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This article was downloaded by: [Australian National University] On: 15 December 2009 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 909690752] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Japan Forum Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713704207 Revisionism, reaction and the 'symbol emperor' in post-war Japan R. Kersten a a Leiden University. To cite this Article Kersten, R.(2003) 'Revisionism, reaction and the 'symbol emperor' in post-war Japan', Japan Forum, 15: 1, 15 — 31 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/0955580032000077711 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0955580032000077711 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. 03 kersten (jk/d).fm Page 15 Wednesday, February 26, 2003 9:13 AM Revisionism, reaction and the ‘symbol emperor’ in post-war Japan R. KERSTEN Recent scholarship on the Sho¯wa Emperor has presented us with a conundrum. In the face of increasingly visible, if intellectually unconvincing, neo-nationalism in contemporary Japan, scholars such as Herbert Bix and Takahashi Tetsuya have sought to undermine this revisionist trend with a clarion call to history. This history, according to Bix and Takahashi, highlights the inescapable logic of accountability that rests at Hirohito’s door. For Bix, it is the accountability that must accrue to Hirohito as an informed, interested and interventionist Supreme Commander of the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy for the duration of World War II in Asia and the Pacific (Bix 2000). For Takahashi, it is the accountability that rests at the door of Hirohito as a dissembler who, when faced with the inevitability of defeat, dallied in order to secure his own personal and institutional survival, with catastrophic consequences for the peoples of Hiroshima and Naga- saki, the thousands of Japanese left behind in Manchuria, China and the Soviet Far East and many non-Japanese victims (Takahashi 1999a, 1999b, 2001b, 2002). Through reappraising interpretations of Hirohito and the war through the rubric of accountability, both Bix and Takahashi seek to do more than reinforce an already familiar critique of the Sho¯wa Emperor’s wartime role.1 Their real Downloaded By: [Australian National University] At: 00:37 15 December 2009 target is the integrity of the post-war symbol emperor system, upon which the substance of post-war Japan’s democracy has been painstakingly grafted. The uncomfortable symbiosis between the notion of the symbol emperor, on the one hand, and the legitimacy of post-war Japanese democracy, on the other, has served over time to highlight the ambivalence of both. As mutually antagonistic as they are mutually reinforcing, the symbol emperor and democracy appear as flimsy edifices in post-war Japan because their historical foundations are built on the ahistorical – even anti-historical – fiction of wartime imperial victimhood. Though another scholar, Kenneth Ruoff, argues that the fudging of imperial façade and democratic substance in post-war has enticed the Right grudgingly to accept post-war democracy, the irony of democracy being made palatable Japan Forum 15(1) 2003: 15–31 ISSN: 0955–5803 print/1469–932X online Copyright © 2003 BAJS DOI: 10.1080/0955580032000077711 03 kersten (jk/d).fm Page 16 Wednesday, February 26, 2003 9:13 AM 16 Revisionism, reaction and the ‘symbol emperor’ through the new transcendentalism of the symbol emperor is hard to ignore. Ruoff valiantly argues that the tortuous attempts to lend legitimacy to the post- war notion of the symbol emperor are ultimately useful. Through creating a narrative of pre-war and wartime ‘symbol emperor’ continuity, the more positive fiction of post-war democracy can be embraced as something that is more than merely a received product of defeat. If the symbol emperor is a product of tradition and not defeat, then the democracy it coexists with is less soiled by the circumstances of its inception (Ruoff 2001: 142). Here we encounter the conundrum implied by Bix and Takahashi, and embraced by Ruoff. The defining institutions of post-war Japan are revealed as little more than companion concepts born of contrary fictions. History is over- looked in the name of creating plausible narratives for the post-war era, and barely survives either as method or context. In the midst of this creative dispensation of the wartime past, one uncomfortable coincidence continues to poke through to the surface. The moment of fictional invention is consistently identified as the moment of defeat in August 1945. While Bix and Takahashi have their eyes trained on a revisionist surge