ABSTRACT
On 24 September 1972 a Japanese press group that was visiting China was guided to the Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing. This trip was not included in the official schedule but was arranged at the delegation's request. The main theme of the Maoist era, especially during the Cultural Revolution period, was permanent revolution, and the main task was economic reconstruction and class struggle. It is an operable method to capture the intangible Chinese national war remembrance by using one Chinese local area as a case study of war remembrance activities in the whole of China. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the general situation as to how the Fifteen-Year War was remembered in China by studying how the war was presented in a series of 'realms of memory': memoirs, martyrs' memorials, the national anthem, war memorial days, textbooks, museums, songs, films, scholarly works and so forth.
