ABSTRACT
A spectre is stalking Japan studies – the spectre of Pacific War revisionism. As memories of the savage conflict inaugurated by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour recede, the factual and ethical foundations of the Allied interpretation of the war in the Pacific, our ‘good war’, are crumbling on three fronts. First, the Hollywood propaganda film version of the Pacific War (the version that most Americans believe) is being quietly undermined by academic historians who are discovering new continents of fact that undermine the orthodox position. These discoveries make it clear that if historians are to understand the Pacific War ‘as it really was’ (Leopold von Ranke), the orthodox Allied interpretation of the war must be radically rethought. Wartime propaganda was a form of rhetoric. Its goal was to rally us to the colours, to persuade men and women to die for our cause, not to explain the facts or to weigh evidence objectively. The academic defence of this wartime discourse, a defence which is rife with bias and prejudice, persuasive definitions and value claims, does not qualify as scholarship.
