ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how popular historical narratives shape the “collective memory” of Japan’s colonial past by present-day Japanese. I argue that protracted conflicts are often rooted in traumatic memories of historical violence, and that acknowledging “inherited responsibility” for past injustices is critical to reconciliation and building peaceful relationships. Collective memory can be transmitted via historical narratives in official textbooks, commemorations, mass media, Internet commentary and through interpersonal storytelling. Japan is known for its past efforts to downplay information about the Japanese Imperial Army’s atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre and the coercion of “comfort women” in its official discourse. Using surveys and interviews within Japan–South Korean contexts, this chapter examines how current generations of Japanese “remember” the past war through popular culture. To what extent does that specific form of war memory, developed via popular culture, promote the Japanese forgetting of its colonial past? How does exposure to a societal memory that primarily focuses on Japan’s victimisation affect acceptance by younger Japanese of the responsibility to redress the mistakes of their ancestors? The aim of this chapter is to understand how popular narratives may influence a transgressor’s collective memory and potentially open – or foreclose – spaces of reconciliation.
