ABSTRACT
This chapter considers peace education in Japan and examines the relationship between education and catastrophe in the country. In Japan, the ‘history of war caused by Japan, especially war in Asia and the Pacific Ocean’, has become the central material for peace education. This has taught Japan not only about wartime damage, but also about perpetration of war, how to hold out against war, and complicity in war. Moreover, education on the atomic bomb in Japan is in no way inferior to that in other countries.
Therefore, most Japanese people study about catastrophes such as World War II or dropping of the atomic bomb in peace education. In this study, we first show how education and pedagogy in Japan dealt with catastrophes by examining the history of peace education in Japan. Then, we consider the relation between education and catastrophe in Japan by examining the problem of ‘school trip to Hiroshima’. Finally, we show how the recent theories of catastrophe education in Japan managed the problems in the relation between catastrophe and education.
