitors about who they are in relation to the war heroes. The War History
Room, for instance, narrates a history of Korea from the prehistoric age to the present. It stages
weapons technology and military tactics of each period in a standardized format which enables
visitors to see them as similar to each other and therefore sharing the same heritage. The displayof military uniforms also operates by such a parallel logic. A window display presents a line ofmannequins in variously styled military uniforms of the Taehan Empire (1897–1910). Yet the
facial expressions of the mannequins are identical. There seems no need for the museum toexplain who the military men were, not only because they all look alike but also they all look
like “us,” Koreans, who are capable of changing costume. This group is immediately linked toanother group from the Choson Dynasty, which is again linked to others from ancient times(Figures 3 & 4).

(3) Military uniforms of the Taehan Empire

War and Visual Culture44(4) Military uniform of the late Choson dynasty

The question is not how different but how similar they are to each other. Who else would fit into
this series of armor and helmets except “we” ethnic Koreans? They are standing there to
represent a continuing military tradition across time, emblematic of an identical and collective
Korean heritage.
The museum impresses people with the vast numbers of the war dead. A series of memorial
panels in polished black marble inscribed with the names of Korean soldiers and policemen
killed in the Korean War and the Vietnam War is located in the left and the right gallery wings
which extend from the main exhibition building. The 170,585 names of the dead are orderedaccording to the year they fell and the military units. Their names appear in a standardized
format and the rows of panels remind one of their mass sacrifice rather than their individuality.
The 200 meter long gallery appears more like the space for the tomb of the unknown soldiers.
Anyone can be there for the same reason. There seems no need to personalize any of them. Their
presence and death for the survival of the nation are all that matter (Figures 5 & 6).

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

45(5 & 6) The gallery with the black panels inscribed with names of the deadOne could say that personal memories are not encouraged in the Confucian temple built forcollective identification. Visitors can only see the names as interchangeable with one another andassembled as the collective body of national heroes. In the attempt to nationalize the war dead,no other identities are allowed except that of ethnic Korean. It in this ethnicity that official
nationalism lives. The museum probably modeled its exhibition technique on that of the National
Memorial Cemetery (Kungnip hyo’nch’ung won) which was built in 1956 as a military burial
ground shielded by auspicious mountains and the Han River.[16] As a site of national mourning,
it enshrines remains of soldiers and patriots as national heroes, physically and symbolically. In it,War and Visual Culture46

the individual death becomes standardized and identical under the collective category of the
Korean nation.[17] By rescuing the dead from obscurity and giving them a national meaning, themuseum creates not only political legitimacy but also the “ethnic” lineage of the state. Once thewar dead are enshrined as Korean heroes for all to see, the state claims its legitimacy as therightful bearer of a Korean ethnic nation.
Just as the museum represents the war dead as equivalent Koreans, regardless of their glorious or
shameful deeds, and regardless of rank, it also seeks to embrace visitors as collective Koreans.
When the spirit of the dead conjures up a Korean ethnic collectivity, the past dead and thepresent living become one and indivisible. The exhibition also prepares the ground for the future
war dead. Today’s young pilgrims to the memorial are placed in the position of future fellows of
the dead. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that the museum provides an auxiliary facility forwedding ceremonies. This brings together the idea of normal family, unconditional loyalty, andthe future reproduction of the “pure” national subject, as if ethnic purity itself guarantees the
future of the nation. Who will guarantee the existence of the ethnic nation? The museum perhaps
answers that it is the children. Moreover, it is for those yet-to-be-born “Koreans” that we work
hard, sacrifice, and, if necessary, sacrifice our lives. Crucial to the unborn is the impliedmeaning: the innocent unborn descendants will honor us for giving life to them. The museum
looks forward by constructing the idea of national (ethnic) “purity” against the fears of national
degeneration. The sanitized space shows the museum’s obsession with “cleanliness” as a basis
for “national health” and “national youth.” The task of the museum is thus to ensure the nondecay of the nation and to celebrate national virility.
Representing the invading others: The U.S. and North Korea in the Korean War
Consistent with the discourse of ethnic nationalism, the WMK degrades North Korean
communism as anti-nation (ban minjok) which needs to return to the “normal” state (South
Korea) to recover true Korean nationhood. The major focus in the exhibitions of the Korean
War, seen as one of the most critical threats to the nation, is less the Cold War competition
between hegemonic powers and more the confrontation between the two Koreas over thequestion of who is the rightful heir of Korea.[18] The Korean War Room, the largest exhibition
section, presents the dominant narrative of the victimization of “innocent” South Koreans by theinvasion of “tainted” North Korean communist aggressors backed by China. Two strategies ofrepresentation can be discerned here. First is the display of victimhood, and second thedeterminacy of South Koreans (especially civilians and students) to resist. Interwoven into thisprogression is the involvement of U.S. and U.N. forces in fighting for the “free world” against
the Communist forces of North Korea and China. The first exhibition section of the Korean War
indicates clearly that the war was started by North Korea. Civilians are shown suffering from thebrutal acts committed by North Korean soldiers. The museum carefully explains the involvementof the U.S. as helping defend the territory of South Korea, emphasizing that the U.S. got
involved only after the collapse of the crucial South Korean defense line at the Han River. The
key message is that the U.S. (and later U.N. international forces) joined in only after South Korea
had long sought to defend against invading North Korean forces.
The Korean War, however disastrous, is recast to highlight the resilience, idealism, andfulfillment of the Korean nation under the leadership of the South Korean state. In this narrative,
the participation of U.N. forces on the side of South Korea is portrayed as an expression ofinternational solidarity to defend the “free democratic world”, which includes South Korea.

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

47

Several panels, some with documentary videos, depict scenes of battles, weapons and wounds
showing South Korean and U.S. soldiers working hand in hand to push back the North Korean
invaders. The U.S. is presented through images of Douglas MacArthur, rifles, aircraft andmedical support, all to help South Koreans to defend, to launch a counter offensive and even to
move north to capture the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The museum depicts the success of
this cooperation as an indication of the capacity of South Korea to work together with nations of
the “free world” to fight communism. The U.S. supporting role in the War is best illustrated in
the dioramic scene of “Medical Activities by the Field Hospital.” Along with the panel
description that “the medical support capability of the ROK armed forces were extremely
insufficient. But through medical support from UN forces, the wounded were treated in timely
ways,” the diorama scene displays the U.S. presence through the aid boxes at the entrance to thehospital (Figure 7). The message is clear. The U.S. came here to aid, but South Koreans were themajor actors at the scene.

(7) Field hospital with aid boxes emblematic of the US army

The U.S. is a major supporter of South Korea, but the survival of the nation relies on theresilience of the nation itself. Nothing more clearly demonstrates this than the depictions of theinvolvement of South Korean student volunteers and the Civilian Commando Units in fighting
against the North Korean invasion. The displays of civilian voluntary forces seem more powerfulthan the war machines mobilized by foreign supporters. Right next to the panel on U.S. and U.Nforces, the museum shows students fighting with bloody spears, their fallen bodies displaying
university hats, school buttons and of course the Korean flag stained with signatures fromstudents and traces of their struggles. The body, soil and blood represent most affectively the
patriotic South Korean civilians who willingly and spontaneously formed their commando
groups “to defend their country.” This patriotic spirit extends to Korean students overseas.
Korean students in Japan are displayed alongside their counterparts in Korea in their fight against
the North Korean invaders (Figures 8 and 9). With those (even foreign troops) who sacrificed
themselves to defend the nation, visitors to the museum are asked to remember the goodness of
the Korean nation. The nation is presented through the death and sacrifice of its “innocent”
volunteering youths and embraces the free world.

War and Visual Culture

48(8) Korean Student volunteer corps(9) Belongings from Korean student corps in Japan

While trying to minimize the historic dependency of South Korea on US forces, the museum
finds ways to acknowledge the role of the U.S. In remembering the patriotic sacrifice of thechildren of the nation, it does not forget the American and transnational soldiers mobilized by the
U.S. and the U.N. to fight on behalf of South Korea. One section of the memorial panels in thegallery wings is dedicated to these international soldiers who were ordered according to theirnations and units. The U.S. with the largest number of war dead (33,642 out of a total of 37,645)
occupies center stage. Unlike Korean soldiers who do not need to be introduced since they are allfrom “Korea,” American soldiers demand identification of where they were from. The fallen
American soldiers are identified by their home states. Above the memorial panels dedicated to
the U.S. and the U.N. soldiers killed in the Korean War, an inscription says “Our nation honors
her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people
they never met,” a quotation from The Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. In
some ways, the willingness of the children of “all” nations to die for South Korea in the fightKal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

49

against Communism seems to convey on South Korea a legitimacy to exist as a nation of the“free world.”
The Vietnam War and the recovery of the national self
The emphasis on the agency of the South Korean nation continues in the battle ground of
Vietnam. In many ways, the section on Korean participation in the Vietnam War represents thepsyche of the nation in overcoming the history of the Korean War. It shows not only Koreanleadership in fighting against communism, but also in bringing Vietnam to the “civilized” worldof freedom– something that South Korea would wish to do for North Korea in future. In thissense, the panels on the Vietnam War tell us much about the psychic recovery and the postKorean War syndrome of South Korea, which was expressed in Vietnam with a vengeance. The
sending of Korean troops to Vietnam (between 1965 and 1973) is thus represented as an act of amember of “freedom crusaders for world peace” and a chance to gain “confidence andexperience in building a more self-reliant defense force” as well as a righteous mission to bring
Vietnamese the democracy, freedom and peace that only become possible in the anti-communist
state.[19] In addition to military operations, it highlights the Korean army’s engagement in thereconstruction of Vietnamese civilian facilities. For example, the museum displays at the centerof the exhibition room Korean soldiers building a school, helping them mechanize riceproduction and constructing a new bridge in concrete (Figure 10).

(10) Korean solders constructing a new “superior” bridge in Vietnam which presumably rendered obsolete
the old Vietnamese bridge seen in the background

Both North Korea and Vietnam are represented as objects of the patronizing mission of guiding
communists to the “free world.” Yet there is a fundamental difference in the museum’s portrayalof Vietnamese and North Koreans. While the communist Vietnamese are portrayed as inhumane
and barbaric perpetrators, the North Koreans are presented as dangerous communists yet“brothers” who have gone astray and pitifully left the family by adopting “foreign” communism.
On this front it is instructive to examine the museum’s portrayal of a North Korean. Outside themuseum there is The Statue of Brothers, a monument which depicts two solders in different
military uniforms holding each other on a cracked hemispherical pedestal (Figure 11).

War and Visual Culture50(11) The Statue of Brothers

According to the catalogue, the two soldiers represent brothers who met on the battlefield asenemies, but finally reconcile with “brotherly love.”[20] The younger brother, here virtually achild, represents a North Korea soldier, politically communist yet ethnically Korean who, afterlosing everything in future will return to the embrace of the elder brother, the heir of the family’shouse.[21] Here, a North Korean soldier is humanized as a “younger brother” who returns to the“elder brother,” who has preserved the unbroken heritage of the nation. The military heritage isthen presented in the monument located at the other side, the replica of the memorial stele(erected in 414) dedicated to the military achievement of King Kwanggaeto the Great from theancient Koguryo kingdom. These two monuments meet at the new structure, The Korean War
Monument, which was built to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Korean War with ancientand contemporary symbols of prowess. Erected at the centre of the museum complex, the 32
meter high monument in the shape of a divided bronze sword flanked by two gigantic groups of
patriotic Koreans (4 meters high) embodies the museum’s obsession with masculinity (Figure12). As indicated by Sheila Miyoshi Jager, “the masculinist logic of the official commemorative
culture” makes a connection between “the military, manliness and nationalism.”[22] The
association of familial piety and national virility further suggests that the future reconciliation
would be framed within the code of the patriarchal ethnic family.

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

51(12) The Korean War Monument

Where has Japanese colonialism gone?
The representation of Japanese colonialism in the WMK reveals another aspect of the politicalculture of postcolonial Korea. Despite the fact that modern Korea was profoundly affected by thecolonial experience, the WMK virtually ignores Japanese colonialism. As Jager observes, theembarrassing time of colonialism becomes “a mere blank period” in the Korean military history
narrated in “the masculinist language of the national self-definition.”[23] It is understandable
that the museum pays close attention to the ChosÇ’n dynasty, in contrast to the peripheral
position of the colonial period, to prove Korean “manliness”. However, more is at stake than anenterprise to overcome a sense of being emasculated. The invisibility of the colonial past implies
that Japanese occupation did not change the character of the Korean military tradition but merely
proved Korean prowess.
By emphasizing heroism and resistance under colonialism, the museum projects the colonial past
as a world absolutely divided into “we,” Koreans, and “they,” Japanese. “We” are related acrossgenerations in a homogeneous ethnic bond against “they.” Japan is counterpoised against Korea.
These two antagonistic political forces confirm the ethnic coherence of the Korean nation, which
was in fact constructed as a reaction to the Japanese colonial ideology that Japanese and Koreansshare a common ancestor. The obsession with ethnic distinction as well as military strength
indicates that the museum functions to redeem the humiliating experience of being colonized bystaging a coherent story of the nation through images of family, ethnicity, patriotism, andmasculinity. In this sense, the absence of the colonial period in fact actively constructs an ethnic
lineage of the nation’s military patriotism. Japanese colonialism is a humiliating part of Korean
history, one which remains difficult to integrate into the national imagination. Out of thisWar and Visual Culture52

selective forgetting and remembering of Japanese colonialism, a “patriotic” community of the
Korean nation emerged. In creating a seamless familial history of the Korean ethnic nation, themuseum dissociates postcolonial Korea from colonial Korea.
The WMK’s effort to construct the nation’s military patriotism based on the idea of a common
bloodline and shared ancestry is closely associated with the making of Korean “others,” namely
North Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These others, while constitutive of Korean nation, are featured
so as to highlight the continuity of Korea. In this sense the nation is not created out of historicalrupture but rather it lives on the basis of continuity while “others” serve to highlight its
continuing prowess. A good illustration of this is the two groups of wall sculptures depicted on
the pedestal of the museum building. On the left is the Righteous Army formed at the end of thedynastic era and on the right is the Independence Army created during the colonial period tofight against Japanese occupation (Figures 13 and 14). The effort to make connections withmilitary tradition is clear, but in the museum there is no mention of how Japanese colonial rule
contributed to the formation of the South Korean Army. Assumed here is the sameness, that is,
the essence of being “Korean."(13 & 14) The Righteous Army (top) and The Independence Army (bottom)

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

53

North Korea has a particular significance as the most threatening but ethnically related other.
Therefore, this otherness has to be reconciled but at the same time maintained as a politicalground on which the South Korean state proclaims its legitimacy or at least superiority in termsof anti-communism, a dominant state ideology throughout the second half of the twentiethcentury. Anti-communist nationalism has lost its hegemonic position over the emerging
discourse of peaceful unification as symbolized by the the summit meeting between the leadersof the two Koreas, Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae Jung, in 2000. The WMK nevertheless maintains atone of anti-communism as an underlying narrative of postwar history. It seeks to constructlegitimacy for the South Korean state by staging ethnic patriotic nationalism against “others”
from inside as well as outside.
Through selective remembering, the WMK creates a seamless history of the nation’s military
patriotism based on a common bloodline and shared ancestry. The process of making a national
subject of Korea is closely associated with the making of Korean “others,” namely North Korea,
Vietnam, and Japan. North Korea has a particular significance. It is simultaneously the mostthreatening and an ethnically related other. Therefore, this otherness has to be reconciled but at
the same time maintained as a political ground on which the South Korean state proclaims its
legitimacy or at least superiority in terms of anti-communism. The museum seeks to position
Korean visitors as an ideal citizen with a shared memory of the war. It does so, however, by
suppressing discordant memories of the war such as the massacre of non-combatant prisoners bySouth Korean authorities in Taejon in July 1950 and the killings of villagers by the U.S. soldiers
at Nogunri. The violence of South Korean and U.S. authorities have not found a place to beremembered. Likewise, the brutality against Vietnamese civilians is nowhere hinted at in themuseum.[24]II. The Yushukan and Japanese Historical Memory
The most important Japanese museum representations of the Asia-Pacific War indeed of any
modern war involving Japan during the immediate postwar decades were the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. In emphasizing the horrors of
nuclear war, and in presenting the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the victims of that war,
the museums underlined a Japanese commitment to peace and elided the military past that had
culminated in empire, war, and defeat for Japan and had brought great suffering and mass deathto the people of China and other Asian nations. The peace museums thus produced a narrative of
the Japanese nation as both the victim of war and a force for peace. The resultant “peace culture”
made it possible for many Japanese to “forget” the history of Japanese imperialism andaggression in Asia.[25] This peace culture has been countered by the new refurbished war
memorial museum, the Yushukan in Tokyo. Situated at Yasukuni Shrine, it urges visitors to“remember” Japan’s “glorious” imperial past, and celebrates the Japanese who sacrificed foremperor and nation in the Asia-Pacific War.
The Yushukan and Yasukuni Shrine
The history of the Yushukan tells of Japan’s modern history. It was first built in 1882 in order tohonor soldiers who fell in combat at the time of the restoration that inaugurated the Meiji
imperial state. It was expanded in 1908 to accommodate the increased collections after the SinoJapanese War and the Russo-Japanese War and rebuilt in 1932 after the Great Kanto Earthquake.
With Japan’s surrender in 1945, the museum was closed. Restored in 1986, it was reopened after
renovation in 2002 with a new exhibition hall. Sharing much in common with war museums of

War and Visual Culture

54

other former imperial powers, the Yushukan is notable for its association with the symbolism of“emperor, war, nation and empire.”[26]The Yasukuni shrine where the museum is located is notable for its close ties to the emperor andits links to modern Japanese warfare. Built in 1869 on the order of the emperor Meiji, it
enshrines as deities over 2.4 million Japanese military dead from 1853 to 1945, the vast majorityof whom died in the final year of the Pacific War.[27] It also includes Koreans and Taiwanese
who fought and died with the imperial army as well as Okinawans, not just soldiers but also
youths such as nurses and the male corps that were called up in the final days of the war. In
return for sacrificing their lives for the emperor and the nation, the shrine rewarded them by
elevating them as deities, hence objects of worship by the nation. In short, Yasukuni shrine
glorifies self-sacrificial death while celebrating the imperial legacy. The authority of the shrine infact depends on the practice of visiting, in which the living and the dead constitute a mirror
image of the circle of decay and renewal, death and rebirth and bequeath and inheritance. One of
the most special rites was attended by the emperor (in the person of his emissary) with offerings
to the deities which in turn would bestow their blessings upon the emperor and the whole
nation.[28] Although under the US occupation the shrine was formally separated from the stateand made a private religious institution, the Showa emperor continued to visit, and his emissary
participated in major rites each year. In addition, Prime Ministers, cabinet members and dietmembers regularly visited the shrine, in most cases in a private capacity. When Prime Minister
Nakasone Yasuhiro visited in his formal capacity in 1985, a storm of controversy led to an end of
the practice until 2001, when Koizumi Junichiro made the first of five successive official visits.
The visits both divided the Japanese polity and sparked criticism in China, Korea and other
Asian nations, given the shrine’s association with the wartime ideology of emperor-centerednationalism.[29] Within this context, after several years of renovation, the Yushukan wasreopened in 1985 and again, with new exhibits in 2002, its mission to renew a sense of pride inbeing Japanese by displaying the nation’s “glorious” war history.
Like Yasukuni, the Yushukan poses political questions that reverberate beyond Japan’s borders.
The reopening of Yushukan is emblematic of the rise of Japanese neonationalism whichcelebrates the nation’s military past. In the 1990s neo nationalists launched a campaign to rewritea “new history” that neither imposes “victim complex” on Japan nor assigns all blame for thecatastrophic wars on the Japanese military state.[30] Strongly opposed to any apology orcompensation for Japanese war atrocities, they claimed that affirmation of wartime Japan is thepath toward full realization of Japanese identity, which was forcefully suppressed and abandoned
under U.S. hegemony. The revival of the Yushukan is one important attempt to connect thepresent to the imperial past, a link that they believe has been undermined by the peace culture.
The Yushukan presents a version of the nation’s modern, which elevates the war dead as asymbol of sacred patriotism and celebrates its military past. In this sense the museum not only
looks back at the imperial past as a proud tradition but also looks forward to reconstruct thenation on foundations of empire and war. In what follows, as in the WMK, I analyze themuseum’s exhibition displays and spatial arrangements and examine how they rewrite
nationhood.
Into the exhibition space: The spirit of the samurai
Yasukuni shrine is protected by a series of Torii gates that create a hierarchy of spatial transition
from the world of mortal beings to the realm of the Shinto deities (kami). Passing the three gatesKal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

55

built along the east-west axis, visitors proceed to the Inner Shrine where they can worship thewar dead transformed into deities through a rite of apotheosis. Behind it is the Main Sanctuary,which is unapproachable by visitors and hidden from the view. The arbitrary denial of entry andthe partial revelation of the shrine grant visitors a glimpse of the world beyond, while suggestingthat the ultimate truth is reserved for those privileged to enter: the war dead and the priests who
perform the rituals of apotheosis and propitiation. This deepest site is where the priests,
accompanied by the imperial representative and others, make offerings to the deities and in
return receive blessings from them for the nation. Located at the north side of the Main
Sanctuary, the war museum seeks to incorporate the deification of the war dead into its
exhibition space by conveying the aura of sacrificial death.
The renovated Yushukan features a new extension which has transparent glass walls and slightly
tilted roofs (Figure 15). In stark contrast to the old Japanese imperial style of the main exhibitionbuilding, the new extension is modern and contemporary. As if to connect the past to the present,
the new extension functions as an entrance lobby. It creates a brighter, modern, welcoming
atmosphere where the individual and the national subject can be linked in “love of nation.”[31](15) The Yushukan exhibition brochure

Upon entering the new lobby, a semi-open plaza with transparent glass walls, visitors firstencounter the Zero fighter, the leading Japanese plane and one which frequently outclassed US
fighters in the early phases of the war. Standing like a sublime object on the sanitized floor withno trace of blood and no hint of the disaster that confronted the Japanese air force, theimmaculate object has been elevated into a sanctified object. The care that has been put into
polishing the aircraft signifies the living who care for the dead. Cleanliness is indeed next togodliness. Once used by the war dead, the military artifact embodies their spirit. Preserved by theliving, it becomes an inheritance that can be bequeathed to future generations to remind them of
those who sacrificed their lives for them.

War and Visual Culture

56

The Yushukan is organized to create circular movements starting from and returning to the Zerofighter in the hall (Figure 9). From the entrance lobby, visitors ascend from the entrance lobby tothe exhibition halls, a passage that resembles the crossing of a bridge constructed to divide therealm of the living from the domain of the dead. This movement from the profane to the sacredalso leads visitors to the past, from where the nation started. As the WMK traces back its military
tradition, the Yushukan looks to the timeless “spirit of the samurai.”
In the middle of the dimly lit room named the Spirit of the Samurai, a vertical glass caseenshrines a sword labeled “a marshal’s saber” with an explanation that “When the nation was incrisis, warriors were bestowed a sword from the emperor. Also in the modern battlefield, soldiers
placed the sword on their waists. Since the age of the gods, the sword has reflected the spirit ofJapan and the soul of the warrior. The sword is a symbol of justice and peace.” As the military
weapon turns into a sacred object, war is given a noble and transcendent meaning. This single
object represents “pure Japaneseness,” and in this purity “the spirit of Japan” is secured. Thismessages echoes from the scrolls hanging at the four corners of the hall. One of the scrolls
writes, “We shall die in the sea, we shall die in the mountains. In whatever way, we shall die
beside the emperor, never turning back.” Then, who is “we”? It continues, “The painful lives of
those who cared for their country piled up and up, protecting the land of Yamato.” The story thengoes back thousands years ago, “More than 2,600 years ago, an independent nation was formedon these islands… Japan’s warriors fought bravely, defending their homes, their villages, and thenation.”[32]The museum asks visitors to value its antiquity as containing the spirit of the warrior which is thespirit of the nation. The museum is, it claims, precisely the place where people can witness andexperience the timeless essence of heroism, loyalty and self-sacrifice for the nation. In thisexhibition space, war death becomes an honorable and righteous act of obligation for a life of thenation inhabited by ethnic Japanese for thousands of years.
Liberating Asia
Like the WMK, the YÅ«shÅ«kan displays an unbroken tradition of the sacrificial spirit of thenation that invokes Japanese military prowess. The Japanese war museum, however, long faced adilemma: how to represent the aggressive and defeated war. This no longer seems a problem.
The museum stages a seamless history of “glorious” warfare leading up to “the Greater East
Asian War.” Before proceeding to the modern wars, it puts on display the rooftop of the (Ise)Shinto shrine decorated with forked finials and reminds visitors of the significance of the spiritof Shinto renewal in the foundation of the Japanese modern state. This link between the ancient
Shinto shrine and the modern nation-state prepares visitors to understand that war is not a merehuman tragedy but a sacred mission for the renewal of Japan and further to assure “the peace ofAsia.” The museum presents Japan’s unavoidable yet heroic actions to achieve pan-Asian peacein the face of the encroachment of Western powers, including the Sino-Japanese War, the RussoJapanese War, the invasion of China and the Asia Pacific War. In this narrative, the annexationof Korea is presented as liberation from China.[33] The story ends with celebration of the legacyof Japan for postwar independence movements in Southeast Asia: “When the war ended thepeople of Asia returned to their homes. Those whose desire for independence had been
awakened were no longer the obedient servants of their [Western] colonizers… One after anotherthe nations of Southeast Asia won their Independence and their successes inspired Africa andother areas as well.”[34]Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

57

The museum thus offers a history which affirms Japan’s military acts in Asia as a holy anddefensive mission to protect the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” from Westernimperialism. In doing so, it not only erases the atrocities committed by Japanese forces but also
revives the imperial discourse of pan-Asianism.
Ethnic nationalism in the YÅ«shÅ«kan
While invoking the wartime rhetoric of pan-Asianism, the YÅ«shÅ«kan renew the concept of“Greater Japanese Empire.” In the exhibition section dedicated to “Mementos of war heroes
enshrined at the Yasukuni shrine,” the wall is covered with individual photographs of those whodied in the Asia Pacific War (Figures 16 & 17).

(16 & 17) Photographs of the war dead

Each photograph, as small as the palm of a hand, shows the name and age of the individual dead.
Yet, despite this personal identification, the soldiers remain nameless. They are all immersed inWar and Visual Culture58

the vast canvas of collective death, a single body of the nation, stripped of all social and cultural
significance. Yet this abstraction of individual death into a collective national whole brings up acompelling question regarding nation and ethnicity in Japan.
Tracing the genealogy of the discourse of the Japanese nation, Eiji Oguma has argued that themyth of Japan as a homogeneous and pure-blooded nation is largely a postwar construction.[35]With the collapse of the Japanese empire, for instance, the broadly accepted idea of the prewar
period that Japanese and Koreans shared a common ancestor was transformed into the belief thatJapanese and Koreans were fundamentally different in their culture and ethnicity.[36] In postwar
Japan, Koreans and Taiwanese living in Japan, including veterans of the Japanese army, would
be deprived of Japanese citizenship. Despite the instability of the concept of Japan, oscillating
between the homogeneous nation and the mixed nation, however, as Harumi Befu has aptly
pointed out, what has been maintained beneath the discursive shift of the nation in modern Japanis the idea of ethnic nationalism.[37]Yasukuni shrine nevertheless enshrined some 50,000 ethnic Korean and Taiwanese soldiers who
were mobilized to serve the Japanese empire and died in combat during the Asia Pacific War.
Some bereaved families, who were informed only recently of enshrinement, demanded that theshrine return the souls to them. The shrine, however, rejected the demand saying that all had died
for the emperor and nation and would be honored for their sacrifice. Like the shrine, the museum
erases any reference to the multiethnic nature of those who died in Japanese uniform during thewar. In the museum, these ethnic others, who were Japanese but not quite Japanese, aresubsumed in a unitary Japanese identity that elides their ethnic identities.
III. A Crisis of Ethnic Nationalism in the Era of Globalization
The war memorial museums aim to convey an aura of sacrificial death that supposedlytranscends individual physical annihilation. Yet the problem arises precisely in this practice ofmuseumization of death. The attempt to present divine souls threatens the sacred aura as such.
As Arjun Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge have argued, the museum is needed especiallywhen “the separation of sacred objects (whether of art, history or religion) from the objects ofeveryday life has occurred.”[38] In the case of the Yushukan, the museumization of ritualsuggests the decline of the shrine as a social practice and thus a need to remind people of its“sacred” meaning. Likewise, in the WMK, heroic death is presented as prime material for thefoundation of national identity through objects in the form of exhibition displays, andmonuments, extending even to souvenirs. The serialization of images can be seen as “a replica
without aura” in Anderson’s term.[39] In this sense the two museums represent not the power but
the loss of popular faith in military nationalism. In 1993, even before its opening, the WMK
faced criticism of the lack of accountability of government spending for the museum andquestioning the very need to build a war museum with such a belligerent appearance in the centerof the city.[40] The museum in fact proved unpopular.[41] In particular, in the emerging newpolitical relations with and public perceptions of North Korea, has faced continued pressure toaccommodate the change. Perhaps partly as a response to such pressure, in 2002 the museum
added a new monument, The Clock Tower of Peace, which portrays two young girls holding two
watches, one stopped at the moment of separation of the two Koreas and the other moving
toward future unification (Figure 18).

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

59(18) The Clock Tower of Peace

These new images of young girls and stopped watches remind us of the familiar icons of peace
culture as presented in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki museums in Japan. Despite such a gesture tomodify its militaristic and masculine image, the presence of the museum with a message ofanticommunism and military patriotism continues to elicit criticism. In 2003, a group of citizens
launched a campaign for an alternative peace museum, stating that “the WMK teaches ourchildren how stronger weapons can kill more people… In this country with experiences of wars
and state killings, we need a place to teach peace to our children.”[42] Some people resist theofficial representation of the museum by consuming it in ways different from its intended
meanings. One popular website, for example, issued a call for “a new millennium techno party”
to be held in the museum restroom:
A fun, weird party in the restroom at War Memorial Hall…The restroom of War
Memorial Museum is the cleanest and largest in Seoul. This restroom will be totallychanged to a wonderful party place. Some snacks, BBQ, cocktails and beer will beserved…also, some funny events such as graffiti contest… and the performance by afive-man band Barberbershopporno led by the self-styled keeper of the women’s
toilet.[43]The restroom party fantasy illustrates how the museum can lead a life in popular consumption
quite independent of the original official context. The celebration of nonsense, decadence, andobscenity is exactly what the museum tried to keep out of the public for the production of the“pure,” “healthy” and “normal” state of patriotic ethnic nationalism.
The Yushukan provoked similar reactions on the part of some.[44] Especially for those who
painfully remember “stepping on dead bodies” and “there is nothing glorious about the war,”[45]the museum is deeply disturbing. A Japanese visitor regretted that, “the exhibits express neither
condolences to victims of the U.S. air raids and atomic bombings nor remorse for Japan as anaggressor in Asia. I felt as if I had been exposed to the specter of Japanese militarism. … TheWar and Visual Culture60

museum souvenir shop sells T-shirts displaying the wartime slogan, “We Shall Win.”[46] In the
project of securing the future embedded in the idea of nation with singular history, ethnicity, andidentity, the museum continues to suppress the past violence, fear, and anguish experienced byboth “Japanese Japanese” and other “non-Japanese Japanese.”
In a way all the different visual and spatial devices employed in the WMK and the Yushukan
merge into what can broadly be termed ethno-conservative nationalism, which invents an ethnicbased tradition of military prowess. The obsession with military prowess is related to historicalamnesia that both Korea and Japan have experienced. Both museums still find it difficult to
integrate the dark past into their histories. The dark past is, therefore, kept in the family closet to
avoid embarrassment. Or simply denied. Each only tells a story that the nation-family wants tohear about its ancestors and does not tell other stories, such as those of military aggressions athome and abroad, civilian participations in wrongdoings and collaboration with colonial rulers.
“We” do not have to talk about the embarrassing deeds in “our family.” Out of the selective
forgetting and remembering of the past, a seamless familial history of the ethnic nation and theidea of a patriotic and ever glorious national community have emerged.
The WMK performs an enactment of manliness in the discourse of ethnic nationalism, one which
was suppressed under Japanese colonialism. It can be seen as an enterprise for overcoming acultural crisis with respect to historical memories of colonialism, war, and the current phase of
globalization. Hence, we see in the WMK a communal quest for a rooted identity expressed in
the urge for ethnic unity, a role that can be most decisively played by the loud voice of militaryprowess. As in Japan, however, in a period which has witnessed a growing population of nonethnic Koreans, it is a serious question whether a “democratized” and “globalized” Korea willfurther ethnicize or de-ethnicize the idea of nation and national membership. The issue of
ethnicity and national membership becomes more complicated and even contradictory, as
Katharine Moon aptly notes: “What is the meaning and content of the Korean nation if foreigners
purport to claim Korea as their ‘second homeland’? Does Korea’s pursuit of democracy andglobalization require that it alter its definition of nation?” [47] Furthermore, the changing
relationship between women and the state also challenges the patriarchal definition of the Korean
ethnic nation.
The Yushukan similarly calls for the recovery of Japanese military identity by affirming thewartime past at the center of national character and identity. Toward the end of the twentiethcentury, Japan confronts a divide between those who share the memory of wartime and those
who grew up or were been born after the war. As the older generation passes, someneonationalists feel the need to bequeath to the younger generation “heroic” memories of the warthat have been forgotten. The Yushukan’s mission to reestablish the linkage between the national
subject and the individual can also be understood as a reaction to globalization in contemporary
Japan. One of the visible signs of this is the growing visibility of postcolonial Asia along with
the influx of Asian pop cultures and migrant populations from surrounding Asian countries.
Postcolonial Asia threatens to disrupt the putative wholeness of the citizenship project thatneonationalists attempt to maintain. The Yushukan is the showcase for an ethnic-based
reactionary nationalism which retreats to the military tradition, a symbol of loyalty to andsacrifice for the nation, at the moment when the idea of the nation based on ethnic homogeneity
is being undermined by domestic and international transformations.

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

61

Juxtaposing Korea and Japan, we see interconnected discourses of ethnic nationalism.
Comparing war memorial museums in Japan and Korea, I have suggested that despite theirantagonistic discourses, they display similar strategies of representation: staging a ritual
dedicated to the war dead as an embodiment of national identity. The dispute over the museums
suggests a change in the social and political landscapes of Korea and Japan. However, the public
in both countries, although critical of militarism, still seems to take for granted the core idea of
ethnic nationalism, which often develops into xenophobic sentiment toward “non-ethnic”
Koreans or Japanese and migrant foreign workers. The unchallenged concept of nation andcitizenship based on an ethnic collectivism poses a critical obstacle to the task of reconciling
historical injustice between nations as well as within them. Without critical self-reflection
regarding the exclusive and aggressive nature of ethnic nationalism, it will be difficult to moveahead. In this essay, rather than placing the two war memorial museums in the category ofcolonized versus colonizer or victim versus victimizer, I have paid attention to their similar
ambition to exhibit the nation bounded by ethnic, not civic, sentiments. They urge citizens to be
exclusively Koreans or Japanese and to unquestioningly identify themselves with the ethnic
national community. Such visions can best be countered by recognition of the terrible price that
Koreans, Japanese and Asian people have borne as a result of colonialism and aggressive wars,
including those waged in the name of nationalistic purity and liberation of oppressed people.
* I am indebted to Mark Selden for critical comments on an earlier version of this article.
Hong Kal is assistant professor of Art History at York University, Toronto.
This is a revised and expanded version of a chapter that was published in Rethinking HistoricalInjustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia, edited by Soon-Won Park, Gi-Wook Shin, andDaqing Yang. New York: Routledge, 2007. Posted on Japan Focus, September 6, 2008.
Notes[1] In Korea, they include the Independence Museum of Korea (1987), War Memorial of Korea(1994), Sodaemun Prison Museum (1995), and Dongduchon Municipal Museum of Freedom,
Defense, and Peace (2002). In Japan, most peace museums were built or renovated in the 1990s,
including the Osaka International Peace Center (1991), Kyoto Museum for World Peace (1992),
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (1994), Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum (1996),
Showakan in Tokyo (1999), Peace Memorial Center (Heiwa Kinenkan) in Tokyo (1999),
Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum (2000), and Yushukan in Tokyo (2002). In China,
major memorial museums including The Memorial Hall of the People’s War of Resistance
Against Japan, The Memorial to Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, The
Crime Evidence Exhibition Hall of Japanese Imperial Army Unit 731, and The September 18
History Museum were built in the 1980s and 1990s. See Yoshida, “Revising the Past,
Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum in Modern Japanese History” and Denton,“Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism inChinese Museums.” The proliferation of memorial museums in Korea and Japan can be situatedin the rise of the discourse of memory which, according to Andreas Huyssen, “has become acultural obsession of monumental proportions across globe.” The discourse of memory wasenergized in the 1980s by the broadening debate about the Holocaust and accelerated in postcommunist Eastern Europe, post-Apartheid South Africa and various post-dictatorship countries.
See Huyssen, “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia.”

War and Visual Culture62[2] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 205.
[3] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 205.
[4] My thinking about nationalism and the war dead in this chapter owes much to Anderson’s“Replica, Aura, and Late Nationalist Imaginings” and “The Goodness of Nations” in The Spectreof Comparisons, 46–57, 360–368.
[5] See the War Memorial of Korea, WMK catalogue (English edition), 5.
[6] My approach to the museum draws on Carol Duncan’s analysis of the museum as a modern
ritual in which visitors are prompted to enact and internalize the values written into theexhibitionary script. See Duncan, Civilizing Rituals.
[7] See Lie, Multiethinic Japan; Oguma, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images; and Sato, “ThePolitics of Nationhood in Germany and Japan.”[8] Befu has emphasized that nihonjinron constitutes a broadly based ideological stance forJapan’s nationalism. See Befu, “Nationalism and Nihonjinron,” p.107.
[9] Indeed, the shrine still has a strong association with the state, as evidenced by thecontroversial visits to the shrine by prime ministers and cabinet members. The renovation of theYÅ«shÅ«kan was extensively funded by the Japan Bereaved Families Association, a privateorganization that is closely connected to the conservative Liberal Democratic Party.
[10] Jonjaeng kinyomgwan konlipsa, 55-73.
[11] Jonjaeng kinyomgwan konlipsa, 436–37.
[12] War Memorial of Korea, 5.
[13] Shin, “Nation, History and Politics: South Korea.”[14] In 1989, the war museum construction committee issued an open competition forarchitecture design. Of the twenty designs submitted, Lee Song Jonjaeng kinyomgwan konlipsa,
181–89.
[15] The temporal sequence is also emphasized by outdoor monuments which depict the military
tradition from the first century to the present.
[16] For a reflection on national cemeteries, see Anderson, “Replica, Aura, Late Nationalist
Imaginings,” 46-57; and Laqueur, “Memory and Naming in the Great War.” 150-167.
[17] The National Memorial Cemetery enshrines those who sacrificed themselves for the defense
and development of the nation. Established in 1956 as a military cemetery for the war dead fromthe Korean War, in 1965 it was elevated to the national cemetery and included patriots whofought for the liberation of the country and men of merit who sacrificed their lives for thecountry. It is also a ceremonial site for national anniversaries and is regularly visited bypoliticians to demonstrate their allegiance to the nation. Since the late 1990s, however, the statusof the cemetery as the only national sanctuary has been challenged by the establishment of newnational cemeteries. For example, the 4.19 cemetery which buried those killed in the protests
against government corruption and dictatorship in April 1960, and the 5.18 cemetery whichKal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

63

buried those killed in the Kwangju civilian uprising in May 1980, were rebuilt as official national
cemeteries respectively in 1997 and in 2002.
[18] With no winner in the war, the ground was open for claims represent the ideal “Korea.” Themuseum seeks to confirm the political legitimacy of South Korea as the only legitimate son who
has preserved the unbroken heritage of the Korean ethnic nation against successive foreigninvasions. Even after the summit meeting between the leaders of the two Koreas in 2000, themuseum’s narrative of the Korean War was little revised, as can be seen in the special exhibition,
entitled “Ah! 6.25: For Freedom That Time, for Unification This Time,” held in the same year.
[19] See exhibition panels in the Expeditionary Forces Room and also War Memorial of Korea,
28.
[20] War Memorial of Korea, 42.
[21] The original project before The Statue of Brothers was The Peace Tower, a monument
initiated to be a symbol of “free and democratic world” along with the WMK in 1988. The Peace
Tower was designed as an abstract vertical tower 330 meters high (later adjusted to 120 meters).
However, this project was cancelled in 1991 and converted to The Statue of Brothers. Both were
designed by the same architect, Ch’oe Yong Jip.
[22] Jager, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea, Chapter 7, 118.
[23] Jager, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea, Chapter 7, 129.
[24] See Cumings, The South Korean Massacre at Taejon: New Evidence on US Responsibility
and Cover Up,” Kwon, “The Korean War Mass Graves,” and Charles J. Hanley and Martha
Mendoza, “The Massacre at No Gun Ri: Army Letter Reveals U.S. intent.”[25] The major Peace Museums, notably those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seek to teach peace
through documenting the nuclear destruction of the city and conveying a sense of the impact of
the bombs on its citizens and the built environment. Until recently, there was no representationof Japanese colonialism or Japanese invasion of Asian countries, or even, of the United States as
the nation which dropped the atomic bombs. Japanese citizens, portrayed as atomic victims, areprojected as a metaphor for all human suffering in war, particularly nuclear war. Thus themuseums barely mentioned the perpetrators of the violence that produced the Asia-Pacific War,with exhibits limited to the human and material consequences of the atomic bombings. The
suppression of the role of U.S. in the dropping of atomic bombs entails a forgetting of theequally violent history of Japan’s militarism in Asia Pacific.
[26] Mark Selden has emphasized that the problem of Japanese nationalism needs to be locatedwithin the broader frameworks of competing nationalisms in Asia such as in China and Korea;
the divisions among the people regarding memories of colonialism and war; and the Japan-US
relationship. See Selden, “Nationalism, Historical Memory and Contemporary Conflicts in the
Asia Pacific.”[27] Shintoism, often referred to as Japan’s indigenous religion, centered on a reverence for
deities (kami) that animistically inhabit nature. It was elevated to the state religion when the new
Meiji government placed Shinto at the center of the nation’s religious and social life. The
Yasukuni Shrine embodied the idea that the emperor is at the center of the religious and social
life of Japanese people. With Japan’s surrender in 1945, the shrine was separated from the state.

War and Visual Culture

64

The close bonds between Yasukuni and the emperor are delineated in Takahashi, “The national
politics of the Yasukuni Shrine” and Takenaka, “Enshrinement politics: War dead and war
criminals at Yasukuni Shrine.” More critical articles on the politics of Yasukuni Shrine can befound in Japan Focus.
[28] For a discussion of the ritual space in the Yasukuni shrine, see Breen, “The Dead and the
Living in the Land of Peace: A Sociology of the Yasukuni Shrine.”[29] Some people commemorate the war at alternative sites, such as in the Chidorigafuchi, anational nonreligious cemetery built in 1959 to accommodate the remains of 350,000 unknown
soldiers. In December 2002 a government advisory panel proposed a plan to construct a new
non-religious national war memorial that would include non-Japanese war dead. This proposal
sparked controversy, however, and was never implemented.
[30] See Hein and Selden, “Lessons of War, Global Power and Social Change” and McCormack,“The Japanese Movement to ‘Correct’ History” in Hein and Selden [eds]. Censoring History.
[31] See the Yushukan exhibition brochure.
[32] From the exhibition panel in the section entitled “Spirit of the Samurai.”[33] From the exhibition panel entitled “The Korean Problem” in the section entitled “From the
Russo-Japanese War to the Manchurian Incident.”[34] From the exhibition panel.
[35] Oguma, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images.
[36] See Sato, “The Politics of Nationhood in Germany and Japan,” chapter 7.
[37] See Befu, “Nationalism and Nihonjinron.”[38] Appadurai and Breckenridge, “Museums are Good to Think,” 39.
[39] Anderson, “Replica, Aura, and Late Nationalist Imaginings,” in Spectre of Comparisons.
[40] Donga Ilbo (8 June 1993).
[41] A newspaper column deplores that “The young people visit the museum led by teachers or
only to enjoy cultural events or festivals held in the outdoor plaza. For those in their thirties andthe forties, the war is no longer a subject they want to talk about.” Donga Ilbo (26 June 2001).
[42] Hankyoreh (24 September 2003). They started from a campaign to publicize atrocities
committed by Korean solders to Vietnamese civilians. For the on-line peace museum, click here.
[43] http://www.technoguy.pe.kr[44] Not unlike the WMK, the Yushukan has been unpopular since it opened in July 2002. Until
May 2003, approximately 226,000 individuals had visited the museum, a small number
compared with the atomic bomb peace museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, each of which hasreceived more than one million visitors every year for more than two decades. The daily
newspaper Sankei reported in 2002 that no schools are currently making field trips to themuseum, nor does any school incorporate the museum’s pedagogical apparatus into its curricula.

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

65

See Yoshida, “Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum inModern Japanese History.”[45] Asakura, “WWII Survivors Fear Return to Warpath.”[46] Kiroku, “Build Alternative to Yasukuni.”[47] Moon, “Strangers in the Midst of Globalization: Migrant Workers and Korean
Nationalism.”
References
Anderson, Benedict.
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.London:
Verso Editions, 1991.
Spectre of Comparison: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World. London: Verso,
1998.
Appadurai, Arjun and Carol Breckenridge.
“Museums are Good to Think: Heritage on view in India.” In Ivan Karp, Christine Muller
Kreamer and Steven D. Lavine [eds]. Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public
culture. Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
Asakura, Takuya.
“WWII Survivors Fear Return to Warpath,” The Japan Times (16 August 2002).
Befu, Harumi.
“Nationalism and Nihonjinron,” in Befu [ed.]. Cultural Nationalism in East Asia:
Representation and Identity. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1993: 107–35.
Breen, John.
“The Dead and the Living in Land of Peace: A Sociology of the Yasukuni Shrine,”
Mortality, 9, 1 (February 2004): 76-93.
Breen, John [ed.].
Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2008.
Cumings, Bruce.
“The South Korean Massacre at Taejon: New Evidence on US Responsibility and Cover
Up,” Japan Focus;
Denton, Kirk A.
“Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of JapaneseImperialism in Chinese Museums,” Japan Focus.
Duncan, Carol.

War and Visual Culture

66

Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
Huyssen, Andreas.
“Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia,” Public Culture, 12, 1 (2000): 21-38. [AFoundation history of the war memorial of Korea]. Seoul: The War Memorial Service,1997.War Memorial of Korea, catalogue (English edition).
Laqeur, Thomas W.
“Memory and Naming in the Great War.” In John R. Gillis [ed.], Commemorations: The
Politics of National Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, 150-167.
Jager, Sheila Miyoshi.
Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism. London: M.E.
Sharpe, 2003.
Gluck, Carol.
“The ‘End’ of the Postwar: Japan at the Turn of the Millennium,” Public Culture 10, 1(1997).
Hanley, Charles J. and Martha Mendoza.
“The Massacre at No Gun Ri: Army Letter Reveals U.S. intent,” Japan Focus.
Hein, Laura and Mark Selden.
“Lessons of War, Global Power and Social Change.” In Hein Laura and Mark Selden[eds], Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the UnitedStates. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000.
Kiroku, Hanai.
“Build Alternative to Yasukuni.” Japan Times (27 August 2002).
Kwon, Heonik.
“The Korean War Mass Graves,” Japan Focus.
McCormack, Gavan.
“The Japanese Movement to ‘Correct’ History.” In Hein and Mark Selden [eds],
Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States.
Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000.
Moon, Katharine.
“Strangers in the Midst of Globalization: Migrant Workers and Korean Nationalism.” In
Samuel S. Kim [ed.]. Korea’s Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000: 147-169.
Nelson, John.

Kal: Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism

67“Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at
Yasukuni ShintÅ Shrine.” Journal of Asian Studies 62, 2 (May 2003): 443–67.
Oe, Shinobu.
Yasukuni Jinja. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1984.
Oguma, Eiji.
A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images, trans. David Askew. Melbourne, Australia:
Trans Pacific Press, 2002.
Sato, Shigeki.
“The Politics of Nationhood in Germany and Japan.” Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 1998.
Selden, Mark.
“Nationalism, Historical Memory and Contemporary Conflicts in the Asia Pacific: the
Yasukuni Phenomenon, Japan, and the United States,” Japan Focus.
Shin, Gi Wook.
“Nation, History and Politics: South Korea.” In Pai and Tangherlini [eds]. Nationalism
and the Construction of Korean Identity. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies,
University of California, 1998: 148–165.
Takenaka, Akiko.
“Enshrinement Politics: War Dead and War Criminals at Yasukuni Shrine,” Japan Focus.
Takahashi, Tetsuya.
“The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine,” Japan Focus.
Yoshida, Takashi.
“Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The YÅ«shÅ«kan War Museum in Modern
Japanese History,” Japan Focus.
http://www.peacemuseum.or.kr
http://www.technoguy.pe.kr

War and Visual Culture

68“Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States”
Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka
July 20, 2007
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Akiko-TAKENAKA/2477
This essay compares museum representations of WWII from Japan and the USA anddiscusses how museum curators responded to the changing international and domestic
environment in their exhibits. The authors also identify challenges that museum curators inthese countries have often faced. In Japan, for example, when the newly opened peacemuseums in Osaka, Kawasaki, Saitama, and Kanagawa began to depict Japan’s role in the
Asia-Pacific War from a critical angle by including photographs of the Nanking Massacre,
they drew heated criticism from conservative nationalist groups. This in turn eventually led
some of the museum curators to revise their exhibitions, while other museums like thePeace Osaka remained firm about keeping their original exhibitions. This kind of tension
was also evident at the National Air and Space Museum in the USA, where the curators’
initial plans to display war artifacts such as the Enola Gay (the airplane used to drop theatomic bomb on Hiroshima) had to be restructured to be more “American” due to pressure
from veterans’ groups. What to display in exhibitions and how to display it are sensitive
issues for museum curators, who are expected to serve racially and culturally diverse
audiences, and this is one reason why the pedagogic role of the public museum has become
increasingly challenging since the 1990s. The authors of this essay introduce the ways inwhich museum curators in these regions have developed their strategies to accommodate
public demands in ways that contribute to a more inclusive environment.

