East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence 0415637457, 9780415637459

Table of contents :
East Asia Beyond the History Wars Confronting the ghosts of violence
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: confronting the ghosts of war in East Asia
The statue and its shadow
Reparations, restitution and apology
Rethinking reconciliation
Framing and reframing memory: the textbook wars and beyond
The ghosts of the past
Notes
Part I Reconciliation as method
1 On the frontiers of history: territory and cross- border dialogue in East Asia
The troubled region
Forms of conflict, processes of reconciliation
Geographies of reconciliation: the China–Russia case
Korean borders as meeting places
Geography and dialogue
Notes
2 Historiography, media and cross-border dialogue in East Asia: Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation
Introduction
Korea at the centre
Historiographical conflicts
Nationalists and national history in Korea
Resolving history conflicts
Media of reconciliation
Reconciliation through film
Conclusion
Notes
3 Reconciliation onscreen: the second Sino-Japanese war in Chinese movies
Introduction
Demon
Family
Self and history in crisis
Conclusion
Notes
4 Letters to the dead: grassroots historical dialogue in East Asia’s borderlands
On Ainu land
A question of violence: forced labour and its legacies
Unearthing the dead of the Uryū Dam
Etching the past in the mind, feeling the present in the body
The return of the dead
Reading the archive, speaking to the dead
Notes
Part II Reframing memories
5 Gender and representations of the war in Tokyo museums
Introduction
Yasukuni
Shōwakan
Shōkeikan
War and masculinity in Korean monuments
Conclusion
Notes
6 Remembering the unfinished conflict: museums and the contested memory of the Korean War
Forgotten by whom?
The return of the past
The War Memorial of Korea, Seoul
The Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang
The Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Dandong
The Australian War Memorial, Canberra
Beyond structural absence
Notes
7 Art, photography and remembering Hiroshima
Introduction
Picturing Hiroshima
Capturing shadows
Painting the sky
Conclusion
Notes
8 Heroes, collaborators and survivors: Korean kamikaze pilots and the ghosts of war in Japan and Korea
The unseen memorial
Suicide gods or reluctant recruits?
The martyr as terrorist
The obelisk and the empty grave
In the house of memories
The survivor’s story
Two shrines of remembrance
History and the ethics of survival
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Asia’s Transformations

East Asia Beyond the History Wars Confronting the ghosts of violence

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu

East Asia Beyond the History Wars

East Asia is now the world’s economic powerhouse, but ghosts of history continue to trouble relations between the key countries of the region, particularly between Japan, China and the two Koreas. Unhappy legacies of Japan’s military expansion in pre-war Asia prompt on-going calls for apologies, while conflicts over ownership of cultural heritage cause friction between China and Korea, and no peace treaty has ever been signed to conclude the Korean War. For over a decade, the region’s governments and non-government groups have sought to confront the ghosts of the past by developing paths to reconciliation. Focusing particularly on popular culture and grassroots action, East Asia Beyond the History Wars explores these East Asian approaches to historical reconciliation. This book examines how Korean historians from North and South exchange ideas about national history, how Chinese filmmakers reframe their views of the war with Japan and how Japanese social activists develop grassroots reconciliation projects with counterparts from Korea and elsewhere. As the volume’s studies of museums, monuments and memorials show, East Asian public images of modern history are changing, but change is fragile and uncertain. This unfinished story of East Asia’s search for historical reconciliation has important implications for the study of popular memory worldwide. Presenting a fresh perspective on reconciliation, which draws on both history and cultural studies, this book will be welcomed by students and scholars working in the fields of Asian history, Asian culture and society, as well as those interested in war and memory studies more generally. Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor of Japanese History at the Australian National University. Morris Low is Associate Professor of Japanese History at the University of Queensland, Australia. Leonid Petrov is a former Chair of Korean Studies at Sciences Po (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris) and teaches Korean History and Language at the University of Sydney, Australia. Timothy Y. Tsu is Professor in the School of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.

Asia’s Transformations Edited by Mark Selden, Cornell University, USA

The books in this series explore the political, social, economic and cultural consequences of Asia’s transformations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The series emphasizes the tumultuous interplay of local, national, regional and global forces as Asia bids to become the hub of the world economy. While focusing on the contemporary, it also looks back to analyse the antecedents of Asia’s contested rise. This series comprises several strands. Asia’s Transformations Titles include: 1. Debating Human Rights* Critical essays from the United States and Asia Edited by Peter Van Ness 2. Hong Kong’s History* State and society under colonial rule Edited by Tak-Wing Ngo 3. Japan’s Comfort Women* Sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and the US occupation Yuki Tanaka 4. Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy* Carl A. Trocki 5. Chinese Society* Change, conflict and resistance Edited by Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden

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34. Aesthetic Constructions of Korean Nationalism Spectacle, politics and history Hong Kal 35. Popular Culture and the State in East and Southeast Asia Edited by Nissim Otmazgin and Eyal Ben Ari 36. Japan’s Outcaste Abolition The struggle for national inclusion and the making of the modern state Noah Y. McCormack 37. The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China Red Fire Gene Cooper 38. The Role of American NGOs in China’s Modernization Invited influence Norton Wheeler 39. State, Society and the Market in Contemporary Vietnam Property, power and values Edited by Hue-Tam Ho Tai and Mark Sidel 40. East Asia Beyond the History Wars Confronting the ghosts of violence Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu

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East Asia Beyond the History Wars Confronting the ghosts of violence

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu

First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu The right of Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data East Asia beyond the history wars: confronting the ghosts of violence / Tessa Morris-Suzuki [et al.]. p. cm.—(Asia’s transformations ; 40) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. War and society–East Asia. 2. Reconciliation–Social aspects–East Asia. 3. Memorialization–East Asia. 4. Collective memory–East Asia. 5. East Asia–History, Military–20th century. 6. East Asia– Foreign relations–21st century. I. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. DS518.E37 2013 355.0095–dc23 2012024056 ISBN: 978–0–415–63745–9 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0–203–08453–3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction: confronting the ghosts of war in East Asia

xiv xv 1

TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI

The statue and its shadow 1 Reparations, restitution and apology 4 Rethinking reconciliation 9 Framing and reframing memory: the textbook wars and beyond 14 The ghosts of the past 19 Notes 22 PART I

Reconciliation as method 1

On the frontiers of history: territory and cross-border dialogue in East Asia

27

29

LEONID PETROV AND TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI

The troubled region 29 Forms of conflict, processes of reconciliation 30 Geographies of reconciliation: the China–Russia case 31 Korean borders as meeting places 33 Geography and dialogue 38 Notes 38 2

Historiography, media and cross-border dialogue in East Asia: Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation LEONID PETROV

Introduction 40 Korea at the centre 41

40

xii

Contents Historiographical conflicts 43 Nationalists and national history in Korea 44 Resolving history conflicts 47 Media of reconciliation 49 Reconciliation through film 53 Conclusion 56 Notes 57

3

Reconciliation onscreen: the second Sino-Japanese war in Chinese movies

60

TIMOTHY Y. TSU

Introduction 60 Demon 64 Family 67 Self and history in crisis 73 Conclusion 81 Notes 83 4

Letters to the dead: grassroots historical dialogue in East Asia’s borderlands

87

TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI

On Ainu land 87 A question of violence: forced labour and its legacies 88 Unearthing the dead of the Uryū Dam 91 Etching the past in the mind, feeling the present in the body 93 The return of the dead 97 Reading the archive, speaking to the dead 100 Notes 101 PART II

Reframing memories

105

5

107

Gender and representations of the war in Tokyo museums MORRIS LOW

Introduction 107 Yasukuni 108 Shōwakan 116 Shōkeikan 119 War and masculinity in Korean monuments 121 Conclusion 123 Notes 123

Contents 6

Remembering the unfinished conflict: museums and the contested memory of the Korean War

xiii 128

TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI

Forgotten by whom? 128 The return of the past 129 The War Memorial of Korea, Seoul 131 The Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang 135 The Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Dandong 139 The Australian War Memorial, Canberra 144 Beyond structural absence 147 Notes 148 7

Art, photography and remembering Hiroshima

153

MORRIS LOW

Introduction 153 Picturing Hiroshima 156 Capturing shadows 158 Painting the sky 158 Conclusion 160 Notes 161 8

Heroes, collaborators and survivors: Korean kamikaze pilots and the ghosts of war in Japan and Korea

164

TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI

The unseen memorial 164 Suicide gods or reluctant recruits? 166 The martyr as terrorist 168 The obelisk and the empty grave 171 In the house of memories 173 The survivor’s story 176 Two shrines of remembrance 180 History and the ethics of survival 184 Notes 185 Index

191

Figures

0.1 1.1 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

‘Comfort Woman’ statue outside the Japanese Embassy, Seoul, wearing a mackintosh (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) Part of the Mount Geumgang Tourist Resort Complex, shortly before the death of Park Wang-ja (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) The Uryū Dam (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) Jizō statues erected to console the souls of dead convict labourers, near Abashiri, Hokkaido (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) The main gate, Yasukuni Shrine (© Adam Croft, reproduced with permission) Main Yūshūkan building and entrance hall, showing a Zero Fighter (© Adam Croft, reproduced with permission) ‘Statue of Mother’ Yūshūkan (© Adam Croft, reproduced with permission) ‘Statue of a Special Attack Hero’, Yūshūkan (© Adam Croft, reproduced with permission) Shōwakan building (© Adam Croft, reproduced with permission) Entrance to Shōwakan building (© Adam Croft, reproduced with permission) B-52 bomber in the grounds of the War Memorial of Korea (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) Display from Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) Bust of Mao Anying in the Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Dandong (© Morris Law) School group photograph being taken opposite the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1978 (© Morris Law) Memorial to Yoon Bong-Gil, Kanazawa (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) Pak In-jo and his memories (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) Pak In-jo’s public memorial (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki) Pak In-jo’s private memorial (© Tessa Morris-Suzuki)

2 35 96 98 109 110 111 112 117 117 134 137 141 154 172 178 183 183

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the Australian Research Council and the Academy of Korean Studies, which supported the research on which this book is based. Fieldwork for Chapters One and Two was conducted in China and Korea to incorporate material found in the libraries and museums of Beijing, Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang, Dalian, Lushun, Dandong, Pyongyang, Gaeseong and Seoul. Interviews with local scholars of social sciences, public officials, NGO activists and diplomats helped mapping the state of academic, popular and public discourse on the history controversies in East Asia. Sandra Wilson, King-Fai Tam and Lim Beng Choo provided generous assistance with and comments on Chapter Three. Research for Chapter Four was made possible by the kind help of Tonohira Yoshihiko, Ogawa Ryūkichi, Kim Yeong Hwan and other members of the Sorachi People’s History Group and East Asia Collaborative Workshop, and Chapter Eight could not have been written without the generous cooperation of the late Pak In-Jo and of Professor Song Ahn-Jong of Kanazawa University. We express our warm thanks to all these people, and to Adam Croft for permission to use the photographs reproduced in Chapter Five, to Hilary Morris for editorial assistance and to Mark Selden and the anonymous readers who gave helpful and insightful comments on drafts of the manuscript. An earlier version of Chapter Six was published as an article in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 29-4-09, 27 July 2009. We are very grateful to the editor, Mark Selden, for permission to publish the revised version here.

Introduction Confronting the ghosts of war in East Asia Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The statue and its shadow On 14 December 2011, a bronze statue of a seated woman was unveiled by the side of a busy street in central Seoul. The statue depicts a young woman, barely past childhood, wearing traditional Korean dress. She sits on a plain hard chair – straight-backed, her hands curled on her lap, her soft youthful face displaying a quiet and almost pensive expression, but her gaze fixed firmly ahead. A small bronze bird perches on her shoulder and a second empty chair has been placed next to the statue, so that passing visitors can sit side-by-side with the statuewoman and, if they wish, have their photo taken with her. Her human scale invites interaction. Local residents sometimes present her with bouquets of flowers, or lend her a mackintosh as protection from the rain (see Figure 0.1). A casual passer-by, unacquainted with this street and its recent history, might assume that this is just a rather charming artwork, and would perhaps be surprised to learn that the unveiling of the statue sparked an international diplomatic incident. A closer look is necessary to expose the deeper layers of imagery. The pavement beneath the statue is marked by a darker shape, which at first appears simply to be the natural shadow cast by the statue. But this ‘shadow’ does not change with the shifting light of day. It remains always the same, always forming the bent shape of an old woman, on whose chest rests the white outline of a butterfly: the symbol of rebirth. For the statue symbolizes the so-called ‘comfort women’ – young women from Korea and throughout Asia recruited by the wartime Japanese army, often by force or deception, for work in military brothels; and the building across the road, on which the bronze woman’s calm but unrelenting gaze is fixed, is the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. The statue was erected by supporters of a group of former ‘comfort women’ who have, for the past 18 years, been holding weekly protest gatherings on this site to demand an official apology and state compensation from the Japanese government. As the protest group held their 1,000th rally in front of the Embassy, with no sign of a resolution of their claims in sight, the monument was set in place as a perpetual reminder of the lives of the former ‘comfort women’, of whom many are already dead, and others elderly and very frail. Despite the tranquil and unthreatening depiction of the young woman, the

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Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Figure 0.1 ‘Comfort Woman’ statue outside the Japanese Embassy, Seoul, wearing a mackintosh.

statue aroused the ire of the Japanese Embassy and government. In an official protest to South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, who visited Japan shortly after the unveiling, Japanese Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko demanded the statue’s removal: the Japanese government sees its presence as a violation of the Vienna Convention’s requirement that diplomatic missions be protected from ‘any disturbance to the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity’.1 President Lee’s response was to request Japan to provide the official apology and compensation necessary to resolve this issue, which remains, in Lee’s words ‘an obstacle to bilateral relations’.2 The latent force of this obstacle became clear in August 2012, when a renewed cycle of conflict erupted between Japan and its neighbours. Against a background of political change throughout Northeast Asia, on the eve of stepping down as president, Lee Myung-bak sought to bolster his popularity by paying a highly publicized visit to the rocky islet known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese, whose ownership is contested by the two countries. This ignited a war of words between South Korea and Japan, in which the history of the ‘comfort women’ once again became a central focus of contention. The ‘comfort woman’ statue is a work both of memory and imagination. The statue’s designers, husbandand-wife team Kim Un-seong and Kim Seo-gyeong, could have chosen to depict

Introduction

3

their subject in many ways – as a weeping figure or in a posture of defiance with raised fist. The ‘comfort woman’ could have been depicted in the company of images of the men who recruited and inflicted extreme suffering on the female victims, or their fate could have been expressed in abstract and symbolic form. Instead, the artists chose to sculpt this simple, realistic figure: a carefully considered expression of their interpretation of historical events which they did not experience at first hand, but about which they feel strongly. Kim Un-seong explains that he ‘kept recalling the image of young girls being dragged away and feeling enraged’, and adds, ‘we had to suppress a lot of emotion to give her [the statue woman] a serene feeling’.3 It is, perhaps, the combination of innocence and serenity with suppressed rage that makes the monument such a potent image of this dark moment of history, and that causes such discomfort to the Japanese diplomats whose offices lie in the path of the bronze woman’s unblinking gaze. The statue is, above all, a tangible embodiment of the refusal of the past to go away. More than 45 years after Japan and South Korea signed the treaty that was supposed to settle questions of historical responsibility for Japan’s colonial rule, and almost 20 years after a Japanese government investigation confirmed that Japan’s military had operated a widespread system of military brothels to which women were recruited against their will,4 questions of historical responsibility remain unresolved. Apologies of various sorts have been issued, and for 12 years (from 1995 to 2007) a Japanese government-supported but privately funded Asian Women’s Fund offered its own limited form of compensation to victims – compensation which many refused, since they saw the fund as an attempt by the Japanese state to evade its responsibilities.5 The hurt and anger, the denials, obfuscations and mutual recriminations that are the legacy not only of the ‘comfort women’ system but of Japan’s harsh colonial rule, continue to haunt Japanese and Korean society and the relations between the two nations. Intermittently overshadowed by other events, this history repeatedly returns. The forms of protest and the terms of debate change, but the substance and power of this shadow from the past shows no sign of fading with the flow of time. The problem of the ‘comfort women’ is of course just one of many historical problems which overshadow relations between the countries of East Asia – particularly between Japan and China, between Japan and the two Koreas, between the two halves of the divided Korean Peninsula, and between China and the two Koreas. Though some of these problems have earlier roots, most arise from the events of the early to mid-twentieth century: Japan’s colonization of Korea and Taiwan and military expansion into China; the violence of the Asia-Pacific War; and the post-war chaos which culminated in the Korean War. Why has history become such an enduring and contentious problem in relations between the countries of the region? Over the past two decades, a growing range of studies have sought to answer this question. Broadly speaking, these studies have approached the question from three main perspectives. Some focus primarily on questions of inter-state relations, particularly on the issue of state apologies and compensation for historical wrongs; others extend the debate to the public transmission of historical memory through school education and textbooks; and others again look more widely at the

4

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

shaping of popular historical consciousness through books, films, manga, anime among others. These studies have enormously enriched our understanding of the region’s historical controversies, but at the same time have highlighted the profound conceptual problems that lie embedded in the terms of the debate itself. The essays in this book address some of these conceptual problems by exploring the relationship between the process of reconciliation and the shaping of historical memory. We use case studies from around East Asia – here defined as the region encompassing China, Japan, the two Koreas, Taiwan and far eastern Russia – to examine the ways in which memory is reframed through cultural practices of representation, commemoration and cross-border dialogue. Although we do not explicitly address trans-Pacific issues, the United States is of course an enduring presence which, as we shall see, also helps to frame the terms of historical conflicts in the region. In particular, we consider how the constantly moving present day creates ever-changing perspectives on the past. The past does not recede from view; rather, our shifting perspectives reveal new shapes and new shadows, which in turn evoke a wide range of creative responses from the people of the region. In order to place these essays in context, though, it is first necessary to look more closely at the background to the region’s historical controversies, and at the changing ways in which these controversies have been interpreted.

Reparations, restitution and apology Studies of national apology and restitution in East Asia have mostly focused on Japan: specifically on whether the Japanese state has or has not adequately apologized and made reparation for the wrongs inflicted by its pre-war empire building and wartime territorial expansion. Questions of apology, restitution and historical responsibility have, of course, been subjects of debate in Japan and throughout East Asia ever since the end of the Asia-Pacific War. The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, concluded in the tense Cold War environment at the height of the Korean War, represented an uncomfortable compromise between the US desire to protect and strengthen Japan as a bulwark against communism and the position of countries like the Philippines, whose government demanded reparations commensurate with the death and destruction wrought by Japan’s wartime occupation.6 The final text stated: it is recognized that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognized that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient, if it is to maintain a viable economy, to make complete reparation for all such damage and suffering and at the same time meet its other obligations. The treaty left the way open for occupied countries to negotiate reparations with the Japanese government, but implied that this would be done so as to minimize the foreign exchange burden on Japan. The ambiguities surrounding Japan’s obligations arose, not only from the tone

Introduction

5

of the treaty text, but also from the fact that many countries colonized or occupied by Japan (including the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and both Koreas) were absent from the final negotiations and did not sign the treaty. Though 48 countries, from Uruguay to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, were signatories, only five of these (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia) were countries which had actually been occupied by Japan.8 In the years following the treaty, Japan (with strong encouragement from the United States) entered into a series of post-war ‘reparations’ agreements with the Southeast Asian nations that it had occupied. These agreements, signed between 1954 and 1967,9 were reached in the context of a Cold War Asia in which Japan, no longer struggling to maintain a ‘viable economy’, was rapidly emerging as the region’s leading economic power. In every case, rather than in fact providing recompense to victims of wartime violence, Japanese ‘reparations’ took the form of development aid, much of it in the form of projects carried out by Japanese firms, which opened the way to cementing closer economic ties with the region. Though reparations agreements were not reached with Korea and China, in 1965 Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) signed a Treaty of Basic Relations which similarly waived Koreans’ rights to demand individual recompense in return for substantial Japanese development aid. At the time of the restoration of Japan’s diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1972 (reaffirmed by the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the two countries), China also accepted economic aid in lieu of reparations. In September 2002, then Prime Minister Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il issued the Pyongyang Declaration, which signalled North Korea’s willingness to accept a settlement in return for economic aid, a Japanese apology for colonial rule, and an agreement to discuss outstanding problems of cultural properties and of the status of Korean residents in Japan.10 However, in the wake of revelations about North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s, the agreement fell apart, and no settlement between Japan and North Korea has ever been signed. Some of the agreements signed between Japan and its Asian neighbours were, even at the time, highly controversial and divisive. In the Philippines, for example, an initial ‘reparations’ agreement concluded with Japan in April 1954 had to be abandoned because the proposed levels of aid were so low as to cause public outcry. Even Felino Neri, the head of the mission responsible for negotiating the better terms that were finally accepted, stated that ‘the Philippines was aware that these terms did not provide anything like complete restoration of its losses and relief of its injury’.11 The signing of the Basic Treaty between Japan and the Republic of Korea too was greeted by mass demonstrations in both Tokyo and Seoul. Declassified Korean documents have since shown that the South Korean government of President Park Chung-hee, while basing part of its demand for aid on calculations of the numbers of Koreans forcibly recruited for labour by the colonial authorities, used almost all the money received for infrastructure development projects, rather than passing it on to individual victims. This led to a 2005 decision by the South Korean government to reopen the question of providing compensation to individual victims of Japanese colonial policies.12

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Against this background, it is perhaps not surprising that a new wave of controversies surrounding issues of historical responsibility, apology and recompense should have gathered force in the final decade of the twentieth century. From the late 1980s onward, the confluence of several historical trends encouraged a rethinking of questions of historical responsibility worldwide. The end of the Cold War in Europe led to the re-emergence of debates about recompense for historical wrongs. Unresolved problems of German war responsibility towards the societies of Eastern Europe came to the surface, leading (for example) to the creation of a new reparations scheme for survivors of wartime German forced labour schemes. At the same time, the collapse of Soviet power also opened the way to questioning of the Soviet Union’s responsibility for acts of violence both within and beyond its own borders. In the emerging post-Cold War world, old ideological divisions were replaced by new forms of resurgent nationalism, sometimes involving intense conflicts over rival national versions of history. Meanwhile, human rights and indigenous rights movements raised questions about the responsibility of former imperial powers for the wrongs of colonialism worldwide. In one country after another, history became (as Elazar Barkan puts it) ‘a crucial field for political struggle’.13 The democratization of East Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan allowed long-suppressed voices to make themselves heard: among them, the voices of those individual victims of war whose claims for restitution had been smothered by the formal post-war reparations agreements. The global spread of feminism also encouraged the victims of war crimes against women to speak out – the most noted examples being the former ‘comfort women’, who began to give personal testimony of their experiences for the first time in the early 1990s. One sign of the resurgence of the problems of historical redress was the growing number of court cases launched by victims of war against the Japanese state. Before 1990, just eight cases claiming personal compensation – including cases by Korean victims of the atomic bombings and Taiwanese recruits to the Japanese military – had been launched in Japanese law courts, but by the end of 2008 the number of claims brought before the courts had risen to 89 (of which just seven had been successful, while one further claim had been partly accepted, and three cases had ended in out-of-court settlements).14 The 50th anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War prompted intense debates in East Asia about questions of historical memory and responsibility, and the Japanese government found itself under growing pressure both from groups within Japan and from neighbouring countries to deal with unresolved issues of apology and redress. In addition to the ‘comfort women’ problem, these issues included the painful legacies of wartime massacres, particularly of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre (discussed further in Chapter 3), the problem of wartime forced labour (see Chapter 4), and the controversies caused by Japanese politicians’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine (see Chapter 5). The pressure had some effect. An official investigation of the ‘comfort women’ issue was conducted from 1991 to 1993, leading to a public statement of apology by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei in August 1993. In the same month, Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro made a major policy speech during which he said:

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I believe it is important at this juncture that we state clearly before all the world our remorse at our past history and our renewed determination to do better. I would thus like to take this opportunity to express anew our profound remorse and apologies for the fact that past Japanese actions, including aggression and colonial rule, caused unbearable suffering and sorrow for so many people and to state that we will demonstrate our new determination by contributing more than ever before to world peace.15 In 1995 his successor, Murayama Tomiichi, marked the 50th anniversary of the war’s end with a speech which included the words: During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology.16 Though these Prime Ministerial apologies were welcomed by many commentators, neither of them stilled the controversies. Some critics pointed out that the words of apology were not accompanied by actions to redress the suffering of victims, while (from the opposite political viewpoint) Japanese nationalists condemned the apologies as affronts to the nation’s dignity, and responded by launching a Japan Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai), designed to promote patriotic education. The force of the expressions of remorse was also weakened by a series of comments by rightwing political figures which seemed to fly in the face of these apologies, and by the determination of several prominent politicians (including Prime Minister Koizumi Junichirō), to pay respects at the Yasukuni Shrine, the Shinto shrine to the war dead in which executed war criminals are also commemorated (for further discussion, see Chapter Five). Those who criticize the Japanese state for its inadequate repentance for past wrongs often highlight the contrast between Japan and Germany. As Japanese philosopher Takahashi Tetsuya has noted, the ‘German model’ for addressing historical responsibility developed around three core principles – public admission of Germany’s war responsibility by the country’s political leaders, the payment of compensation to victims, and the prosecution of those responsible for war crimes by (West) Germany’s own legal system.17 While Hosokawa’s and Murayama’s statements went some way towards fulfilling the first principle, their brief sentences of regret have been criticized for being much less detailed and fulsome than (for example) the lengthy and reflective apology made by German President Richard von Weizsäcker in 1985.18 Meanwhile, Japan has paid almost no compensation to individual war victims of its colonial and wartime expansion,

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and has never prosecuted Japanese war criminals in its own courts. Elazar Barkan, in a comparative study of historical injustice and restitution, writes, ‘if at first the novelty of these [Prime Ministerial] statements was significant, by 1997 the constant repetitions of these formulations had transformed them from apologies for the war crimes into failed excuses and an indication of submitting to rightwing sentiments in Japan’. He goes on to argue that ‘the inability of Japanese society to feel guilt about its war crimes and aggression stands in marked contrast with the German experience’.19 Over the past decade or more, though the intensity of the controversy has not abated, its terms have become more complicated, as a growing number of voices have joined the conversation. Many commentators, outside as well as within Japan, have questioned the notion of a simple dichotomy between a ‘repentant Germany’ and an ‘unrepentant Japan’. Given the survival of neo-Nazism in Germany, the depth and extent of German repentance is open to question. On the other side of the equation, numerous writers have pointed out that the actions of the Japanese state do not necessarily reflect public opinion. Widespread debates over war responsibility in Japan, which have continued from the late 1940s to the present day, contradict sweeping statements about the inability of Japanese society to feel war guilt.20 The Japanese state’s response to problems of reparations and war responsibility also needs to be seen in an international framework. The United States, sometimes depicted as a ‘bystander’ observing East Asia’s history wars from the sidelines, is increasingly recognized as having in fact played a central role in shaping Japan’s post-war settlements.21 Besides, Northeast and Southeast Asian governments agreed to sign the ‘reparations’ and normalization treaties concluded between the 1950s to the 1970s, and must therefore (it is argued) share some blame for the inadequacies of those treaties.22 In the more complex story that emerges from these debates, the problem can no longer be seen simply as one of Japan versus its erstwhile enemies, but becomes an issue that crosses national boundaries. As Alexis Dudden has argued in her analysis of Japanese, Korean and American entanglement in the apology problem, ‘more than sixty years of political apologies and apologetic narratives have woven Japan, Korea and the United States together into a sea of stories in which blame and denial masquerade as history’.23 This internationalization of the problem of war responsibility has a further important dimension. In Europe, debates over Germany’s war responsibility created ‘echoes’ in various parts of the continent, ultimately forcing other European states and societies to consider their own responsibility for wartime and colonial violence. Thus in France, pursuit of war crimes committed in the period of German occupation led, in the 1990s, to growing public acknowledgement of the problems of collaboration and of French complicity in these crimes. This in turn fed into debates about other dark episodes in French history, particularly about the violence of the Algerian war of independence. Similarly expanding circles of reflection on historical responsibility can be seen in many other parts of the world. In Northeast Asia, for example, Korean critics of Japan’s failure to address past wrongs were confronted, during the democratization era, with questions about South Korea’s

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own participation in the Vietnam War, and about the failure of the South Korean government to provide adequate redress for domestic acts violence such as the antigovernment uprisings in the late 1940s and Gwangju Massacre of 1980.24 Indeed, conflicts between Japan and its neighbours are just part of a complex nexus of ‘history wars’ that have beset the region. Northeast Asia is the only part of the world where the Cold War has never ended. Korea remains divided, and no peace treaty has ever been signed to conclude the Korean War of 1950–1953. Intense rivalries over interpretations of history continue to plague the relationship between North and South Korea, and resurgent nationalisms have also been reflected in conflict between both Koreas and China over the right to claim the heritage of ancient kingdoms that once controlled the region now bisected by the China–North Korea border. It is important to emphasize that these multiple ‘history wars’ do not simply exist side by side, but have become deeply intertwined, so that (as we shall see in Chapter Three) attempts to resolve one conflict often have ramifications for the discourse of other disputes. This internationalization of controversies about history, memory and responsibility has in some ways been encouraged by growing cultural interaction between the countries of the region. Despite the intense nationalism that still pervades history debates in East Asia, the discourse of history increasingly crosses national boundaries. As Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter have put it, ‘the surge of memory in the 1990s that brought World War II to the centre of Japanese public debate generated a “transnational memory” of war, that is, one that was not confined to a single national narrative, but included interactions across Asia’.25 The essays in this collection explore issues of historical memory within this complex web of multi-directional interactions.

Rethinking reconciliation Transnational discussions of historical responsibility and apology emerged and evolved within an expanding global discourse on the notion of ‘reconciliation’. Until the 1990s, the Chinese, Korean and Japanese equivalents of the word ‘reconciliation’ – hejie (C.), hwahae (K.), wakai (J.) – had not been widely used except in the judicial context (referring to negotiated legal settlements), but from then on, inspired in part by the South African experience of ‘truth and reconciliation’, scholars, political leaders, human rights activists, and others in East Asia as in many parts of the world began to seek paths to conflict resolution through reconciliation.26 The contrasting approaches of recent studies, however, indicate some of the conceptual complexities that lurk within the innocent term ‘reconciliation’; for the term begs the questions ‘reconciliation between whom?’, and ‘what is the end of reconciliation?’ (the word ‘end’ here meaning both ‘objective’ and ‘conclusion’). Two studies both published in 2008 – Jennifer Lind’s Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics and the collection of essays edited by Hasegawa and Tōgō, East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism – suggest possible paths to historical reconciliation between Japan

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and its neighbours. Both works define reconciliation in broadly similar terms, as the process of building a degree of common understanding of history sufficient to prevent conflicts over the past from disrupting international relations in the present.27 But their conclusions of the best way of reaching this end diverge sharply. Tōgō Kazuhiko, a former Japanese diplomat who is a contributor to, and editor of East Asia’s Haunted Present, addresses a range of problems – including the ‘comfort women’ issue, memory of the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, the forced recruitment of wartime labour, the treatment of POWs and the Yasukuni Shrine problem – by developing an approach which echoes Hegelian dialectics. He defines the ‘history wars’ as arising from a polarization between two groups within Japan: ‘the apologizers’ and ‘the nationalists’. The former group (he says) believes that ‘Japan’s modernizing past was an unmitigated march towards militarism, colonialism and aggression’, while the latter argues that ‘not everything Japan did should be judged negatively, and that some actions were justifiable’.28 His aim is to create a ‘patriotic/international’ synthesis transcending the thesis of the ‘apologizers’ and the antithesis of the ‘nationalists’.29 The synthesis would involve reaching agreement as far as possible on the historical facts: an agreement which would enable the relevant Japanese parties to acknowledge moral responsibility for past wrongs where appropriate, while China, Korea and others would accept Japanese apologies and move on to a more forward-looking relationship with Japan. Some practical measures proposed by Tōgō as part of this Hegelian process of reconciliation are to ‘de-ideologize’ the Yasukuni Shrine and its associated Yūshūkan War Museum, and to revive the Asia Women’s Fund as a means of offering recompense to former ‘comfort women’.30 Jennifer Lind, on the other hand, presents a less positive view of the role of apology in reconciliation, arguing that expressions of contrition can provoke backlashes and intensified controversy, as indeed they have in the Japanese case, and thus in the end be ‘counterproductive to international relations’.31 Lind therefore recommends a ‘German model’ very different from the one outlined by Takahashi Tetsuya: based, not on the German apologies and restitution of the period since 1970, but rather on the 1950s policies of West Germany toward its former enemy France. Lind uses a detailed analysis of post-war Franco-German relations to show how French attitudes towards Germany, though very negative immediately after the end of the Second World War, were transformed into warm friendship by the early 1960s. This transformation came about despite the fact that Germany offered only ‘modest contrition’ for wartime violence and aggression.32 Lind concludes from this case study that, although outright national denial of historical wrongs is likely to be harmful to international relations, national apologies are not essential to post-war reconciliation, and (if they evoke heated controversy) may even be harmful. Rather than looking in detail at the merits and weaknesses of Tōgō’s and Lind’s contrasting recipes for reconciliation, let us here consider the deeper assumptions that underlie these analyses. For Lind and for Tōgō, reconciliation is essentially an issue between states, and the restoration of harmonious inter-state relations is

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evidence that reconciliation has been achieved. But, as Gi-wook Shin and others point out, however desirable interstate harmony may be, there is always a risk that such state-to-state harmonization may be achieved through a tacit mutual agreement to evade important issues of historical truth and justice, thus remaining a ‘thin’ and ultimately very fragile form of reconciliation.33 Even where national governments are friendly, and majority public opinion in two countries is mutually warm and harmonious, deep bitterness and unhappiness may remain at the subnational level. For example, even if the majority of French people felt positive emotions towards Germany by the late 1950s, it is unlikely that most French Jews shared those emotions. Subnational senses of injustice are particularly likely to simmer in silence where non-democratic governments have power to suppress and control public opinion – which is one reason why (as in the case of South Korea) democratization is often accompanied by the resurgence of ‘memory wars’ with neighbouring countries. The fragility of ‘thin’ reconciliation reflects the delicate relationship between ‘reconciliation’ and ‘truth’. It is important to remember that the reconciliation mechanisms created both in post-apartheid South Africa and in South Korea (as these countries struggled with their own historical ghosts) were called Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. The naming reflects a consciousness of the dangerous temptation to pursue political harmony by sweeping inconvenient or controversial truths under the carpet. Tōgō’s Hegelian approach to reconciliation raises important questions of truth. For one thing, it should be noted in passing that his initial ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’ is strangely unbalanced. The group he terms ‘apologizers’ are sweepingly depicted as unequivocally denouncing Japan’s modern history as ‘militarist’, while those he calls ‘nationalists’ are depicted in more nuanced terms: they recognize both bad and good in Japan’s wartime history, and only the ‘extremists’ among them are said to see Japan’s wartime actions as ‘completely justifiable’.34 This fails to capture the diversity within both groups, but particularly within the ranks of the so-called ‘apologizers’, few of whom in fact depict Japan’s modern history as an unmitigated tale of wrongdoing and disaster. More fundamentally, though, there is no reason to believe that a balanced synthesis between two radically opposed views of the past will produce historical truth, still less reconciliation. For example, few historians (I think) would accept the view that a synthesis between the views of those who condemn the Nazi holocaust and those who deny its reality would produce a basis for reconciliation. Tōgō’s attempt to arrive at a consensual narrative by putting two opposing versions of the past side by side and seeking points of agreement fails to address profound underlying problems of historical method: for example, contrasting understandings of the reliability of official documents, oral history and other primary material as sources of historical truth. These questions of method are particularly important because those who seek to deny historical events such as the coercive recruitment of ‘comfort women’ and wartime labourers or the violence of the Nanjing Massacre often present official, state-endorsed written records as the only source of historical truth, denying the validity of oral history and personal memory.

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The need for a cautious and reflective approach to reconciliation is vividly illustrated by the content of one of the earliest published works to propose the notion of reconciliation in the context of historical understanding: Faisons la Reconciliation Franco-Allemande (Let us Create Franco-German Reconciliation), a pamphlet calling for the creation of a shared French and German perspective on their common history. The benign resonances of the title begin to sound less reassuring as soon as we realize that this work was written, not in the post-war era, but in 1942, by the prominent German National Socialist lawyer Friedrich Grimm, and was published in Vichy France by a body called ‘Groupe Collaboration’.35 Faisons la Reconciliation Franco-Allemande, in other words, is a reminder that profound and lasting reconciliation needs to be based on openness to inconvenient truths, and also that problems of reconciliation cannot be separated from problems of power relationships. How can one speak of meaningful ‘reconciliation’ between two nations when one is under military occupation by the other? The problem of power relations is of great importance in the East Asian context, and is a major source of continuing historical conflict and controversy. Korean scholar Park Yu-ha’s work For Reconciliation, for example, is a courageous attempt to look critically both at denials of historical responsibility by Japanese nationalists and at Korean nationalists’ refusals to face up to their own nation’s dark past. Sweeping Korean condemnations of Japan, Pak argues, simply intensify the ‘victim consciousness’ that feeds Japanese nationalism, aggravating the spirals of conflict between the two nations. A more balanced and self-critical exchange of ideas between intellectuals on both sides is needed, she suggests, to achieve real reconciliation.36 But ironically, For Reconciliation, although well received by many in Japan, also sparked fierce controversy both in South Korea and in Japan. One criticism is that, in urging Japanese and Koreans to strive equally for reconciliation, Pak’s approach does not sufficiently acknowledge the profound inequalities that characterized the post-war relationship between the two countries. It may be argued, for example, that South Korea, the Philippines and other countries should have made more effective demands on Japan for post-war apology and compensation. But that argument must be tempered by recognition of the structural realities of 1950s and 1960s East Asia. Post-war South Korea and the Philippines were impoverished countries deeply reliant on Japanese aid, and even more reliant on the United States, which strongly supported and indeed helped to shape Japan’s ‘reparations’ strategy. The problem of power relations is also evident if we try to apply the model of Franco-German relations to the post-war relationship between Japan and Korea. In post-war Europe, the defeated aggressor Germany was divided. In post-war East Asia, the defeated aggressor emerged from a six year US occupation as the region’s economic powerhouse, while the liberated victim of colonization, Korea, was divided and soon immersed in war. Efforts at reconciliation between two parties whose wealth and power is very unequal may simply perpetuate injustices unless they are accompanied by measures to equalize the relationship and empower the powerless. But power relations change over time, and that is one reason why the terms of historical debate change too. In East Asia, the development and democratization

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of Taiwan and South Korea and the economic rise of China and South Korea, have influenced the way in which the past is retold. The growing wealth and cultural self-confidence of China, for example, may be one reason for the ability of Chinese film makers to present memories of the war in increasingly complex terms, rather than simply repeating earlier stereotypes of the Chinese as heroic resisters or mindless aggressors (see Chapter Three). These changing perspectives on the past highlight one further conceptual dimension of the term ‘reconciliation’. In the legal context, the process of reconciliation between two parties has an end point: a settlement is reached, and the dispute is ended. But does historical reconciliation ever have an end? Writings on reconciliation in East Asia – whether focusing narrowly on state-tostate relations or more broadly on ‘thick reconciliation’ between societies – often seem to suggest that it does. Some (like Tōgō Kazuhiko) propose the possibility of a ‘consensus’ narrative of the past. Even those who would not go this far often imply that reconciliation can create a reasonably compatible set of narratives which allow the ghosts of the past to be laid to rest. Images of this endpoint vary widely. For Jennifer Lind ‘reconciliation requires that countries stop perceiving one another as a threat’, and therefore reconciliation between Germany and its European neighbours can truly be said to have been achieved.37 Pak Yu-ha, on the other hand, looks forward to a still unachieved moment of reconciliation between Japan and Korea in which young people in both countries will understand each other well enough to be able to join hands to resist nationalistic or militaristic pressures from their respective states: ‘if that day comes, we will be liberated from the injuries inflicted by the mistaken path that we both embarked on one hundred years ago, and will be able to prepare for a new century’.38 This volume takes a slightly different perspective. Our starting point is the perception that the rewriting of history never ends, since the constantly changing vantage point of the present reveals constantly changing landscapes of the past. As the chapters that follow show, fresh dimensions are added to the telling of history, new media and forms of expression offer changing ways to address the past, and shifting international networks of communication bring narratives and voices together in constantly changing combinations. This ongoing process of retelling history may produce greater international understanding and harmony, or may provoke new waves of conflict. Chapters One and Two, for example, explore how the deepening engagement created by South Korea’s ‘Sunshine Policy’ toward North Korea from 1998 to 2008 gave way to a renewed era of heightened hostility and conflict. The process is unceasing. There is no point at which any society can truly be said to have overcome its past. As we search for forms of historical understanding that will diminish hatred and conflict and promote regional understanding, then, it is important to think about the processes by which historical understanding is created, as much as about the content of the historical narrative itself. In other words, it is helpful to think about ‘reconciliation as method’ – not as an end-point in which consensus on history is achieved, but rather as sets of media, skills and processes that encourage the creative sharing of ideas and understandings about the past. Through the ongoing

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process of sharing visions of the past it in turn becomes easier to create cooperative activities in the spheres of culture, economy and human security. What expressive media promote reflection on historical responsibility? What forums of debate bring former enemies or their descendants into dialogue, and help them to understand one another’s memories and to re-remember their own pasts? Efforts at reconciliation in the region are no longer new. Some date back 20 years or more, and it is now possible to make some retrospective assessment of their effects. The aim of this book is not to seek a common narrative of East Asian history, but rather to explore ‘reconciliation as method’ by examining the cultural tools and creative strategies through which people in the region retell their past. The four chapters in the book’s first section present examples of experiments in reconciliation underway in the region over the past two decades. Not all have been successful. Some have faced reverses, but together, they offer a repertoire of tools and strategies which may be used by future generations as they in turn embark on the dynamic and continuing process that is reconciliation. Our case studies of ‘reconciliation as method’ look beyond the role of the state to consider the central role played by history writing, popular culture, media and grassroots social movements. At the same time, they also highlight the fact that state and non-state realms are always intertwined. Chapter One examines cases of reconciliation on national borders. As this chapter shows, the frontiers of East Asia, often seen primarily as places of conflict, are also meeting points which can become the locus for experiments in reconciliation by nation states and civil society. Focusing on Korea, Chapter Two extends the story to experiments in reconciliation in academic and popular representations of history. As this chapter makes clear, such experiments have been profoundly influenced by the volatile politics of the Korean Peninsula. In Chapter Three, we see how political and social changes in China, and changes in the relationship between China and Japan, have generated a form of ‘reconciliation onscreen’: an ongoing reshaping of cinematic images of the Japanese wartime presence in China. Chapter Four highlights the active and growing role of grassroots social movements in pioneering inventive processes of reconciliation between the nations of the region. Through an examination of a historical reconciliation group based in regional Japan, we see how non-state actors, though often constrained by the policies of their national governments, can also create crossborder dialogues that transcend the limits of national geography and ideology.

Framing and reframing memory: the textbook wars and beyond While memory and culture are always political, politics is always framed by cultures of remembering. At a national and official level, the most important tool for shaping the historical memories of citizens is school education. In all the countries of East Asia, the school curriculum is textbook-based, and the content of history textbooks has become a major source of international conflict. Controversies over history textbooks have therefore become a central, focus of research on the region’s ‘history wars’.

