The View From Japan

Total Japanese War Dead: 2,694,322 (140,00 in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki from a total of 393,367 civilian casualties) Destroyed: shipping 80%; automobiles 36.8%; machine tools 34%; structures 24.6% 66 Cities bombed destroying 40% of area and making 30% homeless

Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection. It is a painful remembering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present. Homi K Bhaba: Interrogating Identity.

The act of gathering bits and pieces of the past, and joining them together in public.... What they create is not a cluster of individual memories; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Collective memory is constructed through the action of groups and individuals in the light of day. […] When people enter the public domain, and comment about the past - their own personal past, their family past, their national past, and so on - they bring with them the images and gestures derived from their broader social experience. […] When people come together to remember, they enter a domain beyond that of individual memory. (Winter and Sivan)

Founded 1997 in Ueda, Nagano. Dedicated to young artists who died during or shortly after the war.

Listed Japan’s war crimes and attacked the concealment of the truth by successive Japanese wartime governments. Emphasised the crimes resulting from Japanese militarism, including those committed during the so-called ‘Rape of Nanking’, but also portrayed Hirohito as working for peace as the leader of a moderate faction. Placed the blame for the war on a handful of ‘military cliques’ and depicted the Japanese people as deluded ‘victims’ and the emperor as having been deceived by the military.

The empire was compelled to embark on the Greater East Asia War in view of the surrounding circumstances. Tojo’s attack on Pearl Harbor was an act of self- defence. The emperor had always been a peace-minded constitutionalist who was in kept in ignorance of the actual details of the attack. Completely ignored Japanese aggression in China after 1931 and in Southeast Asia in 1940.

1954 growth of strng pacifist movement centred on Hiroshima. Stories of the hibakusha became heard. Lucky Dragon incident causes concern about nuclear testing Japanese popular culture: Godzilla and Barefoot Gen ‘No’ to revision of Clause 9

1971 journalist Honda Katsuichi serialised reports about atrocities committed in Nanking. Caused reverberations in Japan

Japanese Historian Ienaga Saburo campaigned in the courts for the ‘truth’ to be told about the war Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

In summer 1982 the Chinese and South Korean governments complained to the Japanese government that the Monbusho was attempting to play down the brutal behaviour of Japanese troops during the war by omitting details or softening the language…………..

26 August 1982 the Chief Cabinet Secretary Miyazawa in a unified government statement referred to past joint statements signed with Korea and China expressing Japan’s contrition and deep regret for the suffering inflicted on the Chinese and Korean people. Stated that: ‘the Japanese government will pay full heed to the criticism in promoting friendship and good will with neighbouring countries, and will undertake on its own responsibility to make the necessary amendments.’

History is not just a chronological sequencing of events, but the story of a people or peoples, from their origins, their adventures, their successes and failures. This is a site for Japan's modern history, a period which some say begins in the 16th century.

Announcement : "Jiyuu-shugi-shikan Kenkyuu- kai"'s English name has been changed to Association for Advancement of Unbiased View of History from Association for Advancement of Liberal View of History. The word "Jiyuu" can denote a number of meanings, and it has been pointed out to us that what we wish to express by 'jiyuu' is better expressed in the English word 'unbiased', rather than 'liberal'.

the use of pseudo-technical arguments to demonstrate the physical impossibility of atrocities. seizing upon one or two examples of propagandistic exaggeration on the part of the victims and then through wild extrapolation draw the conclusion that entire atrocity is a fabrication. linking the atrocity to the ideological causes of those who identify with the victims.

Memory is always suspect in the eyes of history, whose true mission is to demolish it, to repress it. Historicised memory comes to us from without. Because it is no longer a social practice, we internalize it as an individual constraint. The transition from memory to history requires every social group to redefine its identity by dredging up the past.