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

69

Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States
Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka
Like most people, museum professionals generally dislike being at the center of a firestorm ofcriticism. Yet in recent years, many Japanese and American museum curators have suffered thisfate for their exhibits on World War II. As many scholars have noted, war remembrance isfraught with difficult issues, prominently including how to portray the motives, policies, andconduct of one’s own government during the war. In both countries, curators, particularly thoseat public institutions, faced a sudden increase in vitriolic political criticism in the mid-1990s over
how to remember the wartime past.
The controversies over exhibiting war have highlighted the relationship between museums andtheir audiences and the professional responsibilities of curators. Controversy has erupted mostoften when the target audience was young people, both in Japan and America. In the UnitedStates, museum professionals have endured fierce battles over depictions of racial minorities,
including foreigners, as well as the morality of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Japanese curators have struggled over whether to explain Japan’s involvement in the AsiaPacific War as a battle of self defense or of imperial ambition, and what to say about war crimes
committed in other Asian countries. Debate in both countries often has assumed that theimportant constituencies are all domestic, even though some of these museums are significant
international tourist destinations.
There was little conflict over museum portrayals of World War II in either country until the hugebattle over the National Air and Space Museum’s 1995 exhibit on the Enola Gay (the airplaneused to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima) and a series of conservative attacks on Japanesepeace museums that began in 1996. The curators at the National Air and Space Museum in
Washington D.C. had originally planned to locate the Enola Gay’s historic run in the context of
the war that led up to that event and also depict the destruction of the city of Hiroshima and its
inhabitants using artifacts borrowed from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Their
proposal also explored the implications of having entered the nuclear age. However, when they
circulated the initial draft for comments, veterans’ groups publicly attacked these aspects of theplanned exhibit as anti-American and unacceptable. In the end, the curators capitulated, and the
new annex to the museum in Virginia now displays the Enola Gay without discussing the humansuffering caused by its use or the ambiguous legacy of nuclear weaponry since 1945.

The Enola Gay. Like most of the images here,
this is courtesy of the U.S. National Archives

Postwar public opinion in Japan has been strongly pacifist since 1945, at least until the end of theCold War and the death of the Showa emperor led to a major reassessment of the war years.
Many older Japanese root their pacifism in personal memories of loss and suffering. In the

War and Visual Culture

70

1990s, however, many Japanese began taking a more self-critical look at their wartime past. War
remembrance soon grew more polarized over such issues as the stance of the wartime
government toward its own citizens and the culpability of ordinary Japanese in mistreatment of
Asians. Finally some Japanese today believe that postwar peace and prosperity was only possible
because the wartime leadership was defeated and discredited, while others argue for a morepositive legacy from the war years. In other words, in the 1990s in Japan the war was
remobilized as an ideological site of nationalist remembrance, with one side asserting the right toan American-style militarized national identity and the other continuing to insist on a pacifist
interpretation of war remembrance.
This fast changing international and domestic climate soon affected museum depictions of thewar. Several cities and prefectures, including Osaka, Kawasaki, Saitama, and Kanagawa opened
peace museums in the early 1990s that both critically depicted Japan’s role in the Asia-Pacific
War and also preserved local Japanese memories of their own war losses, while Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum and Nagasaki Prefectural Peace Museum incorporated new material criticalof Japan’s war. In 1996, Japanese conservative nationalist groups, alarmed by these changes,
went on a counter-offensive. These groups, such as the Liberal View of History Study Group(Jiyushugi shikan kenkyukai), led by Fujioka Nobukatsu, had earlier attacked middle-school
textbooks as “self-flagellating” and sought not only to end Japanese criticism of Japan’s wars in
the 1930s and 1940s but also to change public opinion in favor of future rearmament. They
attacked the Nagasaki museum curators’ plan to “include in their exhibit” photographs of “theNanjing Massacre, Unit 731 and their experiments with biological weapons, and the comfort
women.” In response, the Nagasaki museum removed some of the new exhibit.[1]So how did museums respond to these attacks on their patriotism? Japanese and American
museums have deployed many of the same strategies—some effective and some self-defeating—for meeting those challenges. Neither has found ideal ways of addressing these issues, although,as we explain, some directions seem to hold greater promise than others.
War and Peace Museums
Japan is home to over two hundred museums and exhibit halls that focus on the Asia-PacificWar, and the United States has well over one hundred The stances of these museums varyconsiderably within each country, reflecting the highly politicized and diverse nature of war
remembrance everywhere. In both nations, many museums unabashedly celebrate national
military actions. In Japan, this is particularly true of those managed by the Self Defense Forces(SDF). The Army, Navy and Air Force divisions of the SDF own and operate 130 so-called
Public Relations Facilities (koho shisetsu), usually inside their bases throughout Japan. Theirexhibits celebrate Japan’s war in China, which started in 1931 and expanded into the Pacific in
1941. In fact, the ultimate goal of the SDF museums seems to be to create an uninterrupted
celebratory history of the Japanese military from the establishment of the imperial armed forcesin the late nineteenth century through today. The most popular SDF facilities include “SailTower” at the Sasebo base in Nagasaki and the newest: the PR Center in Asaka City, Saitama,that opened in 2002, which offers virtual experiences of war to its visitors in the forms of flightand firing simulators, a “battle dress uniform” corner where visitors can try on military attire,and helicopters, tanks and other vehicles on which visitors selected by lotteries are invited toHein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States71

ride. .[2] These museums are comparable to such institutions as “the world’s largest and oldest
military aviation museum,” the United States Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base in Ohio, the 1991 California State Military Museum in Sacramento, and the National
Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg Texas, established by the Admiral Nimitz
Foundation. Founded by military units or veterans’ groups, these museums emphasize military
strategy, the heroism of the nation’s commanders and soldiers, and the ingenuity and sheer force
of its military technology.

Display at the Japan Army Self Defense Force, Asaka PR Center“Battle Dress Uniform” corner Asaka

Other museums reject the legitimacy of war altogether and condemn World War II in particular.
The oldest and best-attended of these, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, established inWar and Visual Culture

72

1955 by Hiroshima City, spreads anti-nuclear messages internationally. The organizers of thatmuseum were motivated by a desire to commemorate the victims of the atomic bomb, provide
evidence of their suffering, and work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. Impelled by theknowledge that the generations who experienced the war will soon be gone, a number of socalled “peace museums” opened in Japanese cities in the 1990s to record and preserve theexperiences of local fire-bombing victims and to pass on the message that war is a disastrous
way to solve disputes. These include the private Oka Masaharu Memorial Nagasaki Museum(Oka Masaharu Kinen Nagasaki Heiwa Shiryokan), notable for focusing primarily on Japan’s
war crimes in Korea and China and the travails of forced laborers from those areas. While there
is nothing dedicated to the cause of peace on the scale of the Hiroshima Museum in the UnitedStates, smaller institutions such as the Peace Museum in Chicago proclaim a similar message.
This kind of museum has endured the most controversy in Japan.

The Hiroshima Bridge that was the target of Enola Gay, August 8, 1945

The Atomic Dome in the Hiroshima Peace Park

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

73

Peace Osaka
The publicly funded Japanese municipal museum with perhaps the most profoundly self-criticalanalysis of the Asia-Pacific War is the Osaka International Peace Center, or Peace Osaka, which
opened in a corner of the Osaka Castle Park in September 1991. The museum evolved out of
long-term efforts by local citizens’ groups and news media to remember the impact of the war on
Osaka, efforts that included collecting, recording and exhibiting the air-raid experiences of local
residents. [3]Peace Osaka Exterior

The main objective of Peace Osaka was to educate contemporary local residents about theapproximately fifty American air-raid attacks that the city suffered during the last years of thewar. In order to explain why the city was attacked so many times, the planners agreed on an
exhibit that portrayed Japan as not only the victim but also the aggressor: it showed that while
the air-raids and the atomic bombs caused tremendous suffering, the war was the result ofJapan’s assaults in Asia. The exhibit also explained that Osaka Castle Park, in the heart of thecity, was used as a munitions factory during the war. While this information was absolutely
accurate, mention of it acknowledged that Osaka had been a military as well as a civilian target,
potentially justifying the American bombardment. In other words, the museum was establishedby local residents, many of whom had contributed to smaller exhibits since the 1970s, in order toinstitutionalize “collective remembrance,” built around testimony of local suffering due to thepolicies of both the U.S. and Japanese governments. These Osaka residents also wanted toincorporate remembrance of Asian suffering inflicted by the wartime Japanese into themuseum’s narrative. The fundamental message was that war should always be avoided.

War and Visual Culture74

Osaka Castle Park Map

When the museum opened, the same message was reflected in curatorial decisions. The first wall
panel sets the tone with its assertion that “Japanese people (nihon no kokumin) caused great
hardship to Asian and Pacific people. Japanese also suffered….We must work for global peace.”
The first of three sections, Exhibit Room A, shows the Osaka air raids and how they affected
people’s daily lives through artifacts, replicas (including life-sized models of 1-ton bombs andincendiary bombs, which are the first objects to greet the visitor entering the room), film footage,
photographs, and artwork. Exhibit Room B examines the fifteen year war as experienced by
Japanese civilians and Asians who lived in the colonies and occupied territories. The exhibit
discusses such Japanese actions as the bombing of Chongqing and the Nanjing Massacre, forwhich Japanese commanders were later convicted of war crimes at the Tokyo Tribunal, and also
other atrocities for which they were not prosecuted, such as the activities of the biowarfare Unit
731. The final exhibit expands the message that peace everywhere is the paramount goal byaddressing contemporary conflicts throughout the world, the ongoing danger of nuclear weapons,and environmental degradation. Business Manager Otsuki Kazuko explained that curators
believed that no visitor could attain full understanding of the Osaka war experience without
viewing both Exhibit Rooms A and B, emphasizing the extent to which Osaka was economically,
politically, and socially part of the Japanese Empire during the war years. [4]Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

75

Floor Plan, Room B, Peace Osaka

Exhibit Room B, Peace Osaka

There was no outspoken opposition to this portrayal of the war until 1996, when conservative
groups, after their success in Nagasaki, turned their attention to Peace Osaka. Just as with theNagasaki case, conservative media outlets including the Sankei newspaper and journals Shokun
and Shukan shincho published numerous articles penned by members of right-leaning groups
with such innocuous names as the Japan Policy Institute (Nihon seisaku kenkyu sentaa) and theJapan Conference (Nippon kaigi), as well as by members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP),
which had dominated postwar politics since its creation in 1955 but had recently been forced toaccept a coalition government. On October 18, the LDP caucus of the Upper House published a“Research report on Japanese war museums (Zenkoku no senso hakubutsukan ni kansuru chosahokokusho),” in which they criticized Peace Osaka as a “center for propaganda activities basedon a politically biased ideology Stepping up the campaign, in March 1997, Osaka-based
members of several of these neonationalist groups formed the Group to Correct the Biased
Exhibits of War-Related Material (Senso shiryo no henko tenji o tadasu kai or Tadasu kai forshort), whose exclusive focus seems to be attacking Peace Osaka. [5]War and Visual Culture76

Although the planners of Peace Osaka had done an excellent job of addressing difficult issues
honestly, involving knowledgeable experts in creating the exhibits, and mobilizing public
opinion when creating the museum, for reasons explained below, the staff later failed to draw on
any of these resources in response to the attacks. Their other major mistakes have been to avoid
direct discussion of the issues at the heart of the conflict and to try to avoid controversies—
particularly criticism from the right—at any cost. For example, unlike other peace museums
where volunteers discuss the exhibits with visitors, Peace Osaka has prohibited their own oral
history narrators from talking about subjects other than their personal experiences. It has also
withdrawn educational worksheets that it had created for school children after receiving criticism
that they were “too biased.” The museum staff, buffeted between competing views has adopted adefensive posture to maintain the status quo as their main strategy for brokering among them.
Strategies for Managing Controversy
Other museums have handled competing pressures in different ways. One common, albeit
unsatisfying, strategy is to limit war-related exhibits to uncontroversial aspects of any given
subject, with only tiny hints of larger interpretive contexts and minimal reference to hot-button
issues. This often means focusing on the experience of civilians and emphasizing daily life on
the home front or front lines rather than battle strategy. One American example is the 1995
exhibit at the National Museum of American history on “World War II: Sharing Memories”
which opened immediately after the Enola Gay fracas. Much of that exhibit focused on the homefront, particularly the contributions women made to the war by planting vegetable gardens,
buying government bonds, and working at jobs previously held by men.

WWII U.S. Government poster: winning the war on the home front

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

77

Even the sections on the military focused on foot-soldiers rather than generals and made thepoint that soldiers’ chief concerns were often unconnected to national policy. The section on“The Things They Carried” showed the contents of individual soldiers’ pockets.[6] In anotherexample of minimal analysis on a controversial topic, the National D-Day Museum, which
opened in 2000 in New Orleans, limited its discussion of the use of the atomic bomb to a photoof the mushroom cloud and the bland observation that its use “changed the world forever[7]In Japan, everyone can agree that life was very difficult for both civilians and soldiers during thewar. There is far less agreement on four related issues, however. First, some Japanese wish toblame wartime suffering on the policies of the government, which started a bloody war it could
not win with little concern for the well-being of its own national subjects, while others focus
only on the enemy airplanes, warships, and guns that were the direct cause of most Japanesecasualties. Secondly, Japanese differ on how to think about the responsibilities of ordinary
citizens for the war. Third, some Japanese have long argued that all Japanese should recognize
the suffering they caused others as well as themselves, while others find that topic inappropriate
for history education directed at school children, because it interferes with the task of cultivating“a healthy nationalism.” Finally, some Japanese believe that postwar peace and prosperity was
only possible because the wartime leadership was defeated and discredited, while others argue
for a more positive legacy from the war years. The solution to bridging these differences is often
an exhibit focused only on daily life of ordinary citizens with little reference to these difficult
issues.

Women getting rations in wartime Japan

Two museums in Tokyo, both funded by the state for the consolation of groups that were
adversely affected by the war, employ this tight focus: the Showakan in Kudanshita and thePeace Memorial Prayer and Exhibit Hall (Heiwa Kinen Tenji Shiryokan), located on the 31st
floor of the Sumitomo Building in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The mandate to “console” survivors has
sharply limited the scope of both museums. Initially named “Memorial Hall for the Children of
the War Dead” (Senbotsusha Iji Kinenkan), and later “Peace Prayer Hall in Commemoration of
the War Dead” (Senbotsusha Tsuito Heiwa Kinenkan), the Showakan was intended as amemorial to comfort senso iji, or children who lost their fathers during the war. The project was
initiated in 1979 as the state’s indirect response to requests for monetary reparations from thethen-grown children whose fathers had died as soldiers. These “war orphans” who pushed forWar and Visual Culture

78

reparations are members of the politically powerful Japan Association of Bereaved Families(Nihon Izokukai), which propagates a very positive view of the war. Former Prime Minister
Hashimoto Ryutaro, who also served as president of the Japan Association of Bereaved Families,
fought for this project out of his belief that “the current prosperity of Japan was built upon thepain and suffering of its people during and immediately after the war,” endorsing the view thatthe war was beneficial and justified the willing and valued sacrifice of its soldiers. Yet theShowakan concentrates entirely on civilians.

Showakan exhibit: Family prepares for air raidThis is because one of the museum’s initial regulations had stipulated that the exhibits show aslittle war as possible – a decision reached by the planning committee after contemplating therequest by the Association of Bereaved Families that the exhibit avoid giving the slightest
impression that the fathers of the senso iji had died unnecessary deaths or behaved less thanhonorably.[8]The Shinjuku museum is based on a clashing premise: that war is never worth the suffering.
Ironically, however, it sends the same message as does the Showakan because both institutions
were designed to console survivors by publicizing the story of their suffering. The Shinjuku
Peace Hall was established in 2000 to “console three groups of people by educating the generalpublic about the difficulties they faced”: soldiers who are not eligible for pensions since they did
not fulfill their service requirements (mostly because they were drafted near the end of the war);
Japanese detained in Siberia after the war; and civilian repatriates from Manchuria and otherparts of East Asia. The Exhibit Hall is meant to teach visitors about the hardships these groups
experienced through its display of artifacts and visual aids. While the Fund was established in
response to complaints by the three groups, each of whom felt they were not receiving thereparations they deserved, it is oriented more toward publicity than monetary reparation. The
exhibit has a rather peculiar format, of three sections, each with precisely the same layout,
organization, and numbers of items displayed; a result of the effort the organizers took to beabsolutely fair.

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

79

Diorama of repatriates in Shinjuku Peace Memorial Prayer and Exhibit Hall

Curator Furudate Yutaka has defined the most important goal of the Exhibit Hall as pleasing all
visitors, by which he means all Japanese visitors. [9] He believes that the displays must not havea narrative or present a particular viewpoint that might offend anyone. His strategy is to
drastically limit contextual explanations of the chosen topics—including such questions as why
so many Japanese civilians were living in Manchuria in 1945. Furudate believes that if he strips
away all interpretive framing of the exhibit, which is likely to provoke controversy, and reduces
it to only the materials directly relating to the daily lives of foot-soldiers, Siberian prisoners, andcivilians trapped in China, the enormity of their suffering will convey the anti-war message hehopes to send. While some context is provided in the brief timeline presented at the entrance ofthe hall, the exhibits themselves focus on artifacts and personal narratives in order to convey thetypical experience of each group. The one strong perspective that does emerge—precisely
because it is not controversial--is that war causes great suffering. The result is that his museum inmany ways closely resembles the Showakan exhibit, even though the Exhibit Hall’s planners andcore constituencies are far less vocally supportive of the war than is the Association of Bereaved
Families. Neither museum feels politically free to state its philosophical position boldly, andboth concentrate on the same limited subjects, hoping that the public will draw likemindedconclusions or at least will refrain from attacking the museum staff down the road.
A second common strategy for avoiding controversy in both countries has been to present a
pastiche of individual experiences rather than one overarching narrative. Many curators ofhistory exhibits now evoke a variety of personal memories and images among museum goers
without trying to integrate them completely—collecting memories rather than collectivizingthem. This approach, which tries to extend the range of individual perspectives as much as

War and Visual Culture

80

possible without losing a sense of the representativeness of each interviewee, was pioneered inliterary form for World War II by Studs Terkel in The “Good War”, and his vision is now
reproduced in many other artistic forms, museum exhibits among them. Such a collection ofindividually distinct memories is often a conscious political act that asserts the humanity andindividuality of people who were persecuted as an undifferentiated group, as with the UnitedStates Holocaust Memorial Museum’s videotapes of the recollections of survivors.
This strategy has been particularly useful for acknowledging the sensitive history of race
relations in the United States. Even curators who fervently wish to avoid any controversy can nolonger choose one white soldier to stand in for everyone; the simple act of organizing an exhibit
as a collection of varied stories immediately highlights the specific experiences of non-whites.
Yet often exhibits go farther because many curators, like many other Americans, now see thestruggle for racial equality as central to the American story. American museum exhibits on
World War II now routinely discuss what the D-Day Museum calls the “lamentable American
irony of World War II,” that the armed forces were racially segregated throughout the war. Thisis a huge development fueled by African-American insistence that their struggle for equal
treatment not be forgotten. Similarly, new attitudes about race made possible long-term exhibits
such as “A More Perfect Union” at the National Museum of American History which opened in
1987 and treated wartime internment of Japanese Americans as a violation of civil rights thatdiminished constitutional protections for all Americans, not just for those of Japanesedescent.[10]The Army censored this photo because it showed African American Soldiers on burial detail, as usual, and
the Army was sensitive to criticism that this assignment was race-based.

Like their American counterparts, many Japanese museums, including the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum, Peace Osaka, the Okinawa Prefectural Museum, and the two Tokyo
museums, provide written or videotaped personal testimony for visitors’ perusal. Some of theseHein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States81

museums, including Peace Osaka and Showakan, also encourage elderly volunteers to talk tovisitors about their experiences within the walls of the museums. The Hiroshima Museum has
space for temporary exhibits, which typically focus on individual life stories and testimony,
including a 2004 show about school children mobilized for war work. Yet these museums
generally present personal narratives as illustrations of a typical experience rather than using
them to sketch out the full range of individual experiences. The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb
Museum is a significant exception, in that it has incorporated into its video collection the oral
narratives of non-Japanese survivors, including forced laborers from Korea.
Curators and Their Audiences
In the United States, the controversy over the Enola Gay exhibit spurred museum professionals
to intensify a process already underway: reexamining their practices in order to more effectively
interact with the public they served. Museum professionals inside and outside the Smithsonian
learned from the mistakes made at the Air and Space Museum. As one curator put it, “The Enola
Gay controversy moved the Smithsonian from being a 19th century organization to a 20th
century one. It became more professional and sophisticated about meeting public and scholarly
expectations.” Another Smithsonian curator concurred, “In the post Enola Gay world of history
museums, curators must think increasingly carefully about the tone of exhibitions. Once we did
not much worry about what the public brought with them to exhibits, but that is not the caseanymore. The public is demanding to be considered a partner in the creating of meaning. This isgood, but the trick is how to share authority with your public while not simply abandoning thejob of the curator and the historian.”[11] The essential point is that museum professionals
rethought their relationship with their audiences as one in which curators and visitors collaborate
in creating the narratives they use to understand the world around them.
Many of the most articulate and thoughtful museum professionals have concluded that if
museums wish to continue be places where people can create meaning for themselves, curators
must give up the idea that there is a single correct interpretation of an event as major andcomplex as World War II. They now believe that museum exhibits should be open-ended andalso should reflect a multiplicity of views. As Lonnie Bunch, now Director of the National
Museum of African American History and Culture, who has written extensively on strategies forhandling political controversy over exhibits, explained, “Museums must not look to educate
visitors to a singular point of view. Rather the goal is to create an informed public.” Leslie
Bedford argues that “the public has the right to participate” and the “days of an authoritative
curatorial voice are gone.” Museums, in this view, “are in the business of creating environmentsthat facilitate the construction of appropriate meanings that engage people in the stuff of science,
art, and history.”[12]Another way to describe this approach is that curators, after recognizing that people have a rightto challenge curators’ claims to determine how to interpret the past, have reconceived theexhibition as something that develops out of interaction with the audience. As Lisa Roberts
argues, “Interpretation is in part an act of negotiation—between the values and knowledges
upheld by museums and those that are brought in by visitors.” Conceptually, the goal is to “sharethe job of interpretation, of creating meaning, with our visitors” while at the same time,
challenging them to think in fresh ways about their past. But most of all, as Leslie Bedford

War and Visual Culture82

argues, it is “important to realize how profoundly people want to participate and leave theirmark, and make sense of things in their own way.” Rather than giving up all control, sharing thejob of interpretation with the public requires explaining far more explicitly than in the past how
curators choose topics, themes, and objects for display.[12]This attitude is less prevalent in Japan, in part because most peace museum staff members are
not professional museologists, especially those at institutions that are funded and operated bycities and prefectures. Rather, most are career civil servants, who just happened to be appointed
to the curatorial division of a peace museum as part of their regular rotation through local
government. These people, whose other appointments typically include such jobs as issuingvehicle licenses and managing national health insurance, usually have little prior knowledge of
operating a museum or curating exhibits, let alone professional post-graduate training. Civil
servants’ appointments typically last three to five years, after which they move to completely
different positions. Moreover, these local officials lack expertise in the history of the war,
making it difficult for them to articulate an effective defense of their institutions.
One way that new attitudes about the relationship between museums and their audiences haschanged exhibit practice in the United States is that American museums now typically provide
materials for visitors to both add their own comments and read those of earlier visitors. This has
worked well in exhibits related to WWII. Indeed, this was the most popular aspect of World War
II: Sharing Memories. Space for public debate was also a major feature of a 2004 on-line exhibit
at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, based on Yamahata Yosuke’s photographs of Nagasaki
taken just after the atomic bombing there.
While Japanese museums also typically give visitors opportunities to provide feedback, usuallyin the form of questionnaires and/or notebooks located at the end of exhibits, most museums dolittle with the accumulated information. Nor do visitors have the opportunity to read thecomments by other visitors. In the case of Peace Osaka, the staff is reluctant to incorporate
comments for fear of generating controversy requiring changing the exhibits, and currently use
the questionnaire sheets only to catch simple mistakes, such as incorrect dates, names, or English
translations.
Hiroshima, by contrast, uses feedback from visitors to create a controlled dialog among curators.
The museum staff gathers questionnaire sheets, notebooks, and exit interviews of visitors to themuseum, and circulates the collected information internally. Employees also shadow selected
visitors to understand their movement patterns and conversations as they go through themuseum. Their findings are then used to modify the exhibits. These are standard methodologies
used by museums all around the world and it is not surprising that Hiroshima, one of the few
museums to have professionally trained staff, has most fully adopted them.[12]Confronting Irreconcilable Differences
Yet, while essential, reshaping the museum-audience relationship into a more collaborative
endeavor between museums and the public will never be enough because there is no
undifferentiated “public” in either America or Japan The challenge is not just to articulate
multiple viewpoints or extend the right to participate in exhibit-making. The more difficult andHein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

83

important task is developing strategies by which curators can negotiate between irreconcilable
groups within the public–something that many museum professionals have yet to fully
acknowledge. Moreover, whenever one group demands sole control over interpretation, it is
impossible to satisfy everyone. If, as increasing numbers of museum professionals believe, theentire public has a right to participate in ascribing meaning, groups demanding monopoly control
cannot be accommodated without invalidating the entire project. This is a dilemma difficult toresolve.
More precisely, in both nations, the ugliest fights have occurred when the audience in question
was young people. Rather than allowing them to reach their own conclusions about the war, both
American critics of the Enola Gay exhibit and Japanese ones of Peace Osaka demanded soleinterpretive authority in order to shape the attitudes of young people about the war. American
veterans who opposed the original Enola Gay exhibit were so insistent because they feared that
introducing questions about the moral or strategic value of using the atomic bombs and evensimply recognizing Japanese suffering would lead younger American viewers to think of theAllies and Axis as morally equivalent combatants. The central issue was whether displaying
civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a sympathetic manner—people who indisputably had
been harmed by American state action—was dangerous for American children. Tom Crouch
recalls that one of the key moments in the negotiation process with the American Legion
occurred over precisely this point. A Vietnam-era vet told Crouch that he had given the first
script of the exhibit to his 13-year-old daughter to read and she had been horrified by American
use of the bomb on civilians. The veteran then told Crouch “I can’t let you mount an exhibit that
does that.” [13] This individual, like his allies, feared what young people would do withinformation that he has had for decades, showing the vastness of the gulf they imagine exists
between the generations.
In Japan, too, most controversies about war memory focus on shaping the attitudes of young
people, as evidenced by the perennially thorny issue of textbook representations of the war.
Initially World War II museums were peripheral to this issue because so many of them wereoriginally conceived of as a religious memorial to the dead and/or a service to survivors. Indeed,
many of the war-related museums in Japan combine the function of a religious or secularmemorial (or both—the line is usually blurred) with the educational mission of a museum. This
combination is not unknown in the United States, where prominent examples include the UnitedStates Holocaust Memorial Museum and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, but is morecommon in Japan.
Japan’s oldest war museum, the Yushukan Museum, is the most famous of these memorials andthe most fully situated within Shinto ritual. This museum is annexed to Yasukuni Shrine, thecontroversial “war shrine” that memorializes all Japanese who died in uniform since the Meiji
Restoration, including war criminals from the Asia-Pacific War. Those war criminals, convicted
at the Tokyo Trials, were belatedly enshrined in 1978, in an earlier postwar attempt to control themuseum’s representation of the war. Like many other Shinto shrines, the museum exhibits thebelongings of the people memorialized there as a religious practice.[14]War and Visual Culture

84

Yushukan Atrium exhibits a Zero Fighter
Yet many of the state-sponsored and private peace museums also have an ambiguous memorial
function, signified by the term “kinenkan” or “prayer hall” in their names. As indicated in theirfounding statements, these museums originated out of a project to “memorialize and honor (ireikensho)” the deceased. Peace Osaka, for example, is a “site to memorialize the war victims of
Osaka The museum fulfills that memorial function in part by collecting the names of all the local
war dead in order to set their souls at rest, like the explicitly religious Yasukuni shrine. The
Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum similarly states that one of its goals is to “mournfor those who perished during the war,” while the Himeyuri Peace Memorial Museum was built
because the survivors of the Himeyuri corps (female students mobilized as nurses during theBattle of Okinawa) believe that working toward peace is the best way to console the souls of
their colleagues who lost their lives in 1945. This responsibility to the souls of the deadintensifies the problem created by defeat and helps explain why many museum officials andvisitors feel uneasy about exploring the proposition that the dead gave--or were forced to give-their lives for a useless cause. The Okinawa Peace Museum addressed this issue in a unique andpolitically powerful way: by naming everyone who died in the Battle of Okinawa, regardless ofnationality, and so separating the issue of commemorating the dead from nationalist celebration.

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

85

Filipino Boy, Juan Castillo, wounded by Japanese bayonet

Interestingly, both the 1995 exhibit World War II: Sharing Memories, and the Showakan wereoriginally designed primarily for the sake of elderly visitors who remembered the war. “TheThings they Carried” section of “Sharing Memories,” in particular, was designed to encourageolder American visitors to reflect on their own lives by presenting collages that conveyed
individual differences within a common experience. The curators hoped that the objects
themselves would lead veterans to recall their own lucky talismans and wartime gear. Similarly,
the Showakan’s Curatorial Division manager, Watanabe Kazuhiko, explains that the initial
objective of the hall was not peace education, but a display of everyday artifacts from the war
and occupation years, in order to provide a “therapeutic effect” for the now-mature senso iji
visitors by reminding them of benign aspects of their past. Most people agreed that older people
already understand the context of the artifacts and assumed that they had the right to draw theirown conclusions about the exhibit, a generosity not extended to young people.
Yet, as it turns out, an increasingly large share of Japanese history museum-goers are kids onschool trips. For example, 65 percent of Peace Osaka’s visitors are elementary and junior highschool children on field trips. Echoing the anxieties of their American counterparts, Japanesecritics of peace museums fear young Japanese will accept what they think of as a “Tokyo Trials
view of history,” one that indicted Japan’s war without recognizing either Japan’s legitimate
complaints in the 1930s or acknowledging the fact that the United States, Britain, Germany,
indeed most major combatants, engaged in such behavior as aerial bombardment of civilians,
although only Japan and Germany were prosecuted for it after the war. They worry that young
Japanese will believe that Japan still carries a moral taint, and that this belief will keep themfrom asserting Japan’s global interests in the future.

War and Visual Culture

86

These exhibit designers are searching for a single unified narrative of the war that will convey tochildren an unambiguous message: that the war was a disaster for all involved, in the case of
Peace Osaka, and that Japanese fought for a noble cause, in the cases of the Showakan andYushukan. At the Air and Space Museum, the victorious critics forced the curators to acquiesce
to the message that the use of the atomic bombs in 1945 was both righteous and necessary. In
each example, the sharpest conflicts occurred when one group (sometimes inside the museum,sometimes outside) insisted that teaching patriotism required refusing to engage criticisms of
one’s own government. In this view, the state has the right—sometimes framed as the obligation- to present its own actions in the best possible light to its own younger citizens. Frequently thismeans withholding information that has been common knowledge for decades. Morefundamentally, in both nations these celebrants of state power deprive young people of theopportunity to engage exhibits through their own ethical and historical questions, leaving them
ill-equipped to face a complex and morally ambiguous world.
Museum exhibits on World War II have another largely neglected audience—international
visitors. Even though most debate assumes the primary audience is domestic, many museum
visitors come from overseas, particularly in major tourist locations such as Honolulu andHiroshima. Moreover, cities such as Washington and Osaka have substantial populations ofpermanent residents who hold foreign passports. Neither American nor Japanese museums havefully grappled with this fact, although Japanese museums try harder to accommodate foreign
visitors than do American ones. In general, Japanese must accommodate international opinion on
the topic of World War II far more than do Americans, reflecting greater American power in theworld. This imbalance, of course, is one important source of rightwing Japanese anxiety about
the attitudes of their younger compatriots.
One way museums accommodate foreigners is bilingual or multilingual signage and recordedmaterial. Both the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Yushukan have translated alltheir captions into English, and visitors can listen to the survivor testimony on computer
monitors in the Hiroshima museum in five languages. Other museums, such as Peace Osaka andthe Okinawa Peace Museum have translated key sections of their exhibits into English. The
Okinawan museum also posts a smaller portion of their exhibit in Korean and Chinese.
The Hiroshima Museum demonstrates its concern for international visitors in other ways. For
example, it offers no opinion on whether the United States committed a war crime by using theatomic bombs on civilians. The museum’s silence is almost certainly out of sensitivity to
American attitudes, because there is no controversy among Japanese on this point. In contrast to
the United States, few Japanese today view the use of the atomic bomb as an ambiguous moral
issue. The near-universal opinion there is that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki wereclearly war crimes under the definitions incorporated into law and applied retroactively in the
postwar Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Trials.
By contrast, American exhibits on World War II have not expanded their focus to encompass
foreigners in the same way that they have included the perspectives of American women,
African Americans, and Japanese Americans. Nor is it likely they could do so without sparking
criticism, since this sharp distinction between citizens and foreigners is obvious in many otheraspects of contemporary American life, including American history textbooks and American

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States87

responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks
The Enola Gay exhibit controversy suggests that Americans are not yet willing to take Japaneseopinions into consideration when designing exhibits about the war despite widespread American
demands that Japanese modify their war memories. Although many Americans think theHiroshima Peace Memorial Museum should include information about the attack on Pearl
Harbor to help explain why the atomic bombs were used almost four years later, they see no needfor the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor to include mention of the later devastation at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet, according to Yujin Yaguchi, many Japanese visitors would likejust that, not to diminish the losses in Hawai’i, but “to complete their sense of the narrative
framework of the war.” They do not visit Pearl Harbor out of nationalist pride. Rather, to them,
the key message is that war is a tragedy for everyone, and recognition that neither side emerged
unscathed best conveys that message[15]Pearl Harbor: USS Arizona after Japanese attack on December 7, 1941

Yet the well-established trends in museum practice described above can become equally
powerful tools for expanding American imaginations beyond their compatriots. First, the focus
on individual experience is easily extendable to include foreigners. In fact, the simple act ofshifting one’s imaginative focus to individuals rather than nation-sized protagonists makes thenationality of those individuals seem far less important then their participation in common
humanity. John Hersey pioneered this mental shift in his account of six individuals in his 1946
book, Hiroshima, which has had an enormous impact on American readers ever since. In asimilar spirit, the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, while unabashedly nationalist,
collects reminiscences of the war from all participants—including Japanese, Filipino, andChinese-- not just Americans.

War and Visual Culture

88

Hiroshima Memorial Museum exhibit on students working in central Hiroshima on August 8th, focusing onthem as individuals

Moreover, recognition of the humanity of Japanese-Americans automatically calls attention to
Japanese nationals, since immigrants were barred from becoming U.S. citizens because they
were not white. Most of them retained Japanese citizenship not because of loyalty to Japan but
because of racist discrimination. Moreover, some American citizens of Japanese descent weretrapped in Japan during the war, many of them in Hiroshima. They were treated as enemies byboth the American and Japanese governments. These issues all are reflected in the permanent
exhibit and collection of personal memories of the war at the Japanese American National
Museum in Los Angeles.

White Man’s Neighborhood: in the aftermath of Pearl HarborAnd, if racism is a problem when it occurs at home then surely it is a problem internationally.
Building on the pioneering work of John W. Dower in War Without Mercy, many Americans
now recognize that racism was a significant factor in both American and Japanese conduct
during the war. The National D-Day Museum devotes a section of its permanent exhibit to“racial stereotyping, demonization, and warfare in the Pacific Theater of World War II,”
acknowledging that racism played a large role in intensifying the violence on both sides of thatconflict.

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

89

Cartoon by David Low on display at the National D-Day Museum

Further, simply documenting the troubling history of global genocide, war crimes, state
terrorism, and systematic cruelty itself encourages comparative thinking, particularly about
instruments of mass death such as the atomic bombs. The process of defining and explaining
subjects necessarily involves abstraction and therefore a template for comparison. If bombing
civilians at Guernica or Shanghai was wrong, how exactly were Nagasaki and Hiroshimadifferent? One may conclude that they were, but simply going through the mental exercise
establishes criteria for comparison and judgment. Evidence that many Americans have alreadytaken such an imaginative journey for various aspects of state terrorism or war crimes is visible
in debates such as over whether genocide is taking place in the Darfur region of the Sudan,
including a discussion of “genocide emergency Darfur” on the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s
website, or over the propriety of reparations to African Americans for slavery. The concept of“holocaust” has been borrowed to describe actions as diverse as the Nanjing Massacre ofChinese by Japanese soldiers in 1937, the AIDS crisis among gay men in the 1980s, and legal
abortion in the United States since 1973, spurring much debate over principles of comparison.
The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience, a “world-wide network oforganizations and individuals dedicated to teaching and learning how historic sites and museums
can inspire social consciousness and action,” explicitly presents the subjects of children as
victims of war, state terrorism, human trafficking and slavery, and racism, among others, as
equivalent across national boundaries. This website links thirteen museums, including the
Terezin Memorial in the Czech Republic, the Gulag Museum at Perm-6 in Russia, the District
Six Museum in South Africa, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and theMartin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. While each of these museums focuses
on a specific history of persecution, by linking them as equivalent “sites of conscience,” theinternational coalition effectively uses the global technology of the world wide web to pose thequestion of comparability of experience across national borders.[16]Finally, to return to the history of American use of the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians in1945, many Americans have never been comfortable with the official A-bomb narrative because
it never fit well within the story of a nation that fights only for the right reasons when it must—

War and Visual Culture

90

or within a framework of proportionate retribution. Indeed, people come to look at the Enola
Gay airplane at the National Air and Space Museum because they already see it as a complex
symbol of many things. Robert R. Archibald, a former curator at the museum who spent several
hours eavesdropping on visitors at the eviscerated 1995 exhibit, reports that an American woman
struck up a conversation with a Japanese tourist, asking her, “How does it make you feel when
you look at this?” Soon a dozen people had joined them. As Archibald explains, “The ensuing
discussion was precisely the one that politicians and representatives of veterans’ organizations
worked so furiously to prevent. There was no demeaning of the sacrifices made by veterans nor
was there any question of their jubilation at the war’s end. Yet standing there in the shadows of
the Enola Gay, there was profound acknowledgment that this airplane had ushered in the atomic
age and the threat of unparalleled destruction.”[17]Precisely because the Enola Gay never has been a simple symbol of the end of the war, it nevercan become only that. If, as museum professionals now emphasize, visitors brings their own
meaning to exhibits, display of the Enola Gay will forever provide an invitation to debate themoral and strategic legitimacy of the use of the bomb in August 1945 even though the exhibit
itself attempts to assert only one point of view. As museum professionals now understand,precisely because those concerns are invoked but not addressed by the presenters of the airplane,
visitors will feel their absence and raise them over and over again.
Notes[1] Asahi News Oct. 25, 1993 and January 3, 1996. Kamata Sadao “Nagasaki genbaku shiryokan
no kagai tenji mondai, Kikan senso sekinin kenkyu 14 (Winter 1996), 22-31.
[2] Boei hakusho 12 nendo-ban, shiryo-hen: jieitai no koho shisetsu nado . Accessed May 27,
2005. Harada Keiichi, “Senso to heiwa no shiryo ni tsuite: Jieitai gokoku jinja no shiryokan
tanbo-ki,” Kikan senso sekinin 14 (Winter 1996):15-21.
[3] The Asahi newspaper started an annual exhibition in August 1975, as did the Yomiuri
newspaper. In 1977, groups such as “The Group to Record War Experiences (Senso taiken okiroku suru kai),” the Osaka branch of the “Japan China Friendship Association (Nitchu uko
kyokai),” and the “Osaka History Educators’ Association (Osaka Rekishi Kyoikusha Kyogikai),”collaborated to mount the exhibition series “War and ourselves (Watashitachi to senso).”[4] Otsuki Kazuko interview with Akiko Takenaka, February 3, 2005, Osaka.
[5] Koyama Hitoshi, “Peace Osaka mondai: saikin no keika ni tsuite,” Hisutoria 159 (April
1998), 133-136. Also Senso shiryo no kenko tenji ‘tadasu kai’ Osaka de Kessei, Sankei March 2,
1997l.
[6] Steven Lubar “Exhibiting Memories,” in Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at
the Smithsonian, Amy Henderson and Adrienne L. Kaeppler eds., (Washington, 1997), 15-27.
[7] See website of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans. Accessed June 22, 2004.

Hein and Takenaka: Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States

91[8] Tanaka Nobumasa, Senso no kioku” sono inpei no kozo: Kokuritsu senso memoriaru otoshite (Tokyo, 1997), 21-22. Ogawa Naotaro, “Showakan to sono shuhen,” Rekishi chiri kyoiku
597 (Aug. 1999), 98-102. For a brief account in English, see Ellen Hammond, “Commemoration
Controversies: The War, the Peace, and Democracy in Japan,” in Laura Hein and Mark Seldeneds., Living with the Bomb, M.E. Sharpe, 1997, 100-121. For Showakan, Watanabe Kazuhiro
interview with Akiko Takenaka, Tokyo, Jan. 26, 2005.
[9] Furudate Yutaka interview with Akiko Takenaka, Tokyo, January 30, 2005.
[10] Accessed June 3, 2005. This exhibit is now only on line.
[11] Quotes from Lonnie Bunch interview with Laura Hein, May 28, 2004 and Steven Lubar“Exhibiting Memories,” p. 24.
[12] Quotes from Lonnie Bunch, “Fighting the Good Fight,” Museum News, 21 (March-April
1995), 32-35, 58-62 and Leslie Bedford, Director, Leadership in Museum Education Program,
Banks Street College of Education, interview with Laura Hein, May 21, 2004.
[13] Tom Crouch, interview with Laura Hein, June 29, 2004.
[14] John Breen, Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory, Japan Focus, June 3, 2005.
[15] Japanese Visitor Experiences at the Arizona Memorial,” Yujin Yaguchi, in Laura Hein andDaizaburo Yui, Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, Center for
Pacific and American Studies, The University of Tokyo, 2003, pp. 138-151.
[16] Available here.
[17] Robert Archibald, “Epilogue to ‘The Last Act,’” Museum News November-December 1996,
pp. 22-23, 56-57, quote p. 57
This essay is an abridged version of “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United Statessince 1995,” Pacific Historical Review, 76.1 (February 2007): 61-94 . Copyright © 2007 by the
Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association. Reprinted by permission of The
University of California Press, Journals and Digital Publishing. Posted at Japan Focus on July20, 2007.
Laura Hein is a professor of Japanese history at Northwestern University and a Japan Focus
coordinator. The Japanese translation of Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture
and Expertise in 20th Century Japan is being brought out by Iwanami Press in July 2007 as Riso
aru hitobito to chikara aru kotoba—Ouchi Hyoe guruupu to kodo.
Akiko Takenaka teaches architectural history and theory in the Department of the History of Art
at the University of Michigan. She is the author of “Architecture for Mass-Mobilization: The
Chureito Memorial Construction Movement, 1939-1945,” in Alan Tansman ed., The Culture ofJapanese Fascism (Duke University Press, forthcoming). She is currently working on a bookWar and Visual Culture
manuscript on the history and politics of Yasukuni Shrine (tentatively titled Yasukuni:
Nationalism, Violence, Memory).

92

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

93“Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial: Renovating War Memory in Nanjing and Tokyo”
Jeff Kingston
August 22, 2008
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jeff-Kingston/2859
The Nanjing Massacre (also called the Nanjing Atrocity or Incident) is a muchcontested historical event that has generated heated debates among historians and thegeneral public on questions ranging from the validity of the reported number of victims tocriticism of some documents as having been fabricated. (For a discussion of these issues,see Joshua A. Fogel, “Response to Herbert P. Bix, ‘Remembering the Nanking Massacre,’”Japan Focus). The Nanjing Massacre has become a site of “competing narratives” between
China and Japan, since it was mobilized to legitimize an “official” history of each nation, andthis is the underlying issue at stake. The Nanjing Massacre Memorial’s (hereafter NMM)
presentation of the victimization of Chinese people by Japanese militaries has beenchallenged by the Japanese government. By re-examining historical debates on the incident
in the context of recent China-Japan relations, the author shows how the memory of war isconstructed in the newly renovated NMM and how the memorial has further encouraged
antagonistic attitudes between Japanese and Chinese citizens.
The current conflict between China and Japan over the NMM, however, is notentirely shaped by a state invoking patriotism from its own citizens. It has also been
influenced by small yet powerful interest groups who mobilize media to generate blatantnationalist sentiments among the public, sometimes more vigorously than the government
wishes. By looking at the museum’s display of artifacts, documents, and statistical data, thisessay inquires into the way state patriotism and popular nationalism are entwined to
produce monolithic views of history.

War and Visual Culture

94

Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial: Renovating War Memory in Nanjing and Tokyo
Jeff Kingston
On a scorching July 7, 2008, officers of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces visited Nanjing for an
artillery demonstration, a visit barely mentioned in the Chinese media even though it was thefirst time Japanese soldiers had returned to the scene of the crime since Japan surrendered in
1945. Unlike in recent years, there were no special commemoration rites on this anniversary of
the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge incident. This reflected the Chinese leadership’s decision to turndown the heat on history in the wake of President Hu Jintao’s spring 2008 visit to Japan and thesubsequent inking of an agreement on gas field development in disputed maritime territory near
the contested Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands. [1]Indeed, since Prime Minister Koizumi left office in 2005, the Chinese government has madeimprovement of bilateral ties a priority. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Japan in April 2007
and made a conciliatory speech lavishing praise on Japan’s post-WWII peaceful development,
expressing gratitude for Japan’s generous assistance to China and acknowledging Japan’s
apologies for wartime aggression. Televising this speech in China indicates that the state istrying to calm widespread anti-Japanese animosity among the people. Leaders in both nations
reckon that too much is at stake to hold the bilateral state relationship hostage to the past, but thepolitical context in which war memory is contested remains fluid. Whether the Chinese
leadership can insulate contemporary relations from popular anger over the shared past remains
uncertain and depends on factors beyond its control.
In the recent past, survivors gathered at Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial (NMM) to bear witness tothe suffering of victims, tapping into and elaborating on the narrative of national humiliation thatis central to national identity in modern China, a nation that keenly recalls its bainian guochi,“one hundred years of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers. [2] Now, as China celebrates
its debut as a major power with the staging of the Olympics and as it works to repair relations
with Japan, the state seeks to shift the national humiliation narrative to the backburner. Many
people, however, remain vigilant supporters of this narrative, constraining the leadership’s
diplomatic and reconciliation initiatives. Outbursts in 2004 at the Asia Cup soccer tournament
hosted by China and on the streets of Shanghai in 2005 suggest that anti-Japanese sentiments area potent factor keeping the state’s reconciliation initiatives on a short leash and subject to public
scrutiny and criticism. Patriotic education in China focusing on Japan’s wartime misdeeds andthe CCP’s crucial role in defeating the Japanese ensures that younger Chinese are aroused overthis history. The combination of this patriotic education and the actions and words of Japan’s
conservative elite convince many Chinese that Japan remains unrepentant and evasive about its
war responsibility, thus limiting the ability of the state to maneuver and compromise overhistory.
In light of these contemporary concerns, noncommemoration of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
in 2008 is striking given that the exchange of shots in 1937 served as a pretext for Tokyo tolaunch the large-scale invasion that ignited the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. Later that year,
on December 13, 1937, Japanese troops entered Nanjing and unleashed a reign of terror,
executing POWs and civilians, raping women by the thousands while burning and looting thecity. The rampage extended over the next six weeks, leaving the once grand capital of China ashattered and smoldering husk. [3]Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

Facade of the new NMM

Bronzes in front of NMM depicting victims caught up in the Japanese maelstrom.

95

War and Visual Culture

96

Mother and dead child in bronze nearly as tall as the NMM.

Competing Narratives
Nationalist narratives of war memory in Japan and Çhina have recently been refurbished.
Renovation of the Yûshûkan Museum, on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine where Japan’s war
dead are venerated, was completed at the end of 2006 and renovation of the NMM wascompleted at the end of 2007. The NMM draws attention to the horrors inflicted in ways that arebound to make Japanese visitors uncomfortable. The rapt crowds gathering around some of themore gruesome displays attest to the allure of gore, and may well tap into and inflame antiJapanese sentiments. But whether this translates into a nationalism the state can mobilize insupport of its agenda is hardly certain. While emphasizing the barbarous actions of the Japanese
invaders, the central message the NMM seeks to convey—a plaque near the beginning of theexhibit spells this out—is that China must modernize and grow powerful and rich because it isbackward countries that endure such indignities and horrors. To get rich is not only glorious, it isalso the basis for security.

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

97

Never forget national humiliation. Group photos are a common sight at the NMM.

Based on my conversations with Chinese visitors, it would be mistaken to assume that everyone
embraces this message uncritically in its entirety. The presence of the sign signifies the concernthat visitors might ‘miss’ this message. Whether visitors take their cue from the state is hardly
certain and overlooks ways in which the narrative of war memory is contested in China within
the leadership and between the state and the people. The more than10 million visitors to the
NMM since it opened in 1985 attest to its popularity, but it would be a mistake to assume that all
visitors come to learn about and reflect on history; there are groups who pass through the facility
as casual tourists seeing the famous sights of Nanjing, stopping to pause for group photo sessions
outdoors—photos inside are prohibited—sometimes longer than they spend absorbing thedisplays. It is also possible that many diaspora Chinese, attracted to the “forgotten holocaust”
theme in Iris Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking (1997), share the outrage she felt when she
visited the NMM in ways that may overlap, but also differ from those of Chinese residents in
China where the politics of identity resonate differently. A Taiwanese professor I met by chance
confided that even though he bears no grudges, the NMM is a welcome recognition of theatrocities committed against ‘his’ people by a regime that had long overlooked this dark chapter
in favor of trumpeting its own heroic victories against the Japanese.
Central to my argument is that monolithic views of war memory in China and Japan miss theways that these narratives are contested not only among nations, but also among the citizens ofeach nation. As Phil Deans points out for China, “ …an important distinction must be madebetween the state-sanctioned discourse on patriotism and the popular mass discourse on
nationalism. ‘Patriotism’ (aiguozhuyi) here is an official position, approved of and supported by
the CCP, whereas nationalism (minzuzhuyi) may go beyond the state’s approved and preferredboundaries of discourse.” [4]Tokyo and Nanjing are only three hours distant by plane, but in terms of public history and war
memory they are poles apart. Yet there are also forces working toward reconciliation over theWar and Visual Culture

98

shared history of China and Japan. The 2006 establishment of a bilateral Sino-Japanese history
panel to develop a mutually acceptable narrative, sixteen years after a similar Korea-Japan panel
was launched, is a state-led gambit to shape public discourse over history. However, this panel
seems unlikely to resolve fundamental disputes over what happened and why, or to muzzle
discordant voices in either country.
Although the political leadership in both nations has decided that contemporary relations should
not be held hostage to history, and are in fence-mending overdrive, several Chinese told me that
there is little popular support in their country for such efforts. The emergence of history activists
in China from the mid-1980s means that the state is no longer able to turn down the volume on
history as effectively as it could in the past. Indeed, popular outbursts about historicalcontroversies undermine and circumscribe state initiatives. As one Nanjing-based scholar
explains, reconciliation must be based on recognition of what happened and there are too many
troubling signs that such recognition is absent among too many Japanese. Yasukuni Shrine inTokyo is ground zero for this selective amnesia and a compelling symbol of Japan’s incomplete
repentance and inadequate contrition.
The narrative of Nanjing in 1937-38 on display at the renovated Yûshûkan Museum on the
grounds of Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a lesson in the politics of war memory. [5] There one
can view a video of Japanese troops raising their arms while bellowing a collective “banzai”
from atop Nanjing’s city wall that abruptly cuts to a scene of a soldier ladling out soup for theelderly and young while the narrator explains that the Japanese troops entered the city andrestored peace and harmony. Throughout the exhibit, Japan’s invasion of China is portrayed as a
campaign to quell Chinese terrorism, a post-9/11 narrative that demonstrates just how much thepresent impinges on the past. At the Yûshûkan, there is no mention of invasion, aggression,
massacres or atrocities committed by Japanese troops in China, or, for that matter, of Japan’s
defeat in the war. Indeed, Japanese suffering is the only suffering on display.