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Like the problems of recompense for the violence of war, problems of history textbooks have been a source of debate ever since the immediate post-war period. In 1946, the Japanese Education Ministry, with the approval of the allied occupation authorities, commissioned a new set of history textbooks to replace the militaristic texts of the wartime period. The new two-volume textbook, entitled The Progress of the Country (Kuni no Ayumi), depicted the Pacific War as a disaster for Japan, but said little about the destruction inflicted by Japan on other countries, and attributed the blame for Japan’s defeat to a limited group of ‘militarists’: ‘our country was defeated. Our citizens suffered terribly for a long time during the war. This unhappiness was caused by the militarists who suppressed our citizens and led us into a useless war’.39 These cautious, vague and limited comments provoked fierce criticism from left-wing commentators in Japan, who saw them as a very inadequate expression of Japan’s war responsibility. Ironically, one of the authors of the controversial new text was historian Ienaga Saburō, who was later to emerge as the central figure in demands for a more critical approach to Japan’s colonial and wartime past. Ienaga himself later described The Progress of the Country as a ‘stop-gap’ and a ‘failed experiment’.40 In 1948, a new ‘screening’ (kentei) system was introduced whereby the government, rather than directly controlling the writing of texts, produced guidelines, and allowed private publishers to prepare textbooks written according to these guidelines and submit them to the ministry for official approval.41 After the end of the Allied occupation, the approval of Japan’s history textbooks became an ideological battleground. The political right, who controlled the government, sought to strengthen the patriotic tone of history textbooks, while historians like Ienaga struggled to ensure that critical discussion of Japan’s imperial and military expansion, and of social problems within Japan, was included in the curriculum. After repeatedly being told that the texts he had written would not be approved unless he removed or reworded sentences referring to the ravages of war, in 1965 Ienaga launched the first of series of court cases against the Ministry of Education, claiming that its censorship of textbooks was unconstitutional. Ultimately, the battle was fought out in three major court cases, the last of which was not settled until 1997. Ienaga was unable to secure a decisive ruling against the Ministry of Education’s interventions, but the final case did rule that some interventions had been inappropriate and warranted compensation from the Ministry. The court cases also attracted considerable public attention both inside and outside Japan.42 It was not until the 1980s, though, that the controversy became truly international. During the screening process in 1980–1981, the Ministry of Education demanded the rewriting of several key passages related to the war, including Ienaga’s description of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Newspaper reports suggested that textbook writers would be required to use the euphemism ‘advance’ (shinshutsu) to describe Japan’s invasion of Asia, though this circumlocution was not in the end enforced. The result was heated protest from Japan’s neighbours, particularly China, Korea and Vietnam.43 The issue erupted again in the late 1990s, when the nationalist Japan Society for History Textbook Reform composed its own new history and civics textbooks,

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and submitted these to the Education Ministry for approval. The Society’s activists were particularly outraged by the fact that, in the course of the 1990s, references to the ‘comfort women’ issue had come to be been included in all the existing junior high school history texts. Even though these references were very brief and bland, the Society saw this as an affront to Japan’s national dignity, and sought to counteract it with a text which maximized the triumphs of Japan’s modern development and minimized the damage wrought by imperial expansion. In 2002, the Education Ministry approved the Society’s New History Textbook (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho) with some revisions, sparking widespread demonstrations in Japan’s neighbours, and in 2005, the authorization of a second edition of the text was a trigger for anti-Japanese riots which swept several Chinese cities. Critics reacted angrily to the fact that the New History Textbook not only maintained complete silence on many wartime and colonial acts of violence, but also cast into question the historical reality of such events as the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Some found comfort in the fact that the New History Textbook was initially adopted for classroom use only by a very small number of schools. But as time has passed, the use of the textbook has gradually increased. Even more striking, perhaps, the quiet spread of the New History Textbook has been accompanied by the muting of critical discussion in history textbooks produced by other publishers. By 2010, for example, references to the ‘comfort women’s experiences had disappeared from Japan’s junior high school history texts altogether. Like the debate on apology, the debate on textbooks has also gradually extended beyond Japan’s boundaries to evoke questions about history education in other countries of the region too. Indeed, the period since the mid-1990s has seen an outpouring of studies examining the nature of history textbooks and teaching in the region. Mikyoung Kim, in a comparative analysis of East Asian textbooks, criticizes the Japanese system for its mixed motives and susceptibility to ideological influence, but notes that Chinese and South Korean history education are even more firmly state controlled. In the Chinese case, she points out, emphasis on patriotism and on Japanese aggression have increased with the passing of time. In South Korea, political shifts between progressive and conservative governments have led to intense controversies over the depictions of national history, and particularly over the vexed issue of the relationship with North Korea.44 Meanwhile in Taiwan, equally fierce contests over the content of history education pit those who link the island’s past and future firmly to the Chinese mainland against those who highlight Taiwan’s colonial experiences as part of a process of fostering a distinctively Taiwanese identity. These struggles sometimes create strange bedfellows, as (for example) when the rhetoric of pro-independence Taiwanese was taken up by Japanese nationalists such as comic-book writer Kobayashi Yoshinori to bolster efforts to justify Japanese colonialism.45 On the other hand, reconciliation efforts across frontiers led to initiatives such as the writing of a three-nation unofficial textbook, presenting a joint Chinese, Japanese and South Korean view of the region’s history.46 In Chapter Two, focusing on the Korean case, we consider the fascinating ways in which continual rewritings of national histories create both new conflicts and new commonalities across political borders.

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This internationalization of textbook controversies has complicated the terms of debate in other ways too. Intense focus on the wording of Japanese textbooks has to some extent given way to broader discussions of the dynamics of history education region-wide. Many researchers have pointed to the need to look beyond the covers of textbooks, and to consider how the texts are used in classrooms, and how children are exposed to other sources of historical knowledge through TV, comic books, visits to museums and stories told by parents and grandparents.47 In an increasingly visual age, images of the past in magazines, on the cinema or TV screen, and increasingly also in websites, blogs and other digital media, are likely to have at least as much impact on the minds of viewers as the dry phrases of history textbooks. Growing interest in the broader cultural dimensions of historical memory in East Asia is part of a global rise of memory studies: a phenomenon so marked and widespread that some scholars speak of a late twentieth-century to early twentyfirst-century ‘mnemologic turn’ in cultural theory, following the ‘linguistic turn’ of the late 1960s and 1970s.48 One stream of this mnemologic turn emerged from the massive project on cultures of memory in France developed by Pierre Nora and his colleagues from the 1980s onward.49 Another developed out of Holocaust Studies, as scholars sought to explore the transmission of traumatic histories from one generation to the next.50 These studies also inspired widespread research on the troubled processes of memory and forgetting in relation to cases of genocide and mass violence in other parts of the world.51 Meanwhile, developments in cultural studies – including theoretical developments in the study of visual culture and of the cultural construction of the body – were encouraging profound rethinkings of memory cultures and their impact on historical understanding.52 All of this is reflected in the flourishing of research on cultures of history, memory and forgetting in East Asia. Scholars such as Igarashi Yoshikuni, Lisa Yoneyama, Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Kirk Denton have explored the way in which literature, art, cinema, monuments and museums mould memories of war in Japan, South Korea and China.53 Increasingly, such studies are also conducted in a cross-border framework. Hong Kal (for example) has compared the aesthetics of nationalism embodied in Japanese and Korean war museums, while Jeff Kingston has compared the visual representation of nationalist themes in China’s Nanjing Massacre Memorial and Japan’s Yūshūkan.54 One recent collection of essays edited by Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz even seeks to define a distinctive East Asian form of historical memory, different in kind from its Western memory. ‘Asia’s Memory Problem’, Kim and Schwartz argue, ‘is unique’.55 Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, they suggest, place greater emphasis on the past than Westerners, and approaches to memory in Asian cultures of ‘honour and shame’ diverge from the approaches taken in societies of ‘dignity and guilt’. Kim and Schwartz also propose that Asians are more likely to feel responsibility for historical events than their western counterparts, are more likely to be influenced by the perspectives of the state, and have a realist perception of history that differs from the post-modern constructivism embraced by many Western scholars.56

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The essays in this volume take a different approach. While seeking to elucidate the particular historical and social context of memory wars in East Asia, these essays highlight the diversity and fluidity of approaches to memory within the region (a diversity and fluidity which also exists within the ‘West’, making any sharp ‘Asia/West’ dichotomy difficult to sustain). Part Two of the book shows how ongoing social and political changes, including the reconciliation processes discussed in Part One, have encouraged a reframing of public narratives of the past, but also indicates how gaps in memory persist and resurface over time. In exploring diverse re-workings of memory in the region, we seek to bridge one noticeable gap in the literature on historical memory in East Asia: the paucity of studies on memory and culture in North Korea. Though works like Suk-young Kim’s remarkable study Illusive Utopia are shedding new light on the construction of historical narratives in North Korea, the country generally remains on the margins of the literature about history and memory in the region.57 An aim of the present volume is to bring the North Korean case into the broader East Asian context of memory cultures (see particularly Chapters Two and Six). Research on the cultures of memory has also shed new light on the phenomenon that Ruth Linn calls the ‘culture of forgetting’.58 Forgetting, in this sense, is something different from the outright denial of the inconvenient past, of the sort peddled by groups like the Japan Society for History Textbook Reform, but it is also not simply a lapse of attention or a failure to remember. Rather, forgetting is produced by the way that stories are told, words are chosen, events are labelled and photographs are cropped. Diana Wong, for example, has shown how successive governments of Singapore developed strategies to ‘control memory production and memory suppression with regard to the Japanese Occupation of 1941–1945’.59 In his powerful study of the memory and forgetting of Pinochet’s Chile, Steve Stern evokes the image of the ‘memory box’ as a frame for discussing the ‘process of competing selective remembrances’. The memory box: contains several competing scripted albums, each of them works in progress that seek to define and give shape to a crucial turning point in life, much as a family album may script a wedding or a birth, an illness or a death, a crisis or a success. The box also contains ‘lore’ and loose memories, that is, the stray photos and mini-albums that seem important to remember but do not necessarily fit easily in the larger scripts.60 The creation of each ‘album’ or narrative is a process of selection, and therefore of forgetting as well as of remembering. The physical image of a box of memorabilia, however, does not quite capture the elusive psychology of memory, which involves not only choices of narrative, but also often internal conflicts of the conscious and subconscious mind, in which the same event may simultaneously be remembered and forgotten. Thus Bill Schwarz, exploring the memory and forgetting of empire in Britain, observes how

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certain cultural inhibitions about the imperial past have created a simultaneous process of suppression and remembering: ‘what couldn’t be spoken in one sphere of the society would appear elsewhere in the social landscape, transformed, elliptical, perhaps not even fully conscious, but nonetheless meaningful, and attesting to the pasts which couldn’t otherwise be spoken’.61 To put it another way, we might suggest that discarded or suppressed fragments of the past have a tendency to return as ghosts to haunt individuals, communities, nations and international relationships.

The ghosts of the past ‘A specter is haunting East Asia, a specter of the memories of the past, resurrected by the resurgence of nationalism that is gaining momentum in Japan, China and South Korea, snatching away hope for forging a new international framework based on regional cooperation.’ With these words, Hasegawa and Tōgō open their co-edited study East Asia’s Haunted Present. The image of the past as a ghost at the feast of Northeast Asian regionalism is often repeated in writings on this subject.62 At times, the notion of haunting is used as a rather general metaphor for the past as a troublesome presence. In some cases, however, the concept is given further layers of meaning. Grace Cho centres her study Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War on the ghost-figure of the yanggongju – ‘western princess’ – an ironic and pejorative term generally applied to Korean women who became prostitutes for the US military. More broadly, however, the yanggongju embodies the trauma and stigmatization produced by a range of forms of sexual violence and sexual encounter in Korea’s troubled modern history – the trauma of the ‘comfort women’ and the victims of rape in war, the stigmatization of GI brides, often depicted in patriarchal and nationalist Korean rhetoric as little different from prostitutes. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Avery Gordon, Cho argues that the Korean diaspora is not just ‘transgenerationally haunted by the unspoken traumas of war; it is constituted by the haunting’.63 The notion of ‘haunting’ as used by Cho, Gordon, and others enables us to go beyond a simple dichotomy between memory and forgetting. For, just as there is a state between waking and sleeping, so there is also a state between remembering and forgetting, where memories hover in the borderlands between the conscious and the unconscious, until some event in the present calls them into the full light of day. In the histories discussed by Grace Cho, shame and unarticulated pain make memories both impossible to forget and impossible to bring openly into the realms of commemoration. It is from this unclosed space between memory and forgetting that (to borrow Schwarz’s phrase) ‘the pasts which couldn’t otherwise be spoken’ arise in transformed substance as ghosts. And the ghosts that emerge from this crevasse haunt not only the survivors of trauma, but also subsequent generations of their families: ‘haunted’ individuals are caught between two inclinations. They must at all

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Tessa Morris-Suzuki costs maintain the ignorance of a loved one’s secret; hence the semblance of unawareness (nescience) concerning it. At the same time they must eliminate the state of secrecy; hence the reconstruction of the secret in the form of unconscious knowledge.64

The space between memory and forgetting may be created by profound trauma, but may also be generated by experiences which are unable to find a place in the existing narratives of history. Master narratives deploy grand categories such as ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’, ‘combatant’ and ‘civilian’, ‘victim’ and ‘aggressor’. Many human experiences, however, fail to fit comfortably within these categories, and therefore even lack a vocabulary which will allow them to become historical narratives. Mariko Asano Tamanoi’s and Lori Watt’s studies of Japanese repatriated from the empire at the end of the Asia-Pacific War, for instance, reveal how the experiences of the repatriates have haunted Japanese war memories because they fail to fit into the binaries of aggressor and victim.65 Similarly, in Chapter Eight of this book we consider the haunting presence of the Korean kamikaze pilots, and examine contending efforts to find a place for their story in national and cross-border narratives of war. But, as we have already observed in considering the ends of reconciliation, historical narratives are not static. They change in response to shifting political, social and cultural conditions, and this fluidity has the potential to open up space for the ghosts who have long haunted the margins of memory to take their place at the table of history. In Chapter Three, for example, we shall see how China’s domestic political and cultural changes and growing links with Japan created new space in Chinese film for the stories of wartime personal relationships between Chinese and Japanese: a topic which had been unspeakable in the days when the Japanese invaders were uniformly depicted in Chinese media as dwarfish demons. Even if this continuous reframing of narratives encompasses long-neglected experiences, however, this does not necessarily reduce nationalism or lead towards common understandings of the past. The examination of Japanese war museums in Chapter Five shows how previously excluded or marginalized stories may come to be accommodated within the bounds of existing nationalist tropes. So Tokyo’s Shōwakan, opened in 1999, responds to the rise of women’s history by focusing on the war experience of Japanese women and children, and yet co-exists with, and complements, the nearby and older Yūshūkan, which presents an overtly masculinist view of the war. Changing attitudes to the body and disability make possible the recently established Shōkeikan’s representation of the history of the experience of war-wounded soldiers, but here too without fundamentally challenging the Yūshūkan’s depiction of war as noble sacrifice, or probing the colonial dimensions of Japan’s military ventures in Asia. How can silenced or marginalized experiences be made visible in forms that destabilize the self-contained certainties of nationalist narratives? One answer may lie in cross-border approaches to public memory, which bring contrasting narratives of the same event into dialogue with one another. Chapter Six of this volume brings together presentations of the Korean War from four national

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museums – in South Korea, North Korea, China and Australia. In creating its own story of the war, each museum silences certain aspects of the experience of violence. Since these museums are also memorials, whose mission is to commemorate the national dead, there are limits to their capacity to move beyond their national narratives, and to hear and respond to their own silences. Like Tōgō’s approach to reconciliation, this chapter aims to place contrasting narratives of the past side-by-side. However, the aim here is not to produce a ‘synthetic’ common narrative on which all can agree. Rather, by bringing these narratives into conversation with one another, we can make the silences in each individual museum resoundingly audible. In this way, it may become possible to open up potentially creative space for the rethinking of past violence – by becoming more aware of silence and aporia in both our own and others’ representations of history. The artistic imagination can also create new language and imagery to convey long-silenced stories, or to reactivate dormant memories. Chapter Seven explores some ways in which recent experimental photographic and artistic projects commemorate the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Here the issue is not ‘forgetting’, but rather ‘memory fatigue’. Many Japanese commentators have observed declining interest and participation in more conventional commemorative events, as the survivors of the atomic bombings grow old and die, and younger generations consign this history to the realms of stories heard already, horrors on which the entire lexicon of horror has already been expended. Can creative arts give new life to this memory? And can they do so in ways that startle and shock without trivializing violence or exploiting it for commercial ends? Cultures of memory and forgetting need to be sought, not just in commercial and public realms such as cinema, museum and art exhibitions, but also in the less visible actions of individuals and small groups who devote themselves to the work of remembering. Franziska Seraphim, for instance, has shown how non-state groups ranging from the Association of Shinto Shrines to the Japan Teachers’ Union have helped to define the terms of historical debate in post-war Japan.66 Alongside these relatively large and formal national bodies, however, a host of very small local groups and individuals also play quiet but significant roles in shaping the contours of memory, not only at local and national level, but also across national boundaries.67 While Chapter Four considers the experience of one such grassroots reconciliation group, Chapter Eight takes the story to the individual and personal level, showing how a single person caught in the vicissitudes of East Asia’s violent past – a Korean migrant recruited into the ranks of the Japanese imperial army’s suicide pilots – came to terms with his own memories, and how his private past was interwoven with the public reshaping of memories throughout the region. These examples suggest possible creative approaches to the problem of addressing the ghosts of history – ways of allowing marginalized personal experiences to erode the boundaries of national narratives and reawaken questions of historical responsibility. Both at the level of national media and at the grassroots and personal level, the work of memory can find new words and images for expressing pasts which have been unspeakable and unspoken, so easing the ongoing

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pain that history inflicts on the present. For, as we shall suggest, the ongoing and ever-changing work of reconciliation does not expel the ghosts of the past. Rather, its task is an even more difficult and demanding one: in the words of Jacques Derrida, ‘to exorcise not in order to chase away the ghosts, but this time to grant them the right’ to a ‘hospitable memory . . . out of a concern for justice’.68

Notes 1 ‘Nihon Taishikan mae Ianfu Rensōzō Seifu: Tekkyô o Yōsei’, Yomiuri Shinbun (Tokyo Edition), 15 December 2011, p. 4. 2 ‘Lee Presses Japan to Put Priority on Resolving “Comfort Women” Issue’, Mainichi Daily News, 15 December 2011. Available online: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/ 20111218p2a00m0na010000c.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]; ‘Don’t Make Easy Compromise on “Comfort Women” Issue’, Daily Yomiuri Online, 20 December 2011. Available online: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/editorial/T111219004474.htm [Accessed 26 December 2011]. 3 Quoted in ‘“Peace Monument” for Former “Comfort Women” Established in front of Japanese Embassy’, Hankyoreh (English Edition), 15 December 2011. Available online: http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/510277.html [Accessed 26 December 2011]. 4 See ‘Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the Result of the Study on the Issue of the “Comfort Women”’, 4 August 1993, on the home page of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/ state9308.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 5 See the Fund’s digital museum, ‘The Comfort Women and the Asian Women’s Fund’. Available online: http://www.awf.or.jp/ [Accessed 20 August 2012]; also C. Sarah Soh, ‘Japan’s National/Asian Women’s Fund for “Comfort Women”’, Pacific Affairs, Summer 2003, 76(2):209–33. 6 See Utsumi Aiko, Sengo Hoshō kara Kangaeru Nihon to Ajia, (2nd edition) Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan, 2010, pp. 10–24. 7 See ‘Treaty of Peace with Japan’, on the website Taiwan Documents Project. Available online: http://www.taiwandocuments.org/sanfrancisco01.htm [Accessed 26 December 2011]. 8 Ibid. 9 The agreements were with Burma (1954), the Philippines (1956), Indonesia (1958), South Vietnam (1959), and Malaysia and Singapore (1967). 10 For the text of the declaration, see ‘Japan–DPRK Pyongyang Declaration’, 17 September 2002, on the website of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/n_korea/pmv0209/pyongyang.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 11 J. L. Vellut, ‘Japanese Reparations to the Philippines’, Asian Survey, October 1963, 3(10):496–506, quotation from p. 500. 12 Seo Hyun-jin, ‘Seoul Ready to Launch Panel on Korean Victims of Colonial Rule’, Korea Herald, 11 February 2005. Available online: http://www.koreaherald.com/ national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20050211000005 [Accessed 27 December 2011]; see also Alexis Dudden, Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea and the United States, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 94–6. 13 Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices, New York: W. W. Norton, 2000, p. x. 14 Utsumi Aiko, Sengo Hoshō kara Kangaeru Nihon to Ajia, (2nd edition) Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan, 2010, pp. 105–110. Five of the successful compensation claims were by Korean atomic bomb victims (1978, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005) and one by Taiwanese wartime bond holders (1984). The seventh case was not strictly a matter of

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war compensation, but rather a libel suit brought by a victim of the Japanese attack on Nanjing against a Japanese author who had described his claims as false. The partially successful case and out-of-court settlements related to claims by Korean and Chinese forced labourers for unpaid wages and/or compensation. See ‘Policy Speech by Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa to the 127th session of the National Diet’, 23 August 1993, on the website Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific, George Washington University: http://www.gwu.edu/~memory/data/ government/japan.html [Accessed 28 December 2011]. ‘Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama “On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the War’s End” ’, 15 August 1995, on the website Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific, George Washington University: http://www.mofa. go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. Takahashi Tetsuya, ‘Yōroppa, Ajia, Sekai: ‘Daburu Sutandādo’ o Koerareru ka’, in Takahashi Tetsuya ed., ‘Rekishi Ninshiki’ Ronsō, Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2002, pp. 136–44. For the text of von Weizsäcker’s speech, see ‘Speech by Richard von Weizsacker, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, in the Bundestag during the Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the End of the War in Europe and of National Socialist Tyranny’, 8 May 1985, on the website: http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/ Weiszacker.html [Accessed 28 December 2011]. Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices, New York: W. W. Norton, 2000, pp. 62–3. For example, Philip Seaton, Japan’s Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ in Historical Consciousness of World War II, London and New York: Routledge, 2007; Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005, Cambridge Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2006. For the US as bystander, see Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ‘Introduction’, in Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008, pp. 1–14, quotation from p. 10. See Philip Seaton, Japan’s Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ in Historical Consciousness of World War II, London and New York: Routledge, 2007, Chapter 3;Alexis Dudden, Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea and the United States, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Korean scholar Park Yu-ha also strongly criticizes South Koreans for failing to acknowledge their own country’s share of responsibility for the absence of reparations (while also criticizing Japanese nationalists for denying Japan’s historical responsibilities); see Park Yu-ha, Wakai no tame ni: Kyōkasho, Ianfu, Yasukuni, Tokutō, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2008, particularly pp. 223–6. Alexis Dudden, Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea and the United States, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 131. See for example Charles Armstrong, ‘Doubly Forgotten: Korea’s Vietnam War and the Revival of Memory’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 291–306; Kyung-Yoong Bay, ‘From Seoul to Saigon: Gook Meets Charlie’, in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park and Daqing Yang eds., Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 114–29; Dong-Choon Kim, ‘The War Against the Enemy Within: Hidden Massacres in the Early Stages of the Korean War’, in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park and Daqing Yang eds., Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 75–93. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, ‘Introduction: Re-Envisioning Asia, Past and Present’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 1–14, quotation from pp. 7–8. In practical terms, the idea of reconciliation inspired the setting up of collaborative

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Tessa Morris-Suzuki government-sponsored committees of historians: one (created in 2002) bringing together Japanese and South Korean historians and the other (created in 2006) bringing together Japanese and Chinese historians. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, ‘Nicchū Rekishi Kyōdō Kenkyū (Gaiyō)’. Available online: http://www.mofa.go.jp/ mofaj/area/china/rekishi_kk.html [Accessed 29 December 2011]; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, ‘Nikkan Rekishi Kyōdō Kenkyū’. Available online: http://www.mofa. go.jp/mofaj/area/korea/rekishi/index.html [Accessed 29 December 2011]. See Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, p. 9; Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ‘Introduction’, in Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008, p. 3. Kazuhiko Togo, ‘Japan’s Historical Memory: Overcoming Polarization towards Synthesis’, in Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008, pp. 59–79, quotation from pp. 61–2. Kazuhiko Togo, ‘Japan’s Historical Memory: Overcoming Polarization towards Synthesis’, in Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008, p. 63. Kazuhiko Togo, ‘Japan’s Historical Memory: Overcoming Polarization towards Synthesis’, in Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008, pp. 65 and 73; see also Kazuhiko Togo, ‘Comfort Women: Deep Polarization in Japan on Facts and on Morality’, in Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008, pp. 142–62. Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, p. viii. Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, pp. 4–5 and 101–26. For a discussion of the notion of ‘thin’ reconciliation, see Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park and Daqing Yang, ‘Introduction’, in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park and Daqing Yang eds., Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 1–14. Kazuhiko Togo, ‘Japan’s Historical Memory: Overcoming Polarization towards Synthesis’, in Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2008, pp. 61–2. Friedrich Grimm, Faisons la Reconciliation Franco-Allemande, Paris: Groupe ‘Collaboration’, 1942. Park Yu-ha, Wakai no tame ni: Kyōkasho, Ianfu, Yasukuni, Tokutō, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2008. Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, p. 4. Park Yu-ha, Wakai no tame ni: Kyōkasho, Ianfu, Yasukuni, Tokutō, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2008, p. 234. Quoted in Koshida Takashi, ‘Zenshin o Togetekita Kingendaishi Kijutsu’, in Ishiwata Nobuo and Koshida Takashi eds., Sekai no Rekishi Kyōkasho: 11-kakoku no Hikaku Kenkyū, Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 2002, pp. 265–72, quotation from p. 267. Ienaga Saburō (trans. Richard H. Minear), Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One Historian’s Odyssey, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011, p. 130. Kimijima Kazuhiko, Kyōkasho no Shisō: Nihon to Kankoku no Kingendaishi, Tokyo: Suzusawa Shoten, 1996, pp. 181–92.

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42 Ienaga Saburō (trans. Richard H. Minear), Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One Historian’s Odyssey, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011, pp. 175–96; Nozaki Yoshiko and Inokuchi Hiromitsu, ‘Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburō’s Textbook Lawsuits’, in Laura Hein and Mark Selden eds., Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2000, pp. 96–126; Yoshiko Nozaki and Mark Selden, ‘Japanese Textbooks, Nationalism and Historical Memory: Intra- and Inter-National Conflicts’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, June 15 2009, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yoshiko-Nozaki/3173. 43 Yoshiko Nozaki and Mark Selden, ‘Japanese Textbooks, Nationalism and Historical Memory: Intra- and Inter-National Conflicts’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol 24-5-09, June 15 2009, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yoshiko-Nozaki/3173. 44 Mikyoung Kim, ‘Myth and Fact in Northeast Asia’s History Textbook Controversies’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 15 August 2008. 45 Barak Kushner, ‘Nationality and Nostalgia: The Manipulation of Memory in Japan, Taiwan and China since 1990’, The International History Review, December 2007, 29(4): 793–820. 46 Trilateral Committee on Common History Teaching Materials, A History that Opens the Future; published in Chinese as Dongya Sanguo de Jinxiandaishi, Beijing: Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 2005; in Japanese as Mirai o Hiraku Rekishi: Higashi Ajia Sangoku no Kingendaishi, Tokyo: Kōbunken, 2005; in Korean, Miraereul Yeoneun Yeoksa: Han Jung Iri Hamkke mandeun Dong Asia Samguk-eui Geunhyeondaesa, Seoul: Hankyoreh Sinmunsa, 2005; for an English version of the Preface and Table of Contents, see http://www.gwu.edu/~memory/issues/textbooks/jointeastasia.html [Accessed 16 November 2012]. 47 Seaton, Japan’s Contested War Memories; Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History, London: Verso, 2005. 48 Itagaki Ryūta, Jeong Ji-Yeong and Iwasaki Minoru, ‘ “Higashi Ajia no Kioku no Ba” o Tankyū shite’, in Itagaki Ryūta, Jeong Ji-Yeong and Iwasaki Minoru eds., Higashi Ajia no Kioku no Ba, Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 2011, pp. 7–35, citation from p. 8. 49 Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman eds. (trans. Arthur Goldhammer), Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, 3 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–1998. 50 For example, James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, Yale: Yale University Press, 1993; Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera’s Eye, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 51 For example, Elizabeth Jelin, ‘Human Rights and the Memory of Political Violence and Repression: Constructing a New Field in Social Science’, in Charles H. Wood and Bryan R. Roberts eds., Rethinking Development in Latin America, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, pp. 193–201; Joshua Cole, ‘Intimate Acts and Unspeakable Relations: Remembering Torture and the War for Algerian Independence’, in Alec G. Hargreaves ed., Memory, Empire and Postcolonialism: Legacies of French Colonialism, Lanham Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005, pp. 125–41. 52 For example, Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997; Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic and the Politics of Remembering, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997; Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone eds, Memory, History, Nation: Contested Pasts, New York: Routledge, 2003. 53 Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory, Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press; Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000; Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Narratives of Nation Building

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Tessa Morris-Suzuki in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism, Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2003; Kirk A Denton, ‘Horror and Atrocity: Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Japanese Museums’, in Ching Kwan Lee and Guobin Yang eds., Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China, Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2007, pp. 245–86. Hong Kal, ‘The Aesthetic Construction of Ethnic Nationalism: War Memorial Museums in Korea and Japan’, in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park and Daqing Yang eds., Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 133–5; Jeff Kingston, ‘Nanjing’s Massacre Memorial: Renovating War Memory in Nanjing and Tokyo’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 22 August 2008. Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz, ‘Introduction: Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem’, in Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz eds., Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 1–25, quotation from p. 21. Kim and Schwartz, ‘Introduction: Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem’, pp. 21–2. Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia: Theatre, Film and Everyday Performance in North Korea, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010, see particularly Chapter 2; also Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung, North Korea: Beyond Charismatic Politics, Lanham Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012; and Sonia Ryang, Reading North Korea: An Ethnological Inquiry, Cambridge Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 2012. Ruth Linn, Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting, Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press, 2004. Diana Wong, ‘Memory Suppression and Memory Production: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore’, in T. Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White and Lisa Yoneyama eds., Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001, pp. 218–38. Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004, p. xxviii. Bill Schwarz, Memories of Empire, Vol. 1: The White Man’s World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 8–9. Mikyoung Kim, ‘Myth and Fact in Northeast Asia’s History Textbook Controversies’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 15 August 2008. Available at: http://www. japanfocus.org/-Mikyoung-kim/2855 [Accessed 16 November 2012]. Grace M. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, p. 12; see also Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok, (ed. and trans. Nicholas T. Rand), The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 188, quoted in Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora, p. 35. Mariko Asano Tamanoi, Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009; Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009. Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005, Cambridge Massachusetts. and London: Harvard University Press, 2006. For a discussion of some interesting examples in the Japanese context, see Kazuyo Yamane, Grassroots Museums for Peace in Japan: Unknown Efforts for Peace and Reconciliation, Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, 1994, p. 175, quoted in Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Part I

Reconciliation as method

1

On the frontiers of history Territory and cross-border dialogue in East Asia Leonid Petrov and Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The troubled region Controversies over history in East Asia are not a recent phenomenon. Ancient kingdoms in China, Korea and Japan spared nothing to create versions of the past which would help justifying and glorifying the power of the incumbent ruler or dynasty. Historical accounts tended to depict immediate neighbours as hostile, while the neighbours of neighbours were often deemed allies. The errors of the past were habitually rectified by official historians, only to be further criticized by succeeding generations. In modern times, Japanese colonial historians and nationalist historians in China and Korea clashed over a range of issues related to their claims of national superiority, and economic and political advancement. Myths describing the origins of their respective nations came to the forefront of historiographical debates in East Asia. Militarism and colonialism dictated the new paradigm of historical discourse, in which economic progress and technological modernization were used as the main measures to calibrate the achievements of the national past and present. History as an academic discipline, once again, was employed by conflicting sides to justify their uncompromising courses and consolidate popular support. After the fall of the Japanese Empire in August 1945, when Korea, Taiwan, South Sakhalin, the Kurile Islands and other former colonies became independent or changed hands, history continued to play an important role in explaining areas with ambiguous administrative status. As national divisions continued, history was perennially used by the competing sides to prove their case for national unification and independence. North and South Korea, as well as mainland China and Taiwan, both fiercely competed for the exclusive right to represent the nation and, therefore, to lead the process of reunification. Russian and Japanese historians were also hired by the policymakers to find convincing evidence that could prove the ownership of contested areas such as the Kurile Islands. Highly publicized controversies over textbooks, maps, cultural relics and national borders continue to flare in the region. As we shall see in the following chapter, China and Taiwan, North and South Korea, though at loggerheads on ideological issues, often join forces on national issues, teaming up against other neighbours and regional powers whom they commonly accuse of past wrongdoings. The sensitive

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issues of forced labour abuse, government-ordered massacres and inhumane treatment of POWs or civilians, germ warfare experimentation and other war crimes continue to cause tensions in the region. Today’s historians, supported by increasingly proactive netizens and NGOs, enthusiastically raise the issues of ancient and not so remote past. Disagreements over the topics of Chinese hegemony, Japanese colonialism and the Cold War stand-off often become entangled in contemporary problems of economic competition for resources, technologies and markets. For decades the region has remained an active conflict zone dominated by the unresolved issues and legacies of colonialism, the Second World War and the Cold War conflict. Korea remains divided politically, economically and ideologically. The Civil War in China also ended inconclusively in 1949, leaving the country divided into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. After Moscow failed to agree with Tokyo and Washington on the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which was signed by the United States, Japan and 46 other nations in September 1951, Japan continued to claim that some of its northern territories (the Southern Kuriles) were illegally occupied by Russia.1 Tensions between Japan and the two Chinese states arise from the ambiguity related to the possession of the Diaoyutai/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea.2 A serious conflict between Japan and the two Koreas stems from their conflicting claims for administrative rights over the tiny islet of Dokdo/Takeshima. This islet, also known as Liancourt Rocks, was not mentioned in the final version of the San Francisco Treaty. Existing historical documents fail to provide conclusive evidence to support the claims by one side or another.3 Even the name of the sea, which surrounds the disputed islet, is a subject for bitter controversy. The Koreans insist that the name ‘Sea of Japan’ should be dropped and universally replaced with the ‘East Sea’, as it was known in Korean and Chinese texts before the colonial expansion of Japan in the late nineteenth century. But the Japanese in principal refuse to use this name as the sea in question lies to the west of their home islands. Many controversies over history in the region are seriously aggravated by the anxieties generated by ideological and economic competition. In the 1970s and 1980s, intense economic competition between the regional ‘tigers’ and ‘dragons’ came to the fore, and the export-oriented economies of Taiwan and South Korea engaged in the cut-throat struggle with Japan for resources and markets. More recently, the rise of China has opened a new chapter in the history of the region, resulting in revisions of understandings of China’s past and present both internationally and within China itself. Economic rivalries often intensify the politicization of history and conflicts over the legacies of history.

Forms of conflict, processes of reconciliation According to He Baogang and David Hundt, current historical conflicts in East Asia can be divided into three major categories. The first group of disputes involves the possession of cultural assets, physical, spiritual and territorial. The timeline and location of ancient civilizations, and cultural affinity of long-gone

On the frontiers of history 31 kingdoms (Goguryeo/Gaoguoli, Balhae/Bohai, Imna/Mimana), fall into this category. Among the territorial disputes the most difficult are about Dokdo/Takeshima, the Diaoyutai/Senkaku islands, the South Kurile/Northern Territories and the geographical name of the East Sea/Sea of Japan. Disputes about the origins of oriental traditional medicine, calligraphy, the Dano/Duanwu Festival,4 and the family lineage of Confucius and poet Qu Yuan can also be included.5 The second group of historical conflicts in the region concerns the ways in which certain powers colonized and maltreated the neighbouring peoples. Some of the bitterest memories are associated with the building of Japan’s ‘Greater East Asia co-Prosperity Sphere’ and the ‘developmental colonialism’ which resulted in forced labour mobilization and wartime atrocities. The Nanjing Massacre, bacteriological experimentation Unit 731 in Manchuria, and ‘comfort stations’ of the Japanese military are among the most debated topics across East Asia and the North Pacific. The 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean War (1950–1953) and the Vietnam War (1965–1975) can also be added into this category of ongoing historiographical disputes. The third group of conflicts is that which is being caused by the contemporary developments related to the issues outlined above. For instance, Japanese government apologies or refusals to compensate the victims; publication of new history textbooks; errors in geographical maps; changing administrative names and borders cause fierce public reaction. Recurrent attempts to re-examine the Tokyo Trials (1946–1948), growing critical assessment of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, and new discoveries of the post-war reparations injustices belong in this category. Among the most vivid examples of this type of conflicts was the saga with registration of Goguryeo/Gaoguoli cultural relics as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, where both Koreas and China claimed the cultural legacy of this ancient kingdom as part of their national history.6 Another way of categorizing historical issues in the region is to consider various types of ongoing dialogue or reconciliation processes that may be necessary to overcome the forms of conflict discussed by He and Hundt. Problems of historical dialogue within the region might be examined under the headings of ‘geography of reconciliation’ – the settlement of border disputes and building of cross-border linkages; ‘historiography of reconciliation’ – the sharing of perspectives on and narratives of the past; and ‘media of reconciliation’ – the development of shared media through which past and present issues can be debated.7 Ongoing dialogue at these three levels may ultimately sooth haunting memories of the past and ease anxieties about the future. The following chapters will address issues related to historiography and media, but this chapter explores some examples of ‘geographies of reconciliation’ by focusing on issues that fall within He and Hundt’s first category: disputes concerning the impact of history on possession and belonging.

Geographies of reconciliation: the China–Russia case As with conflicts over textbooks, disputes over territories, geographical names and borders have become a volatile element in domestic and international politics.

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This is because nationalism as a popular sentiment can be easily inculcated, but proves difficult to control. For ultra-patriotic groups the importance of obscure and uninhabited lands is often exaggerated since these lands are elevated to become symbols of national prestige and territorial integrity. To such groups the disputed territories often appear as ‘sacred’ and ‘inalienable’. Nevertheless, there have been successful examples where seemingly uncompromising positions have been reconciled through negotiations and mutual acquiescence. While the conflict between Japan and Russia over the Kurile Islands, and the Dokdo-Takeshima dispute between Korea and Japan, have attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, the role of frontiers as meeting places (rather than places of conflict) should also be highlighted. This chapter examines examples of frontiers as meeting places, and considers the extent to which agreements on frontier issues have opened doors to a new era of friendship and cooperation, national benefit and stable peace. In the last 20 years one notable but relatively little-discussed success has been scored by China and Russia who managed to settle their long-standing disputes over numerous islands lying on their common riparian boundaries. In May 1991, after four years of secret negotiations, a boundary agreement was signed between the former communist rivals. This demarcated some 3,700 km of border between both states, largely running along the Amur and the Ussuri Rivers. Russia agreed to transfer to China some 600 of the 700 little islets and rocks, uninhabited except for the itinerant fisherman, which fall on the Chinese side of the two rivers. These included the island of Damansky/Zhenbao, the site of fierce and bloody clashes of March 1969 between Chinese and Soviet soldiers. According to the estimates by a Russian historian, Boris Tkachenko, the treaty resulted in net territorial gain for China, which received about 720 km2.8 In 2004, a new agreement stated the intention of Moscow and Beijing to resolve and demarcate the rest of the disputed border. Based on the thalweg (lowest point in the river stream) principle, both sides identified the various points of contention. Military usage and traffic rights along the river borders were taken into consideration when Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island (Heixiazi) and Abagaitu Islet were demarcated. Heixiazi with its area about 350 km2 was divided between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. Its position at the confluence of the Amur and the Ussuri, just next to the major Russian city of Khabarovsk, has given it great strategic importance.9 According to the 2004 Complementary Agreement between the PRC and the RF on the Eastern Section of the China– Russia Boundary, Russia also agreed to relinquish control over a part of Abagaitu Islet (approximately 58 km2) on the Argun River. The Russian Duma and the Chinese National People’s Congress approved the agreement in 2005. The agreement, although barely discussed with the public, did not meet complete approval on either side of the border. In May 2005, the Russian Cossacks in Khabarovsk demonstrated against the loss of half of Bolshoy Ussuriysky. Some Chinese commentators, outside of the control of PRC government censorship, especially the media in Hong Kong and Taiwan, criticized the Beijing government for signing the agreement, which they regarded as permanent the loss of former

On the frontiers of history 33 Chinese territory to Russia. Therefore, the government of the Republic of China in Taiwan still formally claims all parts of the Heixiazi Islands. Heixiazi is bounded closely by Yinlong/Tarabarov Island and over 90 smaller islets. The dispute over Yinlong Island and its neighbouring islands was finally resolved on 21 July 2008. On that day the Foreign Ministers of the two countries signed an agreement in Beijing, under which Russia ceded an additional 174 km2 of territory to China. This comprised all of Yinlong Island, which at the time of the territory transfer, was largely uninhabited. Some news reports suggest that China is considering developing tourism on Yinlong Island, which is the most eastern part of China and the first place on mainland China to see sunlight. The settlement of their border dispute followed over 40 years of negotiations. Even though it might have seemed as if China ‘gained’ a lot of territories at the expense of Russian ‘losses’, Chung Chien-peng argues that: settling the riparian boundary according to the thalweg principle only means that Russia has resolved a border dispute by adhering to widely accepted international law. In exchange, China renounced openly that she has abandoned all territorial claims to the Russian Far East, although it was territory that she has little opportunity to recapture anyway.10 Why were China’s disputes with Russia over Zhenbao/Damansky, Heixiazi/ Bolshoy Ussuriysky, Yinlong/Tarabarov and Abagaitu resolved so easily, while its dispute with Japan over Diaoyutai/Senkaku shows no sign of solution? Chung Chien-peng argues that in spite of a visible similarity between the Chinese claims over these two groups of islands, the mechanism of dispute resolution differs significantly. He recommends employing the theory of ‘two-level game’, where negotiators involved in international bargaining not only have to negotiate with their foreign negotiating counterparts (Level I), but also have to negotiate with domestic constituents who could block the deal at home (Level II).11 Chung warns that ‘the forces of nationalism have shown few signs of abating since the end of the Cold War, and may well experience an increase in influence in bad economic times’.12 The influence of domestic nationalist groups on negotiations regarding territorial issues between South Korea and Japan over Dokdo/ Takeshima, between China and Japan over the Senkaku Island/Diaoyutai and between Russia and Japan over the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories may be decisive. On the other hand, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are less inclined to pay attention to the protests of their constituencies than democratic governments, which are more transparent and more aware of public opinion. This may explain the impasse in Russo-Japanese relations as opposed to the easy and efficient demarcation of the Russia–DPRK border.

Korean borders as meeting places The Russo-Korean border could be seen as a good example of border as meeting point with the exception of one, virtually non-existent island of Noktundo.

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Although North Korea does not have territorial disputes with Russia, South Korea claims that Russia illegally controls 32 km2 of Korean land. The border between Eastern Manchuria, Russian Maritime Province and Northern Korea was first created in 1860 under the Convention of Peking, when Russia acquired new lands from China. Some of the lands, which Qing Dynasty ceded to the Russian Tsars, had been possessed by the Yi Dynasty of Joseon Korea since the fifteenth century. In 1587 the Koreans had a local garrison on this island under the control of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a national hero of Korea, whose mission was to repel the Jurchen nomads. Noktundo was an island in the segment of the Tumen River (Dumangang in Korean), which separated Russian Maritime Province (Primorskii Krai) from Northern Hamgyeong Province of Korea. Every time water levels in the Tumen was fell, the northern branch of the river would change or completely disappear. As a result, the island of Noktundo de facto merged with the Russian mainland, while de jure it remained under Korean jurisdiction. After the conclusion of the 1884 Russian–Korean trade agreement the Korean government approached Tsarist Russia many times with a request to return the Noktundo Island, but to no avail. Three rounds of talks held between Korea and China over the resolution of this territorial problem did not bear fruit either. The Qing government referred to the false topographic documents at the time of the transfer of the lands east of the Tumen River to Russia, and only expressed regret to the Korean side. All this prompted the ROK government to believe that Chinese officials had implicitly admitted that the 1860 Peking Convention was illegal and unfair.13 The Japanese colonial regime (1910–1945) also considered areas around the Noktundo Island as ‘Korean territories’ illegally occupied by Russia, but attributed this to the weakness of Joseon Korea’s authorities in dealing with territorial disputes. The establishment of the DPRK in North Korea in 1948 completely changed the nature of relations between Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow. In order to secure economic and military aid from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, North Korea abandoned territorial disputes with the fraternal nations. The DPRK government, which claimed sole legitimacy on the Korean Peninsula, ceded some lands around Mount Baekdu (Changbaishan in Chinese) to China and agreed to the existing border with Russia. Due to the changing course of the Tumen River, the border between North Korea and Russia periodically needed to be re-demarcated. Most recently this was done between 2000 and 2003, when the Russian Federation and the DPRK conducted a joint topographical survey on terrain changes, and restored the boundary markers along the 17 km-long frontier. This was confirmed by the two governments in the 2004 Protocol on State Border Demarcation. To prevent further erosion, Russia has planted willows along the Tumen River and built a 13-km bank. The geostrategic importance of this short DPRK-Russian border is that it effectively separates the land mass of Northeast China from the East Sea/Sea of Japan. The North Korean Special Economic Zone of Rajin-Seonbong attracts both Russia and China as a strategically important transportation hub. The state-run monopoly OAO Russian Railways is currently upgrading the 52 km railway connection

On the frontiers of history 35 between the Khasan–Dumangang railway crossing and Rajin-Seonbong SEZ, investing at least 1.75 billion roubles (US $60 million) into this project.14 China, in its turn, has built a modern expensive highway linking the city of Yangji with the Rajin-Seonbong SEZ. These projects may positively affect the reconnection of the trans-Korean railway. By linking Rajin-Seonbong with either the Trans-Siberian Railroad or the network of PRC railroads, both Russia and China are hoping to benefit from the transit of South Korean and Japanese cargo which could be sent via their respective territories to Central Asian and European markets. Pyongyang approves these profitable initiatives, including the building of high-power electric line and the natural gas pipe line across the Russian-DPRK border.15 However, these projects cannot succeed without improved inter-Korean relations and resumed cross-DMZ traffic corridors. The future of the Russo-Japanese border therefore depends on the future of the dividing line separating North from South Korea. The growing air and maritime traffic between South and North Korea was one of the major achievements of the ‘Sunshine Policy’ launched by the South Korean government of the late President Kim Dae-jung from 1998 onward, and maintained by his successor Roh Moo-hyun until 2008. Even before the historic June 2000 summit between Kim Dae-jung and his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-il, the once impenetrable frontier of the Demilitarized Zone began to be pierced by crossings and joint zones of economic cooperation. The Mount Geumgang tourist resort project, just north of the DMZ, was launched in 1998 and jointly operated by Hyundai Asan and the DPRK Tourism Authority in an area of particular natural beauty which was also one of the main historical centres of Korean Buddhism (see Figure 1.1). In 2003, a land route across the DMZ was

Figure 1.1 Part of the Mount Geumgang Tourist Resort Complex, shortly before the death of Park Wang-ja.

