ABSTRACT
Since the eruption of the history wars in Asia, occasioned by attempts to revise Japanese textbooks in the early 1980s, ongoing grassroots efforts at reconciliation between Japan and the victims of her wartime empire have largely flown under the radar. However, such efforts, in spite of being almost entirely ignored by the international media, now represent a “rich tradition”, as Tessa Morris-Suzuki has argued, one that deserves proper consideration, particularly in light of the lessons it might present to states in the region.
Moving away from state-centred approaches, Morris-Suzuki has posited the idea of “reconciliation as method”, an insight which serves as the starting point for Frost and Watanabe's discussion. Their chapter focuses on the transnational efforts of three Japanese reconciliation activists active in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore since the early 1960s. Using oral history interviews, press reports, and the personal accounts of the participants in such reconciliation activism, they endeavour to reconstruct the complex meanings and consequences of grassroots post-war reconciliation, as revealed through a variety of perspectives, assessing what significance this innovative and largely neglected practice might have for the broader region.