Entrance of the NMM

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

99

A family fleeing in hope of reaching safety.

Visitors confront the iconic 300,000-the number of massacre victims claimed by the Chinese government
throughout the exhibits.

Back to the Inferno
Nanjing’s new Massacre Memorial unveiled at the end of 2007 is a sleek but somber tomb-likestructure fronted by a moat and several bronze statues depicting the suffering endured by thosecaught up in the Japanese maelstrom. As one passes the turnstile—admission became free after
local protesters complained the museum was profiting from others’ trauma—eyes are drawn

War and Visual Culture100

across an expanse of gravel to a long black marble wall flanked on the left by a towering cement
cross decorated with the dates of the massacre and a large bell on the right. On the wall theiconic number 300,000 is emblazoned and incised in several languages. This is a recurrent image
throughout the exhibit, one that insists on the number of victims. Inside there is a chamber wherevisitors can hear the amplified sound of a drop of water every twelve-seconds, said to be thefrequency of death during Nanjing’s six-week ordeal. My Chinese companions thought that a bit
hokey, but to me it provided a refreshingly subtle contrast to the screams of torture one hears
visiting the old Seodaemun jail in Seoul once run by Korea’s colonial masters.
Visitors descend into the museum, a mood-transforming experience as the past is exhumed andthe inferno relived. Down the walkway visitors first confront a replica of the city walls with thesounds of bombardment, air raid sirens wailing, anti-aircraft guns blazing and a video of Japan’s
attacking bombers. From this sensory assault, one proceeds to a tranquil darkened room with areflecting pond shimmering with electric “candles” over which projected images of victims’
faces float towards the visitor, beneath a ceiling glowing with the talismanic 300,000, as a bellsolemnly tolls.

Projected faces of victims float across a pond shimmering with candles beneath a glowing reminder of thedeath tally.

A sign explains: “A human holocaust: An Exhibit of the Nanking Massacre Perpetrated by theJapanese Invaders.” Here, Iris Chang’s legacy resonates loudly as the NMM appropriates her
central and controversial metaphor; the subtitle of her book is: “The Forgotten Holocaust”. The
NMM ensures it is no longer forgotten. Interestingly, the holocaust theme was absent from theoriginal NMM. The displays of photographs, newspaper articles, diary excerpts and artifacts
trace the three hundred kilometer trail of sorrow and pillage from Shanghai to Nanjing, with avideo of the aerial bombing projected overhead. What happened to the citizens of Nanjing, andto captured and surrendered Chinese soldiers, are richly featured, leaving visitors in no doubt
about the scale of the destruction as the Imperial Armed Forces raped, looted and burned theirKingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

101

way from the Shanghai littoral all the way to Nanjing. What happened there then is understoodhere as a culmination and concentration of the malevolence witnessed all along the invasionroute. Perhaps responding to the Yûshûkan’s post-9/11 narrative, and with far greater
justification, the NMM portrays Japanese troops as terrorists.

The massacre remembered at the NMM

Bronze attesting to a common crime committed by the Japanese troops in Nanjing and elsewhere.

War and Visual Culture

102

Chinese father and son look at bronze depicting familiar sight in December 1937 of relative carrying deadand maimed relatives away.

One unexpected display shows the Kuomintang (KMT) forces that defended and then abruptly
abandoned the capital, leaving its remaining denizens to their fate. This display was not in theoriginal NMM, only appearing from the mid-1990s. Nanjing was the Nationalist capital and themassacre was, therefore, a story in which the CCP has no role. War memory during the Mao era
featured examples of heroic resistance by the CCP, so Nanjing was pushed to the margins of war
memory discourse. Nanjing based scholars recall that a study on the Nanjing Massacre by local
researchers was suppressed in the early 1970s. It is only with the emergence of a parallel
victim’s narrative in the post-Mao era that Nanjing gained greater prominence in the narrative ofwar. [6]It is striking that the newly included KMT display avoids recriminations or schadenfreude about
the KMT’s sudden abandonment of the city to the mercy of Japan’s Imperial Armed Forces. The
Taiwanese professor I met on a river cruise said he was pleasantly surprised by the impartial
inclusion, pointing out that Chinese textbooks tended to dwell almost as much on the misdeedsof the KMT as those of the Japanese. [7] Indeed, visitors learn that the leader of the KMT forces
defending Nanjing was General Tang Shengzhi, but the NMM glides over his escape to safety
while leaving his troops in the lurch. It is an ignominious story, one featured in abridged form at
the Yûshûkan, of top echelon officers abandoning their troops with no notice, leaving many
trapped by the encircling Japanese troops. Some tried to flee, many surrendered only to be
executed, while others shed their uniforms and tried to blend into the civilian population.
Subsequently, Tang enjoyed a distinguished career in the PRC, rising to Governor of Hunan
Province. Even in the Chinese translation of Iris Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking (1997), his
reputation is protected as authorities prevailed on the translator to cut a footnote in which she
drew attention to his opportunism.

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

103

A mass grave site excavated on the site of the NMM.

Among the unremitting gamut of displays, there is also an excavation of a mass burial site withseveral skeletons piled one upon another, helter-skelter, grisly evidence that was unearthed frombeneath the museum. [8] In this gallery of horrors there is a Shooting, Sabering, Burning andDrowning corner that graphically portrays in photographs, confessions, testimony and soldiers’
diaries the means of massacre. We also learn that many of the tens of thousands of raped women
were murdered as a standard procedure to eliminate witnesses. On display are some of thevictims humiliated as they were forced to pose for pornographic photos by their rapists.
Problematically, the NMM displays include some photographs and representations that havebeen discredited, providing ammunition for Japanese revisionists who will no doubt seek todiscredit the entire enterprise over a few mistaken attributions and misleading displays in thesame manner they tried to bamboozle much of the Japanese public about Iris Chang’s book anddivert attention away from the mountains of evidence that corroborate her main claims and thoseof the NMM.
This brings us to the numbers debate. By insisting on the iconic 300,000, the NMM risks playing
into the hands of Japan’s revisionists who would like nothing better than a sterile numbers debate
diverting attention away from how much is known about the sacking of Nanjing. Moreover,emphasizing the abacus of history diverts scrutiny away from more crucial issues such as why
the troops were allowed to run amok for so long and why the cover-up, minimizing and denial
persist to this day.

War and Visual Culture

104

The massacre verdict at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial).

The estimates of victims vary widely and depend a great deal on the time-frame and spatial
limits. [9] The higher estimates include victims well beyond the city walls and extend before andbeyond the six weeks from Japan’s initial incursion in Nanjing on December 13, 1937. The
International Military Tribunal for the Far East sanctioned an estimate of 200,000 victims. In
Japan, estimates of Nanjing victims range from zero by those associated with the illusion school
who contend that the massacre is a fabrication, to 10,000-50,000 by those who are associatedwith what is known as the centrist school, a group of scholars who understand that there is no
credibility in denial, but some possibility to cloud the debate by minimizing and mitigating theatrocities, to those who accept higher figures. Most Japanese specialists on the Nanjing Massacre
accept figures in the range of 80,000 to 110,000 victims, depending on time and place.
The key point is that the atrocities perpetrated in Nanjing and the city environs were the savage
standard operating procedure all along the invasion routes from the Shanghai littoral. The
invading Japanese troops were forced to live off the land, in practice meaning the routine
plundering of villages, rape and murder of women, and a devastating scorched earth policy thatenveloped the entire region stretching three hundred km northwest of Shanghai to Nanjing.

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

105

This bronze of a beheaded man lies in the courtyard of the Massacre memorial.

Politicizing History
Yang Xiamen, a professor of International Relations at the Jiangsu College of Public
Administration in Nanjing, and the translator of Iris Chang’s, The Rape of Nanking (1997), says,“Ironically, thanks to the revisionists (in Japan), the government spent lots of money and time tocollect all of this evidence and build this museum to display it.” In his view, one shared by fiveother Chinese scholars I met, Japanese efforts to minimize, downplay or obfuscate the extent ofwartime atrocities and Japan’s responsibility since the early 1980s provoked a Chinese official
response and public anger about Japan’s lack of contrition. Yang also suggests that the
globalization of human rights discourse in the 1990s sharpened bilateral debate over contentious
history issues.
The controversy over history was triggered in 1982 by Japanese media reports concerning therole of the Japanese Ministry of Education in instructing high school textbook publishers to alter
the word “invasion” to “advance” in describing Japan’s escalation of hostilities in China from
July 1937. [10] Yang acknowledges that specialists in China now know that this incident was
misreported, but at the time the textbook issue was part of what Chinese perceived as a larger
trend of whitewashing history in Japan. This example shows the power of the media ingenerating ill will and distorting public perceptions and the difficulties in undoing the damage.
Even if specialists in China do understand now that the textbook row was in some respects‘invented’ by the Japanese press, this does not stop them from citing it as the key incident in thedeterioration in relations between China and Japan in the early 1980s. [11] This is not to defend
Japanese secondary school textbooks as models of accurate and uncompromising war memory
any more than their Chinese or US counterparts, but rather to emphasize how public memory isprone to lingering distortions that resist correction or reconsideration. [12] Moreover, as Ienaga
Saburo’s lawsuits stretching from 1965-1997 reveal, even if this particular instance ofgovernment interference was inaccurate, there were systematic attempts by the JapaneseWar and Visual Culture106

government and powerful interest groups to downplay Japanese atrocities against a larger
backdrop of a conservative-dominated discourse seeking to promote a vindicating and valorizing
narrative of war memory that remains offensive to the people and government of China (andmany Japanese). [13 ]Did the Chinese government whip up a unifying anti-Japanese nationalism in the early 1980s to
shore up Deng Xiaoping’s legitimacy and deflect attention away from his adoption ofcontroversial market-oriented reforms? [14] At a luncheon roundtable on July 7, 2008, Chinese
specialists on the massacre all rejected this view, arguing that the government was not so savvy
or prescient to instrumentalize history in this manner. In their view, Japanese whitewashing of
the nation’s shared history forced the Chinese government to abandon its emphasis on building afuture oriented relationship as evident in Beijing’s agreement, following normalization ofrelations in 1972, to renounce compensation. They blame attempts by Japanese revisionists tobeautify war memory and shirk responsibility for igniting the ongoing bilateral battle overhistory that is impeding reconciliation.
Although unmentioned in our discussion, the textbook imbroglio did not occur in a vacuum. The
ongoing dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands flared up in 1978 when members of theJapan Youth Association erected a lighthouse on the disputed territory and conservatives eager toassert a heroic and noble narrative were prominently weighing in on public discourse concerning
war memory in Japan. This territorial dispute heated up following the reversion of Okinawa toJapanese sovereignty in 1972 involving a denial of China’s claims, an assertion that assumed
greater importance due to the provisions of the 1968 Law of the Sea. The secret enshrinement ofClass “A” war criminals in 1978 at Yasukuni Shrine, first reported in Japan in April 1979 and in
China in August 1980, also poisoned the atmosphere and undermined goodwill gestures.
Despite the consensus among the Nanjing-based scholars I met, others argue that Deng realizedthat the success of his modernization agenda in transforming China from a backward,
impoverished nation depended on large-scale infrastructure projects, technology transfer andforeign investment. Given Deng’s pragmatic inclinations, invoking history to help China getwhat it needed from Japan made sense, although this does not mean raising concerns about theshared past is merely instrumental as Japan’s revisionists contend. Clearly, China does havelegitimate grievances over the killing of at least 10 million Chinese in addition to widespreaddevastation that Japan has failed to assuage by remaining obdurate over war responsibility. [15]Using the past to serve the present meant abandoning what Reilly terms “China’s benevolent
amnesia towards Japan” and invoking wartime aggression to help pressure Japan to pay the bills
by vastly expanding its bilateral economic assistance programs.
Reilly argues that the victimization narrative that emerged in the 1980s bore a strong
resemblance to earlier propaganda campaigns. The Chinese were mobilized by the promotion of
patriotic education from the early 1980s, reinforced by government-sponsored films and history
museums such as that in Nanjing. However, unlike previous propaganda campaigns, thevictimization narrative resonated powerfully among the Chinese people for the very good reason
that they had endured tremendous suffering, not only under the Japanese, and suddenly foundpolitical space and resources to voice their pain. Reilly describes the state-sanctioned
groundswell of popular activism in China in the 1980s on history issues that tapped into deeply
ingrained memories of wartime suffering and widespread distrust of Japan. [16 ] Thus, just as the
Chinese were finding a collective identity in their shared wartime experiences, “the Japanese”

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

107(the Japanese image in China tends towards the monolithic with scant recognition of the deep
differences that characterize war memory there) appeared to be backtracking on history,
minimizing what happened, while failing to accept responsibility and express atonement.
In this increasingly tense atmosphere, even small gestures, omissions or slight changes in
expression carried enormous implications. Any signs of downplaying the suffering inflicted andJapan’s responsibility therefore only served to reinforce popular images of ‘perfidious’ Japanese.
The textbook and territorial controversies thus came at a critical juncture in China’s evolving war
memory while Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro’s official visit to Yasukuni on August 15,
1985, the first official visit on this politically symbolic date since the 1978 enshrinement of Class“A “ war criminals, rubbed salt in the wounds. [17]The Japanese government may be eager to declare an end to the postwar era and assert an
identity free from the baggage of the shared past— indeed this was Prime Minister Koizumi’s
aspiration in trying to make Yasukuni visits ‘normal’— but its neighbors show no signs of letting
Japan off the hook of history any time soon.
This is precisely because history issues are far too useful at home, because they box Japan in
diplomatically, and also because the Japanese state has waffled about its war responsibility. The
enormously popular NMM keeps the past alive and ensures that it is examined and that Japan’s
responsibility for crimes against humanity is remembered.
Currently, as the Chinese state tries to insulate contemporary relations from popular anger overhistory, it finds that it is not so easy to get the genie back in the bottle. Patriotic education andstate sanctioned history activism since the 1980s politicized history at the grassroots, ensuringthat the younger generations with no first hand experience of the invasion are keenly aware andaroused about their nation’s shared history with Japan. With the spread of the Internet they havea powerful tool to contest history issues and now have a social basis in China’s growing middleclass. [18]It is important to emphasize that insisting on Japan assuming responsibility for committing
atrocities is not merely playing the history card. China, after all, suffered enormously fromJapanese depredations and reactions at the elite and mass level are more than an instrumental
tactic in support of a wider foreign policy agenda. Japanese revisionists harp on how China’s
leadership instrumentalizes war atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre, but this glosses over thevery real suffering inflicted and serves to reinforce Japan’s negative image as a country unable todemonstrate remorse and contrition over horrific acts. The Japanese have handed the Chinese thehammer of history by failing to fully acknowledge and assume responsibility for what happened
so it is not surprising that the Chinese use it.

War and Visual Culture

108

A baby suckling at the breast of a dead mother.

Lessons of History
The NMM is much more than a gallery of horrors and does try to suggest lessons to be learned,
but it is not certain that chief among those lessons is patriotic duty. Although Buruma argues thatthe memorial at the time he visited in 1990 before the recent renovations seemed designed to
evoke Chinese patriotism, this seems an inadequate interpretation now, two renovations later,
because it fails to distinguish between state patriotism and popular nationalism. [19] The
renovated and expanded NMM is a splashy, spacious and well-maintained multi-media affair
bearing little resemblance to the ‘sad, ill-maintained” site he recalls. [20] Similarly, theYûshûkan Museum, which used to look like a neglected antique warehouse when I first visited in
the late 1980s, now is a state of the art museum. None of the Chinese who accompanied me on atour or others I questioned agreed with Buruma’s assessment. Visitors feel sadness and anger,
and seem more likely to emerge from the museum convinced that the Japanese are truly barbaric
rather than embrace a patriotism beholden to state directives.
In contrast with the Yasukuni Shrine, which has an ambiguous relationship with the state as a
private religious institution that serves as a national memorial for the war dead, the NMM isunambiguously linked with the state and reflects the government’s agenda. It was built in theearly 1980s at a time when relations with Japan were frayed over history issues. Then (and now)
Chinese believe that Japan is in denial and incompletely contrite about the consequences of its
aggression in China. The NMM fits with the state-sanctioned shift in war memory in the 1980s
towards emphasizing Chinese victimization, a counter to the noble sacrifice narrative espoused at
Yasukuni Shrine.
The most recent NMM renovation took place in 2006-2007, in the wake of Koizumi’scontroversial tenure (2001-2005) when bi-lateral relations sank to a postwar nadir due to his six
visits to Yasukuni Shrine. The renovation serves as a riposte to the Yûshûkan’s Nanking
narrative of denial, official adoption of the hinomaru flag and kimigayo anthem, the 2006

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

109

revision of the Fundamental Law on Education emphasizing patriotic education, public discourse
about amending Article 9 of the Constitution and the retreat of Japanese textbooks in 2005 fromthe more forthright representations of the shared past that began to emerge in the 1990s. For
example, in 1997 all junior high school textbooks gave high estimates for the number of Nanjing
victims while those published in 2005 mostly avoid citing the number of victims and the“massacre” is once again referred to as an ‘incident’. [21]This sign at the NMM draws attention to the role of revisionists, here referred to as "certain forces," instirring controversy by distorting history.

The renovated NMM does attempt to challenge monolithic images of Japan by drawing attention
to the role of revisionists in provoking contemporary disputes over history, but given thesurrounding exhibits and prevailing stereotypes that is expecting a lot from one panel. Perhaps
small gestures are as far as the state risks going in modestly toning down the anti-Japanese tenorof the NMM. Chinese government officials, party leaders and intellectuals need to look overtheir shoulders lest they spark public ire by being seen to be too soft on Japan; the Internet andthe socio-political consequences of modernization endow history activists with the means,autonomy and space to pressure the state. Displays about Japanese politicians visiting Yasukuni
Shrine and Japanese textbook content update negative images of Japan and ensure that the NMM
is not just about the past. Requests in early 2008 by Japanese revisionists for changes in some of
the NMM exhibits were studiously ignored. In contrast, the Yûshûkan revised a display blamingWar and Visual Culture

110

FDR for provoking war with Japan to revive the US economy in response to criticisms by
George Will, a conservative columnist in the US. Subsequently, and quietly, revisions were also
made sometime in 2007 to a panel describing Nanjing, removing an offensive reference to theJapanese troops restoring order in December, 1937 which used to conclude: “Inside the city,
residents were once again able to live their lives in peace.” [22] It is intriguing that there wassignificant media attention to the changes in the FDR panel while the revisions to the Nanjing
panel were not publicized and remain overlooked.
As Reilly points out, the state has lost control of popular discourse over history and theemergence of history activists threatens the state monopoly over shaping and expressing war
memory. These activists do not determine policy, but they do constrain public debate about war
memory and Japan. As Deans argues, “While the Chinese leadership appears to want to pursue a
pragmatic policy towards Japan, the mobilization of the historical legacy in the context of
popular Chinese nationalism constantly limits the ability of the Chinese leadership to develop
and maintain a rational relationship.” [23] Thus, in assessing the NMM it is crucial to go beyond
the monolithic message the state wants to convey and explore how individuals understand thememory and meaning on display.
Cindy Zhang, a twenty-two year old Chinese undergraduate studying in Nanjing, confided that
the NMM had not aroused her patriotism at all. In the following passages excerpted from anemail, she shares her reactions following her first visit while accompanying me on July 7, 2008:
What disappointed me most about the memorial was that I had expected the exhibition to
be condensed and focused, but, as it turned out, things were just the opposite. Althoughmuch disappointed, I had to give the memorial the right to be huger than necessary –were it not so huge, it would have been “politically incorrect” in some sense.
Here, Cindy challenges the Nanjing taboo, suggesting that the NMM is influenced by politicalcorrectness and is a bit more than it needs to be. Although she does not elaborate on whether thisis in terms of state preferences or popular sentiments, it is clear that she is aware of the wider
context in which history is being depicted, contested and possibly manipulated. She adds,
After the visit, I often wondered why I was not the least touched or moved by theexhibition. One reason is that I was already familiar with that history so that nothing on
display made me feel aghast or strike me as particularly overwhelming. I have watched
the movie Schindler’s List for over a dozen times; every time I watched it, I cried my soulout. But I never shed a tear for books or movies related to the Nanjing Massacre. I havebeen intentionally keeping myself at an emotional distance from the Massacre not only toprevent myself from being crushed by the cruel history but also to keep my mind cooland unaffected so that I can analyze the history in a rational way rather than let myperception be overwhelmed with and misled by too much emotions.
Here, Cindy refers to the contemporary context of war memory and her desire to remain aloof
from the fray, resisting the NMM’s grisly but powerful appeal to emotions.
In closing she writes:
As for the relationship between the Chinese and the Japanese, I would like to share someof my thoughts. To begin with, neither side should take the Massacre too personally.
When people take things personally, their emotions gain over their reason, giving rise toKingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

111

unjustified hatred, which often leads to calamity. In about thirty years, all people who
once lived to have any kind of personal experience about the Massacre will be dead. The
future relationship between the Chinese and the Japanese in regard to the Massacre solely
depends on how people who have no personal experience of this matter view andinterpret it. I suggest that both the Chinese and the Japanese accept the Massacre as anestablished historical fact, try to analyze it in an objective manner and draw up schemes
to prevent similar calamities from happening. I believe that the national characteristics of
the Chinese and those of the Japanese played crucial roles in the Massacre. In the light of
this, a thorough and in-depth analysis seems particularly important.
I would also suggest that China, including its government and its people, stop assuming the roleof a once scarred victim and stop [emphasizing] its old tragedy too frequently. If one indulges in
the past, no matter good or bad it is, one loses hold of the present; the past is to be learned andremembered, not to be a burden that hinders the march into the future. As for the Japanese, theirnational characteristics contain some particularly dangerous elements that are likely to result incalamities like the Massacre. Hopefully, they can face those elements with a positive attitude.”
Cindy’s detached perspective on history may not be representative, but suggests that monolithic
images of the Chinese state manipulating history and stoking patriotism are misleading,overlooking the reality of individuals assessing history on their own terms. Her point about theneed for China to turn away from the wailing wall of the past is reassuringly subversive even if
again it may not be representative.
Towards the end of a numbing array of multi-media displays, three hours in a fast-paced tour,
there is a room with a battery of eighteen video monitors that show films and documentaries
about the massacre, although not the recent Japanese film that denies it happened. Alongside,
there is a twenty-by-twenty meter archival wall with folders containing what information is
known about the documented deaths in Nanjing 1937-38. It is a wall that insists that there ismuch to answer for and overwhelming evidence that Japanese forces perpetrated extensive
crimes against humanity, much of it drawing on the testimony and eyewitness reports ofJapanese soldiers and journalists.
It is an imposing edifice that Japanese revisionists have tried to undermine by pointing to small
flaws, mistaken attributions and exaggerations. They try to discredit the victims’ “forest” ofevidence by grasping at branches on the “trees”. [24] Sadly, the discourse over Nanking hasbogged down in endless debates over exactly how many civilians, combatants and POWs were
killed by Japanese soldiers. [25]What is clear is that an inordinate number of civilians and unarmed POWs were executed in cold
blood, not in the heat of battle as apologists assert. Moreover, Japanese officers and officials at
the time systematically sought to cover up the very crimes that perpetrators, surviving victims,
officials and observers have all acknowledged. The 100-man beheading contest attributed to two
Japanese officers heading for Nanjing, and featured at the NMM, was a media invention aimed atstirring enthusiasm for the war and selling more newspapers to a hero-hungry public. [26]However, the inclusion of this concocted tale serves a purpose because it highlights what themedia thought the Japanese public craved, implicating them in the horrors that ensued.

War and Visual Culture

112

A copy of a Japanese newspaper article about the 100-man killing contest is on display

The final image as one emerges from the NMM is a towering obelisk inscribed with PEACE (inEnglish and Chinese) that flickers in a reflecting pool. It is a jarring juxtaposition to the violence
and mayhem featured inside, an unconvincing accessory that fails to persuade. None of theChinese who accompanied me on this tour felt the message either masked or matched themuseum’s intentions and impact. One young Chinese man bluntly confided that the museum left
him angry, reinforcing his already hostile views towards the Japanese. He said, “Yes we like
Japanese technology, gadgets and machines, but not the people. At that time they always referred
to us Chinese as pigs, but here we see who was really an animal and inhumane.”

The Peace tower doesn't seem to fit with the NMM's intent or impact

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

113

The lessons of history at the NMM.

Monolithic Myths, Fragile Relations
In China and Japan, public discourse reproduces and reinforces monolithic images of the otherthat are broadly negative. The central problem for Japanese revisionists is the impossibility ofreconciling their narrative of noble sacrifice with the gruesome evidence of cavalier slaughterand rape as presented at the NMM. Their strategy depends on instigating and instrumentalizing
Chinese grievances over the shared past. Revisionist emphasis on denying, minimizing,
mitigating and otherwise shifting responsibility for the atrocities committed by Japan’s Imperial
Armed Forces 1931-45 may not gain much popular support in Japan, but does cast a long

War and Visual Culture114

shadow over relations with China and ignites anti-Japanese sentiments. Provoking the Chinese
over history naturally produces anti-Japanese outbursts in China that amplify anti-Chinese
nationalism among Japanese in ways that play into the hands of Japan’s revisionists. In short,inflaming the Chinese pays handsome dividends for revisionists, and so they act accordingly.
Thus, while leaders in both countries seek to build mutually beneficial, forward-looking
relations, their efforts remain fragile and vulnerable. In Japan, a country with numerous cases ofhome-grown food-safety problems that affect millions of consumers, tainted frozen gyoza(dumplings) imported from China that affected ten Japanese consumers in the winter of 2008
sparked an anti-Chinese, media-induced hysteria of epic proportions. Positive attitudes toward
China imploded in the wake of the gyoza hysteria and the media was still making it an issueduring the G8 Summit in July, 2008. The LDP was roundly thrashed in the national press for not
immediately disclosing all it knew about ‘gyoza-gate’ in the run-up to the Olympics, essentiallyfound guilty of placating the Chinese at the expense of Japanese consumers. Hu Jintao and
Fukuda Yasuo might have grander visions for bilateral relations, but can not ignore or escapesuch populist brushfires.
This latent grassroots hostility can easily erupt precisely because the media in both countries
sensationalizes the present and the past. In 2003, 300 Japanese businessmen were caught up in araid involving 400 prostitutes at a hotel in Guangdong for holding an alleged ‘orgy’ on
September 18, the anniversary of the Mukden Incident of 1931. While not condoning theexecutives’ conduct, enforcement of laws against prostitution in Guangdong appear to be quite
lax in general while the notion that these inebriated salarymen were trying to make a politicalstatement is ludicrous. The Chinese media, however, whipped up popular anger among an
incensed population who were led to believe that the timing of the ‘orgy’ was a calculated insult.
Where does the NMM fit into this public discourse on history? Of course there was considerable
media attention at the unveiling of the renovated NMM in December 2007 commemorating the70th anniversary of the massacre, but films, television dramas, textbooks and the Internet reachwider audiences. The NMM is more like the repository of “evidence” that buttresses otherrepresentations of the Nanjing Massacre. It is ground-zero of Japanese evil, a site that reinforces
the perception that Japanese conduct in Nanjing was emblematic of its fifteen-year war in China,
a locus of concentrated Japanese malevolence that exists to honor local suffering and counterJapanese denial. [27]The NMM draws heavily on testimony and diaries of Japanese soldiers, some of whom wereshocked by what they experienced. It also includes an exhibit on Azuma Shiro, a veteran of the
Nanjing massacre who wrote forthrightly about what he observed and did back in December
1937-January 1938. The court case he lost over whether some points he made in his accountwere plausible is seen in China to be typical of Japanese attempts to cavil rather than assume anencompassing responsibility with dignity and remorse. Thus, ambivalence in Japan about thegruesome past has burdened Japanese with the appearance of shirking, explaining why Chinese
imagine that denial is more widespread than it really is.
Conclusions
Visitors to the NMM, and the Chinese in general, never learn that a majority of Japanese people
do not embrace the valorizing and exonerating view of the war cherished and endlessly promoted
by Japan’s revisionist conservative elite. [28] As Seraphim elucidates, the memory battles inKingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

115

Japan are hotly contested, exposing fundamental political cleavages that are central to debatesover the past and ensuring that Japan’s ambivalence towards its shared history with Asia draws
considerable criticism based on invidious comparisons with Germany.[29]She correctly asserts that the notion of collective amnesia in Japan regarding war responsibility
is, media representations to the contrary, grossly inaccurate, overlooking the vigorous
contestations and wide divergence of opinions concerning war memory that abound in postWWII Japan. Alas, those who espouse narratives of denial and minimization are prominent in thepolitical mainstream and in some influential media in Japan and can not be dismissed as“unsavory crackpots” to borrow Buruma’s felicitous phrase.
Chinese, however, uncritically accept Iris Chang’s monochromatic view of war memory inJapan, endlessly reinforced in the Chinese mass media, suggesting that a majority of the Japanese
are in denial about the wretched past and eager to embrace a vindicating narrative. In China there
is little recognition of the vibrant scholarship on Nanjing by Japanese researchers who havetoiled for decades to present an accurate view of what happened and why. [30] There is also little
awareness of the interest groups in Japan that have contested narratives of the wartime past up
until the present. There is far greater awareness about conservative politicians’ public denials of
the massacre and their extensive involvement in study groups aimed at rebutting the facts of themassacre. The outpouring of Japanese books, films and manga raising doubts about the massacreleads many Chinese to question the sincerity of the joint declaration of November 1998 in which
the Japanese government reiterated that, “Japan is keenly aware of its responsibility for themassive suffering and loss inflicted on the people of China resulting from its invasion of China at
one time in the past, and expresses its deep regret.“
The revisionists may be a megaphone minority in Japan, but they cast a disproportionately longshadow in China precisely because they are entrenched at the center of state power. The politicalinfluence of the revisionists is undeniable even if their views of history are not widely embracedby the Japanese public. Public opinion polls show that a majority of Japanese people rejectreactionaries’ insistence on denying and minimizing the atrocities perpetrated by the Imperial
Armed Forces, and most think the government should do more to acknowledge war
responsibility and atone for the excesses. The textbook written by the Dr. Feelgoods of Japanese
history that has garnered so much media attention because it downplays the “bad bits” has been
adopted by less than 1% of school boards around the country. Former Prime Minister Abe
Shinzo’s egregious attempts to reinterpret the history of comfort women and the battle for
Okinawa are part of the reason he is remembered as one of Japan’s most hapless leaders. PM
Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni were criticized by a who’s who of the conservative elite, including
five former prime ministers and the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun. It is understandable why the
Chinese government refrained from summit meetings between leaders and limited other highlevel government exchanges during Koizumi’s tenure, but it is also important to recognize that
official actions and popular sentiments are often discordant in both countries, especiallyregarding issues of war memory and responsibility.
Just as Japanese have much to discover about the tensions in China between the state andgrassroots history activists over war memory, the Chinese people can learn much fromunderstanding the realities of Japanese public discourse over war memory. Chinese may besurprised to learn that they can find common ground with many Japanese over war
responsibility. The media tends to sensationalize this discourse and generates misperceptions that

War and Visual Culture116

fan hostility. As a teacher I have noticed how much better informed Japanese students are now
than they used to be twenty years ago about this shared past. Thus only one of the more than one
hundred research papers on Nanjing submitted in my classes in recent years expressed anything
but condemnation and contrition. The only sign of contemporary Japanese contrition at theMassacre Memorial, however, are mute, decorative garlands of origami cranes, looking rather
forlorn, piled as they are on a shelf visitors hurry past on their way to the exit. Though it may bescant consolation to Chinese that few Japanese seek a national identity rooted in an airbrushed
history, knowing this might be a useful step towards reconciliation.

Over 200 footprints of survivors of the massacre are cast in bronze at the NMM.

The NMM serves as a barometer of the evolving discourse over history. Since opening in 1985
there have been at least three significant renovations, the last in 2006-2007 vastly expanding andmodernizing the space. Certainly the curator has an eye to drawing visitors and the new multimedia exhibits and tranquil spaces for contemplation have considerable visual and sensory
appeal. The NMM grew into a political space created by the shift towards a victims’ narrative inthe 1980s and the timing of its construction ties it with the 1982 textbook row. According tosome observers, it is also linked with Deng’s desire to raise the ante over history as a means of
opening the spigots of quasi-reparations from Japan in the form of economic and technologicalassistance. In the mid-1990s the NMM brought the KMT into the story line, perhaps reflecting
shifting attitudes towards Taiwan and growing confidence. The holocaust theme now on display

Kingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

117

owes much to Iris Chang’s legacy; German holocaust memorials were not part of the original
design or inspiration in the early 1980s. The recent renovation also appears to be a riposte to therenovation of the Yûshûkan Museum the previous year in which the revisionist narrative
vindicating and valorizing Japan’s ‘noble quest’ prevails. Indeed, the NMM appropriates thepost-9/11 theme of the Yûshûkan that justifies Japan’s actions in China in terms of quelling
terrorist threats, by referring to the Japanese invaders as terrorists. In addition, the NMM
renovation took place at a time when bilateral relations were in a deep freeze caused by PM
Koizumi’s six provocative visits to Yasukuni Shrine between 2001 and 2005. Since Koizumi’s
departure, leaders in both countries have emphasized thawing relations and nurturing the habits
and inclinations of cooperation, consultation and expanded exchanges, but there is no denying ahostile environment. Japan’s official adoption of the hinomaru flag and kimigayo anthem,legislation compelling patriotic education and efforts to revise the Peace Constitution are
provocations that link the current state with the wartime regime. The impact on Chineseperceptions, both official and popular, should not be underestimated and help explain why the
NMM remains relevant and why the renovations are linked to an anticipated bid for World
Heritage status. Most of the survivors will be gone by the 80th anniversary in 2017, but the NMM
will remain as a poignant reminder of the nation’s ordeal and the perils of nationalism, then andnow.
Jeff Kingston is Director of Asian Studies, Temple University (Japan Campus) and a Japan
Focus associate. He wrote and photographed this article for Japan Focus. He is the author of“Burma’s Despair,” Critical Asian Studies 40:1 (March 2008), 3-43, and East Timor andJapan’s Quiet Transformation: Social Change and Civil Society in the 21st Century (Routledge,2004).
Notes[1] It is striking that on July 7, 2004, Denton writes, “... special ceremonies were held, including
personal oral narrations by living witnesses.” This of course occurred during Prime Minister
Koizumi Junichiro’s term in office (2001-2005) when he heated up the bilateral history war andfroze diplomatic exchanges by repeatedly visiting Yasukuni Shrine, six times in total. Four years
and two Japanese prime ministers later, the frenzied Chinese response to Koizumi’s provocations
has abated, and key dates in the two nations’ shared history are no longer natural opportunities topoke the wounds of history and engage in recrimination. See Kirk Denton, “Heroic Resistanceand Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese
Museums”, Japan Focus, Oct. 17, 2007.
[2] On national humiliation as identity and nationalist contestations see Peter Gries, China’s New
Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2004.
[3] The documentary by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, Nanking, (Thinkfilm, 2007) evokes thehorrors and devastation of the Japanese invasion and ensuing onslaught. This documentary
focuses on the role of western residents of Nanjing in establishing an International Safety Zone
for noncombatants with readings from their letters and diaries spliced with archival footage andinterviews with survivors.
[4] Phil Deans, “Diminishing Returns”: Prime Minister Koizumi’s Visits to the Yasukuni Shrinein the Context of East Asian Nationalisms”, East Asia (2007) 24, pp. 269-294 (287)War and Visual Culture

118[5] For a discussion of the politics of war memory in Japan see, Jeff Kingston, “Awkward
Talisman: War memory, Reconciliation and Yasukuni”, East Asia, 24 (2007), pp. 295-318. For
the politics of war memory in China, see Mark Eykholt, “Aggression, Victimization, andChinese Historiography of the Nanjing Massacre”, in Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacrein History and Historiography, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, pp. 11-69.
[6] Denton, op.cit., elucidates the evolution of war memory in China from heroic resistance tovictims of atrocity. In Nanjing, for obvious reasons, it could only be about victimization. In
interviews with six Chinese scholars specializing in the Nanjing massacres, there was no support
for this analysis of evolving war memory. They see no clear dichotomy between narratives ofheroic resistance and victimization in public history as described by Denton, arguing instead thatboth perspectives are inextricably intertwined, along the lines that Gries argues.
[7] Zhu Jianrong confirms this perception, arguing that a content analysis of Chinese textbooks
indicates that there has not been any increase of anti-Japanese content in the 1990s contrary toprevailing misperceptions. Zhu Jianrong, “Japan’s Role in the Rise of Chinese Nationalism:
History and Prospects”, in Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and Kazuhiko Togo, ed., East Asia’s Haunted
Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism. NY: Praeger Security
International, 2008, pp. 180-189. Zhu draws on an unpublished study of Chinese textbooks cited
on p. 183.
[8] The old museum also displayed excavated skeletons, but they had been laid out to make themmore easily recognizable. The new excavations left the skeletons undisturbed to better convey
the chaos of the mass burials and make the evidence more compelling precisely because it does
not appear “constructed”. This “hot” evidence also is aimed at creating a sense of immediacy toconvince skeptics that the museum site is indeed a mass graveyard where Japanese hoped to bury
their crimes. Interview, Yang Xiamen, July 7, 2008.
[9] For an assessment of the numbers debate see Fujiwara Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity: An
Interpretive Overview,” Japan Focus, Oct. 23, 2007.
For an intriguing discussion of atrocities and how they are remembered (or not) see Mark Selden,“Japanese and American War Atrocities, Historical Memory and Reconcilation: WWII to
Today,” Japan Focus, Apr. 15, 2008.
[10] On the idea of the museum arising from the 1982 textbook controversy see Daqing Yang,“Mirror for the Future or the History Card? Understanding the ‘History Problem’ “ in Marie
Soderberg (ed.), Chinese-Japanese Relations in the Twenty-First Century: Complementarity andConflict. (London: Routledge, 2002). The misreporting of the revision by Nippon Television andsubsequently the Asahi Shimbun is extensively analyzed by Caroline Rose, Interpreting History
in Sino-Japanese Relations, Routledge Curzon: London, 1998. For an overview of the textbook
controversy see Claudia Schneider, “The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian
Perspective”, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May 2008),
617, pp.107-122. Also Daiki Shibuchi, Japan’s History Textbook Controversy: Social
Movements and Governments in East Asia, 1982-2006. Discussion Paper #4 (March 2008),
Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies.
For details and analysis of Ienaga Saburo’s pioneering lawsuits challenging state censorship of
textbooks, see Yoshiko Nozaki and Hiromitsu Inokuchi, “Japanese Education, Nationalism, andKingston: Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial

119

Ienaga Saburo’s Textbook Lawsuits”, in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, ed., Censoring History:
Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe,
2000, pp. 96-126.
[11] The textbook controversy was invoked at a luncheon roundtable with six Chinese scholars
July 7, 2008.
[12] There was a trend in the mid-1990s towards a more forthright reckoning in Japanese
secondary school textbooks, but this provoked a backlash among the “Dr. Feelgoods” ofJapanese history and the establishment of the Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashi
Rekishi Kyokasho o Tsukurukai, hereafter referred to as Tsukurukai). This group favors an
exculpatory and valorous historical narrative. As part of Tsukurukai’s efforts to shape public
history and war memory, it published a textbook in 2001 (revised in 2005) for junior highschools. Extensive media coverage both in Japan and internationally conveys an impression that
this textbook reflects the public mood and that Japanese are seeking an identity grounded in amore assertive nationalism based on an unapologetic view of Japan’s shared history with Asia.
Moreover, as Sven Saaler concludes, the Tsukurukai text has significantly shaped public
discourse over this past to the extent that other publishers have revised their textbooks byretreating from the somewhat more critical mid-1990s narratives and have moved closer towards
the Tsukurukai narrative. The media hype translated into unusually high sales of the textbook,including large volume sales to conservative organizations, reinforcing and amplifying its
influence over public discourse. Bestowing best-seller status on this text then feeds the media
frenzy and stimulates more curiosity. Sven Saaler, Politics Memory and Public Opinion: The
History Textbook Controversy and Japanese Society. Deutsches Institut fur Japanstudien:
Munich, 2005. Also see David McNeill and Mark Selden, “Asia battles over war history: The
legacy of the Pacific War looms over Tokyo’s plans for the future,” Japan Focus, April 12,
2005.
and Yoshiko Nozaki “The Comfort Women Controversy: History and Testimony,” Japan Focus,
July 29, 2005.
[13] See Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics, 1945-2005. Cambridge, MA,
Harvard University Press, 2006. [14] For analysis of this perspective and the rise of history
activism see James Reilly, “China’s History Activism and Sino-Japanese Relations”, China: AnInternational Journal 4.2(2006), pp. 189-216. On Deng’s desire to embarrass the Japanese andprotect his back from domestic opponents see Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt : Memories of
War in Germany and Japan, NY: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1994, p. 126. This interpretation isrejected by Zhu Jianrong, op.cit., who holds that Deng sought good relations with advanced
industrialized nations including Japan and avoided making an issue of the past because he knew
China needed Japan’s assistance to modernize. He argues that Jiang Zemin played a key role inwhipping up anti-Japanese nationalism in the 1990s.
[15] Reilly, Seraphim and Deans, op.cit., all argue that China has played the history card to
extract quasi-reparations.
[16] According to Reilly, the genie of history activism unleashed by the state morphed into anautonomous grassroots movement the state could no longer control and more recently into what
he terms oppositional activism. op.cit.

War and Visual Culture120[17] The Treaty of Peace and Friendship with China was ratified in Japan on October 18, 1978, a
day after the 14 Class-A war criminals were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine.
Conservatives opposed to normalization of relations with China were also mollified by thepassage of the Gengo Law in 1978 that gave legal status to the practice of linking official dates
to the year of an Emperor’s reign, i.e. 2008 is Heisei 20. Deans, op.cit., 282.
[18] Zhu, argues that successful modernization has created a large middle class that demands,“…respect from other nations. Nationalism thus acquired a social basis.” Zhu, op.cit., p.184.
[19]Ian Buruma, “The Nanjing Massacre as a Historical Symbol,” in Nanking 1937: Memoryand Healing, ed. Feifei Li, Robert Sabella and David Liu (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), pp.
1-9.
[20] Ian Buruma (1994), op.cit., p. 185[21] Schneider, op.cit., p. 116.
[22] I am indebted to Sven Saaler regarding this point. Personal communication, 8/15/2008).
[23] Deans, op.cit. p. 288.
[24] See Daqing Yang, “The Challenges of the Nanjing Massacre: Reflections on HistoricalInquiry”, in Joshua Fogel, ed., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, Berkeley,
University of California Press, 2000, pp. 133-179.
[25] See Takeshi Yoshida. “The Nanjing Massacre” Changing Contours of History and Memory
in Japan, China and the US”, Japan Focus, December 19, 2006. Also see Yoshida’s , The
Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States.
Oxford University Press: New York, 2006.
[26] For analysis of the alleged contest see Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, “The Nanking 100-Man
Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971-75”, Journal of JapaneseStudies 26-2, Summer 2000, 307-340.
[27] For related discussion see Selden, op.cit.
[28] For a more accurate and nuanced assessment of Japanese attitudes and public opinion
regarding history see Philip Seaton, Japan’s Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ inHistorical Consciousness of WWII. Routledge: London, 2007.
[29] Seraphim, op.cit.
[30] For example see Bob Wakabayashi, ed., The Nanking Atrocity 1937-38: Complicating the
Picture. Bergahn Books, NY, 2007.

Jennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

121“Against Forgetting: Three Generations of Artists in Japan in Dialogue about theLegacies of World War II”
Rebecca Jennison and Laura Hein
July 25, 2011
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Laura-Hein/3573
This essay introduces three different generations of artists whose works deal withexperience, memory, and trauma derived from World War II. The first generation refers toartists who experienced the war: they are harsh critics of the wartime government for thevictimization of both Japanese and non-Japanese citizens, such as Koreans. The second
generation of artists were born in the 1940s and 50s. These artists do not have direct
memories of the war, yet they challenge less-explored issues in relation to the time period,
such as women’s participation in the war effort. The third generation can be characterized
by their desire to participate intergenerational and transnational dialogues with the older
generations and with other artists and social-justice activists. The authors explain how
these artists engage with viewers about the importance of remembering the war. Someolder artists incorporate their direct war experience as a way to redress the atrocities
imposed on their people while others reflect on family histories that were largely shaped
by Japanese imperialism and war. Although they use different media and explore various
issues, what binds them together is a message to the younger generation “not to forget” thebrutality of war, and to critically reflect on their identity in relation to history. The essay
also provides a number of images of relevant artworks with informative descriptions.

War and Visual Culture

122

Against Forgetting: Three Generations of Artists in Japan in Dialogue about the Legacies
of World War II
Rebecca Jennison and Laura Hein
Although international consensus has it that the Japanese people are unusually reluctant to face
their own wartime past, this generalization has never been entirely true, as regular readers of The
Asia Pacific Journal already know. Like human beings everywhere, since 1945 Japanese havedebated the lessons of war and disagreed about its meaning among themselves. And, also likepeople everywhere, many Japanese regret both official policies and widespread individual
behaviors of the past. They not only desire reconciliation with Koreans, Chinese, and other
Asians, but also recognize that, as Japanese, they cannot dictate its terms. Some have alreadyentered into cross-national dialogue about the war and the colonial violence that reached its
crescendo during the war years. Moreover, precisely because reflection on such issues is
uncomfortable, they struggle over how to do so, often turning to oblique or refracted approaches,what Dora Apel calls “the sideways glance,” such as through literary or artistic expression.1 Boththis ambivalence and these strategies are human rather than Japanese traits.
Visual artists, filmmakers, and fiction writers have far more experience expressing complex andcontradictory emotions than do historians, so their prominent role in memory studies globally is
not surprising.2 They show us how to convey the complex and sometimes messy individuality ofactors. When we appreciate the ways that people are simultaneously well-meaning, bigoted,
intelligent, obtuse, flawed, internally contradictory, and/or troubled human beings, it is easier torecognize the individuality of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, while still acknowledging
the actions that divided them as groups. Artistic work also directs our attention to the processesof imagination and to affective linking, explaining why some acts of historical imagination feelso much more satisfying than do others. Finally, identifying these contradictory qualities helps
indicate a standpoint that can make reconciliation possible.
Of course, the style in which people imagine the past is not the same for everyone. One obvious
difference is generational. While debates over war remembrance have reverberated throughJapanese society at regular intervals ever since 1945, their nature is shifting as the generations ofpeople who experienced the 1940s “join the great majority” that will one day claim us all.3 In
many ways, 2010 served as a powerful symbolic reminder of that generational shift in Japanbecause so many significant twentieth-century events were commemorated— including the100th anniversary of the annexation and colonization of the Korean Peninsula by Japan, the 55th
year since World War II ended, the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War and the10th anniversary of the 2000 International Women’s War Crimes Tribunal.4 In East Asia aselsewhere, the grey-haired individuals who testified to their direct personal experiences of war
and colonial domination have had their say and now are yielding to people who have no choice
but to make a larger imaginative leap in order to understand the wartime past.
Dialogue Across Generations: Individual memories, Postremembrance, and Imaginative
Reconstruction
People who lived through the war in Japan need little prompting to remember how that era
smelled, sounded, and felt, as one of us realized last year when an older friend casuallymentioned that she would instantly recognize the sound of a B-29 plane overhead even though it
had been decades since she heard one. These individuals also carry in their heads the internalJennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

123

logic of Japanese society in the 1940s. By contrast, the social ethos and institutional environmentof the wartime era are so distant now that it is extremely hard to imagine twenty-somethings oftoday’s Japan conforming to its outmoded expectations. Young Japanese today—like young
Americans—can barely fathom many elements of the wartime cognitive universe, such as its
rigid class and gender hierarchies or the casual daily violence meted out within military ranks.
They have no choice but to piece together isolated fragments of the past, using a variety ofstrategies to shape their images of the war years. And, while all generations interpret thehistorical events of the decades before their birth through assumptions that differ from those of
their parents, such shifts are especially pronounced when social change is as momentous and as
abrupt as it was for mid-twentieth century Japanese.
And what of the generation in between, particularly individuals born in the 1940s and 1950s?
Although they do not remember the war, they still experienced it in a profound and distinctive-although indirect--manner as numerous memoirs and commentaries attest. Marianne Hirsch has
written about the differences between acts of remembrance by people with first-generation
experience of the war versus those of their children. She calls this second-generation experience"postmemory," and also differentiates it from the preoccupations of historians or others
interested in more far-flung outposts of the past. Difficult experiences–as World War II was fornearly everyone in East Asia–mark people in ways that profoundly affect their child-rearing
practices.5 Her primary example, Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, brilliantly evokes
the ways that Art’s parents’ harrowing experiences in occupied Poland and Auschwitz shaped his
identity despite his far more comfortable childhood in New York City. In the opening pages ofthat memoir, young Art expects sympathy when some other kids roller-skate off without him.
Instead, his father stops sawing a board: “Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in aroom with no food for a week then you could see what it is, friends!” Small wonder that Art feels
compelled to understand the forces that shaped his father’s world view, or to express that quest
artistically.6
Hirsch’s work has been very influential because it builds on Freudian theory about how
individuals respond to trauma—through unconscious processes of repression and displacement.
Properly speaking, “postmemory” refers only to a single generation: the people who pursue
remembrance in order to make the baffling conditions of their own upbringing morecomprehensible. Their personal histories include elements that are completely irreconcilable withthe rest of their lives. The lives of postrememberers are indelibly marked “by traumatic events
that can be neither understood nor recreated.” In her formulation, their response to that dilemma
is “postmemory,” which is “a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its
connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative
investment and creation.”7 Hirsch actually waffles on whether “postmemory” can extend to athird generation, both in her book and a recent essay, but, either way, her contention is thatfamily stories and photographs are the mechanisms by which people reframe the years before
their birth as essential to their identities.8 Some of these effects may stretch beyond a single
generation but they are surely most powerful for the children of the people directly traumatized.
As she explains, “postmemorial work ….strives to reactivate and reembody more distantsocial/national and archival/cultural memorial structures by reinvesting them with resonant
individual and familial forms of mediation and aesthetic expression.”9 Most valuably, she calls
attention to the profound emotional investment in the past by people too young to remember it
and explains why this occurs. Postrememberers feel an intense desire to make their own senseWar and Visual Culture124

out of that past to address the profound cognitive dissonance created by growing up in the homesof people still responding to already-vanished events.
Hirsch, like other memory studies scholars, has struggled with how to expand this analysis toinclude remembrance by larger communities. It is particularly vexing when applied to people
who did not personally experience the terrible event in question. While Freudian theory provides
an elegant explanation for individuals’ engagement with the traumatic past, it is far less useful inshowing how larger groups arrive at a common understanding of that past or how a second
generation does. One way to handle that problem is to move to a more generic understanding of
trauma, the strategy employed by Dora Apel, writing on “the art of secondary witnessing” of theholocaust, her term for second-generation remembrance through artistic expression.10 And
perhaps doing so better captures the processes by which individuals as well as communities
make sense of their world. Yet the work of scholars such as Hirsch and Cathy Caruth remains
highly influential precisely because they ground it in Freudian theory.11
One way to retain their rigorous explanation for individual behavior while opening it out tobecome a social phenomenon is to treat postmemory, like memory itself, as a strategy thatincorporates intergenerational dialogue—which functions as a kind of talk-therapy--as well as aninternal psychological process. Depictions of the past frequently develop out of intergenerational
dialogue, particularly as the event in question recedes in time. This is one reason why people sooften only begin talking about the past openly and frequently a decade or more after an important
event. Hirsch identifies family photographs and family stories as key to postremembrance but
this misdirects attention to the talismanic object when the emotional power comes from theprocess of conveying historical knowledge, something that artists integrate into the making of
new and intensely personal talismanic objects in the form of paintings, prints, collages, videos,
and other art media. The members of the generation that remembers World War II across theglobe have embarked on remembrance in large part to sway younger people out of a desire to
make the war emotionally comprehensible to them. Often these older individuals were only
moved to begin because earlier interactions revealed the cluelessness of young people. This iswhy, for example, the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. was only planned in
the 1990s and completed in 2004.
Intergenerational dialogue is central to the remembrance of the next two generations as well,although in differing ways. Moreover, such dialogue is the precise point at which thefundamentally psychological familial relationship intersects with understandings of the past for alarger community, such as a nation. Indeed, while Apel’s main concern is with the problem offinding a way to represent the holocaust that does not “risk either a falsely manipulative andmoralizing political instrumentalization or a depressing sense of obsession and despair,” thestrategy she charts as a more successful form of representation actually incorporates
intergenerational dialogue as a central aspect of the art work itself. As she points out, Art
Spiegelman solved the problem of how to tell his parents’ story without being consumed by it by
explicitly framing it as a dialogue with his father.12
Nearly all people under fifty years old today who engage the events of the 1940s are rather
arbitrarily choosing to do so rather than seeking to manage powerful emotions that psychicallycannot be ignored, the behavior Hirsch labels “postmemory” and identifies as crucial for Art
Spiegelman. To be precise, individuals so far removed from the war may identify somestubbornly incompatible shards of the wartime past that linger in the present, and may alsoJennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

125

incorporate them into their creative expression, but these projects are indirect and idiosyncratic
imaginative reconstructions of the past. Such individuals often are deliberately selecting specificelements of their heritage as important statements of identity while equally deliberately ignoringother elements. By definition, such a thoughtful and conscious process cannot be a Freudian
response to trauma. Older people too, are contributing to a fundamentally public social process
when they shape their message for younger generations, rather than “just” giving voice to a
profound psychological trauma. But, as the strategies of artists described here suggest, their
engagements with their audiences, often much younger than themselves, function simultaneously
to bring their concerns onto the larger social stage and to partially resolve the internal conflict.
And, while the art object itself may be arresting, it is the human engagement surrounding its
production, dissemination, and display that operates as therapeutic treatment.
Artists who experienced the war
How then have artists and writers contributed to reimagining the war in Japan and how importantis the intergenerational process? Quite a few, including most whose World War II remembrance
are internationally famous, have not only challenged wartime priorities, but also havespecifically sought to reach younger people. This group includes both the creator of the
autobiographical manga (and film) Barefoot Gen, Nakazawa Keiji, (b. 1939) and Nosaka
Akiyuki, (b. 1930) whose novel Grave of the Fireflies was made into a prize-winning animatedfilm in 1988 by director Takahata Isao (b. 1935).13 These works shine a harsh light on the crueltyof both the wartime government and of many individual Japanese toward young children.
Nakazawa also addressed the distinctive suffering of Korean colonial subjects in Japan,
beginning in the early 1970s. Because these works are about the experience of children and are
in visual form, both were immediately accessible to youngsters. Nakazawa began depicting theatomic bombing in manga form the day after attending his mother’s funeral, where he wasshocked to discover that her bones had become so brittle due to her exposure to radiation aquarter-century earlier that nothing but ash remained after her cremation. Nakazawa’s wife was
expecting their first child when his mother died, and both were troubled by the thought that she
would never meet her grandchild. Sleepless over these personal sorrows, Nakazawa then moved
beyond his own family story: “I thought and thought, and it always came to this: ‘Have theJapanese pursued and settled responsibility for the war?’ ‘Have the Japanese pursued and settled
the issue of the atomic bomb?’ I realized that both issues had been rendered ambiguous, thatneither had been settled.…I resolved to fight a one-man battle.”14

War and Visual Culture

126Internationally recognized painters Maruki Iri (19011995) and Maruki Toshi (1912-2000) were impelledby the same impulse to convey the horrors they
personally experienced in Hiroshima in 1945 and they
too squarely addressed Japanese oppression of other
Asians from the 1970s. Their work includes, forexample, a large 1972 painting of crows flying past a
Korean woman’s chima chogori dress, symbolizing
the Koreans who were brought to Hiroshima to workin the local armaments factories and who perished in
1945.15 They chose the subjects of their later paintings
by talking to visitors of all ages at their firstexhibitions and responding to their comments andcriticisms.16
This and other work is visible here.
Similarly, in 2006, contemporary artist Tomiyama
Taeko expressed her frustration at failing to fully
convey the savagery of Japan’s imperial policies to hercompatriots. “I feel so sad and angry. What did we do?
Cover of Richard Minear, Autobiography ofWhat did I do? It is difficult to create art that
Barefoot Gen
expresses any perspective other than ‘Japan is thevictim.’ When I try to show how many Korean people suffered, it is seen as a Korean issue.
Perhaps it is easier to express this through artwork than through literature because the visual
medium can communicate directly. But it is hard to find places to show such work here in
Japan.”17 Tomiyama, who is still painting at age 89, is one of the last artists of her generation toretain significant control over the ways that her expression is interpreted in public. She is keenly
aware that few in her audiences today share her experiences and struggles to overcome thischasm, for example by avoiding interaction with professional art dealers and art critics andexhibiting where students congregate instead. Yet Tomiyama has enjoyed far more publicity inthe last fifteen years than at any earlier time, suggesting that she has successfully connected toyounger Japanese who approach the war only through “postmemory” or in even less intimate
ways. Her first major exhibit in Tokyo was not until 1995, when Tama University Art Museum
showed Silenced by History.18 Tomiyama’s signature theme is the moral obligation to remember
the unnamed victims of war. She is currently hard at work, finishing a series of paintings about
today’s war in Afghanistan, drawing on her own travels there in 1967 as well as more recent
images of Afghanistan taken by photojournalists.19 She has also begun three large oil paintings in
response to the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and ongoing nuclear disaster in Fukushima,connecting the past to the present in new ways.

Jennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

127

The work of artists of Tomiyama’s generation is now nearly all
mediated by younger museum curators, gallery owners, and art
historians, who are making such art more visible, both in Japanand abroad. This group includes such “postrememberers” asmuseum curators Kobayashi Hiromichi at the Tama Art
University Museum and Mizusawa Tamotsu at the Kamakura
Museum of Modern Art. Kobayashi has also played a central
role as photographer and collaborator in the production of
Tomiyama Taeko’s slide and DVD works; in effect he istransmitting the artist’s ideas through new media, whiledeveloping his own “postrememberer’s” representational
strategies in innovative sites of expression, further illustrating
our point that these two generations work in dialogue witheach other in many kinds of ways.20
Both Kobayashi and Mizusawa also have recently displayed
works by Miyazaki Shin, another artist whose work is infusedwith his wartime memories. Like Tomiyama, Miyazaki is far
better known in the 21st than he was in the 20th century.
Miyazaki, born in 1922, is no longer an active artist.21 He grew
Tomiyama Taeko, Foundation of up in Yamaguchi prefecture, graduated from art school in 1942
Manchukuo, painting fromand was drafted a few months later. His unit was dispatched to“Harbin: Requiem for the 20th
northeast Manchuria and, when the Kwantung army
Century,” 1995
disintegrated in August 1945, Miyazaki at first was stranded
there without food, and then was taken prisoner andtransported to Siberia, returning home only in 1949. He resumed painting but did not then depict
his wartime experiences. In 1965, Miyazaki not only enjoyed his first exhibition but also won the
Nitten Exhibition Prize for one of his paintings, “Night of the Festival” (Matsuri no Yoru). Twoyears later, Miyazaki’s canvas “Sideshow Performers” (Misemono Geinin) won the prestigious
Yasui Sōtarō Memorial Prize. Miyazaki began teaching painting at Tama University in 1981, atage 59, and his career really only took off when he was in his sixties, after his personal
experiences of the 1940s became the main topic of his work. He won a prize in 1984 for “WinterLight” (Fuyu no Hikari), and had a major exhibit of his work at Tama Art University Museum in
1992. In 1999 the Yamaguchi prefectural art museum displayed the first of his monumental
paintings about Siberia, some of which were also shown at the Kamakura museum in 2001.
Mizusawa, the curator in Kamakura, also commissioned two canvasses from Miyazaki for the
Sao Paulo Biennale of 2004, and Miyazaki chose to depict in abstract form the miserable weeks
just after Japan’s surrender. His work is visible on his official website here.
Miyazaki’s large, dark, densely textured canvasses have a potent impact for viewers but
reproduce poorly. Like Tomiyama, Miyazaki is primarily concerned with giving expression to
the feelings of powerless people, whose suffering is of no concern to others. He includes hisformer self in that group more than does Tomiyama, but never frames his experience as anational Japanese one. Nor does his work convey bitterness at his captors. Rather, it emphasizes
loss, abandonment, the fragility and value of human life, and, most importantly, the intensity of
his own feelings about the past. Miyazaki explains that, like Tomiyama, he is motivated in partby his horror that younger people have not yet learned to avoid war. While he struggles toWar and Visual Culture128

articulate his tangled emotions about his personal experiences, Miyazaki is crystal-clear that heembarked upon that struggle “because we have once again entered a period of warfare.”22 His
insistent demand for our attention helps explain why sustained direct interaction with survivors issuch a powerful phenomenon.
Indeed, postrememberers not only receive these messages, they actively solicit and help shapethem through their interactions with the older artists. Mizusawa describes Miyazaki’s work as
follows: “When we experience a work by Shin Miyazaki, we are first of all overwhelmed by thesilent voices that emanate from the physical object that is the artwork, regardless of its size or
medium.….We hear, too, intermixed, the voices of others, for in his works the artist has
committed his prayers for the eternal repose of their souls.”23 Mizusawa explains that he said thisto Miyazaki in 2003 and that the artist, then 82 years old, responded to his comments byproducing five huge canvases in six months rather than just the two Mizusawa had requested.
One of these was “Mud,” a work that Mizusawa describes as at first seeming to signal“bottomless despair,” but, after more extended viewing, reveals “a place of surging energy that is
not entirely negative.” Mizusawa, the “postrememberer,” expresses his own stance to wartime
society as well as to the artwork when he explains that “these paintings present unstable,
incomplete situations and fail to provide a port of refuge for the viewer’s emotions.” Thatemotional state, in turn, “arouses numerous memories and cannot be compressed within
individual experience.”24 Message received indeed.25
Postrememberer Shimada Yoshiko
The postmemory generation includes not only curators and art historians but also artists such as
Shimada Yoshiko. Shimada, born in 1959, was raised in the shadows of the U.S. Air Force Basein Tachikawa near Tokyo, formerly used by the Imperial Japanese Army. After attending
university in the United States, she spent time in Berlin, where she viewed the work of artists
engaging directly with the question of German war responsibility. Later, she lived in New Yorkat the time of the first Gulf War, and saw artists dissent through their art. Comfortable in English
and German, Shimada has built a transnational platform for herself, meaning that her reflections
on her country of birth are informed by deep knowledge about war experience and war
remembrance elsewhere. On visits to Japan in the early 1990s she was angered by the nostalgic
portrayals of Japan’s war and the Shōwa Emperor, who had passed away in 1989, and so began
her artistic reflection on the wartime past. In her series “Past Imperfect,” she both challenged thesimplistic view that the war was an unavoidable tragedy and tied that theme to her longstanding
interest in gender.

Shimada Yoshiko, “White Aprons” from the series “Past Imperfect” 1992

“Past Imperfect” exploredthe extent to which
Japanese women had
participated in andstrengthened the war
effort—and the costs ofthat collaboration tothemselves, to otherJapanese women, and mostof all to Asian women. She
chose as her symbol forJennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

129

their enthusiasm the white aprons, or kappogi, that wartime Japanese patriotic women’sorganizations had adopted. Using old photographs of these mothers holding smiling babies,
waving flags, and lighting the cigarettes of soldiers, she created collages that commented on theirchoices. Her critique was made sharper by the border around one of these collages, which
incorporated photos of young “military comfort women.” As she explained, “I realized thatJapanese women were not entirely the voiceless victims of male-dominant militarism. Many
were enthusiastic fascists and willing to sacrifice themselves and to victimize others in the nameof the emperor.”26 This project emphasized the ways that wartime Japanese women were drawn
into the conflict as mothers of soldiers, a form of recognition that simultaneously celebrated
them and severely limited their life choices, while also noting that Asian women were assigned
far harsher tasks.
In this early work, Shimada seems to be distancing herself from the wartime generation’s selfserving romanticized remembrance but as time went on, she challenged herself and otherpostrememberers to acknowledge their own responsibility for the past, despite being born after
the war. Indeed, the impetus for “Past Imperfect” came from Shimada’s recognition that she
shared some of the qualities that had led so many wartime Japanese to accept the need formillions of pointless deaths. As Shimada put it, “Personally, I basically like absolute discipline,
and tend to be swayed by emotion rather than logic and so I suppose it would be quite simple forme to become a fascist.”27 And, even more fundamentally, she doubts that anyone ever can becompletely confident of the morality of their own behavior within a repressive society. As she
put it, “when I talk about art and activism, I do not make art from the viewpoint of the oppressedor the victimized. I make art to make the oppressors think of what they do from where they are.
But there is no clear borderline between the oppressors and the oppressed anymore.”28 Shimada
feels a responsibility to revisit the war precisely because she did not herself experience it and socannot be confident that she would have behaved ethically.
Shimada’s 1995 work, “Comfort Women/Women of Conformity,” expanded on the images of
military comfort women that had first appeared in “Past Imperfect” by including photographs of
the aged survivors and snippets of their testimonies in installation works.29 She juxtaposed themwith startlingly racist eugenicist comments by famous presurrender feminists such as Hiratsuka
Raichō, pointing out the racial boundaries of Hiratsuka’s imagination. If earlier feminists had
combined acute gender analysis with such an absence of empathy for Asian women, how canfeminists today be sure they are not replicating that pattern?

War and Visual Culture

130

Shimada’s willingness to ask herself “would I have behaved
differently?” became more evident in a major exhibit at the Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 1996. Shimada’s
installation piece, “Black Boxes + Voice Recorder,” featured
photographs of former “military comfort women” exhibited inchained black wooden boxes. Placed on the floor of the gallery with“lids off,” the boxes contained the portraits of the women submerged
under several inches of water. Meanwhile, recordings of thewomen’s voices giving testimony about their wartime experiences
played continuously. Shimada’s aim was to create a space in themuseum for these testimonies, as well as to encourage visitors toinvestigate the “internal conditions” of wartime Japanese society thatallowed such callous exploitation of poor Asian women. As she saw
it, fully appreciating the harm inflicted on them required looking
critically at the actions of Japanese women during the war and also
acknowledging the ways in which Japanese men’s “humanity had
been violated” under the military regime. Shimada encouraged
viewers to feel empathy for the people most victimized but also to
acknowledge that the worst perpetrators were trapped in a fascist
system that did not protect their best interests either. Curator
Shimada Yoshiko, image
Kasahara Michiko wrote that Shimada’s work “represents afrom “Black Boxes + Voice
resistance to forgetfulness, an active will to remember. She is not an
Recorder” 1996
outsider, producing her work in some safe place; rather, as aJapanese woman she is placed in the ambiguous place of being one of the assailants.” And,
Kasahara continues, Shimada’s labor is necessary, “or we will never be free of the nightmare ofwar.”30
It seems that Shimada could only fully express her discomfort with the values of wartime Japan
when she imaginatively entered that past society rather than merely viewing it from a distance,suggesting that successful remembrance—as opposed to postremembrance--may require a kindof double vision that includes empathy for all involved. In other words, rather than unconscious
displacement to manage trauma, it requires not only conscious acknowledgement of the pain felt
by others but also an imaginative acceptance of responsibility for that pain. In other exhibitionsin the early 1990s, Shimada included a live-art performance in which she herself appeared
wearing the symbolic white apron, which also became the screen for projected images of theformer “military comfort” women.31 Her work is effective because it encompasses both asympathetic understanding of the weaknesses of wartime actors and a firm rejection of the values
on which their actions were based, achieving a genuine dialogue with the past. As Kasahara
explained, Shimada and the other artists in the 1996 exhibit “have the will to question the verybasis of their way of thinking… to look at things from a view opposite to that of their own
perspective and reconstruct the way they think.” Kasahara argues that feminism provided
Shimada with the sense that “we Japanese, alive today, have a duty not to erase, but to preserveand pass on to future generations….the numerous crimes that were committed by the Japanese
during the Second World War.”32 In the same volume, Ōgoshi Aiko draws an even stronger
connection between feminism and an anti-war stance, arguing that “the threat of war lies at theroot of the genderization of authority, that this is what led to the acceptance of the structure of

Jennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

131

sexual prejudice and violence, even in peacetime.”33 The question to the older generation in this
implied dialogue is less about “what happened” than it is about “how did you let it happen?”
We note that here too we see intergenerational dialogue. Shimada’s choice of the military
comfort women as her theme was triggered by the testimonies of Kim Haksun and other former“comfort women.” Shimada was also familiar with Tomiyama’s series of 1988 on the same
subject, while Tomiyama incorporated the white apron (stylishly worn by lady foxes in her
rendition) into her 1995 series “Harbin: Requiem for the 20Th Century” and “The Fox Story” of
1999. The DVD version of “The Fox Story” also featured photographs of the young comfort
women, suggesting an intertextuality that moved in both directions. Both artists evoke the lostworld of the past in order to warn viewers against the self-deluding character of nostalgia, andboth rely on feminism as a moral guide through the past. Shimada’s critique also was powerfulenough to impress “Resident Korean” artist and activist Hwangbo Kangja (b. 1957), who had
already spent several years giving lectures and producing documentaries about the military
comfort women. Hwangbo met Shimada through this show and invited her to collaborate on a
joint exhibit based on family photographs, which was displayed in Vancouver and Gwangju.34
That project became an opportunity to work out more fully Shimada’s own relationship to war
remembrance.
In this exhibit and in a later project, Shimada focused on the personal experiences of her own
relatives, adopting the strategy identified by Hirsch as characteristic of postrememberers. Like
Art Spiegelman, Shimada suggests that the secrets of the past resemble a locked box that retains
its power as long as she carries it forward unopened, also explaining her chained black boxes of
1996. But, unlike Spiegelman, she is less interested in the inter-generational effects of traumatic
war experience on herself than in the ways that keeping secrets has protected her fromunderstanding the harm she and her family may have done to others. Indeed, while researchingher family history for this project, Shimada uncovered part of her own family’s past: her
grandfather, who had worked as a policeman before the war, was ordered by his superior to“dispose of dangerous criminals” in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. This
was not an isolated case. Vigilante groups and police responded to rumors that Koreans werecausing mayhem by murdering as many as 6,000 individuals in the wake of the earthquake.35
Shimada herself recalled that her grandfather never allowed them to make a “snapping” soundwith wet towels because it reminded him of the sound of Korean victims’ skulls being struck
with wooden bats. (Later, Shimada’s grandfather quit the police force to become a farmer.
According to her mother, he also helped Korean conscripted laborers escape during the war.)
This is precisely the kind of childhood experience that makes the case for retaining thepsychological concept of “postmemory,” now expanded to include coping with the memories of
perpetrators as well as victims, while examining how it becomes a broader socially relevant
experience. For Shimada working through “postmemory” necessarily means refusing to evade
responsibility and making amends by openly acknowledging her own connections to this past.

War and Visual Culture132

That disturbing discovery led to
Shimada’s next project, Bones in Tansu:
Family Secrets, an ‘interactive’
installation piece that was first exhibitedat A.R.T in Tokyo in 2004 and then inseven other locations internationally.36
Shimada began by exploring theboundary markers between her own
private memories and public
remembrance, and over the next three
years solicited the anonymous personal
memories of gallery viewers, which she
incorporated into the exhibit. Once again,
she began with family histories, although
this time with memories generated by
Shimada Yoshiko, Copenhagen installation of “Bones in
strangers, to make visible the emotions
Tansu: Family Secrets” 2004
evoked by the past. This ever-expanding
dialogue revealed much trauma,
sometimes linked to war histories, but most often to an unexpectedly high incidence of domestic
violence, including incest and sexual abuse. These traumatic stories crossed national lines. For
example, participants in Manila wrote about the experience of being abused as children in
response to a similar “secret” revealed by a Korean participant at the previous site. Some of theManila children were vulnerable to predatory adults because their parents had been forced bypoverty to become global migrant workers, revealing another way in which “private” family
trauma is part of transnational history.37 Shimada is facilitating an open-ended dialogue among
visitors that makes no assumptions in advance about who may be a victim or a perpetrator, while
unequivocally condemning transgressions by making visible the pain they caused.
The Next Generation
What aspects of the wartime past matter most to younger people in Japan who wish to take astance “against forgetting” World War II? Their engagement with the war seems to begin with
their recognition that they know little about the lives of the older individuals who peopled theirchildhood and grow into a nagging feeling that such ignorance is a debt that requires redress,
meaning that a desire for more intergenerational dialogue is at the heart of their quests. It seems
likely that, as with the older artists, their interactions with historians, art historians andcurators—as well as larger audiences—will continue to shape their inquiries into the past, as willtransnational dialogues with other artists and social-justice activists. Eventually, so will theirinteractions with people younger than themselves.
One recent collaborative project arrayed “against forgetting,” Asia, Politics, and Art, is itself atransnational venture that brought together artists, musicians, scholars, and curators of various
ages to explore the legacies in East Asia of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War,and the current American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lee Chongwha of Seikei University
organized this project on the “lingering wounds” of past wars in order to develop new kinds of
dialogue for the future. Their efforts between 2006 and 2008 led to a unique collaborative
publication, Zanshō no Oto (Sounds of lingering wounds).38 Their work is also in dialogue withdeceased artists, as is symbolized by the fact that the inaugural conference for Asia, Politics andJennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

133

Art was held in the Sakima Art Museum in Ginowan, Okinawa in March 2007, in a room whose
walls are covered with the enormous panels of the “Battle of Okinawa,” by Maruki Iri and
Toshi.39 (Link)
Oh/Okamura Haji (b. 1976, hereafter Oh Haji) and Yamashiro Chikako (b. 1976), both of whom
participated in this project, are two generations removed from direct experience of the war but
explore its meaning today in their work. Not only are they far younger than Tomiyama andMiyazaki, their respective positions as a “Resident Korean” and an Okinawan complicate theirstatus in relation to Japan. Both artists, still at formative stages in their careers, evoke thewartime era in their work, in ways that emphasize their temporal distance from the 1940s andunderline their postwar identities. Interestingly, they also use some of the “postmemory”
techniques discussed by Hirsch and explored artistically by Shimada, such as creating an
imaginative world from the fragmentary images provided by old photographs and objects usedby their relatives, and building out from the testimony of older family members and neighbors
about past experiences.
Oh Haji uses a variety of spinning, weaving and dyeing techniques to create original garments,
objects, and installations that give material expression to the layering of time and memory.40 The
death of her Korean-born grandmother prompted the artist to explore themes of personal history
and memory in greater depth. Although she had shared a home with her grandmother all her life,
since Oh spoke only Japanese and her grandmother was only comfortable in Korean, they had
never communicated easily. Her regret at not having worked harder to overcome the painful
silences between them prompted Oh to imaginatively recall her grandmother’s life in a large,
mixed-media installation piece, “Memory” (2006). “Memory” recalls Oh’s grandmother’s forced
prewar move from her original home on Cheju Island in Korea to Osaka. Oh painstakingly
covered a semi-sheer white cloth with a flower pattern like those on skirts worn by her
grandmother. For Oh, clothing, like family photographs, provides a physical object that can bear
the weight of the tasks of creating an imaginative investment and framing identity, and so—atleast partially—replace the emotional satisfaction derived from communication throughlanguage.

Oh Haji, Image from “Memory” 2006

Oh had previously used thread that she had
carefully unraveled from her grandmother’s
Korean dresses in other projects, and later
decided to photograph her Korean chima
blouse, which she had hung on the wall of herroom. Oh said that interacting in such ways
with her grandmother’s clothing helped her“feel as if she were really there, as if she was‘physically present.’ That was the inspiration
for this work.” Knowing little of her
grandmother’s thoughts and feelings, Oh
hoped to gain an imaginative understanding of
her life experience by making art from theclothing she left behind after her death. Whilethey shared the label of being Korean inJapan, they shared little else until Oh decided
to learn more about the older woman’s life.

War and Visual Culture134

Oh acknowledges in her art that she moves through Japanese society with far more linguistic andcultural ease than did her grandmother and was offering redress—literally re-clothing—for her
own youthful obliviousness to her grandmother’s linguistic isolation. Her forthrightacknowledgement of her own complicity in that isolation and her feelings of regret give her workits power, as does the intensity of her desire to capture as much meaning as she can from thethreadbare swatches of her grandmother’s garments.
Yamashiro Chikako, an Okinawan video and performance artist, has also begun exploring
remembrance of the war in recent highly innovative video works that, like Oh, imaginatively
place her in an ambiguous ethical relationship with elderly victims of war and colonialviolence.41 Yamashiro became interested in this topic after June 2007 when the Japanese
government eliminated passages from history textbooks that made reference to the “masssuicides” in the Battle of Okinawa. In the last weeks of the war the Japanese military had
encouraged and sometimes ordered Okinawan civilians to kill their families and themselves inorder to avoid capture by the advancing American forces. The subsequent protests against the
textbook changes (Link) prompted Yamashiro to interview senior residents in a nearby carecenter in Okinawa on video, which she then transformed into works she exhibited at two Tokyo
museums, the National Museum of Modern Art and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography in 2009 and 2010. In a statement describing “Your Voice Came Out Through My
Throat” (2009), the artist explains that many of the elderly people had never spoken of their
wartime experiences. Like Yamashiro, however, they were so offended by the government’s
move to revise textbooks that they told their stories to her. She extended this theme in a 2010
series, “Sinking Voices, Red Breath.”
They also passed on their feelings ofresponsibility for remembering the past,telling Yamashiro, someone of their
grandchildrens’ generation, “because wesurvived you were born into this world.
And now 65 years have passed since thewar ended, we have to tell what really
happened.”42 Yamashiro said she could
feel the exact moment when each speakertransferred the burden of remembering
the past to her in an interview with Kum
Soni, another participant in the Asia,
Politics, and Art project.
Yamashiro Chikako, still image from video “Sinking Voices,
When talking about the war there was a
Red Breath” 2010
moment when the elderly people wouldstop speaking. Perhaps, it was the instantthat brought back what was most painful, most devastating in the minds of the speakers. At thosemoments, when they were about to speak about the most painful things, they fell silent, andbegan to shake or weep. …so then I just asked them to touch me and express what they werefeeling in some other way.”43

In January and February 2011, Yamashiro participated in an artists’ exchange and festival in thePhilippines, and began doing research for new work based on oral histories and memories ofJennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

135

Okinawan migrants and war-brides who moved there during and after the war. She wanted toshowcase Okinawan responses to the ongoing presence of US military bases in Okinawa, andalso make a connection between that situation today and Okinawan participation in the Japanesemilitary occupation of the Philippines in the 1940s. This experience will add greater moral
ambiguity to her already-arresting photographs and video works. It will also add a transnational
dimension to her intergenerational commentary.
These young artists are gathering fragments of the war experience and are connecting them totheir own postwar stories in ways that both require intergenerational dialogue and encourage it inothers. While they are clearly motivated by their sense of shared identity with specific groups ofpeople who were systematically wronged during the war, they are not drawing a stark distinction
between the descendents of victims and of perpetrators or bystanders, nor absolving themselvesof responsibility. Finding a stance that expresses recognition of their own distance from thewartime victims while sympathetically acknowledging the injustice of their victimization is
crucial to powerful imaginative reconstruction. This distance can be as little as the passage oftime in an individual life, as with Miyazaki Shin, or it can involve soliciting the views of people
who previously seemed of little interest, as with Yamashiro Chikako. What is being bridged hereis the gap between postremembrance as displaced attempts at psychological healing bytraumatized individuals and conscious social acts based on interaction with older or younger
people.
Why do these acts matter? Acknowledgement by young people and bystanders as well as byperpetrators that victims’ suffering was not only very real but also unjustly imposed is a form ofredress. This is why people feel such deep satisfaction when their own experiences are belatedly
acknowledged to be of public importance, i.e., part of history. In the end, providing that sense ofsatisfaction to their elders is a major way that young people make the experiences of earlier
generations part of their own lives. Much of the time these transactions happen invisibly aroundholiday dinner tables or in everyday public settings, such as classrooms. These artists are finding
ways to initiate dialogue, which, rather than the art work itself, becomes a talk-therapy forthemselves and frequently for others as well. The Marukis, Nakazawa, and Miyazaki all reportthat they were unable to express themselves on other topics until they painted or drew the war,
while Shimada visited the past because she wondered how she would have behaved then—and
was honest enough to admit doubts that her choices would have been ethical ones. Oh andYamashiro both stumbled into their projects for reasons that they could only articulate after
paying close attention to the older generation for the first time. Sometimes the impetus is theemotional desperation at the heart of Hirsch’s remembrance/postremembrance while others begin
to care about unacknowledged war-related traumas through more cerebral processes. Both paths
lead to the same result: they remind us with admirable clarity and poetic subtlety that all of us
today bear responsibility for redressing the injustices of the war. And without such redress, it isvery difficult to create a future that truly moves beyond the injustices of the past.

Rebecca Jennison is a professor at Kyoto Seika University in the Department of Humanities,
Division of Culture and Arts, and an Asia Pacific Journal. She is active in a variety of feminist
and peace networks. She recently curated with Fran Lloyd (Kingston University London) The Art
of Intervention Now - London & Kyoto at the Fleur Gallery, Kyoto Seika University (24thSeptember - 23rd October 2010). (Link) Her most recent publications include an essay in Zanshō

War and Visual Culture

136

no Oto, Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo (2009), and, with Laura Hein, Imagination Without Borders:Feminist Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility, Ann Arbor: Center for JapaneseStudies, The University of Michigan, 2010.
Laura Hein is a professor of Japanese history at Northwestern University in Chicago and an
Asia Pacific Journal coordinator. Her most recent publications, in addition to the book editedwith Rebecca Jennison mentioned above and its companion website, include “Reckoning with
War in the Museum: Hijikata Teiichi at the Kamakura Museum of Modern Art,” Critical AsianStudies, 43.1 Winter 2011, pp. 93-110 and “Japan, the Vulnerable, and All of Us” foreword toDreams of Repair, Eleanor Rubin, Milan: Charta, 2010.
Notes
1

Dora Apel. Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing. New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. 2002, p. 3.
2

Examples include Jay Winter and Emanuel Sivan, War and Remembrance in the 20th century,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lisa Saltzman. Making Memory Matter:
Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2006.
3

For example, Franziska Seraphim, War memory and social politics in Japan, 1945-2005,
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006; Beatrice Trefalt, Japanese Army
Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950-1975 , London : New York:
RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History andMemory in Japan, China, and the United States New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
4

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Free Speech – Silenced Voices: The Japanese Media, the Comfort
Women Tribunal, and the NHK Affair,” Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, March 8, 2007.
Link. Also see proceedings of “Building Peace with a Gender Perspective in the Era of
Backlash—On the 10th Anniversary of the International Women’s War Tribunal” Dec. 19, 2010,
a symposium sponsored by the International Institute of Language and Culture Studies,
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto.
5

Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Post-memory, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. She had dropped the hyphen in “postmemory” by 2008.
6

Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, NY: Pantheon Books, 1973, vol. 1, p. 6.

7Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames, 1997, p.22.

8Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory” Poetics Today, 29.1 (Spring 2008): 103128.
9

Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” p. 111.

10
11

Apel, p. 6, 20-22.

Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History, , Baltimore, John
Hopkins University Press, 1996; Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Baltimore, John Hopkins
University Press, 1995.

Jennison and Hein: Against Forgetting
12

137

Apel, p. 6

13

Richard H. Minear, Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen, Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2010; and Nakazawa Keiji and Richard H. Minear, "Hiroshima: The Autobiographyof Barefoot Gen," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 39-1-10, September 27, 2010. Grave of the Fireflies(火垂るの墓, Hotaru no Haka) 1967. The DVD was brought out in 2002 subtitled in English byCentral Park Media Corporation.
14

Minear, Hiroshima, p. 152.

15

Hiroshima no pika & Hellfire: a journey from Hiroshima; Noriaki Tsuchimoto, director; John
Junkerman, writer, director. First Run Features, 2005/1986, DVD. See also John W. Dower,
Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays, New York: The New Press, 1995.
16

Ann Sherif, “Art as Activism: Tomiyama Taeko and the Marukis,” in Laura Hein and Rebecca
Jennison, eds., Imagination Without Borders: Feminist Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social
Responsibility, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2010, pp.
29-50.
17

Tomiyama comments in “Talking Across the World: A Discussion Between Tomiyama Taeko
and Eleanor Rubin,” in Hein and Jennison, pp. 107-127, quote p. 127.
18

‘Asia eno Shiza to Hyōgen’ Organizing Committee, Silenced by History: Tomiyama Taeko’s
Work, Tokyo: Gendai Kikakushitsu, 1995. Images of Tomiyama’s most recent exhibit, “Looking
at Asia—On the 100th Anniversary of Japan’s Annexation of Korea” can be viewed here.
19

For a photograph of part of this series in progress, see Laura Hein and Nobuko TANAKA,“Brushing With Authority: The Life and Art of Tomiyama Taeko," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 133-10, March 29, 2010.
20

See Kobayashi Hiromichi, “Slides and Collages” in Tomiyama Taeko and Takahashi Yūji,
Hiruko and the Puppeteers, A Tale of Sea Wanderers, Tokyo: Gendai Kikakushitsu, 2009,
bilingual book and DVD, ISBN 978-4-7738-0908-4
21

The Kamakura exhibit was a retrospective of fifty years of prizewinning art by local painters.
Miyazaki also published a memoir about his years as a POW in 1998.『宮崎進画集 私のシベ
リア 森と大地の記憶』 文藝春秋 1998.11. Miyazaki Shin, Gaka watashi no shiberiamori totaichi no kioku , Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū Press, 1998.
22

Shin Miyazaki and Tsutomu Mizusawa, “Hanging ‘myself’ on the wall: A Dialogue with ShinMiyazaki,” pp. 53-61 in Tsutomu Mizusawa, “Voices of Siberia: On the Current Work of ShinMiyazaki,” Shin Miyazaki, Vozes da Siberia/Voices of Siberia, Tokyo: The Japan Foundation,
2004, quote from p. 53.
23

Mizusawa, “Voices of Siberia,” p.16.

24

Mizusawa, “Voices of Siberia,” p. 20.

25

While our focus here is artists, this generalization holds true for others who have shaped thepostwar history of the war years as well. See, for example, Yoshiko Nozaki, War Memory,
Nationalism and Education in Postwar Japan, 1945-2007, London and New York: Routledge
Contemporary Japan Series, 2008.

War and Visual Culture

138

26

Quote from Nancy Shalala, “Artist reveals a “Past Imperfect,” The Japan Times, October 3,
1993.
27

Shimada Yoshiko, “Japanese Women and the War, 1930-40,” Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography and Asahi Shinbunsha, eds., Gender Beyond Memory: The Works of Contemporary
Women Artists, Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, 1996, pp. 104116, quote p. 104.
28

Shimada in Jennifer Chan, Another Japan is Possible: New Social Movements and Global
Citizenship Education, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2008, pp. 242-246, quote, p.
244.
29

Hagiwara Hiroko, “Comfort Women/Women of Conformity: the Work of Shimada Yoshiko,”in Generations and Geographies, ed. by Griselda Pollock, Routledge, 1996, pp. 253-265.
30

Kasahara Michiko, “Gender Beyond Memory,” in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography and Asahi Shinbunsha, eds., Gender Beyond Memory: The Works of Contemporary
Women Artists, Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture, 1996, pp.159168, quote p. 163.
31

Shimada was thus part of a broader trend in public art that foregrounded audience participationin enacting social memories. See Joan Gibbons, Contemporary Art and Memory, London: I. B.
Tauris, 2009, chapter 5.
32

Kasahara, pp.167 and 163.

33

Ōgoshi Aiko, “Gender’s Pitfall –From Feminism’s Changing Viewpoint,” in Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Asahi Shinbunsha, eds., Gender Beyond Memory:
The Works of Contemporary Women Artists, Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History
and Culture, 1996, pp. 155-158, quote from p. 158.
34

“Art Activism and Korean Minority Rights,” Hwangbo Kangja in Jennifer Chan, ed. AnotherJapan is Possible: New Social Movements and Global Citizenship Education, Stanford CA:
Stanford University Press, 2008, p. 281-283. Hwangbo curated an exhibit “Family Photographs”
in Toyonaka City in January, 2011.
35

For an on-line site with photographs and information about the earthquake, see this link.

36

This work was first shown in, “Borderline Cases: Co-responses on the Borderlines” (2004), an
exhibition that brought together artists, curators and scholars working in Korea and Japan. It wasalso shown in Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Denmark, Great Britain, andShanghai. See Rebecca Jennison, “Borderline Cases—Co-responses on the Borderlines,”n.paradoxa, (2004)
37

Rebecca Jennison, “Yoshiko Shimada—Silence, Secrets and Sex in the Gallery,” C-ARTS,
Vol. 9, July-August, 2009 pp. 34-36 (Singapore).
38

See Zanshō no Oto (Sounds of Lingering Wounds), ed. by Lee Chongwha, Iwanami Shoten,
2009. This volume includes 12 essays by participants in the project and a DVD of interviews andworks of seven artists produced by another participating artist, Soni Kum. Selected articles in thevolume are now being translated into English.

Jennison and Hein: Against Forgetting

139

39

Another transnational project concerning Asian war art and remembrance that involves young
scholars and curators is led by Ming Tiempo, a Chinese-Canadian art historian based in Tokyo,
Asato Ikeda, a Japanese scholar based in Canada, and American professor Louisa MacDonald.
Louisa MacDonald, Asato Ikeda, and Ming Tiempo, eds., provisionally titled The Dark Valley:
Japanese Art and World War II, Leiden: Brill, in press.
40“Oh/Okamura Haji,” in Unbound—Gender in Asia, Kyoto Journal, No. 64, Oct. 2006. Also
see articles by Kim Hyeshin and Rebecca Jennison in Zanshō no Oto, Iwanami Shoten,
Tokyo.(2009).
41

Yamashiro is introduced briefly in ANPO: Art X War The Art of Resistance, directed by Linda
Hoaglund, Videorecording New Day Films, 2010.
42

Yamashiro Chikako, “Anata no koe wa watashi no nodo wo tōta” (Your voice came out
through my throat), Video work, Artist’s Statement, Exhibit at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography, 2009.
43

Yamashiro Chikako, Interview with Soni Kum, Zanshō no oto II, DVD (The Sound ofLingering Wounds II, DVD) , Iwanami Shoten, 2009.

War and Visual Culture

140“Freedom Next Time: Japanese Neonationalists Seek to Silence Yasukuni Film”
David McNeill; John Junkerman interviews Li Ying
April 1, 2008; updated May 1, 2008
http://www.japanfocus.org/-John-Junkerman/2712
The documentary Yasukuni, directed by LI Ying, problematizes the enshrinement of
war dead (including both Chinese and Koreans) in the Yasukuni shrine, formally a State
Shinto shrine that became a private religious institution during the U.S. occupation period.
It was screened in two dozen theatres in Tokyo in May 2008 but was soon removed due toenormous pressures from Japanese right-wing groups and a member of the Japaneselegislature, the Diet. Li states that he did not intend to evoke anti-Japanese sentiment but
was trying to explore conflicting feelings towards the shrine from ordinary people
including families and relatives of dead soldiers as well as a 90-year-old sword-maker
whose thousands of swords were used during the war. Nonetheless, the attacks from rightwing groups on the director as well as the theatres screening the film were threatening
enough to prevent Li from producing any more films in Japan. Despite having spent
nineteen years in Japan, after this controversy Li decided to move back to China where hecontinues his filmmaking to this day.
In this article, David McNeill introduces the documentary, Yasukuni, and its
controversies, followed by an interview with Li Ying conducted by John Junkerman a few
weeks before the film’s cancellation from theatres. In the interview, Li presents the ideasthat he used in the film and shares his experience of filming it in Japan.

McNeill et al.: Freedom Next Time141

Freedom Next Time: Japanese Neonationalists Seek to Silence Yasukuni Film
David McNeill
John Junkerman interviews Li Ying
Neo-nationalists forced the cancellation of the theatrical launch of a Chinese-directed movie
about Japan’s controversial war memorial Yasukuni in early April, 2008. In the weeks that
followed, the incident became a cause célèbre, with some 30 film, media, and civil liberties
organizations issuing declarations of protest. A number of theaters throughout Japan signed on
to screen the film, and its Tokyo premiere was scheduled for May 3.
Its name translates as “peaceful country,” millions have silently prayed there for an end to wars,
and for much of the year the loudest sound is the buzzing of insects and the shuffle of old
footsteps to the hushed main hall. Yet Yasukuni Shrine, which occupies a single square
kilometer of central Tokyo, is one of the most controversial pieces of real estate in Asia, resented
by millions who consider it a monument to war, empire, and Japan’s unrepentant and undigested
militarism.

Yasukuni shrine at night. All photographs courtesy of Argo Pictures

A decade ago when Chinese director Li Ying began filming there he didn’t know what to makeof his mysterious subject either. Today, as he watches the official Tokyo launch of his two-hourmovie “Yasukuni” go down in flames amid death threats and cancelled screenings, he says theshrine symbolizes a “disease of the spirit” in Japan. “That I haven’t been able to leave this issue
alone for the last ten years means that I too am suffering,” explained the 44-year-old Guangdong
native.
“I didn’t really want to make such a difficult film…so I must be sick to do it. The point is to lookdirectly at the disease.”
Li’s point appears to have been lost by Japanese conservatives, who have branded the movieWar and Visual Culture

142“Chinese propaganda,” and condemned a decision by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan toaward Li a 7.5 million yen (approx. $75,000) grant. In March, the film’s distributors were forced
to give a private preview to 80 lawmakers after a weekly tabloid launched a campaign against thedecision to fund it. With criticism growing along with the threat of ultra-right-wing violence,four Tokyo cinemas pulled out of an official launch on April 12. But it appears the squelching of
the film may only be temporary. As of May 1, nearly two dozen theaters around the country had
announced plans to screen the film.

The campaign against the movie is led by powerful Liberal Democrat (LDP) lawmaker Inada
Tomomi, who says it is guilty of “political propaganda.” “I felt the movie’s ideological message
was that “Yasukuni was a device to drive people into an aggressive war,” she told the Asahi
newspaper after the screening, but denied she wanted it banned. “I have no interest in limiting
freedom of expression or restricting the showing of the movie. My doubt is about the movie’s
political intentions.” Inada can be seen in Li's documentary speaking at the shrine on the 60th
anniversary of Japan's surrender, Aug. 15, 2005. “We are committed to rebuilding a proud Japan,
where the prime minister can openly worship at Yasukuni,” she tells the crowd. “We will devote
ourselves to speeding the day when the Emperor too can worship here.”
Inada is a leading historical revisionist. Right-wing webcaster Sakura Channel lists her as asupporter of its movie “The Truth of Nanjing”, which argues that the 1937 rape of the old
Chinese capital by Japanese Imperial troops is a lie. She helped lead a lawsuit against novelist
Oe Kenzaburo , who angered neo-nationalists by writing about the military’s role in forcing
civilians to kill themselves during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. Osaka District Court exonerated
Oe in March, but the plaintiffs have promised to appeal. Inada is a signatory to a now famous
2007 Washington Post advertisement claiming that the sexual enslavement of thousands of Asian
women had no basis in fact, and a member of a parliamentary group fighting against what it seesas “masochistic” teaching of history in the nation’s high schools.
â€¨In a now familiar pattern, ultra-nationalists who follow in the shadow of establishment
politicians, threatened retribution against anyone who handled the movie. Anonymous bloggers
posted contact details for the distribution company, the Japan Arts Council and every theatre
showing it. Anonymous death threats have been issued against Dragon Films, the company that
produced "Yasukuni."

McNeill et al.: Freedom Next Time143

Former soldiers at Yasukuni on August 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender in 1945.

The attempt to bury Li’s film follows a string of similar incidents. In February, Tokyo’s Grand
Prince Hotel New Takanawa cancelled a conference by the Japan Teacher’s Union – a popularultra-right target -- after learning that 100 right-wing sound trucks turned up to last year’s
conference venue. The hotel’s decision has been bitterly attacked by union officials.
Scholars have also lined up to criticize a government decision that they say effectively refused toallow the Italian scholar Antonio Negri to enter the country last month. Mr. Negri, an antiglobalization activist and philosopher who served a prison sentence in Italy on controversial
charges of “insurrection against the state,” had been scheduled to give a series of lectures at the
Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto. He was forced to abruptly cancel his trip after being told hewould need a permit to entry the country.
“My sense is that we have entered a very dangerous period for freedom of expression and press
freedom in this country,” says Tajima Yasuhiko, a professor of journalism in Tokyo’s Sophia
University. “That is the background to these cases. The idea that people are entitled to express
different opinions and views is withering. That should be common sense, whether one is on theleft or the right.”
Why was the movie canned? The cinemas say they were disturbed by right-wing threats and thepossibility of “trouble,” particularly during the first days of screening. “We very much regret
canceling the documentary but we felt we had no choice after considering the safety of ourcustomers,” explains Murayama Yaseyuki, a spokesman for Q-AX Cinema in Shibuya. But
Director Li rejects these claims and says only political pressure explains the sudden decision by
all four Tokyo cinemas to pull the plug.
“Before the movie was released I visited the theatres and talked to the managers,” he says on thephone from China. “Some magazines had already started discussing the movie, so we knew that
there would be some protests. There was a very strong sense among everyone then of wanting to
put this movie out and challenge the protesters. So why have they all suddenly changed theirWar and Visual Culture144

mind? I can only conclude that pressure was exerted behind the scenes.” For the English
subtitled video of a more recent statement by the director, see here and here.
Japan has been here many times before. Because of neonationalist protests, few Japanese haveseen Paul Schrader's 1985 art-house cinematic tribute to Mishima Yukio. How many people here
will see the dozen or so movies made to commemorate the 1937 Nanjing Massacre over the last
two years in Europe, North America and China? The pattern is often the same: The movies pickat the scabs of Japan's war history, conservative politicians express "concern" and the ultra-rightgo into battle.
“Politicians know that when they make pronouncements about these issues that we will takeaction,” says Takahashi Yoshisada, who heads a Tokyo-based ultra-nationalist group. Like mostother ultra-nationalists, including the group that first spooked the Ginza Cinepathos movie
theatre with a visit in March, Takahashi has not seen “Yasukuni,” only heard about it frompeople like Inada. “They talk, we protest. They know this because it has happened many times in
the past. In that sense, I think the politicians are using us.”
In a recent press conference to foreign reporters in Tokyo, Councilor Inada defended her
criticism of Li’s movie. “Wouldn’t China have a problem if a Japanese company [funded by tax
money] in China created a film conveying the message of the Dalai Lama?” But the comparison
is rejected by Professor Tajima. “Liberal democratic nations are not afraid of some criticism.
Expecting everyone to just cheer on the country and cooperate with the government is more like
North Korea or the situation in Tibet.”
Speaking at the Foreign Press Club, veteran Japan commentator and Keizai University professor
Andrew Horvat said the debate about Li’s movie worried Japan’s friends as much as its enemies.
“I’m afraid that Japan’s reputation as a democratic country will come under scrutiny.” But
conservatives have cheered the cancellation of the screenings. “Our tax money should be notspent to support a film that expresses an anti-Japan ideology,” wrote one right-wing blogger.
“This is just common sense.”
The controversy over Yasukuni is not difficult to understand. Among the 2.46 million war deadenshrined there are over 1,000 war criminals, including the men who led Japan’s brutal pillage of
Asia. A museum on the shrine’s grounds audaciously rewrites history: teenage suicide bombers(Kamikaze) are heroes, America is the enemy and the Emperor, supposedly reduced to mortal
status after Second World War, is still a deity. The Shinto officials who run the shrine believe
they are protecting the “soul of Japan.”Li’s cinematic gaze is unflinching, and sometimes disturbing. In one scene, filmed on the 60th
anniversary of Japan’s World War 2 surrender, August 15, 2005, two young anti-Yasukuni
protestors are beaten and chased from the shrine’s grounds by right-wingers who yell at them to“go back to China.” The protestors, who are Japanese, are later hauled off by the police. Archive
shots show Japanese soldiers using Yasukuni swords, forged in the grounds from 1933-1945, todecapitate Chinese victims.
But much of the movie, which is narration free, unobtrusively explores the conflicting sentiments
provoked by the memorial among ordinary Japanese: from the two older women who recall theMcNeill et al.: Freedom Next Time145

battlefield deaths of relatives and who want the prime minister to pay his respects, to the
Buddhist priest who resents the fact that his father’s soul has been enshrined there against his
will. The movie is hinged around the work of the shrine’s last remaining sword-maker, Kariya
Naoji, a gentle craftsman who offers few insights into how he helped forge the 8,100 swords that
ended up on the battlefield.
Many have been quick to blame the cinemas for the “Yasukuni” debacle. The Asahi and Sankei
newspapers, representing the left and right of mainstream public opinion in Japan, have both
urged the theater managers to rethink their decision. One newspaper called the collapse under
threat “pitiful.” But you can hardly blame the theaters for running scared, says Japan-based film
director John Junkerman, who wrote the subtitles for “Yasukuni.”“There have been a sufficient number of violent attacks for alleged ‘anti-Japanese’ thought
crimes that the threat of violence is very intimidating,” he says, citing several cases including themurder of Asahi journalist Kojiri Tomohiro in 1987, the shooting of Nagasaki mayor Motoshima
Hitoshi in 1990 and the most recent fire-bomb attack on the home of LDP politician Kato
Koichi, after he criticized prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni. “Couple this with the apparent
reluctance of the police to intervene to prevent intimidation, and the threat that the theaters
perceive is not actually unreasonable.”
Junkerman acknowledges that Japan has “a very high level of respect for and exercise of
freedom of expression.” But the branding of a movie as “mondai-saku” — or a “problem” — in
the press is a potent way for politicians to raise questions about its political slant, and “the rightwing take over from there.” Ultra-nationalists are like the mad dogs kept in bad neighborhoods:
not nice to be around but useful in an emergency.
One of the more interesting developments, then, in the continuing saga over Li's movie, is how
little support Inada appears to have among neonationalists, who believe she has betrayed them.
“That woman is the worst,” says prominent new-right figure Kimura Mitsuhiro. “First she
criticizes the movie, then refuses to back the protests against it. She did a complete about-face.”
At a Shinjuku meeting about the “Yasukuni” movie in April, another senior new-right activist,
Suzuki Kunio, argued that ordinary Japanese should have a chance to judge for themselves what
all the fuss is about. “I think it is a mistake for politicians to decide what is best for the public tosee,” he said.
There are signs that Suzuki may get his wish as the smear campaign against the movie runs outof steam. As of May 1st, as many as 20 theaters around the country plan to screen the film,
which has now become a sort of free-speech cause célèbre. Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura
Nobutaka and even Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo have gone on the record to call the harassmentof the movie “inappropriate.”
For his part, director Li Ying, who moved to Tokyo in 1989 and speaks fluent Japanese, rejects
claims that he is anti-Japanese and describes his movie as a “love-letter” to the Japanese people.
“I live in Japan. How could something that is anti-Japanese be good for me, personally? This
love letter may be hard to watch, but that’s the form my love takes.” He says he was motivated toWar and Visual Culture

146

start making the movie a decade ago by the shock of listening to Japanese revisionists at aconference on the Nanjing Massacre. “When it comes to history, there’s a gap that’s so large.”
John Junkerman interviews Li Ying
[Note: This interview was conducted on March 10, several weeks before the theaters in Tokyodecided to cancel their screening of the film.]

