ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connections between war memory and differing concepts of the ‘postwar’ as a period of Japanese history. It examines, among other things, the prime ministerial statements of Murayama Tomiichi (1995) and Abe Shinzō (2015) to argue that attending to the historical experience of the war in its entirety – and to the legacies of America’s Cold War role in shaping understandings of those legacies – is necessary for Japan to move beyond the idea of a ‘post-postwar’, in which the time of the war will always be the central referent, to a time that is truly post-‘war’.
