ABSTRACT
Scramble, a Tokyo rock group, can be found in some of the city’s smaller venues, belting out punk songs shrill with nationalist rage. Their fans, mostly male, often come to gigs dressed in black boiler suits and carrying hinomaru (rising sun) flags. In “Kill the Gooks,” Scramble singles out Korea for lying about Japanese war crimes, and Japan’s most popular liberal newspaper Asahi Shimbun for amplifying such mendacity (Scramble 2013). “Sever diplomatic ties,” “Smash Korea,” sings lead vocalist Riko. Young Japanese, she says, are fed up living under the shadow of events that occurred 70 years ago. “School textbooks will eventually stop teaching lies about Japan’s past.” Not that it matters, she adds; most children don’t remember a thing about them.1 She certainly doesn’t.