in contemporary Japan – notably, the contest over the content of high-school history textbooks and the writing of ‘comfort women’ and events such as the Nanjing Massacre into post-war Japan’s historical conscious- ness – they both locate the actual act of ‘revision’ in the past, not in the present. Both Bix and Takahashi claim that post-war attempts to rewrite or rehabilitate the Sho¯wa Emperor are responsible for undermining post-war democracy. At the same time, they identify so-called ‘defeat revisionism’ as the original manifesta- tion of this historical distortion. History was revised before it was ‘history’, when it was still ‘present’. The implications of this idea are considerable. If the symbol emperor is a product of defeat revisionism, then how can we make sense of post-war revision- ism? The very idea of defeat revisionism inverts the temporal logic of post-war revisionism. If, in the post-war era, we are assailed with notions that simply invoke a view of history that has already been revised, then it is merely a repetition of an earlier distortion. Moreover, it conveys the logic of reaction rather than that of revisionism in the post-war period. Could it be that post-war revisionist forays Downloaded By: [Australian National University] At: 00:37 15 December 2009 into interpreting the Sho¯wa Emperor’s locus in Japan’s wartime history actually represent a desperate attempt on the part of reactionaries to retrieve ascendancy for defeat revisionism? Are Bix and Takahashi fighting a battle that has already been won? Takahashi Tetsuya (b. 1956), trained as a philosopher with a specialization in French philosophy, emerged in the 1990s as one of the leading analysts of contemporary political thought, particularly debates over war responsibility. Identified clearly as an opponent of neo-nationalist groups such as the ‘Liberal School of History’ and the ‘Atarashii rekishi kyo¯kasho o tsukurukai’ (hereafter referred to as ‘Tsukurukai’; Society for History Textbook Reform), Takahashi has become a central figure in Japan’s contemporary debate culture. Through 03 kersten (jk/d).fm Page 17 Wednesday, February 26, 2003 9:13 AM R. Kersten 17 examining the assumptions buried in Takahashi’s interpretation of the symbol emperor system and its consequences for post-war democracy, I shall endeavour to shed light on the actual nature of revisionism, and reaction, in post-war Japan. The objective of this exercise is to develop a better and more insightful under- standing of revisionism as a formative idea in the writing of modern Japanese history in general, and Japan’s WWII history in particular. Revisionism and reaction As Takahashi indicates in the introduction to his book Rekishi/Shu¯seishugi, the act of revision is integral to the writing of good history (Takahashi 2001a: iii). Revi- sionism can reflect a reappraisal of history in light of new information; alternatively, it can reflect the changing values of society over time (as in the case of feminist history). In the post-war world, historical revisionism has become primarily a pejorative term, often implying a deliberate intent on the part of authors to misrepresent or distort history. In some cases, such as in ‘Holocaust denial’ or ‘Nanjing Massacre denial’, uncertainty over statistics or the inability to provide exact details has been extrapolated to imply uncertainty over the event as a whole. The antecedents of revisionism as a notion partly explain this predominance of negative connotations, but the late twentieth-century concerns with rehabili- tating the contemporary ‘nation’ through WWII history writing is another decisive factor in how revisionism has developed as a political phenomenon in recent times. While some scholars, such as Ueno Chizuko, regard this as a phenomenon particular to a post-Cold War context (Ueno 1998: 62, 65, 74–5), it is evident that an enhanced concern with national or communal subjectivity has become a significant driver of contemporary historical revisionism. Contemporary revision- ism also embraces a clear reactionary element, whereby contemporary concerns and conflicts are catalysts for a reflex return to the past, in search of a history that is more ‘suitable’ for those with specific interests in this contested present. History is reinforced as an indispensable factor in establishing contemporary national and political legitimacy in the process. In modern political history, revisionism emerged as an expression of dissent Downloaded By: [Australian National University] At: 00:37 15 December 2009 against the interpretation of Marxism as an orthodox, inflexible body of thought.
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