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opened to facilitate access to the area. The number of visits continued increasing after 2007, when South Korean tourists were allowed to use their own cars to travel to the jointly-managed resort. Although free movement outside the official routes was restricted by the DPRK side, these visits allowed South Koreans to get a rare glimpse of the North. From 2002 onward, the Mount Geumgang resort was used by the national Red Cross organizations as a place for family reunions. During the 16 rounds of faceto-face reunions 10,673 ROK and 5,539 DPRK citizens were able to meet with their loved ones for the first time since the Korean War. The family reunion at Mount Geumgang resort which took place on 17–22 October 2007 brought together 396 South Koreans and 97 North Koreans. To facilitate these trips a special Reunion Centre for separated families was completed in 2008. In 2003, on the western end of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), just 60 km north of Seoul, construction began on the Gaeseong Industrial Park (GIP) as a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation. GIP officially opened in March 2005 and all infrastructure facilities and half of the planned First Development Stage targets were accomplished by the end of 2007. Covering more than 350 hectares (or 3.5 km2) it attracted more than 32,000 North Koreans to work for 83 South Korean-owned factories with some 1,600 ROK managers. Initially, this zone of cooperation was treated as exclusively inter-Korean, but from March 2008 some European and Chinese companies began investing in GIP. During the decade of ‘Sunshine Policy’, almost two million South Koreans visited the scenic Mount Geumgang resort as tourists and half a million more crossed the fortified border for business purposes. On any given day, 300 to 400 South Korean vehicles crossed the DMZ with some 1,000 people going to North Korea to conduct business activities. Annually, about 100,000 North and South Koreans visited each other – a figure which does not include the South Korean tourists who visited the Mount Geumgang resort between 1999 and 2008.16 This human contact also involved a reimagining of the geography of the nation. In 1999, to celebrate the start of its tours from South Korea to Mount Geumgang, for example, the Hyundai Asan Corporation co-sponsored an exhibition entitled Dream Geumgang (Mongyu Geumgang): Mount Geumgang as Seen through 300 Years of Art. Held at Seoul’s Ilmin Art Gallery, this exhibition presented works ranging chronologically from some of the greatest masterpieces of traditional Korean landscape painting to contemporary representations of the mountains, including photographic and video works. Like the tours themselves, the Dream Geumgang exhibition became a focus of some controversy, but the content of the exhibition and the discourse surrounding it provided a fascinating window for observing the processes of national reimagining that border contact engendered.17 The opening of the joint North–South tourism complex was embedded in a narrative of national, and nationalist, reconciliation: Mount Geumgang’s unique beauty and special place in Korean culture and consciousness, it was argued, made it the perfect place for a coming together of North and South. As curator Lee Tae-ho wrote in the exhibition catalogue:

On the frontiers of history 37 since times past, Mount Geumgang has been beloved by an entire people. The extraordinary landscape of Mount Geumgang possesses the spirit of our people. It is our rightful pride. In old travel accounts about Mount Geumgang it is common to come upon statements like ‘Even the Chinese would like to have been born on Mount Geumgang or at least to have visited it.18 As in other cases (to be examined in Chapter Two), revived nationalist imagery provided a framework for cultural and artistic reconciliation between South and North. Mount Geumgang also became a site for other forms of cultural border crossing. Most of the area’s Buddhist temples, many dating back to the sixth century of the Common Era, had been reduced to rubble during the Korean War. Between 2001 and 2007, however, one of the oldest temples, Shingyesa, was restored to its former splendour thanks to a collaborative project between the South Korean Jogye Order of Buddhism and the Central Committee of the Buddhist Federation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the arm of the North Korean state which supervises the training of the country’s small cohort of Buddhist priests. The ceremony to mark the opening of the restored temple, held in October 2007, was attended by a delegation of more than 300 South Korean Buddhists and 30 representatives from the North Korean Buddhist Federation, including North Korean Buddhist priests in their striking red and black robes. 19 The era of cross-border inter-Korean cooperation ended on 11 July 2008, when a 53-year-old housewife from Seoul, Park Wang-ja, was shot dead by a North Korean soldier while vacationing at the Mount Geumgang resort. Park had entered a fenced-off North Korean military zone while strolling along the beach before dawn. After North Korea rejected Seoul’s demand for a joint probe into the killing and defended the shooting as a ‘self-defence measure’, South Korea suspended tourism to Mount Geumgang. A year later, on 11 June 2009, the North Korean news agency KCNA announced the nullification of all contracts on rent, salaries and taxes adopted for Gaeseong Industrial Park. Pyongyang wanted the minimum monthly wage to be raised fourfold (to US $300 from $75) and demanded an immediate lump-sum land lease payment of US $500 million. It asked Seoul to empty the industrial estate unless the money was paid. A compromise was reached and the GIP was spared from sharing the fate which beset the Mount Geumgang resort, but the 50,000 North Korean workers who populate the Gaeseong’s Special Economic Zone these days have very limited contacts with less than a thousand South Korean managers. After the advent of the more conservative Lee Myung-bak regime in the South and sudden illness of North Korean leader in 2008, neither ROK nor DPRK were sufficiently motivated to keep the zones of inter-Korean cooperation and their associated infrastructure functioning. Conservatives and hawks, who currently dominate the political landscape of much of Northeast Asia, are not visionary but are rather driven by the short-term goals populism or regime survival. As the recent history of the dividing line suggests, processes of reconciliation can suffer rapid setbacks unless maintained by continuous effort. The search for reconciliation and justice is an ongoing agenda of action.

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Geography and dialogue In seeking to create and sustain ‘geographies of reconciliation’ we should remember the words of John Collins, who argues that ‘good fences may not always make good neighbors, but mutually agreeable boundaries and environmental practices that avoid adverse regional (even global) side effects generally help reduce the number of potentially explosive international disputes that otherwise could lead to armed combat’.20 The best strategy to start mending the fences is to make the neighbours talk and learn more about each other. ‘Geographies of reconciliation’ therefore subsume bilateral, multilateral and cross-regional research and education projects. Special focus in such projects should be placed upon frontier areas (islands, seas, borders and the Demilitarized Zone) which not only separate regional neighbours but also link them, providing additional interface opportunities. Projects dealing with ‘geography of reconciliation’ should not be confined to material or administrative entities, but also include such issues as forced labour, migration and displacement of population. The purpose of such projects is ‘giving voice to the voiceless’ across the boundaries.21 The geographical and geopolitical processes discussed in this chapter are, in this sense, inseparable from the historiographical and media processes which will be the subject of the following chapters.

Notes 1 See for example Kimie Hara, Cold War Frontiers in Asia and the Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System, London and New York: Routledge, 2007. 2 See for example Min Gyo Koo, Island Disputes and Maritime Regime Building in East Asia: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Dordrecht and London: Springer, 2010. 3 See Alexis Dudden, Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea and the United States, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. 4 A festival held on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in both Korea and China. 5 He Baogang and David Hundt, ‘A Deliberative Approach to Northeast Asia’s Contested History’, Japanese Journal of Political Science, 2012 13(1): 37–58. 6 Leonid Petrov, ‘Restoring the Glorious Past: North Korean Juche Historiography and Koguryŏ’, The Review of Korean Studies, September 2004 7(3): 231–52. 7 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘Lost Memories: Historical Reconciliation and Cross-Border Narratives in Northeast Asia’, in Steffi Richter ed., Contested Views of a Common Past. Revisions of History in Contemporary East Asia, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2008, pp. 397–422. 8 Seddiq Rasuli, ‘Heartland and Periphery’, in Ahmad Kamal ed., Understanding China, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2011, pp. 87–105, particularly p. 103. 9 Until 2004, Bolshoy Ussuriyskiy Island was the site of a territorial dispute between China and Russia. The Soviet Union occupied Bolshoy Ussuriyskiy and Yinlong Islands in 1929, but this had not been accepted by China. While Russia governed the islands as a part of Khabarovsk Krai, China claimed them as a part of Fuyuan County, Heilongjiang province, and the easternmost part of China. Source: http://www.reference.com/browse/ bolshoy+ussuriyskiy+island [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 10 Chung Chien-peng, ‘Resolving China’s Island Disputes: A Two-Level Game Analysis’, Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2007, 12(1): 49–70, quotation from p. 56.

On the frontiers of history 39 11 Chung Chien-peng, ‘Resolving China’s Island Disputes: A Two-Level Game Analysis’, Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2007, 12(1): 50–1. 12 Chung Chien-peng, ‘Resolving China’s Island Disputes: A Two-Level Game Analysis’, Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2007, 12(1): 66. 13 A. Ivanov, ‘The problem of the Noktundo Island in the Media in South Korea’, in Alexander Z. Zhebin and Konstantin Valerianovich Asmolov eds, Korea: A View from Russia, 2007, Moscow. Available online (Asia Pacific International Relations Study Center website): http://apircenter.org/publications/the-problem-of-the-noktundo-islandin-the-media-in-south-korea/ [Accessed 5 September 2012]. 14 Leonid Petrov, ‘Russia’s “Power Politics” and North Korea’, International Issues and Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs, 2008, 27(2): 27–43. 15 ‘Interview with the Russian Ambassador to the DPRK, Valerii Sukhinin’ (InterFax, 9 February 2012). Available online: http://vestiregion.ru/2012/02/09/kndr-zhivyot-irabotaet-v-normalnom-rezhime/ [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 16 Leonid Petrov, ‘The Politics of Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation: 1998–2009’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 29(3) 20 July 2009. http://japanfocus.org/-Leonid-Petrov/ 3190 [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 17 For further discussion, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘Geumgangsan’ (Mount Geumgang), in Itagaki Ryuta, Jeong Ji-yeon and Iwasaki Minoru eds, Higashi Ajia no Kioku no Ba (Lieux de memoire in East Asia), Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 2011, pp. 241–62; see also Tessa Morris-Suzuki, To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey Through China and Korea, Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. 18 Lee Tae-Ho, ‘A Dream of 12,000 Peaks: 300 Years of Art and Culture from Mount Geumgang’, in Ilmin Misulgwan Hakyae Yongusil ed., Mongyu Geumgang: Geurim euro Boneun Geumgangsan 300-nyeon, Seoul: Ilmin Misulgwan, 1999, pp. 123–5, quotation from p. 123. 19 Daehan Bulgyo Jogyejong Chongmuwon Sahwibu-Munhwabu ed., Geumgangsan Singyesa Bukwon Bulsa Baekseo, Seoul: Daehan Bulgyo Jogyejong Chongmuwon, 2009. 20 John M. Collins, Military Geography for Professionals and the Public, Washington: National Defense University Press, 1998, p. 285. 21 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Past Within Us, London: Verso, 2005, pp. 407–8.

2

Historiography, media and cross-border dialogue in East Asia Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation Leonid Petrov

Introduction Due to its central geographical position and nationalistic cultural policies, Korea is engaged in territorial, historiographical and cultural disputes with most of its neighbours. The unresolved legacies of colonialism, the unfinished civil war and the ongoing nuclear crisis have turned Korea into the hub of regional conflicts. Despite the widely accepted assumption and official claims that the roots are buried deep in history, the genuine reasons for Korea’s domestic confrontation and its complicated relations with China and Japan lie as much in ideological differences, economic rivalry or security concerns as in historiographical problems. Korea remains divided as the result of regional confrontation, in which China and Japan – as well as more distant neighbours such as Russia and the United States – struggle for influence or domination. The diverse views of these protagonists on the history of regional conflicts and the clear absence of a recipe for an acceptable solution further complicate the picture and frustrate timid attempts at reconciliation. One may wonder how long this system of distrust and grievance reproduction can continue. What can be done to help the peoples of East Asia heal the traumas of the past without resorting to recrimination each time the neighbouring state refuses to admit guilt or hints at the righteousness of its actions? Can history research be utilized to achieve peace and harmony between the former colonial masters and their subjects? What can be achieved by electronic and visual media to build trust and respect between the former enemies? This chapter aims to address these questions by providing examples drawn from the experience of the decade from the late 1990s to the late 2000s. Marked by the two economic crises – the Asian Financial Crisis (1997–1998) and the ongoing Global Financial Crisis (2008 onwards) – this decade of grand rapprochement may serve as a useful lesson for future policymakers and peace builders. Nevertheless, regional reconciliation and dialogue with the past, which was seen throughout this decade, has remained unfinished and has at times experienced major setbacks, particularly in Korea. Korea-related disputes and controversies, examined in the regional context, are the focus of this chapter. While the previous chapter focused on borders and territory, exploring possible ‘geographies of

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 41 reconciliation’, this chapter shifts attention to ‘historiographies of reconciliation’ and ‘media of reconciliation’. After examining the toxic nature of historiographical wars, it considers how professional historians and those engaged in creative media can confront unresolved issues of the common past and open avenues to mutual understanding. Exorcizing the ghosts of war in today’s East Asia is a complex matter of good will and practical convenience, for which a combination of political endeavour and social acquiescence is required.

Korea at the centre Looking at the map of Northeast Asia, where China, Japan and the Russian Far East occupy by far the most space, one cannot but notice that Korea is at the centre. The Korean peninsula has always been a natural bridge for migrants, trade missions and culture waves moving between the continent and the islands of the northern Pacific. Korea used to be the cultural conduit linking ancient China and Japan, and became the terminating point for Mongolian military expansion eastward in the thirteenth century AD, the spring-board for Japanese expansion plans towards Asia in the sixteenth and then nineteenth centuries and ultimately the Cold War’s hottest and longest-lasting frontier. Policymakers and strategists of all times have seen Korea as a key place in the region, worthy of control and protection from a potential enemy. Relations with its neighbours and the dominating regional powers have been fateful for Korea. Even a minor political event occurring on the peninsula would always attract their attention and swift reaction. For this reason, Korea has an exceptionally rich and dramatic political history. The ruling dynasties of China time and again attempted to incorporate Korea into their empires but could hardly secure anything more formal than a tributary relationship, which in modern terms would mean a security treaty. Military regimes on the Japanese islands, when planning to expand their sphere of influence towards the continent, would first have to win a war against Korea before going any further. Both Koreas and China struggle over the ownership title for the cultural relics left from the ancient kingdoms of Old Joseon/Chaoxian, Goguryeo/Gaogouli and Parhae/Bohai. Despite the contentious evidence provided by international groups of archaeologists and linguists, these kingdoms are revered by all Koreans as the earliest states in their national history. The fact that the larger parts of their territories occupied the plains of Manchuria and the Liaodong peninsula make this issue particularly sensitive for policymakers in Beijing. In the late nineteenth century, China, Russia and Japan all expected Korea to be friendly, equidistant and neutral. The modern expansion of Japanese power and influence over the rest of East Asia started with the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). Fought between Qing Dynasty China and Meiji Japan, this conflict’s main point of contention was control of Korea, and it might therefore be termed ‘the First Korean War’. As a newly rising power, Japan wished to protect its own interests and security by either annexing Korea or by ensuring Korea’s independence from other competitors. China was weak but had strong allies who were

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quick to intervene on its behalf. As a result of this ‘First Korean War’, in 1897 the Great Korean Empire (Daehan Jeguk) was proclaimed, only to start falling under the influence of Imperial Russia. Piecemeal reforms and sluggish administration once again made Korea an easy target for imperialist contest. The temporary agreement on influence over Korea was once again challenged in the course of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). This ‘Second Korean War’ gave Japan a free hand to ‘protect’ its closest neighbour and then, in 1910, to turn it into a full colony. Korea lost control of its foreign policy, which began to be managed by a Japan already planning the extension of its influence into Manchuria. After obtaining control of the Kuriles in 1875, Japan annexed Southern Sakhalin from Russia by the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905). To expand its control in China and to extract more concessions, Japan took advantage of an existing border dispute between the Qing Government and the Yi Dynasty of Korea concerning the Gando/Jiandao territory in the southern Manchurian borderlands between Korea and China. The 1909 Gando Convention recognized the Chinese claim to Gando in exchange for Japan’s attaining railroad rights in Manchuria.1 Colonized Korea found itself deprived of political independence and other attributes of a sovereign nation, and forced to serve the needs of the expanding Japanese Empire. For the next 35 years radical Korean partisan groups pursued anti-Japanese military resistance, while Korean intellectuals fought the battle against the colonial distortions of history and cultural obliteration. The defunct 1909 Gando Convention is not forgotten by Korean ultra-nationalists and one day may trigger an irredentist movement among Koreans residing in China’s north-eastern provinces. With the fall of Japan in August 1945 and the end of the Second World War, Korea suddenly regained its independence, but the Soviet Union and the United States, the allies who liberated and divided the Korean peninsula into two temporary zones of occupation, believed that Koreans were not yet ready for selfgovernance. By now the new global conflict known as the Cold War was already emerging, and this ‘temporary’ division of Korea became consolidated and ideologically cemented. Two antagonistic states – the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) – were established on the peninsula in 1948, creating conditions for a civil conflict. As foreign troops withdrew from the country, a new Korean war broke out. The ‘Third Korean War’, which started on 25 June 1950 with the North’s surprise attack against the South, was an attempt to unify the country but soon escalated to the level of surrogate Third World War. A hot war by proxy, it brought 21 nations under the UN flag to support South Korea, while North Korea was backed by a million ‘Chinese Peoples’ Volunteers’ and hundreds of Soviet air pilots. The three years of fratricidal conflict cost some three million Korean lives, as well as the lives of hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers who never returned from Korea.2 Despite strong opposition from the ROK President Syngman Rhee, the Armistice Agreement was finally signed on 27 July 1953 by delegates representing the Korean People’s Army, the Chinese People’s Volunteers and the United Nations Command. Nevertheless, a proper peace treaty has not yet been concluded.

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 43 What makes East Asian affairs even more troubled and complicated is the old system of block alliances inherited from the times of the Cold War. Both Japan and South Korea are firmly on the side of the US who built this regional alliance in the early days of the strategy to contain communism. Despite the formal collapse of the Communist Bloc in the early 1990s, economic aid and security assurances from China and Russia keep North Korea afloat.3 In other words, East Asia continues to retain the remnants of the old system, which has long disappeared elsewhere. The remaining Cold War mentality in international affairs, and distrust and bitterness at the grass-root level, make East Asia a deeply troubled region. The front line of unresolved regional conflicts lies across the Korean peninsula. Along with unresolved issues of the Cold War, the unhappy legacy of Japanese colonialism keeps regional relations strained. As a result, East Asian politics are deeply entangled in the multi-layer nexus of interconnected problems, such as historical controversies, territorial disputes and unsettled compensation claims. Sharp generational divisions in China, Japan and Korea also deeply affect their societies and ignite fierce political debates both within and outside of these countries. War, liberation, democratization and economic advancement form the watersheds which divide people’s attitudes to conflicting policies and ideologies. According to former ROK President Kim Dae-jung, the silence of the older generation on the problems that had haunted them for half a century increased the shock of the new generation upon their discovery of these newly learnt facts.4 Conventional historical perceptions are now contested by the younger generation of Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, often sparking heated disputes between activists and governments. This generational change, however, does not seem to solve the problem, and in some cases may intensify it.5 Without addressing and resolving these issues, the national traumas left over from colonization, wartime or ideological division will never be healed.

Historiographical conflicts In such complex socio-political circumstances, history research and education resemble a minefield replete with dangers and traps. The natural contestability of history opens numerous avenues for politicizing this academic discipline, and the writing and rewriting of history in accordance with political necessity is at times initiated by states or individual policy makers. The cynical adage – ‘History is politics projected into the past’ – was allegedly coined in 1931 by the dean of Marxist historians in Soviet Russia, Mikhail Pokrovskii, as a response to the upsurge of Russian nationalism in the Stalinist USSR.6 From a somewhat different perspective, the idea that the concerns of the present shape the interpretation of historical fact was expressed by Michael Oakeshott in Experience and its Modes (1933), where he stated: ‘History is a product of historians whose writings create it’.7 This idea is echoed in 1941 by Benedetto Croce’s graphic statement that ‘all histories are contemporary histories’,8 and has been further elaborated by Robin Collingwood, who argued in 1946 that ‘all histories are the histories of ideas’.9 The selection of facts from the past is

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discretionary and motivated by the changing necessities of the present. But does this mean that the attitude of the historian to a particular fact is not static either? E. H. Carr in his What is History? (1961) argued that history is a continuous dialogue between the past and the present and an everlasting interaction between the historian and his facts.10 Subjective views and hidden political agendas are always present, even in the most innocuous investigations of the past. Historians are often hired by governments or partisan groups to exaggerate or, alternatively, to whitewash historical records. As a result, history as an academic discipline may either conceal the inconvenient truth or create new myths. Within the countries of the region, individual authors may be motivated by different concepts of society and development that give rise to conflicts between rival schools and traditions. Among these are positivist, constructivist, Marxist, nationalist, Jucheist11 and other schools of thought. Meanwhile, as the discussion below suggests, reconciliation between two regional parties may be achieved by creating new narratives which deepen conflict with other regional parties. The multi-dimensional nature of East Asia’s history conflicts, therefore, makes the creation of dialogue and reconciliation processes particularly complex.

Nationalists and national history in Korea Nationalist historians in East Asia stress their own country’s traditions and culture, relying on appeals to a common biology, psychology and spirituality. Their insistence on the uniqueness of national history helps them legitimize claims over territories and gives them power to minimize internal disputes within the nation. This approach has helped the colonized nations claim back their national independence but, simultaneously, has led to exaggerations in historical narratives and development of victim mentality. In East Asia collecting, editing and publishing works on national history has long been controlled by the state. This millennia-long tradition has found its way into the twenty-first century, and the role of the state in narrating history shows no sign of disappearing. The modern and contemporary history of Korea provides plenty of examples of cases where revolutionaries and politicians wish to turn to history studies, while professional historians assume the role of scholar-bureaucrats.12 The fact that Koreans are still suffering from the tragedy of national division makes them particularly susceptible to historiographical conflicts. In this connection, the temporary improvement of inter-Korean relations during the last decade, widely known as the ‘Sunshine Policy’ years (1998–2008), also created momentum for the reunification of divided historiographies. North and South Korea, in this sense, provided a positive example for their regional neighbours. At the same time, though, this North/ South reconciliation was based on a nationalist narrative which had the potential to deepen divisions between Korea and its Northeast Asian neighbours. History in Korea has always been a sacrosanct subject. Koreans have a strong sense of pride in their national past, and many are happy to support every argument that presents their history as long and glorious. Boasts about the 5,000 year-long

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 45 history, rich culture and (in the South Korean case) the spectacular economic successes of the second half of the twentieth century are often used to bolster assertions of the unique nature of Korean history. Both Korean states put much effort and wide resources into studying and propagating this around the world. In the South, the Academy of Korean Studies was established on 30 June 1978: with the purpose of deeper investigation into the essence of Korean culture, the establishment of ‘self-reliant views on history’ (juche yeogsagwan) and a sound system of values, the contribution to the development of national culture, the inspiration of people’s spirit aimed at the revival of the nation, and the establishment of the place and principles for Korea’s future existence.13 On 15 November 1979, the Korean Association of Social Scientists was created in the DPRK to ‘coordinate in a unified way the research activities of all societies and scholars of social sciences’ and to ‘make active efforts to develop academic exchange and cooperation with social science research institutions and organizations, educational institutions, Juche (self reliance) idea study organizations and individual scholars in different countries over the world’.14 Although the South Korean perception of ‘self reliance’ was different from North Korean official ideology, the meaning of Juche in both North and South invariably emphasized Korean national uniqueness, spirit and cultural exclusivity. When the leaders of North and South Korea met in Pyongyang (13–15 June 2000) for the first time in history, a Joint Declaration promoting peace and reconciliation was signed. This move, among many other positive aspects, created a solid ground for the reconciliation of views on national history. Research centres and universities in the DPRK and ROK began cooperating for the first time in their history. Academic delegations from the North and the South exchanged visits to Seoul and Pyongyang. Subsequently, a number of joint history seminars, conferences and congresses were held in both Koreas. An attempt to co-host the Second World Congress of Korean Studies was undertaken by the ROK Academy of Korean Studies and the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences in 2004. Although unsuccessful, this undertaking demonstrated the genuine wish of academic circles in both Koreas for exchange and collaboration.15 Soon academic and cultural exchange visits became regular. A group of North Korean historians and archaeologists visited the Academy of Korean Studies to attend a joint seminar in late 2005. The following year, a collection of ancient Korean art from the North was displayed in Seoul at the National Museum of Korea. Resumed academic cooperation clearly showed that a general understanding of the national past in North and South Korea is much closer than many would expect. Scholars of history in both halves of the divided country have few disagreements about ancient kingdoms and medieval wars with foreign invaders. What really sparks conflict are issues that affect their claims to legitimate leadership in the future unification of the country and the interpretations of post-1945 events. To avoid disagreements, North and South Korean scholars preferred not to bring up these topics when they met.

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North Korean historians, while assessing the national past as an inexorable process inspired by class struggle and nationalistic drive, depict the history of Korea as an orderly continuum of self-reliant shifts in socio-economic formations leading from primitive communal society through slave-owning society, feudalism and capitalism to the victory of Korean-style socialism. No foreign influences are admitted, while the influence of Korean culture on the neighbouring nations is especially emphasized.16 Contrary to the theories which used to dominate DPRK historical scholarship in the 1960s, when the site of the former capital of Old Joseon was thought to be situated somewhere on the Liaodong peninsula of China, contemporary historians in the North insist that the capital was originally built on the banks of the Taedong River (the site of present day Pyongyang).17 When the official celebrations of the 1,575th anniversary of Pyongyang were marked in 2002, The Pyongyang Times heralded the event with a proclamation that this city had been the capital of ancient Korea since the early thirtieth century BC: Pyongyang, that boasts a time-honoured history as a cradle of human civilization and the old capital of the first ancient and feudal states, adds brilliance to its history as the capital of the DPRK, playing the role of political, economic and cultural centre.18 South Korean scholars indirectly support the ‘self-reliant views on history’ (juche yeogsagwan). The most representative South Korean study, Yi Ki-baek’s The New History of Korea (1996 New Edition), argues that ‘people are the main character of history’ and the term ‘people of Korea’ can be equally substituted with the term ‘Korean nation’.19 Other scholars in the South concur with their colleagues in the North that the cradle of human civilization was in or around Korea. For example, the Mesolithic Age clam shell mounds discovered in Sangnodae Island allow Korean historians to argue that proto-Koreans populated the basin of the Yellow (West) Sea long before it was covered with the ocean water at the end of the Ice Age (21,000~18,000 BC). This belief in the lost, inaccessible ancient civilization may serve as a unifying factor for North and South Korean academics. They may have different perspectives, methodologies and political agendas, but ROK and DPRK historians continue to grope for mutually acceptable hypotheses. It is natural that South Korean scholars prefer an alternative theory: that the origins of the earliest Korean nation lie in the southern half of the Peninsula. Still, there are many ways to reconcile the views on human prehistory. Emeritus Professor of Seoul National University Sin Yong-ha argues that ancient Koreans – the ‘Hanjok people’ – came from the banks of the Han River, the area where Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea, is located. Professor Sin also believes that there were three ancient tribes (Han, Ye and Maek) who equally contributed to the creation of the first Korean kingdom of Old Joseon (2333–108 BC). The Han had settled on both sides of the Han River; the Maek had lived south along the Songhua River; and the Ye had inhabited the Liaodong peninsula before establishing the confederation of Old Joseon, a tribal state called in

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 47 Korean ‘Asanara’ with its capital at ‘Asadal’ in the basin of the Taedong River, contemporary Pyeongan Province.20 We can see that, in analysing the development of socio-cultural evolution in the region, historians in the North and South both emphasize Korea’s progressive role in the development of East Asian civilization. Professor Sin does not claim that Korea was the cradle of human civilization, as many of his colleagues do, but still argues that his discoveries concerning the history of Old Joseon warrant a total reconsideration of world history. In an interview with the popular magazine Exploration of History (Yeogsa Tamheom), Sin implied that Korean culture has traceable historical links with the cultures of Turkey, France and Finland.21 This may seem speculative, but recently it has become fashionable in the South to argue that the birthplace of the Korean nation was not on the Korean peninsula but somewhere else, for example in the wilds of Manchuria and Siberia or in the basin of the Yellow (West) Sea. Some hypotheses are based merely on personal impressions and cursory analysis. For example, journalist Kim Chong-rok in the pages of the same inaugural issue of Exploration of History (2003) declared the shores of Lake Baikal the cradle of the Korean nation and culture because ‘this area is the birthplace of Siberian shamanism and the local people look very much like Koreans’.22 The proto-Koreans, according to the author, continued moving southeast until their descendants settled on and around the Korean peninsula, setting up their first state of Old Joseon. Historians in the North and the South often seem focused on the issue of national origins, and use every opportunity to present such origins as exceptionally ancient and glorious. Any supporting evidence, regardless of how dubious it may be, is grist to the mill. Claims that Korea once was the cradle of regional civilization are not uncommon and are supported by both South and North Korean scholars. This recent reappearance of historical romanticism may be a subconscious way to displace fears associated with pending Korean unification. Finding a common origin somewhere outside the peninsula can disguise the legitimacy contest between the North and the South. Interpreting Old Joseon as a multicultural society composed of various tribes can appeal to tolerance for the differences that have arisen since 1945. The only obstacle to historiographical reconciliation in Korea remains the ideological schism. However, the reconciliation between North and South was achieved mainly on the basis of a shared nationalism, and therefore produced a narrative that risked deepening the historiographical division between Northeast Asian countries. This raises issues about the need to find alternative ways of narrating history that do more than simply replacing one nationalist narrative with another.

Resolving history conflicts For many people in the region today, colonialism and war are not past history but realities that still shape their everyday lives. Unresolved territorial disputes and unpaid compensation money reproduce the antagonisms of the past and thwart the

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plans for a common regional future. Although the number of war survivors and victims and plaintiffs from colonial times is dwindling day by day, the armies of justice-fighters and truth-seekers are swelling with new warriors. The traditional methods of textbook compilation and history education in most countries of the region remain state-controlled and nationalism-inspired, and that lays the foundation for new history-based conflicts. Can this be rectified? ‘Historiography of reconciliation’ need not suggest a single historical narrative for all countries of the region: it can also be formed by multiple historical narratives created by stimulation of open-ended dialogue and promotion of mutual understanding, without generating consensus. What is important is that the righting of past wrongs must be done not by ‘contesting over responsibility’ but through ‘celebration of once-silent protagonists’.23 He Baogang and David Hundt propose what they call a ‘deliberative approach’ to resolving history disputes. Through case-study mapping and comparative testing they confirmed that ‘deliberation offers some potential for departure from nationalist mentalities and shift towards a consciousness of regional history in Northeast Asia’.24 They encourage dialogue and collaboration, call upon a pluralist rather than nationalist reading of history and welcome a wide involvement of civil groups, NGOs and school teachers. The deliberative approach has already been tested in various forms as a way to resolve regional historiographical conflicts.25 For example, the Trilateral Joint History Editorial Committee (TJHEC) project was encouraged by the progressive Kim Dae-jung government in 2001 to look collectively at the complex relations between Korea, China and Japan during the turbulent time of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Coinciding with, and running parallel to, the development of the Sunshine Policy, the work of the Committee brought together scholars of history, educators and NGOs from the three countries; the TJHEC project examined the different accounts of public memory and this came to fruition with the publication of a sub-textbook in three regional languages – Chinese, Japanese and Korean – under the common title: A History that Opens the Future: The Contemporary and Modern History of Three East Asian Countries (2005).26 To achieve objectivity the authors utilized historical sources from all three countries, which were used to exemplify the common narrative and juxtaposed against each other to emphasize the differences in approach. This method allows a departure from simplistic historical dichotomies such as ‘liberation v. invasion’, ‘oppressor v. victim’, or ‘collaborator v. freedom fighter’. Hundt and Bleiker, in their study of colonial memories in Korea and Japan, recommend viewing reconciliation ‘not as the restoration of a harmonious preconflict order, but as ongoing, incomplete process’.27 Understanding that there will always be differences in how Korea, Japan and China understand and represent their national past, the authors suggest that these differences should contribute to an ongoing process of negotiation between the neighbours. For example, the joint publication of A History that Opens the Future from the outset intended to supplement, rather than replace, the already existing history textbooks by providing a single unified narrative of one of the most controversial periods in

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 49 East Asian history. This project highlighted two important issues: ‘that dialogue can help parties in conflict to reach at least some agreement about what happened in the past; and that an ultimate agreement on the bare facts of what happened to whom and when is unlikely to ever occur’.28 The latter point is supported by Kimura Kan, a professor at Kobe University who has been involved in the work of the Japan–Korea Collaborative History Research Committee (discussed further in Chapter Four). At a symposium held in 2007 by the Goethe-Institut in Tokyo, where scholars from Germany, France and Japan discussed the background and significance of the first Franco-German history textbook for high schools, Kimura emphasized the two major difficulties which confront historians in East Asia in seeking to create common educational curricula. First, ‘in compiling a joint textbook so many people want to stress their versions of “correct history”, when there is no such thing’, and second, ‘a common textbook is only possible in an environment where everyone can freely discuss the issues’.29 Democratization and liberalization of access to historical records will permit marginalized groups of people to seek recognition. Until recently they were excluded completely from this process but steps towards inclusion have already been taken. The emerging ‘historiography of reconciliation’ is creating the environment where the conflicting nation-states start losing their monopoly on history writing. Beyond the realms of academia (as we shall see in Chapter Four) grassroot activists and NGOs are playing a growing role in detaching history education from nationalism. New forms of media might help people in China, Japan and Korea understand their national past as indivisible from regional and global history.

Media of reconciliation ‘Media of reconciliation’ form another vital part of the process of confronting the ghosts of the past in East Asia through the use of both conventional and innovative methods of communication. The written word (articles and books) and faceto-face dialogue (lectures, seminars, performances), the mass media (TV, radio, newspapers) and the new media (websites, blogs, social networks, teleconferencing), along with museums and exhibitions (images, documents, artifacts) combine in ever more complex ways to influence viewers and listeners. Feature films and documentaries also play an important role in making narratives of historical events more accessible for audiences who are unlikely to read complex history texts. Mass media shape the information they deliver. In the age of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) the content often plays a supplementary role to the dazzling and entertaining form designed to appeal to the insatiable and ever-growing market. Demand for fresh news and definitive knowledge is created not only by the readers, viewers or listeners but by the media itself. Something that was deemed astounding yesterday quickly becomes common knowledge, only to be replaced by more and yet more recent news. In such circumstances, any

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information striving to find an audience becomes meaningless without a strong dose of sensation. How can the study of history survive in such changing circumstances without a constant promise to deliver seductively attractive research results? What is the impact of fast-produced and fast-consumed knowledge on the process of historical reconciliation between once antagonistic nations? Can high-speed Broadband, Wi-Fi and other forms of ICT compete against the traditional means of information delivery when dealing with national memories of wars, colonization or involuntary migration? The paperless generation is easily mobilized for cyberspace activism, even without much real-time socialization. It turns out that netizens can change the outcome of national elections, instigate cyber attacks against government agencies and put pressure on influential individuals in politics and business. Social networking services (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and their local equivalents) mobilize their users much faster than radio, TV or telephone could ever have done. But does this really help the nations of such a troubled region as East Asia to understand each other better? In August 2008, the globe-trotting relay of the Olympic torch leading up to the Beijing Summer Games triggered mass protests in Japan and Korea against China’s crackdown on the independence movement in Tibet and the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees hiding in China. Student and youth activism was spurred by the stories (real and fictitious) which circulated the blogosphere with the clear intention of targetting the PRC. The Chinese internet reciprocated by producing a false report citing the English edition of a Korean newspaper as having stated that the Chinese students arrested for violence against local protesters had received a heavy 10-year prison term in South Korea.30 Chinese web forums, chat rooms and blogs exploded with anger against Korea and Koreans. Diplomatic relations between the ROK and PRC had been deteriorating since 2003–2004 as a result of the Goguryeo/Gaogouli controversy. This focused on the right to lay claim to the heritage of the The Goguryeo/Gaogouli Kingdom (37 BCE to 668 CE), which spanned an area now bisected by the China–North Korea border. In December 2003, China applied to UNESCO to include Goguryeo tomb murals discovered in the Ji’an area in the list of globally recognized World Heritage Sites, raising suspicions that Beijing was preparing to claim that Goguryeo was a part of China.31 Tensions were worsened when South Korea successfully registered the ‘Dan-O’ festival with UNESCO as a Korean tradition.32 Reports that South Korea was planning to officially change the name ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine’ to ‘Korean Medicine’, in order to use this term in the international medical community, further enraged the Chinese public. Some websites in China started posting claims that Koreans believe certain Chinese historical figures, such as Confucius, Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong were actually Koreans. Many of these reports were invented by the bloggers but it was enough to make millions of Chinese readers extremely angry over South Korea’s alleged revisions of history. The issue also damaged the ROK’s relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan). The South Korean newspaper Chosun Daily lamented that groundless

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 51 stories were being printed in Taiwan in an effort to ruin the public view of South Korea. ‘The local Taiwanese media even falsely quoted Chosun Daily as the source to dress up their article as convincing’, the newspaper’s editors wrote in response. ‘All the misunderstanding would not have happened if the Chinese local media did a quick check on our articles on the internet first before going to write a story based on what they gleaned from the internet forums and blogs’.33 These incidents illustrate how volatile the relationships between the regional neighbours are in East Asia, particularly when the conflicts can be instantly amplified by electronic media. Lillian Chen, a graduate of China Foreign Affairs University, when interviewed by a South Korean journalist based in Beijing, argued that ‘the problem in all of this is that South Koreans are discussing the issues among themselves on the Korean internet, while the Chinese are discussing the issues among themselves on Chinese internet.’ She believes that they should talk to each other to solve these problems: ‘Even though . . . people visit each other’s country frequently, I think there are many things the two countries still don’t know about each other’.34 For the Korean people divided by the Civil War, learning about each other is particularly difficult. The DPRK and ROK have been divided by Cold War politics since 1948 and by the fratricidal Korean War (1950–1953). Since then neither Korean state has permitted private visits or postal exchanges between citizens of the two states, while each other’s radio and TV signals are persistently jammed by the respective counter-propaganda military units. Printed materials such as books, magazines and newspapers are not permitted on each other’s territory, and those who try to disseminate the knowledge about ‘the other Korea’ are subjected to repressions on both sides of the DMZ. While the DPRK’s draconian censorship of material from the South is well known, Southern censorship has been less widely reported in the international media. In South Korea the National Intelligence Service (NIS) can officially investigate crimes defined in the National Security Act (NSA, adopted in 1947), and can also use the recently amended Communications Secrecy Protection Act to intercept domestic residences’ communications for the investigation of crimes defined in the NSA. Since 2008, when President Lee Myung-bak was sworn in, administrative control of internet content has been getting progressively tighter in the ROK, a country with the second most connected population on Earth. ‘There has been a shrinking space for freedom of expression in the Republic of Korea, primarily due to new and more restrictive interpretations and application of existing laws’, says the UN’s special rapporteur.35 The Constitutional Court in Seoul in 2010 upheld a military ruling that labelled 23 books ‘subversive’ and off limits to soldiers. The list included a book by a South Korean economist Chang Ha-jun titled Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008). The well-known academic, who holds a post at Cambridge University, was criticized for his openly anti-US and implicitly pro-Marxist take on the history of world economy.36 The author of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (2004), long-term North Korea watcher Bradley Martin, believes that the Lee

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Myung-bak government faced a difficult dilemma: ‘The choice for the Southern government lies somewhere between opening up completely to pro-North information flows and hoping its subjects learn how to sift true from false, on the one hand, and barring all such flows, on the other hand’.37 The new media pose a much more challenging target of control than books. Between 2007 and 2010, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) ordered the removal of 3,716 internet postings on the grounds that they violated the National Security Law, and a new system was introduced to quickly block illegal information on the internet.38 The revision of the Communications Secrecy Protection Act in 2008 required mobile phone service providers to redesign their networks to facilitate wiretapping, and permitted investigative agencies (e.g. the NIS, prosecution agencies and the police) to carry out Deep Packet Inspection by hacking into private e-mails. One outcome of this increased surveillance was the NIS’s banning of the business website of the travel agency Koryo Tours. Founded in 1993 in Beijing by Nicholas Bonner, a British citizen, this agency became a clear leader in the narrow market of North Korean tourism (fewer than 2,000 Westerners visit the country each year). Although South Koreans are banned from these tours by both the ROK and DPRK governments, at least until July 2008 short trips to the scenic Mount Geumgang and the historic city of Gaeseong were permitted (see Chapter One). But more recently the ROK’s spy agency claimed that Koryo Tours’ website was violating the National Security Act by spreading propaganda about North Korea. The NSA prohibits ‘praising, encouraging, disseminating or cooperating with anti-state groups, members or those under their control’. Even more ambiguous crimes, such as ‘creating or spreading false information which may disturb national order’, are punishable under this law.39 Charles Armstrong, a Columbia University history professor and director of its Centre for Korean Research, argues that this ‘can be interpreted to mean anything that doesn’t portray North Korea in the most critical and negative light’.40 This was the case with the Koryo Tours’ website on which certain pictures portrayed North Korea in a rather positive light; this included images of people smiling and playing golf. If Bonner were charged criminally for violating the NSA, he could face up to seven years in prison. The way in which the democratic South is censoring and controlling the flow of information reaching its citizens sometimes mirrors that of the notoriously secretive North. As Seoul tightened its grip on cyberspace, the Koryo Tours’ website was not the only victim. The Korea Times reported that, in the first half of 2010, South Korean police ordered various local websites to delete more than 42,000 posts deemed to be supportive of North Korea. This was one hundred times the number removed in 2005.41 In August 2011, a South Korean naval officer who taught Korean history was put on trial for downloading allegedly pro-North Korean materials, and in early 2012 the ROK authorities began investigating and arresting bloggers who praised the DPRK or downloaded North Korean propaganda that is widely available on the internet.42 In other words, in this region badly affected by ideological and political conflicts, the advancement of ICT generates new problems instead of resolving the old ones.

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 53

Reconciliation through film While new media such as the internet have often been the focus of cultural conflicts between and within East Asian nations, it is perhaps the traditional media of film, documentary or drama that are most successful in sending the message of peace and reconciliation. Nicholas Bonner, who has already produced three successful documentaries about North Korea,43 has produced a feature film: Comrade Kim Goes Flying, a comedy completed in 2012. By developing a close working relationship with the DPRK’s state-run Korea International Travel Company, Bonner has gained unprecedented access to different levels of bureaucracy and society in general. Koryo Tours has already expanded the range of its activities by screening Western films for the North Korean public, and organizing international sports exchanges in and outside North Korea. The first non-Russian or Chinese foreign film to be aired on state television in North Korea was The Game of Their Lives (2002). Directed by Daniel Gordon, this documentary told the story of the DPRK soccer team which caused an upset by beating Italy in the 1966 FIFA World Cup. Thanks to Bonner’s relentless efforts, a British romantic comedy about women’s soccer, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), was first screened in front of an audience of 12,000 North Korean viewers at the 2006 Pyongyang International Film Festival, and in 2010 this became the first Western commercial feature film to be screened on DPRK Central Television. The film was dubbed into Korean and became extremely popular among the young because the plot addressed religion, interracial relationships, homosexuality and other tabooed subjects in the DPRK, where the only two existing television channels feed the viewers with a stale mix of patriotic films, science-fiction animation and propaganda newsreels deifying the national leaders.44 During the decade of inter-Korean cooperation the South Korean film-makers took a noticeable step forward in creating the ‘cinematography of reconciliation’. It is interesting to note that as a genre this did not exist before, and quickly disappeared after, the period of the ‘Sunshine Policy’. Before 1998 the South Koreans simply did not know how to portray the reclusive North and its inhabitants. The decades of fierce anti-communist propaganda did not permit the actors and directors to find anything human in the characters associated with North Korea. After the democratization of the late 1980s, only a handful of films about the Korean civil conflict were created by left-leaning directors, among them Nambugun (North Korean Partisan In South Korea, 1990) by Cheong Ji-young, and Taebaek (Mount Taebaek, 1994) by Yim Gwon-taek. In both films the plot unfolds in the southern half of the Korean peninsula, and all central characters are of southern origin. These two films deal with the drama of national division from the perspective of the internal struggle within Korean society inherited from the years of Japanese colonial domination. These films are set in, and focus on, the post-1945 Liberation and the 1950–1953 Korean War years; no contemporary issues are touched upon. The authors belong to the generation born shortly before the Liberation and, therefore, were spared from firsthand participation in warfare. Their literary and cinematographic works became

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the first cautious attempts to analyse the roots of the Korean conflict without blaming one particular side for starting the conflict. In the late 1990s, with the rise of the Korean Cultural Wave (Hallyu) a new theme in South Korean cinematography became visible. The new governmentsupported idea of inter-Korean rapprochement made it possible to portray North Koreans as human beings, albeit poor and brainwashed ones. The thriller-comedy Gancheob Li Cheol-jin (Spy Li Cheol-jin, 1999), directed by Jin Jang, had to compete against the box-office sensation thriller-drama Shiri (1999) by director Kang Je-gyu. Both directors belong to a new generation, born in the 1960s and early 1970s. The main characters of both films are North Korean secret agents planted in contemporary South Korea, but they are presented in a way that secures them the sympathy and respect of the viewer despite their evil intentions and selfdestructive actions. Not a single scene of life in North Korea appears in either of these films, but the unwelcome visitors from the North are presented as enjoying the lifestyle of the South. The first experiment in showing the North Korean territory on the South Korean screen was undertaken by the South Korean director Park Chan-wook in his Gongdong Gyeongbi Guyeok: JSA (Joint Security Area, 2000). Talented actor Song Gang-ho was aptly chosen to play the North Korean Sergeant Oh, a mature but demoted veteran, who merits the compassion of the film-goers. Most of the action of this film is set in or around the Joint Security Area of the DMZ, the neutral strip of land which is patrolled alternately by North and South Korea, and where Korean conscripts from the North and the South can secretly meet during nightsentry duty. In circumstances of continuing confrontation, such clandestine fraternization ends in tragedy: a shoot-out followed by the suicides of reluctant witnesses. Despite the bleak ending, however, the main message of the film is a reminder that the common people in North and South Korea share the same language and culture, something that could ultimately unite them despite ideological differences. Between 2002 and 2006, Joint Security Area was followed by a number of films focusing on the human side of national division, war and political confrontation. These works can be grouped on the basis of genre and epoch but all of them emphasize the aberrant nature of inter-Korean conflict and division. The thrillers Ijung Gacheob (Double Agent, 2002) and Taepung (Typhoon, 2005) explore the moral sufferings of North Korean spies and terrorists who have to turn against their own nation. The military dramas Taegeukgi (Brotherhood of War, 2004) and Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005, original has English title) address the issue of fratricidal war, in which Koreans are embroiled against their own wishes. The comedies Hwiparam Gongju (Whistle Princess, 2002), Namnam Buknyeo (Love Impossible, 2003), Geunyeon-eue Moreumyeon Gacheob (Spy Girl, 2004) and Pidan Kudu (Silk Shoes, 2006) provide the opportunity for film-makers to use their imagination in modelling the character and actions of the imaginary other in the familiar environment of South Korea. These films strive hard to reconstruct an imagined North Korea, but the experiments invariably fail due to lack of knowledge and, most importantly, political considerations. Prior to active engagement in the joint industrial and tourism

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 55 projects of Gaeseong and Mount Geumgang, North and South Koreans had very little knowledge of each other’s lives. At the height of the ‘Sunshine Policy’, depicting the North negatively was deemed politically incorrect as it risked upsetting economic cooperation. Therefore, South Korean film-makers in the mid2000s commonly resorted to comedy as the only genre which permitted them to deal with unknown reality by replacing it with a form of fantasy. In Whistle Princess (2002), Ji-eun (actress Ji Seong), a teenage daughter of the North Korean leader, comes to South Korea for a cultural performance. Before going back to Pyongyang, she escapes from her minders to enjoy her last free day in the South and experience party life in Seoul. In the process, she meets the handsome member of a local South Korean rock band and falls in love. Through this romantic comedy the South Korean viewers quickly learn about the cultural differences which had became daunting during the six decades of national division. In the film, it is the CIA that tries to kidnap Ji-eun, apparently to hinder interKorean relations. When things turn serious, and violence ensues, the North and South Korean spy-masters realize that only cooperation can help them outsmart foreign intelligence. National unity trumps ideological division. This strong drive for cooperation and understanding also pervades the romantic comedy Love Impossible (2003). Chul-su (Cho In-sung), a self-indulgent son of the South Korean National Intelligence Service’s director, and Young-hee (Kim Sa-rang), a smart, pretty and intelligent daughter of a North Korean diplomat, meet in Yanbian, Northeast China. They join the same international archaeological excavation team and look for cultural relics of the ancient Goguryeo kingdom. Again, a symbol of national pride (Korea’s claim to the heritage of Goguryeo/ Gaogouli) is used as a vehicle for overcoming the ideological divide between North and South. Chul-su wants to be with Young-hee but given the continuing conflict between the two Koreas it is a difficult thing to achieve, especially from Young-hee’s perspective. Interestingly, Chul-su’s father (the NIS director) is shown as a callous sadist who torments anyone who enters his office, including his own son. This film, despite its seeming simplicity, sends a strong political message and caters for an audience that cares about the country’s growing ideological and cultural differences. Vaguely reminiscent of the German film Goodbye, Lenin! (2003), Yeo Gyundong’s film Silk Shoes (2006) tells the story of an old man’s desire to return to his native village in North Korea and make peace with the ghosts of his past. But when he finally crosses the DMZ and travels northward, the scenery just does not look right. The reason is that he is still in South Korea: it turns out Old Bae (played by Min Jung-gi) has been set up by his own son and the indebted film director Man-su (Choi Deok-mun), who have created a ‘virtual reality North Korea’ for him. This is done with the best of intentions, to let the old man, who also suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, become reconciled with the family he forsook during the Korean War. Finally Old Bae finds peace even without crossing the 38th parallel, but this imaginary trip to the forbidden North helps film director Man-su and his motley crew of amateur actors understand the traumas of the past war and family separation, with which so many elderly Koreans continue to live.