Li Ying

Q: Who is the diet member who has raised objections to the film?
Li: Inada Tomomi is a very famous lawyer. She was involved in the court case over the“Hyakunin-giri” affair [the 1937 contest between two Japanese officers to be the first to behead
100 Chinese] and in the suit against Oe Kenzaburo, regarding mass suicides in Okinawa. She’s
got very powerful backers. An ordinary diet member would not be able to get the Agency for
Cultural Affairs to take action. So it’s intimidating. And now she’s influencing people aroundher. It’s a month until the film opens, and she can make things difficult for us. We don’t reallycare if she threatens us personally, we’re prepared for that, but it’s the theaters we’re worried
about. The theaters are taking out insurance, increasing security. And the other concern is thatpeople who appear in the film might be threatened. The other day I met with Kariya Naoji [theYasukuni swordsmith featured in the film] and he mentioned that he’d seen reports that it was ananti-Japanese film. He doesn’t think so himself, but it could be a problem if he hears that fromother people.
Q: What motivated you to breach the taboo and make a film about Yasukuni?
Yasukuni and the Nanjing Massacre
Li: It was Nanking. Some years ago, I was thinking about making a film on Nanking. In speaking
with Japanese, of course there is always a gap in the perception of history. And the gap
surrounding Nanking is the widest. So I was interested in Nanking and in 1997 I attended a
symposium at Kudan Kaikan in Tokyo on the 60th anniversary of Nanking. The first event of thesymposium was the screening of a documentary about Nanking. It was a propaganda film
produced by the Japanese military, and of course it didn’t touch on the massacre at all. There wasa scene of the formal ceremony of the Japanese military entering the city. And something
happened that I couldn’t believe. The audience applauded, very loudly. It was a shock. It left me
shaking. I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I was standing on a battlefield. It was a shock to

McNeill et al.: Freedom Next Time147

experience such a scene, here in Japan so many years after the war. It’s unthinkable, that people
still feel a sense of honor and pride toward such a scene. This is not simply a typical right-wingproblem. It far surpassed what I understood to be the right wing. Kudan Kaikan is a fancy venue,
and there were more than a thousand people, all wearing suits and ties. University of Tokyo
professors, members of the Atarashii Kyokasho o Tsukuru Kai [Japanese Society for History
Textbook Reform]. There are those in Japan who have documented the massacre, and there arethose who deny it. It was the deniers who were participating in this symposium. And what istheir position? They dismiss the testimony of those who were in Nanking, and argue instead thatthe massacre never happened. There’s no possibility of discussing it with them.
At the symposium, the daughter of one of the officers who engaged in the beheading contest
appealed for the restoration of her father’s honor, that he be treated not as a war criminal but as aheroic soul in Yasukuni. So that made me wonder what Yasukuni symbolized, this sacred spacethat granted heroic status. This was an issue that had a greater sense of reality. Nanking is ahistorical problem, but to take up an issue that carries reality, you need to film in Japan, and thatmeant filming Yasukuni, to bring the issue into present reality. Yasukuni feels very real to me.
So I began filming then and continued for ten years. I didn’t know what kind of film it would
turn out to be. I decided I would just film every time I went to Yasukuni. As I filmed I would
study and learn more, and figure it out. That’s a very time-consuming process, to start filming
without knowing what kind of film it will turn out to be. But I had a sense that it raised very realissues.
Q: Did people try to prevent you from filming?
Preventing the Filming of Yasukuni
Li: My camera was taken away, videotape was taken, I was told to erase the tapes. It was rightwingers who did this. You could never make this film, shooting in the standard way. I thinkthat’s why no Japanese has ever made a film like this. They would follow the ordinary process ofapplying for press passes and permission, but it doesn’t work to take that approach. All you can
do is shoot a bit at a time. When it was possible, I applied for permission. But there are places
where permission wouldn’t be granted, and you either have to go ahead and film there, or giveup.
Q: This is one of the issues that is being raised in criticism of the film.
Li: I did get permission to film on August 15th. I gave my name card to the people in charge at
Yasukuni, and I had permission to film then. In the beginning, I had no idea of what kind of film
I would make, so I shot like a tourist. There are a lot of tourists who shoot video at Yasukuni.
But when I understood there were things I needed to shoot, I got permission. The people incharge knew who I was. I never shot with a concealed camera. I didn’t use a long lens.
Q: Was making a film about Yasukuni something of a provocation?
Li: It was more like a conditioned response than a provocation. I was provoked, and I responded.
I often say, this is a sequela, the psychological aftereffect of the war. Not just World War II, notWar and Visual Culture148

just the war with China, but it’s a disorder caused by all the wars Japan fought since the Meiji
period. Yasukuni Shrine is intricately tied to Japan’s modern history. It was built by the Meiji
emperor, it’s the emperor’s shrine. So it is these contradictions, this disorder caused by war thatcan be seen on the stage of Yasukuni. When I go inside there, I feel like I too am suffering froma disease. I contracted the disease at the Nanking symposium, and I’ve been suffering from itever since. I’m not a doctor, who can diagnose someone’s disease. I’m suffering from the disease
as well. So it’s not a provocation, but a conditioned response, I’m responding by instinct.
Tojo Hideki and "Pride"
I had a dialogue once with Ito Shunya, the director of “Pride.” We’re both members of the
Directors Guild of Japan, and Ito has always been very cordial and friendly toward me, aJapanese gentleman. But around that same time, 1997, he made the film called “Pride.” That too
was a shock. When it comes to history, there’s a gap that’s so large. It’s a film about the “pride”
of Tojo Hideki, his defiance of the Tokyo war crimes trial, arguing that the war was fought inJapan’s self-defense. We had a special meeting of the international committee of the Guild and I
engaged in a three-hour discussion with Ito. And I thought at the time that it was pointless todebate, that what I needed to do was respond with a film of my own. So, it’s matter ofconditioned response. The other side is provocative, I’m just responding by instinct.
Q: So you don’t consider this film to be anti-Japanese.
Curing the disorder caused by war
Li: Of course not. What’s wrong with curing an illness, the disorder caused by war? The point is
to live together in a healthy atmosphere, and that would work in Japan’s favor as well. People
don’t want to recognize their illness, they don’t want to think about it, look at it. They say,
“Japan is beautiful. How can you say it is sick?” But if you watch the film, you’ll see thatdiseased cells are living within the space of Yasukuni. And that’s dangerous. It could lead toheart disease, or to brain disease. But what’s really serious about this disease is that it comes notfrom internal organs but from the soul. So it is a psychological disorder, a disease of the spirit.
That I haven’t been able to leave this issue alone for the last ten years means that I too am
suffering from this psychological disorder. I didn’t really want to make such a difficult film, it’s
only going to cause problems, so I must be sick to do it. The point is to look directly at thedisease.
What is the meaning of Yasukuni?
I’ve been observing for ten years, and this is the result. The film asks the question: What is themeaning of the spirit of Yasukuni? That’s all. Each viewer can come up with his or her own
answer. This has to be good for Japan. It’s an opportunity, an opportunity to get well. That’s
good for Japan, not anti-Japanese. To suggest that the film is anti-Japanese suggests that
Yasukuni symbolizes all of Japan. That’s a mistake to begin with. It’s one face of Japan, the faceof Japan when it’s suffering from disease. That’s not all of Japan. Japan has many beautiful
faces. But this face must not be ignored. It must be confronted. Many Japanese don’t know about
Yasukuni, they feel it has nothing to do with them. But that’s wrong. It needs to be recognized,

McNeill et al.: Freedom Next Time149

looked at, and thought about, and the film provides that opportunity. So it’s not anti-Japanese.
It’s my love letter to Japan, in that sense. I live in Japan. How could something that is antiJapanese be good for me, personally? This love letter may be hard to watch, but that’s the form
my love takes. There are many forms of love. There’s one that declares that everything iswonderful, but that’s not my way. This is my expression of love.
Q: But there are those who consider it a taboo to address this.
Li: That’s because it is questioning the spirit, and so the spiritual pain comes out, and there isresistance. I’m not stating a conclusion. We don’t use any narration. The space itself raises thequestions, the atmosphere of the place. My theme is the space that is Yasukuni. The space andthe spirit. It’s the spirit of Yasukuni that I’m trying to capture. So you need a variety ofperspectives to see the space. It’s not one-sided. But no one has looked at that space, so seeing it
may be a shock, it may be unpleasant, but it’s reality.
Q: What is the spirit of Yasukuni?
The spirit of Yasukuni: the sword
Li: In the shrine’s own doctrine, the spirit is the sword. It is the object of worship. All of thespirits of the dead are embodied in that sword. So that’s the symbol of Yasukuni. The film
depicts symbolic meaning. Everyone who appears in the film, every scene, and the sword itself,
all are symbols. I am using the doctrine of Yasukuni to make a film: the world of symbols. The
sword is the spirit, but what meaning does that spirit have? That’s the question the film raises. Is
it the samurai spirit? The Yamato spirit? An entirely beautiful spirit?

The sword

Q: But it is a spirit that doesn’t allow for reflection.
Li: They are all tools. The sword is a tool. Yasukuni itself is no more than a building. It’s a tool.
What meaning do people invest in those tools? How they are used changes their effect entirely.
So it always returns to people. How do people use these tools, how do they see them? How doWar and Visual Culture

150

they interact with the tools? People are weak, so the government uses the tools to manipulate
people.
Q: There are many war memorials in the world, and everyone who visits them brings their own
meaning to them. But Yasukuni does not allow that freedom. The compulsory nature of
Yasukuni is the key problem, it seems to me.
Yasukuni and State Shinto
Li: It began as a symbol of the state. Under the emperor, it was part of a political religion. It wasa military facility. The head priest was a general in the army, for example. It was run by the
military. During the war, it had a status that surpassed all religions, it represented the morality of
the Japanese people. That was the nature of state Shinto. State Shinto conveyed the power of thestate as the image of the nation. The problem comes after the war, when state Shinto wasdisestablished, and separation of religion and the state was adopted. Yasukuni became an
independent religious institution. But is it really independent? Is it really simply a religious
shrine? There are many contradictions there. For example, in the film, there’s the story of the
Buddhist priest, Sugawara Ryuken. The question he asks is this: if Yasukuni is an independent
religious institution, how did it obtain the information needed to enshrine his father? He wasenshrined, as a heroic spirit, after the war. How could they accomplish that? His father was a
Buddhist. Why does a Buddhist have to be enshrined in a Shinto shrine? That’s a contradiction.
Even after the war, there is no separation between Yasukuni and the government. The
enshrinement rolls are all prepared on the basis of information that comes from the Ministry of
Health, Labor, and Welfare. That’s true of the Class-A war criminals too. All of that information
came from the government. So the government is still using Yasukuni.
The Japanese government employs a double standard. With regard to international society, it
recognizes the verdicts of the war crimes trials, it acknowledges the existence of war criminals.
But domestically, it uses Yasukuni to honor them, and give them the status of heroic souls, toexpress gratitude and respect. This is very Japanese, a different face at home and abroad. And
this double standard has created the contradictory nature of Yasukuni over these decades. So
there are people with different stances and the confrontations among them are repeated. It also
makes Yasukuni very indefinite. To young people, it’s perplexing, and they don’t want to haveanything to do with it. And this connects, of course, to the larger question of Japanese war
responsibility throughout the postwar period. It is the matter of collective memory, and that’s
where coercion comes into play. In the film, everyone is part of a collective, it has nothing to dowith the individual. They have collective memory, they are in a collective context, collective
currents and relationships. Yasukuni is a powerful collective symbol, a powerful symbol ofcollective memory. It is a symbol of Japan as a kyôdôtai, a communal society. To live
collectively, with gratitude to the dead. It’s that kind of symbol. Yasukuni is not a simple symbolof militarism, it’s not simply a matter of whether the prime minister will worship there or not. It
is connected to the collective memories that stretch back to the beginning of the Meiji period,
when Japan began to walk the path of a modern state, with pride and honor.
Q; How do you think the film will be seen in China?

McNeill et al.: Freedom Next Time151

Li: This film is a Japanese-Chinese coproduction, with producers from the Beijing Film
Academy and a Chinese film company. So it will be released in China. And that’s important,because it depicts sides of Yasukuni that have never been shown before.
Q: But there is a chance it will lead to increased anti-Japanese sentiment.
Li: That’s possible, but until now Yasukuni has been used for political purposes, with anationalist spirit on both sides. But this film shows many aspects of Yasukuni, so it may have theeffect of dampening the nationalist response. It provides the opportunity to engage the subject
calmly, to watch, feel, study, and relate to it. An opportunity to communicate not in a political,
nationalistic way, but in a cultural way.
Q: There are many appealing characters in the film, starting with Kariya-san, the swordsmith,and some of the ordinary people who worship at the shrine.

Swordsmith Kariya

Li: The spirit of the artisan is a central aspect of the Japanese character. There’s a concentrationon the work in front of one. But there is also a tendency to not think about what is done with the
product of one’s labor, and that’s problematic. That can be used by the state again, as it was
during the war. Soldiers went to war doing a job, they didn’t go to war as “devils.” They were allordinary people, and it was their job. Then they were changed. They may have engaged in
atrocities, but it was war, so it’s forgivable. Is that kind of thinking acceptable? The film posesthat question to the Japanese people.
Germany, Japan and the war deadThe desire to remember the war dead is the same throughout the world. When I showed the film
at the Berlin Film Festival, the response was interesting. There are many war dead in Germany,and they had families who have their grief and want to commemorate the dead. But the Germans
first built a memorial to the Jews. There is no facility in Germany commemorating the German
war dead. Why is that? The founder of the International Forum of New Cinema at the BerlinWar and Visual Culture152

festival, Ulrich Gregor, has an interesting take on this. He argues that the difference between
Germany and Japan is that Germany was lucky to have gotten rid of its emperor after World War
I. For Japan, the symbol of the state has remained the same, before, during, and after the war.
The emperor has lost his authority, he made a declaration of his humanity, but he remains the
symbol of the state. That’s the source of the difficulty and complexity of the problem. Yasukuni
Shrine is the emperor’s shrine. The film calls that into question. And that’s the reason it has
generated an intense response.
David McNeill writes regularly for a number of publications including the Irish Times and theChronicle of Higher Education. He is a Japan Focus coordinator.
John Junkerman is an American documentary filmmaker, based in Tokyo, and a Japan Focus
associate. His recent film, “Japan’s Peace Constitution,” has been screened widely in Japan bygroups dedicated to defending Article 9. Information on his films can be found atwww.cine.co.jp. “Japan’s Peace Constitution” is distributed in North American by First Run
Icarus Films.
Article and interview were prepared for Japan Focus. Posted on April 1, 2008 and updated May
1, 2008. This is a substantially expanded and updated version of an article that was published in
the South China Morning Post.

Susan J. Napier: World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation

153“World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation”
Susan J. Napier
May 31, 2005
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Susan_J_-Napier/1972
Japanese popular culture has engaged with experiences and memories of WWII
since the 1950s, starting with manga (comic books) and moving on to some of the mostwidely known and memorable animated war films that have been produced since the1960s, such as Barefoot Gen (1983) and Grave of the Fireflies (1988). A number ofanimation artists have expressed loss and hope in their works on this subject. As Napierargues, Japanese animation has explored history and memory beyond simple
entertainment and has presented important issues still relevant to the audience today. Thisessay analyzes two futuristic science fictions, one TV and one film series, made over two
decades apart: Space Battleship Yamato (produced in the 1970s) and Silent Service (in the
1990s). Both explicitly refer to WWII: in Space Battleship Yamato, after having been sunk tothe bottom of the ocean off Okinawa towards the very end of the war, the battleship
Yamato is revived by the Japanese government in order to save humanity from an alien
attack, whereas a constant battle between Japan and international communities over theownership of a nuclear submarine occurs in Silent Service. After a brief introduction of thenarratives of the two animation series, the author examines their reception at the time of
their production, and discusses the ways in which they rework the memory of loss andvision of hope in response to contemporary national and international politics.

War and Visual Culture

154

World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation
By Susan J. Napier
In her book Hiroshima Traces Lisa Yoneyama discusses how recent scholarship has tended todefine memory in opposition to history, suggesting that “Memory has often been associated withmyth or fiction and contrasted with History as written by professionals. [1] Yoneyama herself
problematizes this opposition as a “false dichotomy,” stating that “the production of knowledge
about the past … is always enmeshed in the exercise of power and is always accompanied byelements of repression.” [2] She exhorts her readers to remember that, “we begin ourinvestigations into the past with an awareness that historical ‘reality’ can only be made available
to us through the mediation of given categories of representation and processes of signification.”[3] This article examines how one of the most significant events in modern Japanese history,
defeat in the Second World War, is represented through the medium of animation, a medium
which allows history and memory to transform into myth and even into fantasy, ultimately
creating for the viewer an experience which allows for a working through of what might becalled historical trauma.
Japanese popular culture has engaged with memories of the Second World War since at least theearly 1950’s when the first Godzilla (Gojira) film took on atomic testing, wholesale destruction
and the American enemy in the form of a kaiju eiga or monster movie. Japanese manga (comic
books) have revisited WWII often, especially in the works of Matsumoto Leiji whose depictionsof aerial dogfights and last minute sacrifices gained a wide following. Since the 1960s, animatedfilms and television series have produced some of the most memorable visions of the war. The
two most famous of these are the remarkably faithful recreations or rememorations ofcataclysmic events such as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima depicted in Barefoot Gen (Hadashi
no Gen 1983) and the final days of the war as seen by two children in Kobe shown in Grave ofFireflies (Hotaru no haka, 1988). In these two films personal memory on the part of the writersof the original texts (respectively Nakazawa Keiji on whose autobiographical manga Barefoot
Gen is based and Nosaka Akiyuki who wrote the semi-autobiographical short story Grave ofFireflies), became part of a collective Japanese memory as the films were seen by millions ofJapanese schoolchildren. But the war, the defeat and the atomic bomb also manifest themselves
consistently in more displaced forms, most obviously in the overall fetishization of apocalypse
which has been a staple of Japanese animation since the 1970’s to the present.
Here discussion focuses on one anime depiction, the Space Battleship Yamato (Uchu Senkan
Yamato) television and film series from the 1970’s???and what might be called the Yamato’s
descendant, the series Silent Service (Chinmoku no Kantai) from the late 1990’s. Both works
refer explicitly to the Second World War at the same time as they go beyond history and memory
to produce a cathartic and fantastic reworking of the loss.
The Space Battleship Yamato series premiered in October of 1974, three years earlier than thefirst Star Wars film. Like Star Wars and the 1960’s American Star Trek series, however, Yamato
can be seen as an immensely entertaining science fiction series, with memorable characters,
cutting edge special effects (for the period), and compelling story lines, that also possesses astrong ideological subtext. In the case of Star Trek and Star Wars, this subtext is clearly linked tothe period in which each was created. Star Trek with its introspective, racially mixed crew andSusan J. Napier: World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation

155

regular invocation of the Enterprise’s mission, “to seek out new worlds and new civilizations”
may be seen as an optimistic answer to American anxieties during the Vietnam War, when many
at home and abroad perceived America’s advance into Southeast Asia as racist and imperialist.
The original Star Wars trilogy, on the other hand, with its evil Galactic Empire and largely
Caucasian cast, took place mainly during the manicheanism of the Reagan years when American
triumphalism coexisted with heightened Cold War tensions.
The Yamato series can also be seen as a product of its time when Japan was one generation awayfrom the war, an era in which technology and economic success seemed to promise a bright
future, but also one in which many expressed anxiety over loss of basic Japanese traditions,
including notions of community, sacrifice, and respect for the past. Unlike Star Wars and Star
Trek, however, which take place in the science fiction continuum that Fredric Jameson describes
as “the defamiliarization of the present “ (my italics), the action of the Yamato films ispredicated on coming to terms with a past event, the sinking of the battleship Yamato off
Okinawa in the final days of the war, an incident that, in its iconic significance for the Japanesepeople, may be interpreted as an originary event, linked with the supreme originary event, theloss of the war. Furthermore this is an event which, in displaced form, is revisited constantly
throughout the series, a dip into a quasi-repressed nightmarish past which, through the mediumof animated science fiction, is reworked into a dream of success.
Interestingly, when the series was initially shown on Japanese television it garnered relatively
low ratings, forcing the producer, Nishizaki Yoshinobu, (the actual creator of the series was
Matsumoto Leiji and there were a number of different directors involved), to shorten the original
39 week broadcast to 26 weeks. It was with the opening of the first Yamato film, however,(essentially a compilation from the season’s episodes), that the film and series began to become a
pop culture phenomenon. In fact, the Yamato film series is widely credited with having inspired
the beginnings of anime fandom, as fans from around the country came to camp out on thecinema’s steps the night before the opening. [5] As the editorial staff of Animerica puts it, “thefirst film] ignited a ‘Yamato craze’ which would go on to consume Japan-and eventually manyother parts of the world-for the next ten years.” [6]The four films comprising the 1970’s cinema series range over a mise en scene that varies from
Earth to the Magellanic Clouds and beyond, even to the fourth dimension, but always calling
attention to the WWII historical framework. [7] This is most obvious in the first film of the series
Battleship Yamato (Uchusenkan Yamato), when an increasingly radioactive future earth ismenaced by alien invaders known as the Gamilans. For somewhat enigmatic reasons, thegovernment decides that the only way to save humanity is to revive the actual battleship Yamato
from its watery grave off Okinawa. The sequence in which the Yamato is raised is clearlycalculated to be both thrilling and deeply evocative of the actual historical event of the Yamato’s
sinking. In a several minute sequence the film flashes back to the sailing of the original Yamato,
the largest battleship ever created. As the film indicates, the battleship Yamato was freighted
with far more iconic significance than an ordinary ship. Its name itself consciously refers toJapan, since “Yamato” was the ancient name for Japan and warriors were urged to have
Yamatodamashii (Yamato spirit). Equally important, the ship bore the final hopes of warding off,
or at least slowing the advance of invading Americans on the eve of the battle of Okinawa.

War and Visual Culture

156

The film shows the 1945 Yamato setting sail, waved off by ordinary Japanese hopeful of its
success, then offers a detailed depiction of its destruction. The film then cuts to the future,
showing the ship’s literal resurrection. Through the astonished eyes of two young soldiers, we
see the reconstituted Yamato breaking through mud and rock (the accretions of history), to thestrains of moving music. The following scene shows its successful first flight, also accompaniedby emotionally charged music. In these few minutes the film encapsulates emotions ranging fromdespair to hope, the basic emotional trajectory of the entire series.
In an article on the Yamato phenomenon originally published in Bungei Shunjuu, the Japanesewriter Yoshida Mitsuru sums up the first film in the following manner:
Space Cruiser Yamato fights alone as best it can against the swarms of enemy forces, its
unassisted fight reminiscent of how the battleship Yamato accompanied by only 10 ships andwith no air protections, fought a fatal battle and sank off Okinawa before the onslaught of 300
American warships and 1,200 American planes. But unlike the tragic demise of its prototype, thespace cruiser Yamato successfully obtains the radioactivity-removing device with the help of
Stasha, a mysterious beauty who lives on the planet Iscandall, destroys the Gamilus forces andreturns safely to earth. [8]The Yamato's successful saving of the earth becomes the basic diegetic pattern for the series.
Battles are fought, new worlds are discovered, the earth is menaced and then saved, always by
the Yamato which miraculously survives destruction time after time. Indeed, throughout the
spaceship’s interstellar journeys one tactic is particularly common: faced with a particularly
menacing threat—one that seems impossible to escape—the crew consistently chooses, notsimply to confront the menace, but to head straight into it, courting almost inevitable disaster but
somehow emerging intact. At one point in Space Battleship Yamato (the first film of the series),
for example, the crew of the Yamato is attempting to engage with an alien attack force, only to
be stymied by the intensity of a star that blocks their passage. Rather than trying to go around thestar and lose precious time, the crew suits up in special heat suits and skims the fiery surface,plunging through awesome solar flares that almost consume it and finally just managing toescape. Later in the same film the Yamato is nearly destroyed by a metal-eating oil sea while
being attacked by an enemy above the surface. Rather than emerge from the water, however, theYamato submerges into the sea just long enough to start a chain reaction on the planet’s surface
that will annihilate the enemy. At the end of Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato (Saraba
Uchusenkan Yamato, 1978), the brave and handsome young captain Kodai Susumu, alone on theship with his dead girlfriend, plunges the ship into a kind of death star disguised as a white cometin order to save the earth even at the cost of the Yamato and his own life. In Be Forever Yamato(Yamato: Eien ni, 1980), the fourth film of the series, the ship is forced to go into the center of
the terrifying Black Nebula, where it are bombarded by both asteroids and enemy forces in a
virtual visual and aural symphony of destruction. At the last moment, however, the crew
discovers an exit space from the Nebula that places them above a planet that seems to be an exact
twin of the Earth, 200 years in the future.
All these exciting sequences no doubt provide suspenseful pleasure for the series’ target
audience of children and adolescents, as the Yamato comes again and again within a hair’s
breadth of being annihilated. But the craft’s constant plunges into danger followed by miraculous

Susan J. Napier: World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation

157

recovery can also be looked at psychoanalytically as plunges into the collective unconscious of
the postwar Japanese citizenry, a form of “working through” the collective national trauma of
defeat. By offering the audience the chance to vicariously approach the moment of Yamato’s(Japan’s) annihilation and then successfully escape what seems like inevitable destruction, thefilms can be seen as a form of cultural therapy in which loss is revisited in a fundamentally
reassuring manner.
One of the most interesting examples of this “cultural therapy” may be seen in Forever Yamato
when the ship, after going through what is perhaps another dimension, discovers what seems to
be a future earth. This is an earth however, in which according to its history, the Yamato neverreturned from its current mission and much of earth’s culture was lost. The present day
inhabitants of the future “earth” attempt to convince the Yamato’s crew that they should simply
stay in the future since history tells them that they will only be annihilated if they try to return.
Just as the crew is about to despair, however, one of the crew begins to notice suspicious
differences between our earth and the future earth (such as the fact that Rodin’s “Thinker”’shand is the wrong one). Realizing that this future earth is actually a simulacrum, a trap set up by
the alien enemy, the Yamato escapes, battles its way back across the universe and, of course,
saves the earth.
Even more than the first film, Forever Yamato addresses and plays on postwar Japaneseanxieties, perhaps the most fundamental of which is that the successes of the postwar period
were not sustainable. Like a dream within a dream the film’s diegesis allows for an initialreworking of the defeat only to suggest that this reworking was itself a fake, (just as when we“wake “from a nightmare only to realize that the nightmare is still continuing) and that in“reality” the Yamato never does make it back to save the earth. At the last moment however, thefilm offers an alternative “true” reality in which the nightmare future is seen as only asimulacrum and the Yamato sails triumphantly on.
Of the postwar attitude toward the defeat, Yoshikuni Igarashi writes, “…the desire to return to
the traumatic experiences of the Pacific War did not disappear with Japan’s prosperity, since thenarrative of progress posited its losses as the origin of the postwar Japanese society.” He goes on
to say that “the familiarity of the narrative simply transformed the eyewitness accounts intoclichés “ and that “the articulation of the war experience could take place only in the form ofrepetition, trapped between the contradictory needs to remember and to forget the traumatic war
experience.” [9]I would suggest that the Space Battleship Yamato series goes beyond both remembering andforgetting. Through its medium (animation) and genre (futuristic science fiction) the series
defamiliarizes the war experience, allowing not only a working through of the trauma of defeat(through innumerable repetitions of attack and destruction) but ultimately a reworking of thedefeat, both through the final success of the Yamato in every encounter and, even more
importantly, through the fetishization of the spaceship Yamato itself, not only a symbol ofJapan’s final battles in WWII but also a symbol of the Japanese nation. Even more than theatomic bomb, which has become what Marilyn Ivy calls a metatrope for loss in contemporary
Japan, [10] the Yamato, both the original and the animated versions, are tropes of the Japanese
identity, initially configured as one of loss and destruction but, through the medium of animatedfantasy, able to become a trope of renewal and hope. For in many ways this reworking is a

War and Visual Culture158

positive one, as the Yamato is more or less transformed from the emblem of prewar Japanesemilitarism to a global (literally) emissary of peace and love to the universe. This universalizationof the Yamato’s iconic significance is made abundantly clear throughout the series. The earth is
now a single nation united against alien blue-skinned enemies (although the characters’ names
are all Japanese and some, such as “Tokugawa” or “Okita” have historical significance) and thetheme of love of humankind is constantly evoked, sometimes explicitly in the lyrics to various
theme music, and in the second film Farewell Yamato’s subtitle Soldiers of Love (Ai nosenshitachi).
If the atomic bomb was a symbol for Japanese of powerlessness and victimhood, as a result of an
unexpected outside force the sinking of the Yamato is a more culturally specific vision of defeat
and despair. While some Japanese criticized the film on its initially appearance as potentiallyreviving militarism [11] the films project a very explicit message of universal love, not simply
among the inhabitants of earth but involving at least some of earth’s alien enemies as well.
Furthermore, the Yamato unlike the Enterprise in Star Trek is always in a reactive rather thanproactive mode, defending the earth rather than seeking out adventures.
A more complex situation is limned in the 1990’s film and manga series Silent Service. This
series, set in the contemporary era, features a nuclear submarine, originally under joint. U.S.Japanese command and originally called the “Seabat.” In a surprise twist, however, the Japanesecrew takes over the submarine and turns it into a rogue vessel, no longer under the command of
any nation. Most of the series consists of the travels of the submarine and the attempts by theinternational community to find and seize it, constantly defeated by the plucky and resourceful
Japanese captain who masterminded the takeover in the first place. Although unexpected, thetakeover is actually presaged by a significant action taken by the Japanese commander early onin the story. Alone with the Seabat, he takes out his knife and carves a single word into the hull.
The word (in Japanese) is “Yamato.”
Although the overall diegesis of Silent Service is less specifically evocative of history than was
the Yamato series, history is still an important emotional catalyst behind the plot, as the above
incident illustrates. This more recent series is a reworking of defeat and loss on a more proactive
level. No longer in the therapeutically safe and dreamlike realm of the outer space of the future,
Silent Service suggests a world of increasing international tension and rising Japanesenationalism, with the Americans clearly delineated and made to appear foolish.
Whether this contemporary reworking of loss and defeat is therapeutic or problematic remains
open to question. Yoshida Mitsuru, himself a survivor of the Yamato’s sinking, insists that,“Fortunately the space cruiser Yamato is decisively different from the battleship Yamato.” [12]The same may not be said as easily of the Japanese appropriation of the Seabat, clearly a symbolof the desire for Japanese autonomy from America.
In his seafaring novel Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad creates a character (Jim), who cannot escape oreven completely acknowledge a tragic mistake in his past, one that involved the lives of many
innocent passengers on a pilgrim ship. In a famous and much critically debated scene, Jim’s two
mentors, Stein and Marlowe, discuss what to do with him. It is Stein who has the last word,
telling Marlowe that Jim must “in the destructive element immerse,” advice that I take to mean

Susan J. Napier: World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation

159

that Jim must confront his past and his own identity. In a sense Jim does accomplish this task
although in a somewhat displaced and deeply romantic form, and one which ultimately involves
the sacrifice of his life. Both the crew of the Yamato and the former SeaBat are also plunging
into a destructive element, one composed of memory, history, loss and desire. That these“immersions” are also popular entertainment does not lessen their impact.
Susan Napier is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Professor of Japanese Studies at the University ofTexas. Her most recent book, Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke, will be published in arevised edition as Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle in December from Palgrave.
This article, prepared for Japan Focus, expands on a presentation on the sixtieth anniversary of
the end of World War II at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago,
March, 31- April 2, 2005. Posted at Japan Focus on May 31, 2005.
[1] Lisa Yoneyama. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999) 27.
[2 ] Ibid, 27[3] Ibid,, 28.
[4 ] I am indebted to two former students for my initial interest in the Yamato series. Karline
McLain’s paper “Remembering the Past, Recasting Identity” linked the sinking of the Yamato to
the atomic bombings while Eric Carmen’s presentation on the original battleship Yamato mademe aware of how accurate was the anime version of the historical event and inspired me to
explore reasons behind this obsessive attention to verisimilitude.
[5] See “All Aboard to the Land of Dreams,” an interview with Ishiguro Noboru, one of the
Yamato directors, for an account of the beginning of Yamato fandom. (Animerica, Vol. 3, No. 8,
1995), 7 and 9. Ironically, the Yamato series, renamed Star Blazers and edited for an American
audience, is also considered to be the initial inspiration behind American anime fandom. See
Robert Fenelon, “Talking about my Star Blazers Generation,” (Animerica, Vol. 3, No.8, 1995), 8
and 10, and Walter Amos, “The Star Blazers You Didn’t See” (Animerica, Vol. 3, No. 8, 1995),
10.
[6] Animerica Editorial Board, “Yamato Forever," (Animerica,Vol. 3, No. 8, 1995), 6.
[7] More so than either Star Wars or Star Trek, space itself becomes a character in the Yamato
series since much of the action takes place while the ship is on interstellar voyages (beautifully
rendered in lush, dreamlike imager), rather than on planets. The fascination with the element of
space may connect with the modern Japanese consciousness of the Pacific Ocean, whichsurrounds their island nation, and more specifically, with the crucial role the Pacific in both thesuccesses and failures of World War II. For a discussion of the Pacific in Japanese science
fiction see Thomas Schnellbacher, “Has the Empire Sunk Yet? –The Pacific in Japanese Science
Fiction,” in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 29, Part 3, 2002, 382-396.
[8] Yoshida Mitsuru, “The ‘Space Cruiser Yamato’ Generation,” (Japan Echo, Vol. VI. No. 1,
1979), 82.

War and Visual Culture

160[9] Yoshikuni Igarashi. Bodies of Memory. (Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press, 2000),167.
[10] Marilyn Ivy. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 14.
[11] See the discussion by Yoshida Mitsuru, “The ‘Space Cruiser Yamato’ Generation,” op cit.,
85-87.
[12] Ibid., 86.

Tanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

161“War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu: The Humanism of his Epic Manga”
Yuki TANAKA
September 20, 2010
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yuki-TANAKA/3412
TEZUKA Osamu (1928-1989) was one of the most important manga writers inJapan; his contribution to the popularization of manga and anime cannot be overstated.
Tezuka’s handling of the confrontation and reconciliation between human and machine,
and his vision of humanity with a global perspective, for example, have fascinated many
readers both domestically and internationally. Following his creation of a human robot
character, Astro Boy (1951), Tezuka frequently wrote about the various impacts of scienceand technology on humanity. As Tanaka explains, Tezuka witnessed the destructive
consequences brought about by the particular use of science and technology during the U.S.
bombings of Japan during WWII, which in turn motivated him to explore themes such aswar, peace, and humanity in his works. This essay introduces Tezuka’s family backgroundand his upbringing, and discusses how his history and personal experience of the war
influenced him in the creation of manga heroes and narratives that are closely connected toreal-world problems, such as the Vietnam War and nuclear issues. Focusing on Tezuka’s
early works, the author analyzes some of the most representative manga expressing theartist’s observations and ideas about war and peace, as well as his imagination of the
future.

War and Visual Culture162

War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu: The humanism of his epic manga
Yuki Tanaka
Introduction
From late November 1944, the U.S. Air Force began aerial bombing of Japan’s main islands. By
the time the war ended on 15 August 1945, the United States had dropped a total of 160,800 tonsof conventional and incendiary bombs, as well as two atomic bombs. More than ninety percentof these bombs were dropped by B-29 bombers during the last five months of the Asia-PacificWar. In the end, almost 100 cities and more than 300 towns and villages throughout Japan weretargeted, causing more than 1 million casualties including 560,000 deaths. It is said that seventy
percent of those killed were women and children. The great destruction and carnage from thisintense indiscriminate bombing campaign imposed severe physical as well as psychologicaldamage on Japan’s society and people.
Ironically, the U.S. bombing campaign provided the vital life experience for remarkably creative
expressions by some young survivors, who later became writers, artists, musicians or anti-war
and peace activists. The US destruction thus contributed to creating some of the most important
expressions of post-war Japanese culture. One of the most outstanding examples of this isTezuka Osamu, a manga writer, who is now known worldwide as the creator of Astro Boy.
Tezuka Osamu was born in November 1928 in Osaka and died at the age of 60, in February
1989. In his relatively short life he produced more than 700 manga, both long and short, which intotal amount to some 150,000 pages. I suggest that four major features underlie this large body ofwork: respect for the natural environment, respect for the life of every living creature, a deep
scepticism towards science and civilization, and a strong commitment to anti-war and peacecauses.
Here I focus on some of his early work from the 1950s, while briefly introducing his later work. I
also compare heroes in Tezuka’s epic manga with superheroes in American comics.
Personal Background
Tezuka’s family history had a strong influence on his ideology, which formed the basis for muchof his work. Both his great-great-grandfather, Tezuka Ryosen, and great-grand father Tezuka
Ryoan were “rangakui” (medical doctors who studied Dutch medical science) in the late Edo
period, and belonged to a small group of progressive doctors who set up the anti-smallpox
vaccination clinic in Kanda, Edo in 1858. They and their colleagues strove to introduce modern
Western medical technologies into Japanese feudal society, overcoming the widespread and deep
mistrust of “alien operations” among the general population as well as traditional doctors.
(Between 1981 and 1986, Tezuka produced an 11 volume long epic entitled Hidamari no Ki, The
Tree Under Sunlight, a semi biographical manga on Tezuka Ryoan and Ryosen.) Tezuka’s
grandfather, Tezuka Taro, was a lawyer who served as chief public prosecutor of the Osaka
District Court and as the director of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nagoya and Nagasaki. He
was also one of the founders of the Kansai Law School (the present Law School of Kansai
University). Tezuka’s father, Tezuka Yutaka, an office worker for Sumitomo Metalwork
Industry, was deeply interested in photography and film. In the 1930s, at a time when going to
the cinema was still a rare recreational activity for many Japanese, he had a film projector called“Patty Baby,” which he used to screen Charlie Chaplin films and Disney animations at home.

Tanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

163

Tezuka’s mother, Fumiko, was the daughter of a senior officer of the Japanese Imperial Army,
Lieutenant General Hattori Hideo, who had remarkably liberated ways of thinking for someoneof her background (she bought many manga as well as other literature including Japanesetranslations of foreign novels and adventure stories for her children). It is obvious that Osamu
inherited many characteristic elements from his parents and forebears. These elements arereflected in his work and contributed to the unique style of his manga.
In 1933, when Tezuka was five years old, his family moved from Osaka to Takarazuka.

Tezuka with his parents and sister

Even though it was a newly established small
town in a rural district, surrounded by rice fields
and mountains, it was a cultural centre: theTakarazuka Grand Theatre, where the extremely
popular all-female Takarazuka Revue constantly
performed and still runs spectacular shows, wasbuilt in 1924, and other amusement facilities
such as Takarazuka Luna Park soon followed. In
his boyhood, Tezuka developed an acute interest
in insects and astronomy, finding these aspectsof rural life fascinating after having moved froman urban area of Osaka city. From his early years
at elementary school, he spent hours collecting
insects and meticulously recording them withdetailed drawings.
Through such activities, hecame to embrace a
profound respect for thenatural environment andfor the life of every living
creature. At the same time,
he became fascinated bymusical and theatricalperformances, as his
mother often took him to
the Takarazuka Revue. His
fascination for Takarazukamusicals must also havestimulated his fondness forcreating stories, and whileat school he often
produced manga withinteresting plot lines,
which circulated not only
amongst his classmates but
also his teachers.

Tezuka’s sketchbook, 1942-43

War and Visual Culture

164

The Sino-Japanese War started in 1931 when
Tezuka was 3 years old and the Pacific War
started in 1941 when he entered junior highschool at the age of 13. In summer 1944, he wassent to a special training school set up for
physically weak junior high school boys, to do
intensive military drills. However he became
seriously ill, having contracted a severe skindisease. From September that year, junior highschool classes were cancelled, and he wasmobilized with his fellow students to work at anarmy arsenal in Osaka.
The Takarazuka Revue, 1930
From the end of 1944, U.S. forces beganbombing Japanese cities, and from the following
March fire-bombing intensified, targeting every major city and town throughout Japan. Osaka
city was attacked several times. The first bombing raid continued for three hours from midnighton 13 March 1945, when 70,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on the city, and 3,000 civilians
were killed. From 1 June, Osaka, the largest city in the Kansai area, was repeatedly attacked - on
7, 15 and 26 June, 10 and 24 July and 14 August. In the last bombing raid, on 14 August (the day
before Japan’s official surrender), 700 one-ton bombs were dropped from 150 B-29 bombers.
The main target was the army arsenal near Osaka Castle, but some bombs fell on Kyobashi
railway station, where two rows of passenger trains had just arrived, approaching from opposite
directions. Many civilians were killed by direct hits from these bombs. Overall, in total, morethan 10,000 civilians of Osaka city were believed to have been killed in this series of U.S.
bombing raids.

Tezuka experienced the fire-bombings of Osaka while working at the arsenal. He was often
reprimanded for drawing comics rather than concentrating on his work and as punishment he wasordered to climb the watchtower in the factory yard to look out for B-29 bombers and give thewarning if he saw them. He later described one air raid:‘As the air raid warning siren began, I saw that as usual, a formation of U.S. bombers washeading towards us along the Yodogawa River. As soon as I thought “here they come,”
incendiary bombs showered down on us, making a loud noise like a heavy rain. Bombs streamed
down one after another onto the factory. Just when I thought that this would be the end of mylife, exposed on the top of the watchtower, a bomb hit the roof just two meters directly below
me. Later I heard that this bomb killed all the people who had rushed into the air raid shelter
underneath this building. I tumbled down the watchtower, screaming as if I had gone mad. Allaround me, the ground was a sea of fire … and houses in every direction were burning withleaping flames making a rumbling sound. Then rain with black soot came down. I walked to the
top of the riverbank of the Yodogawa. From there, I saw many big craters hollowed by bombs,
where numerous objects which resembled human bodies were lying on top of one another (Thebodies were so fractured that they did not look like human beings.)’
In 1974, Tezuka produced the autobiographical manga entitled The Paper Fortress (Kami no
Toride), describing this unforgettable experience. His miraculous survival during this firebombing episode had a profound impact on his ideas of war and peace, and also imbuing him

Tanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

165

with a deep mistrust of military leaders and politicians. He also feared the abuse of scientificknowledge which could create destructive weapons such as firebombs and atomic bombs.
NOTE: This article originally included several examples of Manga here and throughout
the article, which for copyright reasons could not be reproduced in this reader. The
Manga can be viewed at the end of the online version of this article:
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Matthew-Penney/2905

In July 1945, shortly before the end of the Pacific War, Tezuka entered the special medicalcollege of the Osaka Imperial University. Due to the shortage of medical doctors at the time, thespecial medical college system was established, by which some students entered the college
straight from junior high school. Tezuka completed this medical course in 1951, but chose towork as a professional manga writer rather than as a doctor. However, his study of medical
science reinforced his respect for the life of every living creature that he had been nurturing fromhis early boyhood. Indeed, he maintained his interest in medical science throughout his lifetime,and in 1961, despite his extremely busy work schedule, he submitted his dissertation on“heteromorphic spermatid,” and gained a doctoral degree in medicine.
The observation of death in war and the revival of life from the devastation of war infused
Tezuka with a life-long motivation to create manga. In a discussion of his work with the wellknown modern Japanese artist, Yokoo Tadanori, Tezuka explained that he always felt a strong
vitality in the movement of the shapes in manga and animation, and he felt that to some extent
this was due to the fact that his own life during the war had been completely lacking in vitality –he felt almost as if he were dead. When the war ended, he said, the feeling of revival in his own
life was indescribable. Since then, he always found tremendous energy in drawing manga.
An avid reader of novels, adventure stories, and theater scripts, Tezuka was influenced by many
world-renowned writers, in particular works by Karel Čapek such as R.U.R, War with Newts andPower and Glory, H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon, Goethe’s Faust, and Dostoevsky’s Crime
and Punishment. Tezuka drew on the profound humanity of these writers’ works to create his
own stories.
Astro Boy: A Humane Robot
Many of Tezuka’s early works strongly reflect his ideas about war, peace, and humanity,
drawing on his life and death experience during the fire bombing. For example, Astro Boy was
not originally a superhero robot, and never became a superhero, but was a lonely and timid boy
who was abandoned by the scientist who created him, Professor Tenma. Astro Boy was createdas a substitute for the scientist’s real son who had died in a car accident. Yet, the scientist
disposed of Astro Boy when he realized that a robot cannot replace a real person.
It seems that the orphan Astro Boy evoked the numerous war orphans marginalized by post-war
Japanese society. When the manga of Astro Boy was published in 1951, six years after the war,
there were many war orphans throughout Japan. Like them, Astro Boy had to gain his own
identity, striving to be accepted by society through his contribution to the community. Astro Boy
succeeded by acting as a peace mediator. This is why the title of the first episode of Astro Boy
was Astro Boy Plays the Role of Ambassador (Atomu Taishi).
This manga tells of aliens living on another planet who are forced to migrate to Earth following
the explosion of their planet. These space refugees are identical to the human beings on Earth,War and Visual Culture

166

except that the aliens have bigger ears. The people of Earth initially welcome their alien doubles,
but soon, faced with a food crisis, they begin fighting. Here we find Tezuka’s criticism of war
and conflict through his simple but profound question: how can identical human beings fight andkill each other. Through this manga we see that Tezuka’s concept of a “united Earth” is alreadytaking shape, a concept which he elaborated more comprehensively in later works. Tezuka learnt
first-hand the absurdity of fighting between different races not only through the terrifying firebombings of World War II but also through his encounter with violence during the Allied
occupation immediately after the war. He was bashed by an American soldier when he tried tostop the soldier from tearing up a picture he had drawn to sell to the GIs.
Astro Boy does not have a double among the aliens as he was artificially created, and therefore
can act as a mediator as he does not belong either with the human beings or with the aliens.
Eventually he succeeds in making peace between the two races by arranging that half the humans
together with half the alien migrants will leave Earth to find another planet to live peacefully. It
is interesting to note that, while many post-war monster-invasion stories, most notably
represented by the film Godzilla, are constructed on the theme of the ultimate survival of theJapanese in confrontation with bizarre and threatening “others,” the main theme of this first
episode of Astro Boy is “reconciliation” between the two different species. Indeed, in thefollowing seventeen year-long series of Astro Boy episodes, reconciliation remained the core
theme of these humane robot stories, although the original theme of confrontation andreconciliation between two different races developed into the conflict between humans androbots.
It is also interesting to emphasize that Astro Boy has the ability
to think for himself and acts to fulfill human happiness. By
contrast, other popular robot manga heroes that appeared in the
1950s, for example Gigantor (Tetsujin 28-go) by Yokoyama
Mitsuteru, simply obey their controllers who ultimately decide
what is right or wrong for their robots. Therefore, these robots
can easily switch from battling for justice to being a villain andvice versa, depending on who controls them. Unlike theserobots which are simply mechanical constructions, time andagain Astro Boy is put in a quandary when other robots rebel
against humans, as he often cannot rationally decide whose side
he should take. Yet inevitably, he eventually accomplishes his
mission to fulfill human happiness, often by his own selfsacrifice through injury or destruction. Thus, in many episodes,
Astro Boy goes through cycles of death and rebirth, being
repeatedly repaired or rebuilt. Indeed, the last episode of the
Astro Boy series, which concluded in March 1966, ended with
Astroboy
Astro Boy’s ultimate self-sacrifice. In this story, Astro Boy iscompletely destroyed and cannot be repaired, after he tries toprotect Dr. Rosso who is attacked by the robot Blue Knight (Ao-kishi), the leader of therebellious robots against humans. These robots are products of Dr. Rosso himself. Thus, unlike
superheroes in American comics, Astro Boy is neither immortal nor invincible. It is not possible
for Astro Boy to become a superhero as he always suffers from the dilemma between selfconsciousness as a robot and that as a human being. Although he remains forever young andTanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

167

physically never ages, Astro Boy is just like an ordinary human boy, who is always imperfectand keeps learning from his own experiences and encounters with life’s difficulties.
The crucial difference between Astro Boy and Gigantor is the universal nature of Astro Boy.
Astro Boy moves around the world, seeking peace and justice. He transcends nationality andethnicity and freely crosses national borders. He eventually allies with anyone who stands forjustice and fights against villainy, although he often finds it difficult to determine what is really
just. On the other hand, in the manga stories of Gigantor, the good guys always look Japanese,and they ride in planes or vehicles decorated with the Japanese flag, while the bad guys always
look Caucasian. In the world of Astro Boy, conflicts usually do not occur between different
nations or different races, but between immoral adults and innocent children. In this sense, thismanga for children contains a profound criticism of adult activities, most of which are closelyintertwined with such factors as politics, nationality, ethnicity, religion and racial and culturaldifferences. This universal aspect to Astro Boy’s character is undoubtedly the key reason for his
immense, world-wide popularity.
It seems that Tezuka was clearly conscious of the famous SF story,
R.U.R, written by Karel Čapek in 1920, in which Čapek invented theword “robot” from the Czech word “robota” (meaning slave work), aword that quickly spread all over the world through the English
translation of this imaginative story. R.U.R. ends with the total
annihilation of humankind as a result of the increased population ofrobots produced by humans themselves. One of the important questions
that Čapek explored throughout his life was whether the developmentof science and technology would ultimately bring happiness to humanbeings. Always sceptical about the benefit that science can provide, hewondered if the abuse of technology would ultimately lead to theextinction of the human race. This question also haunted Tezuka, but
unlike Čapek, he never gave up hope that humans are basically wise
enough to utilize the knowledge of science and technology for theirown happiness. However, through his manga, he constantly warned of
the harm that abuse of such knowledge could bring not only to humans,
but also to the environment and the many other creatures on this planet.
GigantorWar and Visual Culture168

One question that remains is why Tezuka
used the Japanese word “Atomu” (i.e.
“Atom) for the name of this robot. The
English name “Astro Boy” was adopted in
1963 when the first few episodes of theJapanese animation version of “Tetsuwan
Atomu” (Atomu with Iron Arms) were
televised in the United States. The first
episode of Astro Boy, Astro Boy Plays theRole of Ambassador (Atomu Taishi) neversuggests that the energy source of the robot
is nuclear power, despite the name“Atom.” In later episodes, there are often
references suggesting that the energy
source of the robot is nuclear power, but it
is never clearly explained how nuclear
power is used to generate energy for the
robot. Some people suggest that Astro Boy
carries a small nuclear reactor inside thebody, but Tezuka himself never adopted
this story. In one of his autobiographies, heexplains that he stumbled on the idea ofusing the word “Atom” for the name of therobot as the deadline for the manuscript
Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. robot
was coming closer and the publisher waspressing him to urgently decide on the title
for this manga. The early 1950s was a time when “peaceful uses of nuclear energy” began to bepromoted in various nations. It seems that, even unconsciously, Tezuka was influenced by thisover-optimistic idea for the use of nuclear energy, despite his deep fear of the abuse of scientificknowledge. In 1960, he used the word “Uran” (Uranium) for the newly created sister robot of
Astro Boy, which implies that in the early 1960s, Tezuka was still influenced by the idea of“peaceful uses of nuclear energy”.
The Future World: A Warning about the Abuse of Science and Technology
In 1951, Tezuka published an epic manga entitled The Future World (Kitarubeki Sekai), which
sharply criticizes the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. In thismanga, two hostile nations, the Star Nation and the Uranium Union have been conducting
nuclear tests over many years. As a result many animals and plants have been affected byradiation causing mutations. One such mutation produces a breed of creatures with superior
intellect called the “Mufun,” who sense that the Earth will soon be covered in poisonous gases
and hence that all living creatures will be annihilated. Therefore the Mufuns decide to leave theEarth in a large satellite, taking a pair of every creature on Earth, as Noah did in his Ark.
Meanwhile, the people of the Star Nation and the Uranium Union are still busy developing
nuclear weapons and eventually go to war. When both nations are almost completely destroyed,
their leaders agree to restore peace. However, by then the Earth is clouded with dark, poisonous
gases. The leaders of the two nations embrace and joyfully proclaim “Peace, Peace has come, No

Tanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

169

more war on Earth,” “Long Live Human beings! Long Live World Culture!” as gases begin to
shower down on them. The message of this manga is still relevant today as we fight wars all over
the world, and globally spend more than US$1.4 trillion annually on the military, at a time when
our planet suffers a serious climate crisis due to global warming.
The Future World presents many other elements of the problems it raises. In this manga, themain characters are three children, a Mufun, a private detective called Hige Oyaji (meaningmustached old man), a biologist by the name of Dr. Yamadano Kakashi, and the respective state
leaders of the Star Nation and the Uranium Union. The story of the conflict of the two nations
unfolds as the relationships between these characters evolve. These characters watch as a vicious
cycle is created, wherein critical events occur one after another, each commencing before theprevious case is solved. As Japanese manga writer and critic Natsume Fusanosuke points out,
this tale of international conflict between two powerful nations is complexly comprised of manystories of personal relationships among the main characters. Furthermore, international conflict isconstructed as an important element of the story of cultural and intellectual differences between
humans and Mufuns. Eventually, readers find that all these stories are presented only as small
parts of the grand tale of the cosmos. We find that the conflict between the two nations ismeaningless in the context of the conflict between humans and Mufuns, and similarly that theantagonism between the humans and Mufuns is futile at a time when Earth and everything on it
is under threat.
The Future World is based on the logic of relativity and shows that there is no such thing as“absolute justice” in this world, in particular from a universal viewpoint. In fact, through hisentertaining and imaginative manga, Tezuka tried to convey that everything is conditioned by its
relationship with other things, so there is no simple and straightforward answer to anything. In
other words, every existence, including that of human beings, is conditioned by its relationshipwith other existences, and nothing exists without this relationship of relativity. Hence, unlike
many other children’s manga stories, no superhero fighting for justice and peace appears. The
story never ends with the absolute victory of a superhero. However, Tezuka did not want to end
this manga with a tragedy of mankind. Thus, he let the poisonous gases undergo a drastic
chemical reaction and turn into harmless oxygen, just as they were showering down on the Earth,allowing humanity to survive. Even so, he warns readers through Dr. Yamadano’s last statement– ‘Someday, superior creatures may conquer humans in a similar way to which, once upon atime, we humans conquered the apes. This is the law of nature. If we wish to live under the lawof nature and survive, we must stop fighting each other.’ Tezuka inserted similar warnings at theend of other such epic manga that he produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s such as
Metropolis and Zero-Man: for example, ‘Some day, human beings may destroy themselvesbecause of the science that they over-develop.’
In comparing Karel Čapek’s novel War with Newts and The Future World, we find a strikingly
similar logic of relativity. In both stories, a species superior to humans – salamanders in War
with Newts and Mufuns in The Future World – appear and eventually everything on Earth is
faced with the danger of total destruction. In both stories, humans are treated as one of manyliving species on Earth, and fighting among humans themselves seriously endangers the planet.
Then again, the ending of Tezuka’s story still gives hope for ultimate human survival, whileČapek’s story ends with a prediction of fatal tragedy for human beings. Despite this difference,
there is no doubt that Tezuka’s early work was heavily influenced by Čapek’s scepticism
towards science and human behavior.

