German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ)

Joint DIJ History and Humanities
and Social Science Study Group
Wednesday, 29 July 2015, 18.30 hIngvild Bode & Seunghoon Emilia Heo(United Nations University & Sophia University)

Choosing Ways of Remembering: Comparing
Student Narratives about World War II
in Japan and Germany
When individuals, be they political elites, bureaucrats, members of civil society organisations, or“ordinary” people on the street, talk about conflicts, they frequently recur on the narrative form – inother words, they tell stories. Devising and passing on narratives are basic human sense-making
methods and thereby contribute to shaping social reality. This paper studies the narratives about
World War II German and Japanese students tell based on a mixed-structure online questionnaire,
paying particular attention to how these narratives depict their respective home countries.
2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, but the war remains an importantreference point for how Germany and Japan perceive of themselves and are perceived of by others as
public perception of “self” and “others” greatly affects (foreign) policy planning. Both German andJapanese governments choose their ways of remembering World War II, especially through school
curricula. In this context, exploring World War II narratives as told by current German and Japanese
university students is significant. While much scholarly attention has been devoted to analyzing school
curricula and how these curricula are reflected in school textbooks, little is known about how theofficial version of national/international history is retained by and shared among university students.
Our research addresses this question in two parts: first, we compare the sources and the depth ofWorld War II knowledge of German and Japanese students. Second, we examine whether theirnarratives about World War II include critical or non-critical assessments of their home countries’ roles.
As current students will play a crucial role in creating their countries’ national images, capturing how
they choose to remember their countries’ World War II past can indicate what kind of reference points
may shape Japan and Germany’s future outlook.
Ingvild Bode is JSPS International Research Fellow with joined affiliation at the United Nations
University and the University of Tokyo. Her research has been published in journals such as GlobalGovernance and she is also the author of Individual Agency and Policy Change: The People of theUnited Nations (Routledge, 2015). Bode’s research interests include the human element ininternational relations, conflict narratives, UN peacekeeping and state recourse to the use of force.
Emilia Seunghoon Heo is Assistant Professor in International Relations at Sophia University and theauthor of Reconciling Enemy States in Europe and Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). She has a careerbackground in diplomatic service and regularly lectures at the Korean Parliament. Heo specializes inEuropean politics and International Relations and in her research focuses on actors in processes ofreconciliation between countries.
The joint DIJ History and Humanities and Social Science Study Group is organized by Miki AoyamaOlschina, Steffen Heinrich, Phoebe Holdgrün, Carola Hommerich, and Torsten Weber. All are
welcome to attend, but prior registration (weber@dijtokyo.org) is greatly appreciated.
German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ)
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