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After the transformation in South Korean politics in 2008, films about North Korea also changed their style and direction. The previously dominating themes of cooperation and reconciliation, with their ‘virtual’ images of the North, have given way to critical and more realistic visions of the North. The melodramatic thriller Crossing (2008) offers to unmask the reality of human rights abuse and economic collapse in North Korea. Together with the pseudo documentary Musan Ilgi (Journals of Musan, 2010), which follows the struggles of a North Korean defector to survive in an unfamiliar and unfriendly South Korean environment, Crossing raises the issue of the great cultural differences that make life for North Korean refugees in the South unbearable. Secret Reunion (2010), also known as Eui Hyeongje (Blood Brothers), returns to the topic of North Korea’s subversive espionage against South Korea. Actor Song Gang-ho this time plays the role of Han-gyu, a NIS agent who has been fired at the height of the ‘Sunshine Policy’ for failing to hunt down a secret North Korean agent, Ji-won (Kang Dong-won), also deserted by his agency. Six years later, the two meet again by chance and start a business partnership in order to find out more about each other. Even though reconciliatory themes are still employed by South Korean cinematographers, the optimistic tone of earlier years has been replaced by a mood of bitterness and melancholia. Journals of Musan (2010), particularly, leaves the audience with the impression that North and South Korea have drifted so far apart that there is no way the two halves of the broken nation will ever be able to live under one roof. The euphoria of the early 2000s, in which the realities of life in the North are omitted or fantasized due to lack of knowledge and understanding, has given way to general disillusion and pessimism associated with the breakdown of inter-Korean cooperation. Low expectations in the sphere of trade and cultural exchange cause Koreans on both sides of the divided peninsula to forget about the value of the media of reconciliation. Instead, the low-tech media of confrontation and disinformation are being deployed as the preferred way of communication across the DMZ. Even the old military telephone hotline between Pyongyang and Seoul periodically becomes disconnected. The resumption of primitive forms of propaganda warfare, such as loudspeakers, leaflets and air balloons, is now marking the post-Sunshine era. Dialogue in Korea is now at a standstill, and as long as the silence continues there is little hope for rapprochement. In this time of tension, however, it is more important than ever to remember and to provide balanced assessments of the techniques of reconciliation that were developed during the Sunshine era.

Conclusion In order to correctly interpret the present and to predict the future, we must know and understand the past. The problem, however, exists in the variety of interpretations of regional history that stem from divergent attitudes to the origins of colonialism and the results of the Cold War. These conflicting views create misunderstandings and often lead to ‘history wars’. Such wars polarize public opinion, halt regional cooperation and aggravate international relations. The

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 57 continuing marketization of societies leads to increased competition and growing uncertainty in the region and results in a search for cultural identity and a resurgence of nationalistic anxieties. Korea has always occupied an important geo-strategic position in Northeast Asia. The target of imperial contest, the subject of colonial exploitation and the scene of hostilities in the Cold War, Korea remains deeply divided. Nowadays every change in the country’s local affairs resonates loudly in the actions and policies of its powerful neighbours, who genuinely fear the prospect of Korea’s unification. The place and time of the nation’s inception, the cultural affinity of ancient kingdoms, the problem of unification and even the chronology of basic historical events are vehemently debated among Koreans themselves. Significant differences in the methodology of historical research and the issue of political motivation also remain. North Korea continues to look at national history as a useful tool for political indoctrination and domestic mobilization, while South Korea brings up the issue of the national past predominantly when it is dealing with its neighbours. However, the ten years of ‘Sunshine Policy’ prompted the beginning of cooperation between the two Korean states in many areas, including research on national history. Some of the hypotheses developed during this period looked promising for the process of national unification. In the face of ongoing historical conflict with China and Japan, historians of North and South Korea managed to unite their positions and iron out their differences. The humanization of images of North Korea which emerged from South Korea’s ‘cinematography of reconciliation’ may also prove useful sources of inspiration for others throughout East Asia as they seek to build narratives that cross national and ideological boundaries. As we shall see in the following chapter, some similar strategies have been deployed by Chinese film-makers as they retell the story of the war with Japan in forms that complicate the traditional dichotomy between ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’. Through the prism of this short cooperation, historians across East Asia received an opportunity to have another look at some controversial issues of regional history and learned to overcome some existing differences and conflicts inside their own camps. Despite the setbacks, it is important to recall and learn from the lessons of the reconciliation methods developed in the era from the late 1990s to late 2000s, because it is on the foundation of such experiences that future processes of reconciliation for this region can be laid.

Notes 1 Under the 1951 San Francisco Treaty this agreement became null and void. Dong-Ho, Kang, ‘The 100 Years of Kando Convention . . . “Returning our Lost Land” is spreading’, Hankook Ilbo, 2 September 2009. Available online: http:// economy.hankooki.com/lpage/worldecono/200909/e2009090217445969820.htm [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 2 Michael Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007, p.114. 3 Jonathan D. Pollack, ‘The major powers and the two Koreas: an uneasy transition’, The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, March 2007, 21(1): 1–9.

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4 Kim Dae-jung, (trans. Kim Yong-un) Together with History: Kim Dae-jung’s Autobiography, Seoul: Indong, 1999. 5 Kimura Kan, ‘How can we cope with historical disputes? The Japanese and South Korean experience’, in Marie Söderberg ed., Changing Power Relations in Northeast Asia, London and New York: Routledge, 2010, pp. 19–31. 6 A. G. Mazour, Modern Russian Historiography, Princeton NJ: D.van Nostrand Co. Inc., 1958, p. 193. 7 Michael Okeshott, Experience and its Modes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933, p. 99. 8 Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1941, p. 19. 9 Robin G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 215, 317. 10 Edward H. Carr, What is History?, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961. 11 ‘Juche Thought’ or ‘The Juche Idea’ is the official ideology of North Korea, developed under the name of Kim Il-sung from the 1960s onward. It emphasizes national self reliance and the power of human beings to transform nature, economy and society. 12 Leonid Petrov, ‘Turning Historians into Party Scholar-bureaucrats: North Korean Historiography in 1955–1958’, East Asian History, June 2007, 31: 101–24. 13 The Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) Hanguk Jeongsin Munhwa Yeonguwon, information leaflet, 2003. 14 The Korean Association of Social Sciences – Joseon Sahoe Gwahakja Hyeobhoe, promotional brochure published in Pyongyang, DPRK. 15 ‘2nd World Congress of Korean Studies’, North Korean Studies website. Available online: http://north-korea.narod.ru/congress.htm [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 16 Leonid Petrov, ‘Restoring the Glorious Past: North Korean Juche Historiography and Koguryŏ’, The Review of Korean Studies, September 2004, 7(3): 231–52. 17 Ku Chong-geon, ‘Uncovering Korea’s Past’, The Pyongyang Times, 22 September 2002. 18 Cha Ho-nam, ‘Pyongyang, 1,575 years’, The Pyongyang Times, 16 November 2002, p. 8. 19 Yi Ki-baek, Hanguksa Sillon – Sinsupan (The New History of Korea – a New Edition), Seoul: Ilchogak, 1996. 20 Sin Yong-ha, ‘Tracking the History of Old Chosŏn Warrants the Reconsideration of World History’, Yeoksa Tamheom, June 2003, (Supplement to Weolgan Chungang), no. 1, pp. 6–9. 21 Sin, ‘Tracking the History of Old Chosŏn’. 22 Kim Chong-rok, ‘Finding the Baikal Lake, the Symbol of Korean National Origins’, Yŏksa T’amhŏm, June 2003, (Supplement to Weolgan Jungang) no. 1, pp. 36–46. 23 Tessa Morris–Suzuki, ‘Lost Memories: Historical Reconciliation and Cross-Border Narratives in Northeast Asia’, in Steffi Richter ed. Contested Views of a Common Past: Revisions of History in Contemporary Northeast Asia. Frankfurt, Campus Verlag, 2008, pp 397–417. 24 Baogang He and David Hundt, ‘A Deliberate Approach to Northeast Asia’s Contested History’, Japanese Journal of Political Science, 2012 13(1): 37–58. 25 Among the most significant projects were the China–Japan Intellectual Community Dialogue (1997), East Asia Historical Forum for Critique and Solidarity (2000), Korea–Japan Joint History Research Committee (2002), Forum for Historical Consciousness and East Asian Peace (2003), Korea–Japan Solidarity 21 (2004), Trilateral Joint History Editorial Committee (2005). 26 Trilateral Joint History Editorial Committee ed., Miraereul Yeoneun Yeoksa: Han Jung Iri Hamkke mandeun Dong Asia Samguk-eui Geunhyeondaesa (A History that Opens the Future: The Contemporary and Modern History of Three East Asian Countries), Seoul: Hankyoreh Sinmunsa, 2005.

Korea’s uncertain path to reconciliation 59 27 David Hundt and Roland Bleiker, ‘Reconciling Colonial Memories in Korea and Japan’, Asian Perspective, 2007, 31(1): 61–91. 28 David Hundt and Roland Bleiker, ‘Reconciling Colonial Memories in Korea and Japan’, Asian Perspective, 2007, 31(1): 61–91, 84. 29 Setsuko Kamiya, ‘Bilateral history text project tries to heal old scars’, The Japan Times, 23 October 2007. Available online: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ nn20071023a6.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 30 Sunny Lee, ‘Internet rumors roil China-Korea ties’, Asia Times Online, 9 August, 2008. Available online: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JH09Ad02.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 31 See Petrov, ‘Restoring the Glorious Past’; also Yonson Ahn, ‘The Contested Heritage of Koguryo/Gaogouli and China–Korea Conflict’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 11 January 2008. Available online: http://www.japanfocus.org/-YonsonAhn/2631 [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 32 Chinese call this festival duanwu jie or Dragon Boat Festival and believe it is China’s tradition. 33 Quoted in Sunny Lee, ‘Internet Rumors Roil China–Korea Ties’, Asia Times Online, 9 August, 2008. Available online: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JH09Ad02.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 34 Quoted in Sunny Lee, ‘Internet Rumors Roil China–Korea Ties’, Asia Times Online, 9 August, 2008. Available online: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JH09Ad02.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 35 LC for Association for Progressive Communications News, 9 August 2010. Available online: http://www.apc.org/en/node/10890 [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 36 Ha-joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, London: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. The book review by Howard Richman, Raymond Richman and Jesse Richman is available online: http://www.idealtaxes.com/ post3056.shtml [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 37 Quoted in Cullen Thomas, ‘All Quiet on the Northern Front’, Foreign Policy, 25 August 2011. Available online: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/25/ all_quiet_on_the_northern_front?page=full [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 38 Jang Yeo-kyoung, ‘NIS looks into your “Gmail”; next time, it can be you’, Pressian, 7 December 2011. Available online: http://koreanstory.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/nislooks-into-your-gmail-next-time-it-can-be-you/ [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 39 For unofficial English translation of the ROK’s National Security Act see: http://www. hartford-hwp.com/archives/55a/205.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 40 Quoted in Cullen Thomas, ‘All Quiet on the Northern Front’, Foreign Policy, 25 August 2011. Available online: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/25/ all_quiet_on_the_northern_front?page=full [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 41 Cullen Thomas, ‘All Quiet on the Northern Front’, Foreign Policy, 25 August 2011. Available online: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/25/all_quiet_on_ the_northern_front?page=full [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 42 Choe Sang-hun, ‘Sometimes, It’s a Crime to Praise Pyongyang’, The New York Times, 5 January 2012. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/world/asia/ 06iht-korea06.html?_r=1 [Accessed 20 Auguat 2012]. 43 All three documentaries, ‘The Game of Their Lives’ (2002), ‘A State of Mind’ (2004) and ‘Crossing the Line’ (2006), were created by the British director Daniel Gordon. 44 Jonathan Landreth, ‘ “Bend It Like Beckham” Is First Western Film to Screen on North Korean Television’, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 December 2010. Available online: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bend-beckham-western-film-screen-67379 [Accessed 20 August 2012].

3

Reconciliation onscreen The Second Sino-Japanese War in Chinese movies Timothy Y. Tsu

Introduction An opinion survey in 2009 by China Daily, the leading English newspaper in China, and Genron NPO,1 a Japanese polling organization, found 65.2 per cent of Chinese respondents held a negative image of Japan.2 Of these, 73.2 per cent cited the last war between the countries and 56.8 per cent referred to the ‘unresolved historical issue’ — the common Chinese belief that Japan has not shown proper contrition over its past aggression — as the source of their unfavorable perception.3 The same survey found that more Chinese respondents associated Japan with the Nanjing massacre (1937) than with Mount Fuji or cherry blossoms, which the Japanese themselves prefer as national icons.4 Will the Chinese ever change their attitude toward Japan over the war? After all, fighting ended more than 60 years ago. A Japanese professor I once met was confident that time would dissipate this deep-seated Chinese animosity toward Japan. He pointed out that China has never apologized for invading Japan in the thirteenth century (the Mongol invasions), but the Japanese nowadays do not feel aggrieved in the least because of it. Give the Chinese another century, or maybe two, and things will somehow work out, this argument seems to imply.5 I am less optimistic than my Japanese colleague that the passage of time per se necessarily leads to forgiving and forgetting in the case of social traumas like wars and massacres. However, I accept that time opens up the possibility of change, for it allows for new experiences to influence understanding of the past. Just consider this. Between 2000 and 2008 Chinese visitors to Japan increased almost threefold to a million.6 Chinese tourists are the most avid spenders, pumping on average twice as much cash into the economy as those from other countries.7 To expand the Chinese tourist market, which is one of few growth areas in an otherwise lackluster economy, the Japanese government introduced a new category of individual tourist visa for well-to-do Chinese in July 2009. In the first month alone 1,200 applicants obtained this visa in Shanghai, and most of these eager tourists are in their 30s. Whatever feelings they may harbor about the war, the young and newly rich Chinese today simply cannot consume enough of Japan. But perhaps this is not surprising, for China surpassed the United States to become Japan’s biggest trading partner in 2007,8 a position it has since held on to.

Reconciliation onscreen 61 As China’s war generation passes into history, Chinese coming of age half a century removed from the fighting and suffering are unlikely to see that period in the same way as their parents and grandparents. Not only have the post-war generations not experienced combat, atrocity and deprivation first-hand, their contact with contemporary Japanese people as well as culture and products also complicates received memories of the ‘Resistance War’ (kangzhan). They encounter a vastly different Japan through the media, shopping, work, study, travel and friendship. This gap between a negative and receding memory of rapacious and bellicose Japan and a glamorous and exciting image of consumerist Japan requires today’s Chinese to make cognitive and behavioral adjustments consciously or unconsciously, willingly or grudgingly. Anecdotes and social trends show that realignments indeed have been underway in Chinese societies for some time. An Irish-American friend lived in Hong Kong as an exchange student in the 1970s. As she has sensitive skin, when she went out she used to put on a hat with a flap on the back for better protection from the sun. Hong Kong people then had only one comment about her appearance – that her headgear made her resemble an imperial Japanese soldier. The comparison, she knew, was not intended as a compliment. (It was not hostile either, as she was obviously not Japanese.) In 2008 this friend returned to work in Hong Kong. This time people expressed nothing but admiration for her stylish protective headgear. Not once has she been compared to a Japanese soldier. Communal perception has changed. Another story provides a different perspective on the same phenomenon. The father of a Hong Kong friend served in the Guomindang army during the war. Although as a technician he did not see combat, his antipathy toward the Japanese was so strong that he avoided Japanese products for a long time after the war. Japanese food, which often includes raw ingredients, was beyond the pale for him. But this former soldier’s buying behavior gradually changed in the 1990s. Now over 80, he insists on buying Japanese when it comes to electrical and electronic goods and has developed a taste for Japanese cuisine. Though no more than an anecdote, this story shows that individual perception can change over time and age is no impediment. It would be simplistic to conclude on the basis of stories like these that Hong Kong people’s perception of Japan has simply changed from negative to positive, as if individual and communal attitudes are so clear-cut and one-dimensional and can flip-flop just like that. No, Hong Kong people’s feelings toward Japan are layered and contradictory. In this respect they are similar to their mainland compatriots who at once dislike and desire to consume the former enemy country. What these anecdotes do suggest is that the perception of individuals and communities is capable of change, developing internal tension and fission with the passage of time, or more accurately under the weight of new experiences. The same object can evoke different meanings at different times in the same community, and the same individual can acquire new tastes that complicate, obscure or override earlier convictions and inclinations. It must be pointed out that memory of the war is very much alive in Hong Kong. As an icon in the city’s folk culture, the imperial Japanese soldier – the diminutive

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‘radish’ (lo-bak-tau in Cantonese) sporting a Hitler moustache, round, broad-rim Tōjō spectacles and a distinctive cap-with-a-flap – continues to trigger reflexive disgust and contempt. Recently, a Hong Kong taxi driver boasted to this author that his relatives had assisted anti-Japanese guerrillas in the New Territories after we drove past a war monument in Sai Kung.9 He also told of Japanese soldiers coming to his village in Shatin and slapping everyone they encountered on the face for no reason. These stories may well represent his personal experience, as he claimed, but they are also part of the ‘collective memory’ of Hong Kong people, known and owned and recycled by the community. To promote patriotism in conjunction with the city’s transition from British to Chinese rule in 1997, Hong Kong’s government and civic groups paid tribute to Chinese residents’ contribution to the anti-Japanese war by compiling new local histories and refurbishing and dedicating war memorials.10 Far from disappearing, memory of the war, this time articulated from the Chinese rather than the British perspective, has been enriched and reinforced in relation to Hong Kong’s changed political status. Nonetheless, the conventional image of the Japanese ‘radish’ – the brutal, lecherous, rapacious, arrogant but dimwitted imperial soldier – must now compete with more recent, vivid, direct and – let’s face it – pleasurable and satisfying experiences of contemporary Japan by many Hong Kong Chinese. A similar shift in the image of Japan has been taking place in mainland China for three decades, especially among the middle class and in the prosperous coastal cities. Japanese pop culture entered China soon after Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978 and initiated far-reaching reforms. As the country began to open up to the outside world, wholesome entertainers such as singer-actress Yamaguchi Momoe and uplifting TV dramas such as NHK’s Oshin11 became hugely popular among a Chinese audience eager for fresh stimuli after years of socialist propaganda.12 The penetration of Japanese pop culture has since quickened and deepened, even though anti-Japanese sentiments persist.13 The same tension can be observed outside the realm of pop culture. Chinese consumers express antipathy toward Japan because of the war but admiration for its manufactured goods on account of their quality.14 Japanese cuisine, in spite of its unfamiliar ingredients and cooking methods, is gaining ground too.15 The phenomenon of ‘Japanese fan tribe’ (harizu) – young people who adore and imitate Japanese fashion and performance trends – has spread from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the urban centers of coastal China since the 1990s.16 Thus, in the cultural arena too, antipathy toward Japan in the form of parental disapproval, warning about cultural imperialism and the xenophobic nationalism of ‘angry youths’ (fenqing) exist alongside a growing desire for and infatuation with hip, high-tech and futuristic Japan.17 Faced with these apparent contradictions, a journalist for the Chinese media Fenghuang offers this advice to the audience: ‘Don’t forget the past [read: the war] even as you embrace the present [read: Japanese-made gadgets and pop culture]’. But that only fudges the issue, for the trouble is, as we have seen, past and present do not sit comfortably together. Moreover, as the unexpected clashes between Japan and China over the Diaoyu/ Senkaku Islands in 2010 and 2012 show, anti-Japanese sentiments in China can

Reconciliation onscreen 63 quickly bubble to the surface. The war may be history, but the hostility it begot is still potent and recyclable. Changes in the representation of the Second Sino-Japanese War in mainland Chinese war movies are part of this sea change in contemporary Chinese society. In this chapter I propose that cinematic narration of the war has passed through three stages in the past six decades: stages characterized by, respectively, the trope of the Japanese ‘demon’ (guizi), the Chinese–Japanese bi-national family and the self-in-crisis. In the first stage, from 1949 to the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, movies such as Dileizhan (Mine Warfare, 1962)18 and Didaozhan (Tunnel Warfare, 1965)19 projected a world of black-and-white morality wherein an absolute opposition is created and maintained between Japanese aggressors and their nemeses, Chinese communist fighters.20 In this ‘classical socialist anti-Japanese war narrative’,21 Chinese communist heroes are saintly and infallible whereas Japanese villains are utterly despicable. There is not the slightest confusion between the two types of character, and the communist resistance heroes always vanquish the sinister invaders. In the second stage, from 1978 to 1999, cinematic representation of the war took a new turn. On the one hand, the classical anti-Japanese narrative continued to dominate the plots of most war movies. On the other hand, a small number of new productions began to deploy the trope of the Chinese–Japanese bi-national family to convey a conciliatory message about the war. Focusing on the suffering of Chinese–Japanese couples and their extended families during and after the war, and drastically cutting down on the length of combat sequences, movies such as Ying – Sakura (So Near Yet So Far, 1979)22 and Yuse hudie (Butterflies Bring Reunion, 1980)23 proclaim the need to transcend the chasm between the two countries opened up by the war. In the third stage, since 2000, the tropes of the Japanese demon and the bi-national family compete with yet another new trope, namely, the self-in-crisis. Movies such as Guizi Laile (Devils on the Doorstep, 2000)24 and Zhi Hudie (Purple Butterflly, 2003)25 do not cast the communist protagonist as a saintly figure. At the same time, they try to portray individual Japanese as something other than maniacal murderers and rapists. They blur the line between friend and foe, patriot and traitor, bestiality and humanity, a quality that has won them critical acclaims and scathing criticism alike. Controversies aside, there is no doubt that the trope of the ‘self-in-crisis’ directly challenges that of the Japanese demon. It should be stressed that in this scheme, later stages do not displace but build on earlier ones. In the first stage, the trope of the Japanese demon is dominant and the tropes of the bi-national family and the self-in-crisis have yet to emerge. In the second stage, movies employing the trope of Chinese–Japanese family exist alongside those vilifying Japanese demons. By the third stage, the tropes of the bi-national family and the self-in-crisis share the stage, so to speak, with that of the Japanese demon and his alter ego – the resistance hero. A word about terminology is needed too. In this chapter the term ‘combat movies’ refers to movies that depict fighting extensively, for example, such classical pieces as Pingyuan Youjidui (Guerrillas of the Plain, 1955)26 and Tunnel Warfare. By comparison, the term ‘war movies’ denotes a larger and more

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heterogeneous body of works that share one thing in common: namely, the war impinges on their stories in a significant way. Some of the movies in this category may feature lengthy fighting sequences, others have fewer such sequences, yet others may contain no explicit depiction of combat at all. In this sense, any love story, tragedy, comedy or docudrama may come under this rubric as long as the war, in the background or foreground, remembered or unfolding, constitutes more than an incidental element in the plot. Hence, a movie that deals with Japanese war orphans and their Chinese foster families like So Near Yet So Far (1979) belongs to this category, so does Qiuyu (Autumn Rain, 2002)27 which is about a Chinese man falling in love with a Japanese woman only to find out that her father has ordered his grandfather’s execution during the war, and so does Purple Butterfly, wherein a romantic relationship between two Chinese and Japanese secret agents plunges the two in a morass of contradictions.

Demon The portrayal of the Japanese soldier as ‘demon’ is central to the classical socialist anti-Japanese war narrative that informs all movies produced in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s about the last war between China and Japan. As the only acceptable representation of the Japanese aggressor for three decades, the trope of Japaneseas-demon remains resilient today, even though it must share the screen with other images of Japanese soldiers. This section analyses four movies from the 1950s and 1960s to illustrate how this trope glorifies the Resistance War, legitimizes Chinese communism and justifies the rule of the Chinese Communist Party by dramatizing such binary oppositions as right v. wrong, resistance v. oppression, discipline v. rapacity and loyalty v. treachery. Faithful to the Party policy that art must project unambiguous political messages, all four movies feature pristine Chinese resistance heroes and heroines. Brave, wise and upright, members of the Eighth Route Army stand in sharp contrast to the Japanese invaders who are invariably blood-thirsty, wanton and incorrigible. By the same token, these movies are populated by Chinese peasants who are instinctively and unyieldingly patriotic, resourceful and loyal to the Party. Endowed with superior morality and intelligence, these fine examples of the ‘masses’ are a separate species from the collaborators – Chinese militiamen and spies working for the Japanese – who are duplicitous and rapacious but rather lacking in intelligence and resolve. Moreover, soldiers of the Eighth Route Army and the peasant-fighters are ideologically unassailable, always displaying complete trust in communism/Maoism and the Party. By comparison, the Japanese and their Chinese sidekicks are motivated by nothing other than fanaticism, greed and debauchery, which make them at once evil and vulnerable. All in all, the good characters are pure and unwavering just as the bad ones are rotten to the core and unredeemable. The classical war narrative thus does not allow the slightest ambiguity in the meaning of the war: the prosecution and outcome of the war must resoundingly vindicate the correctness and greatness of the Chinese Communist Party and the patriotic masses that support it.

Reconciliation onscreen 65 This portrayal of Japanese demon (and his antithesis, the resistance hero/ heroine) closely conformed to the political dictates of the government as it validated its claim to legitimacy. Toeing the line laid down by Mao Zedong in his famous 1942 Yan’an talk on art, war movies without exception amplified the orthodoxy on the war against Japan, that ‘[it] was a genuine people’s war led by the Communist Party of China and Comrade Mao Zedong’.28 Made in the 1950s and 1960s, the movies discussed here also embodied the increasingly narrow and extreme leftist principles of artistic expression requiring, among other things, the glorification of Chairman Mao, the ‘triple elevation’ (santuchu) of the hero/ heroine and the relentless visual denigration of the enemy, showing him ‘at a distance, stunted and dark’ (yuan xiao hei).29 Guerrillas of the Plain is set in 1943 North China where the Japanese army is preparing an assault on an Eighth Route Army base. To distract the enemy, Li Xiangyang (literal meaning Facing the Sun) and his guerrilla fighters engage the enemy force led by Matsui. The guerrillas are also under order to procure food for the base camp. While Li and his associates are making plans at the home of a peasant sympathizer in Lijiazhuang, however, a rich neighbour informs on them, and the Japanese swoop in on the village. In an attempt to flush out the guerrillas, who have escaped into tunnels under the village, the Japanese terrorize the villagers and tear down their houses. In response, the guerrillas take out a fort manned by pro-Japanese Chinese militiamen, blow up a Japanese munitions train and attack the Japanese garrison in town, forcing the invaders to retreat temporarily. In the final round of engagement, the guerrillas destroy the Japanese depot in town and lure Matsui and his men into the village where they are eliminated. The movie ends with Li and his comrades triumphantly leaving the village for the mountain with loads of food. Tielu Youjidui (Railroad Guerrillas, 1956)30 is set in Japanese-occupied Shandong, North China, where communist guerrilla leader Liu Hong and political commissar Li Zheng lead a group of resistance fighters to sabotage Japanese railway communication. Their aim is to disrupt a Japanese military campaign against an Eighth Route Army stronghold. After pulling off a successful operation against a Japanese freight train, however, Liu is wounded by sniper fire from a soldier belonging to the local pro-Japanese Chinese militia. After recuperating under the care of young peasant widow Fanglin, Liu leads a frontal assault on a large and better equipped contingent of Japanese soldiers. As a result of this ill-conceived move, commissar Li sustains serious injury and has to be evacuated. In Li’s absence, Liu and his fighters are forced to reposition themselves to an island on an expansive lake. But the Japanese receive information on their whereabouts and have them surrounded. Along the way, the enemy also captures widow Fanglin as an accessory to the resistance. In spite of the precarious circumstances, Liu and his men manage to mount a successful counter-attack, forcing the Japanese to surrender and rescuing Fanglin from imminent execution by Chinese soldiers colluding with the Japanese. Having achieved a decisive victory, the guerrillas return to their mountain base in high spirits. Mine Warfare is set in Zhaojiazhuang, Jiaodong, in North China in 1942. Communist guerrilla Zhao Hu, having learned to make and lay mines, returns

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home to find the Japanese intent on overrunning his village, which lies between the Japanese garrison at Huangcun and a communist stronghold in the mountain. The Japanese force led by Captain Nakano and Sergeant Kameda must pass through Zhao’s village to attack the resistance camp. Working with village headman Shi Daye, commissar Lei from the Eighth Route Army and the enthusiastic young men and women of the village, Zhao trains the villagers in the manufacturing of various types of mines, which they then deploy with devastating effects against the invaders. After several skirmishes, the main Japanese force advances on the village using captured villagers as human shields and proJapanese Chinese militia as vanguards. Even so, the heavily armed Japanese are dealt a crushing defeat as cleverly designed tripwire landmines laid by the villagers decimate their numbers. In the end, the defeated and delirious Japanese commander perishes in front of a ‘demon interdiction boulder’ (zhenyao shi) by the village entrance. Tunnel Warfare (1965) is set in Jizhong, North China, in 1942. As the movie opens the Japanese are launching an offensive against an Eighth Route Army base in the mountains. In one of the affected villages, party representative Gao Laozhong and resistance leader Gao Baochuan decide to fight the enemy from tunnels. One night, the Japanese make a stealthy attack on the community, killing some villagers and damaging the primitive tunnels they have built. Taking this lesson to heart, the villagers design and build a more sophisticated underground system complete with ventilation, drainage, booby traps, camouflaged gun holes and hidden entrances inside and outside the settlement. The next round of engagement commences as Japanese commander Yamada mobilizes his men to occupy the village and to try to demolish the tunnel system. At first the resistance fighters attack a fort at a different location to try to distract the Japanese, but the Japanese ignore it and redouble their effort at discovering the tunnels and ferreting out the underground guerrillas. In the end the resistance fighters eliminate the invaders relying on the tactical advantage offered by the extensive tunnel network. In the movies discussed above, the Japanese demon is always an evil character, pure and simple. He possesses not a single redeeming quality and exists only to be reviled and vanquished. He is not to be enlightened or reformed. Communist cadres do not try to ‘educate’ him, and patriotic Chinese peasants would have no traffic with him. The division between the Japanese aggressor and the Chinese patriot is sharp and unbridgeable: there can be no confusion or rapprochement between ‘demon’ and ‘human’. It should be noted that the Japanese demon is not just evil. In addition to his moral depravity, this demonic character is physically and intellectually inferior. Typically, he appears onscreen as short, dimwitted and clumsy. Swaggering but out of his depth, he is a clown in addition to being a butcher. The same artistic convention prescribing that Chinese heroes and heroines must be tall, handsome, intelligent and dignified also dictates that the Japanese villains be marked by the exact opposite attributes. Thus, Japanese soldiers and officers appear in these movies as confused, pigheaded and downright incompetent. Outmaneuvered by the Chinese resistance at every turn, they stumble, run in circles, chase shadows and meet their end in the most pathetic and panicky ways.

Reconciliation onscreen 67 The Japanese commander in Mine Warfare becomes delirious before being shot dead; his demon clone in Tunnel Warfare makes a final suicidal charge like a scared, cornered animal; yet another clone in Guerrillas of the Plain is taken prisoner and made to kneel on the ground and watch Chinese fighters overrun his side. The classical Japanese demon is thus a rather peculiar creature: he has an excess of evil but a huge deficit in intelligence and composure. The Japanese demon continues as a stock cinematic trope to this day. One reason for its longevity is that many Chinese continue to harbour a deep, unmitigated grievance against the Japanese. The strong emotions arising from the pain and loss from the war will not dissipate easily ‘because of a piece of paper’ (the normalization and friendship treaties) which offers a ‘deep reflection’ instead of an apology and no compensation.31 Compounding this problem is the Chinese government’s renewed search for legitimacy, especially after the 1989 bloody crackdown on peaceful protestors on Tiananmen. The cinematic formula of China/ victim v. Japan/aggressor thus continues to find eager sponsors and receptive audience. Movies such as Quan Wang (Dog King, 1993)32 and Juqi Shoulai (Hands Up, 2005)33 carry on with the tradition of casting Japanese soldiers as murderous, duplicitous and debauched but utterly incompetent when pitched against the Chinese resistance. In addition to disseminating through movies, such images enter millions of households through a continual supply of TV dramas about the war. Nevertheless, even this time-honored and widely circulating trope cannot avoid modification as time passes. After about 2000 it is not hard to find movies that dispense with some constituent elements of the stereotype of the Japanese demon in casting Japanese soldiers. Taihangshang Shang, (Mount Taihang, 2005),34 a combat movie produced by the Chinese military’s August First Studio to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war, depicts the Japanese as fanatical and ferocious warriors but not as stupid and clumsy midgets. Yexi (Night Raid, 2007);35 another combat movie produced by August First, displays the same tendency. Featuring lengthy sequences of gory hand-to-hand combat, it unabashedly glorifies the communist heroes, spills quantities of fake blood and fills the screen with much smoke and fire, but refrains from turning the Japanese soldiers into clowns.36 In both movies, the Japanese aggressors are still despicable enemies but no longer moronic and clownish. Whether such modifications are a consolation to the Japanese audience is doubtful, but they certainly depart from the extreme, negative caricature of Japanese soldiers that has held sway for so long in Chinese film.

Family The end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Deng Xiaoping’s return to power and implementation of political and economic reforms, together with some relaxation of political control over cultural production and the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese Friendship Treaty in 1978, ushered in a new era of film making where directors have more room to explore alternative meanings of the war, among other hitherto

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taboo topics. The first event, the end of leftist mass political campaigns – confirmed by the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Chinese Communist Party Central Committee in December 1978 and reiterated in Deng’s 1979 message to art workers – led to an outburst of creative cinematic energy represented by, in particular, the work of the highly creative, post-Cultural Revolution ‘fifth-generation’ directors.37 The second event, culminating in Deng’s high-profiled visit to Japan in October 1978 to conclude a new treaty, signalled the Chinese leadership’s decision to seek closer ties with Japan, and necessitated a recalibration of Sino-Japanese relations, particularly but not exclusively with regard to the memory of the war, in accordance with the new reality of political rapprochement and growing cultural exchange and economic cooperation. In 1972, when Mao Zedong and the Chinese leadership decided to normalize relations with Japan, a massive political education campaign was launched to prepare party members for the sudden and radical change in policy. Six years later, a similar politico-cultural campaign followed the new supremo Deng’s visit to Japan where he declared that his country had a lot to ‘learn from the great Japanese people’.38 This emotionally difficult but politically necessary retreat from the Manichean worldview of Chinese Resistance v. Japanese Imperialism is the theme of a new crop of movies that articulate a message of reconciliation by depicting the impact of the war on ordinary, non-combatant Chinese and Japanese. Affirming an enduring bond between the two peoples in spite of the war, these works deploy the Chinese–Japanese bi-national family as a trope for the new emphasis on amicable bilateral relations. This section discusses four titles in this category: So Near Yet So Far (1979), Butterflies Bring Reunion (1980), Yipan Meiyou Xiawan de Qi (Go Masters, 1982)39 and Qingliangsi de Zhongsheng (The Sound of the Bell of Qingliang Temple, 1992).40 It ends by commenting on the 2004 movie Autumn Rain that reworks the bi-national family trope into one of bi-national romance. So Near Yet So Far, produced and exhibited soon after the Cultural Revolution, treats the trauma not just of the Second Sino-Japanese War, but also of the domestic political turmoil. Set in 1975–1976, the movie introduces Chen Jianhua (literal meaning Building China) as an engineer just recalled from political exile in the countryside to participate in a Sino-Japanese joint venture. He becomes the interpreter for Morishita Mizuko, a Japanese expert who assists in the project. It turns out that Morishita has a personal reason for coming to China: she was an orphan saved and reared by a Chinese peasant woman. Repatriated in her early teens, she now wants to seek out her Chinese foster family. Chen soon realizes that Morishita’s Chinese foster mother is none other than his own mother and that this Japanese expert is his long-separated ‘sister’. However, wary of causing political trouble for himself again, he keeps the information from Morishita: the Cultural Revolution has not yet run its course by 1975. A year later the Gang of Four falls, and Morishita is able to return to China to reunite with her foster family. In the climactic reunion scene, the Japanese woman falls onto her knees to thank Chen’s mother for raising her in the chaotic early post-war years. Meanwhile, her son from Japan, who accompanies her on the trip, comes forward to greet his Chinese grandma and uncle and quickly becomes a good friend of Chen’s daughter

Reconciliation onscreen 69 of a similar age. The reunion of three generations from two countries at the end of the movie affirms the newly established friendship between China and Japan. At the same time the movie conveys the message that, with professionals like Chen recalled to their former posts and reunited with their families, the decade-long political upheaval is over and the rebuilding of the country can begin. Butterflies Bring Reunion opens with Chōnen Nakako (literal meaning: Always Remembering China), a young Japanese biologist, coming to China in search of a rare species of jade-coloured butterfly on behalf of her elderly mother. Through her interpreter Wangdong (literal meaning: Looking East), she is introduced to a Chinese entomologist named Qiu Tong, but the latter refuses to see her. When the young woman returns to Japan and relates her experience in China to her mother, the older woman is convinced that the elusive Chinese scientist is her longseparated husband, who returned to China with their little boy as the two countries went to war. Now the mother, accompanied by her daughter, her daughter’s husband and their little girl, comes to Beijing hoping to reunite with her Chinese husband. The Chinese entomologist, however, wrongly believes that his Japanese wife has remarried and refuses to acknowledge her. Later, during a trip to South China, Qiu Tong and his Japanese wife finally resolve all the misunderstandings and become reunited. The Chinese father is delighted to find out that Chōnen Nakako is actually his daughter, born soon after his departure, whereas the Japanese mother is moved to tears upon realizing that Wangdong is her longseparated son. To complete the grand reunion, the Japanese granddaughter embraces her Chinese grandfather, bringing together the two estranged sides of a three-generation, two-country family. Reflecting closer ties between China and Japan, Go Masters is a joint Chinese– Japanese production with a Chinese and a Japanese director and a bi-national cast. (The previous two movies have an all-Chinese cast.) The story begins with a friendly match between Chinese go master Kuang Yishan and visiting Japanese go master Matsunami Rinsaku in pre-war China. The game is interrupted, but the two men have become close friends. Noticing the talent in Kuang’s son Aming, Matsunami persuades the father to let his son come to train under him in Japan. However, war breaks out and cuts off communication between the two families. Having lost his wife and daughter during the war, Kuang goes to Japan after the war to search for his son, his only hope. There he discovers that his son has married Matsunami’s daughter Ba but was killed by the Japanese military police, having been betrayed by Matsunami. He also finds out that Ba has lost her mind and now lives in a mental institution. A bitterly disappointed Kuang returns to China filled with remorse and hatred for the Japanese and gives up go. After China and Japan re-established friendly relations, Matsunami returns to China on an official cultural exchange program. Once in China he insists on meeting Kuang even though the latter refuses to see him. Eventually, the two old men meet and Matsunami is able to explain that it was his misplaced trust in some militarist that had cost his Chinese son-in-law’s life. Bursting into tears, he falls onto his knees and begs to be forgiven. Consumed with rage, Kuang initially refuses to listen. Witnessing this impasse, Matsunami’s sister introduces a teenage

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Japanese girl to Kuang as his granddaughter, explaining that Aming and Ba have left behind a child. The appearance of the granddaughter causes Kuang to slowly agree to be reconciled with Matsunami and accept the Japanese half (through his deceased son) of his extended family. In conclusion, the movie fast forwards to another sequence of reconciliation, this time explicitly conflating the country and the individual. After participating as supervisors in a friendly match between young Chinese and Japanese go players, the two old masters take a walk on the Great Wall with friends and relatives. As they gaze hopefully into the distance atop the ancient monument and become infused with optimism, Kuang and Matsunami resume the game they have left unfinished from before the war. As the relationship between the two old men comes full circle to its propitious origin, so, it is implied, does the relation of their countries. The Sound of the Bell of Qingliang Temple is a production to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the normalization of relations between China and Japan, and it too makes use of the bi-national family trope. Gouwa (literal meaning: Puppy) is a Japanese war orphan saved and raised by the Chinese peasant woman Yangjiao Daniang (literal meaning: Mother Goat Horn). Growing up in poverty but loved by his Chinese foster family, he becomes a Buddhist monk (Dharma Master Mingjing) and later has the opportunity to visit Japan as a member of a Chinese Buddhist delegation. Somehow, his real mother in Japan, O ¯shima Kazuko, recognizes this visiting Chinese monk in the news as her lost son. After some hesitation and difficulties, she manages to invite the son back home where she apologizes to him for failing to fulfill her maternal duties. In spite of the reunion, the son decides to go back to China rejecting the mother’s plea for him to stay with her. What is more, he asks her not to come to the airport to see him off to avoid an emotional farewell. Instead, he invites his mother to come to China at another time to pay her respects to the grave of his Chinese foster mother. The movie ends in a visit by the son and his Japanese mother to the grave of his Chinese foster mother in the countryside. Although produced to commemorate the official resumption of Sino-Japanese friendship, this movie is rather different from the ones just discussed. Not only does it end in a (second) separation instead of a happy reunion between mother and son, but the mood of the whole movie is also sombre and restrained. Unlike in the other movies, the brief reunion of son and mother in Japan is a subdued event where the two appear to feel awkward rather than joyful in each other’s presence. Moreover, during his whole time in Japan, the son wears on his face a faint but unmistakable expression of incomprehension and aloofness toward the people he meets and the things happening around him. On more than one occasion, he declares his Chinese identity, explicitly positioning himself as a foreigner in Japan. Last but not least, the movie leaves the viewer with the lingering suspicion that the son, in asking the mother not to come to the airport to see him off, is more concerned about maintaining his composure in public than about his mother’s affection for him (or his feeling for her). The movie seems to suggest that Chinese should take pride in their country and resist the temptation of materialist Japan like Puppy, the Japanese orphan/Chinese monk. One cannot help but ask why,

