Japan's Contested War Memories Book

List of illustrations     ix
Acknowledgements     x
Notes on text     xi
List of abbreviations and glossary     xii
Introduction     1
The 'orthodox' interpretation of Japanese war memories     2
'Memory rifts': reframing the discussion of Japanese war memories     7
Historical consciousness in contemporary Japan     10
Theoretical approaches to the study of war memory     10
Towards an 'integrated approach'     12
Judgemental war memory     18
Japanese war memories: a hypothesis     20
A media/cultural studies approach     28
The war representations business: a hypothesis     31
Conclusions     35
The 'long postwar'     37
Occupation, 1945-52     38
Japan's return to the international community, 1952-72     42
To the end of the Showa era and '1955 system', 1972-93     48
Japan's contested war memories in the Heisei era, 1994-2005     56
Conclusions     63
'Addressing the past'     65
State-centredness: the official narrative and its importance     65
Human rights vs state rights: international backing for Japan's compensation policy     67
The role of American policy     70
'The orthodoxy' and Japanese war memories     73
Culturally deterministic approaches     75
International comparisons     78
Conclusions     83
The war as a current affairs issue     85
The war as front-page news     85
Prime ministerial apologies vs Yasukuni worship     87
The fiftieth anniversary statement and politicians' gaffes     94
The press taboo: criticizing the emperor     96
The 'comfort women', lawsuits and compensation     98
Textbooks     100
The A-bombs     102
Returnees     104
Conclusions     105
August commemorations     107
Television and war memories     107
War-related television: 1991-2005     110
NHK's survey of war-related programming in 1995     114
The politics of war-related television     116
The sixtieth anniversary as seen on TV     123
Conclusions     130
History and ideology     131
Publishing and the selective historical gaze     132
Consuming ideological debate     137
Ideological confrontation: the liberalist view of history      140
History at school: textbook content vs history education     144
Conclusions     150
War stories     151
War cinema and war memories     151
Japanese war cinema: an overview     153
War cinema: 1972-2005     155
The secrets of success in war cinema     159
The challenges of progressive film-making     161
Television dramas     163
Simulation fiction     167
Conclusions     169
Regional memories     170
Local memories, local victimhood     170
War museums in Japan     171
The politics of war and peace exhibits     172
Consuming museums: museums as sites of education     175
Japanese pacifisms     177
Air raids: from distinctive local memories to generic narrative     180
Okinawa: unique and personalized memories     185
Conclusions     187
War and the family     188
Testimony: the voice of the individual     189
War and the family: when love and historical consciousness collide     192
War guilt: inherited traumas in Japanese families     193
Patriotism: commemorating sacrifice      197
The war and day-to-day family relationships     198
Activism: the personal is political     200
Conclusions     203
Epilogue: beyond the sixtieth anniversary     205
Critiques of orthodox arguments     211
Notes     226
Bibliography     230
Index     245