War and Visual Culture170

Epic Manga on Nuclear Issues
In 1953, Tezuka published an epic manga
entitled Point X in the Pacific (Taiheiyo X
Pointo), another critique of the nuclear arms
race. Two hostile nuclear powers, Cosmopolitan
and Eurasia, are frantically developing more andmore powerful weapons. Eventually
Cosmopolitan produces a new bomb called the“Oxygen Bomb,” which is far more powerfulthan a nuclear bomb. Despite world-wide protest
against the test of this new weapon, thegovernment of Cosmopolitan decides to carryout the test at “Point X” in the Pacific, removing
all local inhabitants of islands near the test site tomore remote locations. When an old man called Hige Oyaji (meaning mustached old man), an
ex-thief who now lives as an ordinary citizen, hears this news, he decides to destroy the weapon
before it is tested. With his son’s assistance he succeeds. In this manga, too, it is not a superhero
but an old man with a criminal record and his son, who fight against the madness of politicians
and militarists.
Remarkably, Tezuka wrote this manga a year before the United States tested the Hydrogen
Bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Southwest Pacific. Although the U.S. government started nuclear
tests on Bikini in July 1946, less than a year after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki, the nuclear test issue did not become a major political issue in Japan or internationally
until a Japanese fishing boat called Lucky Dragon # 5 was covered by radioactive fallout and its
crew irradiated as a result of the first U.S. Hydrogen Bomb test, Operation Bravo, near Bikini in
March 1954. Aside from Tezuka, hardly any writers in the manga world took up the nuclear
issue as the main theme of their work at this time.
One of the first to do so was Shirato
Sampei, whose A Disappearing Girl
(Kieyuku Shojo) was published in
1959, five years after the Lucky
Dragon incident, when the Japaneseanti-nuclear movement was alreadystrong and widespread. This is a story
about a young girl in Hiroshima wholoses her entire family due to radiation
caused by the atomic bombing. She
herself becomes sick from exposure toradiation, and as a result of deeprooted social discrimination against
hibakusha (A-bomb survivors) she
becomes homeless. In the forest where
she wanders about, she meets a Korean
Irradiated Japanese fisherman from the 1954 Hyrdogen Bombman who was brought to Japan during
test at Bikini having contaminated hair shaved
the war and forced to work at aTanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

171

Japanese coal mine. They live happily together for a while until the Korean man is arrested by
the police and put on a ship back to Korea. Escaping from the ship, he returns to the forest only
to find that the girl is already dead. The main theme of this moving manga is social and racial
discrimination rather than nuclear issues. It focuses on the problems of Japanese society, and,unlike Tezuka’s manga, does not offer a global
perspective on nuclear issues.
It is well known that the film Godzilla, produced
at the end of 1954, was inspired by the Lucky
Dragon incident. The following year, Kurosawa
Akira, who was also influenced by the H-bomb
test, produced the film I Live in Fear (Ikimono
no Kiroku). Both films present the Japanese as
victims of nuclear weapons.

Shirato Sanpei’s Disappearing GirlIn fact, many films featuring atomic bombingsor nuclear tests were produced following the endof the US occupation in 1952, such as Childrenof the Atomic Bomb (Genbaku no Ko) directedby Shindo Kaneto. Without exception, thesefilms depict Japan and the Japanese as victims.
In the 1970s, Nakazawa Keiji published
Godzilla
Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen), an epic manga
about the difficult life of a boy and his family, some of whom survived the atomic bombing ofHiroshima. The translation of this manga has been widely circulated in the English-speaking
world and remains popular both within and outside of Japan. However, as Tezuka once
commented, the main weight of Nakazawa’s manga is the deep love and strong bonds of a family
who experienced an unimaginable calamity, rather than the issue of nuclear weapons as such. In
this manga, too, the Japanese are presented as victims of the war, although rather than being
portrayed as passive victims, they strenuously act to overcome the difficulties of life in post-war
Japan.

War and Visual Culture172

In 1955, Tezuka produced one other epic manga
dealing with nuclear issues, The Age of theDeluge (Daikozui Jidai), in which he presented
Japan as a nuclear power. This manga tells of adisaster in which Japan’s secret nuclear arsenalbuilt near the North Pole suddenly explodes,
causing a deluge of seawater to descend on
Japan. As a result, one third of Japan sinks underwater. We see through this manga that whilemost Japanese people were concerned only with
their own victimization through the use of
nuclear weapons, Tezuka did not hesitate to
imply that Japan too could become a nuclear
Victims of the bomb, Barefoot Gen
nation and consequently bring disaster on thenatural environment as well as on human beings,
even without engaging in warfare. Tezuka obviously produced this manga to voice his concernthat with the U.S. military using Japanese bases to fight the Korean War, Japan too might
become aggressors. In this manga, again, it is a boy who tries to fight against the madness ofadults who plan to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Gekiga Manga and Heroes
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, at the height of the Vietnam War, Tezuka produced several
excellent gekiga manga (manga for adults) featuring the Asia Pacific War, such as The Paper
Fortress (Kami no Toride), Zephyrus, Canon, A Crashed Fighter Plane (Tsuirakuki), and The
Grand General Goes to the Forest (Dai Shogun Mori e Iku). There is no doubt that Tezuka wrote
these manga imagining what the Vietnamese were suffering under heavy U.S. aerial bombing. In
1987, many years after the Vietnam War and two years before his death, Tezuka continued to use
Astro Boy to make readers of his manga think about the effects of bombing civilians in Vietnam.
In Astro Boy, Past and Present Stories (Atomu Konjyaku Monogatari) published in 1987, Astro
Boy travels back almost 50 years from 2017 to Vietnam in 1969, and stops the bombing by B-52
bombers, saving the lives of a newly born baby and his mother in the jungle.
In the 1970s, he also produced other gekiga manga, in particular the series Black Jack, featuring
the psychological trauma and serious physical injuries experienced by American soldiers in
Vietnam. Black Jack is a series of medical dramas that Tezuka started in November 1973 andended in October 1983, producing a total of 230 short manga stories which fully utilize his wide
medical knowledge. The main character Black Jack is an unlicensed but superbly gifted surgeon.
Again and again Black Jack miraculously saves seriously ill patients and those on the verge ofdeath, utilizing his surgical technique - but he always demands an outrageous price for his
operation to rich clients.
In the Black Jack series, Tezuka included several stories focusing on the Vietnam War. For
example in Anaphylaxis, published in December 1973, Black Jack is asked to save the life ofGeorge, son of a U.S. officer, Colonel Mason. George has been struck in the heart by shrapnel ona battlefield in Vietnam and brought to the hospital at Yokota Base. He is anaphylactic, anddevelops a severe cramp in reaction to the anesthesia. Therefore Black Jack tries electricTanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

173

anesthesia, and the operation succeeds. Nevertheless, George commits suicide when his father
forces him to go back to Vietnam and show his bravery as a U.S. soldier.
Another Black Jack story entitled Captain Devil, published in October 1975, is a kind of analogyof the March 1968 My Lai Massacre committed in Vietnam by a unit of US Army, Charlie
Company. In this story, Lieutenant Kenneth is a captain of the Army unit who burned innocent
civilian villagers to death in Vietnam. He shows not the slightest acknowledgement or
repentance for what he had done. even boasting that killing civilians is simply unavoidable
during wartime. He visits Black Jack and asks him to remove the bullets lodged in his brain.
Black Jack accepts the request, on condition that Vietnamese child refugees from the village
where Lieutenant Kenneth’s unit committed the massacre are present at the operation. While heis on the operation table, he is struck with terror. The operation is successful, but he becomesinsane and kills himself accidentally.
From the latter half of the 1970s until the end of his life, many of Tezuka’s stories addressed thequestion of the duality of human nature – the co-existence of good and evil – and how to solve
various problems arising from this innate contradiction, the most serious of which is war. Two of
the finest of these works are MW, published in 1976, and Adolf, published in 1983. While MW
depicts the madness of people who deal with weapons of mass destruction such as chemical
weapons, Adolf is a long and comprehensive war story about three men, each named “Adolf”:
Adolf Hitler, a Jewish boy living in Kobe, and a boy born to a German father and Japanesemother. This story addresses many important issues such as racial purity, ethnicity, personal
identity, nationalism, state ideology, military violence, dehumanization, and political corruption.
The father of the Jewish boy is killed by the Japanese-German boy, who becomes a Nazi officer
during World War II. Yet after the war, the Jewish boy migrates to Israel and becomes a brutal
oppressor of Palestinians.
In the early 1980s, at a time when few Japanese
were paying attention to the Palestinian problem,
Tezuka was already introducing this issue tomanga readers, clearly pointing out that war canmake the same person a victim as well as an
assailant. The story is cleverly woven into actual
historical events, so that readers learn muchabout World War II while being enthralled by afascinating plot. The final message that readerslearn from this captivating epic manga is thatevery nation claims to be acting justly in order tojustify its conduct, yet the result often turns out
to be gross “injustice” for many people,
including citizens of that nation-state itself – anirony of politics.

Adolf

As already mentioned, hardly any superheroes appear in Tezuka’s manga. Even the saint-like
Buddha is described as a person who struggles to painfully overcome various human weaknesses
and defects in order to achieve his goal. In the 14 volume long epic manga entitled Buddha,
Buddha has personal flaws, unlike an innately perfect figure such as Jesus Christ. Tezuka’s
manga contain no superheroes like Superman, Spiderman and Batman, the most popularWar and Visual Culture174

characters in American comics. These American superheroes never make mistakes of judgment
concerning justice, morality and ethics. They always fight for the noble causes of justice andpeace, and invariably accomplish their grand missions to defeat villains and evil, eliminating one
danger after another with their incredible powers.
Yet, these superheroes suddenly become utterly
powerless when a real catastrophic event occurs,
like the September 11 terrorist attack. This isbecause the world of the imagination in whichthese superheroes live is completely detachedfrom the real world, whilst the imaginative worldof Tezuka’s manga is closely and firmly
connected with the vital and complex problemsof the real world. Thus, Superman is at a loss forwords and simply holds his head in his hands,
looking down at the ground in front of the debrisof the Twin Towers. A cartoon published in late2001 shows a tiny figure of Superman standing
Buddhaand saying ‘wow’ in front of the oversized
figures of the September 11 rescue volunteers – afire fighter, policeman, nurse and doctor – clearly indicating that the real heroes are theseworkers and volunteers, not Superman. Similarly, after the September 11 attack, the only thingthat Spiderman could do immediately was to hopelessly stand at “ground zero” site and mutterthat we can never comprehend the world of terrorists. In fact, the first Hollywood movie of
Spiderman was being filmed shortly before the September 11 attack, in which Spiderman makes
a huge web between the Twin Towers. Before the movie was released, all images of the World
Trade Centre buildings were erased using computer technology. How could Spiderman jumparound the Twin Towers, despite the fact that he could not save even a single person trapped
under the debris after these buildings collapsed?
I wonder, were he still alive at the time, how Tezuka would have reacted through his manga tothis astonishing terrorist attack, in which almost three thousand civilians were killedindiscriminately. In Tezuka’s manga there is no space for superheroes, simply because his mangaworld is a complex one, in which there is no absolute justice or absolute righteousness. In his
imaginative manga world, if any of his characters yearn for justice and peace, they have to face
the complexities of human society, in particular the various forms of “confrontation.”

Tanaka: War and Peace in the Art of Tezuka Osamu

175

Conclusion
Tezuka’s epic manga are dynamic as thestorylines always revolve around confrontation:
powerful nations versus powerful nations,humans versus machines, the primitive versus
the modern, organizations versus individuals,
idealism versus realism, science versus ethics,
and so on. These confrontations take the form of
universal problems such as imperialism,
dictatorship, colonization, war, genocide, andbureaucracy. Yet, these adult themes are always
clearly presented and simplified so as to bereadily understood by children. Indeed, the vast
Tezuka’s characters surround Astro Boy
volume of his manga work can be called “aceremony of innocence,” an expression that the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, used todescribe children in 1920.
In this way, from the very beginning of his career as a manga writer immediately after the war,
until the end of his life, Tezuka’s fascinating vision and powerful imagination allowed him to
maintain a profound humanism with a global perspective, which was largely unaffected by thenarrow-minded Japanese view of war victimhood. It is apparent that his work stands at the
opposite end of the spectrum from recent works of nationalistic Japanese war manga like thoseof Kobayashi Yoshinori. How did Tezuka gain such humanism? How can we acquire humanismand disseminate it as a moral foundation for society? These questions should be taken up by
anyone, regardless of race or nationality, who reads Tezuka’s vivid manga.
Yuki Tanaka is Research Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, and a coordinator of The AsiaPacific Journal. He is the author most recently of Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, eds.,
Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History as well as of Japan’s Comfort Women and
Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. He wrote this article for The AsiaPacific Journal.

War and Visual Culture

176“War, Memory, the Artist and the Politics of Language”
Hong-An TRUONG and Elin O’Hara Slavick
August 2, 2010
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Hong_An-Truong/3393
In this essay, two U.S.-based visual artists discuss a selection of their works that
represents history, memory and the trauma of war. They use different artistic media, aims,
and methodologies in dealing with these subjects. However, their conversation converges
on common ground as they discuss the role of art and artists in remembering war atrocities
such as the Nanjing Massacre, the Hiroshima bombings, the Korean War, and the Vietnam
War, among others. The conversation shows how artists express their interests in history
by incorporating empirical and theoretical elements into their artwork, and looks at theway they explore physical, emotional, individual, and collective perspectives of war andtrauma through art.
Though these two artists do not have firsthand experiences of war, they are
motivated by historical events and historical figures, both distant and recent, that are
pertinent to their works. Truong is interested in the way history is produced by individuals.
In her video installation, A Measure of Remorse, Truong features an American-born Chinese
historian, Iris Chang, and presents the ambiguity of individuals’ acts of speaking about andagainst the past. Slavick’s cartographic drawings, Protesting Cartography, on the other
hand, feature images of the U.S. testing ground for weapons and provide both well-known
and lesser-known facts about U.S. bombings since Hiroshima. By presenting informative
texts alongside images, Slavick aims to educate others about the U.S. military interventions
that have taken place since 1945 in 60 different parts of the world. The essay includes anumber of Slavick’s drawings and a link to an audio clip used in Truong’s work – aconversation among Iris Chang; the Ambassador of Japan, Kunihiko Saito; and a journalist,
Elizabeth Farnsworth. The conversation was held by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
in 1998.

Truong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

177

War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language
Artists Hong-An Truong and Elin O’Hara Slavick
This conversation between two artists draws on, presents, and discusses visual representations
including video, drawings and maps pertaining to the Nanjing Massacre and the US history ofbombing. Discussion offers reflection on war, memory, history, biography, the relationshipbetween language and visual representation, protest, the possibility of reconciliation, and therole of the artist in response to war.
Slavick - We are both artists who utilize history, memory and the archive to explore specifichistorical events. While we both focus on Japan here, we have chosen different aspects of history
and utilize different methodologies and visual strategies in dealing with the subject. Initially, I
was invited to contribute the drawings of Asia, including those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, frommy series Protesting Cartography for the Hiroshima Anniversary issue. Having been inspired byyour work over the years, I invited you to discuss our related yet very different projects in termsof ethics, politics, history, memory and language.
Truong - When you first asked me to participate
in this conversation with you, I was excited but a
bit hesitant. First off, I was worried because myproject has an uneasy relationship to “history.”
Rather than being about history, or trying to retell history, or suggesting an alternative tohistory-telling, it is more interested in calling
into question how we produce history byengaging the individual players within a bigger
history. While your project provides a lot of
information to the viewer, important informationthat most viewers might not know about (where and how much the U.S. has bombed around theglobe), my work isn’t necessarily trying to give a history lesson.
A Measure of Remorse is a single channel video installation that is part of a larger project
provoked by the life of writer Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking (1998), which brought
intense and overdue attention in the English-speaking world to Japanese military atrocities
committed against the Chinese in WWII. Exploring historical violence and the nature of apology
through language, the body, desire, and trauma, the video re-imagines a confrontation on PBS in1998 between Chang, the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., Kunihiko Saito, and journalist
Elizabeth Farnsworth. The video is not a re-enactment of the past, but rather a kind of future
made dark and deeply sensual, almost as an effect of Chang’s suicide in 2004. It raises questions
about the effect of performative utterances - like apologies - when it comes to historical violence.
The three figures acknowledge hurt, even death, and ask us about the claims our memories andvoices can make against the past.

War and Visual Culture

178
So in some ways, the project makes abstract the
specifics of the history as a way to crystallize
broader questions about trauma, memory, andlanguage.
Slavick - Who are the 3 protagonists in yourvideo A Measure of Remorse? Are theycountries?

Truong - In one sense they are, but on a basic
level, they are three people. Part of what wascompelling to me about this interview (you canread the full transcript here) was the way inwhich the two individuals interviewed oscillated
between speaking for themselves and speaking
for their countries / their people. Their positions
are not simple, of course, and even an attempt tospeak for a group of people is problematic. In thecase of Iris Chang, she is a second generation
Chinese American who is advocating for the
Chinese victims (and their families) of theseatrocities. I am interested in the way that political
A Measure of Remorse may be viewed in full here violence operates on the individual and on the(requires Quicktime 7). [The images here are stills from nation, and in the slippery spaces in between
the video.]
these sites of trauma. Thinking about larger
questions of nation-hood, nationalism, and theState, people have very strong feelings about whether and how governments should do the workof reparation. What is the role of memory in dealing with the history of political violence? My
project does not re-hash national positions on this particular issue, but asks, how war andviolence affect us as individuals transnationally.
Slavick - It is interesting that these people are individuals; yet in the video they do not speak –neither for themselves nor for their countries. The soundtrack is from PBS, a mass-media source.
Do you see any contradiction there? It is as if they are slow-moving, embracing and beautiful
pawns. Are we pawns in history, in the present?
Truong - Absolutely not –we are not pawns in history or in the present. The silence of thecharacters goes back to the question of language. How do we make ourselves heard? How
effective is language in dealing with sorrow and pain and regret? How can we performdifferently with our bodies than with our words? I follow Judith Butler's thinking throughperformativity, both in words and with our bodies. In the PBS interview, the language that isused is a regulated discourse – the language of political debate, where one speaks for the
institution that he or she represents. This is what Iris Chang is getting at in her frustration about
the lack of an apology. Can the Ambassador speak for himself and not the nation? No. He speaks
for the nation because he is constrained by the norms of political speech—and he does so
because of his specific job, not just the general framework of political speech, which regulates
the other two participants. We are also disciplined in our bodies. The three characters would
never have an opportunity to engage each other’s bodies in the way that they do in the film. I

Truong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

179

bring these actions of tenderness, of embrace, of a stillness and slowness with the threecharacters – in and against language – as a way to challenge our performativity, and how we are
disciplined in both language and body, as it
relates to questions of history, violence, andremorse.
Slavick - Do you think that a government or
history has a heart?
Truong - I don't think so, but I do think that theyknow time. They know how to use time. There
are differences in the way that we experience,measure and think about time. Time is an
abstract notion that becomes concretized throughart, science, and social structures, but also
through history – history as it is relates to what
we know, how we write and talk about it, what knowledge gets proliferated. So no, government
does not have a heart; history does not have a heart, but they are bound up with time, bound up
with consciousness.
Slavick - But memories, unlike history, come all mixed up together time-wise. They are rarely
chronological. I don't quite know how to separate consciousness from emotion (the heart) and am
fearful of a government that does not act with compassion (again, from the heart).
Does the chatter, noise, impossibility to comprehend much of the soundtrack symbolize theimpossibility of communication and of changing history? Does it symbolize the difficulty of atrue apology, of understanding and accepting an apology, and the fact that an apology does notundo the action? Also the suppression / denial of information? What was your strategy in making
so much of the soundtrack incomprehensible?
Truong - I wanted to create a kind of trance-like soundtrack, where the words become abstract
sound and only some comprehensible sentences emerge, to draw attention to the problem oflanguage. I had in mind J. L. Austin's concept of language and performative speech acts -- theidea that to say something is to do something -- and what he calls 'misfires' when performative
speech acts fail; they become 'unhappy.' In this project, I am not championing the spoken over
the written word or vice versa. I was thinking about Derrida's concepts of difference — that the
spoken word is always in reference to the written word; it demands the written word so it renders
what is spoken as suspect. The lack of clarity in the soundtrack is about my suspicion of spoken
language and how we perform with language. It wasn't about making clear who was in the rightand who was in the wrong (in terms of the actual apology from Japan to China) but rather, about
the fallibility of language and our struggle to articulate our sorrow, remorse and pain.
I think Derrida’s concept of différance is useful in conceptualizing the trauma of war violence
through temporal and spatial terms. Différance is a play on words – it means both to defer and todiffer, a deferral in time and space. Words are never adequate because they merely refer to more
words. Words are fundamentally different than what they signify, and meaning is always
deferred through language. Thus, this present, rather than assert itself as presence itself, splitsthat moment in a gesture of différance – a split that marks the trace of the future and the trace ofthe past in the present.

War and Visual Culture

180

Slavick - Do you identify with one of the womenin the video?
Truong - I identify with Iris Chang, but notwithout reservation or critique. Her life was theimpetus for this piece and I hope to make alonger work about her soon.
Slavick - Could you speak more about Iris
Chang here? I am particularly interested in youridentification with her. How do you identify
yourself? (I identify myself as a reluctant but
privileged American citizen with roots planted firmly in Germany and France - for better orworse - wanting to be a citizen of the world.)
Truong - Iris Chang was born in the U.S., second generation like me. Her parents were Chinese
academics, and she grew up in the suburbs. Her story is very different from mine (my family
were refugees who fled Viet Nam after the end of the U.S. War; I was born soon after they
arrived in the U.S. and I grew up in various parts of the country, refugee-poor). But there is asimilarity in how we approach our family histories and shape our identities. She grew up hearing
stories of the atrocities and genocide at Nanking, and these memories, while not from her own
experience, functioned as her own. This parallels my own engagement with the U.S. War in Viet
Nam, which has compelled me to make the work that I do. It’s what Marianne Hirsch has called
post memory to describe the relationship between people of the second generation to thetraumatic experiences that occurred before they were born, and the ways that these memories get
transferred. Post memory is an in-between space where memory (which includes second-handmemory, memory through stories or archives, memories through the media) splits one’s sense ofself, between here and there, between now andbefore.
Slavick - We are all second generation to
traumatic experiences that occurred before wewere born, processing the ways these memories
get transferred: physically through lingering
contagions and landmines; emotionally throughcountless absences, lacks, losses, denials, truths
and lies. Of course, being second generation to
the perpetrators or to the victims are very
different positions, but ultimately, we all suffer
the consequences of history.
Pierre Peju writes in Clara's Tale, "War was everywhere. It had gone on for so long that people
had forgotten what caused it…. In Germany, memories of the disaster that occurred still hangheavily, but nobody speaks about them. Their shadows lurk in the artificial post-war serenity,
among the still visible traces of violence and ruin. A veil of unspoken words shades people's
kindly actions and disturbs the apparent innocence of things…Will my own life run its entire
course in a similar kind of peace? A heavy, dense peace. An amnesic peace."Truong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

181

Truong - For Chang, the stories she heard growing up were the impetus for her research into thehistory of atrocity and ultimately the writing of The Rape of Nanking (1998), and she committed
her short life to seeking justice and reparations for its survivors. While her book was a bestseller, and she was highly praised for it in the Chinese-American community and beyond, shealso received a lot of criticism for that book, in the U.S. and, especially, of course, in Japan,
where the book still causes a lot of controversy. She also received death threats and personal
attacks, leading to periods of mental instability. In 2004 she was researching her fourth book, on
the Bataan Death March (an atrocity which also occurred during WWII, when the Japanesemilitary moved American POWs many miles without rest or adequate food) when she washospitalized for mental health reasons. She committed suicide soon after that. I am interested in
how she struggled with this history that she could not claim as her own experience but which
drove her commitment to political and social justice. But her life's research and writing about
war and violence also fueled her psychological instability. I am interested too, in how her own
identity as a strong, outspoken, Asian American woman affected the way that her work was readand the criticism she received. In terms of her writing style, she had an ardent belief in the first
person narrative and used emotional language in what is ostensibly considered history writing.
One of the reasons I chose to approach this topic the way I did is that I did not want to make afilm about Iris Chang; I did not want to pathologize her, nor did I want to glorify her life and herwork. On the contrary, I am using her story and this history critically as an attempt to get at
wider questions about the role of memory in our understanding and relationship to war violence.
Political violence is happening every day and quickly becomes the past. I was interested in thishistory in particular because of the ways that it can remind us how past political violence is also
very much now.
I think the relevance of this story is made clear in the persistence of fraught relations between
Japan and China, and the ways that this history – this historical memory – rears its ugly head in
unexpected moments. There are Chinese activists who stage protests every time Japanese revise
their school textbooks because of the way that this history is treated. Simply, the Chinese believethat the history is not being told truthfully – and this of course, has huge implications in the waythat the Japanese see themselves and understand their history in relation to China and the rest of
the world.
For me, though, my project does not take a humanist approach to violence. I am critical of ahumanism that is founded upon a perceived universal moral order. To have empathy can be
powerful – but it cannot work towards justice all by itself because I think it also problematicallyrelies on the idea that there is an essential “goodness” of the individual and also doesn’t accountfor relations of power. I think this is what is weak about liberal democracy. It assumes that you
have power without having to seize power. Humans don’t have an ahistorical essence – it’s
important to remember that we are desiring subjects, operating within a set of power relations.
We have to be critical of this and self-reflexive so that we can be active in our resistance.
In the video I wanted to create a tension between the words and the bodies of the threecharacters. The language that the characters used in the conversation fit within established codesthat are based on a perceived moral order. The contrast between the language and the bodies was
about proposing a kind of individualizing ideal, an experience of ethics that might question what
and who we are. I think the framework for political action is not based on empathy within a setof moral rules, nor is it based on some notion of an essential sameness (our humanism), but

War and Visual Culture

182

rather a reflexive notion of the self where one can be something other, where difference andalterity are taken up.
Slavick - How do you see the difference in reception of a video vs. a series of drawings? We areboth dealing with specific violent histories but utilize different media. I know my choice ofdrawing was deliberate, even though I am trained as a photographer. And I am sure video was adeliberate choice for you. Could you talk about
why and how you make those formal decisions?
Truong - Since I started making videos, I havebeen dying to make a purely photographic
project, and it just hasn't happened. I just think inmoving images, I am thinking in time-based
images. I think electronically! In both sound andimage -- I am always thinking of movement. Partof it is because I am drawn to the archive, thedigital archive, the photographic and filmic
archive, and so I am just working in the medium
in which I find my source material. In this case,it was the PBS broadcast of this argument between Iris Chang and the Japanese ambassador. I
love video because of the way that it can be so evocative. It is a language that so many arefamiliar with.
Slavick - You make me want to make videos and films.
Truong - And you make me want to work on paper!
The images that follow are from Protesting Cartography: Places the United States has Bombed.
All drawings are mixed media on Arches papers, 30 x 22 inches, unframed.

World Map, Protesting Cartography: Places the United States has Bombed
1854 – OngoingTruong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

183

Flag pins mark bombsites for which there are corresponding drawings.
Dugway is a “massive firing range that for 50 years was the
U.S. Army testing ground for some of the most lethal
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ever made. A
slope of mountains to the east is pockmarked with hundreds
of fortified bunkers storing enough toxins to eradicate
mankind. Ground water is fouled with carcinogens. This waswhere the cold war was waged, not in battlefields in foreign
lands, but in factories, laboratories and testing ranges." Tony
Freemantle,
HoustonChronicle
The drawing
takes as its
reference a
photographDugway Proving Ground, Utah, USA from
Lawrence
1942 – Ongoing
Livermore
National Laboratory of a Project Schooner (partof Project Plowshare) crater and a football field(for scale), which was made by a 35-kiloton
nuclear bomb.

Nevada Test Site II, USA
1955 - 1968

“From 1957 to 1973, scientists and engineers
working under the direction of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and its Livermore laboratory
investigated, experimented with, and promoted the idea of “peaceful” uses of nuclear explosives
through a program called Project Plowshare. Proponents confidently argue that the“geographical engineering” of harbors, canals, dams, and mountain passes could beaccomplished safely, economically, and scientifically by means of nuclear-blasted excavation.
But the nuclear earthmoving explosions produced large amounts of radioactive fallout, and withit, significant challenges to the program on scientific grounds. The Project Schooner cratering
explosion produced the highest levels of fallout in Utah recorded since 1962, and sent
radioactive debris across the Canadian border.” - Scott Kirsch, Peaceful Nuclear Explosions
and the Geography of Scientific Authority
Slavick - Protesting Cartography – Places the U.S. has Bombed (1998 – 2005) is a series of 60
drawings of places the U.S. has bombed. They include Dresden, the Bikini Atoll, Guatemala,Nicaragua, the Congo and France, among many other places. Pictured in this essay are the World
Map, several of Asia, and two domestic ones of atomic test sites. (Order the book: Bomb After
Bomb: A Violent Cartography) The drawings are manifestations of self-education on the subjectsof U.S. military interventions, geography, politics, history, cartography, and the language of war.
The drawings are also a means to educate others. The drawings are "beautiful" so that the viewer
will take a closer look, slow down, and contemplate the accompanying information that may
implicate her. As a photographer aware of the military’s use of the aerial view that flight andWar and Visual Culture

184

photography provide, using the aerial view seems like a logical choice to me. I utilize
surveillance imagery, military sources and battle plans, photography and maps, much of which isfrom an aerial perspective. Maps are preeminently a language of power, not protest, yet I offer
these maps as protests against each and every bombing.
Truong - I want to think about the relation between image and text -- how do they work together
and / or against each other? For your work, the accompanying titles are important for a kind ofpivot in the reading and reception of the work. I wonder about the language that you use and how
it works. Can you talk a little about your choice of language?
Slavick - It is important that people see and experience the drawings first as drawings, that is, as
visual things, because I think the subsequent and accompanying texts, (usually hung beside eachdrawing as a title and published in my book at the end as "List of Annotated Plates"), if theychoose to read them, shock them out of their initial enjoyment of the drawings as cartographic,
abstract and semi-modernist compositions and into a more politicized, active and historical field.
Mostly, the titles come from other sources – historians, writers and activists like Howard Zinn,
Sven Lindqvist, James Bradley, William Blum, Terry Tempest Williams and Jeffrey St. Clair,and media sources like the New York Times and the Washington Post. I probably spent as muchtime finding these texts as I did on the drawings. During my research, I discovered previously
unknown places the U.S. had bombed, including its own territories (Atomic tests in Nevada,
Alaska, Utah, Mississippi and New Mexico; the fire bombing of a neighborhood in Philadelphia;bomb tests in Puerto Rico and North Carolina) and realized that I was giving myself a history
lesson. I felt compelled to share this information with others. Perhaps this comes more from myposition as an educator than it does from me as an artist, but I am a big fan of art that is
described, often disparagingly, as didactic, pedagogical, propagandistic and political.
The drawings do not show any people. As Howard Zinn writes in the foreword to my book, I do
not show "bloody corpses, amputated limbs, skin shredded by napalm." Somehow though, thedrawings compel the viewer to envision those things. The text does not show any people either,but it literally describes the historical events that took place - the number of the dead, the tonnageof bombs dropped. The text also compels you to imagine, to empathize. While some of the text isfrom an overtly political position, most of the titles are factual. While the drawings consistently
work against the authority of maps as sources for specific information produced by those inpower, the texts provide lots of specific information. I hope this provides a dynamic tension
between the images and the text. The drawings seem to compel viewers to "figure them out" andonce they start reading, they usually do not stop.

Hypocenter in Hiroshima, Japan1945

The atomic bomb called Little Boy “dropped on
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 turned into powder
and ash, in a few moments, the flesh and bones of
140,000 men, women, and children. Three days
later, a second atomic bomb dropped on
Nagasaki killed perhaps 70,000 instantly. In thenext five years, another 130,000 inhabitants of
those two cities died of radiation poisoning.
Those figures do not include countless otherpeople who were left alive, but maimed, poisoned,
disfigured, blinded.

Truong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

185

A Japanese schoolgirl recalled years later that it was a beautiful morning. She saw a B-29 fly by,then a flash. She put her hands up and ‘my hands went right through my face.’ She saw a ‘manwithout feet, walking on his ankles.’” - Howard Zinn,
Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence
On the morning of August 9, 1945, the U.S. B-29
Superfortress dropped the nuclear bomb code-named Fat
Man over the city. The explosion generated heat estimated at
7000 degrees Fahrenheit and winds estimated at 624 miles
per hour. About 70,000 of Nagasaki's 240,000 residents were
killed instantly and up to 60,000 were injured.
Truong - It’s interesting that the text is what anchors thework politically – it is the pivot on which the meaning of thework is understood. So the text is incredibly necessary, and I
see it as completely part of the work. We are both trying tochallenge the negative perception of didactic political
approaches to art practice. Considerable recent work takes up
the language of political protest and uses it to both critiqueand engage (Sharon Hayes, Emily Roysdon, or even The
YES! Men). In particular, a lot of work that takes up thelanguage of the news media is about critiquing it. But you are
Nagasaki City at Bombing Time,taking that language, and lots of other languages, to simply
Japan. 1945.
inform. It's interesting that these texts must be taken as facts.
Do you see these annotations as really doing the work? Would the work function the way thatyou would want without them, and does that mean the texts then are the authority?
Slavick - I do not believe in one meaning of the work (or of any work). There have been probombing people in the audience who appreciate this project too and that is fine with me. I strive
for a multiplicity of experiences and understandings of my projects. I think the text is critical tothe piece for you and me and many others, but not for everyone.
The language of political protest has always been utilized in art and has consistently gotten lotsof attention – from Goya and Kathe Kollwitz to Hans Haacke and Alfredo Jaar, to name a few. I
do think the text "does the work" in some sense, but not all of it. The drawings and titles, are codependent. I think the drawings, while working against authority and within subversive
cartography, still do provide facts, information, and subsequently "authority" - this really is a
representation of a real place where a bombing occurred. Ultimately, I am not sure that we needto distinguish between text and image in terms of language. Visual information functions and isunderstood in a very similar way as written text. Both function as language, even if they appear
very differently.
I did feel a bit unqualified to make such a historical project, doubting my position andknowledge. Expertise makes us all insecure when we move outside our prescribed fields.
Utilizing the texts from other sources did provide me with a sense of confidence and acommunity of support, even if I had to create it.
I think about A Measure of Remorse here. The "facts" are the PBS story that you use as asoundtrack, even though much of it is inaudible, we comprehend enough of it to know that thisWar and Visual Culture

186

conversation really took place. The soundtrack is paired with a completely fictional reenactment
or staging of the real event that happened years ago. Which form carries more authority – thesoundtrack or the imagery? One reason you make me want to make videos and film is how these
two elements are seamlessly contained within one piece, rather than placed side by side as
autonomous elements.
We are both challenging the way history is told and represented, the way things are remembered,along with challenging traditional perceptions of art practice as a purely formal exercise. They
are all inherently dependent on each other – the sidelining of conceptual, political, ethicalpractices for the privileging of mainstream history and sanitized memory.
On the night of March 9-10 American B-29
bombers attack Tokyo, a city of 6 million people.
600 bombers drop 1,665 tons of napalm-filled
firebombs, destroying 16 square miles. “In one
horrific night, the firebombing of Tokyo — then acity largely of wooden buildings — killed an
estimated 100,000 people.” - Howard French,
The New York Times, March 14, 2002

The Firebombing of Tokyo, Japan, 1945.

Assault on Iwo Jima, Japan, 1944 – 1945.

“B-29 Superforts and B-24 Liberators
pummeled the island mercilessly. Iwo Jima wasbombed for 72 consecutive days, setting therecord as the most heavily bombed target andthe longest sustained bombardment in the PacificWar. Every square inch of the island wasbombed. The 7th Air Force dropped 5,800 tons in
2,700 sorties. In one square mile of Iwo Jima, aphotograph showed 5,000 bomb craters - all thison an island 5.5. miles long and 2 miles wide.” James Bradley, Flags of our Fathers
Truong - This also has to do with our choices of
medium. We're both deliberate about how weapproach the topic -- we are researching andturning to archives. I am curious about yourdecision to work with maps. How do you think
about the relationship between the abstract(shapes / color) and the concrete (place /violence)?

Slavick - I had never worked with maps before but it was the logical form for this project forseveral reasons. First, as an American, it is crucial that I identify myself as a citizen of thebombing nation. Utilizing the cartographic perspective that is inherently photographic (I am aphotographer) provides a bomber pilot's view. I would never drop bombs and am opposed toeach and every bombing, but it seemed critical to put myself in that position. Second, there is along history of maps. They are usually used as instruments of power, determining borders andlines of private property, providing the source from which governments decide where to bomb.
They are also considered to be true, factual representations of a place. I wanted to undermine that

Truong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

187

power. Bombs do not stay within their intended borders - chemicals and toxic agents flow freely
across borders. Ideologically, bombings create more "terrorists," (What is the difference between
a terrorist and a soldier?), not just in the country under attack but in neighboring countries aswell. I chose not to include geographic or cartographic symbols or information (other than thedemarcation of a country or locality's shape in many cases) as a means to open up the
possibilities for reading a map, to disengage maps from the clenched fist of authority.
Some of the color choices were very deliberate, based on the source material from which I wasworking. For example, the Congo is the same ochre yellow color that it was in the old atlas and itis the one drawing in which I turned the orientation of the country on it's side because the historyof that country's borders and name is so complicated and constantly changing. The World Map,that has flag pins at each place for which there is corresponding drawing, is fairly red, white andblue - patriotic colors in the name of professed democracy and freedom. But for an artist who
usually has a reason for everything and a purpose for each formal decision, I was surprised by
the lack of correlation between colors and specific countries and events. Sometimes, it makes
sense: The Firebombing of Tokyo is full of flame red and burning yellow, ash black and the bay
is bluish, the landscape green; The Nevada Test Site II is dessert sand beige, even the sky is
striped white and brown, the bomb crater black and injured red. But more often, the colors do notmake sense: Vienna is pink and Poland and Iwo Jima are both white with dark blotches. I tried tomake each drawing different to avoid redundancy and so that people would stay interested inthem.
And I also enjoyed making them - watching the ink bleed, experimenting with acrylic resist,
intuitively choosing colors and patterns. This felt wrong to me because I was so troubled by thecontent, by the events, but again, the process kept me working on a very depressing topic and it
became clear to me that to keep people going with it, I had to make them beautiful. There is a lotof red for blood, black for death, blue and bleeds for water, concentric circles for targets and thespiraling aftermath, grids and lines to represent the map, the grid of power. Each one is also
different because each place has a very specific history. I did not want to collapse each place into
one big target or try to equalize the traumatic
violence.
"From 1962 through 1973 the United States
struck Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with eight
million tons of bombs, more than three times theamount it dropped in World War II. U.S. Policyin Cambodia from 1969 to 1973 played acrucial, if unintended, role in building support
for the Cambodian Communists (the Khmer
Rouge). A once insignificant rebel group, theKhmer Rouge did not gain strength until theUnited States began secretly bombing
Cambodia.” - Christian Appy, Patriots: The
Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides

Cambodia, 1969 – 1973.

War and Visual Culture

188"Between 1965 and1973 more than 2 million tons of bombs
rained down upon the people of Laos, more than the U.S. had
dropped on both Germany and Japan in WWII." - William
Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
since World War II"Fred Branfman was one of the first Westerners to expose
the fact that the United States had been secretly bombing
northern Laos since 1964. Many of the attacks focused on the
Plain of Jars, a high plateau controlled by the LaotianCommunists, the Pathet Lao. It had been populated by some
fifty thousand Laotian peasants who lived among six-foot-tallvessels believed to be ancient funeral urns – the famous jarsof the plain. Branfman writes, ‘Every single one of the
refugees told the same basic story. The bombing started in
May 1964, slowly accelerated, and got really bad in 1968.’ Ilater found out that when Johnson declared the bombing haltover North Vietnam just prior to the November 1968
Laos, 1964 – 1973.
election, they simply diverted all the planes into northern
Laos. Then Nixon and Kissinger came in and leveled the entire Plain of Jars.
Many of the air strikes dropped 'pineapple bombs' – antipersonnel bombs. They couldn't destroy
trucks or antiaircraft emplacements. They were only meant to kill people. They'd shoot two
hundred and fifty pellets across an area the size of a football field. Then they refined them withthese little fleshettes so they'd enter your body and were almost impossible to remove.'" –Christian Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides
Truong - The way that you talk about this makes me think of them as memorials – maps that,
unlike their typical function of telling you where you are, memorialize what was once there,
what once existed. And because it doesn’t have the function of what we want a map to typicallydo, it pushes us to want to know more, to seek out information.
Slavick - Exactly. My work has been about memorials for a long time. I just came back from 6
months in Lyon, France where I was making work inspired by the French Resistance during
World War II. I wrote about and photographed memorials. (My photographic essay comparing
memorials in France to those in Hiroshima, Japan, is forthcoming in the Canadian journal
Public.) Memorials mark history and provide a constant reminder of what once happened. Many
memorials are monumental. When all 60 bomb drawings are exhibited together, they do verge on
the monumental, but as autonomous drawings, they are fragile paper documents offered as
witness, testimony and in memory of all those who perished beneath our bombs.

Truong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

189“American airpower in Korea was fearsome to behold. As
was the case in Vietnam, its use was celebrated in thewholesale dropping of napalm, destruction of villages,
bombing cities so as to leave no useful facilities standing,demolishing dams and dikes to cripple the irrigation system,
wiping out rice crops, saturation bombing, and a scorchedearth policy. It is worse than useless to destroy to liberate.” –William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions since World War II"Three years after the beginning of the war, a cease-fire was
finally signed. Everything was back to where it had been in
the beginning, with almost the same borders as before thewar and the same unfulfilled dream of reunification. No one
had won. Everyone had lost. The war is calculated to havecost the lives of 5,000,000 people, by far the majority of themcivilians." - Sven Lindqvist, The History of Bombing
Truong - Can you talk about your influences and references?

Korea, 1950 – 1953.

Slavick - I love Sue Coe and Kathe Kollwitz and their insistence on the hand being present in thework; the hand marking resistance, scratching alternative histories and slowing us down; making
work against war. I am probably most inspired and challenged by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, how headdressed deeply personal and political issues with surprising and seemingly banal forms - heapsof candy as bodies, side-by-side clocks as gay lovers. I grew up loving the modernists and loved
echoing some of their formal choices of abstraction, automatic writing, subconscious andchildlike expressions, but for a different reason and in a completely different time, although war
is ever present. I also grew up in an activist family where I was taught that our every gesture canchange the world.
Truong – Can you talk about your deliberate choice of materials? Why drawing?
Slavick - I chose drawing because of my ongoing struggle with the problematic nature ofphotography. While the drawings are not photographs, they are photographic. Many of them are
drawn from photographic sources and most of them are from an aerial perspective that isinherently photographic. But I can not make photographs of these damaged places. I did notsurvive the bombings as a victim but as a war-tax-paying citizen of the bombing nation. Even if I
could make photographs, I would not because there are already too many photographs – too
immediate and too brief - countries and lives reduced to singular images. I hope that if I labor ona series of drawings in which the artist’s hand is visible, that people will work to understandthem on a deeper and more complicated level than they might when seeing a photograph.

War and Visual Culture

190"North Vietnam had been the target of secret U.S. military
operations since 1961. In early 1965, just months after hislandslide victory over Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson launched
Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing of North
Vietnam. In June, huge American B-52 stratofortresses
began bombing targets in South Vietnam, each plane
dropping up to twenty-seven tons of explosives per mission…
Of the 53,193 American military fatalities in Vietnam, morethan ten thousand were classified as 'noncombat deaths'. U.S
forces also suffered more than three hundred thousand
wounded. In 1995 the Vietnamese government announced
that 1.1 million Communist troops were killed and six
hundred thousand were wounded during the American War.