Reconciliation onscreen 71 20 years after the Chinese leadership initiated closer ties with Japan, a movie that stresses restraint alongside goodwill in bilateral relations should appear. It will be noticed that there are two types of bi-national families in these movies. The first type consists of Chinese foster parents and their adopted Japanese war orphans. The second type consists of Chinese–Japanese couples, their children and the in-laws on both sides. Whatever the type, the central meaning of the trope is the same, i.e., ordinary Chinese and Japanese have suffered alike during the war and – here is the crux of the intended political message – it is time for the two countries to become reconciled in the same way broken families reunite and pick up the pieces. It can be said that the bi-national family movies narrate the war in terms of ‘blood relation’ as opposed to ‘bloodshed’ with the aim to reconnect two peoples whom the demon-centered war narrative does not allow to bond or make peace in any way. Bi-national family movies differ from classical war movies in other ways too. First, the focus of their war narrative shifts away from combat and combatants to the suffering of civilians caught up in the fighting or the general confusion of war. The Chinese characters, though still patriotic, are no ardent communists or hardened resistance fighters. By the same token, the main Japanese characters are not militarists but usually passive victims like women and infants. The movies present the Japanese living under militarist government as helpless and oppressed much like the Chinese living under Japanese occupation. Second, these movies echo the Chinese government’s new position on the war, namely, although Japan has inflicted colossal damage and unspeakable suffering on China and its people, reconciliation is not just possible but necessary provided the Japanese people show proper contrition. Go Masters drives home this political message in the climactic scene in which the two masters meet again after the war. It has the Japanese master transfer most of the responsibility for the tragedies that have befallen the two families to unidentified militarists (who are not called to account for their action in the movie), and then has him fall to his knees and apologize to his Chinese counterpart for his naive trust in the bad guys. Next comes the turn for the Chinese master to lecture his Japanese friend/enemy/relative about the suffering and sacrifice he (read: the Chinese people) has made during the war. For the whole duration of this encounter, the Japanese repents in tears and stays on his knees while the Chinese stands tall, gives vent to his anger and agonizes over the need to forgive. Despite their conciliatory message, these movies do not amount to a repudiation of the trope of the Japanese demon because they preserve the solid moral certainty of the classical war narrative built on the formula of patriotic Chinese v. devilish Japanese. In these movies the Japanese demon is still there in the background as unnamed soldiers and fanatics, even though ‘ordinary’ Japanese now appear in the foreground as victims in accordance with the decision of Chinese leaders that friendship with Japan best serves China’s interests. In summary, all these movies faithfully expounded the position on reconciliation with Japan that the Chinese government first articulated in 1972 and has since adhered to closely, namely: (1) reconciliation is necessary from a strategic point

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of view; and (2) even though some Chinese are still angry with Japan, it should be remembered that the Japanese people are also victims of militarism and are not to be blamed.41 Although the trope of the war-torn bi-national family tapped a strong emotional vein in China from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, its relevance quickly diminishes as time passes. Memory of the Cultural Revolution is fast fading, many separated families have reunited, and not a few of the people directly affected have passed away. Moreover, the political restrictions on interaction between Chinese and Japanese that form the backdrop of the movies no longer apply. By the early 1990s the two peoples can associate freely in most circumstances, even though it is still much easier for Japanese to go to China than the other way round. In short, the elation and surprise resulting from the two former enemies’ epochal rapprochement in 1978 have passed, and so has much of the efficacy of the bi-national family trope. In this connection, Autumn Rain indicates a possible way ahead: it morphs the bi-national family tragedy into a bi-national love story where the burden of history is confronted and overcome by youthful mutual affection. In this Sino-Japanese love story, Hashimoto Shiko, a young Japanese woman, comes to Beijing hoping to study Chinese opera with retired master He Jichu. In spite of the master’s initial reluctance, Shiko’s enthusiasm and persistence persuade the old man to take her under his wing. Before long, Shiko falls in love with the master’s errant son He Ming. Ming is alienated from his father because he does not want to carry on with the family’s vocation in Beijing opera. However, Shiko’s love of the art rekindles in him an interest in the family’s heritage and eventually reconciles him with his father. Just when everything seems to be going well for Shiko, she discovers to her horror that her grandfather, who arranged her study with the old master in the first place, had perpetrated a horrible crime in China during the war. In an e-mail confession, her grandfather reveals that he has unwittingly committed cannibalism in China. What is more, it was he who ordered the execution of the father of master He. Sending his granddaughter to China to study under the son of his wartime victim is the former soldier’s way of atoning for his past crime. A shocked Shiko leaves master He and Ming, but eventually returns to them out of her love for Beijing opera. The two young people then perform on stage as husband and wife in the historical piece Silang Tanmu (Silang Visits His Mother), whose plot mirrors the modern performers’ complicated relationship. Toward the end of the movie, master He declares that he cannot forgive Shiko’s grandfather for the crime he has committed against his country and family, but accepts that the younger generation is innocent. The romantic relationship of Ming and Shiko thus symbolizes a new and positive phase in the relation between Japan and China. Just as the old bi-national families are fading, new bi-national romantic relationships (and future bi-national families?) are being formed. A forward-looking message indeed, and one partly based on reality. Since 1997, marriage between Chinese and Japanese has topped the list of foreign nationals marrying Japanese, beating Americans, Koreans, Filipinos and Thais.42

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Self and history in crisis In contrast to the classical anti-Japanese war movies and the family-reunion-cumnational-rapprochement movies, a small number of new productions since the start of the twenty-first century introduced a heavy dose of moral ambiguity into the narration of the war between China and Japan. These movies came at a time of tension and conflict over China-Japan relations in China. On the one hand, the 1990s and 2000s saw ‘history activists’ inciting strident criticism and mass protest against Japan and implicitly challenging the government’s policy of pragmatic engagement.43 On the other hand, a minority of commentators questioned the continual demonization of Japan as counter-productive if not downright ‘unhealthy’, advocating instead a ‘forward-looking’ relation.44 It was under these emotionally and ideologically charged circumstances that the three movies discussed here were conceived and made. Intentionally provocative, they stirred up controversies domestically while attracting generally favorable attention abroad. The first, Purple Butterfly, explores the meaning of the war through the tortuous relationship of a Chinese woman and a Japanese man, who are lovers but also secret agents working for opposite sides. The second movie, Devils on the Doorstep, uses the character of a ‘typical’ Chinese peasant to deflate the patriotic myth of the Resistance War. The third movie, Nanjing! Nanjing! (City of Life and Death, 2009),45 experiments with the characterization of a conscientious Japanese soldier and a nuanced narration of the Nanjing massacre. The last two movies in particular represent the boldest attempts as yet to re-examine the classical war narrative, testing the limits of Chinese official and popular tolerance for alternative historical interpretations. Purple Butterfly opens in 1928 in Manchuria where Chinese girl Xinxia is romantically involved with Japanese youth Itami Hidehiko. Their relationship comes to an abrupt end when Itami returns to Japan. Soon after the separation, Xinxia witnesses a fanatic Japanese murder her college-student brother for his anti-Japanese activity. The scene shifts to Shanghai a few years later where Xinxia and Itami meet again as secret agents working for opposite sides. Xinxia and her fellow Chinese agents attempt to assassinate Itami’s superior Yamamoto, whereas Itami organizes a counter-attack. Driven by duty and emotion, the two former lovers engage in a complex and dangerous game in which feigned/rekindled romance gets entangled with mission, and physical intimacy mixes up with coldblooded murder. As the two dance in a Japanese club, Itami’s men foil the assassination plot and eliminate all of Xinxia’s associates. But Situ, a bystander who has been caught up in the spy war, barges in and shoots dead Itami while gravely injuring Xinxia in revenge for his slain girlfriend. As Xinxia fades out of consciousness, the movie flashes back to a moment when Xinxia had sex with the leader of her cell prior to setting out on a mission. The last minutes of the movie comprise a series of silent black-and-white historical footages of Japanese forces attacking Chinese targets. The only Chinese movie to win a nomination (but no award) in the 56th Cannes Film Festival, Purple Butterfly is ‘full of ambiguities (aimei) of human relations’,

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to quote its director Lou Ye.46 Many Chinese viewers find the movie bewildering, citing the convoluted story and minimalist dialogues.47 Blending together a love story, a spy story and an anti-Japanese war story, it blurs conventional distinctions and destabilizes received meaning by skewing the identities of its main characters, twisting their relationships out of shape, thwarting their ostensible intentions and compounding their emotional predicaments. Long periods of silence, cryptic dialogues, forward and backward leaps in time-space and a pervasive gloom that haunts almost every frame serve to fudge the storyline, smudge the characters and generally discourage the audience from construing a unitary message for the movie. Accessibility aside, this piece successfully shakes up the conventions of the classical war narrative. Female lead Xinxia’s romantic involvement with multiple men is an affront to the chaste and patriotic classical anti-Japanese heroine. The youthful peasant women opposing the Japanese in Guerrillas of the Plain, Tunnel Warfare and Mine Warfare would never allow themselves to be distracted from their mission by more than a furtive glance toward their handsome male comrades. Time for romance, not to mention sexual gratification, has no place in a single-minded, spartan and ideologically pure struggle for national survival. By these standards, Xinxia is an irrevocably compromised resistance fighter. Indeed, she does not qualify as a ‘proper’ Chinese woman in the first place. Early in the movie the silent but obvious disapproval her brother and his anti-Japanese activist friends show towards her liaison with Itami highlights the fact that she is no innocent girl sexually or politically, her student uniform and girlish ponytail notwithstanding. And she carries this contradiction with her after her transformation from a student into a gun-toting secret agent. Carnally involved with Japanese and Chinese men, sometimes consecutively and sometimes simultaneously, this militant Xinxia is again too ‘loose’ for a classical war heroine. Her continual involvement with Itami after he turns enemy agent separates Xinxia from the exemplary female fighters in the classical war movies, who would rather pay with their lives than have anything to do with the Japanese. Xinxia is not the only character assassin of the classical war heroes and heroines. The characters of Situ and his girlfriend Yiling, two bystanders whose lives are ruined in the crossfire and intrigue between Chinese and Japanese secret agents, also challenge the image of patriotic Chinese purveyed by the classical war movies. These two happy and self-absorbed modern Shanghai lovers take no interest in the skirmishes and looming war between their country and Japan. They hurry to work and they hurry to the cinema and dancehall. At work they are cogs in a modern capitalist machine – this is 1930s Shanghai – he as a postman and she a telephone operator. At play, they are like any number of other young Shanghai men and women who adore the latest products the modern Western entertainment industry serves up. The noisy and passionate anti-Japanese student demonstrations they pass by on their way to work and to their rendezvous hardly register in their consciousness. To them, the slogans and banners of patriotic students and workers are as inconsequential as the ubiquitous traffic noise and signboards of the city. The tragedy and injustice that befall them – Situ being mistaken by the

Reconciliation onscreen 75 Japanese for a Chinese agent and tortured while Yiling is shot dead by Xinxia by mistake – produce in Situ a desire for revenge but no patriotism. He tracks down Itami and shoots him dead at point blank range. He does not take a fatal shot at Xinxia, the killer of his girlfriend, but the reason for that is left unexplained in the movie. It could be that he recognizes that Xinxia works for a worthy cause, but it could also be that he remembers his brief relationship with her after his girlfriend’s death. Ambiguity, as director Lou reminds us, is the hallmark of this movie. What is indisputable is the fact that Situ and his girlfriend – and presumably many, many more Shanghai people like them – are not the least concerned about the war, or for that matter about anything that is not immediately related to their welfare. Xinxia’s patriotism may be less than pristine, but Situ and Yiling display no emotion whatsoever for their country. Characters like Situ and Yiling, who work for neither the Chinese nor Japanese cause, simply cannot exist in the Manichean world of the classical war movies. There every Chinese must be a patriot or risk being branded a collaborator. Just as the characters of Xinxia, Situ and Yiling contradict established roles in the classical war movies, the Japanese character of Itami also deviates from the stereotype of Japanese demon. Itami is a bona fide lover of Xinxia in Manchuria. Even as a spy in Shanghai, he continues to love her in spite of his knowledge of her covert identity. During a tryst with her, it is he who reminisces about their time together in Manchuria while she remains silent. The movie portrays Itami as a complex character by having him knowingly go along with Xinxia’s love game so as to foil her assassination scheme but at the same time arranging through his superior for her to go to Tokyo with him. Moreover, it is revealed that Itami’s father was forced to commit suicide by militarists in Japan before the son’s posting to Shanghai. The father’s persecution by fanatics suggests that the son has no sympathy for the militarism engulfing Japan at the time. Hence, we have in Itami a Japanese character that is essentially human – complex and contradictory. He is no ultra-nationalist but can be cunning and ruthless as a secret agent. He loves and cares about his Chinese girlfriend even as he works to destroy her professionally. In the final analysis, there is no doubt that Itami is an accessory to imperialist aggression, but he is a far cry from the one-dimensional Japanese demons that populate the classical war movies. While Purple Butterfly smudges the distinction between friend and foe, resistance fighter and Japanese agent, Devils on the Doorstep, winner of the Grand Prix at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, upsets cinematic conventions governing the representation of patriotism in the struggle against Japanese militarism by relentless mockery. In this work the humble life of a Chinese peasant descends inexorably into confusion and ends in a bloodbath after he is drawn into the murky and deadly confrontation between the Chinese resistance and Japanese occupation. Conjoining farce and tragedy, resistance and collaboration, patriotism and opportunism, merrymaking and massacre, undeserving victory and irreparable loss, self-righteousness and gross miscarriage of justice, this movie mercilessly ridicules and blatantly debunks the longstanding anti-Japanese rhetoric purveyed by the communists and Guomindang alike.

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The life of peasant Ma Dasan goes haywire as the result of a surprise during his tryst with young widow Yu’er. An armed stranger barges into his house just when Ma and Yu’er are getting really intimate and points a gun at Ma’s forehead. The intruder, whom Ma presumes to be a ‘guerrilla leader’ (duizhang), demands that Ma temporarily harbour two prisoners for him. Too scared to object, Ma takes in the Japanese soldier Hanaya Kosaburō and the Chinese interpreter Dong Hanchen. Accepting the prisoners, however, exposes Ma and the entire village to terrible reprisal from the Japanese. The risk grows by the day as the mysterious visitor fails to return for his ‘baggage’. In desperation Ma and the villagers decide that it is best to return the prisoners to their unit and, claiming credit for their ‘rescue’, ask for food as recompense from the Japanese. Seemingly acceding to the deal, the Japanese officer Sakazuka takes a squad of soldiers and the promised food to the village where a party is organized for them. Midway through the revelry, the Japanese open fire and massacre the whole community. Ma escapes only because he happens to be away. After the war he tracks down the Japanese to a POW camp run by the Guomindang army. Seeking revenge, he charges into the camp one day and dispatches a number of the POWs with a heavy butcher’s knife. Nonetheless, he is to pay for this with his life. The local Guomindang commander Major Gao sentences Ma to death for murder but passes the job of execution to the Japanese POWs on the grounds that Chinese should not kill Chinese. As it happens, the dirty job goes to Hanaya, who was once Ma’s unwanted prisoner. The movie ends in a rapid sequence of shots: Hanaya’s samurai sword falls, Ma’s head rolls, blood gushes forth, the frame is flooded red (the movie is in black-and-white up to this point), the eyes of Ma’s severed head blink, the frame freezes. Devils on the Doorstep contains no resistance hero, not even a blemished one like Xinxia in Purple Butterfly. The presumed guerrilla leader, who dumps the prisoners in Ma Dasan’s house, reveals neither his face nor his identity: it is unclear if he is Communist or Guomindang. Moreover, his failure to return as promised brings many inconveniences and eventually catastrophe upon Ma and his fellow villagers. ‘Which leader?’, ‘Where is he?’, ‘When is he returning?’ are questions the villagers ask themselves repeatedly but fail to find answers for. In the end, the presumed guerrilla leader not only fails to liberate the oppressed peasants but contributes to their violent deaths. No hero here for sure. If the resourceful classical communist resistance fighter is absent in this movie, so are the patriotic masses. No one in the village is serious about resisting the Japanese. Ma Dasan carries on an affair with a neighbour literally under the nose of the invaders: there is a Japanese garrison on the hilltop above the village. The children in the village cheer the Japanese military band as it comes through now and then, expecting candies from the officer in the lead. The village also supplies the Japanese with drinking water. Unlike the peasants in Tunnel Warfare and Guerrillas of the Plain, who refuse to cooperate with the Japanese regardless of the sacrifice, these villagers acquiesce to living under occupation, bowing and smiling obsequiously to the occupiers while receiving small largesse from them. Since survival is their overriding goal, they have to please the Japanese while trying to appease the resistance, which is precisely what their predicament is.

Reconciliation onscreen 77 As if that is not bad enough, the villagers are divided among themselves. Even in crisis, everyone from the elder Wujiu Laoye to the sharp-tongued Bashenzi to the evasive Ermazi is more concerned with saving his/her own skin than some lofty goal like repelling the Japanese. As the villagers debate about the best course of action, they also try to settle scores with each other and to maximize personal gains. Their fractious and largely fruitless meetings are a far cry from the harmonious and high-minded discussions in the classical war movies. Last but not least, the solution eventually adopted by the villagers is not only self-serving and deceitful but borders on collaboration. By returning the prisoners for reward, they arguably render material assistance to the enemy and sell out the resistance cause. All in all, the legendary patriotic masses are nowhere to be found in Devils on the Doorstep. Instead, we get petty, cunning and selfish peasants who constantly scheme and contend against forces beyond their control hoping to survive and maybe gain a little advantage over the neighbour. For them, mundane concerns like sex, food, money and self-preservation come before abstract concepts such as country and ideology. Next, the portrayal of Japanese soldiers in the movie also deviates from that of the classical war movies. The soldiers garrisoned on the hill above the village appear harmless enough in the first half of the movie. When they enter the village, they do not come as menacing fighting men but as a military band led by the seemingly affable officer Nonomura. Contrary to type, Nonomura distributes candies and performs a trick or two to entertain the cheering and laughing village children. Certainly, these apparently harmless soldiers eventually turn murderous and set upon the villagers, but they do so under the influence of alcohol and after being goaded by a fanatical officer from another unit. Nonomura initially hesitates to draw his sword, although he kills with abandon once the sword is out of its sheath. At the same time, the movie shows that the Japanese can be equally merciless to one of their own. Prisoner Hanaya returns to his unit to face hatred and abuse instead of welcome. ‘You have been made a “heroic spirit” at Yasukuni Shrine, how dare you come back alive?’ roars his superior as he and others take turns to assault him. This episode is a grim reminder that Japanese militarism is oppressive to non-Japanese and Japanese alike. The Japanese characters in this movie are therefore more developed and less coherent than in the old movies. Some of them can be friendly under certain circumstances even though they all eventually revert to type. There is also division and oppression among their ranks, an issue few Chinese movies bother to seriously explore. Even victory does not escape mockery in this movie. It unfolds as a farcical spectacle for the people of the local town and a personal tragedy for the main character Ma Dasan. The pompous Major Gao of the Guomindang army appears as much an outsider as the Japanese. He descends into town in a speeding jeep driven by a reckless American GI. His victory speech is delivered in a Mandarin so marred by a Cantonese accent that he comes across more like an impostor than a saviour. Indeed, he has to be propped up by GIs because of a bad leg – the Japanese at least stand on their own. These are devastating shots, for they suggest that the Chinese, personified by this lame officer, cannot convincingly claim to

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have won the war, even though the Japanese have surrendered. As for the main character, the terribly wronged peasant Ma, justice does not follow victory at all. Ignoring the responsibility of the Japanese for massacring civilians, Major Gao sentences Ma to death for taking justice into his own hands. It is an ultimate irony that this Chinese officer, by a twisted logic, assigns the job of execution to the Japanese POWs. In having a Chinese make a Japanese lop off the head of another Chinese, the movie poses a series of uncomfortable questions: Who is the real victimizer in this war? Who is the true patriot? Who defends the rights of victims? Who deserves the credit for winning the war? Although it is possible to see Devils on the Doorstep as an ‘anti-war’ movie,48 to stay at that level of generality misses much of the point. To an audience without a stake in the Communist or Guomindang anti-Japanese war rhetoric, the movie may indeed articulate nothing more than a generic anti-war stance. But its farce and mockery achieve the greatest potency and cause the most ideological damage only when they are seen as directly challenging the conceits of the classical antiJapanese war narrative. Its irreverence toward the Communist Party (by total elision), toward the masses that the Party claims to enlighten, lead and rely on and toward the purity of the anti-Japanese cause are simply too much for the Chinese government. Although the movie was released outside China in 2000 and has won international acclaims, all that a Beijing official could say in 2002 was that it was being edited for release in China.49 It appears to have subsequently been very discreetly released for limited viewing, but how much editing has gone into the domestic version is unclear. The Nanjing massacre occupies a special place in the Chinese memory of the war, representing the ultimate proof of Chinese victimhood and the strongest indictment of Japanese bellicosity.50 This horrific event has inspired a number of Chinese movies,51 notably, Tucheng Xuezheng (Evidence of Massacre, 1987),52 Nanjing 1937 (Don’t Cry, Nanjing, 1995)53 and Heitaiyang: Nanjing Datusha (Black Sun: The Nanjing Massacre, 1995)54. However, City of Life and Death stands apart from previous works on account of its ‘sympathetic’, in-depth portrayal of a Japanese soldier, in addition to superior cinematography, a more complex story, more developed characters and ‘realistic’ combat sequences. That the film was shot in black and white (like Devils on the Doorstep) also gives it an ‘authentic’ feel. Directed by the ‘sixth generation’ director Lu Chuan, the movie captured international attention by winning the top prize at the 2009 San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. Responding to the announcement of the award, director Lu expressed his hope that international recognition for this movie will heighten awareness around the world of the atrocity committed at Nanjing. In spite of the publicity it has generated overseas, its reception among the Chinese audience is far from uniformly favourable. While many profess to respond emotionally to the depiction of violence and degradation, some pointedly question the wisdom of including a conscientious Japanese character in the movie.55 As the movie opens, the Guomindang army is in the process of retreating from Nanjing, the capital at the time. Unwilling to give up, Lu Jianxiong and a group of crackpot fighters, including the rotund Shunzi and the boy Xiaodou, wage

Reconciliation onscreen 79 a last-ditch battle with the Japanese in the urban wasteland. Their efforts are of course futile, and the Japanese secure the city after intense but brief fighting. What follows is a series of planned and impromptu killings of the wounded, POWs and suspected deserters pulled from the swelling refugee population. Lu, the leader of the ephemeral resistance, is killed together with several hundred POWs by Japanese machine gunfire. At the same time, sexual violence against women erupts on a large scale as the invaders go around raping and forcing Chinese women into the military brothel system. One young Japanese soldier, Kadokawa, is troubled by this orgy of murder and rape unfolding around him. Following his conscience, he tries to behave moderately and to restrain his fellow soldiers. Needless to say, the difference he can make is negligible. Deeply troubled – he has a bewildered look on his face throughout – he shoots himself after taking Shunzi and Xiaodou away from a doomed crowd of refugees and releasing them outside the city. The movie has a subplot that develops around the safety zone run by the German Nazi sympathizer Rabe with the assistance of his male secretary Tang Tianxiang and female teacher Jiang Shuyun. Rabe represents the international law that the Japanese hold in contempt and freely trample on. Tang is the wise guy who sells out his people to save his family only to bring disaster on his loved ones and other refugees. Teacher Jiang represents the modern Western-educated Chinese woman imbued with righteous courage, who insists on doing good when others succumb to fear and selfishness. Defending the welfare of the refugees in the safety zone against brutish Japanese soldiers, she eventually pays with her life. When the German Rabe can no longer protect her, Kadokawa puts a bullet into her head to spare her the ravage of Japanese soldiers. The character of the Japanese soldier Kadokawa is the most notable and controversial character in City of Life and Death. The movie gives him a psychological depth and complexity that is not seen in previous Chinese works. Moreover, Kadokawa is not just a more fully developed character: he is portrayed sympathetically, as critics rightly observe. He is an enemy soldier for sure, but far from a monster – that fanatical nationalist, sadistic killer and sexual predator so familiar to the Chinese audience. Rather, he is a Japanese soldier with a conscience and enough independence to act on his moral judgements. Unlike other trigger-happy soldiers, he exercises restraint in the use of force, he tries to respect international conventions on war and he displays basic human decency when confronted with the plight of non-combatants. The human side of him, which the movie hints is related to his higher level of education and exposure to Christianity at school, is able to connect with the humanitarian spirit of teacher Jiang, who in turn recognizes his basic decency. It is this tenuous connection – a mutual recognition of humanity between a Chinese and a Japanese – that takes the movie to its climax. Kadokawa shoots teacher Jiang to save her from sexual abuse and later takes his own life too. To prepare the audience for this extraordinary turn of events, the movie goes to some length to separate Kadokawa from the other Japanese soldiers. In addition to suggesting that he comes from a different social background from the regular conscripts, it utilizes close-up shots to dramatize the feelings of hesitation, bewilderment, anxiety and regret that register on his face as the war unfolds.

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Furthermore, the movie reinforces Kadokawa’s yearning to connect with another human being, to love and be loved, by depicting a brief relationship between him and a Japanese comfort woman. Casting Kadokawa as a sexually innocent young man who tries to make conversation with a weary and sickly Japanese prostitute in a military brothel, the movie contrasts him with other unfeeling, wanton soldiers working hard at releasing their sexual stress on women in beds separated by flimsy veils. But his feeling for the prostitute is not reciprocated, for she soon becomes delusional and dies. The Japanese military machine first exploits and then abandons her. It also thwarts Kadokawa’s desperate attempts to connect with another human. Such a dehumanizing war eventually becomes too much for a conscientious soldier: Kadokawa shoots himself in the head after confessing to a conscript that ‘to live is harder than to die’. The second notable feature about this movie is that it frames the massacre in such a way that some agency is given back to the Chinese. The same move, however, has the effect of seemingly mitigating the crimes committed by Japanese soldiers, for it gives the impression that some of the killings are perhaps overzealous acts of war but fall short of being criminal and sadistic. Instead of showing, as previous movies on the incident do, unopposed Japanese soldiers romping through the war-ravaged city terrorizing civilians for sport, City of Life and Death begins with Lu’s team of ragtag fighters ambushing and almost overwhelming a small unit of Japanese soldiers. Depicting a colossal Chinese defeat from the perspective of a motley group of Chinese waging a heroic but doomed rearguard action against the advancing Japanese force restores some degree of honor to the Chinese. Compared to the tidal wave of Guomindang deserters rushing out of the city, this handful of diehard fighters saves face, if not the day, for the nation. Nevertheless, by showing some Chinese fighting stubbornly to the end, or rather beyond the end, the movie concedes that Japanese soldiers enter the city under confusing and hostile circumstances. As a consequence, it may be too much to ask the invaders to carefully distinguish enemy soldiers and refugees, not knowing if there is an ambush awaiting them around the corner. Some of the killings could then be explained away as the unfortunate consequences of a legitimate but messy mop-up operation, a defence that has indeed been offered by Japanese massacre deniers. Moreover, the movie concedes another important point, namely, defeated Chinese soldiers, rather than surrendering and being taken as POWs, put on civilian clothes and hide among refugees in the international safety zone. Since they take their weapons into the safety zone, upon receiving information on such irregularities, the Japanese march into the refugee camp to round up suspects. That the soldiers end up terrorizing the inmates may again be seen as the unintended excesses of a legitimate military operation. The third characteristic of this movie is its upbeat ending. Although by the nature of its subject matter the movie includes graphic depictions of Japanese soldiers machine-gunning and bayoneting POWs, torching refugee-packed buildings, rounding up women for sex, raping and killing, its ending exudes an irrepressible sense of joy and hope. Shunzi and Xiaodou, upon realizing that they are truly free and safe after Kadokawa’s suicide, walk into the future smiling broadly,

Reconciliation onscreen 81 patting and hugging each other and clutching dandelion clocks. As the lucky two blow on the feathery balls, they send seeds flying in all directions to spawn new lives, reinforcing the message of revival and continuity. By the same token, the pregnancy of the wife of the traitorous secretary Tang projects the same message of life and renewal.56 Secretary Tang makes the mistake of trying to make a deal with the Japanese, but the movie offers him the chance to redeem himself by giving up his life to save another person. For this act of courage and atonement, he is rewarded with the opportunity to make a triumphant gesture before his death: ‘My wife is pregnant’, he proudly and defiantly tells his executioner. The Tang family is shattered and traumatized, but it will renew itself, outlive the massacre and presumably the war as well. Compared with the hopes of Chinese survivors, Kadokawa’s deepening moral confusion, despair and eventual self-destruction is a metaphor for the aggressors’ ultimate moral and physical defeat. The movie’s ending is thus subtly but insistently forward-looking. The Japanese war machine may be ferocious and merciless, but it is doomed like Kadokawa. The population of Nanjing may have been devastated, but the Chinese people live on tenaciously. The movie’s power derives in no small part from this refusal to stop at portraying violence and narrating suffering, and its determination to plant the seeds of rejuvenation and hope. In fact, its title says as much: it declares that Japanese-occupied Nanjing is not merely a death zone but a site of death and life.

Conclusion It is of course impossible to predict with any precision how the war narrative of Chinese movies will develop in the future, although it seems reasonable to assume that change there will be.57 One can expect Chinese film-makers to experiment with new characters and plots as Chinese film production continues to open up and diversify while Chinese movies reach ever larger domestic and international audiences. Like other serious artists around the world, the best Chinese film-makers are determined to innovate, to challenge, to provoke and to make breakthroughs with their work. Moreover, since movie production involves not just directors, actors and actresses but also studios and the bureaucracy, and since as a commodity movies involve even more people – exhibitors, investors, critics and audiences – many Chinese, and increasingly non-Chinese, from different backgrounds can be said to participate, directly and indirectly, in a collective construction of the cinematic narrative of war. In the meantime, the national and international sociopolitical contexts will continue to influence Chinese cinema as they do other forms of Chinese cultural production. Even though the influence of the classical socialist anti-Japanese war narrative will likely endure, it is almost certain that new images and stories will emerge to challenge the conventional dichotomy of Japanese-demon v. Chinesepatriot that undergirds it. As more movies questioning simplistic representations of the war appear in future, they will encourage critical reflection on the meaning of the war, about which Chinese and Japanese still disagree on substantive points. A small number of Chinese war movies have reached a point where Chinese

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protagonists are flawed as ordinary human beings are, where love means not only support for the Party but also affection for the opposite sex, where Chinese and Japanese do not simply loathe and destroy each other, and where the occasional Japanese soldier can even acquire a measure of individuality and humanity. Any radical questioning of the classical war narrative will almost certainly encounter resistance, which can be strong and shrill. A brief controversy erupted in China in 2002, especially in cyberspace, over Jiang Wen’s visit to Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine, where the country’s fallen soldiers, including wartime leaders, are honored.58 Although Chinese colleagues quickly came to the defence of the actor-director of Devils on the Doorstep, arguing that he was there to ‘experience the place’ as an artist, not to pay respect to past aggressors, he was still branded unpatriotic by some in the media for daring to go to the shrine at all. Lu Chuan, director of City of Life and Death, is the latest but most certainly not the last artist, to feel the wrath of extreme Chinese nationalism that feeds on the classical war narrative. While his movie generally receives positive reviews in the mainland Chinese media, it is also the target of many innuendos and some trenchant criticism. Writing in the influential China Youth Daily, one critic praises the film’s artistry as ‘first rate’ but condemns its history as ‘third rate’.59 Calling Lu ‘confused’ (mishi or ‘lost’), this writer rejects the movie’s sympathetic portrayal of Kadokawa as ‘historical nihilism’ (lishi xuwu zhuyi), asserting that the character is not just phoney, but its fabrication undermines the central historical lesson of the war, namely, the Chinese have been wronged by the Japanese. This critic concludes with the admonition that artists should refrain from showing off their artistic techniques on an event as ‘solemn’ as the Nanjing massacre. Clearly, for this critic history is inviolable and artists must desist. But is this dictum tenable? Even if we accept for the moment that art should defer to history, how do we know which history tells the truth and so deserves this special treatment? Devils on the Doorstep courts controversy in China precisely because it grapples with this vexing question. It asks what would remain of the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang, each claiming to have rescued the nation from the abyss, if the Resistance War was no longer a black-and-white moral drama.60 It asks too what would be left of the Chinese nationalist myth if the Japanese demon was less evil and the Chinese people less brave and patriotic but more selfish and cunning. More generally, it raises the question of how much responsibility the Chinese people must accept for frustrating their country’s search for wealth, strength and independence when they acquiesce in or even take advantage of Japanese, and other foreign powers’, aggression and occupation. Last but not least, the movie asks how often Chinese resistance fighters (or revolutionaries) have brought disaster rather than liberation, justice and happiness to the people they claimed to help, to lead and to represent. Devils on the Doorstep is not a freak, one-off phenomenon in asking these probing questions. In a passionate essay, Beijing writer-activist Yu Jie61 poses similar questions when considering how the Chinese people should approach the war with Japan. His first contention is that the Chinese should forgive the Japanese in the Christian spirit of unconditional and unilateral forgiving. While

Reconciliation onscreen 83 that may already be too radical for many, his second contention is even more unsettling for those who subscribe to the classical war narrative. He challenges the moral lesson this narrative purveys by placing it in the context of the modern history of China. Pointing to examples of Chinese-on-Chinese atrocities and manipulation of history by Chinese governments, he declares that the Chinese government and people must first come clean on their own sorry record of lies and barbarity before they can claim the moral high ground to confront the Japanese about their war responsibility. What Yu argues with piercing words is the same as what director Jiang articulates with light and sound, i.e. China must come to terms with its own modern history if it is to be truly reconciled with Japan over the war. But the tenacity of the classical war narrative should not be underestimated. One of the reasons the first official Chinese–Japanese joint history project had to suppress parts of its final report was the Chinese refusal to sign on to a document that would appear to give space to Japanese questioning about the legitimacy of the Tokyo War Tribunal, the international forum in which Japan was convicted as an aggressor nation.62 There can be no grey in the world of black and white in which the war continues to be replayed in China – at least that is still the official position.

Notes 1 Genron NPO, Dai 5-kai Nitchū kyōdō yoron chōsa no shōsai kaisetsu. Available online: http://tokyo-beijingforum.net/index.php/survey/5th-survey, [Accessed 23 August 2012]. 2 Genron NPO, Dai 5-kai Nitchū kyōdō yoron chōsa no shōsai kaisetsu. Available online: http://tokyo-beijingforum.net/index.php/survey/5th-survey, [Accessed 23 August 2012]. 3 Respondents could give more than one answer. 4 The survey found 73.2 per cent of Japanese polled held a negative perception of China and 81 per cent of these cited the Chinese government’s mishandling of contaminated food exported to Japan as their main complaint. 5 Chinese impressions of Japan showed improvement in 2010: 65.2 per cent of Chinese surveyed in that year had a good impression of Japan as opposed to 55.9 per cent the year before (Genron NPO 2010). This result was obtained before the clash over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in September 2010, which sparked protests in both countries. 6 Kankō Tōkei, Hōnichi Chūgokujin kankōkyaku no suii, 2009. Available online: http:// www.geocities.co.jp/nezimaki_tokyo/kankou/graph/china.html [Accessed 27 September 2009]. 7 Searchina, Nihon o otozureru Chūgokujin kankōkyaku no shōhigaku gakokujin Naka, 2009. Available online: http://news.searchina.ne.jp/disp.cgi?y=2009&d=0825&f=busi ness_0825_104.shtml [Accessed 27 September 2009]. 8 Jetro, ‘China overtakes US as Japan’s largest trading partner’, 2008. Available online: http://www.jetro.go.jp/en/news/releases/20080229066-news [Accessed 15 December 2010]. 9 For the history of anti-Japanese activity during the war in Hong Kong, see Chen Jingtang ed., Xianggang kangzhan: Dongjiang zongdui gangjiu duli dadui lunwenji, Hong Kong: Hong Kong History Museum, 2004. 10 Huanan xinwen, 29 October 1998. Available online: http://web.peopledaily.com.cn [Accessed 15 June 2009]. There are two ‘anti-Japanese heroes memorial arches’ (kanri yinglie jinianbei) in Hong Kong, one in Taipo and the other in Saikung Gangjiu dadui de buxizhan: Xianggang xinjie geming gushi. Available online: http://dangshi.people. com.cn/GB/18153640.html, [Accessed 23 August 2012]. The Taipo arch was built in

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Timothy Y. Tsu 1951 and was refurbished in 1985 whereas the one in Saikung was completed in 1989. Both were privately funded. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong attended a commemoration ceremony at the Saikung monument on 17 August 1998, a year after the territory’s reversion to China. It was the first time the highest-ranking Hong Kong official visited these sites and paid tribute to the organized anti-Japanese activity by the Chinese of Hong Kong. Under British rule, commemoration of the victory over Japan emphasized the sacrifice of British and allied soldiers. NHK, Renzoku terebi shōsetsu Oshin 2 hankyōhen, 2009. Available online: http://www.nhk.or.jp/archives blog/2008/06/oshin2.html [Accessed 27 September 2009]. Liu Wenbin, Chūgoku 10-okunin no Nihon eiga netsuaishi: Takakura Ken, Yamaguchi Momoe kara Kimutaku anime made, Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2006. Nakano Yoshiko, ‘Who initiates a global flow? Japanese popular culture in Asia’, Visual Communication, 2002, 1(2): 229–53; Zhang Yong, ‘Chinese consumers’ evaluation of foreign products: the influence of culture, product types and product presentation format’, European Journal of Marketing, 1996, 30(12): 50–68. Klein, Jill Gabrielle, Richard Ettenson and Marlene D. Morris, ‘The Animosity Model of Foreign Product Purchase: An Empirical Test in the People’s Republic of China’, The Journal of Marketing, 1998, 62(1): 89–100. Itō Fumi, ‘Chūgoku shoku no naihan: Honkon kara no atsui shisen’, Kanan Monthly, 2009, 74: 14–17. Sakai Tōru, Harizu: naze Nihon ga suki na no ka, Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 2004. Fenghuang, ‘Hari’ zhenghouqun, 2009. Available online: http://culture.ifeng.com [Accessed 25 May 2009]. Dileizhan, (English title: Mine Warfare), directed by Tang Yingqi, Xu Da and Wu Jianhai, Zhongguo Renmin Jiefangjun Bayi Zhipianchang, 1962. Didaozhan, (English title: Tunnel Warfare), directed by Ren Xudong. Zhongguo Renmin Jiefangjun Bayi Zhipianchang, 1965. The first reference to a film gives the Chinese title, then the English title. Further references use only the English title. I coined this term drawing inspiration from Berry and Farquhar (2006), who employ the term ‘classical socialist movies’. Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Ying – Sakura, (English title: So Near Yet So Far), directed by Zhan Xiangchi and Han Xiaolei, Beijing Dianying Zhipianchang, 1979. Yuse Hudie, (English title: Butterflies Bring Reunion), directed by Zhang Fengxiang and Yang Gaisen, Emei Dianying Zhipianchang, 1980. Guizi Laile, (English title: Devils on the Doorstep, directed by Jiang Wen, Qiaojiaren Wenhua Chuanbo Youxiangongsi, 2000. Zhi Hudie, (English title: Purple Butterfly), directed by Lou Ye, Shanghai Dianying Zhipianchang, 2003. Pingyuan Youjidui, (English title: Guerrillas of the Plain), directed by Su Li and Wu Zhaodi, Changcun Dianying zhipianchang, 1955. Qiuyu, (English title: Autumn Rain), directed by Sun Tie, Dianying Pindao Jiemu Zhongxin, Zhongguo Dianying Jituan, Beijing Tiege Huaya Yingshi Wenhua Fazhan Youxian Gongshi, 2005. Lin Biao (1965) quoted in Parks M. Coble, ‘China’s “New Remembering” of the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance, 1937–1945’, The China Quarterly, 2007, 190: 394–410. Qi Zhi, Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying, Taibei: Xiuwei, 2010; Fan Zhizhong, Bainian Zhongguo dianying de lishi yingxiang, Zhejiang: Zhejiang Daxue Chubanshe, 2006. Tielu Youjidui, (English title: Railroad Guerrillas), directed by Zhao Ming, Shanghai Dianying Zhipianchang, 1956.

Reconciliation onscreen 85 31 Mōri Kazuko, Nitchū kankei: sengo kara shinjidai e, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006; He Yinan, ‘Remembering and Forgetting the War: Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950–2006’, History and Memory, 2007, 19(2): 43–74. 32 Quan Wang, (English title: Dog King), directed by Yao Shougang, August 1st Film Studio, 1993. 33 Juqi Shoulai, (English title: Hands Up), directed by Feng Xiaoning, Zhongguo Dianying Jituan Gongsi, 2005. 34 Taihangshan Shang, (English title: Mount Taihang), directed by Wei Liang, Shen Dong, Chen Jian, Zhongguo Renmin Jiefangjun Bayi Zhipianchang, 2005. 35 Yexi, (English title: Night Raid), directed by An Lan, August 1st Film Studios, 2007. 36 Available online: http://www.c-c-club.net/review/yexi.htm. 37 Mōri Kazuko, Nitchū kankei: sengo kara shinjidai e, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006, p. 103; Fan Zhizhong, Bainian Zhongguo dianying de lishi yingxiang, Zhejiang: Zhejiang Daxue Chubanshe, 2006, p. 93; Paul J. A. Clark, Reinventing China: A Generation and its Films, Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. 38 Mōri Kazuko, Nitchū kankei: sengo kara shinjidai e, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006, pp. 86 and 99. 39 Yipan Meiyou Xiawan de Qi, (English title: Go Masters), directed by Satō Junya and Duan Jishun, Beijing Dianying Zhipianchang, 1982. 40 Qingliangsi de Zhongsheng, (English title: The Sound of the Bell of Qingliang Temple), directed by Xie Jin, Shanghai Dianying Zhipianchang, 1992. 41 He Yinan, ‘Remembering and Forgetting the War: Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950–2006’, History and Memory, 2007, 19(2): 49–50; Mōri Kazuko, Nitchū kankei: sengo kara shinjidai e, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006, p. 86. 42 Kōseirōdōshō, Fusai no kokusekibetsu ni mita nenjibetsu kekkon kensū, 2009. Available online: http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?lid=000001066477 [Accessed 21 December 2010]. 43 James Reilly, ‘Remembering History, Not Hatred: Collective Remembrance of China’s War of Resistance to Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, 2011, 45(2): 463–90. 44 Peter Hayes Gries, ‘China’s New Thinking on Japan’, China Quarterly, 2005, 184: 831–50. 45 Nanjing! Nanjing!, (English title: City of Life and Death), directed by Lu Chuan, China Film Group, Stella Megamedia, Media Asia and Jiangsu Broadcasting, 2009. 46 Xie Xiao and Liu Xiya, ‘ “Zihudie” daoyan Liu Ye: shuo buqing de aimei’, Nanfang doushi bao, 19 February 2003. Available online: http://www1.peopledaily.com.cn/ BIG5/wenyu/64/127/20030219/926363.html [Accessed 8 October 2009]. 47 See the negative comments at Yahoo! Movies. Available online: http://movies.yahoo. com/movie/1808486760/user [Accessed 13 October 2009]. 48 Stephen Holden, ‘Heroics, Horrors and Farce in War-Torn China’, New York Times, 18 December 2002. 49 Jinghua shibao, 6 June 2002. Available online: www.people.com.cn [Accessed 17 June 2009]. 50 Yoshida, Takashi, The Making of the ‘Rape of Nanking’: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 51 Michael Berry, ‘Cinematic Representations of the Rape of Nanking’, East Asia, 2001, 19(4): 85–108. There is also the Hong Kong movie, Wuyue Bayue, (English title: May and August), directed by Du Guowei, Nanjing Dianying Zhipianchang, 2002. Also see the documentary, Nanjing Datusha: xingcunzhe de jianzheng, (English title: Nanjing Massacre: Survivors’ Testimonies) directed by Chen Hui. Jiangsu Dianshitai, 2005. 52 Tucheng Xuezheng (English title: Evidence of Massacre), directed by Luo Guangqun, Nanjing Fujian Dianying Zhipaingchang, 1987. 53 Nanjing 1937, (English title: Don’t Cry, Nanjing), directed by Wu Ziniu, Zhongguo Dianying Hezuo Zhipian Gongsi, Taiwan Longxiang Dianying Zhipian Gongsi, 1995.

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54 Heitaiyang: Nanjing Datusha, (English title: Black Sun: The Nanjing Massacre), directed by Mou Dunfei, Xianggang Dafeng Dianying Gongsi, Zhongguo dianying hezhuo zhipian gongsi, Emei dianying zhipianchang, 1995. 55 See comments on the Chinese movie site. Available online: http://imdb.cn/ comment/1124052 [Accessed 21 October 2009]. 56 See comments by Sherry_tangle and Hzy19880512. Available online: http://imdb.cn/ comment/1124052 [Accessed 21 October 2009] Sherry_tangle, 2009. Nanjing! Nanjing! message posted on 28 April 2009 http://imdb.cn/comment/1124052 [Accessed 21 October 2009]. 57 Notable new movies not discussed in this paper are Douniu (English title: Cow, directed by Guan Hu, United Star Corp, 2009) and Jinling Shisan Chai (English title: Flowers of War, directed by Zhang Yimou, EDKO Film and Beijing New Picture Film, 2011). The former resembles Devils on the Doorstep in style but questions the orthodox war narrative from a different angle. The latter is another attempt to tell the history of the Nanjing massacre not just to indict human depravity but to affirm the virtues of courage and dignity under extreme circumstances too. 58 Ma Licheng, ‘Dui-Ri guanxi xin swei: Zhong-Ri minjian zhi you’, Zhanlue yu guanli no. 6, 2002. 59 Yang Yu, ‘Nanjing! Yishuguan yiliu lishi sanliu’, Zhongguo qingnian bao, 28 April 2009. Available online: http://yule.sohu.com/20090428/n263658487.shtml [Accessed 27 October 2009]. 60 The shift away from a Manichean narrative of communist-Nationalist relations has progressed further than in the case of the war with Japan. For example, the selfcongratulatory epic, Jianguo Daye, (English title: The Founding of a Republic), directed by Huang Jianxin. Zhongguo Dianying Jituan Gongsi, 2009, treats the Guomindang rather magnanimously. 61 Yu Jie (trans by Nanyan Guo), ‘The Anti-Japanese Resistance War, Chinese Patriotism and Free Speech. How Can We Forgive Japan?’ Japan Focus, 2 February 2008, http:// www.japanfocus.org/-Yu-Jie/2654. 62 Interestingly, according to a Japanese member of the joint research team, it is the post-war portion of the report that has been entirely suppressed due to Chinese dissent (personal communication).

