History / Sociology SAITO … CONTINUED FROM FRONT FLAP … HIRO SAITO “Hiro Saito offers a timely and well-researched analysis of East Asia’s never-ending cycle of blame and denial, distortion and obfuscation concerning the region’s shared history of violence and destruction during the first half of the twentieth SEVENTY YEARS is practiced as a collective endeavor by both century. In The History Problem Saito smartly introduces the have passed since the end perpetrators and victims, Saito argues, a res- central ‘us-versus-them’ issues and confronts readers with the of the Asia-Pacific War, yet Japan remains olution of the history problem—and eventual multiple layers that bind the East Asian countries involved embroiled in controversy with its neighbors reconciliation—will finally become possible. to show how these problems are mutually constituted across over the war’s commemoration. Among the THE HISTORY PROBLEM THE HISTORY The History Problem examines a vast borders and generations. He argues that the inextricable many points of contention between Japan, knots that constrain these problems could be less like a hang- corpus of historical material in both English China, and South Korea are interpretations man’s noose and more of a supportive web if there were the and Japanese, offering provocative findings political will to determine the virtues of peaceful coexistence. of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, apologies and that challenge orthodox explanations. Written Anything less, he explains, follows an increasingly perilous compensation for foreign victims of Japanese in clear and accessible prose, this uniquely path forward on which nationalist impulses are encouraged aggression, prime ministerial visits to the interdisciplinary book will appeal to sociol- to derail cosmopolitan efforts at engagement. Readers of all Yasukuni Shrine, and the war’s portrayal in levels of these issues will benefit from Saito’s lucid command ogists, political scientists, and historians textbooks. Collectively, these controversies of the post-1945 terrain as well as his thoughtful suggestions researching collective memory, nationalism for cooperation and coexistence.” have come to be called the “history problem.” and cosmopolitanism, and international rela- — ALEXIS DUDDEN, University of Connecticut But why has the problem become so intracta- tions—and to anyone interested in the com- ble? Can it ever be resolved, and if so, how? memoration of historical wrongs. To answer these questions author Hiro “The History Problem is a powerful analysis of how com- Saito mobilizes the sociology of collective memoration and the controversies that arise from it overflow the so-called container of the nation-state. Memory, Saito, memory and social movement, political theo- HIRO SAITO is assistant professor of soci- demonstrates, is a transnational, even cosmopolitan issue. ries of apology and reconciliation, psycholog- ology at Singapore Management University. As a result, only the kind of multidirectional analysis Saito ical research on intergroup conflict, and phil- provides is adequate to memory’s complexities, which are osophical reflections on memory and history. of glaring importance in world politics. This book thus makes The history problem, he argues, is essentially a crucial and nuanced contribution to the fields of memory a relational phenomenon caused when nations studies, international politics, and the historiography of Northeast Asia.” publicly showcase self- serving versions of the —JEFFREY K. OLICK, University of Virginia past at key ceremonies and events: Japan, South Korea, and China all focus on what hap- pened to their own citizens with little regard JACKET ART: (front) Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo, Japan; for foreign others. Saito goes on to explore (back, top) “Family Ruined,” Nanjing Massacre the emergence of a cosmopolitan form of Memorial Hall, Nanjing, China; (bottom) “Statue of Peace” comfort woman statue, Seoul, South Korea. commemoration taking humanity, rather than nationality, as its primary frame of reference, an approach increasingly used by a transna- tional network of advocacy NGOs, victims of UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS Japan’s past wrongdoings, historians, and edu- HONOLULU, HAWAI‘I cators. When cosmopolitan commemoration THE HISTORY PROBLEM ISBN 978-0-8248-5674-8 90000 The Politics of War Commemoration in East Asia … CONTINUED ON BACK FLAP … 9 780824 856748 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu THE HISTORY PROB LEM THE HISTORY PROB LEM The Politics of War Commemoration in East Asia Hiro Saito University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu Publication of this book has been assisted by a grant from Singapore Management University. © 2017 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Saito, Hiro (Sociologist), author. Title: The history prob lem : the politics of war commemoration in East Asia / Hiro Saito. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016020564 | ISBN 9780824856748 (hardcover ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Memorialization— East Asia. | Nationalism and collective memory— East Asia. | War and society— East Asia. | East Asia— Foreign relations. Classification: LCC DS518.1 .S25 2016 | DDC 940.54/6095— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016020564 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid- free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access ISBN for this book is 978-0-8248-7439-1. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY- NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Cover art: (front) Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo, Japan. Contents Preface vii Introduction 1 1 Cross- National Fragmentation, 1945–1964 20 2 Th e Growth of Transnational Interactions, 1965–1988 48 3 Apologies and Denunciations, 1989–1996 74 4 Th e Coexistence of Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism, 1997–2015 102 5 Th e Legacy of the Tokyo Trial 129 6 Th e Role of Historians in the History Prob lem 155 Conclusion 178 Notes 199 Bibliography 247 Index 271 v Preface Th e Asia- Pacifi c War ended more than seventy years ago. Yet, to this day, the war continues to haunt Japan’s relations with its two most impor tant neighbors, South Korea and China. Can the three countries ever resolve the dispute over how to commemorate the war, and if so, how? Th is question motivated me to write this book. I have no experience of the war, and I did not hear about it fi rsthand when I was growing up. My father was born after the war, and my mother was still a small child when the war ended. Th ey have no memory of it. But they once told me that my paternal grand father, a carpenter, had been con- scripted as a technician to support Japa nese troops in Manchuria, while my maternal grand father, an elementary school teacher, had been spared from military ser vice. Th is second hand story about my grand fathers was my only point of personal, albeit indirect, connection with the war. Growing up in Japan, however, I was exposed to many illustrated books and movies about the war at both home and school. I still remember learn- ing about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through Th e Angry Bodhisattva (Okorijizō) and Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen), the bomb- ings of Tokyo and other major cities through Th e Glass Rabbit (Garasu no usage) and Grave of the Firefl ies (Hotaru no haka), and the Battle of Okinawa through Th e Tower of Lilies (Himeyuri no tō) and Tsushima Maru. Th ese books and movies made deep impressions on me because many of them de- picted the suff ering of children of my age. And yet, the war felt like a remote past, for I was sheltered in postwar Japan’s economic prosperity. I developed a strong interest in the war or, more precisely, its commem- oration, only in fall 2001. I had just entered the doctoral program in sociol- ogy at the University of Michigan when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. I was shocked by the inhumane nature of the attacks, as well as by the US government’s aggressive response. Th e US government did not appear to care about collateral damage to civilians in Af ghan i stan and Iraq. I saw a parallel between those civilians and the ones in Hiroshima and Nagasaki— all vic- tims of a strain of American nationalism that did not recognize the human- ity of people in “ enemy countries.” So, I deci ded to write a historical critique vii viii Preface of American nationalism, examining how people in Japan had coped with the atomic bombings. But I soon realized my naïveté. Many Japa nese citizens commemorated the atomic bombings to articulate Japan’s victim identity in nationalist terms, discounting the suff erings that the Japa nese military had infl icted on people in the Asia- Pacifi c. Indeed, while the US government waged war in Af ghan i- stan and Iraq in the early 2000s, Japa nese prime minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō repeatedly visited the Yasukuni Shrine, the sacred site for Japa nese nation- alism, causing an uproar in South Korea and China. Th e controversy was further intensifi ed by the nationalist history textbook promoted by the Japa- nese Society for History Textbook Reform that glorifi ed Japan’s past aggres- sion as a heroic act of self- defense against the Western imperial powers.