The hardest figures to find reliable estimates for are thenumber of Vietnamese civilians killed during the war. Mostestimates indicate that civilian deaths exceed combat deaths.
The Vietnamese government estimates that two million
Vietnam, 1961 – 1971.
Vietnamese civilians died during the American war. In total,
the war extinguished some three million lives." – Christian Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War
Remembered from All Sides
Truong - I am interested in how you think about mapping in the context of experimental
geography and radical cartographies. Do you think of your work as a spatial practice? You talkabout the specificity of history, but do you also think about what you are doing as re-productionof space?
Slavick –Yes, these drawings must be considered as re-productions of space because that is what
they are and I was aware of that as I made them. I wanted to re-present not only each place that
the U.S. has bombed, but also the space between the airplane and the land, between the bomband the people under the bomb. I also wanted to image the enormous space that these bombs
have destroyed. We, the U.S., have practically bombed everywhere on earth, or at least a placeclose by.
Truong - I ask this question because cartography is having such a renaissance in thecontemporary art world right now, fueled by the prevalence, proliferation and access to the waythat we can map things nowadays (think Google Earth, MapQuest and the like).
Slavick - Many of the sources for my bomb drawings came from the web – interactive military
battle maps, surveillance and aerial views from the Department of Defense and activist sites forexample. It felt like swimming upstream to then translate these globally accessible maps into
hand-drawn images, but also critical to the process, both in production and reception. I wish I
thought electronically like you do. I am too worried that the plug will be pulled, my hard drive
will crash, or that I will inadvertently delete a thought or emotion.
Truong - It’s a means of production that has been taken up by artists practicing a kind of critical
geography whose works overlap with other disciplines like urban planning and architecture andare supported by fantastic organizations like the Center for Urban Pedagogy in New York. But
I’m thinking through the way they function as maps, how they might create another space for aTruong and Slavick: War, Memory, the Artist and The Politics of Language

191

viewer (ostensibly an American viewer) to imagine the place of war, to imagine the U.S.’shistory of violence. I think it’s important that you keep reminding us that the U.S. is also you –it’s also the viewer and it’s also me – to remind us of our complicity as Americans. But I am
thinking about the role of map-making and space-making within that, and the ethicalresponsibility of re-presenting our orientation of the world that adequately addresses theimbalances of power and violence. The artist and geographer Trevor Paglen has written about
this – the idea that experimental geography is a way of taking up a position within the politics of
lived experience. The production of space is indeed a political act. Can you talk about how you
see map-making as a kind of political act, and do you related it to a concept of ethics? What isyour concept of ethics in this regard?
Slavick - I am familiar with the cartographic trend in the contemporary art world. Two of mybomb drawings are included in Katherine Harmon's recent book, The Map as Art: Contemporary
Artists Explore Cartography. There has been much written about it but I can't help but think thatmuch of it comes from our sense of placelessness. We can be anywhere and everywhere (via thescreen), yet we are nowhere (always in front of our screens). Making maps gives us a sense ofplace, even if that place is war-torn or imaginary. I can't imagine making anything as an artist
without "taking up a position within the politics of lived experience." Experimental geography isjust one tool among many that you can use. I would argue that the production of art in itself is apolitical act, that the production of art is the production of space.
Ethics are intertwined with empathy. I believe in an ethic of reciprocity - do unto others, as you
would have them do unto you. I believe in trying to cause no harm. I try to identify and stand insolidarity with those who suffer, especially due to my country's policies. I am not interested inart for art's sake. I believe we all have an ethical obligation to make our work serve a greater
good. Art is no exception.
elin o’Hara slavick is an artist and Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill where she teaches studio art, theory and practice. She received her
MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA at Sarah Lawrence College.
Slavick has exhibited her work in Hong Kong, Canada, Scotland, England, Cuba, and across the
U.S. and Europe. Upcoming shows of Hiroshima: After Aftermath are scheduled for Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, Lawrence, Massachusetts and Hiroshima, Japan. She is the author of Bomb
After Bomb: A Violent Cartography, (Charta, 2007), with a foreword by Howard Zinn. Slavick's
essay “Hiroshima: A Visual Record” appeared in Asia-Pacific Journal in 2009. Her exhibit,
Aftermath, on the aftermath of wars, is in progress at the Fedex Center for the Arts, University ofNorth Carolina, Chapel Hill from September 15-November 11, 2010.
Hong-An Truong is an artist and writer based in New York and North Carolina. Her
photographs and videos have been shown across the U.S. and in Seoul, South Korea. Her work
was screened at the PDX Documentary and Experimental Film Festival in 2009. Recent shows
include Art in General, Gallery 456 at the Chinese American Arts Council, both in New York, ascreening at DeSoto Gallery in Los Angeles, and a solo show at the New Media Gallery at theJohn Hope Franklin Center at Duke University. Currently her work can be seen in a group showat the International Center for Photography in New York. Truong received her MFA at the
University of California, Irvine, and was a studio fellow in the Whitney Independent Study
Program. She is the current recipient of a BRIC Media Fellowship from the Brooklyn Arts
Council and will begin teaching at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill this fall, 2010.

War and Visual Culture

192“Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras: Cinema in Korea Under U.S.
Occupation, 1945-1948”
Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim
November 1, 2010
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ae_Gyung-Shim/3437
This essay analyzes the impact of film policy enacted by the U.S. Army Military
Government in Korea (hereafter USAMGIK) between 1945 and 1948, a period when Korea
was divided into North and South due to the ideological confrontation between the U.S and
USSR. Rarely has the USAMGIK’s cultural policies in the southern half of the peninsula been
discussed to this date, yet the USAMGIK’s screening of Hollywood films during the timebears significance for its utilization of cultural products as a tool to propagate American
democracy and capitalism. The essay begins with a brief and informative history of Korean
film and the country’s film industry during the colonial period, linking this with theimporting of Hollywood films by the USAMGIK to identify some ideological parallels
between the two eras.
The film policy that was enacted in this period, according to Yecies and Shim, wasintended to project a sense of political liberty. In order to create a “liberal mood,” the
USAMGIK screened numerous Hollywood films that would meet their goals. This essay
examines the USAMGIK’s film policy in Korea, which aimed to stabilize political “disorder”
using the motif of the “American way of life.” It provides rich empirical data and further
analyzes the reception of this policy and the Hollywood films by two groups: Koreans andthe USAMGIK, both of which were quite “distracted” by the complex political situations in
the nascent stage of the enactment of the policy. However, the authors argue that the
Hollywood films eventually left a strong impression about American democracy andcapitalism in Korean people’s minds.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

193

Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras: Cinema in Korea Under U.S.
Occupation, 1945-19481
Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim
Abstract
Reorienting the southern half of the Korean Peninsula away from the former Japanese colonial
government's anti-democratic, anti-American and militaristic ideology while establishingorderly government was among the goals of the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea(USAMGIK, 1945-1948). To help achieve this aim on a wide front and as quickly as possible,
USAMGIK’s Motion Picture Section in the Department of Public Information arranged theexhibition of hundreds of Hollywood films to promote themes of democracy, capitalism, genderequality and popular American culture and values. While U.S. troops in the field enjoyed theincreased availability and calibre of American feature films, the Korean government-in-waiting
was affronted by their perceived immorality. Standard Korean film histories focus on thehardships endured by Korean filmmakers, and the conflicts among them, and on Hollywood’s
monopoly of the screen in the era, a situation which USAMGIK film policy – strikingly similar tothe ordinances previously set in place by the Japanese – assisted. This study demonstrates how
many of these ‘spectacle’ films, which have hitherto largely gone unlisted, were designed toinculcate Western notions of liberty among Koreans, while distracting them from a tumultuous
political scene. However, the films exhibited did not always live up to this lofty purpose. Alongwith positive portrayals of the ‘American way of life’, representations of violent, anti-social andmisogynistic behavior were foreign to Korean cultural and aesthetic traditions, and often
provoked negative responses from local audiences.•
In July 1950, within days of the start of the Korean War, hundreds of 16mm prints of Hollywood
feature and short films and more than fifty film projectors were rushed from Japan to US Armyand United Nations troops in the field. With many thousands of movies and over one thousand
new projectors eventually sent from the United States, the Motion Picture Division of the
Army’s General Headquarters, Far Eastern Command, went to great lengths to entertain thetroops with some of the latest commercial releases – such as Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Next
Voice You Hear (1950), The Black Rose (1950) and Father of the Bride (1950) – as well as
Disney animations and current newsreels of the war (Pacific Stars and Stripes, 28 October 1950).
Onscreen entertainment was available to soldiers in the field almost every night throughout thethree-year conflict. Troops swapped foxhole assignments and huddled inside abandoned railroad
tunnels, burned-out houses and half-bombed buildings, enduring rain and freezing weather tocatch a glimpse of films that were often simply projected onto walls or hanging bedsheets. In thewords of one anonymous soldier, “When you go the movies over here, you get out of Korea for acouple of hours” (Pacific Stars and Stripes, 28 Aug 1951, p. 10). These daily Hollywood film
screenings were a critical catalyst for raising the morale and national spirit of the troops on thefront lines in Korea – an intriguing military strategy for bolstering the fight for democracy.
This was not the first time that Hollywood films played a vital role in military affairs in Korea.
Within seven months of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), and after
the United States and Russia had carved the country in half, US film distributors rushed theirmost popular films to the southern half of the Korean peninsula. They were simply following theadage ‘trade follows the flag’ (Self, 1944, p. 6), even as Lt. General John R. Hodge and his US

War and Visual Culture194

Occupation forces were disarming the Japanese military.2 Amid chaotic social, political andcultural change, local cinemas were inundated with a range of genre films from Hollywood.
These were productions that the US Army Military Government in Korea (hereafter USAMGIK,
1945-1948) – under advisement from the Central Motion Picture Exchange, the U.S. film
industry’s East Asian outpost – believed would assist them to reverse four decades of Japanese
influence – in particular, to inculcate a sense of ‘liberty’ among Koreans. Instead of thinking andacting similarly to Japanese, Koreans were now expected to think about what ‘America’ anddemocracy had to offer them.
Despite the monumental size of this undertaking, most histories of the USAMGIK period such as
Cumings (1997), McCune (1947), Meade (1951), and Oh (2002) lack a sustained discussion ofthis significant cultural aspect of the USAMGIK’s occupation strategy and its impact on local
culture. These previous studies mostly focus on politics and the economy – not culture, andespecially not film policy. Standard Korean film histories such as Lee and Choe (1998), Lee(2000), Kim (2002), Min, Joo and Kwak (2003), Yi (2003) and Cho (2005) are important, butthey focus narrowly on the hardships and conflicts of Korean filmmakers in this era, and see
Hollywood’s domination of Korean screens as a threat to local culture.
Until now, little has been published in either Korean or English about the hundreds of American
films – made with ‘Hollywood’s cameras’, in contradiction to Japan’s now silenced ‘cannons’(see Figure 1) – that were targeted explicitly at Korean audiences through advertisements in
Korean-language newspapers. Indeed, this plethora of films was consumed by thousands upon
thousands of local cinemagoers, including, of course, U.S. Army personnel.
Soon after liberation, local filmmakers and entertainment entrepreneurs became frustrated at the‘undemocratic’ ways in which US occupation policy was restricting their activities. A wave ofyoung and experienced filmmakers, many of whom who had grown up on a heavy diet of
Hollywood films between 1926 and 1936, and who had gained valuable training making
propaganda films for the Korean Colonial Government, were ready to explore realist aesthetics,
film as art, and narratives that resisted Japanese power. Yet, USAMGIK film policy, which wasa close copy of laws promulgated by the former colonial government, kept Korean filmmakers
subservient, albeit temporarily, to an authoritative agenda that aimed at restoring democraticorder to the region.
After 1945, members of the Korean film industry, in common with other cultural critics,
expressed concern that Korea was simply being opened up to American goods and services, andKorean entrepreneurs were being sidelined. In fact, as this article shows, US film distributors(like the mining industry, for instance) were simply seeking to restore the level of business thatthey had enjoyed in Korea before the Colonial Government began suppressing American film
culture and commerce with America more generally.
By analysing the impact of USAMGIK film policy, and the major themes of a cross-section of
Hollywood films exhibited in Korea, we seek to explain the circumstances in which the projectboth failed and succeeded. Many of the spectacle films discussed here were used to evoke asense of personal and political liberty, while distracting local audiences from the political turmoilof the period. With these themes in mind, this exploratory study provides new and important
information about South Korea’s post-liberation film industry, which was desperate to break freefrom the legacy of 35 years of Japanese colonial rule.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

195

First, however, a brief history of Hollywood’s dominance in the region is presented to help
account for the influence of American film and American culture on Koreans.
Korea Awakening
Between 1926 and 1936, Hollywood experienced its first golden age in Korea (Yecies 2005).
During this period, American films overwhelmingly dominated the Korean market. In 1932,
films from the U.S. (calculated by length) amounted to 63 per cent of all film prints exhibited(Yecies 2008, p. 163). Hollywood had a much smaller market share in Japan, where about 70 per
cent of all films screened were Japanese (Langdon 1934). During this decade, all major US film
companies had direct distribution offices in Seoul, submitting around 5,700 prints to theGovernment-General of Korea’s film censorship office through local Japanese, Korean,
American and Chinese representatives. An additional 640 Argentinian, British, Chinese, French,
German, Italian and Russian films were divided evenly between Japanese and Korean
representatives, both individuals and companies.
Among the most popular American film genres from the mid-colonial era were musicals,
mysteries, action adventures, historical dramas, and gangster films. These were the genres
described by Hollywood mogul Joseph M. Schenck, chairman of 20th Century-Fox, as making
the big screen an ‘effective salesman of American products and the American way of life’(Benham 1939, p. 410). Asia was not immune to this cultural allure.3
Perhaps surprisingly, colonial censorship restrictions posed little threat to this influx from
Hollywood. From the evidence of film censorship statistics for the period between August 1926
and March 1935 – presented to the 69th Imperial Diet by the Library Section of the Bureau of
Police Affairs of the Korean Colonial Government – censorship in Korea was strict and careful.
Korean customs and cultural norms were seen as differing from those in Japan, and all films
entering the country for public exhibition were assessed in light of this.4 Generally speaking,censorship laws restricted freedom of expression throughout the empire and suppressed films
that critiqued Korean society under Japanese rule or glorified revolution.5 With these
considerations in mind, the vast majority of Hollywood films submitted were approved withminor, if any, censorship changes, suggesting that the Government-General of Korea and
Hollywood representatives maintained good relationships at this period.6 In terms of the total
footage of all foreign films submitted, less than one-tenth of 1 percent was censored on the basisof being a threat to public morals.7
With access to an increasing number of foreign films, Koreans had the opportunity to escapefrom their colonial realities. In 1934, screenings of Hollywood films approved by the censor
included I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Frisco Jenny (1932), Tiger Shark (1932),
Winner Take All (1932), Footlight Parade (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Captured(1933), 42nd Street (1933) and Little Giant (1933).8 These exciting and entertaining films
appealed to people of all ages and literacy skills, as their narratives relied little on knowledge ofEnglish. Common themes found in these and other films mentioned in this article – too numerous
to discuss in detail – included modernity, capitalism, justice and urban lifestyles, among a host of‘American’ themes.9
Hollywood’s fortunes began to take a dive in 1935 when Governor-General Ugaki mandated that
one-third of all screenings had to be of domestic films (defined as Japanese or Korean), thusincreasing the barriers for foreign movies and precipitating a temporary boom in locallyWar and Visual Culture

196

produced talkie films (Yecies 2008). Then, from the late 1930s, every scrap of film and every
filmmaker in Korea was harnessed for Japan’s war-time film production project, which created asmall number of feature-length propaganda films to coalesce public support for Japan’s war-time
agenda, largely aimed at cultural assimilation. Representative Korean-Japanese co-produced
films include Military Train (1938), Volunteer (1941), You and I (1941) and The Straits of
Chosun (1943).10
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, strict censorship guidelines
prevented Korea’s 120 cinemas from screening films from the U.S. and other Allied countries.
Naturally, Hollywood distributors looked forward to the time when they could regain the market
dominance in Korea that they had enjoyed during the middle years of the Japanese colonial
period. The U.S. occupation of Korea was the solution – particularly with the re-opening of
Hollywood distribution offices throughout the country from 1945.
Hollywood Rejuvenation
Following the end of the Pacific War, the United States and the Soviet Union divided Korea atthe 38th Parallel: the southern and northern parts of Korea to be temporarily governed by the US
and USSR respectively in order to facilitate the establishment of orderly government. The US
interim government proclaimed its intention to transform the southern part of the Korean
Peninsula into a ‘self-governing’, ‘independent’ and ‘democratic’ nation.11
During this time, four pivotal US players contributed to the re-invigoration of cinema culture in
Korea: the Office of War Information (hereafter OWI),12 the Motion Picture Export Associationof America (hereafter MPEA),13 the Central Motion Picture Exchange (hereafter CMPE)14 andthe USAMGIK’s Motion Picture Section in the Department of Public Information (hereafter
DPI). The chief role of the DPI was to monitor and improve public opinion towards the US andto democracy in general in Korea.
Before the end of the war, and before the OWI was incorporated into the US Department of State(hereafter US-DOS) in September 1945, the OWI’s Bureau of Motion Pictures had devised plans
to continue ‘fighting with information’ in the post-war period (Barnes, 1943, p. 34). It
established key CMPE outposts in Japan and the southern part of Korea, through which the U.S.
government attempted to facilitate democracy and stability in the region. In addition to
generating profits by distributing American feature entertainment films, the CMPE also
distributed cultural and educational documentaries and newsreels, while the USAMGIK’s DPI
promulgated film policy and initially oversaw film censorship during the US occupation.15 In
US-controlled Korea, the Motion Picture Section was established in 1945 under the PublicInformation Bureau of the DPI. It had the clear objective of “disseminating information
concerning American aims and policies, the nature and extent of American aid to Korea, andconcerning American history, institutions, culture, and way of life.”16 OWI government
information manuals make it clear that movies were viewed as ammunition for winning the war
for democracy.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

197

Hollywood films became a key vehicle forindoctrinating Koreans along these lines. In
Germany, the US launched a similar project oftransforming its former enemy into a democratic
country through motion pictures. In short,
Hollywood films were seen as quintessential
vehicles for disseminating ‘American’ ideology
as ‘democratic products’ (Fay, 2008, p. xix).
During the immediate post-war period, the
USAMGIK’s propaganda operation in Korea
was anchored by the dissemination of a flood of
glamorous Hollywood ‘spectacle’ films across a
range of genres, filling a noticeable void hitherto
Figure 1. left: cover of the Movies at War, Vol. 1
left empty by American, Korean, Japanese andpamphlet published by the War Activities
other European films. As local film critics noted
Committee, Motion Picture Industry, New Yorkat the time, the sheer spectacle and extreme
City, 1942. The phrase ‘Cannon and Camera!’
appears above the bottom right image (p. 3). The ‘foreignness’ of the Hollywood films on showphrase ‘Films Fight for Freedom' appears below the enabled audiences to forget about the political
top right image (p. 6). Images courtesy of Special turmoil going on around them (Lee, 1946, p. 4).
Collections, University of Iowa Library.17
The portrayal and promotion of modern Westerncity life in the films discussed in this article wasan important facet of this process.
While the criteria used to select the American films distributed and exhibited in southern Korea
appear somewhat random, many were Academy Award-winning (or nominated) films such as In
Old Chicago (1937), Boy's Town (1938), You Can’t Take it With You (1938), Suspicion (1941),
The Sea Wolf (1941), Random Harvest (1942), Casablanca (1942) and Rhapsody in Blue (1945).
In addition to having achieved popularity in the United States, these films presented well-dressedpeople scurrying along the skyscraper-lined, car-filled streets of Manhattan, Paris and othermodern cities. Heterosexual coupling was depicted as a moral norm: lovers embraced openly onlarger-than-life studio sets and natural locations alike. While many films contained strong moral
themes affirming the final victory of justice and the importance of hope, others affirmed
women’s (equal) rights, Christianity (religion) and patriotism. However, these themes were often
expressed using less lofty motifs such as violence, vigilantism, public disorder, deception,
desperation, suicide, theft, murder, killings, adultery and corruption.
Through the importation of Hollywood films from the mid-1940s, Korean audiences were
exposed to large-scale, continuous visual and thematic representations that were totally foreign
to their own cultural traditions. And, if the advertisements published in Korean in local
newspapers are any indication, Korean audiences were the primary targets of these films.
Generally speaking, Koreans had had long-standing Confucian traditions that required physicalseparation between noblemen and commoners on the one hand, and men and women on the otherhand. Confucianism provided the foundational social, moral and legal guidelines and customs
between people of all ages. Not only did cinema-going in this era enable all walks of life tomingle together in ways that were different from traditional Korean moral values, but the images,
themes and motifs presented in the onslaught of spectacle Hollywood films, which was not a new

War and Visual Culture

198

phenomenon, did continually present ‘American’ situations that shook the roots of traditions andworried traditionalists.
Films such as Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take it With You, exhibited in April 1947, offered
Korean audiences the opportunity to consider new ideas and social relations. In fact, Americans
at home were told that the newly liberated countries of East Asia were ‘seeing, with awe andenvy, the homes and clothes and motor cars of the world’s most prosperous and least-suffering
people’ (Missoulian, 13 March 1945). In You Can’t Take it With You, an inter-class couple ispresented as free to pursue an intimate relationship, resulting in a ‘happy ending’ that portrays
wealthy people sacrificing their personal gains and championing community and family values.
This was one Hollywood film among many that embraced themes of social mobility and change
through marriage in the face of seemingly incompatible class relations, pitting ambition andwealth against happiness and social acceptance. Heterosexual coupling and marrying withoutparental or family consent was linked to the desire for social mobility through acquiring material
wealth in a modern society.
However, seeing is a culturally constructed process, and Korean audiences saw more than they
were perhaps intending to. In about half of all the American feature films exhibited at this time(and foreign films generally), what was seen on the screen was often at odds with the wholesome
values ostensibly being promoted – these movies offered Koreans a mixed view of Westernculture where open expressions of immoral behavior sat alongside purported democratic ideals.
Property theft, fraudulent activities, malicious intent, crimes against individuals and authority
figures and sexual contact of a kind eschewed in Confucian tradition filled local screens.
Fox’s In Old Chicago, produced by studio mogul Darryl F. Zanuck for almost $2 million andreleased in Korea in April 1946, exemplified the mixed messages received by Korean audiencesfrom Hollywood. This film showcased major stars Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Don Ameche,
who deliver a dramatic message about overcoming poverty and fighting corruption. The film was
inspired by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and showed how the city was rebuilt throughdetermination and perseverance. In Old Chicago portrays an Irish family in the second half of the
19th century struggling to survive in a ‘modern’ society at a time when rough frontier towns were
full of opportunity and the wealthy kept African-American house-servants. In the first 5 minutesof the film, as the family is travelling from the country to Chicago in their horse-drawn covered
wagon, the father is killed while chasing a passing steam train – a sleek symbol of modernity. In
the next scene, the following text appears onscreen: “Chicago – 1854. A City of easy money,
easy ways, ugly, dirty, open night and day to newcomers from all parts of the world… a fighting,laughing, aggressive American city.”
The film is jam-packed with a wide range of positive and negative behaviors, including
chivalrous men helping well-dressed women across muddy streets, unmarried couples kissing
and hugging, fist fights and police raids in saloons, dancing girls in revealing clothes, andbreaking and entering into private homes. Yet, as an overriding coda, In Old Chicago ends withthe optimistic sentiment: ‘Out of the fire will be coming steel’—underlining the film’s projectionof themes of righteousness, corruption and manifest destiny in the context of industrialization
and American expansion. While the physical setting of the story perhaps shares some of thegritty feel of post-liberation Korean society, Asian audiences must have had difficultly finding
the democratic message in a story where ‘moral turpitude’ is so openly and abundantly on
display.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

199

Ironically, although it was a hit on Korean screens, In Old Chicago was suppressed by the US
Occupation authority’s Civil Censorship Detachment in Japan – not because of flagrant
immorality, but because of its overt portrayal of political corruption.18 Hence, not all films boundfor Korea via US distribution offices in Japan enjoyed public screenings, demonstrating
differences in U.S. strategy in Korea and Japan. The difference reflects divergent objectives of
the interim US governments in Korea and Japan. In Japan, the US had spent seven years creating
and maintaining political stability in its former enemy. The process of ‘democratizing’ Korea
was seen as a simpler task, achievable in just three short years and requiring less politicalvigilance.
In fact, USAMGIK was well aware of the criticism directed at the undesirable nature of many ofthese films. According to one report from mid-1947 submitted to the US-DOS, a committee ofAmerican educators that had conducted a formal survey of local attitudes in Korea wasdisappointed at the CMPE’s failure to offer appropriate films to Korean audiences.19
Hollywood Rollout
In February 1946, MPEA representatives, along with a local liaison officer who had previously
worked for Paramount, one of the most active American distributors in colonial Korea, opened
CMPE’s Korean branch in Seoul. From the outset, CMPE collected film rental fees from all
exhibitors and documented daily box-office receipts and monthly attendance figures; it also
monitored audience reactions to US films as well as those from other countries.20 Exhibitors
were required to pay CMPE at least 50 percent of all box office revenues as part of the
distribution deal, an arrangement which Korean exhibitors severely criticised.21
Despite sophisticated market analysis, USAMGIK did not immediately gain the upper hand in
Korean cinemas.22 After liberation, and before cinemas could be renamed from Japanese to
Korean names, a ‘black market’ emerged for the unofficial distribution and exhibition of
Hollywood and Soviet films and those of other countries. Entrepreneurs and others interested inintellectual social debate, including communism, began exhibiting soi-disant illegal films. To
assert their independence, and to make a quick profit during the exhibition vacuum left behind by
the colonial regime, these entrepreneurs screened films such as Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill,
Jr. (1928), The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935), and B-grade science fiction, gangster andaction-adventure films such as Undersea Kingdom (1936), What Price Crime? (1935), Sea
Devils (1937), and The Ware Case (1938). Political films such as Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia(1936) and the Italian fascist propaganda film Lo Squadrone Bianco (1936) and the romantic
drama Eravamo sette sorelle (1939) were also screened for the general public. Movies from
France, such as Julien Duvivier’s monster film Le Golem (1936) and his gangster film Pépé leMoko (1937), and films from Argentina and China, were also exhibited.23

War and Visual Culture

200

Leftist entrepreneurs also stepped in the fill the
gap in control of the film scene. Before
USAMGIK had begun in earnest to assist the US
film industry to spread ‘American’ views of socalled democracy and modernity via theexhibition of Hollywood films, otherorganizations such as the left-wing Chosun Film
Federation (hereafter CFU) began holding
screenings of Soviet feature films. In the earlypost-war period, CFU had stimulated debate insouthern Korea about Korea’s political andsocial future by screenings films, such as Sergei
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944), as well as
Figure 2. Advertisements. top: ‘The White
Soviet newsreels (Armstrong 2003). They too
Squadron’, New Corea Times 21 December 1945, p.
were interested in developing new cultural ideas
2; bottom: ‘Puerta Cerrada’, Hansung Daily 14
and attitudes that could help Korea move away
December 1946, p. 2; side: ‘Pépé le Moko’, Hansung
from the militaristic ideology of the former
Daily 27 October 1946, p. 3.
Japanese colonial government.24 Yet, theiractivities were strongly opposed by the USAMGIK authorities – particularly given the proximityof Soviet forces in the northern part of Korea.25
USAMGIK eventually purged the marketplace of these ‘unwanted’ films under Ordinance No.
68, ‘Regulation of the Motion Pictures,’ promulgated in mid-April 1946. In October 1946, US
Occupation forces also enacted Ordinance No. 115, which regulated the licensing of allcommercial as well as educational and cultural films.26 On paper, these ordinances abolishedmost colonial film laws, such as the Peace Preservation Law of 1925, which has been referred to
as Japan’s ‘domination over the soul’ (Lee 1999, p. 42). The Peace Preservation Law was asocial policy instrument that rigorously detailed the cultural values and submissive behavior thatimperial subjects were expected to show. Yet, in actuality, the two USAMGIK ordinances
maintained the spirit of Japanese colonial censorship edicts, thus restricting Korean autonomy in
the film industry.27
In April 1946, the month the first USAMGIK ordinance came into force, the first batch of
authorized Hollywood films arrived in Seoul. Ironically, and seemingly haphazardly, they
arrived with Japanese subtitles via CMPE-Japan (Christian Science Monitor 12 April 1946,
p.19). A rueful prologue produced by the DPI’s Motion Picture Section appeared at the start ofeach of film, explaining the presence of these subtitles.28 In order to connect with local
audiences, well-known Korean byeonsa (live narrators) were recruited to introduce each film andto explain how subsequent officially distributed films would contain either Korean subtitles orpart-Korean dialogue.29
Almost immediately, these first Hollywood films made a splash in the marketplace as audiences
lapped them up with enthusiasm, whether of not they understood them or appreciated the culturalvalues they contained (U.S. Embassy, Seoul 1950). According to the Supreme Commander ofthe Allied Powers (hereafter SCAP) reports on USAMGIK activities in Korea, between 15 April
and 31 May 1946, nearly 400,000 tickets to US feature films were sold, generating a turnover of
Y4,000,000 (the equivalent of about $266,666). Subsequently, DPI’s Motion Picture Section
stimulated a burst of censorship activity by approving 328 applications to screen American andYecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

201

other countries' films, including a few from Korea.30 By June 1946 about 100 feature, short,
documentary and newsreel films had been shown in southern Korean cinemas under the new
regulations, leveling off thereafter to a monthly total of about 50 films, a flow that enabled
CMPE to harmonize its activities with the politics of the occupation.
Police confiscated at least a dozen unapproved films from Korea, Germany, France and Italy in
May 1946, and 9 cinemas across Seoul were shut down pending the arrival of approved films to
exhibit (Donga Daily 5 May 1946, p. 2). The confiscation of unauthorized films removed
competition and restored the kind of market dominance that Hollywood distributors had enjoyedin the colonial period between 1926 and 1936 (Yecies 2005). It also solidified MPEA’s growing
footprint in post-war Asia. Prints that had not been approved by DPI were treated as blackmarket goods, and confiscated by USAMGIK police. Not only were pro-colonial andcommunist-oriented films, which violated the ideological spirit of the US Occupation,
confiscated, but also any other films that might interfere with the monopoly that CMPE wasattempting to build on behalf of the American film industry. Thus the decision to confiscate such
films was based on both economic and cultural factors.
Dawn of Re-orientation
The documentaries and newsreels distributed by CMPE arrived in Korea along with a large
number of US feature films which, like the former, were intended to serve the USAMGIK’s
reorientation program. The larger list of films screened in April 1946 included Queen Christina(1933), Barbary Coast (1935), The Devil Doll (1936), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Romeoand Juliet (1936), San Francisco (1936), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The Buccaneer (1938), The
Rains Came (1939), Golden Boy (1939), Honolulu (1939), The Under Pup (1939) and Abe
Lincoln in Illinois (1940). These were ‘prestige pictures’ in the sense that they were ‘injectedwith plenty of star power, glamorous and elegant trappings, and elaborate special effects’ (Balio
1995, p. 180) – attractive packaging for presenting some of the core democratic reform values
that the US government wanted for Korea.31

War and Visual Culture

202

Based on advertisements in Koreanthat appeared regularly in major local
newspapers, a majority of the films
screened at this time were talkies
produced between the mid-1930s andearly 1940s. Action-adventure andhistorical bio-pics were prevalent,followed by melodramas, screwballcomedies, musicals, westerns,
crime/detective thrillers, sciencefiction and animated cartoons.32
These advertisements attempted tolure audiences with arousingdrawings and silhouettes of film
stars, action scenes and exotic
locations, promoting all the glamourof American culture. They depicteddashing portraits of leading
Hollywood stars including RobertMontgomery, Judy Garland, Bing
Crosby, George Raft, Eleanor
Powell, Richard Dix, Clark Gable(about to kiss Claudette Colbert in
Figure 4 below) and Jean Arthur as a
Figure 3. Advertisement. Top: ‘Honolulu’, Hansung Daily 14 Julyfeisty cowgirl in Arizona (1940).
Often, the images in theseadvertisements revealed little about
the themes treated in the film
concerned. In contrast to the happyromantic image featured in theadvertisement for MGM’s Boom
Town reproduced below (Figure 5),
the film portrays themes of frontier
exploration and desire for material
wealth, as well as jealousy andrivalry over women, and social
mobility. These are all themes thatwould have appeared in striking
contrast to the colonial ideology of
the Japanese occupation, let alone thepre-colonial values to which Koreanaudiences were accustomed. At thesame time, the graphic imagery of
the advertisements attracted nonKorean-speaking US troops as well –a welcome secondary audience.

1946, p. 4; bottom: ‘The Buccaneer’, The Korean Free Press, 13
May 1946, p. 2.

Figure 4. Advertisements. left: ‘I Wanted Wings’ (1941), Jayu
Shinmoon 4 May 1948, p. 2; middle: ‘Laura’ (1944), Daidong
News 8 June 1948, p. 2. right: ‘Boom Town’ (1940), Jayu
Shinmoon 27 August 1948, p. 2.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

203

As these advertisements show, many of these films
carried the ‘heavy scent of “Americanism”’(Yoshimi 2003, p. 434), portraying the United States
as an exoticized and ‘glamorous elsewhere’. Ads forWesterns displayed men in ten-gallon hats either
embracing a pretty woman or pointing a gun at thereader. Those for romantic dramas and musicals,such as Romeo and Juliet (1936, exhibited in July,
September and December 1946 and in October1947), I Wanted Wings and Honolulu showed
scantily-dressed women and couples in passionate
embraces. These and other films portraying ‘modern
life’ showcased ‘film stars, dance crazes, general
oddities and glamorous strangeness’ (Vieth 2002,
pp. 23-24), and the newspaper ads faithfullyreflected this. Although exhibitors promoted
programs that mixed features with shorts and live
musical and/or theatrical performances, a surfeit of
Hollywood films left little room for the exhibition offilms from Korea and elsewhere: movies whichmight have offered alternative views of ‘America’ –and modernity, for that matter.
The USAMGIK Legacy
The question remains how successfully American
films distributed and exhibited in the southern halfof the Korean Peninsula meshed with USAMGIK’s
occupation strategy. The films selected originatedfrom a variety of sources, including film distributors
in Shanghai and U.S. film distributors' vaults incolonial Korea that were impounded by theJapanese authorities after Pearl Harbor. Yet, regardless of the origins of these prints, the US film
industry was able to profit from the exhibition of older and recycled films while at the same time
exploiting them for their cultural contents. In fact, before appearing in Korea, most if not allthese feature films would have undergone the self-censorship process implicit in Hollywood’s
Motion Picture Production Code. This industry initiative attempted to ensure that stories andscenes contained appropriate content for domestic viewers. USAMGIK would no doubt havebeen confident that these star-driven films – often in the running for Oscars – upheld the kind of
moral values and accurate portrayals of (American) society that would not offend Koreanaudiences.
Figure 5. Advertisements. top: ‘Union Pacific’(1939),Jayu Shinmoon 5 July 1948, p. 3; middle:‘The Flame of New Orleans’, Jayu Shinmoon 5
July 1948, p. 3; bottom: ‘The Great Victor
Herbert’, Jayu Shinmoon 14 July 1948, p. 3.

However, as we have seen, while many CMPE films approximated this model, an equal number
offered a different view of America: one that depicted opulence, feisty and independent female
characters, unrestrained love-making, violent themes and an exotic cultural milieu that was boththrilling and dangerous – as newspaper advertisements containing guns attest. This suggests that
CMPE was keen to select sensational films that would bring both locals and Occupation troops
to the cinemas in droves, without carefully distinguishing between these two audiences.

War and Visual Culture204

The portrayal of gender themes especially was potentially problematic. Otto Preminger’s filmnoir mystery-romance Laura portrays the female protagonist as a successful and savvy
advertising executive. Her traits and abilities are continually questioned in the context of the‘proper’ conduct of women and class boundaries.33
We have no way of knowing whether the popularity of the films discussed in this article equatedwith their success in implanting American ideologies of democracy and gender equality in
Korean audiences. DPI officials may have been preoccupied with larger issues or lacked
sufficient motivation to gain a deeper understanding of Korean culture and the aspects ofAmerican movies that would appeal to Korean audiences. On the face of it, it should not havebeen too difficult for the US authorities to select for general release films with a predominantly
positive message while winnowing out their less edifying counterparts. Films such as Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington (1939), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Penny
Serenade (1941), The Rains Came and Random Harvest were better vehicles for showcasing
democratic and other ‘wholesome’ ideals and values that represented the best of what ‘America’
had to offer. However, an equal number of films evidently catered to US troops rather than
Koreans.
Clearly, however, there was a limit to what the USAMGIK and CMPE could achieve in the shorttime at their disposal. Nor were CMPE and the US film industry the only parties at fault. Other
foreign films such as the French gangster film Pépé le Moko (1937) and the musical comedy
Avec Le Sourire (1936), Monte Carlo Madness (1932), Burgtheater (1936) and the sex andhorror film Alraune (1928) from Germany, as well as Puerta Cerrada (1939) from Argentina,
titillated audiences with provocative images both onscreen and in newspaper advertisements.
DPI failed to censor objectionable or obscene content from these foreign films as it was moreconcerned with blocking films with communist sympathies and any Hollywood films obtained
through unofficial – that is, non-CMPE/MPEA – channels. As a result, audiences were freely
exposed to films like Pépé le Moko, set in Algiers’ seedy casbah underworld where gunfights arecommon, and a melting pot of gypsies, Slavs, blacks, Arabs, homeless people, Sicilians,
Spaniards, prostitutes and corrupt officials stands in stark contrast with the (apparently civilized)
French colonial authorities. The film’s negative ending depicts the protagonist’s suicide afterlosing the chance to develop love and trust with his girlfriend (who betrays him), and thus, toredeem himself.
Hence, as we have already suggested, US involvement in developing a new age of cinema
culture in liberated Korea was more complex than previous studies have indicated. Whereas
American films received a warm reception in Japan into the early 1960s (MPEAA 1961), in
Korea they experienced tougher market restrictions after President Rhee took office in 1948.
Although the general public was enthusiastic about Hollywood ‘spectacle films’, intellectuals
and the Korean government saw American films (and USAMGIK film policy) as a threat toKorean culture and tradition, and a hindrance to developing a local industry. Despite theirentertainment value, American films that promoted themes of violent and anti-social behavior,and frequently portrayed Western notions of ‘gender equality’, had unintended consequences in
Korea.
Political turmoil on the ground posed difficult challenges for US occupation forces and for
USAMGIK’s attempts to execute a highly organized cultural re-orientation campaign. As aresult, US occupation authorities likely misunderstood local concerns and underestimated theYecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

205

impact that thirty-five years of Japanese colonialism had had on Korea. Nevertheless,
USAMGIK’s aim of reorientating Koreans away from the legacies of the former Japanesecolonial regime was achieved with surprising ease by allowing hundreds of Hollywood spectacle
films back into the region. Their contents could not have differed more from the propaganda andcultural films that the Korean Colonial Government had obliged audiences to watch (and Korean
filmmakers to make) between 1937 and 1945. In pursuing this course, USAMGIK had indeed
disarmed Japan’s ‘cannons’ with Hollywood’s cameras.
However, both domestic audiences and US Occupation forces were too distracted by the politicalsituation for a comprehensive Hollywood re-orientation project – combined with other UScontrolled media such as radio and print propaganda – to generate new cultural ideas and ideals.
Ultimately, the procession of glamorous images and stirring stories in films and other media kept
the post-liberation euphoria flowing until USAMGIK could stabilize the southern half of the
Korean Peninsula. While CMPE’s films may not have had the immediate and solid effect on
Koreans for which USAMGIK had hoped, the entertainment and exoticism associated with‘America’ certainly lingered in the minds of Korean audiences.
At the same time, although USAMGIK saw all its activities as contributing to the growth of
democracy, it hardly needed to work as diligently as it did to generate ‘American’ attitudes
among Koreans because Hollywood films (and therefore, American culture) had only been
suppressed for 7 or 8 years before 1945. In addition, traditional Korean culture had never been
completely suppressed, despite the colonial authority’s efforts to implement Japanese language
into everyday learning and communication.
Eventually, a steady diet of Hollywood productions – regardless of whether their narrative styles
fell outside the Motion Picture Production Code guidelines – proved too much for Koreanaudiences including president-in-waiting Syngman Rhee. According to an anonymous article in
the right-wing newspaper Chung Ang Shinmoon (31 March 1948), American pictures seduced
Koreans with the ‘thrill of murder and gangsterism, with fickle and promiscuous love, withfrenzied jazz, and with the pleasures of life in foreign countries’, thus seriously affronting
Korean cultural norms.34 Other critics were concerned that Koreans were mindlessly consuming
the eroticism, glamour and fantasy depicted in American films without considering the massive
gulf between everyday life and culture in the US and in Korea (Lee, Kyunghyang Daily 30
October 1946, p. 4). The open expressions of sexuality and boisterous behavior portrayed inthese films were seen by American education specialists (on a formal fact-finding visit to Korea)
as culturally insensitive and potentially injurious to Korea’s Confucian traditions and national
pride (USAMGIK 1947).
By March 1949, only six months after the end of the USAMGIK period and establishment of the
Republic of Korea, Hollywood’s economic stronghold in the southern part of Korea was alreadyslipping. President Syngman Rhee was developing regulations to limit the number of imported
American films – partly to assist the rebirth of a domestic film industry and partly to limit the
public’s exposure to what was seen as objectionable content (US Embassy, Seoul 1949).35
The proponents of such views were more interested in seeing and producing films with more
appropriate and edifying themes to counter those embedded in the military propaganda films
produced during the last few years of the Japanese colonial period and the perceived vulgarityand objectionable content of Hollywood films. After years of suppression by the Japanesecolonial authorities, workers in the Korean film industry were genuinely looking forward to theWar and Visual Culture

206

stimulation of the domestic industry that USAMGIK was supposed to have offered after
liberation. However, the reality of CMPE’s market dominance quickly tarnished these hopes. As
one newspaper editor summed up the issue early on: “The CMPE’s coming to Korea was not tofertilize Korean cinema, but to plant a strong tree of the American cinema over the top of the
sprouting Korean cinema” (Seoul Newspaper 26 May 1946, p. 4).
Nonetheless, the domestic industry revived as local filmmakers consolidated their production
skills and re-used equipment formerly owned by the consolidated Chosun Film Production andDistribution Co. that the Colonial Government created between 1941 and 1942. It was also
happy to answer USAMGIK’s call for the production of Liberation News shorts and a small
number of ‘Liberation’ feature films. As a result of these and other factors, the foundations of anational film industry were laid.
Although progress was disrupted by the civil war, the Korean film industry blossomed both interms of its size and of the quality and number of films made in the mid-1950s, starting with therelease of Lee Kyu-hwan's The Tale of Chunhyang (1955) and Kim Ki-young’s Yang sanProvince (1955). Invitations to international film festivals increased proportionately. The 111
films made in 1959 constituted a dramatic increase over the mere 15 films made in 1955
(KMPPC, 1976, p. 47).
Although the full impact of USAMGIK’s re-orientation film programme on Korea is likely toremain unknown, a deeper understanding of its policy underpinnings, execution and pitfalls
provides new insights into how this cultural project contributed, at least in theory, to the‘Americanizing’ of the region. Ironically, South Korea’s love affair with Hollywood featurefilms revived during the 1950s and 1960s, a process well-documented in McHugh and Abelmann(2005). The continuing popularity of Hollywood genre conventions, iconography and the starsystem, conspicuous in many Golden Age classics from Madame Freedom (1956) to BarefootYouth (1964), suggests that the Hollywood films distributed during the USAMGIK period may
have had a longer-term cultural impact than can be gleaned from distribution and exhibition
statistics alone.
Brian Yecies is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies and the Co-convenor of the
Bachelor of Communication and Media Studies degree at the University of Wollongong. His
research focuses on film policy, the history of cinema, and the digital wave in Korea. He is apast recipient of research grants from the Asia Research Fund, Korea Foundation and AustraliaKorea Foundation. His book Korea’s Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948 (with Ae-Gyung Shim),
which is supported by the Academy of Korean Studies, is forthcoming in the Routledge Advancesin Film Studies series.
Ae-Gyung Shim teaches part-time in the Bachelor of Communication and Media Studies degree
program at the University of Wollongong, and is an avid cook. Her PhD thesis, written while
studying in the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at the University of New South
Wales, focuses on the transformation of film production, direction, genre and policy in South
Korea during the 1960s golden age.
References
Armstrong, C 2003, ‘The Cultural Cold War in Korea, 1945-1950’, Journal of Asian Studies
62:1, pp. 71-99.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

207

Balio, T 1995, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939, vol. 5,
History of American Cinema Series, University of California Press, Los Angeles.
Barnes, J 1943, ‘Fighting with Information: OWI Overseas’, The Public Opinion Quarterly 7:1,
pp. 34-45.
Benham, A 1939, ‘The “Movie” as an Agency for Peace or War’, Journal of Educational
Sociology 12:7, pp. 410-417.
Caprio, M 2009, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945, University ofWashington Press, Seattle.
Cumings, B 1997, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, W.W. Norton, New York.
Eckert, CJ, Lee, K, Lew, YI, Robinson, M and Wagner, EW 1990, Korea Old and New: A
History, Seoul, Published for the Korea Institute, Harvard University by Ilchokak.
Farhi, P 1988, ‘Seoul’s Movie Theaters: Real Snake Pits?’, The Washington Post (17September): 14.
Fay, J 2008, Theaters of Occupation: Hollywood and the Reeducation of Postwar Germany,
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Hicks, OH 1947, ‘American Films Abroad’, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers
49:4, October, pp. 298-299.
Hirano, K 1992, Mr Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation,
1945-1952, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington D.C.
Iwasaki, A 1939, ‘The Korean Film’, Cinema Year Book of Japan 1939. International Cinema
Association of Japan and the Society for International Cultural Relations, Tokyo, pp. 64-65.
Johnston, RJH 1945, ‘Japanese Put Out Of Korea Rapidly’, New York Times 10 October, p. 7.
Joongoi Daily 1946, ‘Film Review: The Rains Came/20th Fox’, Joongoi Daily 9 May, p. 2.
Kim, HJ 2002, ‘South Korea: The Politics of Memory’, in Being & Becoming: The Cinemas ofAsia, Aruna Vasudev, Latika Padgaonkar, and Rashmi Doraiswamy eds, Macmillan India, Delhi,
pp. 281–300.
Kitamura, H 2007, ‘Exhibition and Entertainment: Hollywood and the American Reconstructionof Defeated Japan’, Local Consequences of the Global Cold War, Jeffrey A. Engel, ed, Stanford
University Press, Washington D.C., pp. 33-56.
Kitamura, H 2010, Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of
Defeated Japan, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
KOFA. Korean Cinema through Newspaper Articles: 1945-1951 (Sinmungisa ro bon hanguk
yeonghwa: 1945-1957). Seoul: Gonggan gwa saramdeul, 2004.
Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation (KMPPC) 1976, Korean Film Material
Collection, KMPPC, Seoul.

War and Visual Culture

208

Koppes, C and Black, G 1987, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits and Propaganda
Shaped World War II Movies, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Langdon, WR 1934, ‘Chosen (Korea) Motion Picture Notes’, US-DOS, 23 March. File 895.
Records of the US-DOS Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1930-1939, The National
Archives at College Park, Maryland (hereafter NARAII).
Lee, C 1999, ‘Modernity, Legality, and Power in Korea Under Japanese Rule’, Colonial
Modernity in Korea, Shin G and Robinson, M eds., Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge,
MA., pp. 21-51.
Lee, H 2000, Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, and Politics, Manchester
University Press, Manchester.
Lee, TW 1946, ‘How are we going to watch US films’, Kyunghyang Daily, 31 October, p. 4.
McHugh, K. and N. Abelmann (eds.). 2005, South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender,
Genre, and National Cinema, Wayne State University Press, Detroit.
McCune, GM 1947, ‘Post-War Government and Politics of Korea’, The Journal of Politics 9:4,
pp. 605-623.
Meade, EG 1951, American Military Government in Korea, King’s Crown Press, New York.
Min, EJ, Joo, JS and Kwak, HJ 2003, Korean Film: History, Resistance, and Democratic
Imagination, Praeger, Westport.
Motion Picture Export Association of America (MPEAA) 1961, ‘Japan Country Fact Book’,
USC-Warner Bros. Archives, Japan File #16520B.
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) 1942, ‘Motion Pictures in
Wartime’, Film Facts, 1942: Twenty Years of Self Government, New York. Record Group(hereafter cited as RG) 208, Records of the OWI, Records of the Historian Relating to theDomestic Branch, 1942-1945, Box 3, Entry 6A, NARAII.
Oh, BBC (ed.) 2002, Korea Under the American Military Government, 1945-1948, Praeger,
Westport, CT.
Robinson, M 1984, ‘Colonial Publication Policy and the Korean Nationalist Movement’, Myers,
R and Peattie, M eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, pp. 312-343.
Self, SB 1944, ‘Movie Diplomacy: ‘Propaganda’ Value of Films Perils Hollywood’s Rich
Markets Abroad’, Wall Street Journal, 16 August, p. 6.
U.S. Embassy, Seoul 1949, ‘Dispatch No. 247: South Korean Motion Pictures’, 4 May, RG59,
US-DOS Decimal File 1945-49, Box 7398, NARAII.
U.S. Embassy, Seoul 1950, ‘Dispatch No. 657’, 2 January, US-DOS, RG59, Decimal File 194549, Box 7398, NARAII.
USAMGIK 1947, ‘Report of the Educational and Informational Survey Mission to Korea’, 20
June, US-DOS, RG59, Decimal File 1945-49, Box 7398, NARAII.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

209

Vieth, E 2002, ‘A Glamorous, Untouchable Elsewhere: Europe's American Dream in World War
II and Beyond’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 5:1, pp. 21-44.
Yecies, B 2005, ‘Systematization of Film Censorship in Colonial Korea: Profiteering From
Hollywood's First Golden Age, 1926–1936’, Journal of Korean Studies 10:1, pp. 59-84.
Yecies, B. 2008, ‘Sounds of Celluloid Dreams: Coming of the Talkies to Cinema in Colonial
Korea’, Korea Journal 48:1, pp. 16-97.
Yecies, B and Shim A (forthcoming), Korea’s Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948, Routledge
Advances in Film Studies, New York.
Yi, HI 2003, ‘The Korean Film Community and Film Movements During the Post-liberation
Era’, Traces of Korean Cinema From 1945 to 1959, Korean Film Archive, Seoul, pp. 11-89.
Lee, YI and Choe YC 1998, The History of Korean Cinema, Jimoondang, Seoul.
Yoshimi, S 2003, ‘“America” as Desire and Violence: Americanization in Postwar Japan andAsia during the Cold War’, trans. David Buist, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4:3, pp. 433-450.
Notes
1

The authors acknowledge the generous research support from the Academy of Korean Studies,
Asia Research Fund, and Korea Foundation. Invaluable guidance was provided by librarians andarchivists at the University of Maryland-College Park (Gordon W. Prange Collection), National
Archives (NARAII, College Park), University of Wisconsin-Madison, United Artists Collection
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Special Collections in the University of Iowa Library(Papers of the Victor Animatograph Corp.), Cinema/Television Library, Korean Heritage/East
Asian Library and Warner Bros. Archives at USC, Arts Special Collections at UCLA, and theMargaret Herrick Library-Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. Special
thanks goes to Mark McLelland, Mark Caprio, Mark Morris, and Hiroshi Kitamura for valuablecomments on earlier drafts.
2

An insightful article about USAMGIK by Lt. General Hodge appears as “With the U. S. Armyin Korea”, National Geographic Magazine, June 1947, pp. 829-840.
3

The comprehensive Korean Cinema: From Origins to Renaissance (2007), by the Korean Film
Council, has grossly underestimated Hollywood’s activities in colonial Korea and its long-term
links to the US film industry’s stronghold in the Asian region.
4

Censorship statistics cited in this article come from: “Table of Censored Motion Picture Films,
1 August 1926 to 31 March 1935” (Katsudō shashin [firumu] ken’etsu tōkeihyō, Taishō jūgonen
hachigatsu tsuitachi kara Shōwa jūnen sangatsu sanjūichinichi made), Sixty-ninth Imperial
Parliament Document (Dairokujūkyūkai Teikoku Gikai Setsumei shiryō), Library Section of the
Bureau of Police Affairs, Korean Colonial Government (Chōsen Sōtokufu Keimukyoku
Toshōkan Teikoku Gikai Setsumei shiryō), Serial# CJA0002448, File# 101-7-1-2, Ministry ofGovernment Administration and Home Affairs, Government Archives and Records Service,
Daejon, Korea (hereafter cited as Archives and Records Service); and “Table of CensoredMotion Picture Films, 1 April 1935 to 31 March 1936” (Katsudō shashin [firumu] ken’etsu
tōkeihyō, Shōwa jūnen shigatsu tsuitachi kara Shōwa jūichinen sangatsu sanjūichinichi made),
Sixty-ninth Imperial Parliament Document (Dairokujūkyūkai Teikoku Gikai Setsumei shiryō),

War and Visual Culture

210

Library Section of the Bureau of Police Affairs, Government-General of Chōsen, File#CJA0002471, Archives and Records Service5

One of the primary aims of the Library Section was to suppress material regarded as promoting
such subversive themes, in particular Korean independence and communism – rather than blockforeign films outright.
6

Although during this decade minor cuts were made to Universal, Fox and Paramount films (75,
63, and 51 cuts respectively) for allegedly violating public peace and safety, only 10 (out of a
total 3599) individual reels from Paramount were completely rejected by the censors, while
Universal and Fox suffered no rejected reels.
7

Between 1926 and 1935, two-thirds of all Universal films submitted for censorship approval to
the Library Section of the Bureau of Police Affairs were handled by Korean
distributors/importers, and two-thirds of all Fox films were represented by Japanese. Nearly all
Paramount films from this decade were represented by Koreans.
8

United Artists collection, Series 1F Box 5-5, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

9

In 1932 alone, around one in every three Koreans (of all ages) was watching movies mainly
made in America and Japan, but also including films from other countries (Langdon 1934).
10

During this time, and through the narratives in these films, the Korean Colonial Government
intensified its encouragement for Koreans to support Japan’s colonial (and nationalistic) agenda,
which was formalized in 1938 under the naisen ittai (naeseon ilche in Korean), or ‘Japan and
Korea as One Body’ assimilationist policy (Eckert, 1991, p. 236).
11

Records of the US Department of State relating to the internal affairs of Korea, 1945-1949,
Department of State, Decimal File 895, Reel 5, ‘US role in Korea’, National Archives at College
Park, Maryland (hereafter cited as NARAII).
12The OWI had been developed in the United States in mid-1942 to coordinate the massdiffusion of media and information at home and abroad through multiple government
departments. To remain as close to the American film industry as possible, OWI operated abranch office in Hollywood. It published government information manuals that advised industry
representatives about how ‘the motion picture should be the best medium for bringing to life thedemocratic idea’ – that is, American notions of ‘freedom’.
13

MPEA was formed in June 1945 under the Webb-Pomerene Act in order to support the US
economy and to promote world peace. The organization developed influential trade strategies
that successfully overcame foreign market barriers and increased distribution profits for its
member companies.
14

In early 1946 OWI and MPEA formally coalesced under the name of the Central Motion
Picture Exchange. Among other roles, CMPE was charged with controlling the distribution rights
for MPEA members’ films throughout Asia.
15

See ‘Operational Guidelines for the Distribution of O.W.I. Documentaries and Industry Films
in the Far East’, 22 December 1944, Records of the OWI, Records of the Historian Relating to
the Overseas Branch, 1942-1945, RG 208, Box 2, Entry 6B, NARAII.