4

Letters to the dead Grassroots historical dialogue in East Asia’s borderlands Tessa Morris-Suzuki

On Ainu land In a small temple in central Hokkaido, Ogawa Ryūkichi, an elder of the indigenous Ainu community, stands facing the altar, speaking to a man he has never met. The rain patters steadily on the tin roof of the temple and on the lush greenery all around. Within the building, a group of people – Japanese, Koreans, including second and third-generation ethnic Koreans from various parts of Japan, and a sprinkling of visitors from Europe and elsewhere – sit on the mat-covered floor, listening intently. The altar is decorated with brocade cloth and flowers. Behind it stand rows of small wooden memorial tablets to those who died in the hills around the temple, and whose bodies rested here, far away from their homes and families, for the final night before their burial. Faded photographs on the walls of the temple show the places where they died: vast construction sites gouged out of hillsides and forests for dams, mines and railways. Ogawa Ryūkichi speaks quietly, and his voice sometimes hesitates, tripping over his words; but he speaks with profound feeling. He wears an atus – a jacket woven of elm bark and decorated with the traditional appliqué designs of the indigenous Ainu people of Hokkaido – together with a headdress made of shaved willow bark. ‘Our Ainu ekashi and fuchi – our grandfathers and grandmothers – told us to live without conflict’, he says. ‘This should be a land filled with peace, but violence grows worse day by day. We must do something about this. We must value this peace again. And the task that is left to us is to return these mortal remains to their home’. The man to whom Ogawa is speaking does not respond: he has been dead for more than 60 years. His bones are contained in a small box of pale wood, which is kept in the temple, and has been placed in front of the altar for this occasion. He was one of many thousands of Korean workers who were brought to Japan under labour conscription schemes during the Asia-Pacific War and died there from malnutrition, hard working conditions, disease, accidents or the ferocious punishments meted out to those who attempted escape. Local historians from the Sorachi People’s History Forum (Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza), who have devoted decades to researching this subject, have produced long lists of the numbers of Korean labour conscripts brought to various sites in

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Hokkaido: around 3,000 to build underground military facilities in Sapporo; 9,182 to coalmines in the Mikasa district; 17,852 to the Yūbari coalmines, and tens of thousands more to other parts of the island.1 In all, some 700,000 Koreans are believed to have been brought to Japan under the various labour recruitment schemes created by the Japanese government between 1939 and 1945, and a substantial proportion of them were sent to Hokkaido. The Japanese labourers who worked in the same mines and construction sites included the poor, unemployed and transients who had been rounded up with as little respect for their freedom and dignity as that accorded to colonial subjects. It is to commemorate these people, Korean and Japanese, and to confront the legacy of their recruitment, that the Sorachi People’s History Forum created an East Asia Collaborative Workshop, whose members are gathered in the temple in Hokkaido, listening to Ogawa Ryūkichi as he addresses the dead.2 The East Asia Collaborative Workshop is just one of a growing range of grassroots groups which play an active role in preserving and passing on contentious historical memories in the countries of the region, often working to cross the boundaries that divide memory in ways that national government are unable to do. In this chapter, we shall explore the methods of reconciliation pioneered by the Workshop, and consider how they have helped to shape new narratives of troubled and long-suppressed facets of the past.

A question of violence: forced labour and its legacies The question of forced labour is one of many problems of historical responsibility for war and colonialism that continue to be fiercely debated in Japan today. The issue was given added visibility by the fact that Aso Tarō, who served as Japan’s Prime Minister from September 2008 to September 2009, is a scion of a family whose company employed substantial numbers of labour conscripts during the Asia-Pacific War. When Aso was Foreign Minister in 2006, his ministry strongly criticized a New York Times article which revealed the family company’s use of forced labour, including the labour of allied prisoners-of-war. However, after researchers tracked down further evidence on the matter in 2008, during his tenure as Prime Minister, Aso was forced to admit the truth of these reports.3 But denials persist in some quarters. The Japan Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai), an influential right-wing lobby group established in 1996 (see Introduction), has conducted a long campaign against the use of the term kyōsei renkō (‘forcible transportation’) to describe the fate that befell labourers recruited from Korea during the war. The Society argues that Korean colonial subjects were legally recruited as war workers, on terms that were better than those of many Japanese, and it denies that any were ‘forcibly transported’.4 There is no dispute about the fact that hundreds of thousands of labour recruits were shipped from Korea to Japan during the war; so the source of contention is clearly the notion that force was involved. In its efforts to refute this, the Society selects a very small number of the many testimonies of forced labour conscripts, and raises questions about dates or other details, thus aiming to cast

Letters to the dead 89 doubt on the credibility of such testimony as a whole. Drawing on selected quotations from a single notebook kept by one Korean labour conscript, while ignoring or rejecting testimony to the contrary, the Society insists that the living conditions of Korean recruits were good and that workers were well cared for.5 As so often when historical debates generate intense passion, this history is not simply about the past, but has important contemporary echoes. Neither the Japanese government nor (with a few exceptions) the companies involved have paid compensation to wartime forced labourers, and the unresolved memory of their recruitment continues to haunt Japan’s relationship with its former colonies and with the countries it occupied during the Asia-Pacific War. The issue is complicated by the fact that a very large number of often confused and arbitrary labour conscription schemes were used in various parts of the former Japanese Empire. However, an abundance of research and collected testimony illustrates the widespread use of coercion in labour recruitment. In some cases, Chinese or allied prisoners of war were shipped into Japan to work on mines or construction sites.6 In Korea, a series of labour recruitment laws, characterized by increasing degrees of coercion, were introduced in 1939, 1942 and 1944 to bring workers to Japan.7 From 2005 onward, an 85-member Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under Japanese Imperialism (Ilje Gangjeomha Gangje Dongwon Pihae Jinsang Gyumyeong Wiwonhoe), established by the South Korean government, collected over 220,000 statements from former Korean labour or military conscripts and their families, and published 28 volumes of their findings, including many pages of testimony from former conscript labourers in Japan.8 These and other testimony show that recruitment methods varied widely. Under the 1944 Labour Conscription Ordinance, individuals received conscription papers ordering them to gather at a place from where they would be shipped to an uncertain destination. In others cases people were simply rounded up off the streets by the police, or jobs in Japan were advertised, and those who went to make enquiries found themselves herded onto trucks and taken away whether they wished or not. Sometimes Korean officials such as village heads acted as intermediaries, placing pressure on villagers to ‘volunteer’, and threatening unpleasant consequences for their families if they failed to do so.9 Those recruited joined other Koreans who had come to Japan more or less voluntarily in earlier years: migrating in search of work, but also often fleeing poverty and debt aggravated by colonial policies.10 Meanwhile, in Korea and China as well as many parts of Southeast Asia, local people were rounded up to work for the military on construction in the areas where they lived. In addition to the recruitment of male workers, the Teishintai (‘Volunteer Corps’) scheme was used to recruit colonial women, some of whom became factory workers, but many of whom ended up in military brothels, enduring the most terrible forms of institutionalized sexual abuse.11 The memory of forced labour casts its shadow, not only over Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbours, but also over contemporary debates about the rights of the Korean minority in Japan. After the end of the Asia-Pacific War, around 600,000 Koreans remained in Japan, becoming the country’s largest ethnic

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minority. The descendents of these colonial-era migrants still live in Japan today but, because of the nature of Japan’s nationality laws, many of the third or even fourth generation do not yet have Japanese citizenship. It is not known how many Zainichi Koreans (Koreans living in Japan) are former forced labourers or their descendents. Some certainly are12, though the substantial majority are descendents of people who arrived in Japan before the introduction of wartime labour recruitment.13 The Japan Society for History Textbook Reform’s campaign against the term ‘forced transportation’ is part of its wider crusade against demands by Koreans in Japan for improved social and political rights (including the right to vote in local elections.14) The issue has been further muddied by singularly unhelpful interventions from some academics, among them prominent Japanese sociologist Miyadai Shinji. Miyadai points out that some critics of the Japanese government wrongly depict all Koreans in post-war Japan as forced labourers.15 This point is a fair one, but Miyadai then goes on to exaggerate the significance of this ‘myth’ of forced labour, and, like the Japan Society for History Textbook Reform, links this to his opposition to local voting rights for foreigners.16 Often unspoken, but always present at the heart of these debates lies the question of violence. In much of the discourse about forced labour in Japan, there is an implicit assumption, on both sides of debate, that a clear and unequivocal line can be drawn between the ‘free’ and the ‘forced’. The focus of controversy, then, is on the number of people who fall on one side of the line or the other. But a growing literature on the global experience of slavery and freedom, and of forced and free migrations, emphasizes the dangers of a simple binary vision of ‘free choice’ versus ‘coercion’.17 In theory, for example, slavery can be distinguished from indentured labour by the fact that slaves are forced to work while indentured labourers enter into a voluntary contract. But historical studies show that only the finest of lines existed between slavery and indenture in some parts of the nineteenth-century world.18 As this history shows, forced labour highlights complex issues of the relationship between ‘coercion’, ‘force’ and ‘violence’. Classic forms of slavery such as the Atlantic slave trade were based upon direct physical violence: the forced seizure of people from their homes, their transportation in chains to distant places and use of physical punishment to prevent escape and impose obedience. Over the course of history, other more subtle forms of intimidation, psychological violence and social pressure have come to be used. The International Labour Organization notes that the coercion underlying forced labour may take a variety of forms, including direct physical or sexual violence; the threat of such violence; physical restrictions on movement; debt bondage; the withholding of wages or identity documents etc.19 To deny the existence of a simple dividing line between freedom and coercion, then, is not to deny the presence of violence in this history. On the contrary, it is to emphasize the presence of violence in choices that superficially appear to be free, while also acknowledging the moments of choice which sometimes may be seized by people subject to great violence. Absolute freedom of choice and total

Letters to the dead 91 coercion must be seen as points at either extreme of a spectrum, with many possible degrees of intermingling in the middle. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that coercion varies not just in degree but also in kind. Understanding problems of forced labour therefore requires careful attention to the texture of violence: to all the details of the material, social and psychological conditions in which recruitment occurs, and in which labourers live (and sometimes die) after they have been recruited. As I shall argue, violence may indeed not end with their deaths, but continue in the treatment and remembering of the dead. The work of the East Asia Collaborative Workshop suggests fresh ways of approaching legacies of wartime violence, and of seeking paths to overcome those legacies.

Unearthing the dead of the Uryū Dam During the 1970s, a Buddhist priest named Tonohira Yoshihiko, who lives in a small town near Asahikawa in central Hokkaido, encountered disturbing stories as he traveled around his district visiting outlying temples. In some places, local people told him of unmarked graves that were believed to lie in the forests. Elsewhere, in the little temple of Kōkenji in the village of Shumarinai, villagers showed him a sack full of mortuary tablets which lay abandoned at the back of the temple. These traces of the un-commemorated dead all seemed to be connected to the sites of wartime mines and construction projects. Kōkenji is close to the site of the massive Uryū Dam, constructed between 1937 and 1943 by Uryū Electrical Power, an affiliate of the Ōji Paper Company, to supply electricity to Ōji’s factories in the coastal Hokkaido town of Tomakomai.20 Over the course of the entire project, almost 3,000 Korean and many thousands of Japanese workers laboured on the site, which was said to have created the largest artificial lake in East Asia.21 Others worked nearby on the construction of the Meiu Railway, which linked the dam to the town of Nayoro, and was completed in 1941. Tonohira along with other local teachers, researchers and amateur historians who formed the Sorachi People’s History Forum began to research the history of these wartime projects in an effort to solve the mystery of the deaths. In doing this, they became part of a seldom acknowledged but significant post-war Japanese tradition. While the Japanese central government has rightly been condemned for its reluctance to face up to its historical responsibilities, a number of small, littleknown local history groups in various parts of Japan have taken on the task of exploring the darker sides of their regions’ histories, and sometimes of attempting to create reconciliation projects with counterparts in other Asian countries. The research of the Sorachi group revealed a history of harsh working conditions which went back far beyond the Asia-Pacific War. Hokkaido was Japan’s first ‘settler colony’. In most parts of the island, large-scale settlement by majority Japanese did not occur until the second half of the nineteenth century, when land was expropriated from the indigenous Ainu population and ‘opened up’ to the modernizing forces of Meiji Japan. In the early stages of this colonizing process (as in settler colonies elsewhere) convict labour was extensively used on construction

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sites. By the twentieth century this practice had ceased, only to be replaced by takobeya labour: a system which, although less coercive than the use of convicts, was something less than wholly ‘free’. Takobeya – literally ‘octopus pots’ – were overcrowded, prison-like barracks, apparently so called because the octopus (like the occupants of the barracks) inhabits a space just large enough for its body. Takobeya workers were people from the poorest sections of rural or urban Japanese society who were recruited by brokers to work on remote construction and mining sites. Once on the site, they were kept in takobeya, subject to extremely harsh working conditions, and often beaten or tortured if they attempted escape.22 Although these practices had virtually disappeared from most other parts of Japan by the late 1930s, they survived unusually long in the remoter parts of Hokkaido, and provided the foundations on which the wartime recruitment of labour from the colonies was built. Through archival research in local newspapers, temple documents and the records of permissions for burials and cremations kept by village authorities, the local historians began to put together a picture of life and death on the Uryū Dam and the Meiu Railway. Temple and village records gave details of 169 Japanese and 36 Korean workers buried in unmarked graves: most of them victims of malnutrition (particularly beriberi) or accidents. The total number of deaths at the site is unknown: according to the testimony of one person who worked on the dam site, those who died were sometimes simply entombed in the concrete of the dam wall itself.23 The local records gave an indication of the place where burials had occurred, enabling some individual victims to be identified. From 1977 onward local people began unearthing the remains of the dead and placing them within the temple. By 1983 the group had unearthed the remains of 16 of the dead. Meanwhile, using information on family registrations from the local burial records, they had begun to contact local authorities in Japan in an effort to locate the relatives of the dead workers. In the case of Korea, matters were much more complicated, because local districts and family registration systems had changed so much since the colonial era. It was a former Korean forced labourer, Jae Man-Jin who came up with a solution to the problem. Why not, he suggested, send letters addressed to the dead? In other words, the researchers in Japan would copy the names and addresses given in the burial records onto envelopes, in which they placed letters. These letters, addressed to people who had died half a century before, would then be posted, in the hope that they would eventually find their way to surviving relatives. In Hokkaido, the writers of the letters waited anxiously and somewhat skeptically for the results of this strange method of communication, and were astonished to receive replies from family members of seven of the fourteen dead to whom they had written. Until they had received these unexpected and startling letters, most of these families had absolutely no knowledge where, when or how their relatives had died. But the process of returning the remains to their homes for burial proved difficult. Feelings of resentment were still strong. In some cases, families had lost more than one member to forced wartime recruitment, and their sense of anger was so intense that they refused to accept the remains of the

Letters to the dead 93 relatives. Mediation by a Korean Buddhist priest and by a Korean resident in Japan who had worked on the Uryū site was needed before the return of the remains could proceed.24 By now the scale of the group’s project had become so great that new participants were needed. In 1997, therefore, they launched the first Japan–Korea Collaborative Workshop (Nikkan Kyōdō Wākushoppu – later renamed East Asia Collaborative Workshop: Higashi Ajia Kyōdō Wākushoppu). The workshops were camps, generally lasting for several weeks, which brought together young Japanese and Koreans (including Korean residents in Japan), and later also people from other countries, to expand, disseminate and exchange knowledge about the forced labour issue, and more broadly about East Asia’s modern history. The first workshop was held in Shumarinai and was attended by more than a hundred participants. During the day, the young people excavated sites where bones of dead labourers were believed to be buried. In the evenings, they discussed problems of history and listened to lectures from eminent scholars, as well as singing, dancing and generally socializing.25 Since 1997, a series of summer and winter workshops has been held, bringing together more than a thousand participants in total. As well as further excavations at Shumarinai and other sites in Hokkaido where forced labour was used, the workshops have involved gatherings in Seoul and the Korean island of Jeju, and in Osaka, home to Japan’s largest ethnic Korean community.26 The meeting in July 2008 was a shorter gathering, following an international symposium held to coincide with the Hokkaido G8 Summit. On this occasion there were no excavations, but rather quiet reflection on the outcome of over a decade of workshops and on prospects for the future.

Etching the past in the mind, feeling the present in the body The East Asia Collaborative Workshop is just one example of a mass of reconciliation movements that have emerged in an effort to overcome conflicts over history and memory between Japan and its neighbours. Mostly small in scale, these movements have flourished particularly since the early 1990s, but have received less attention than the right-wing revisionist movements (such as the Japan Society for History Textbook Reform) which have proliferated during the same years. Though stimulated in part by the intense debates on historical responsibility which emerged around the 50th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War, these groups have roots in a long history of critical post-war approaches to history in Japan. In the two decades following Japan’s defeat, left-of-centre local history groups proliferated in Japan as part of the ‘study circle movement’ (sākuru undo). These aimed to unearth aspects of the past which had been suppressed by nationalist ideology of the war years. Most focused on local social history – particularly on the stories of labour and peasants movements – but some also attempted to reflect on Japanese wartime aggression in Asia and (despite the difficult Cold War environment) to create links to Japan’s Asian neighbours. For example, Curtis Gayle’s study of the Ehime Women’s History Circle, created in 1956 in Matsuyama on the

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southern island of Shikoku, describes the public events organized by the Circle in 1960 to celebrate the 50th International Women’s Day. The celebration of the occasion included the public performance of a drama entitled ‘Variety Special – The History of Women’ (Baraietê – Josei no Ayumi), in which the actors, including members of the local Korean community, recalled the violence inflicted by the Japanese military on Asian women during the war, and concluded with a chorus pledging in unison to work ‘as Asian women and alongside women from all countries’ to bring about ‘the liberation of women worldwide’.27 A further important influence was the ‘people’s history’ (minshūshi) movement of 1960s and 1970s Japan. Inspired by the work of historians like Irokawa Daikichi and Yasumaru Yoshio, ‘people’s history’ sought to explore the lives of non-elite ‘ordinary people’ as the motive force of Japanese history, while questioning the relatively rigid theoretical apparatus of Marxist dialectics which had dominated much history research in post-war Japan.28 The Sorachi People’s History Forum grew out of one of the most influential of these local people’s history groups, the Okhotsk People’s History Forum, established in the early 1970s in northeastern Hokkaidō town of Kitami. The founders of the Okhotsk People’s History Forum – who included the charismatic schoolteacher and historian Koike Kikō and the Buddhist nun Hayashi Ryūko – unearthed long forgotten stories of the Japanese convict and takobeya labourers who had built much of the early twentieth century infrastructure of northern Hokkaido, and it was this research that laid the foundations for the Sorachi group’s work on Korean forced labour.29 Other local reconciliation groups also have their origins in the social and intellectual movements of the 1960s and 1970s. For example, the Grassroots House Peace Museum in Kōchi City – dedicated to reflecting on Japan’s war responsibility and opening channels of communication with Japan’s Asian neighbours – was established in 1989, largely on the initiative of Nishimori Shigeo, a local teacher who had been engaged in local peace and history research activities since the 1970s, while the Oka Masaru Memorial Nagasaki Peace Museum, which commemorates the Korean victims of the atomic bombings and also presents harrowing representations of Japanese aggression in Asia, builds on the work of a Christian minister who played a central role in Nagasaki’s peace and human rights movements from the 1960s onward.30 These groups helped to pave the way for a new wave of cross-border reconciliation networks established since the 1990s. A few of the reconciliation groups have official government blessing. In March 2002, for example, the Japanese and South Korean governments announced the establishment of a Japan–Korea Collaborative History Research Committee (Nikkan Rekishi Kyôdô Kenkyûkai), which aims to encourage the exchange of ideas on the history of relations between the two countries, and ‘to promote mutual understanding’.31 In 2006, following anti-Japanese riots in China, a Japan–China Collaborative History Research Committee (Nicchû Rekishi Kyôdô Kenkyûkai) was established, similarly to pursue the goal of historical reconciliation.32 In addition to these government-authorized groups for Japan–Korea Joint History Research and Japan–China Joint History Research (whose work is also

Letters to the dead 95 cited in the Introduction), non-governmental groups have also been created by academics, editors and other intellectuals from Japan and other east Asian countries, one of the best known examples being the Trilateral History Commission linking China, South Korea and Japan (discussed in Chapter Two). The East Asia Collaborative Workshop belongs to a further category of reconciliation movement: groups which go beyond the world of professional scholarship and try to engage ordinary people who might not otherwise have much opportunity to debate questions of historical responsibility. What interests me particularly about this group is not just its local and grassroots focus, but also the fact that it centres on the physical presence of the remains of the dead. Why is it that the excavation and return of the bones of the dead plays such a central part in the Workshop’s approach to reconciliation? How does this focus affect the messages that the group conveys to participants and to others who come into contact with its activities? The historical reconciliation projects created between Japan and its neighbours over the past 15 years are in part inspired by reconciliation movements in other parts of the world, particularly by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose work during the 1990s provided a model emulated (despite some criticisms) world-wide. But there are also great differences between efforts in Japan to address events from the mid-twentieth century and South African moves to address the violence of the much more recent past. Some of these differences become clear if we turn to accounts of South African reconciliation such as Antjie Krog’s powerful work, Country of my Skull: Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa.33 Krog emphasizes how the South African Truth and Reconciliation process brought perpetrators and victims (or perpetrators and the close relatives of dead victims) face-to-face in encounters which forced the perpetrators to confront the reality of their actions in all their excruciating detail. These encounters were often searing experiences for all involved. They did not necessarily produce forgiveness or understanding. But they did help to bring the buried past to light. One of their most important consequences was the way in which they educated not only the perpetrators of violence but also the ‘bystanders’, those who saw themselves as uninvolved or merely marginally involved, about the realities of apartheid. Reconciliation groups like the Japan–Korea Joint History Research and Japan–China Joint History Research projects have none of that immediacy. They bring together historical specialists who compare research findings and share archival resources, but they involve no direct encounters with either the perpetrators or victims of violence. One of the distinctive features of the East Asia Collaborative Workshop, on the other hand, is that it does connect directly with the families of victims. It also exposes young people not simply to documentary evidence about the past but also to other aspects of the physical realities of history, by taking them to the places where forced labourers worked and, in some cases, bringing them face to face with the physical remains of the dead. The Workshop’s aims are described as being ‘etching the past in the mind, feeling the present in the body, and building a future together’.34

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This material aspect – ‘feeling the present in the body’ – seems to me to be an important and sometimes neglected element of reconciliation projects, and of research on the history of violence more generally. Even for someone like me, who did not participate in the hard work of excavating grave sites, but merely paid a short and comfortable visit to Shumarinai and the Uryū Dam, seeing and walking across the landscape in which forced labour occurred was an important experience. It taught me things I would not have learnt from history texts or archival documents. For example, the mosquitoes: the largest, fattest, most persistent mosquitoes I have ever encountered. For example, the ubiquitous sasa grass, like miniature bamboo with tough stems and knife-edged leaves, which covers every inch of the hillsides. I look again at the fading photographs of the labourers with their bare chests and tattered leggings, and understand just a little more of what work on a Hokkaido dam site really meant (see Figure 4.1). Visiting the site also made me reflect again on the notion of ‘escape’. Accounts of forced labour are full of records of failed or successful attempts at flight (tōbō) by workers. The Japan Society for History Textbook Reform uses the frequency of instances of escape as one of its prime pieces of evidence for denying the existence of the forced transportation of workers from Korea. Recruits who escaped from one labour site sometimes ended up working at another. This, the Society argues, demonstrates that these workers were really capable of moving around and choosing their workplaces, and thus proves that ‘they were not forcibly transported’.35 This curious logic ignores the obvious objection that the whole notion of ‘escape’ is premised on coercion. Freely employed workers may be fired, or may leave their workplace with or without the permission of their bosses, but they

Figure 4.1 The Uryū Dam.

Letters to the dead 97 do not ‘escape’, and if they do leave, they are not (as Korean labour conscripts generally were) hunted down by the police. Some years ago in the archives in Sakhalin I discovered a list of hundreds of names and details of escaped Korean labour conscripts, including some from the Uryū Dam site. These lists were circulated to police stations throughout Japan and even as far afield as the colony of Karafuto (Sakhalin) to alert police, who were asked to arrest and return the abscondees. Escape was also prevented by the fact that on many labour sites workers’ wages were not distributed but paid into ‘patriotic savings accounts’ controlled by the management.36 Here again we can see how wartime labour conscription developed almost seamlessly out of forms of coercion imposed on impoverished Japanese workers through the takobeya system. But until I visited the Uryū Dam site, I had completely failed to comprehend the desperate nature of many acts of escape. Shumarinai and its surroundings are the most remote parts of Japan I have ever seen. It is true that depopulation has reduced the size of the village since its peak in the late 1930s to early 1940s.37 However, workers taken there by ship, train and truck from Seoul, Busan, Tokyo or elsewhere found themselves in a landscape in which, apart from the dam site itself, there was nothing to be seen in any direction except endless forest and sasacovered mountains. Many Korean workers, and probably some of their Japanese counterparts, had absolutely no idea where they were. They may not even have known that they were in Hokkaido. They certainly had no map to guide them over the scores or hundreds of miles of trackless mountains to Asahikawa, Sapporo or other cities. Even if they had possessed maps, few would have been sufficiently literate to read them. Though more direct forms of restraint also existed – one skeleton at the site was found with its arms still bound together with wire – the landscape itself shut the workers off from the outside world as effectively as walls or fences could do. The violence of forced labour, in other words, did not always involve the use of guns or shackles, but also arose from the way in which the natural environment and the background of the labourers themselves were deployed as weapons of control.

The return of the dead In his careful and profound reflections on the aftermath of the My Lai and Ha My massacres of the Vietnam War, Korean scholar Kwon Heonik explores ‘the enduring wounds in social life caused by mass violence’, and above all ‘the social practices emerging to attend to those wounds’.38 Vietnamese villages which experienced massacres are literally haunted by the memories: villagers in many places report hearing the cries of the ghosts of the dead, or seeing crowds of ghosts moving along roads on the journeys which they make particularly on certain days of the lunar month.39 These spectral presences reflect the fact that those who die ‘bad deaths’, deaths away from the protecting shelter of their homes, particularly in violent circumstances, purportedly continue to haunt the community until appropriate ways can be found to lay them to rest. One response to such presences

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lies in the act of reburial. As Kwon writes, in words which seem particularly relevant to the Hokkaido project: a proper burial and an appropriate ritual commemoration are two primary conditions for the welfare of the dead . . . The reburial creates a break in the life of the dead, thus enabling the dead to be separated from grievance as their bodies are moved to a new place, and when the act concerns a mass grave, it also allows the dead to recover their individuality.40 Ghosts are also believed to haunt the sites in Hokkaidō where convict and takobeya workers died from malnutrition, overwork or the violence of their supervisors. Buddhist nun Hayashi Ryūko, one of the founding figures in the Okhotsk People’s Study Forum, devoted much time and energy to erecting monuments and statues of Jizō (see Figure 4.2) – the Bodhisattva who is believed to protect the dead – and performing rituals of appeasement for the souls of the dead at places where workers had been buried in unmarked roadside graves.41 The daughter of migrants to Hokkaido who had settled on land close to a road built by convicts, Hayashi found her dreams disturbed by images of dead labourers, demanding (as she believed) to be mourned and remembered, and to receive the burial rights which their gaolers had denied them.42 The uneasy presence of such dead, whose existence was barely acknowledged in official histories, lived on in local beliefs that the sites of death were inauspicious places where road accidents and other misfortunes were particularly common. The return of dead forced labourers has particular potency in Korean society, because the care of ancestral graves and the performance of rituals for the dead play such central parts in Korean social and religious life. Although the strength of these traditions varies from place to place and from generation to generation, for many Koreans, respect for the ancestral dead lies at the core of family life. Against this background, the return of the remains of dead labour conscripts is a

Figure 4.2 Jizō statues erected to console the souls of dead convict labourers, near Abashiri, Hokkaido.

Letters to the dead 99 profoundly important event, but also one fraught with its own burden of complexities. The returned remains must be given an appropriate resting place – which is likely to be an expensive process. They must be honoured and cared for. When the dead are returned more than half a century after their deaths, at a time when those who knew them well may all have died, the return lays anxieties and uncertainties to rest, but also imposes new, heavy and perhaps unwelcome responsibilities on the living. On the other hand, the endeavours of the East Asia Collaborative Workshop help to fill a void which is not specific to Korean or Japanese culture, but which has universal resonance. The loss of loved ones far from home and in violent circumstances always leaves deep scars, but an even more painful form of loss is disappearance. When family members have no knowledge when and how their brother or sister, son or daughter died – no certainty even that he or she is dead, but only a fear that gradually dissolves into almost-certainty – it is extraordinarily difficult to come to terms with the loss. The living are constantly tormented by unresolved imaginings about the fate of the presumed-dead. In this sense the East Asia Collaborative Workshop highlights the violence of the forced labour system, while also helping to address consequences of that violence. The Uryū Electrical Power Company’s acknowledgement of the suffering involved in the dam’s construction extended to erecting a vast concrete obelisk at the dam site, inscribed with the words: ‘for the repose of soul of the employees who laid down their lives’. The term ‘employees who laid down their lives’ – junshokusha in Japanese – is laden with overtones of voluntary selfsacrifice for a cause. The monument does not include any further details of the numbers, names or origins of those who ‘laid down their lives’. The company’s sense of responsibility for their deaths did not extend to publishing its own records, conducting its own investigations of the identities of the dead, and sometimes did not even extend to notifying relatives of the deaths. Neither the Uryū Electrical Power Co. nor its past and present parent companies Ōji Paper and Hokkaido Electrical Power have ever expressed apology or paid compensation for these deaths. Following a request from South Korea’s Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization, the Japanese government finally began to send its own requests to local governments, seeking information about burial records of Korean labourers in their areas, and in 2009 provided the South Korean government with name rosters and payroll lists for 175,000 Koreans coerced into wartime work for private Japanese companies. Japanese companies involved generally refused to provide information to assist the work of the Commission, but some have now begun to reach out-of-court settlements with victims of wartime forced labour. In October 2009, the Nishimatsu Construction Company, which had employed large numbers of Chinese forced labourers during the war, apologized and agreed to provide compensation to workers (or the immediate family members of deceased workers) employed on two of the major wartime construction sites, and in 2010 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries entered into negotiations with 300 Korean women lured into working without pay in its Nagoya aircraft factory during the war.43

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The violence of forced labour, then, lies not only in the methods of recruitment and in the conditions of employment of the labourers, but also in what happens after: above all in the fact that these workers, whether Japanese or Korean, were seen as so disposable that the companies involved felt no need to attempt to account for their deaths to the families – no need, in other words, to spare these families decades of uncertainty about the fate of their loved ones. An important part of the value of the East Asia Collaborative Workshop projects is that they address this failure. Like the Vietnamese reburials described by Kwon Heonik, they pluck at least some of the victims out of the anonymity of the mass graves and the concrete obelisk, allowing them to ‘recover their individuality’. In this way, the workers cease to be a nameless throng who ‘laid down their lives’ and return to being (for example) Pak Hae-bok, born on 1 May 1914, who died after five weeks of illness at the age of 29 while labouring on the Uryū Dam site in the summer of 1943, and was finally laid to rest by his family in Korea half a century later.44

Reading the archive, speaking to the dead Of course, from a standard academic point of view it is irrational to speak to the dead. The dead cannot hear us. Yet the strength of the Sorachi People’s History Forum and the East Asia Collaborative Workshop, I would suggest, lies precisely in their ability to bring together traditional historical research, attention to the voices of the subjects of history (former forced labourers and their families), and a willingness to speak to the dead. The groups’ participants combine careful examination of archives with the tasks of ‘feeling the present in the body’ and acting to address the ‘enduring wounds in social life’ left by violence. It would be a mistake to over-idealize the Workshop’s achievements. Though some of its young participants have had their lives changed forever by the experience, others have left uninfluenced by or dissatisfied with the group’s approach. To some victims’ families, the return of relatives’ remains have brought a form of closure after decades of psychological suffering; but others remain as hurt and angry as ever. Today, as it has done in the past, the Workshop continues to re-examine its strategies for pursuing the elusive goals of justice and reconciliation. Its work over the past decade, however, has deepened understanding of the coercive aspects of wartime labour recruitment in several important respects. First, the focus on the physical remains of the dead transcends national boundaries, creating a recognition of the common experiences that linked Japanese takobeya workers and Korean labour conscripts. This recognition, though, does not lead in the direction proposed by the Japan Society for History Textbook Reform – towards the conclusion that Korean workers suffered no more than their Japanese counterparts, and therefore that ‘forced transportation’ is a myth. Rather, it creates insight into the long tradition of violence in labour recruitment that lay behind the wartime system. Second, the East Asia Collaborative Workshop’s projects highlight the fact that the denial of freedom in ‘forced transportation’ was not just a matter of the way in which people were physically brought to Japan, but also of the

Letters to the dead 101 multiple forms of coercion by which they were confined after their arrival. Third, the unearthing of the remains of the dead and the search for the bereaved reveals the profound violence inflicted even after death by the way in which the companies which used forced labour treated the dead as well as the living. One important message to emerge from this decade of work is that there is still an unfulfilled need for the Japanese government and the companies involved to make restitution to the victims. In the meanwhile, though, the rituals performed by the East Asia Collaborative Workshop are small steps towards undoing at least some of the effects of past violence. When Ogawa Ryūkichi addresses the dead, the dead (of course) remain as silent and voiceless as ever. But we, the living, who listen to his words, are made to reach out with our imaginations to the dead worker whose bones lie in the box before us, and to whom Ogawa speaks. We are made to confront the experience of the labour conscript in its materiality, and to recognize the conscript as a unique and infinitely complex individual human being whose life ended miserably, alone and far from home. We cannot console him in his death, but we can at least finally accord him some of the respect that he was denied in living and dying, at the same time developing a shared and deeper understanding of this moment of violence in history, and of its echoes in the present.

Notes 1 Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Shumarinai to Kyōsei Renkō, Kyōsei Rōdō, Fukagawa: Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, 1996, p. 31. 2 On the Workshop, see Kim Yeong Hwan, ‘Promoting Peace and Reconciliation as a Citizen of East Asia: The Collaborative East Asian Workshop and the Grassroots House Peace Museum’, Japan Focus, 17 December 2007, http://japanfocus.org/Kim_-Yeong_Hwan/2603 [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 3 Mure Dickie, ‘Aso Admits Family Mine Used POWs’, Financial Times, 6 January 2009. 4 See for example Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai, ‘Daigaku Nyūshiki Sentā Shiken no “Kyōsei Renkō” ni kansuru Setsumon ni tsuite no Kōkai Shitsumonjō’, 24 January 2004, on the Society’s website: http://www.tsukurukai.com/01_top_news/ file_news_ct/ct_news_040127.html; also http://www.tsukurukai.com/07_fumi/text_ fumi/fumi38_text02.html [Accessed 9 January 2009 (both)]. 5 See Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai, ‘Chōsenjin no iwayuru “Kyōsei Renkō” mondai wa nan nanka’. Available online: http://www.tsukurukai.com/14_ web_special/text_webspecial/webspe_rachi_topic04.html [Accessed 9 January 2009]. 6 On forced labour by Chinese prisoners of war, see Sugihara Tōru, Chūgokujin Kyōsei Renkō, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002. 7 For a good discussion of this issue, see William Underwood, ‘Names, Bones and Unpaid Wages (1): Reparations for Korean Forced Labor in Japan’, Japan Focus, September 2006, http://japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/2219 [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 8 See the publications section of the Commission’s website: http://www.gangje.go.kr/ admin_list0302.asp; also William Underwood, ‘New Era for Japan–Korea History Issues: Forced Labor Redress Efforts Begin to Bear Fruit’, Japan Focus, 8 March 2008, http://www.japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/2689. 9 See, for example, Ilje Gangjeomha Gangje Dongwon Pihae Jinsang Gyumyeong Wiwonhoe, Sujogman Meoljjeong Hamyeon Mak Ganeun Gyeoya (Gangje Dongwon

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Gusul Girokjip 6), Seoul: Ilje Gangjeomha Gangje Dongwon Pihae Jinsang Gyumyeong Wiwonhoe, 2007. Available online: http://www.gangje.go.kr/admin_list0302.asp, [Accessed 10 December 2011]; Tsubouchi Hirokiyo, ‘Bōshū’ to iu na no kyōsei renkō: Kikikaki aru Zainichi issei no shōgen, Tokyo: Sairyūsha, 1998; Kang Sangjung and Oguma Eiji eds, Zainichi Issei no Kioku, Tokyo: Shūeisha Shinsho 2008. On pre-war Korean migration to Japan, see for example Sugihara Tōru, Ekkyō suru Tami: Kindai Ōsaka no Chōsenjinshi Kenkyū, Tokyo: Shinkansha, 1998. See Y. Yoshimi, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. A number of interesting case studies can be found in Kang Sangjung and Oguma Eiji eds, Zainichi Issei no Kioku, Tokyo: Shūeisha Shinsho 2008. Not surprisingly, it was those who had lived longest in Japan who were most likely to wish to remain after the war. The schemes for repatriation created by the Occupation authorities also gave priority to forced labourers, ensuring that a large number of them returned to Korea in the 18 months immediately following liberation. See Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai, ‘Daigaku Nyūshiki Sentā Shiken no “Kyōsei Renkō” ni kansuru Setsumon ni tsuite no Kōkai Shitsumonjō’, 24 January 2004, on the Society’s website: http://www.tsukurukai.com/14_web_special/text_webspecial/ webspe_rachi_topic04.html [Accessed 22 August 2012]; also http://www.tsukurukai. com/01_top_news/file_news_ct/ct_news_040127.html [Accessed 22 August 2012]; also http://www.tsukurukai.com/07_fumi/text_fumi/fumi38_text02.html [Accessed 9 January 2009]. This mistake appears in English-language as well as some Japanese-language writings on the subject. For example, ‘Contemporary Japan: Culture and Society’, part of the ‘Asia for Educators’ website hosted by Columbia University, states: Another major ethnic group in Japan is the Korean Japanese population – in Japanese sometimes called zai-nichi kankokujin, ‘Koreans-resident-in-Japan’ – who are a large population estimated in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps in the low millions, of descendants of Koreans who were brought to Japan as forced laborers from the Japanese, from the beginning of the Japanese colonial period in Korea, which started in 1910 when Korea was annexed by Japan.

See: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/at_japan_soc/common/all.htm [Accessed 12 May 2008]. 16 See the online video debate between Miyadai, Tokyo University academic Kayano Toshihito, accessed 8 September 2011 and manga writer Kobayashi Yoshinori, distributed by Videonews.com Internet TV on 29 June 2007. 17 See for example D. Eltis ed., Coerced and Free Migration: Global Perspectives, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. 18 Richard B. Allen, ‘The Mascarene Slave Trade and Labour Migration in the Indian Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in Gwyn Campbell, The Structure of Slavery in the Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia, London: Taylor and Francis, 2004, pp. 33–50; quotation from p. 44. 19 See Convention (no. 29) Concerning Forced Labour, adopted 28 June 1930 by the General Conference of the International Labour Organization, on the webpage of the Centre for a World in Balance: http://www.worldinbalance.net/intagreements/1930ilo-forcedorcompulsorylabour.php [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 20 Onodera Masami, ‘Uryū Suiryoku Hatsudensho no Kensetsu to sono Haikei ni Kansuru – Saikō: Ōji Seishi no Hokkaidō Shinshutsu to no Kanren o Chūshin ni’, Hokkaidō Gakuen Daigaku Keizai Ronshū, January 1992, 39(2): 89–106, see particularly p. 91; Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Shumarinai to Kyōsei Renkō, Kyōsei Rōdō, p. 16. 21 Onodera Masami, ‘Uryū Suiryoku Hatsudensho no Kensetsu to sono Haikei ni Kansuru – Saikō: Ōji Seishi no Hokkaidō Shinshutsu to no Kanren o Chūshin ni’, Hokkaidō Gakuen Daigaku Keizai Ronshū, January 1992, 39(2): 100–5.

Letters to the dead 103 22 See Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Shumarinai to Kyōsei Renkō, Kyōsei Rōdō, Fukagawa: Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, 1996. 23 See Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Shumarinai to Kyōsei Renkō, Kyōsei Rōdō, Fukagawa: Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, 1996, p. 37. 24 See Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Shumarinai to Kyōsei Renkō, Kyōsei Rōdō, Fukagawa: Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, 1996, pp. 54–57. 25 Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Deau, Horu, Manabu: ’97 Nikkan Kyōdō Wākushoppu in Shumarinai, Fukagawa: Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, 1999. 26 Kim Yeong Hwan, ‘Promoting Peace and Reconciliation as a Citizen of East Asia: The Collaborative East Asian Workshop and the Grassroots House Peace Museum’, Japan Focus, 17 December 2007, http://japanfocus.org/-Kim_-Yeong_Hwan/2603 [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 27 Curtis Gayle, Women’s History and Local Community in Postwar Japan, London and New York: Routledge, 2010, p. 119; another interesting grassroots peace movement in regional Japan, the ‘Mountain Ranges’ (Yamanami) group, is discussed by Wesley Sasaki-Uemura in Organizing the Spontaneous: Citizen Protest in Postwar Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001, pp. 63–76. 28 See Takashi Fujitani, ‘Minshūshi as Critique of Orientalist Knowledge’, Positions: East Asia Cutures Critique, 1998, 6(2): 303–22. 29 For further discussion of the Okhotsk People’s History Forum, see Koike Kikō, ‘Ohōtsuku Minshūshi Kōza’, in Iwanami Kōza: Nihon Tsūshi: 2 Chiiki Kenkyū no Genjō to Kadai, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994, pp. 229–43; also Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘Japan and its Region: Changing Historical Perceptions’, Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, October 2011, 11(2): 123–42. 30 Kazuyo Yamane, Grassroots Museums for Peace in Japan: Unknown Efforts for Peace and Reconciliation, Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2009, pp. 190–200 and 243–8; on the Grassroots House Peace Museum, see also Kim Yeong Hwan, ‘Promoting Peace and Reconciliation as a Citizen of East Asia: The Collaborative East Asian Workshop and the Grassroots House Peace Museum’, Japan Focus, 17 December 2007, http:// japanfocus.org/-Kim_-Yeong_Hwan/2603 [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 31 Gaimushô Ajia Taiheiyô Kyoku Kita Ajia Ka, ‘Nikkan rekishi kyôdô kenyû sokushin keikaku’, released by Cabinet Secretary Fukuda, 5 March 2002. On these groups, see also Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘Lost Memories: Historical Reconciliation and CrossBorder Narratives in Northeast Asia’, in Steffi Richter ed., Contested Views of a Common Past: Revisions of History in Contemporary Northeast Asia, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2008, pp. 397–417. 32 Gaimushô, ‘Nicchû Rekishi Kyôdô Kenkyû Dai-1kai Kaigô (Gaiyô)’, 2006. Available online: http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/china/jc_rekishi_01.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 33 Antjie Krog, Country of my Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa, New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000. 34 Quoted in Kim Yeong Hwan, ‘Promoting Peace and Reconciliation as a Citizen of East Asia: The Collaborative East Asian Workshop and the Grassroots House Peace Museum’, Japan Focus, 17 December 2007, http://japanfocus.org/-Kim_-Yeong_ Hwan/2603 [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 35 Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai, ‘Daigaku Nyūshiki Sentā Shiken no “Kyōsei Renkō” ni kansuru Setsumon ni tsuite no Kōkai Shitsumonjō’, 24 January 2004, on the Society’s website: http://www.tsukurukai.com/14_web_special/text_webspecial/webspe_ rachi_topic04.html [Accessed 22 August 2012]; also http://www.tsukurukai.com/01_top_ news/file_news_ct/ct_news_040127.html [Accessed 22 August 2012]; also http://www. tsukurukai.com/07_fumi/text_fumi/fumi38_text02.html [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 36 William Underwood, ‘New Era for Japan–Korea History Issues: Forced Labor Redress Efforts Begin to Bear Fruit’, Japan Focus, 8 March 2008. Available at: http://www. japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/2689 [Accessed 22 November 2012].

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37 Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Shumarinai to Kyōsei Renkō, Kyōsei Rōdō, Fukagawa: Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, 1996, p. 9. 38 Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, p. 4. 39 Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, pp. 87–9. 40 Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, pp. 133–4. 41 On Hayashi, see Chūō Dōro Kaishō Giseisha Tsuitōhi Kensetsu Kiseikai ed. Ru-Betsu-Pe no Bōhyō, Kitami: Rubetsu Kyōdo Kenkyükai, 2006 (1990), pp. 52–6. 42 Hayashi Ryūko, ‘Ukabarenu Tamashii ga Yume ni’, (no. 40 of the series ‘ “Kita” no Kataribe’), Asahi Shimbun, 27 October 1981. 43 William Underwood, ‘Redress Crossroads in Japan: Decisive Phase in Campaigns to Compensate Korean and Chinese Wartime Forced Laborers’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 26 July 2010. Available at: http://www.japanfocus.org/-WilliamUnderwood/3387 [Accessed 16 November 2012]. 44 Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, Shumarinai to Kyōsei Renkō, Kyōsei Rōdō, Fukagawa: Sorachi Minshūshi Kōza, 1996, pp. 36 and 57.

