War Memory in JapanAkiko Hashimoto

The twentieth century was a century of unprecedented progress and development. The
technological progress alone was staggering. In travel, we invented both the firstairplane and also the first spaceship to land on the moon. Our standard of living rose
phenomenally as we moved from agricultural production to industrial, postindustrial, andnow computer-driven production. Information that spread through radio, television andtelephone now travels through the Internet. In the world of medicine, fatal diseases
became curable, and short life expectancy became longevity.
But the twentieth century is also remembered as the bloodiest century in human history.
Why? Because we experienced two major world wars. World War II especially was a"total war," with both military and civilians involved, and everybody affected. The
technological advance that helped to prolong our lives also helped create effective
weaponry that killed tens of millions of lives.
World War II was a war of monstrous scale. The total casualties reached sixty million
people. Of them, twenty-five million were Soviets, fifteen million were Chinese, six
million were Poles and six million were Jews. Furthermore, four million Germans died,as well as two million Japanese, four hundred thousand British, and two hundred
thousand Americans. What happens after an extraordinary war like this? How do people
come to terms with this monumental carnage? How does the experience of war affect anation's identity, self-image, and sense of responsibility?
In an international survey by the NHK-BCRI that compares people's attitudes toward
war in five countries, people in Japan, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdomand South Korea were asked, "What would you do if their country were attacked or
invaded? Would you volunteer to fight to defend your country?" Over half of Americans,
Koreans and British said absolutely yes, they would volunteer to defend their country,
but the answers were very much lower in Japan and Germany. In these two countries
defeated in World War II, those who said they would voluntarily take up arms to defend
their country comprised only ten to twenty percent. For them, the prospect of fighting awar is obviously more problematic than for others.
This is the legacy of defeat, the legacy of having been responsible for starting the war,for having caused the enormous human and physical destruction, and the unspeakably
brutal and diabolical massacres.

Does this mean that the experience of WWII has turned a defeated country like Japanto a pacifist, anti-militarist, peace-loving nation? Let's look at the Japanese case. First,
we find that the Japanese take enormous pride in Article 9 of the Constitution, which
renounced the right to wage war:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanesepeople forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use offorce as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of thepreceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will neverbe maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
Second, there is also a deliberate discourse of peace in Japan that is common andcentral to its national self-definition. Preambles in the various documents that represent
Japan describe the nation as a "peace nation" or a "peace-loving" nation (heiwa kokka).
This rhetoric of peace tends to dominate Japan, in the Constitution, in the media, inpublic policy, and in school textbooks.
However, there are other aspects that complicate this picture. Even though Japanrenounces war in its Constitution, it has a viable military unit called the "Self-Defense
Forces," complete with an army, navy, and air force. As a "peace nation" Japan prides
itself on containing its defense expenditure, which means containing it to one percent ofGNP (Gross National Product), yet the total defense spending in absolute terms is thefourth largest in the world.
How did this state of the nation come about? To answer this question we need to lookbeneath the surface, and look back in history over the course of the past fifty years. We
need to look for the motivation that led Japan to develop its self-image as the"peace-loving" nation.
To understand the fundamental motivation of a defeated nation like Japan, it isimportant to focus on the idea of recovery. This is the notion that you've had a setback,you've incurred some losses, and now you have to exert extra effort to make up forthese losses. From this perspective, Japan has indeed been very active in recovery
work over the past decades. First, there was much economic recovery to do. Japan put
a great deal of effort in bringing recovery to its economy. This was especially true in theimmediate postwar decades. Japan achieved spectacular double-digit economic growth,which became known as the "economic miracle." Second, there is another kind ofrecovery that is as important as economic recovery. This is the moral recovery: therecovery of national dignity and honor, and the re-establishment of "good standing" inthe world.

How did the Japanese go about their moral recovery, and how did they formulate theirpostwar identity and their new self-definition from it? The Japanese sought this goal-therecovery of their dignity and moral standing-by promising peace, by promising tobecome a peaceful, reliable, and trustworthy nation. That is, Japan adopted peace as
their atonement for the past and as a way to redeem itself in the eyes of others, andthemselves. The pledge for peace and the renunciation of war and arms, Article 9 of theConstitution, became the supreme act of redemption for the Japanese: their ticket torecovering their standing in the world. It did not matter that this pledge was originallywritten by the Americans; once it was written and adopted, Article 9 and the act ofrenouncing war took on its own meaning for the Japanese.
In 1997, sixty-nine percent of Diet members still opposed amending the constitution andcited their pride in it as their reason for opposing a change. The discursive practice ofpeace has occupied a central place in Japan's national identity through the end of thetwentieth century. The majority of the Japanese believe that their declaration of peace isabsolutely unique, but in fact, as many as 124 nations in the world have, in one way or
another, included clauses in their constitution that applaud peace and denounce war.
However, since the first Gulf War, Japan has been reconsidering its long-standing peace
strategy; but as of yet, there is no dominant alternative that replaces the old one. This is
the problem that lies at the heart of the current political controversy about nationaldefense. In the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world, a new vision to replace the peace
strategy is difficult to find.

Akiko Hashimoto
Akiko Hashimoto (retired) was Associate Professor of Sociology at the University ofPittsburgh. Her areas of interest are cultural sociology, comparative and global
sociology, collective memory and national identity, generational and cultural change,
family and education, aging and social policy.