Yecies and Shim: Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras

211

16

Department of State Decimal File 1945-1949, RG59, BOX 7398, ‘Report of the Educationaland Informational Survey Mission to Korea’, Seoul, Korea 20 June 1947, p30. NARAII.
17

This material is also contained in: Records of the OWI, Records of the Historian Relating to
the Domestic Branch, 1942-1945, RG 208, Box 1, Entry 6A, NARAII.
18“A Manual for Censors of the Motion Picture Department”, RG331, Box 8603, Folder 7,
SCAP Records, NARAII.
19

In its report, the committee stated: “The only American films generally available to Koreans
are old feature films distributed by the Korean branch of the Motion Picture Export Association.
These are of inferior quality and are completely inappropriate vehicles for presenting American
culture in Korea. As in other oriental countries, motion pictures are enthusiastically received by
the Korean public.” See Report of the Educational and Informational Survey Mission to Korea,
20 July 1947, pp 35-36. US-DOS, Decimal File 1945-49, RG59, Box 7398. NARAII
20

See ‘Memorandum’, from M. Bergher to the Chief of the C. I. & E., 12 April 1946. RG331,
Box 5062, Folder 15, ‘Motion Pictures, Sep 1946 – Dec 1947’, and Box 1020, Folder 9, ‘Central
Motion Picture Exchange’, SCAP Records, NARAII.
21

According to the former manager of the Chosun Film Company, profit-sharing arrangements
had been better for Korean exhibitors under Japanese rule, when they had been only 35-40
percent. For older film industry operatives in Korea, the CMPE’s higher fees were an
unwelcomed challenge (Joongoi Daily 19 April 1946, p. 4).
22

Systematic market intelligence was supplied to the Chief Film Officer of DPI, which
forwarded it to the OWI Motion Picture Bureau in New York for discussion among film industry
executives. The CMPE’s data collection processes helped them cultivate Korean and Japanesemarkets for future MPEA domination.
23

It is important to list these titles here because their screenings demonstrate a sense of initiative
among Koreans that USAMGIK eventually blocked. Their exhibition also reveals a greater
diversity in the national cinema scene in the earliest stages of the US occupation than was thecase with Japan, as discussed in Hirano (1992) and Kitamura (2007; 2010).
24

Caprio (2009) suggests that Japan’s assimilation project failed because there was no real
intention on the Japanese side to allow Koreans to be fully assimilated into Japanese culture.
Nevertheless, it seems the colonial authorities were at least successful in creating a fantasy world
where Koreans could act more like their fellow Japanese as a result of their indoctrination in
Japanese language, education, customs and culture.
25

Before it was silenced, and before restrictive film regulations were enacted, CFU ran articles
in the daily press criticizing CMPE for its close ties to USAMGIK and its monopoly of the local
exhibition market. Other groups attempted to screen colonial-era films such as Crossroads ofYouth (1934) and the propaganda film Military Train (1938). However, USAMGIK forces
quickly confiscated these and all other films not approved by DPI in advance of their public
exhibition.
26

General Headquarters, SCAP, Commander in Chief, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, 1946,‘Monthly Summation No. 8’, US Army Military Government Activities in Korea, Tokyo, May, p.
88; and 1946, ‘Monthly Summation No. 13’, October, p. 81.

War and Visual Culture

212

27

The USAMGIK’s new powers soon became apparent. Its censorship process required 3 copies
of every screenplay in English to be delivered to it, regardless of the language spoken in the filmin question. All films, including those already in Korea, were subject to censorship approval, arule which attracted immediate complaints from Korean filmmakers and other industry
businesspeople that found translation costs prohibitive (Seoul Newspaper 5 May 1946, p. 5; Jayu
Newspaper 5 May 1946, p. 3.)
28

RG331, Box 5062, Folder 15C “Motion Pictures, Sep 1946-Dec 1947”, SCAP Records,
NARAII.
29

Shipping this first batch of prints to Korea was no doubt seen as efficient and economical,
suggesting that the US authorities had sent whatever prints were available – probably stock
abandoned by US distributors during the war. This implies a limited effort with limited resources
to control the film market in Korea – in contrast to the situation in Japan discussed elsewhere by
Kitamura (2007; 2010).
30

General Headquarters, SCAP, Commander in Chief, US Army Forces, Pacific, 1946, ‘Monthly
Summation No. 9’, US Army Military Government Activities in Korea, Tokyo, June, p. 79; and1946, ‘Monthly Summation No. 11’, August, p. 88. Our understanding is that the exchange rate
between USD and Japanese Yen (in Japan) was set at Y15 per $1 in the wake of war in
September 1945, and the inflation of the early postwar economy led to a rate change to Y50 per$1 in 1947. Eventually, this was capped at Y360 per $1 in 1949.
31

Whether or not these big-budget spectacle films successfully embodied or transmitted
democratic ideology and other ‘American’ ideals to Koreans, they were regularly screened overthe course of the USAMGIK period – each about once every six months (for several days at atime).
32

These and other films distributed by CMPE had little competition in the entertainment field,
apart from frequent live theatrical and musical performances and a few screenings of older
Korean films such as Ahn Seok-young’s 1937 talkie feature The Story of Shim Cheong, Na Ungyu’s silent classic Arirang (1926), and Choi In-gyu’s colonial propaganda film Angels on theStreets (1941). The evidence suggests that the exhibition of a small number of Korean films wasallowed by USAMGIK to placate domestic criticism of CMPE’s ‘anti-democratic’ practices.
Arirang was screened multiple times, including at the Jeil Cinema (Segye Daily 9 April 1947, p.
2) and on 28 July 1948 at the Chosun Geukjang (Jayu Shinmun 28 July 1948).
33

And on the subject of portrayals of alternative female sexuality, one may ask how a pre-Codefilm with a lesbian subtext such as Queen Christina could be seen as exemplifying American
moral and cultural values.
34

This quote, an English translation of the original article, is contained in: ‘Dispatch No. 80:
Korean Opposition to American Motion Pictures’, 7 April 1948. Records of the US-DOS relating
to the internal affairs of Korea, 1945-1949, microfilm reel #7, Decimal File 895. NARAII.
35

US film industry representatives were anticipating a maximum of only seventeen films
allowed into Korea per year.

Ikeda: Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State213“Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State: Reassessing the Art of
Ogawara Shū and Fujita Tsuguharu”
Asato IKEDA
October 25, 2010
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Asato-Ikeda/3432
This essay introduces and compares works and lives of two war painters, Ogawara
Shū (1911-2002) and Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1998). It also provides a critical perspectiveon the museological discourse about Fujita and reassesses Ogawara by examining recent
exhibits of their works in Hokkaido, Japan. Ogawara, a prewar surrealist painter,collaborated with the military and produced war propaganda paintings in the early 1940s.
Fujita was an internationally renowned Japanese artist who resided in Paris since 1913,
but came back to Japan and produced propaganda paintings in the 1930s and 40s. After theear, they were criticized harshly by the public for their war responsibility, and largely
forgotten in the Japanese art scene since then: Ogawara isolated himself in Kuchan,
Hokkaido while Fujita left Japan permanently and lived in France until he died.
The author analyzes some of the most representative works produced by each artist
including war paintings, and compares their different responses to their wartime activities:
Ogawara expressed his war responsibility publicly since the 1970s whereas Fujita nevercommented on it. Apart from presenting each artist’s attitude towards his past, the author
problematizes the way Fujita and his war paintings were interpreted at the Hokkaido
Museum of Modern Art in 2008: he was represented as a “Renaissance humanist” whoproduced “anti-war” paintings. The author argues that the nationalistic impulse of thecontemporary Japanese art community was behind the misrepresentation of Fujita as a
“tragic hero” and raises critical questions that need to be investigated further such as theway modernism and nationalism was intertwined in Japan during the war years.

War and Visual Culture214

Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State: Reassessing the Art of Ogawara
Shū and Fujita Tsuguharu
Asato IKEDA
In 1973, Ogawara Shū (1911-2002) painted agroup of Hokkaido dogs in A Herded Society(Gunka shakai). Barking, crawling over eachother, and trying to jump out of the picture plane
toward the viewer, these are not tame, docile petdogs, but rather violent animals. The painting
does not have a smooth finish or a focal point.
The simultaneously expressive yetunsophisticated faces of the dogs add a childish
quality to the work. The artist stated that thispainting represented the group mentality thatexisted among Japanese people, not only during
the war when they supported the military
government without question, but also after the
war when they began uncritically embracing
U.S. policies. Yet, distancing oneself from thepack is not easy.

Ogawara Shū, A Herded Society, 1973

Another painting A Herd (Mure, 1977) creates a sense ofloneliness and isolation through the use of contrastingcolors and body language. In the painting, a sad-looking
dog, placed in the foreground and differentiated from thepack in the indigo background, looks toward the viewers
as if to ask for consolation. The dogs in the pack havemean, scary faces and some of them are ready to pounce
on the isolated one.
Echoing immediate postwar discussions by politicalscientist Maruyama Masao and the literary group Kindai
Bungaku on wartime responsibility, blind feudalism, andthe need to create subjective autonomy, Ogawara not
only tackled the issue of the group versus the individual,
but also confronted his long-silent past: he himself had
belonged to the pack, collaborating with the military andpainting war propaganda in the early 1940s.1 After thewar, however, he disassociated himself from major art
Ogawara Shū, A Herd, 1977
groups in Tokyo and moved to the small town of Kuchan
in Hokkaido where he was raised. The lonely dog in A
Herd may be seen as a self-portrait of the artist in the postwar era.
Similar to the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada, and Australia, Japan had its own official
war art program during the Second World War.2 After Japan’s defeat in 1951, however, theUnited States confiscated one hundred fifty three propaganda battle paintings that had beencommissioned by the Japanese Imperial Army, Navy, and Air Force between 1937 and 1945. It

Ikeda: Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State215

was only after 1967, when photographer Nakagawa Ichirō found this collection of War
Campaign Record Paintings (sensō sakusen kirokuga) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Ohio, that the public paid attention to the paintings once again. Nakagawa’s “discovery” of thecollection spurred a war art repatriation movement in Japan in the late 1960s. The movement was
led by nationalist politicians including Nakasone Yasuhiro and Ishihara Shintarō. Also among
them were former war painters Miyamoto Saburō and Ihara Usaburō who called for repatriation,
claiming that the war paintings were “masterpieces” (meiga) and “valuable ethnic monuments”(kichōna minzokuteki kinenbutsu).3 Critical reflections on wartime collaboration that took placein the field of literature initiated by Ara Masato of Kindai Bungaku in the 1950s never took place
among former war painters. The war art collection was eventually returned to The National
Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 1970 on “indefinite loan.”4 Although the National Museum
curators planned a war art exhibition in 1977, they abruptly cancelled it over fear of politicalcontroversy, citing anticipated anger from formerly colonized nations. In fact, the museum has
never displayed the collection in its entirety and it has long been considered taboo, or as
Sawaragi Noi calls it, Japanese modern art history’s “Pandora’s Box.”5
It was during this time when the art remained hidden in the National Museum that Ogawara, thelast living former war artist, discussed his paintings in an NHK television program titled“Hovering War Paintings” (Samayoeru sensō-ga).6 The program, which was filmed one year
before Ogawara died in 2002, revealed that some artists such as Koiso Ryōhei deliberately
destroyed their wartime works and pulled them from their exhibitions in the postwar period.
Unlike Miyamoto, Ihara, or Koiso, however, Ogawara publically spoke of his personal
responsibility. The ninety year-old artist determinedly stated, “I am responsible for the war
paintings. If I do not take responsibility, who does?” He stated he would “not hide what he did”
and he would “leave others to make a judgment.”7
In the summer of 2008, while the Ogawara Shū Museum located in the small town of Kuchan,
Hokkaido, held a modest exhibition of his works titled The Real Landscape of Myself II, anotherformer war painter was in the spotlight in Sapporo, the capital and largest city of Hokkaido.
From July 12th to September 4th, the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art held the Léonard Foujita
Exposition, which was funded by the Hokkaido Shinbun newspaper and supported by the General
Council of Essonne in France.8 It featured nearly two hundred works by Fujita Tsuguharu (18681968), also known as Léonard Foujita. Fujita was an internationally renowned artist of École deParis, the school of non-French modernists who resided in Paris, the world art capital of the
1920s. He was arguably the most famous Japanese artist in the world during the prewar era. In
Japan, Fujita was also known as a prolific wartime painter of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Due
to his wartime activities he was ostracized for many years in postwar art circles, but following alarge retrospective organized by The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2006, there was renewedinterest in the man and his work. Although Ogawara and Fujita have never been discussed
together, their concurrent exhibitions in Hokkaido in 2008 provide an opportunity to examine
these two artists who lived through the twentieth century.

War and Visual Culture

216
This article introduces and compares the works and lives of
Ogawara Shū and Fujita Tsuguharu. By comparing Fujita
Tsuguharu with another war artist, I challenge the recent
uncritical museological discourse about Fujita and reassess thelesser known artist Ogawara as well.9 In so doing, I attest to thesignificance of unraveling the wartime art, an effort only recently
begun by academic researchers. I first compare the two artists,
focusing on how they started out as modernist artists, produced
war propaganda, and reflected on their wartime experiences in
the postwar era. I will then examine the national investment inrehabilitating Fujita into the canon of Japanese modern art
history, as in the 2006 and the 2008 exhibitions. Finally, I
consider what research remains to be done regarding the wartime
works of these two artists in particular and Japanese war art ingeneral.
Ogawara Shū and Fujita Tsuguharu

Fujita Tsuguharu, ca. 1920s(1886-1968)

Both Fujita and Ogawara established careers as prewar Japanesemodernists who aspired to create art that was new and original.
Tokyo-born Fujita Tsuguharu studied at the Tokyo School ofFine Arts, now known as the Tokyo National School of Arts, themost prestigious art school in Japan. Upon graduation in 1913,
Fujita moved to Paris to study and became a member of École deParis. There he made friends with globally acclaimed avantgarde artists including Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, andHenri Matisse. He produced numerous works of female nudes,
which emphasized thin yet assertive calligraphic black lines andthe smooth, sensuous, transparent, and ceramic-like whitesurface of female skin. These nudes became his “signature style”
and made him the most famous Japanese artist in Paris in the
1920s. Though numerous Japanese artists lived in Paris, theirsuccess did not compare with Fujita’s. In his Nude with Tapestry(Tapesurii no rafu, 1923) for example, he painted a fully naked
woman with curled hair seated on a white silky cloth, stretching
her legs out in front, putting her hands around her head, andOgawara Shū, ca. 1993
exposing her underarm hair. The background, which could be a(1911-2002)
curtain placed behind her, is punctuated with soft pink flowers,
and a cat sits beside the woman. A couch or a bed on which thewoman sits appears unrealistic, seemingly lacking the appropriate mass in its material. The
woman does not recede in space, which creates a slight disjuncture in spatial coordination
especially in the lower part of the painting: the woman appears to be floating in space. Locating
himself in modernist art practice in Europe, where artists turned to non-European cultures totranscend European artistic traditions, Fujita’s use of line and his attention to the sleek,
concealed quality of the canvas was rather strategic. He was fully aware of the potential ofJapanese art in early 20th century Europe: “The new artistic tendency recently in Europe is‘simplicity’. In other words, Western art is becoming Orientalized, Japanized…The reason why I

Ikeda: Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State217

was able to establish my career in Paris was that my paintings contained elements of Japanesestyle painting.”10
Ogawara, by contrast, never studied abroad. In 1929 he moved to Tokyo, Japan’s artistic
metropole, and after graduating from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, joined gatherings of young
Japanese artists such as École de Tokyo and The Art and Culture Association (Bijutsu bunka
kyōkai). Ogawara’s main interest was in surrealism, which developed first as a literary
movement in the 1920s and then as a visual art in the 1930s. Ogawara associated closely with
Fukuzawa Ichirō, a leading avant-garde artist who studied in France and introduced surrealism toJapan. Adapting surrealism to the Japanese milieu, Ogawara discovered atmospheric mysticism(jyōshoteki shimpisei), which he considered to be the principle of the surreal, in the naturalenvironment of Northern Japan (hoppōteki seikaku).11 As late as 1940, he painted in a surrealiststyle, exploring the inner subjectivity of humans, the realm of the unknown, the unconscious, andthe uncanny.
In Snow (Yuki, 1940), he combines the dreamlike quality of surrealism with Hokkaido’s
landscape of snowy mountains, from which a
massive human leg appears. Unlike his dog
paintings in the 1970s, this painting shows thickapplication of paint and the artist’s ability tocreate spatial depth and join foreground andbackground in a plausible manner. Without an
upper body, the leg in the foreground goes into
the mountain with its booted sole facing theviewer. The leg is trapped by a craggy tree, thetip of which looks like a ski. The workcommunicates the menace of nature that could
swallow a human, which Ogawara would have
Ogawara Shū, Snow, 1940
been well aware of from his experiences during
Hokkaido’s ruthless winters. The dark side ofnature, however, is contrasted with the brightness of the white snow and the blue, sunny sky,which gives the painting a mysterious, eerie edge. Like Fujita, Ogawara challenged the European
academicism taught in art schools, but unlike Fujita, his goal was to bring “something new” toJapanese art per se.
What brought these seemingly disparate artists together was war. As militarists dominated thegovernment in the 1930s, the social milieu that surrounded art and artists gradually changed. As
early as 1935, the state explicitly intervened, consolidating art communities through the reformof the Imperial exhibition (teiten).12 With the beginning of the war with China in 1937, thegovernment tightened its control on artists, officially commissioning propaganda works.
According to art historian Kawata Akihisa, over three hundred artists participated in official war
art production and painted War Record Campaign Paintings.13 Military official Akiyama Kunio
defined War Campaign Record Paintings as paintings that “have the significant historical
purpose of recording and preserving the military’s war campaign forever.”14 Another official,
Yamanouchi Ichirō, advocated the realist style of European neo-classicism of the eighteenth andnineteenth century, especially works by Jacques-Louis David as proper models.15 The artists“served the nation” (saikan hōkoku) by exhibiting their works in state-sponsored exhibitions such

War and Visual Culture218

as the Holy War Art Exhibition (Seisen bijutsu tenrankai) and by travelling to war fronts torecord battles.
Artistic protest against the state was rare, and those who did not paint propaganda paintings were
either sent to jail or the battlefield. Matsumoto Shunsuke, who wrote “The Living Artist”(Ikiteiru gaka) in 1941, was one of the very few artists who publicly protested against the
militarist views of art.16 Referring to the symposium where militarist officials declared that
artists should contribute to the war by painting propaganda paintings, Matsumoto wrote, “I regret
to say in the symposium entitled ‘National Defense State and the Fine Arts’ I found no value. It
is wise to keep silent, but I do not believe keeping silent today is necessarily the correct thing todo.”17 Meanwhile, the state set out to eradicate art that was deemed undesirable. Authorities andpolice labeled surrealist works “unhealthy” and linked them to “dangerous” thoughts ofcommunism. In 1941 they arrested the leaders of the Japanese surrealist movement, Fukuzawa
and Takiguchi Shūzō.18 In addition, numerous artists and art students were sent to the battlefield
as soldiers.19
In the early 1940s, Ogawara and Fujita both produced works on government commission.
Ogawara was initially drafted and dispatched to Manchuria as a soldier at the age of thirty in
1941. After succumbing to pneumonia, however, he was sent back to his home in Hokkaido. As
for Fujita, in the 1930s he continued to paint and exhibit, and travelled extensively both insideand outside Japan (to Akita, Okinawa, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States). But in 1940, with
Europe at war, he returned to Japan where he would stay for the duration of the war. Soon
Ogawara and Fujita were on their way to the front, not as tourists or soldiers, but as official war
artists. Both received public recognition through their war art: Ogawara received the Army
Ministry Award (Rikugun daijin shō) and Fujita was awarded the Asahi Newspaper CultureAward (Asahi bunka shō), to name two. As President of the Army Art Association (Rikugun
bijutsu kyōkai), Fujita occupied a higher and more prominent position than Ogawara. He statedin the art magazine Shin bijutsu in 1943: “I feel that I have dedicated my right arm to the nation.
How rewarding it is that painters can directly contribute to the nation!”20
Interestingly, both artists painted the same battle: the Japan-US battle on Attu Island near Alaska
in 1943. Both paintings are currently in the war art collection at The National Museum ofModern Art, Tokyo mentioned above. The battle is known as the first incident in which theJapanese military employed the strategy of gyokusai, or collective suicide. As part of the Battleof Midway that started in June 1942, Japan occupied the Kiska and Attu Islands in Alaska. By
May 1943 the Japanese troops ran out of food and weapons, and their commander, Colonel
Yamazaki Yasuyo, decided to choose “the path of the Japanese warrior,” or death over life.
Those who were injured and unable to fight were asked to commit suicide so that they would not
be captured by the enemy. On the night of May 29, 1943, after performing banzai to theEmperor, the last forces waged a sudden attack on the Americans, which resulted in brutal, handto-hand combat. Except for 28 prisoners, all Japanese on the island (over 2,000 people) died,either killed by the Americans or blown up by their own hand.21 The following morning, thesurviving Americans found piles of Japanese corpses.

Ikeda: Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State

219

Ogawara and Fujita approached this battle
differently. Ogawara’s The Bombing of Attu
(Attsutō bakugeki, 1945), one of only three war
paintings that he produced, portrays Japaneseplanes flying over the mountains of Alaska. Just
like Snow, Ogawara paints mountains covered bysnow, but this time he captures them from theaerial perspective. While a man’s leg wastrapped in nature in Snow, in this painting, themountains are dominated by the humantechnology or battle planes that nobly fly overthem. Offering viewers a perspective from the
cockpit allowed Japanese viewers to visually
dictate the American territory of Attu.22
Ogawara Shū, The Bombing of Attu, 1945
Although Attu is known for its gruesome battles,
the painting does not depict them. However, since it was produced in 1945 and titled The
Bombing of Attu, this painting showing the Japanese bombing of the island generates a curiously
anachronistic effect, giving the impression that Japan had won the battle.
Fujita’s painting of Attu, which portrays the dramatic moment of the gruesome fight and imagesof hell, stands in stark contrast to Ogawara’s somewhat disengaged war propaganda. Honorable
Death on Attu Island (Attsutō gyokusai, 1943) is a work that the artist, even after the war, called
one of the most satisfying works of his career. In the painting, Fujita paints the collective suicide(the so-called gyokusai or “shattered jewels”) for which the battle became so well known.
Japanese soldiers advance from the left, screaming and bayoneting Americans. Dark, earthcolored helmets, bayonets, and military uniforms emerge out of the mound in the foreground andform a solid, abstract pattern that echoes the high, rough wave-like pattern of the mountainlandscape, creating a dynamic composition. In the mound, we also find bodies and faces ofalready dead soldiers. The man in the near center of the background, who raises his arm forward
and looks directly at the viewers screaming, is Col. Yamazaki, who commanded Japanese force.
The two soldiers who are on either side of Yamazaki are cruelly stabbing the body of the enemy
with their swords. In Fujita’s work, which focuses on the violent encounter between the twoforces, the death of every Japanese soldier is justified as inflicting damage, however small, on
the Americans.
The war ended in 1945, but the two artists’ postwar lives and reputations in Japan were longovershadowed by their wartime experiences. In the immediate postwar years, Fujita andOgawara were questioned about their personal responsibility and expelled from the New Art
Association (Shin bijutsu kai) and the Art and Culture Association, respectively.23 It is worth
noting, in contrast, that the first President of the Japan Artist Association (Nihon bijutsuka
renmei), the largest postwar artist community established in 1947, was Ihara Usaburō, who had
himself been a prominent war artist. Similarly, Yokoyama Taikan, who dedicated the sales of his
paintings to the military and produced battle planes with his name on them, never stopped
working in the postwar era. Given this, why were Fujita and Ogawara singled out andostracized? Perhaps for Fujita, it was because of his high visibility as the President of the Army
Art Association (Rikugun bijyutsu kyōkai), or the fact that the shocking rumors about his sex lifein Paris during the 1920s made him an easy target. His enormous success both in 1920s FranceWar and Visual Culture220

and in 1930s Japan might have made other artists envious as well. Ogawara was initially ousted
for failure to pay his Association fee, but he did not challenge his expulsion over this seemingly
small matter.
Facing criticisms that questioned his wartime responsibility, Fujita defended himself by claimingthat artists were always pacifists by nature and thus could not be militarists.24 Putting the war
controversy behind him, Fujita left Japan permanently in 1949, arriving in New York andreturning to France the following year. In 1955 he became a French citizen and was baptized in
1958. He acquired his Christian name Léonard (after Leonardo da Vinci) and created his own
chapel in Reims, which he decorated with stained glass and frescos. While producing art withnew themes such as Christianity and children, the artist also returned to painting the female
nudes that had been his “signature style” in the 1920s. Fujita never commented on his war
responsibility, but shortly before he died, he made an angry statement about how he had beentreated immediately following the war.
It was wrong that I was born in Japan. Japanese are so jealous of me that they want to bully me.
There are no other people like the Japanese, who conspire against me behind my back. They are
all liars and people I cannot trust. How they have tortured me! I always thought to clarify myself
at least once before I die. They owe me in that I helped them and have painted for them, but they
have forgotten my kindness. They only think about themselves and are always trying to makemoney. There is no one as unhappy as I am. I am truly unhappy.25
As for Ogawara, he severed his ties with the major Japanese art communities in Tokyo, isolated
himself in Kuchan, and kept silent about his war art until he publicly engaged the issue in the
1970s:I was interested in surrealism but I gradually moved away from it. All the things that surrounded
me became huge social pressures that moved in one direction and against my will. Those who
resisted the pressure in that society were truly strong individuals who deserve respect.
Unfortunately, I chose the path of conformity and I saw many people like myself. I also saw how
those who followed the dominant power skillfully changed their opinions and positions after thewar. Thinking about these experiences makes me emotional.26
Although the two artists continued to paint, during their lifetimes they never again received asmuch public attention as they had in the prewar and wartime period.
The Fujita Tsuguharu Resurrection in the 2000s
Fujita’s image has been greatly transformed in recent years in dramatic ways. This is partially
due to the scholarship on wartime art that began in the 1990s following the death of the Shōwa
Emperor in 1989, but the catalyst for the change in perception of Fujita’s war art in particular
was the retrospective organized in 2006 by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, twoyears before his exhibition in Hokkaido.27 In terms of the number of visitors, scholarly attention,and media support, the retrospective commemorating Fujita’s 120th birthday was a big success.28
With this retrospective, Fujita, who had previously been criticized as a war collaborator, wasnow “resurrected” as a great modernist artist.29 The retrospective was exceptional in many ways:
it gained official support from Fujita’s widow Kimiyo, who had not always encouraged
exhibitions of his work in Japan, it was the largest exhibition of his work held in Japan in the
postwar period, and it displayed five war paintings by Fujita that the museum had rarely

Ikeda: Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State

221

displayed to the public. What was especially remarkable was how the wartime paintings wererepresented. Fujita’s war paintings, especially his Attu painting, were explained as his effort toexpose the “terrible realities of the war,” rather than to support the war effort. Many Japanese art
critics echoed this apologist—and utterly implausible— interpretation of the paintings. Natsubori
Masahiro argued that Fujita’s propaganda paintings do not display militaristic tones, andKikuhata Mokuma stated, “where can we see propaganda effects in this painting that portrays thedeath of our comrades?”30 Nomiyama Gyōji even further vaguely contended, “his works arerather anti-war (hansen teki).”31 This newly constructed narrative of an “anti-war” Fujitatransformed the painter into a tragic figure who was misunderstood and made a scapegoat overthe issue of artists’ war responsibility.
Crucial to this re-interpretation of Fujita’s life and wartime art was his prewar success in France.
Fujita was friends with internationally acclaimed avant-garde artists and his art was recognizedin Paris, the artistic capital of the time. The museum, however, did not investigate why such animportant artist had been ignored and forgotten by the Japanese public and art historians.
Furthermore, instead of highlighting the transnational aspects of international modernism, theexhibition curiously recuperated Fujita as a “Japanese” artist and made his success a story ofnational glory. Ozaki Masaaki, the curator of the National Museum, wrote in English, “Having
taken pride in being Japanese until then, the decision to sever ties with Japan must have been apainful choice for Fujita…He wanted to compete in the world as Japanese. That wish was
irrelevant to his new nationality. Even if he resided in France and led life as a Frenchman, atheart, he was Japanese.”32 Reclaiming him as “Japanese,” the exhibition narrated his life inparallel with Japanese modern history. Ozaki wrote, “The process of Japan succeeding inmodernization and being ruined for announcing its hegemony over Asia corresponds with theprocess of Fujita succeeding in Paris and eventually getting dragged into the storm of Japanesenationalism.”33 The celebration of Fujita’s fame was not only an art historical reevaluation of anindividual artist, it was a historical reevaluation of a nation as well. The museum narrated both
Fujita’s life and Japan’s modern history in such a way as to highlight their innocence andpassivity in being “ dragged” into the war. By focusing on this victimization, the exhibition
silenced the questions of both Japan’s national and Fujita’s personal war responsibility.
It was this image of Fujita as a pioneering avant-garde pacifist artist that the 2008 Hokkaido
exhibition was built on. This exhibition did not display his war paintings, but instead focused on
his large panel paintings produced in the 1920s. The four monumental panels—Composition with
Lions, Composition with Dogs, Battle I, and Battle II (Raion no iru kōzu, Inu no iru kōzu, Tōsō I,
Tōsō II)—were featured as “Fujita’s works that have never been exhibited in Japan before.”34
They were all painted in 1929 but were missing until discovered in storage outside Paris in
1992.35 In 2000, the panels were designated as French national heritage items, and the Frenchgovernment and the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art collaborated on their restoration for thisexhibition.36 The sheer number of curators and institutions involved in the project attests to bothcountries’ interest in Fujita. Aside from this grand international collaboration, what was notable
was the way Fujita’s persona was transformed—yet again.
The exhibition emphasized Fujita’s interest in monumental works and religious themes,
explicitly comparing him with Italian Renaissance artists. In the catalogue written in Japaneseand French, French museum curator Anne Le Diberder compared his prewar Battle panels withMichelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and called Fujita’s artistic exploration, “another story of theRenaissance.”37 Half of the exhibition space was dedicated to Fujita’s postwar religious works,

War and Visual Culture

222

including Crucifixion (1960), in which the artist painted the lean bodies of Jesus Christ and twoothers nailed to a wooden cross against the background of an ancient city under blue sky. Hischapel, named “Notre Dame de la Paix,” which features stained glass with skeleton motifs, wassaid to refer to the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, therefore symbolizing peace.38 In thisfamiliar trope of peace and Hiroshima, Fujita himself was represented as standing for peace in amost peculiar way: the catalogue concluded, “‘Notre Dame de la Paix’ reminds us of his
Japanese name, Tsuguharu, which means ‘the one who inherits peace.’ His name will foreverpass on the message of peace brought to us by a dove.”39 Overall, by reworking the image of
Fujita created by the 2006 exhibition, which had presented him as an avant-gardist, the 2008
exhibition made him into a Renaissance humanist. Step by step, through these two solo
exhibitions, the formerly denounced Japanese artist Fujita Tsuguharu acquired the new identity
he had wished for decades earlier. He became Léonard Foujita, the Japanese Leonardo da Vinci
and—although he never sought this—a man of peace.
War and Modernism
While Fujita is over-celebrated as a national hero and Ogawara is marginalized as “Hokkaido’s
local artist,” I suggest that their works are equally significant in understanding the relationshipbetween prewar modernism and the war. The key to this investigation is Fujita’s Battle I and II(1928), the featured works in the 2008 exhibition. In this peculiar set of panels, the Caucasianmen and women depicted are all naked for no apparent reason. The men are massively muscularand the women’s bodies are plump compared to the naked women in Nude with Tapestry. One tothree individuals act in a group, and there are men and women violently wrestling with dogs,
having conversations, and lying down. Fujita produced separate sketches for different parts ofthe panels and simply put them together on the canvas, which resulted in the “obvious lack oflogic in composition,” as Le Diberder put it.40 According to Le Diberder Fujita drew on his
studies of Greek and Renaissance sculptures at the Louvre Museum for the panels. She alsosuggests that Fujita’s interest in the classics was inspired by the neo-classicism of Andre Derain
and Picasso in the late 1920s, whom Fujita knew in person.41 What Le Diberder does not
mention is the possible connection between modernist neo-classicism in the late 1920s andfascist classicism of the 1930s and 1940s in Italy and Germany, which recent scholars ofinterwar European art have begun most often in the case of Giorgio de Chirico.42 If scholars
including Alan Tansman, Harry Harootunian, Leslie Pincus, and Andrew Gordon point to thepossibility of talking about “Japanese fascism,” inquiring into Fujita’s “classical turn” in the late
1920s is crucial, especially because the Battle panels seem like a significant segue to his Attu
painting.43 The artist’s interests in the physicality of male bodies engaged in combat and themassive group portrait apparent in the Battle are pursued further in his Attu painting. The“obvious lack of logic in composition” in the Battle is successfully resolved in Attu, where
dozens of soldiers are intricately interwoven and tightly engaged with one another in such a waythat the dynamics of composition remain coherent. Is Fujita’s modernist “classical turn” in late
1920s Paris in any way related to fascism? If so, how does it anticipate his later works inwartime Japan that some scholars call fascist?
The works of Ogawara, who started out as a surrealist and was later transformed into a war
painter again pose a question about war and modernism. The ambiguous political position ofsurrealism is expressed in the scholarship of art historian John Clark. On the one hand, heemphasizes the revolutionary spirit and potentially subversive nature of Japanese surrealism. He
writes, “surrealists were simply the last recalcitrants in the art world against a tacit or explicit

Ikeda: Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State

223

acceptance of ultra-nationalism.”44 On the other hand, he acknowledges, “the late-nineteenthcentury and early-twentieth-century art world [in Japan] became modern without modernist art
forms” (emphasis original), alluding to the fact that Japanese modern artists did not quite
challenge the establishment in the political sense.45 Indeed, Ogawara was not the only surrealist
who painted propaganda. Whether “coerced” or not, his mentor Fukuzawa Ichirō produced a war
painting in 1945, which is included in the above mentioned war art collection at the National
Museum. The problem also arises from the fact that surrealism reached its pinnacle in the late
1930s under supposedly tight militarist control, and as we have seen, Ogawara could present hissurrealist work as late as 1940. In fact, art critic Moriguchi Tari in 1943 stated that despite thesuspicion of militarists, Japanese surrealists are not anti-nationalists.46 In other words, the casesof both Fujita and Ogawara bring into question the conventional narrative that modernism
disappeared when militarism emerged until after 1945. After all, almost all war artists wereprewar modernists. We are now faced with different kinds of questions: why is it that so many
modernists could become war artists with little trouble and ideological conflict? What is therelationship between modernism and nationalism in Japan’s case? Further scholarship on
Japanese war art needs to elucidate this complex interplay of modernism, nationalism, and thewar, as in the works of Fujita and Ogawara.
Asato Ikeda is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the
University of British Columbia. Her dissertation examines Japanese art during the Fifteen-Year
War (1931-1945) and the question of Japanese fascism. She is co-editor, with Ming Tiampo and
Aya Louisa McDonald, of an anthology on Japanese war art, which will be the first anthology on
the subject in English (forthcoming from Brill Academic Publishers). She is also currently
serving Japan Art History Forum as the elected graduate student representative of 2010.
Notes
I would like to thank Mr. Yabuki Toshio, the director at the Ogawara Shu Museum of Art, forsharing with me his valuable stories on the artist. This essay is indebted to Joshua S. Mostow,
John O’Brian, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Ming Tiampo, Laura Hein, and Mark Selden who gave me
valuable comments and encouragement. This essay also benefited from the editorial assistance ofN. J. Hall and Ben Whaley. This is an edited version of my paper presented at the 12th Annual
Harvard East Asia Society Graduate Student Conference, February 2009.
Please follow the links to other websites in order to view Fujita’s works.
1

Ara Masato et al., “Zadankai: sensō sekinin wo kataru,” Kindai bungaku, 1956. Maruyama
Masao, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Ivan Morris (London: Oxford
University Press, 1969), 10.
2

For more on the worldwide comparison of war art, see Laura Brandon, Art & War (London:
I.B. Tauris, 2006).
3“Ushinawareta sensō kaiga: nijūnenkan beikoku ni kakusarete ita taiheiyō sensō meiga nozenyō” [Lost War Paintings: The Whole Story of the Pacific War Art Masterpieces That Were
Hidden in the United States For Twenty Years], Shūkan Yomiuri, August 18, 1967,4

For a discussion of the collection and the controversy over its seizure and return, see Asato
Ikeda, “Japan’s Haunting War Art: Contested War Memories and Art Museums,” disClosure: A
Journal of Social Theory, vol. 18 (April 2009): 5-32.

War and Visual Culture

224

5

Sawaragi Noi, Bakushin chi no geijutsu/ The Art of Ground Zero 1999-2001 (Tokyo: Shobunsha, 2002), 390.
6

“Samayoeru sensō-ga” [Hovering War Paintings], NHK, 16 August 2003.

7

Kay Itoi and George Wehrfritz, “Japan’s Art of War: A Show of WWII Propaganda Paintings
Confronts the Past,” NEWSWEEK, 4 September 2000.
8

Léonard Foujita, exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008). After
Sapporo, the exhibition toured Tochigi, Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Miyagi.
9Shinmyō Hidehito, Ogawara Shū: Harukanaru imāju [Ogawara Shū: Distant Images](Sapporo: Hokkaido Newspaper, 1995).
Recent discussion on Fujita refers to the remarkable increase in the number of publications andexhibitions on Fujita in the late 2000s. Examples include: Fujita Tsuguharu Exhibition (Tokyo:
Oida Gallery: 2006); Paris du monde entire: Artistes étrangers à Paris 1900-2005 (Tokyo: The
National Art Center, 2007); Masterpieces from the Pola Museum of Art: Impressionism andÈcole de Paris (Yokohama: Yokohama Museum of Art, 2010); Eureka: Poetry and Criticism(May 2006); Geijutsu shinchō (April 2006); Serai (February 7, 2008). Yuhara Kanoko, Hayashi
Yōko, and Kondō Fumito all published books on Fujita in the decade.
10

Fujita Tsuguharu, ”Atorie Mango,” Bura ippon: pari no yokogao, Bura ippon: pari no
yokogao (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2005), 167.
11

Originally in Ogawara Shū, “Kyogōnaru kitai” [Ambitious Expectation], Hokkaido
Newspaper, 15 July 1938. Reprint in Shinmyō Hidehito, Ogawara Shū, 145-147.
12

See the second chapter of Maki Kaneko’s “Art in the Service of the State: Artistic Productionin Japan during the Asia-Pacific War,” Ph.D. diss. (University of East Anglia, 2006). Kaneko
points out that the reform was not completely the “imposition” of government control over art;
artists also requested protection from the state.
13

Kawata Akihisa, “Sensō-ga towa nanika” [What Is Sensō-ga?]. For more on Japanese official
war art, see Geijutsu Shinchō, August 1995; Kawata Akihisa and Tan’o Yasunori, Imēji nonakano sensō: nisshin, nichiro sensō kara rēsen made [War in Images: From the Sino-Japanese
War to the Cold War] (Tokyo:Iwanami, 1996); Hariu, Ichirō and Sawaragi Noi, et al. Sensō tobijutsu 1937-1945/ Art in Wartime Japan 1937-1945 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 2007).
14

Akiyama Kunio, “Hon’nendo kirokuga nit suite” [On This Year’s Record Paintings], Bijutsu,
May 1944, 2.
15

Yamanouchi Ichirō, “Sakusen kirokuga no ari kata” [How War Paintings Should Be], Bijutsu,
May 1944, 2-5.
16Mark H. Sandler, “The Living Artist: Matsumoto Shunsuke’s Reply to the State,” Art Journal
55.3 (Autumn, 1996): 74-82.
17

Quoted in Sandler, “The Living Artist,” 78.

Ikeda: Twentieth Century Japanese Art and the Wartime State

225

18

John Clark, “Artistic Subjectivity in the Taisho and Early Showa Avant-Garde,” Japanese Art
After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, ed. Alexandra Munroe (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1994), 48.
19

For artists who died on the battlefield, see Kuboshima Sei’ichirō, Mugonkan nōto [The Silence
Museum Notebook] (Tokyo: Shūei sha, 2005).
20

Fujita Tsuguharu, “Sensōga ni tsuite” [On War Paintings], Shin bijutsu (February 1943): 2.

21

For more on how the American public was confounded by the suicidal act, see Life, 3 April
1944, 36.
22

For visual domination and aerial perspectives, see Kari Shepherdson-Scott, “Utopia/ Dystopia:
Japan’s Image of the Manchurian Ideal,” Ph.D. diss. (Durham: Duke University, forthcoming).
23

Watashino naka no genfūkei I [The Real Landscape of Myself I], exh.cat. (Kuchan: Shu
Ogawara Museum of Art, 2007).
5. Kondō Fumito. Fujita Tsuguharu: Ihōjin no shōgai (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2006), 305-7.
24

Fujita Tsuguharu, “Gaka no ryōshin” [Artists’ Conscience], Asahi Newspaper, 25 October
1945.
25

Fujita Tsuguharu, Bura ippon : pari no yokogao (Tokyo : Kodansha, 2005), 250.

26

Quoted in Shinmyō Hidehito, Ogawara Shū, 104.

27

For examples of war art in the 1990s, see Kawata Akihisa and Tan’o Yasunori, Imēji nonakano sensō: nisshin, nichiro sensō kara rēsen made; Bert Winther-Tamaki,“Embodiment/Disembodiment: Japanese Painting during the Fifteen-Year War.” Monumenta
Nipponica 52, no. 2 (Summer, 1997): 145-80.
28

In an email correspondence, curator of the National Museum Ozaki Masaaki informed me that
290,000 people visited the retrospective in Tokyo, 220,000 in Kyoto, and 80,000 in Hiroshima.
29

Link. For a more detailed examination of this exhibition, see Asato Ikeda, “Fujita Tsuguharu
Retrospective 2006: Resurrection of a Former Official War Painter,” Josai University Review ofJapanese Culture and Society, vol. 21 (December 2009): 97-115.
30

Natsubori Masahiro, Fujita Tsuguharu geijutsu shiron [The Art Theory of Fujita
Tsuguharu](Tokyo: Miyoshi kikaku, 2004), 339; Kikuhata Mokuma, Ekaki ga kataru kindai
bijutsu [Modern Art Examined By a Painter] (Fukuoka: Genshobō, 2003), 228.
31

Nomiyama Gyōji, “Boku no shitteru Fujita” [Fujita That I Know], Eureka: Poetry andCriticism (May 2006), 63.
32

Ozaki Masaaki, “On Tsuguharu Leonard Foujita,” trans. Kikuko Ogawa, Leonard Foujita,exh. cat. (Tokyo: The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, 2006), 191. This is an example ofwhat art historian Bert Winther-Tamaki has called “artistic nationalism,” in which international
influences and hybrid cultures are ultimately subsumed by the paradigm of nationalism. Bert
Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early
Postwar Years (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001).

War and Visual Culture
33

Ozaki Masaaki, “On Tsuguharu Leonard Foujita,” 190.

34

From the exhibition website (accessed on December 15, 2008).

35

The Panels are now owned by the General Council of Essonne.

36

Léonard Foujita, exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 12-7.

226

37

Anne Le Diberder, “Battle and Composition: Fujita’s Unreleased Works”; “Another Story of
Renaissance,” Léonard Foujit, exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008),
72; 8438

This Hiroshima connection was a new element added to the Fujita narrative. It was not Fujita
but rather the President of the Pen Club Yves Gandon who made the reference to Hiroshima in
his speech at the opening of the chapel. Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido
Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 174; 203.
39

Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 203. As
far as I researched, Fujita’s Chinese characters 嗣治 do not refer to peace.
40

Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 73.

41

Léonard Foujita. exh. cat. (Sapporo: The Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 2008), 81.

42

Emily Braun, “Political Rhetoric and Poetic Irony: The Uses of Classicism in the Art of
Fascist Italy,” On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 19101930 (London: Tate Gallery, 1990).
43

Alan Tansman, The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism, 1st ed. (University of California Press,2009); Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community inInterwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Leslie Pincus, Authenticating
Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1996); Andrew Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
44

John Clark, “Surrealism in Japan,” Surrealism: Revolution by Night. exh.cat. (Canberra,
National Gallery of Australia, 1993), 209.
45

Clark, “Surrealism in Japan,” 204.

46

Moriguchi Tari, Bijutsu gojūsshūnen (Tokyo: Masu shobō, 1943), 532.

War and Visual Culture

227

Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Articles Recommended for Further Reading“Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of JapaneseImperialism in Chinese Museums”
Kirk D. Denton
October 7, 2007.
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Kirk_A_-Denton/2547
This essay examines war memorial museums in China beyond the NMM in order to present
the country’s official representation of the war. It is highly informative and it provides
detailed analyses of the exhibition strategies employed in each museum. We have chosen
Kingson’s essay over Denton’s because it includes a discussion of the role of digital media,
an important channel that is able to popularize the nation-focused narrative of war in a
globalized environment.
“The Anime Director, the Fantasy Girl and the Very Real Tsunami”
Susan J NapierMarch 12, 2012.
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Susan_J_-Napier/3713
This essay approaches war as a disaster and analyzes this through an examination of
Miyazaki Hayao’s animations, such as Ponyo. It certainly offers a rich insight into the artist’s
apocalyptic treatment of natural disasters, yet the section that deals with war is quite
insubstantial.
“Photographer Fukushima Kikujiro - Confronting Images of Atomic Bomb Survivors”
Yuki Tanaka
October 24, 2011.
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yuki-TANAKA/3623
This article introduces FUKUSHIMA Kikujiro’s life journey as a photographer and a social
activist, beginning shortly after he survived the Hiroshima bombing. After starting tophotograph A-bomb survivors in 1953, Fukushima devoted his life to increasing publicawareness about the suffering of the survivors by recording their lives with his camera, which hedid for more than two decades. Fukushima tried to convey the disastrous consequences of thebombing as well as the Japanese government’s inadequate provision of social assistance from thesurvivors’ viewpoint. As the author states, Fukushima’s photographs convey the individual
narratives of the survivors, which enables us to “share memories” of this human disaster. This
article includes a number of photographs of A-bomb victims as well as Fukushima’s personal
narrative about his long engagement with photo-activism.

War and Visual Culture

228“Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?”
Yuki Tanaka
June 13, 2005
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yuki-TANAKA/1652
When the original Godzilla film was produced in 1954, its production team tried to convey theanti-nuclear message to the Japanese audience, whose memory of the bombing was still fresh.
Following the release of the original Godzilla, a sequence of 22 Godzilla films was produced up
until 1995. However, the author of this book argues that the once clearly anti-nuclear message
has vanished in the later installments of the of Godzilla series, especially those that were
produced in the U.S.A. Through his comparative examination of the original script, the original
film, and the series of films produced in the U.S., the author interprets the disappearance of theanti-nuclear message as people’s loss of awareness of the destructive power of new technologies
that create injustice and inhumanity.
“Barefoot Gen, the Atomic Bomb and I: The Hiroshima Legacy.”
Nakazawa Keiji interviewed by Asai Motofumi. Translated by Richard H. Minear.
January 20, 2008.
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Nakazawa-Keiji/2638
This is an interview of NAKAZAWA Keiji, a manga artist and the creator of Barefoot Gen, thatwas conducted by ASAI Motofumi. It introduces Nakazawa and his family’s experience of theatomic bombing when Nakazawa was a first grader, and discusses his parents’ influence on hislife and work. His father, an artist and a leftwing activist in the 1940s, was imprisoned andtortured before being killed by the bombing, and his mother suffered the loss of two of herchildren and her husband on August 6, 1945. This family’s suffering is depicted in BarefootGen. Nakazawa has been producing works on the bombing since 1968 and he sees his manga asa “weapon” to criticize those who were responsible for the disaster, including both the American
and the Japanese governments, and as tools to bring justice to victims of the Pacific War.
“Nuke York, New York: Nuclear Holocaust in the American Imagination from Hiroshima
to 9/11”
Mick Broderick and Robert Jacobs
March 12, 2012.
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Mick-Broderick/3726
An exhibit, “Nuke York, New York,” was staged in New York on the tenth anniversary of the
9/11 attacks; it aimed to show how the public conception of New York City as vulnerable to anuclear attack has been constructed historically. It exhibited depictions of a nuclear attack on
New York City that were drawn from various media such as newspapers, magazines, Civil
Defense pamphlets, film, television, books, protest material, comics, computer games, websites,
and material cultural objects produced between 1945 and 2011. The authors of this article, who
also curated the exhibit, show the cultural spaces in which Americans’ anxieties over a nuclear
attack were constructed; and argue that the continuing portrayal of New York City in popularWar and Visual Culture229

media as an “American Hiroshima” dilutes the Americans’ sense of guilt as a nuclear perpetrator
while reinforcing their sense of themselves as victims, especially after 9/11.