Part II

Reframing memories

5

Gender and representations of the war in Tokyo museums Morris Low

Introduction Public memory is never static. Stories are retold; museum displays and commemorative ceremonies change in the light of changing social and political circumstances. In examining Japanese public displays of war history through the prism of gender, this chapter explores the ways in which Japanese war memories are being reframed. On the one hand, it highlights the dynamism of memory, but on the other it suggests how new voices and perceptions of the past may continue to be contained within existing nationalist frameworks. The focus on gender also helps us to perceive commonalities in the public framing of memory in East Asian countries: as comparative comments on the War Memorial of Korea in the final part of this chapter indicate, images of masculinity and the patriarchal family continue to play key roles in the shaping of war memories in many parts of the region. The Yasukuni Shrine has long been seen as a symbol of the way that the Japanese have manipulated history, tradition and memory for nationalistic purposes. John Breen and Yoshida Takashi have, in recent years, explored how the history of Japan at war has been presented at the shrine’s Yūshūkan war museum,1 but this warrants further attention. Takahashi Tetsuya has alerted us to gender issues in his writing on Yasukuni Shrine itself,2 but there are few writers who have attempted to analyse the highly gendered nature of museum displays in the vicinity of the shrine. In this chapter, I will compare the museum displays at the renovated Yūshūkan (reopened in 2002) with those at the nearby Shōwakan: The National Shōwa Memorial Museum (opened in 1999) and Shōkeikan, the new Historical Materials Hall for the Wounded and Sick Retired Soldiers in Tokyo (opened in 2006). Together, they constitute an historical precinct that in sum could be considered Japan’s ‘official’ representation of war, the military and society in Japan. Though all three museums offer highly nation-centred representations of history, they also have much in common with similar institutions throughout East Asia and beyond. Whereas Yūshūkan focuses on a more abstracted, heroic masculinity, the Shōkeikan deals with the Japanese who returned in the aftermath of the war, sometimes missing limbs and suffering from ill-health. In contrast, the Shōwakan

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differs again, focusing on the impact on women and children, with men appearing only as an after-thought in terms of bodily remains that must be repatriated. It is in the Shōwakan that we see women who valiantly support the imperial cause and dedicate themselves to the protection of their children and the homeland. These museums reflect how the Japanese nation is struggling to deal with its war memories and how many interest groups seek to be remembered. Are the museum displays part of a critical examination of Japan’s past and issue of war responsibility, or do they reinforce the idea of the Japanese as victims? To what extent were women complicit in their support of the military and the empire? Like memory itself, museums arrange and exclude. This chapter will pay close attention to how the exhibitions contribute to the construction of memory and masculinities by examining the type of artefacts on display, the context in which they are placed, and the extent to which the exhibitions permit visitors to arrive at their own conclusions regarding Japan’s history of colonialism, the Pacific War and its aftermath.

Yasukuni John Breen argues that the Yasukuni Shrine is a mnemonic device that uses texts, display and rituals to promote a particular view of the Pacific War, namely that millions of Japanese went to war in the name of the emperor and that after a courageous struggle, gave their lives for the emperor and the greater glory of the empire.3 Established in 1869, shortly after the Meiji Restoration, as the Tokyo Shōkonsha shrine, it was renamed the Yasukuni Shrine in 1879.4 After the SinoJapanese War of 1894–1895, the Meiji period intellectual and educator Fukuzawa Yukichi is said to have written an article in the Jiji shinpō arguing for an expanded role for Yasukuni as the national altar at the heart of the empire where bereaved families could be invited to honour the war dead at grand ceremonies led by the emperor.5 The shrine continues to serve that role although the emperor has not visited in recent times, amid much controversy centring around visits by politicians, the enshrinement of Class A war criminals, and around 50,000 colonial subjects who have been enshrined along with them. Okinawan civilians who lost their lives in the Battle of Okinawa are also among those who are enshrined there. Many Okinawans have disputed whether this is appropriate.6 Christians have also been among the many who have spoken out about their concerns regarding these matters.7 On a recent visit, I entered the site through a massive torii gateway opening into a highly masculinized space. I was soon greeted by a bronze statue of a kimonoclad, sword-carrying vice-minister of war Ōmura Masujirō (1824–1869), who is regarded as the ‘father’ of the Japanese army. The statue had been designed by Ōkuma Ujihiro who had studied at the Art School of the Imperial College of Engineering (Kōbu Bijutsu Gakkō) under the Italian sculptor Vincenzo Ragusa (1841–1927). Ōkuma was entrusted with the project from 1885.8 He subsequently went to Italy and France for further studies in order to make what was Japan’s first Western-style bronze statue. The statue was cast by the Tokyo Military Arsenal

Gender and representations of the war 109 and completed in 1893. It was installed the following year, the year that Japan went to war with China. As the art historian Michael Sullivan bemoaned, ‘It is typical of many such monuments, completely European in all but its subject.’9 This is somewhat of a generalization in that there has been a long tradition of Buddhist and Shintō religious sculpture in Japan, and many examples of Buddhist sculpture did come to be registered as national treasures. However, the concept of the realistic representation of the human figure as art, in the tradition of Western sculpture, is considered by many as having only entered Japan in the late nineteenth century and the statue of Ōmura, deemed its first major example of public sculpture.10 The statue reflects how representations of the war owe a debt to the West and patriarchal conceptions of Japanese history and social norms. As Midori Wakakuwa reminds us, such public sculpture seeks to dominate the social space around it. The figure looks down from an elevated position, his benign gaze and bushy eyebrows taking in all that he sees before him. He wears a sword and holds a pair of binoculars in one hand. The very first public sculpture in Tokyo, it is gendered in its commemoration of a male figure who is celebrated for having defeated the army of the Tokugawa shogunate. Its placement signals the role that Western-style modes of representation have played in remembering Japan’s military past.11 Visitors pass through another gateway before reaching Yasukuni shrine (see Figure 5.1), one of the few structures in Tokyo to have survived both the 1923 earthquake and the World War II firebombing of Tokyo. An important part of the

Figure 5.1 The main gate, Yasukuni shrine.

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commemorative apparatus at Yasukuni is the Yūshūkan war museum which is on the right. It is one of the oldest museums in Japan. The front entrance of the main Yūshūkan building (see Figure 5.2), first built in 1882, is flanked on both sides by recent sculptures. To the far right is a group portait of a kimono-clad mother and her three children entitled ‘Haha no zō’ (‘Statue of Mother’, see Figure 5.3). Absent from the family group is the father who has given his life for the nation. Specially commissioned by children of war widows and completed in 1974, the sculpture shows how the museum continues to promote an ideology around sacrifice for the nation. On the far left is ‘Tokkō yūshi no zō’ (‘Statue of a Special Attack Hero’, see Figure 5.4), a bronze of a proud-looking kamikaze pilot, gazing slightly upward to the future, a sculpture which has been standing there at the front of the museum for some time. In 2005, a plaque was installed on the ground beside the statue which praised the kamikaze pilots. It notes how 5,843 young men gave their lives in the last stages of the ‘Greater East Asia War’.12 Use of this term at Yūshūkan reinforces the belief that the war was fought to liberate Asia from the West. Both sculptures speak to how Japanese masculinity during the war revolved around fighting for the nation and how women were seen as having responsibility for caring for the home and children, who represented the future. Alas, those children would sometimes be called to make the ultimate sacrifice.13 As Takahashi Tetsuya has argued, in wartime, the idea of giving one’s life for the nation and being enshrined at Yasukuni was promoted as being an honourable

Figure 5.2 Main Yūshūkan building and entrance hall, showing a Zero Fighter.

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Figure 5.3 ‘Statue of Mother’ Yūshūkan.

thing, a boy’s ultimate dream. In Yokoyama Natsuki’s Kagayaku Yasukuni monogatari (Shining Yasukuni Tales) (1944) were the following words: Nihon ni danshi toshite umaretekita to iu koto wa, kuni o mamoru tame no tanjō desu (In Japan, a boy is born to protect the country).14 In this way, Yasukuni served a role of mobilizing Japanese boys to become soldiers, but (as further discussed in Chapter Eight) not all necessarily went willingly or agreed with the war.15 The sculptures in front of Yūshūkan are important in reinforcing the idea that the Yasukuni spirit encompasses all Japanese, including women and their children. This is especially since women are largely absent from the display within the museum itself, despite having had a prominent place in the war effort. It is the contributions of the men who went to war that are foregrounded within. The nexus between war, militarism and masculinities is an often seen feature of societies and cultures throughout the world.16 Entry to the exhibition rooms is now via a new, modern glass building adjacent to the original building. Up the escalators, and visitors see more sculptures, albeit

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Figure 5.4 ‘Statue of a Special Attack Hero’, Yūshūkan.

smaller in scale. A sculpture by Hinago Jitsuzō (1893–1945) entitled ‘Heisho no zō’ (‘Portrait of a Soldier’) shows an unknown soldier, foot resting on bricks or rocks, with an erect sabre rifle in his right hand. Hinago’s own life was bookended by wars: the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Second World War, whose conclusion he did not live to see. Hinago had studied at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō) under the well-known Western-style sculptor Asakura Fumio, also from Ōita prefecture. Asakura was a member of the Art Committee of the Imperial Household and the Japan Art Academy.17 Nearby is the bronze ‘Dai Tōa’ (‘Greater East Asia’, 1942) by Kawamura Gozō (1884–1950) which provides the subtext. It shows a family scene depicting a semi-naked strong man with a sword in his right hand, helping to hold up an old man (read as ‘Asia’) who is on his knees. A naked boy representing the future and a faithful dog are standing to the side. The ideological nature of Kawamura’s sculpture hides his own story of resisting the military. In order to avoid being drafted into the military, he had originally gone to the United States in 1904,

Gender and representations of the war 113 studying at the National Academy of Design in New York city, from 1906 to 1909 and then the École des Beaux Arts from 1912. He returned to New York in 1916 and worked on public monuments with the American sculptor Frederic William MacMonnies whom he had befriended in Paris. With the worsening of US–Japan relations, Kawamura returned to Japan in 1940. It was not long after his return that Kawamura created the sculpture on exhibition at the Yūshūkan. With the worsening of the war, Kawamura left Tokyo where he had a studio and returned to his hometown in Nagano prefecture, only to fall under suspicion of being a spy due to his many years spent in the United States.18 Also on display nearby is ‘Fushōhei no keirei’ (‘Salute of the Injured Soldier’) by Watanabe Osao (1874–1952). We see a soldier saluting the sky, on his behalf and that of the wounded soldier leaning on his left shoulder. Watanabe was the elder brother of Asakura Fumio and studied under Yamada Kisai (1864–1901) who taught wood sculpture.19 Watanabe was, like his brother, a talented Westernstyle sculptor. He graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1897, and married the daughter of Okazaki Sessei (1854–1921), a sculptor and important bronze caster who taught at the school.20 Watanabe’s best known statue was that of General Nogi: a hero in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) who loyally committed suicide when the Meiji Emperor died. Watanabe created a sculpture of Nogi which was shown at the Tokyo Taishō Exhibition, 20 March–31 July 1914 at Ueno Park in Tokyo, to celebrate the enthronement of the Taishō emperor.21 ‘Heiwa no megami’ (‘Goddess of Peace’) by Kitamura Seibō (1884–1987) is one of the few representations of women on display. A naked-looking woman on a horse flies through the sky with a flaming torch in her left hand. Unlike the highly realistic sculptures nearby, Kitamura’s work is more impressionistic. Born in Nagasaki, Kitamura studied at the Kyoto Technological College and then the Tokyo School of Fine Arts where the teacher Shirai Uzan (1864–1928) was a formative influence.22 Kitamura’s most famous work is his ‘Statue of Peace’ (1955) which is located in the Nagasaki Peace Park. This time ‘peace’ is a muscular male that has been likened to the style of the French sculptor Emile Antoine Bourdelle.23 In the Meiji period, Japan embraced a largely Western-inspired modernity. Indeed, its army owed much to French and German models, and Western-style sculpture struggled to carve out an identity of its own.24 With the closure of the Sculpture Department of the Art School of the Imperial College of Engineering in June 1882, and the school itself by the end of that year, Western-style, modelled sculpture was without an institutional home until its inclusion in the Sculpture Department at the Tokyo Fine Arts School in 1899. The school itself had been established ten years before.25 The sculptor Shirai Uzan, who taught at the school, had argued to the Ministry of Education that: the only way for Japanese sculpture in Western style to escape its imitative nature was for students to be given full opportunities for advanced training, in order that they might eventually produce really original, Japanese works using Western methods.26

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At the same time, though, he argued that ‘the basis of modern sculpture must inevitably rest in the realistic depiction of things, strengthened by sketching from nature and the study of anatomy’.27 Kitamura’s sculpture, which shows a female nude transcending politics and ideology and seemingly flying through the clouds, does attempt to create something new in terms of Japanese sculpture, but falls into common stereotypes that seek to portray women’s bodies as generic, lacking in historicity and somehow divorced from war and violence.28 Females are largely absent from the display at the Yūshūkan, that is until the final exhibition rooms which depict the very end of the war. This is despite 57,000 women being enshrined at Yasukuni. Most were killed while performing caring and nurturing roles as military nurses rather than dying in combat. The museum emphasizes the gender division in wartime. Military nurses could still be considered as conforming to the ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) ideology. As the museum guide explains, ‘women are generally to be protected’ (p. 81).29 The role of the Japanese Red Cross Society is singled out for special mention. More than 35,000 women were sent to the battlefields to help the sick and injured soldiers. Some 1,118 of the women died from disease or were killed in action as a result.30 But what visitors might not appreciate is how the Red Cross in Japan was nationalized and militarized. When it was established in 1887, it was seen primarily as a vehicle by which to serve the nation and help its soldiers. Although Japan derived prestige from membership of the Red Cross Convention of 1864, by associating itself with largely Christian and Western nations, the Japanese resisted any perception that the cross emblem had religious significance that went beyond its borders. The Japanese Red Cross Society was firmly dedicated to the nation. But in the desire to avoid unseemly mentions of violence and contradictions to the narrative, there are omissions. One case in point is the story of the Himeyuri Gakutotai or ‘Lily Corps’ of female high school students who formed a nursing unit on Okinawa. A display in Exhibition Room 14, one of the last galleries, simply states that more than 40 students and workers, devoted to ‘defense of Japanese Homeland’, were killed at the Third Surgery Shelter on 19 June 1945.31 As John Breen has noted, a photo of a monument to the nurses of the Himeyuri unit who treated the wounded Japanese during the Battle of Okinawa is on display, but the museum narrative omits the larger number of total deaths of the unit, and how many of the girls were encouraged to commit suicide in the mistaken belief that they would be raped en masse by American soldiers.32 What is fascinating about Breen’s critique is that he is listed as ‘supervisor’ of the English-language edition of the Yūshūkan illustrated guidebook published in August 2009 which is largely a direct translation of the Japanese version.33 It appears that a total of 219 students and 18 teachers from the Okinawa Women’s Normal School and the First Prefectural Girls’ High School served as nurses attached to the Haebaru Army Field Hospital. Seventy-nine more students and three teachers were also mobilized and sent to other medical units. It is estimated that more than 200 girls were killed or took their own lives after the nurse corps was dissolved and they were ordered out of the caves where the Japanese

Gender and representations of the war 115 soldiers had been hiding.34 The reluctance to tell the fuller story of the Himeyuri nurses can be seen beyond the walls of Yūshūkan. As Steve Rabson and others have reported, there were widespread protests in Okinawa on 29 September, 2007 when the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced that it would delete mention in history textbooks of the military’s role in group suicides of civilians during the war.35 Also missing from the ‘noble spirits of women’ enshrined at Yasukuni are the so-called ‘comfort women’ from Korea, China, the Philippines and Indonesia who were forced to work at military brothels by the Japanese (for further discussion of this topic, see the Introduction to this volume). It is estimated that some 200,000 women were enslaved in this way, with less than ten per cent surviving the war.36 Any discussion of rape and sexual exploitation by Japanese soldiers during the war is avoided. The story of the girls working at the Maoka Post Office in the Japanese colony of Karafuto is briefly mentioned. Nine female telephone operators continued to staff the telephone switchboard despite the invasion by Soviet forces on 20 August 1945. The women then killed themselves (by drinking potassium cyanide). Photographs of the nine young women are displayed, along with a moving message in handwritten calligraphy giving their last farewells.37 The story of the brave young women became better known after Nihon TV broadcast a special drama reenacting the story on 25 August 2008. It was entitled Kiri no hi: Karafuto Maoka Yūbinkyoku ni chitta kyūnin no otometachi (‘Fire in the Mist: The Nine Girls Who Perished at the Karafuto–Maoka Post Office’).38 The duty of soldiers to continue the family line, however, receives much attention at Yūshūkan where there is a gallery of bride dolls that families of dead soldiers have dedicated at Yasukuni as spirit brides, after the war. The dolls on display include Hakata ningyō (ceramic dolls) from the southern island of Kyūshū, as well as Sakurako bridal dolls. The origins of the display dates back to an exhibition entitled ‘Bridal Dolls Dedicated to Heroic Souls’ (1 April–31 August 1997). 39 In northeast Japan, there has been a custom for soldiers who die unmarried to be commemorated at temples by their families with the offering of an ema (votive tablet or handpainted, wooden plaque) showing them with brides. These are known as mukasari (‘marriage’ in the Yamagata dialect) ema.40 During the Second World War, a practice of ‘bride-doll marriage’ emerged in northern Japan which married the soul of a dead son to a spirit bride in the form of a doll.41 Also, small cloth dolls were often carried on missions by kamikaze pilots who saw them as mascots that were imbued with the spirits of the women who made them.42 Thus, even in death, bereaved families and women sought to impose a hegemonic masculinity on their sons. While Japanese masculinity was transformed after the war from a martial masculinity to one more suited to the national agenda of a ‘peace-loving’ nation focussed on rapid economic growth, the expectation that all men would marry and raise families continued unabated, often encouraged by their mothers who have been complicit in fostering the expectation. It was a mother, 84-year old Satō Nami, who offered a bridal doll and a donation of five million yen to Yasukuni, in the hope that it would serve as a type of proxy bride

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for her dead son, Satō Takeichi, who was killed on Okinawa. Other mothers or sisters of unmarried war dead followed and dedicated bridal dolls to Yasukuni.43 The slick presentation of the galleries at Yūshūkan, which was renovated and reopened in 2002, tends to aestheticize the violent nature of the deaths of those enshrined at Yasukuni. A Zero fighter plane and locomotive used on the Thai–Burma railway are placed strategically in the foyer of the new steel and glass entrance hall to attract young men into the museum, signalling that it is a largely masculine space.44 John Breen has noted the absence of representations of American, British and Chinese soldiers at the museum which honours the war dead. Not only do we not see their faces, but there are no artefacts to remind visitors that the enemy were part of the narrative of the war. This absence is described by Breen as ‘an amnesia of perpetration, of defeat and, above all, of the horror of war’.45 When the Chinese are mentioned, they are characterized as ‘terrorists’ (rather than the previously used term ‘bandits’) who oppose Japanese invasion of China. In this way, the museum displays language appropriate to the post-11 September 2001 world and recasts the conflict between China and Japan as Japan’s own ‘war against terror’.46

Shōwakan The historians Laura Hein and Takenaka Akiko suggest that the nearby Shōwakan serves the role of bringing together groups who differ as to who was to blame for the suffering of soldiers and civilians during the war. The government-funded museum does this by focussing on daily life among citizens in wartime Japan. Located close to the Yasukuni shrine and Yūshūkan, the museum was initially proposed in 1979 to ‘console’ those who survived the war, namely the children of those who lost their fathers. This is reflected in its original name of Memorial Hall for Children of the War Dead (Senbotsusha Iji Kinenkan) and later its name of Peace Prayer Hall for Commemoration of the War Dead (Senbotsusha Tsuitō Heiwa Kinenkan). After 20 years of heated debate, it opened in 1999 and is known as Shōwakan or Shōwa Hall, after the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito (see Figures 5.5 and 5.6). Although a national museum, Shōwakan is managed by the conservative Nihon Izokukai (Japan Association of War-Bereaved Families) with funding from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. It is thus the Izokukai that ultimately defines what is on display. In order to avoid controversy regarding whether the war dead died unnecessarily or not, the focus is almost entirely on civilians, that is mothers and children. Men are eerily absent as is much mention of Japan’s war effort.47 In some ways, Shōwakan provides relief from the masculinity and warrior narrative of Yūshūkan. The primary audience was initially the children of war dead. Shōwakan is effectively a museum of everyday life in wartime and Occupied Japan, from around 1935 through to 1955. The artefacts on display are meant to have a therapeutic effect on the survivors rather than remind them of the violence and horrors of war. The displays are commendable in how they throw light on material culture and remind us of how war can disrupt everyday life in Japan.

Figure 5.5 Shōwakan building.

Figure 5.6 Entrance to Shōwakan building.

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Although elderly visitors can often be found in the library, museum visitors increasingly tend to be school children who admire the self-sacrifice of Japanese civilians during wartime.48 The end result, though, is a highly gendered display with one of the few mentions of soldiers at the end of the exhibition in terms of the post-war search for bodily remains. The focus of Shōwakan is thus a rather nostalgic look at the hardships endured by the survivors, rather than the war dead themselves. The main theme of the exhibition is ‘Haha to ko no senchū, sengo’ which is translated as ‘Mother and Children, Loving During and After the War’. Spread over two floors, the exhibition is divided into ‘The Life of Japanese During the War’ (1935–1945) (7th Floor) and ‘The Life of Japanese After the War’ (1945–1955) (6th Floor). As the title suggests, the exhibition renders fathers invisible. During wartime, many men were indeed absent from the home, but the exhibition highlights the increasing peripherality of the father in the Japanese home. In the post-war period, this was partly due to the decline of the fathers’ authority within the family and his perceived role as principal provider for the family but it is also evidence of a negative association of males with war, violence and shame, and the primacy of the mother–child relationship.49 As Kerry Smith has noted, there is a fleeting reference to the Japanese military at the entrance to the first exhibition room on the seventh floor, where we see a section on ‘Parting from the Family’. Letters from soldiers to their families and senninbari (‘thousand stitch belts’) that were given to the soldiers for good luck are on display. One thousand women had each sewn one stitch on long strips of cloth which were worn by soldiers as talismans to protect themselves from harm.50 Otherwise, reference to Japanese soldiers is largely missing from the displays.51 In the educational material, a key photograph dated September 1945 from the US National Archives shows a woman walking among the ruins with a baby on her back and one child walking alongside her. Other Occupation photographs show smiling American soldiers watching Japanese children play, as if they had now become proxies for the absent Japanese fathers.52 Visitors leave the museum with a view of wartime Japan as having been largely a woman’s world that was confined to Japan and lacking much in the way of international context.53 To use Franziska Seraphim’s words, war memory became highly localized, and in the absence of much in the way of historical explanations of the political context, the objects on display tend to foster nostalgia rather than deep reflection.54 The museum tends to validate a sense of national unity in the face of adversity, that is reminiscent of wartime ideology, albeit sanitized for contemporary consumption. The narrative underlying both the displays at Yūshūkan and Shōwakan is that the war was largely a noble cause.55 The Yasukuni Shrine and Yūshūkan are where the war dead are remembered, and Shōwakan has become the place where the victimhood and hardships of bereaved families and ordinary Japanese are put on display. Yūshūkan in particular valourizes Japanese masculinity, and Shōwakan seems to show an emasculated Japan. But some men survived the war, and the two museums do little to acknowledge their existence or struggles to overcome their disabilities and difficulties in rejoining Japanese society.

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Shōkeikan The impact of the Second World War on the male Japanese body can be seen through representations of disabled Japanese soldiers at the newly opened Shōkeikan: Historical Materials Hall for the Wounded and Sick Retired Soldiers in Tokyo. After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, Japanese soldiers returned from abroad and attempted to create new lives for themselves. For some, their disfigurement was a constant reminder of the sacrifices that they had made in the name of the emperor. What impact did it have on their sense of male identity, their family relationships and the people around them? The museum helps document how attitudes to men are socially constructed and reproduced. Returning to Japan after the war, men with disabilities had to deal with damaged masculinities. With defeat came a loss of identity which was compounded by wounds and/or loss of limbs. Returned soldiers were further emasculated by their loss of income and dependence on their wives and families, or begging for survival. The disabled soldier beggar, dressed in white kimono or military uniform, soliciting donations on city streets, was a common sight in the early post-war years.56 Sometimes playing military songs, they were a reminder of the sacrifices that they had made for the nation and a form of protest at the lack of financial assistance extended to wounded veterans.57 Up until the end of the war, Japanese soldiers who were injured in action were entitled to disability pensions. Bereaved families also received pensions or financial assistance. During the Allied Occupation, SCAP (Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers) decreed that such payments be discontinued, save for severely disabled servicemen. This meant that war veterans were treated no differently from any other victims of the war. These measures were seen as part of the demilitarization of Japan.58 The establishment of the previously mentioned Izokukai in 1947 was prompted by the loss of military pensions as a result of the implementation of Occupation policy in 1946. Pension payments were eventually reinstated in 1953, as a result of strong lobbying.59 The opening of the Shōkeikan in March 2006 and the official visit by the current emperor and empress of Japan on 19 January, 2009, highlight how the Japanese nation is struggling to deal with its war memories and the many interest groups that seek to be remembered. The historian Sandra Wilson has recently called for a more careful examination of the place of former soldiers in Japanese society in the 1950s. She suggests that they were far from being universally reviled and that their connections with war ‘remained an integral part of the evolving sense of nation in Japan’.60 The disabled bodies of Japanese soldiers help us to understand the extent to which the Japanese people lived with memories of the war and to what extent they sought to put them well behind them. Many scholars see a disjuncture between masculinity during the war and after.61 The main exhibition room at the Shōkeikan is located on the second floor. In a solemnly dark space with display cases with sophisticated, illuminated opaque glass walls, the display uses state-of-the-art technology. Slightly curved walls encourage visitors to take a circular path around the exhibition, starting with a

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display on the conscription system and enlistment, departure for active service, life on the battlefield and war zone, and then moving to the focus on sick and wounded servicemen. A poignant section is a line of display cases which record the moment of injury. Rather than display images of war-torn bodies, the museum selectively isolates damaged belongings such as spectacles, a cap, tobacco case and boot by placing them reverently in individual glass display cases that are strategically spot-lit. The light shines through each case, showing the impact of bullets and suggesting what injuries the soldiers sustained. Shadows are artfully cast on the didactic panels placed immediately below the artefacts, explaining who was injured, when and where. Many of the visitors are junior and senior high school students, so the museum is careful not to frighten visitors with the violence of the war. The injured are invariably men, though women do receive a mention in the section on ‘Emergency Treatment and Evacuation’. The uniform of a Japanese Red Cross nurse is on display.62 Sensitivity regarding the depiction of the war dead is not unique to Japan. In George H. Roeder’s aptly titled book The Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War Two, he outlines how early in the war, graphic images of dead American soldiers tended to be withheld, but by the final two years, officials released grim archival photographs to fight against public complacency about what had hitherto been seen as a distant war, in order to mobilize the resources, personnel and political support that was needed for victory.63 Kinoshita Naoyuki has argued that in Japan, portraits of the war dead have rarely been produced. Rather, paintings showing soldiers fearlessly fighting in battle before death have been the type of war images which were preferred.64 It is thus not surprising that a central feature of the second floor, main exhibition room at the Shōkeikan is a diorama which recreates a field hospital housed in a cave, not unlike those in which the Himeyuri girl nurses of Okinawa treated the wounded and sick. Connected with this is a display on medical treatment in the war zone, repatriation to Japan, and convalescence and care after their return. A fake eye, prosthetic leg and fingers only hint at the physical challenges that the returned servicemen had to endure. Not the least of their problems was social rehabilitation after being discharged, but what we see is a narrative which shows the treatment and recovery of the soldiers, rather than a focus on the war dead. In a way, the Allied Occupation and the ‘demilitarization’ of Japan exacerbated the problems that the returned soldiers had to endure. In the new Japan, there was little place for the men who reminded the Japanese population of the past and their defeat. The rapid pace of economic growth and changing lifestyles meant a strong demand for able-bodied workers and difficulties for the disabled. The National Sanatorium Hakone Hospital was one of the few places where those living with war wounds and sickness could be treated.65 Representations of disabled Japanese soldiers in films, media reports and museum exhibitions at the Shōkeikan help us to gain some insight into this. Like memory itself, museums arrange and exclude. Museums are strategic sites for exploring how that memory is constructed. The museum displays at the Shōkeikan contrast with those at the nearby Shōwakan and Yushūkan at Yasukuni where the

Gender and representations of the war 121 damaged bodies of men are largely excluded. Together, they constitute an historical precinct relating to the war and memory. Didactic texts and displays of artefacts in the Shōkeikan museum show the construction of a national narrative. The way artefacts are displayed is designed not to overwhelm the high school students who visit. There is some historical contextualization, but the library enables visitors to arrive at their own conclusions regarding the Pacific War by further research. Many of the displays, oral histories and published reminiscences concern the challenges that Japanese veterans (and their spouses) faced in dealing with their health problems. Their difficulties were exacerbated during the Occupation due to the termination of their pensions. It is estimated that there were some 700,000 wounded veterans. There had been 146 Imperial Navy and Army hospitals in each prefecture, but these were transformed into national hospitals in December 1945 and given the task of treating the population at large rather than show preferential treatment for former servicemen. What is missing from the museum narratives is any discussion of the quest by disabled colonial veterans for social welfare benefits. In the early 1950s, the Association of Korean War Criminals was established by Korean parolees to lobby for financial assistance and for compensation for families of executed Korean war criminals. There was the perception that they had been made into scapegoats for the war by the Japanese. Men from colonial Korea and Taiwan had been employed by the Imperial Japanese Army as gunzoku (civilian employees). Although they wore uniforms and were given military training, they were technically not soldiers but rather assisted the army in a non-combat capacity in Japanese-occupied territories, typically as guards in prisoner-of-war camps. There were over 3,000 Korean men who were sent to camps in Singapore, Thailand and Java. Taiwanese gunzoku mainly served in the Philippines and Borneo.66 During the Pacific War, 27 per cent of the 132,134 American and British prisoners of war died in the camps. An even higher 35.9 per cent of the 22,376 Australian prisoners of war died alongside them.67 After the war, the Allied Powers convicted 148 Koreans as war criminals for what they had done as Japanese colonial subjects. Most of them had been prisoner-of-war camp guards. After their release, the Japanese government stripped them of Japanese citizenship, thus denying them any pensions or financial assistance for medical treatment. The Association of War-Disabled Korean Veterans in Japan was established in 1952 to fight for equal financial assistance as Japanese. Although the Japanese government had decided in 1964 to make Japanese nationality a requirement of such assistance, in 1993, the then Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that former colonial subjects lost their Japanese nationality when the Peace Treaty came into effect on 28 April 1952. Laws that have been enacted since that time to assist war veterans and bereaved families exclude their Korean and Taiwanese counterparts.68

War and masculinity in Korean monuments The gendering of images of war is a process that crosses national boundaries. The association of masculinity and war is perhaps particularly strong in East Asia,

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where the power of the patriarchal family survived, and was in some ways strengthened by, processes of modernization. Much of the masculine symbolism visible in the Yūshūkan, for instance, is at least as clearly visible in the halls of Seoul’s War Memorial of Korea (whose displays are also discussed in the following chapter). An English-language information brochure for the War Memorial refers to the museum rather benignly as ‘a cultural resting place in the heart of the city’ and a ‘sanctuary of national defense’,69 but visitors to the museum see a highly charged masculine space with a phallic-shaped sculpture known as the Korean War Tower taking pride of place in front of the institution. Nearby is the Statue of Brothers which is based on the true story of two brothers who encountered each other on the battlefield, despite fighting for different sides. As the guidebook states, the statue ‘symbolized brotherly love transcending ideology’.70 But it would be wrong to say that the museum goes beyond ideology. Like Tokyo’s Yūshūkan, the War Memorial of Korea presents a space of remembrance centred on the heroic male body of soldiers and independence fighters. On the first floor, visitors enter the War History Room, but many would be surprised to find that the room goes back to the prehistoric age to tell the story of the history of their forefathers’ resistance to foreign aggression. We see a model of the famous Turtle-Shaped Battleship of Admiral Yi Sun-sin that was developed to repel the Japanese invasion of 1592–1598 and a video uses computer graphics to re-enact episodes from this seven-year-long war. The video plays in Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese and shows how the Koreans defeated Japan at sea. One of the most moving sections of the War History Room deals with the ‘War of Righteous Armies’. We are told that the war began in 1895 after the assassination of Korean Empress Myongsong (Myeongseong) and continued through to 1913. We see where the Korean hero An Chung-gun (Ahn Jung-geun) shot Itō Hirobumi, the first Japanese resident general of Korea, at Harbin Station on 26 October 1909. But most moving of all is his calligraphy with his handprint, examples of which can also be seen at the Patriot Ahn Jung-geun Memorial Hall, located in the Namsan district of Seoul. In contrast to the noisy display of Admiral Yi, we see the contemplative marks of arguably Korea’s greatest hero. Indeed, on 23 August 2011, Hero: The Musical opened at the Lincoln Center in New York.71 The award-winning musical was based on Ahn’s story. As promotional material proclaimed, ‘Hero is a moving and haunting story of patriotism and sacrifice in the pursuit of justice’. These depictions provide the context for the representations of the Korean War that fill much of the museum space, and that are further examined in Chapter Six. Korean public memories of war are, of course, inscribed in bodies of women as well as of men. In public memory, however, women (as in the case of the Japanese museums discussed earlier) are more likely to be presented in the role of victim than of hero. One striking example of this gender division is the ‘comfort woman’ statue discussed in the opening pages of this book. The life-size bronze sculpture of an unsmiling teenage girl wearing traditional dress, with bare feet, sitting in a chair and looking directly across the street at the Japanese Embassy is in striking

Gender and representations of the war 123 contrast to the much more dramatic sculptures and displays at the War Memorial of Korea which invariably focus on the heroic activities of men.72 Kim Un-seong, who with his wife Kim Seo-gyeong created the 130 cm statue ‘to give shape to the spirit of the “comfort women” ’, has stated that her eyes ‘ended up being more intense than we had originally planned’,73 although he and his wife strove to give her a serene feeling. The result is a sense of transcendence. But as Tessa Morris-Suzuki has pointed out (see the Introduction to this book), it is the statue’s shadow that is perhaps the most moving part of the installation. No matter what time of the day, the statue casts the shadow of an old woman. The statue is thus about the loss of innocence. The shadow heightens the realization that something has been stolen. The space occupied by the young girl and empty chair creates a space where the old women who come to protest can remember and where we can but imagine what had taken place.

Conclusion In War without Mercy (1986), John Dower suggested that the Japanese sought not to denigrate the enemy but rather to elevate themselves.74 John Dower’s original contention that the enemy is largely missing seems borne out by the museums discussed in this chapter.75 What is startling is that in Shōwakan itself, the bodies of soldiers themselves are missing whereas in Shōkeikan, also funded by the government, it is the bodies and the hardships that they create that are under scrutiny. All three museums in Tokyo constitute a fascinating precinct which is testimony to the debates about Japan’s role in the war, and the hardships endured by Japanese soldiers and the citizens of Japan. But there are many blind spots in the narratives that are constructed. As historians have documented, what we see is a judicious editing of history. It is only by carefully reading the displays and texts in museums and spaces both in Japan and abroad, and noting what has been excluded, that we can understand more accurately what took place during the war and its aftermath.

Notes 1 John Breen, ‘Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory’, Japan Focus, 3 June 2005. Available online: http://japanfocus.org/ [Accessed 1 June 2011]; Takashi Yoshida, ‘Revisiting the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum in Modern Japanese History’, Japan Focus, 2 December 2007. Available online: http://japanfocus.org/ [Accessed 1 June 2011]. 2 Tetsuya Takahashi, (trans. Philip Seaton) ‘The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine’, in Naoko Shimizu ed., Nationalism in Japan, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 155–80. 3 John Breen, ‘Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory’, in John Breen ed., Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past, London: Hurst and Co., 2007, pp. 143–62. 4 Yasukuni Shrine, Yasukuni Jinja, Record in Pictures of Yūshūkan, Tokyo: The Shrine, 2009, p. 17. 5 Fukuzawa Yukichi, ‘We Should Hold a Grand Ceremony for the War Dead’ (‘Senshisha no taisaiten o kyokō subeshi’), Jiji shinpō, 14 November 1895. In Keiō Gijuku ed., Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū, vol. 15, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970, pp. 320–2. Cited in

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Tetsuya Takahashi, (trans. Philip Seaton) ‘The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine’ in Naoko Shimazu ed., Nationalisms in Japan, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp. 155–80, especially p. 170. Takahashi Tetsuya, ‘Legacies of Empire: The Yasukuni Shrine Controversy’, in John Breen ed., Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past, London: Hurst and Co., 2007, pp. 105–24. See for example, John Breen, ‘Popes, Bishops and War Criminals: Reflections on Catholics and Yasukuni in Post-war Japan’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 1 March 2010. Available online: http://www.japanfocus.org/ [Accessed 3 June 2011]. Nakamura Denzaburō, ‘Part Two: Meiji Sculpture’, in Uyeno Naoteru ed., English adaptation by Richard Lane, Centenary Culture Council Series, Japanese Arts and Crafts in the Meiji Era, Tokyo: Pan-Pacific Press, 1958, pp. 81–105, especially pp. 84–85, 92. Michael Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art: From the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day, London: Thames and Hudson, 1973, p. 122. Miyagi Museum of Art, Mie Prefectural Art Museum and National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Modern Age in Japanese Sculpture: From its Beginnings through the 1960s, Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2007. Midori Wakakuwa, ‘The Gendered Gaze: Public Art in Tokyo’, China Report, 1999, 35(2): 191–5. Bill Gordon, ‘Kamikaze Pilot Statue’. Updated 29 November, 2009. Viewed 4 January 2010. Available online: http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/kamikaze/monuments/ yushukan/index.htm [Accessed 20 August 2012]. Jemima Repo, ‘A Feminist Reading of Gender and Memory at the Yasukuni Shrine’, Japan Forum, 2008, 20(2): 219–43, espcially 226–8. Yokoyama Natsuki, Kagayaku Yasukuni monogatari, Tokyo: Taihei Shobō, 1944, p. 226. Cited in Takahashi, ‘The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine’, p. 160. See for example, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Paul Higate and John Hopton, ‘War, Militarism, and Masculinities’, in Michael S. Kimmel, Jeff Hearn and R. W. Connell eds., Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 2005, pp. 432–47. ‘Asakura Fumio’, in Laurence P. Roberts, with a foreword by John M. Rosenfield, A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1976, p. 6. Hiroshi Tsunemoto, ‘Katamoto and Japanese Artists in New York in the Early 1930s’, Thomas Wolfe Review, Annual 2007. Available online: EBSCOhost database [Accessed 22 August 2012]. See also Inuma Nobuko, Chōsoka Kawamura Gozō no shōgai, Tokyo: Maijisha, 2000. ‘Yamada Kisai’, in Laurence P. Roberts, with a foreword by John M. Rosenfield, A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1976, p. 195. ‘Okazaki Sessei’, in Laurence P. Roberts, with a foreword by John M. Rosenfield, A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1976, p. 125. ‘Watanabe Osao’, in Laurence P. Roberts, with a foreword by John M. Rosenfield, A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1976, p. 194; Masachi Ohsawa, ‘Indignity for the Emperor, Equality for the People: Taishō Democracy and the Transition from Nationalism to Ultranationalism in Modern Japan’, in Sechin Y. S. Chien and John Fitzgerald eds, The Dignity of Nations: Equality, Competition, and Honor in East Asian Nationalism, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006, pp. 33–48, especially p. 44. ‘Kitamura Seibō’, in Laurence P. Roberts, with a foreword by John M. Rosenfield, A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1976, p. 81.

Gender and representations of the war 125 23 ‘Nagasaki’, Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 5, Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983, p. 304; ‘Kitamura Seibō’, in Laurence P. Roberts, with a foreword by John M. Rosenfield, A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1976, p. 81. 24 Sven Saaler, ‘The Imperial Japanese Army and Germany’, in Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich eds, Japanese–German Relations, 1895–1945: War, Diplomacy and Public Opinion, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp. 21–39. 25 Tamon Miki, ‘Modern Developments’, in Jane Turner ed., The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols, Oxford: Grove, 1996, vol. 17, pp. 133–8, especially p. 133. 26 Nakamura Denzaburō, ‘Part Two: Meiji Sculpture’, in Naoteru Uyeno, Japanese Arts and Crafts in the Meiji Era, pp. 81–105, especially p. 97. 27 Nakamura Denzaburō, ‘Part Two: Meiji Sculpture’, in Naoteru Uyeno, Japanese Arts and Crafts in the Meiji Era, pp. 81–105, especially p. 97. 28 Midori Wakakuwa, ‘The Gendered Gaze: Public Art in Tokyo’, China Report, 1999, 35(2): 191–5. 29 Yasukuni Shrine, Yasukuni Jinja, Record in Pictures of Yūshūkan, Tokyo: The Shrine, 2009, p. 81. 30 Yasukuni Shrine, Yasukuni Jinja, Record in Pictures of Yūshūkan, Tokyo: The Shrine, 2009, p. 81. 31 Yasukuni Shrine, Yasukuni Jinja, Record in Pictures of Yūshūkan, Tokyo: The Shrine, 2009, p. 73. 32 John Breen, ‘Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory’, in John Breen ed., Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past, London: Hurst and Co., 2007, especially p. 153. 33 Yasukuni Shrine, Yasukuni Jinja, Record in Pictures of Yūshūkan, Tokyo: The Shrine, 2009; The Japanese version is Yasukuni Jinja, Yasukuni Jinja, Yūshūkan zuroku, Tokyo: Yasukuni Jinja, 2008. There are some differences, perhaps owing to slight changes in items on display. 34 ‘Himeyuri Student Nurses’, Manoa, 2001, 13(1): 142–51. 35 Steve Rabson, ‘Okinawan Perspectives on Japan’s Imperial Institution’, The AsiaPacific Journal: Japan Focus. Available online: http://www.japanfocus.org/-SteveRabson/2667 [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 36 H. Patricia Hynes, ‘On the Battlefield of Women’s Bodies: An Overview of the Harm of War to Women’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 2004, 27: 431–45, especially 437–8. 37 Yasukuni Shrine, Yasukuni Jinja, Record in Pictures of Yūshūkan, Tokyo: The Shrine, 2009, p. 77. 38 ‘Channel Surf’, Japan Times, 24 August 2008. Available online: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fd20080824cs.html [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 39 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 179–80. 40 Jennifer Robertson, ‘Ema-gined Community: Votive Tablets (ema) and Strategic Ambivalence in Wartime Japan’, Asian Ethnology, 2008, 67(1): 43–77, especially 46, 65, 67. 41 Ellen Schattschneider, “‘Buy Me a Bride”: Death and Exchange in Northern Japanese Bride-Doll Marriage’, American Ethnologist, 2001, 28(4): 854–80. 42 Ellen Schattschneider, “The Bloodstained Doll: Violence and the Gift in Wartime Japan’, Journal of Japanese Studies, 2005, 31(2): 329–56. 43 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms, pp. 179–80; Yasukuni Shrine, Yasukuni Jinja, Record in Pictures of Yūshūkan, Tokyo: The Shrine, 2009, p. 87. 44 Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, ‘Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States since 1995’, Pacific Historical Review, 2007, 76(1): 61–94, especially 88.

