ABSTRACT
Towards both sincere and insincere ends, much ink has been spilled over how to solve Japan’s “history problem”—a problem which is predominantly between Japan and her neighbor over how to write the history of Japan’s imperial past self. The former seeks to find a way to write a more inclusive and critical history, whereas the latter seeks to resolve the matter for good by monetary compensation and issuing of statements. While questions about accuracy and correctness are of import, here I submit that to understand the persistence of the “history problem” in postwar Japan, the two moves must be understood in relation to the generally vexed relation to history “Japan” has been having, after war. I argue that any discussion about responsibility over the past necessitates that an agentic subject is invoked and identified with, thereby both unintentionally and intentionally recentering the state as the sovereign subject of history. While this is but one of the many issues Japan faces, in this chapter I focus on the symbolic politics of history over the “comfort women” bronze statues in South Korea, and how divergent strands of actors with, at times, completely opposite motives end up coalescing in reifying the Japanese nation-state.