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45 John Breen, ‘Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory’, in John Breen ed., Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past, London: Hurst and Co., 2007, especially p. 153. 46 Jeff Kingston, ‘Awkward Talisman: War Memory, Reconciliation and Yasukuni’, East Asia, vol. 24, 2007, pp. 295–318, especially 301–3. 47 Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, ‘Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States since 1995’, Pacific Historical Review, 2007, 76(1): 76–77. 48 Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, ‘Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States since 1995’, Pacific Historical Review, 2007, 76(1): 87–88. 49 Barbara Molony, ‘Equality versus Difference: The Japanese Debate over “Motherhood Protection”, 1915–50’, in Janet Hunter ed., Japanese Women Working, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 123–48. 50 Kerry Smith, ‘The Shōwa Hall: Memorializing Japan’s War at Home’, The Public Historian, Fall 2002, 24(4): 35–64, especially 51. 51 Details of the display (in Japanese) are available at the Shōwakan website: http://www. showakan.go.jp [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 52 See for example, the following brochures: Shōwakan, Senchū, sengo no kurashi Shōwakan, Tokyo: Shōwakan, 2008; Shōwakan, Tsutaete okitai Shōwa no kurashi: Senchū to sengo, Tokyo: Shōwakan, 2007. 53 Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006, pp. 288, 301. 54 Franziska Seraphim, ‘Relocating War Memory at Century’s End: Japan’s Postwar Responsibility and Global Public Culture’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds., Ruptured Histories: War Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 27, 37. 55 Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, ‘Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States since 1995’, Pacific Historical Review, 2007, 76(1): 89. 56 See for example, John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2000, pp. 99 and 135. 57 Sey Nishimura, ‘Promoting Health in American-Occupied Japan: Resistance to Allied Public Health Measures, 1945–1952’, American Journal of Public Health, 2009, 99(8): 1364–75. 58 Petra Schmidt, ‘Disabled Colonial Veterans of the Imperial Japanese Forces and the Right to Receive Social Welfare Benefits from Japan’, Sydney Law Review, 1999, 21(231): 231–59, especially 237–40. 59 Franziska Seraphim, ‘Relocating War Memory at Century’s End: Japan’s Postwar Responsibility and Global Public Culture’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds., Ruptured Histories: War Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 20. 60 Sandra Wilson, ‘War, Soldier and Nation in 1950s Japan’, International Journal of Asian Studies, 2008, 5(2): 187–218, especially 187. 61 Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War, London: Reaktion Books, 1996, especially Chapter One; Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000; Marina Larsson, ‘Restoring the Spirit: The Rehabilitation of Disabled Soldiers in Australia after the Great War’, Health and History, 2004, 6(2): 45–59; Beatrice Trefalt, Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 62 Shōkeikan, Shōkeikan jōsetsu tenji zuroku, Tokyo: Shōkeikan, 2007. 63 George H. Roeder, The Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War Two, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, p. 1. 64 Kinoshita Naoyuki, (trans. Kaneko Maki) ‘Portraying the War Dead: Photography as a Medium for Memorial Portraiture’, in Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere and Mikiko

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65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

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Hirayama eds., Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photography in the Nineteenth Century, Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2004, pp. 86–97. Shōkeikan, Shōkeikan jōsetsu tenji zuroku, Tokyo: Shōkeikan, 2007. Yuma Totani, ‘Kimu wa Naze Sabakaretanoka: Chōsenjin BC-kyū Senpan no Kiseki (Why Was Kim Tried?: The Trajectory of Korean Class BC War Criminals), by Utsumi Aiko’, book review, Social Science Japan Journal, 2010, 13(1): 174–6. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ‘Nihongun no Horyo Seisaku, by Utsumi Aiko’, book review, Social Science Japan Journal, 2007, 10(1): 111–72. Petra Schmidt, ‘Disabled Colonial Veterans of the Imperial Japanese Forces and the Right to Receive Social Welfare Benefits from Japan’, Sydney Law Review, 1999, 21(231): 239, 251. The War Memorial of Korea, The War Memorial of Korea: A Cultural Resting Place in the Heart of the City, Seoul: The Memorial, c. 2010. The War Memorial of Korea, The War Memorial of Korea: A Cultural Resting Place in the Heart of the City, Seoul: The Memorial, c. 2010, p. 44. BMW News Desk, ‘Hero: The Musical Opens at Lincoln Center 8/23’, 29 July 2011. Available online: http://offbroadway.broadwayworld.com/article/HERO-THE-MUSICALOpens-At-Lincoln-Center–823–20110729 [Accessed 20 August 2012]. There are many press reports. For example, see Choe Sang-Hun, ‘Statue Deepens Dispute Over Wartime Sexual Slavery’, The New York Times, 16 December 2011. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/world/asia/statute-in-seoulbecomes-focal-point-of-dispute-between-south-korea-and-japan.html?_r=1 [Accessed 20 August 2012]. Park Hyun-jung, ‘”Peace Monument” for Former “Comfort Women” Established in Front of Japanese Embassy”, The Hankyoreh, 15 December 2011. Available online: http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/510277.html [Accessed 20 August 2012]. John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. John Breen has alluded to the ‘curious absence of the enemy’ at Yushūkan. See John Breen, ‘Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory’, Japan Focus, 3 June 2005. Available online: http://japanfocus.org/ [Accessed 1 June 2011].

6

Remembering the unfinished conflict Museums and the contested memory of the Korean War Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Forgotten by whom? On 27 May 2009, the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) provoked worldwide alarm and protest by announcing that it no longer considered itself bound by the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War. Amongst the mass of western media reports deploring this announcement, however, only a few noted the fact that the armistice has never been signed by the Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea), because its then President Yi Seung-man (Syngman Rhee) did not accept that the war was over, and wanted to go on fighting. The armistice was therefore signed only by some of the belligerents, and, since negotiations on the Korean Peninsula in the UN framework proved abortive and the United States and North Korea have not pursued bilateral peace negotiations, there has never been a peace treaty.1 Despite the long search for reconciliation (discussed in Chapters One and Two), some six decades after the ceasefire, Korea remains uneasily divided along the 38th Parallel, one of the world’s most dangerous military flashpoints. Of all the conflicts over history and memory which trouble the East Asian region, this is surely the one most directly linked to contemporary politics: for rival understandings of the unfinished war lie at the heart of continuing political tensions on the Korean Peninsula. As Sheila Miyoshi Jager asks, ‘how does one commemorate a war that technically is still not over?’2 In English-language writings, the Korean War is referred to, with almost monotonous regularity, as ‘the Forgotten War’. This description, however, begs an important question: forgotten by whom? Certainly not by the people of North Korea, where education, propaganda, TV dramas and repeated air-raid drills ensure that the conflict is experienced as an ongoing reality. Nor, I would suggest, have many South Koreans (particularly those of older generations) forgotten the Korean War. The term ‘Forgotten War’, then, refers largely to an American amnesia, although this amnesia is probably also shared by some of America’s major allies, including Australia, Great Britain and Japan. (The latter, of course, though not officially a combatant in the war, was, as we shall see, deeply involved in providing bases and many forms of support for the UN forces engaged in the conflict). Or perhaps, as Bruce Cumings has suggested (quoting French literary theorist Pierre Macherey), we should see the silence less as

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amnesia than as ‘structured absence’.3 To borrow Steve Stern’s term, the ‘memory boxes’ in which various nations keep their narratives of this war are, to an unusual degree, hermetically sealed; in every national narrative, aspects of this unhappy past continue to be repressed, making the ghosts of the Korean War, as Grace Cho notes, particularly pervasive and hard to appease.4

The return of the past Even in America, however, frequent recent references to ‘the Forgotten War’ suggest that flashes of irrepressible presence are starting to break through the structured absence. You have to remember something in order to be able to describe it as ‘forgotten’, and indeed Philip West and Suh Ji-moon’s collection of essays Remembering the ‘Forgotten War’ is just one of a growing number of works which, over the course of the past decade or so, have examined the production and erosion of US amnesia about the Korean conflict.5 Recent Englishlanguage studies have looked at the war in Korean literature, in photography and in Seoul’s War Memorial of Korea, its presence in Korean movies and its general absence from Hollywood box-office hits.6 Ha Jin’s award-winning novel War Trash has also offered a vivid if contentious fictional evocation of the events of the war, directed at a US audience but written from a Chinese perspective.7 In US popular culture itself, there have also been signs of the emergence of an uneasy contest of war memories. In 2008, a movie which I believe to be the first Hollywood blockbuster to acknowledge the dark side of the actions of US troops in the Korean War was released: Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. Eastwood’s central character, Walt Kowalski (played by the director himself), is a Korean War veteran haunted by the cruelties of the war, and particularly by the face of a young enemy soldier whom he killed as the soldier attempted to surrender. This ghost-like resurfacing of Kowalski’s repressed memories comes a decade after revelations by a team of US journalists about the massacre of Korean civilians at Nogun-Ri, and follows the circulation and debate on the internet of the BBC’s haunting 2002 documentary Kill ’em All: The American Military in Korea.8 On the other hand, and perhaps partly in reaction to these troubling ghosts from the past, 2009 marked the opening (‘thanks to a generous gift from Turtle Wax Inc.’) of the initial stage of the first, only and still incomplete national Korean War museum in the United States. Created by a group of war veterans and their supporters, the Korean War National Museum in Springfield, Illinois, sets out to present an unabashedly triumphal vision of the war – ‘the forgotten victory’ – in which ‘communism was stopped for the first time in world history’.9 The theme of victory is highlighted by the museum’s logo, defiantly focused on a bright red letter V surrounded by a laurel wreath. Images of the planned museum posted on its website show a flowing design of exhibition spaces featuring large photographic panels and life-size reconstructions of villages and dugouts (see http:// www.theforgottenvictory.org). The museum’s prospectus and its archive of photographs focuses firmly on the US experience of the war, in which, we are told ‘54,246 soldiers paid the ultimate

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sacrifice’ (a figure which leaves a strange haze of silence around the estimated three million or more Korean soldiers and civilians, several hundred thousand Chinese ‘volunteers’, more than 3,000 soldiers from other countries of the United Nations Command and 120 Soviet pilots who were also killed in the war). The images which illustrate the museum website, however, do include one striking picture of Korean civilian suffering – a picture also featured in China’s Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (discussed in more detail later in this paper). This is a photograph, taken during the Incheon Landing, of a lone small girl sitting weeping outside what appears to be a bombed factory. On the US museum’s website the photograph is accompanied by the words, ‘during the war, the American armed forces saved thousands of Korean lives.’10 In the book I purchased at the Chinese memorial, the same photograph is captioned: ‘American ruffians of aggression brought extremely serious catastrophe. An unfortunate girl in flames of war crying loudly on the street.’11 I wonder what became of the little girl, and, if she is still alive, how her memories of war would relate to these divided pronouncements on the meaning of her grief. In this chapter I want to approach the question of contested memories of the Korean War by considering how the conflict is represented in the museums of the three key Northeast Asian participant nations: in the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul; the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang; and the Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea in Dandong, China. I also include some discussion of the sections of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, devoted to the Korean War, since these shed some interesting and unexpected light on the remembrance and forgetting of the Korean War in Japan (a country which has no museum dedicated to the Korean conflict). The names of the museums themselves speak volumes about the contrasting ways in which the war is remembered. Museum displays can be examined from many perspectives: which historical facts are presented and which are omitted? What narrative of the past does the museum tell? How do its design, layout and use of media engage the attention and emotions of visitors? How do visitors experience past events as they walk through the museum’s halls? What policies and controversies surround the museum’s creation and the evolution of its displays? In order to understand the role that the museum plays in creating contending memories of war, we also need to know something about the place of each museum in public memory. Who visits the museum? Does it present an unquestioned national narrative of the past, or are its displays open to multiple interpretations or challenged by alternative discourses?12 Here I am particularly interested in understanding how each museum’s representation of the war influences perceptions of the contemporary crisis on the Korean Peninsula. For this reason, I shall consider how each addresses certain key questions about the origins and consequences of the conflict. What was the background to the outbreak of the Korean War? How did the war start? Who were its heroes, villains and victims? How did the war end? What was its aftermath and what are its implications for the present? How far have the reconciliation processes discussed in Part One influenced the displays in these museums? To answer

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these questions involves looking at the factual narratives presented through written information, photos, artifacts, video displays etc. But it is also important to consider the media through which the story is told. How do Korean War museums use design and technology to evoke the experience of the war, particularly for those who have no direct memory of its events? In the final section of the chapter, I shall bring together some reflections on the museums to assess the links between their representations of the past and contested understandings of the present. An exploration of these museums offers glimpses of the way in which remembering and forgetting are intertwined. Each memorial presents a narrative of the war carefully constructed in response to the complex political, social and cultural context in which the memorial operates. Each narrative, by shining a bright light on certain facets of the war, intensifies the darkness that shrouds other facets. The task, I shall argue, is complicated by these monuments’ ambiguous status as both ‘memorials’ and ‘museums’. By comparing them, and (metaphorically) laying their conflicting displays side by side, can we fill the absences with presence, and discover some pointers to paths which might take us beyond conflict?

The War Memorial of Korea, Seoul A visit to a museum is always a conversation. As visitors, we arrive with our own memories and preconceptions, and these influence the way the museum’s displays speak to us, and the way we respond. Sometimes we wander round museums on our own; sometimes in the company of others, whose comments add to the conversation, further affecting the way we see the displays. My perceptions of the War Memorial of Korea, which I visited on a rainy day in May 2009, were influenced by the fact that I had recently completed a short stay in North Korea, and had just come back from a bus trip to the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing North from South. The bus dropped me off in Itaewon, the area of Seoul next to US Army Garrison Yongsan, which occupies 2.5 km2 of the city centre. I walked down the long road bisecting the base, bordered by high walls topped by razor wire. This took me directly to a side entrance to the War Memorial of Korea, which stands next door to the base. The wide grass and paved area around the museum is full of those outsized weapons of war which cannot be accommodated within the museum itself, and to reach the main entrance I walked under the wing of a vast US B-52 bomber: one of the prize exhibits. My impression of the War Memorial was therefore slightly different from the perceptions of Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Jiyul Kim, whose careful study of this remarkable edifice was written during the presidency of the late Roh Moo-hyun, at a time when the Sunshine Policy of engagement between North and South was at its height. For Jager and Kim, a key issue was to understand how the Memorial approached its task of commemorating the Korean War from a South Korean perspective while the government was engaged in rapprochement with the enemy: ‘the problem for South Korea’s leaders’, they wrote, ‘was how to fashion a narrative of triumph that would leave open possibility for peninsular reconciliation’.13

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After all, as they point out, the Memorial itself is a ‘post-Cold War’ construction, opened in 1994, during the period when then President Roh Tae-woo was engaged in his ‘Nordpolitik’, a predecessor to the Sunshine Policy of Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Several strategies were used by the Memorial’s designers to weave together the tasks of commemoration and reconciliation. One was to place the Korean War in the broader expanse of national history. Although the largest part of the Memorial is taken up with displays on the 1950–1953 conflict (which in South Korea is most often called the 6.25 War, a reference to its starting date of 25 June 1950), the first floor of the main building is (as noted in Chapter Five) occupied by a display on earlier wars, including thirteenth-century struggles with the Mongols and the sixteenth-century Korean victory in the face of Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s attempted invasion. The emphasis here is overwhelmingly on united national resistance to outside foes. As the opening words of the War Memorial’s English-language guide put it: Korea is a nation that has been cruelly subjugated by foreign countries throughout much of its history. But despite the rise and fall of native dynasties and foreign suzerains, the Korean people have maintained an independence that dates back to 668 when the Silla Kingdom succeeded in achieving a political union of the country. This achievement provided the basis for the development of Korea as a distinct nation.14 This theme of a nation united against foreign threats is carried through into the design of the Korean War Monument at the centre of the Memorial’s main plaza. This massive statue is inspired by the form of an ancient Korean dagger, which is seen (as Jager and Kim note) as a symbol of the ‘earliest Korean race’.15 The ‘Statue of Brothers’, standing at one corner of the Memorial precinct (as noted in Chapter Five) is also a symbol of reconciliation, but a somewhat ambiguous one: based on a photograph of two brothers from opposite sides of the Korean War who met on the battlefield, the statue shows a large and muscular South Korean soldier embracing and looking down upon his smaller and frailer North Korean kinsman – thus simultaneously embodying messages of triumph and of reunion.16 The desire to leave open a path to reconciliation may also explain why the Memorial’s displays on the Korean War contain only fleeting references to massacres or maltreatment of prisoners of war by North Korean troops. This is in strong contrast to the rhetoric of earlier South Korean regimes, particularly of the Park Chung-Hee dictatorship, which energetically kept alive the memory of cruelties inflicted on South Koreans by the Northern ‘Reds’. The life-size reconstructions of wartime scenes in the War Memorial do include one graphic image of a grimfaced uniformed man pointing a gun at a woman, labelled ‘North Korean Secret Police Searching for the Patriotic People in the South’, but beyond this there are few specific details of acts of violence against civilians by Northern forces. This, of course, has the convenient corollary of allowing the Memorial to remain equally silent on the subject of massacres or maltreatment of prisoners by Southern

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forces and their United Nations allies. For example, the Memorial’s explanation of the lead-up to the Korean War, as presented in multi-lingual video clips, tells visitors that in 1948 North Korea ‘tried to impede South Korea’s separate election, and especially on Jeju Island, communist sympathizers attacked and set fire to government offices and even killed people’. No mention here of the fact that the demonstrations on Jeju were largely a response to an earlier killing of civilians by ROK security forces, nor of the fact that the brutally suppressed 1948–1949 antigovernment uprising on Jeju Island, commonly known as the ‘Jeju 4.3 Incident’, is now believed to have claimed the lives of almost 30,000 people, most of them islanders killed by South Korean troops and military auxiliaries.17 The contentious nature of the Memorial’s representation (or rather, lack of representation) of the killing of civilians both before and during the Korean War is a reminder of the fact that the Memorial itself is part of a deeply divided and contested South Korean public discourse on national history. Far from offering a universally accepted, authoritative narrative of the Korean War, the War Memorial of Korea presents just one interpretation of the conflict – one with which many South Koreans would disagree. A radically different perspective on the war has, for example, emerged from the work of the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission established under the Roh Moo-hyun government, which reached the conclusion that around 100,000 South Koreans were killed by their country’s own security forces in 1950 alone.18 Predictably, too, the Memorial remains silent about topics such as the Nogun-Ri massacre of civilians by US forces, and about similar dark events whose traces may be found in war archives, in recent academic and public debate and (in fictional form) in the nightmares of Gran Torino’s main character Walt Kowalski.19 When I visited the Memorial, the pendulum of politics had swung to the other side of the divide: the Lee Myung-bak administration had renounced the Sunshine Policy, and tensions on the Korean Peninsula had reached a new peak. Against this background, my impression of the War Memorial of Korea was not so much of a place struggling to balance a triumphal military narrative with a message of reconciliation, but rather of a place beset by multiple paradoxes. One of these was the uneasy relationship between the Memorial’s defiant Korean nationalism and its propinquity to US Army Garrison Yongsan. How, I wondered, did the nationalist symbolism of the Korean dagger fit with symbolism of the giant US B-52 bomber, whose outspread wings greet visitors even before they enter the Memorial’s doors (see Figure 6.1)? How does the emphasis on unending Korean resistance to cruel subjugation by foreigners relate to South Korean participation in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars and Afghanistan: events which are celebrated in the memorial as Korea’s contribution to the maintenance of global freedom? (Of the Vietnam War, the Memorial’s brochure tells us that the brave actions of South Korean troops ‘heightened the nation’s international position and greatly contributed to the nation’s economic development by giving Korean corporations a springboard for launching overseas operations.’)20 What should one make of the ambiguous motto engraved in stone outside the Memorial Hall: ‘Freedom is not Free’ (which in Korean translates into the much more cumbersome epigram: Jayu neun geojeo jueoji neun geos i anida)?

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Figure 6.1 B-52 bomber in the grounds of the War Memorial of Korea.

In the narrative of the war which the Memorial presents to its visitors, South Korea is a small, fragile democracy attacked by the juggernaut of international Communism, and saved by the bravery of the South Korean military and people with the support of the their US ally. The information accompanying the displays – both in written form and in ubiquitous multi-lingual videos, with soundtracks in Korean, Japanese, English and Chinese – goes out of its way to emphasize that at the time of the war (unlike today) North Korea was the more industrialized and better-equipped half of the peninsula: The ROK Armed Forces were caught off guard by the North Korean People’s Army (NPKA) invasion. While the NPKA were armed with tanks and fighters the South Korean had none. They also had less than half the North’s effective ground forces. They had no choice but to fight against the NPKA’s tanks with suicide attacks and to drop bombs by hand from training aircraft. Even with such suicidal tactics, there was no contending against such heavy odds, and the city of Seoul fell into the hands of the enemy in three days.21 Of the four museums described here, the War Memorial of Korea is the one that most vividly depicts the sufferings of Korean civilians during the war. On the other hand, it is less forthcoming on some aspects of the war which are highlighted by other museums. Chinese participation in the Korean War is emphasized, but the

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Memorial’s account implies that military conflict stopped at the border between North Korea and China – a story (as we shall see) very different from the one told by Dandong’s war memorial. The Seoul Memorial acknowledges the presence of the 16 other countries who participated in the war alongside the United States under the United Nations Command, but it does so in a way which (intentionally or otherwise) seems to marginalize them from the main story. While the United States is omnipresent in the Memorial’s narrative of the war, the other 16 nations are largely confined to a separate room, which offers a very static display of uniforms, flags and statistics. This is in strong contrast to the vivid and dynamic reconstructions of the heroism of South Korean soldiers and sufferings of civilians. Through skilful use of video, photographs and life-sized dioramas of ruined cities and columns of fleeing refugees, the Memorial seeks to convey the horror of conflict to a generation who can remember nothing but prosperity and peace (albeit an uneasy peace). Its Combat Experience Room mobilizes special effects to offer visitors ‘a vivid vicarious experience of the front line’.22 But here too it seems to confront a dilemma. As I went round the Memorial examining its Korean War display, I was aware of the constant clamour of children’s voices in the background. Yet relatively few children were actually in the Korean War rooms, and those who were often seemed bemused by the scenes that confronted them. It was only as I left the Memorial that I understood where the children’s voices were coming from: in an effort to draw in young visitors, the Memorial had converted most of its lower ground floor into a giant play space which was currently featuring a Thomas the Tank Engine theme. This area was crowded with families. But although some of them probably also ventured out into the Memorial’s other halls, I am fairly sure that most of the young visitors went home with much clearer images in their heads of the Fat Controller and Salty the Dockside Diesel than they did of the Incheon Landing or the Panmunjeom armistice negotiations. Following the dramas of suffering and heroism depicted in the Memorial’s narrative of war, indeed, the end of the Korean War comes almost as anti-climax: ‘After more than two years of talks between the UN and Communist sides, from July 10, 1951, until July 27, 1953, a ceasefire went into effect that has been maintained ever since . . . The ROK government was not a signatory of the Armistice Agreement.’23 The Memorial is the only museum I have seen which acknowledges the fact that the armistice was opposed by the South Korean government and provoked demonstrations in the streets of Seoul. But beyond that, the rest is silence, and the story ends on a note neither of triumph nor of reconciliation, but rather of a kind of uneasy sadness.

The Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang The museums of Pyongyang are resolutely modernist: great neo-classical edifices which tell an immutable and monolithic narrative; or so it seems on the surface. Certainly, in the DPRK there is no scope for public controversy about the nature

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and events of the Korean War. But the official narrative can be told in subtly varying ways; and visiting the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, I realized that it is in fact constructed in a form that allows for just such variety. This effect is achieved by size. The museum contains a very large number of rooms: 80 in all, according to the guide who showed us round, although the plan attached to the official English guidebook shows 34 exhibition spaces. This is not a museum where you can wander at will – all visits are guided tours given by a uniformed member of the armed forces, and because of the size of the building they inevitably include only a limited sample of rooms; so the itinerary chosen affects the story told to the visitor. On my visits (I have been to the museum twice), the itinerary focused on the background to and outbreak of the war, the spoils of captured weaponry which illustrate the military feats of the Korean People’s Army, the evidence of ongoing US military aggression on the Korean Peninsula, and some of the battle panoramas which are among the museum’s highlights. Relatively little was said about other crucial issues. For example, the collaboration between North Korean, Chinese and Soviet forces was only briefly mentioned. But the published guidebook reveals that the museum also contains a ‘Hall Showing International Support’ and a ‘Hall Showing the Feats of the Chinese People’s Volunteers’, and I am sure that these feature centrally in the tours given to Russian and Chinese visitors. As the museum’s very name suggests, the story of the Korean War told here is radically at odds with the story told in Seoul’s War Memorial of Korea, and the differences between the two narratives offer important insights into sources of contemporary tensions on the Korean Peninsula. In the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, the story of the origins of the Korean War goes back to the years before 1945, and to the struggle of Korean nationalists – particularly of partisans led by Kim Il-sung – against Japanese colonialism. On 15 August 1945, their struggle was rewarded when Korea gained its freedom from Japan, but the ‘US troops illegally occupied south Korea on September 8 Juche 34 (1945), forcibly dissolved the people’s committees set up in accordance with the will of the people, and arrested, imprisoned and murdered a large number of patriots.’24 Like other North Korean historical exhibitions, the Victorious Fatherland War Liberation Museum presents its story in a format that relies heavily on the marshalling of archival evidence to support particular truth claims. Unlike the War Memorial of Korea, the Pyongyang museum makes (as far as I have seen) no use of documentary video, but abundant use of still photographs and facsimiles of documents, including South Korean and foreign newspaper reports and letters from the US archives (see Figure 6.2). These are deployed, for example, to present a rather detailed and convincing image of the impact of the US military on South Korean society and of the arrests and killings of opponents of the Yi Seung-man regime. Less convincing are the museum’s efforts to document one of the central North Korean contentions: that the DPRK was the victim of an unprovoked attack by US and South Korean forces. The key pieces of evidence offered here are newspaper reports showing that Yi Seung-man was ready and eager to launch an attack against the North (which is indisputably true), and a letter from John Foster

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Figure 6.2 Display from Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang.

Dulles (then America’s UN representative) to South Korean Foreign Minister Lim, referring to the need for ‘courageous and bold decisions’ – which could mean almost anything. In the Pyongyang museum’s version of events, it is not the South but the North that is weak and vulnerable. The newly created Korean People’s Army is taken by surprise by the attack from the south, but, under the guidance of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, launches a counter attack that aims to liberate the entire Peninsula within the 40 days it will take the United States to bring reinforcements in from its bases around the world. This strategy is almost but not quite successful, and after a massive influx of US troops Kim Il-sung orders the People’s Army to make a strategic retreat to the north. However, US planes launch bombing raids across the border into China, prompting the Chinese People’s Volunteers to join the fight against imperialism, the re-invigorated Korean People’s Army drives southward, and the war ends in victory over the aggressors. The contrast between the Pyongyang and Seoul museums, however, lies not only in their narrative of events, but also in the overall image of war which they convey. There can be no doubt that the people of North Korea suffered horribly during the war. To give just one example, as Steven Hugh Lee notes in his history of the Korean War, in a single raid on the North Korean capital on 11 July 1952, US, ROK, Australian and British bomber pilots flew 1,254 sorties against Pyongyang, dropping bombs and 23,000 gallons of napalm on the inhabitants. After two more major bombing campaigns against the city in August the Americans decided that there were too few targets left to justify a continuation of the bombardment.25

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The portrayal of such sufferings in the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, however, is very muted, and this absence of reconstructions of pain and death (such as those presented by the War Memorial of Korea’s wax works of starving and desperate refugees) appears to be part of a conscious strategy of presenting the war as victory: a site of strength, heroism and triumph. Depicting North Koreans as victims, particularly before the gaze of foreigners, might be taken as a sign of weakness. Experiences of bombing, death, injury and displacement are depicted in other North Korea media, including magazines, novels and film. The sections of the museum which I saw, however, contained only brief references to these events, and a few grainy photographs of bombed cityscapes. There is one small room dedicated to ‘the US Imperialist Aggressor’s Atrocities’, which (to judge by the museum’s guidebook) contains more graphic photographs of civilian suffering, but this was not on our itinerary. Rather than incorporating such stories into the Pyongyang Museum, the North Korean authorities have separated them out into a distinct site of memorial – the Sinchon Museum, south of Pyongyang, which commemorates a massacre in which North Korea claims that US troops killed more than 35,000 people. In the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, it is US enemy troops, rather than Korean soldiers or civilians, who are shown as wounded, captured and suffering. In this, the museum follows a tradition which was common in the Soviet Union and is also evident in some Chinese war memorials today: the narrative is one of triumphant heroism against overwhelming odds, a story to inspire the soldiers of the future, rather than to remind the populace of the misery of war. The theme of victory is re-emphasized by the museum’s extensive exhibits of captured US weaponry, and by its dioramas: for the Pyongyang museum uses the technique of the diorama even more dramatically than its Seoul counterpart. Its major dioramas (our guide told us) are by far the most popular sections of the museum, particularly with schoolchildren, and they are indeed remarkable samples of the genre. One depicts the struggle of the People’s Army and local villagers to keep open the strategic Chol Pass under a barrage of US bombing raids. (This diorama, interestingly enough, can be read as offering the North Korean perspective on the events presented from the US perspective in the popular novel and Hollywood movie The Bridges at Toko-ri.26) The Chol Pass diorama is accompanied by a recorded commentary and atmospheric music, with lighting and a variety of ‘special effects’ creating the spectacle of lines of trucks snaking over the pass as enemy bombers swoop overhead. The second, a huge cyclorama which shows the North Korean capture of the town of Daejeon, south of Seoul, is said to contain a million painted or sculpted human figures, and is viewed from a rotating platform, giving the spectator the sense of looking down on the scene from a hilltop in the midst of the battlefield. Within this drama of heroism and victory, it should be noted, there is almost no reference to the involvement of any countries other than the United States in the UN Command. The emphasis throughout is on US imperialism and aggression, and the war, in short, is narrated as a resounding victory of the DPRK over the United States. To quote the words of another North Korean book on the subject:

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By winning victory in the war, the Korean people shattered the myth of the ‘might’ of US imperialism, the chieftain of world imperialism, and marked the beginning of a downhill turn for it, thus opening up the new era of the anti-imperialist, anti-US struggle.27 This view of the war is diametrically opposed to the one presented in Seoul’s War Memorial of Korea; but it does allow the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum to achieve an effect also pursued by its South Korean counterpart. The image of American imperialism as the enemy, in other words, leaves open the possibility of reconciliation with the South, whose people rarely appear in the museum’s displays, either as victims or as aggressors. But the constantly repeated theme of victory over US aggression, in the end, strikes an edgy and insecure note. When wars are irrefutably victories, after all, it generally ceases to be necessary to label them ‘victorious’. In the case of the Korean War, the North Korean need to pronounce the war a victory seems to have become ever greater, the longer the division of the Peninsula has continued and the more the South has prospered. The museum in Pyongyang was originally opened in 1953 as the ‘Fatherland Liberation War Museum’; it was only when a new and grander museum was unveiled in 1974 that the word ‘Victorious’ was added to its title. In a sense, indeed, I cannot help being reminded of the yet-to-be completed Korean War National Museum in Springfield, Illinois, whose V-sign logo celebrating ‘the forgotten victory’ seems like a similar attempt to silence a nagging uncertainty. The desire of so many national monuments to trumpet the term ‘victory’ could paradoxically be read as a clear sign that this was a war that nobody won. The Pyongyang museum’s proclamation of victory is in fact at odds with the message of its displays, which seems to be that the war has never ended at all. The exhibit of war trophies is ever-expanding, added to with the capture of the US intelligence-gathering vessel Pueblo in 1968 and with wreckage and weapons from a series of minor clashes on the 38th parallel, continuing into the twenty-first century. The theme of unending US aggression and deceit is a much-repeated one, also emphasized in the exhibitions elsewhere in Pyongyang and on the northern side of the dividing line at the truce village of Panmunjeom. There, as in the Pyongyang war museum, visitors are reminded of the massive alien military presence on the doorstep of the DPRK: a country which has had no foreign troops on its soil for more than half a century. The abiding impression, far from being one of a confident victor flaunting its military triumphs, is of an embattled society where constant repetition of the word ‘victory’ is a mantra for warding off the unspeakable but always present threat of annihilation.

The Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Dandong To understand the present crisis on the Korean Peninsula it is essential to understand the position of China; and China’s position cannot be comprehended without knowledge of the way in which Chinese people experienced and remember the

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Korean War. The Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea in the border city of Dandong is a vivid embodiment of the deep and complex feelings which the Chinese government and people – or at least the people of the northeastern provinces of China – hold towards North Korea. From a Chinese perspective, the war was a heroic act of solidarity with a smaller and embattled neighbour, but also a war that they did not want, and the appropriate response to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula in 1950 presented China’s leaders with profound dilemmas. The symbolism of the memorial is therefore replete with reminders of the Chinese–Korean joint struggle against US imperialism, but also of the potential threat to China which lurks on the Korean side of their common border. The DPRK, in short, is presented as a small and vulnerable buffer between China and US military might in Asia, and is thus to be protected; but also as a country whose problems have real and menacing implications for China itself. The memorial’s history goes back to 1958, the year when the last of the Chinese ‘volunteer’ forces withdrew from North Korea. Initially China’s part in the Korean War was commemorated in a more modest adjunct to the Dandong historical museum, but in 1993, at the time of the fortieth anniversary of the Korean War Armistice, it was reopened in an impressive granite and marble hall on a hilltop behind the city.28 To reach the memorial, you climb a long flight of steps surmounted by dramatic socialist-realist sculptures of Chinese soldiers, their guns trained towards the menace that approaches from the North Korean side of the Yalu river – just visible on the horizon from the memorial’s forecourt. Between the statues stands a tall stone obelisk – built in a style which is also widely used for monuments in North Korea – commemorating the armistice which (from the official Chinese viewpoint) marked the victory of the DPRK and its allies. The background to the war, as seen from Dandong, is very different from the background depicted in Pyongyang’s Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum or in Seoul’s War Memorial of Korea. Here, the story starts with the liberation struggles of the Communist Party of China (CPC), whose victory celebrations are disrupted and menaced by the events unfolding in Korea: In October 1949, the Chinese people, under the leadership of the CPC, achieved the great victory of the new democratic revolution and founded the People’s Republic of China. The new-born China was faced with grave war scar and difficulties in economy. A thousand and one things waited to be done . . . Just when the Chinese people began to restore economy and develop production for the consolidation of the new state power, the Korean War broke out and the US immediately made incursions into the DPRK and moreover drew the flames of war towards the Yalu River. At the same time, the US sent its army and navy to the Chinese territory, Taiwan.29 From the Chinese point of view, the timing could hardly have been worse. The country was exhausted from decades of civil war. As some historians have pointed out, there also appeared to be signs in 1950 that the United States might have been willing to relinquish Taiwan and move towards recognition of the PRC, but all

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this was changed by the outbreak of the Korean War and by the use of Taiwan as a staging post for US troops heading for Korea.30 The Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea develops its account of the conflict through a series of large exhibition halls, making abundant use of historical artifacts as well as photographs, written documents and sculpture. It also contains one great cyclorama, very reminiscent of the Pyongyang panorama of the Battle of Daejeon, but here representing the Battle of the River Cheongcheon (Qingchuan in Chinese), a major engagement between Chinese troops and US forces. Uniforms, knapsacks and other items of everyday war life are used to dramatize the hardships faced by the Chinese volunteers, who first crossed the Yalu River to drive back the advancing South Korean and United Nations forces on 19 October 1950. Interestingly, the Dandong memorial (unlike its counterpart in Pyongyang) repeatedly acknowledges the presence of a multinational United Nations force, but presents this as having been essentially a front for US policy: the term ‘United Nations Command (UNC)’ is always written in scare quotes. The memorial’s narrative also argues that internal disagreements among the states participating in the UNC were a major factor impelling the United States to seek a negotiated armistice. 31 The faces of the heroic Chinese volunteers line one entire exhibition room – a reminder of the fact that around one million Chinese people are thought to have been killed or injured during the war.32 A simple white bust commemorates the most famous of them: Mao Anying, the eldest son of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, who was killed in battle in Korea in November 1950 (see Figure 6.3). Predictably,

Figure 6.3 Bust of Mao Anying in the Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Dandong.

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the relationship between Chinese volunteers and North Koreans is represented as an exemplary one – Chinese forces come to the aid of their Korean comrades-inarms and help and feed injured Korean civilians. If the South Korean idealized image of reconciliation is embodied in the War Memorial of Korea’s ‘Statue of Brothers’, the Dandong memorial’s idealized image of the relationship between Chinese and North Koreans is represented by a giant photograph of an elderly Korean woman embracing a young uniformed Chinese volunteer. Here too, the implicit inequalities are striking: the tall, virile Chinese soldier towering over the frail, wizened Korean woman. At the same time, though, there is something genuinely powerful about this photograph. I try, and fail, to imagine a similar image of the relationship between US forces and South Korean civilians. It is a reminder of the fact that the China which went to the help of the DPRK in 1950 was not a nuclear superpower but was itself a poor agrarian country. The social gap between Chinese volunteers and North Korean civilians was much smaller than that between US forces and local civilians in the south. The Chinese memorial in fact gives a fuller and more vivid impression of the suffering of North Korean civilians than does the DPRK’s own war museum. Its photographs offer graphic depictions of devastation produced by the bombing of North Korean towns and villages, and of lines of refugees fleeing the fighting – many of them heading across the Yalu River into China. There are also exhibits dedicated to the claim that US forces used biological warfare in Korea – a claim echoed in the war museum in Pyongyang.33 The dangers of war in Korea spilling over into China are dramatized by photos, not only of the influx of refugees across the river, but also by images of the bombing of the rail bridge spanning the Yalu River between Dandong and the North Korean city of Sinuiju. One half of the destroyed bridge still stands, and is among Dandong’s main tourist attractions. The war memorial’s displays of photos of damaged buildings and injured civilians in Dandong and surrounding towns are a sharp reminder of the bombing raids across the border into Chinese territory which were carried out by US planes on several occasions during the war. One distinctive feature of the Chinese memorial is the fact that, as well as emphasizing the impact of the war on China and the relationship between the Korean conflict and the Taiwan issue, it casts a somewhat unfamiliar light on the contentious question of the maltreatment of prisoners of war. For the United States and its allies perhaps the best-remembered aspect of the war was the killing, maltreatment and ‘brainwashing’ of prisoners of war by North Korea and China. It was indeed during the Korean War that the term ‘brainwashing’ came into general use in English. In the Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, on the contrary, the displays on maltreatment of prisoners of war all relate to the sufferings of Chinese and North Korean prisoners in South Korean prisoner-of-war camps. An important obstacle to the signing of the armistice was the question of whether all prisoners of war should be returned to their countries of origin after the conflict, or whether some would be allowed to defect. For example, would North Korean soldiers who wished to change their allegiance to South Korea be

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allowed to do so? Would Chinese soldiers who renounced communism be allowed to go to Taiwan rather than being sent back to the PRC? The United States and its allies favoured allowing prisoners of war in Southern prisons to determine their own destiny, while the DPRK and China insisted that all should be returned to their place of origin. However, as documented in the records of the International Committee of the Red Cross (which inspected Southern but not Northern prisoner-of-war camps) the US stance had troubling consequences. In the overcrowded ROK prisonerof-war camps, violent contests for the allegiance of inmates broke out, both between prisoners themselves and between prisoners and their guards, resulting in assaults, lynchings and even the forcible tattooing of political slogans on the skin of some inmates (events dramatically reconstructed in Ha Jin’s novel War Trash). Particularly widespread violence occurred at the massive Geoje-Do (Koje-Do) prisoner-of war camp, but there were also serious incidents elsewhere, including one at a camp on Jeju Island where, on 1 October 1952, guards from the UN Command fired on rioting Chinese prisoners of war, killing over 50 people.34 It is this issue (and not, of course, the mistreatment of prisoners of war in the DPRK and China) that is commemorated in Dandong, where it is used to emphasize both the courage of the Chinese volunteers and the violence inflicted on both North Koreans and Chinese by the United States (whose control over the camps is stressed in the memorial’s narrative). The story told in the Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea ends, not with the armistice of 1953, but rather in 1958, when the Chinese volunteers who had stayed on in North Korea to work on postwar reconstruction projects finally returned home. Despite the memorial’s frequent references to a friendship between PRC and DPRK forged in blood, there is evidence that the presence of Chinese troops on Korean soil after the armistice led to increasing tensions with the local population.35 Meanwhile, by the late 1950s, Mao’s China had embarked on its ill-fated ‘Great Leap Forward’, and had its own pressing concerns. Against this historical background, and amid unsuccessful calls for the removal of all foreign troops from the Korean Peninsula, North Korea was left to defend itself. Like the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, the Dandong monument presents an official, state-controlled history whose broad outlines are rarely challenged in public discourse. Its rhetoric of victory over brutal American imperialism echoes North Korean rhetoric. Yet even here, signs of change are visible. Although this is not evident from the displays in Dandong, over the past decade or so, the origins of the Korean War have been extensively debated by Chinese historians, and a number of writers on the subject now accept the view that the outbreak of full-scale war was triggered by an attack launched by North Korea.36 Looking at the interaction between visitors and exhibits in Dandong, I also felt conscious of quiet currents of change. I visited the memorial with two British companions on a holiday weekend, when the building and its forecourt were full of students and young families, many of them stylishly dressed in fashions that could have come from Paris or LA. Several of the children clutched

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Hello Kitty balloons in one hand as they surveyed the images of devastated Korean cities and of the Chinese victory on the Cheongcheon. Many of the college students were eager to be photographed with us, and seemed much more interested in practicing their English than in perusing evidence of US imperialism on the Korean Peninsula – an imperialism of which we, presumably, should have been seen as representatives. Just one old man (perhaps a veteran of the war) looked on with an expression of quiet disapproval. From the perspective of China, North Korea is no longer a fellow struggling revolutionary state. It is a society whose political economy and lifestyle stand in stark contrast to China’s new-found prosperity, but whose political crises have the potential to interrupt the enjoyment of that prosperity. While China has opened itself to the outside world and developed close economic ties with former enemies such as the United States and Japan, North Korea, for complex internal and external reasons, remains frozen in the Cold War era. The changed Chinese perspective on its Korean neighbour does not, of course, mean that China’s narratives of the Korean War are about to be rewritten wholesale along US or South Korean lines. Rather, this shift highlights the uncomfortable position of North Korea as the interstice between the long-standing US presence in Asia and the newly emerged Chinese global power. In both the US and China, long-standing memories (or forgettings) of the Korean War face new challenges. How the memory of the war is rewritten in both countries will affect, and be affected by, the changing balance of power in Asia.

The Australian War Memorial, Canberra The Australian War Memorial occupies a powerful symbolic location in the geomancy of the planned capital of Canberra. Located at the end of one of the major avenues that radiate out from the core of the city – Parliament House – its site embodies the insoluble bond between war and the nation. Within the memorial, though, the space dedicated to the Korean War is relatively small – one and a half rooms on the lower floor. To reach it, you must pass a long line of photographs recalling Australians’ involvement in a whole range of conflicts, from the Boer War to Iraq and Afghanistan. Pride of place belongs to the First and Second World Wars. For Australia, as for China, the Korean War was an unwelcome event which arrived just as the nation was recovering from a much larger conflict. Australians, as the memorial’s display reminds visitors, were among the first to respond to the United Nations’ call for forces to serve in Korea, but the scale of Australia’s involvement (compared to that of China or even the United States) was relatively small in terms of total numbers – around 17,000 Australians served in the Korean War, and 339 were killed.37 Like the War Memorial of Korea, the Australian War Memorial aims to convey the story of war to young generations who know nothing but peace (or, more precisely, who live in a country where recent engagements in war have been faraway events in foreign countries); and it uses similar techniques to draw in a youthful audience. In this case the theme (when I visited) was not Thomas the

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Tank Engine but ‘A is for Animal’, a special children’s display of mammals, birds and even insects at war, featuring everything from camel-riding soldiers to carrier pigeons. The effect, however, seemed similar to that achieved in Seoul. There were plenty of children in the building, but few wandered into the rooms devoted to the Korean War, and those who did seemed to wander out again rather quickly. The design of the Australian War Memorial’s Korean War section, which was remodeled in 2008, is surprisingly reminiscent of the much larger Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea in Dandong. Like its Chinese counterpart, the Australian memorial makes much use of everyday objects – uniforms, backpacks, water flasks, packets of cigarettes etc. – to evoke the life of soldiers at the front. Since several of the main Australian engagements were with Chinese forces, the Canberra memorial includes a substantial display of objects captured from Chinese soldiers, including a rather touching array of photographs and other personal items from a Chinese woman soldier killed in battle. Like all the museums I have discussed here, the Australian War Memorial also seeks to convey the experience of battle through the use of dioramas. Here it is the April 1951 Battle of Kapyeong, in which Australians played a central part, that is immortalized in diorama form. This reconstruction brings the story of the battle to life with the help of a soundtrack of the voice of a veteran describing his experiences, but the size and visual effect of the diorama itself is far less impressive than that of the Pyongyang museum’s reconstruction of the struggle for the Chol Pass. After a rather cursory explanation of Korean history, the Australian War Memorial tells visitors that: on 25 June 1950 Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea. The UN Security Council demanded the North Koreans withdraw. When they refused, the United Nations intervened, led by the United States. Twenty countries, including Australia, eventually responded to the UN appeal. No one realised the war would last for three years and that occupation forces would be required for some years after.38 In the Australian War Memorial, then, the United Nations Command is centre stage, with the focus (unsurprisingly) being on its Australian contingent. The unprovoked nature of the North Korean attack is strongly emphasized in the Australian War Memorial, which cites a visit by two Australian officers to the 38th parallel shortly before the war broke out. On the basis of their observations, the officers concluded (according to the memorial’s account) that ‘South Korean forces were organized entirely for defence’.39 Missing from this account are the repeated reports (some of them from Australian observers) of the belligerence from the Southern side, which provided an important part of the background to war. For example, in 1949 the South Korean Prime Minister, proposing a toast to officials of the United Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK), proclaimed that ‘his next drink would be in Pyongyang’. The Commission’s Australian head took this boast seriously: ‘Foreign Missions in Seoul agree that there is a possibility

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that the Government may feel sufficiently strong to embark on an attack of the North within a few months’.40 Looking at the war from an Australian perspective, however, also has other unexpected effects. For example, it reveals an intriguing aspect almost entirely absent from the other three war museums discussed here – the Japanese dimension of the Korean War. Because Japan was officially not a participant in the fighting, and was under allied occupation when the war began, it is easy to forget how significant a role Korea’s former colonial ruler played in the conflict. But, as the Canberra memorial displays reveal, Australians were able to respond quickly to the UN call because they were already based in Japan. ‘Thousands of Australians,’ the memorial notes, ‘visited Japan on their way to Korea or on leave from the war.’41 Australian nurses who looked after the wounded were mostly based at hospitals in Japan. Indeed, the headquarters of the United Nations Command itself was located in Tokyo, while the factories of Japan provided massive logistical support for the UN forces fighting in Korea. Despite Japan’s official ‘noncombatant’ status, around 7,000 Japanese sailors, dockworkers and others were sent to the Korean Peninsula or to Korean waters in combat support roles: among them around 1,200 former members of Japan’s imperial navy, who manned minesweeping vessels working for the UN forces in Korea.42 These facts, however, have been almost entirely written out of public memory in Japan, where the Korean War is remembered above all (in Prime Minister Yoshida’s unhappy choice of words) as the ‘gift from the gods’ that helped to jump-start post-war economic growth. Exhibited items from the everyday life of Australian servicemen fighting in Korea include booklets on life in Japan, a language primer entitled Japanese in Three Weeks and letters sent home to Australia by soldiers in Japan, waiting to go into combat in Korea. The letters are poignant reminders of other neglected aspects of the impact that this mass of foreign troops had upon the society of East Asia: one Australian serviceman (with rather endearing frankness) writes home to ask Mum for a parcel of goods, including a large amount of saccharine which, he explains, is ‘intended for sale on the local black market, but if anyone asks it will do me no harm if you say that I have diabetes’.43 Other social aspects of the war, such as its impact on the spread of prostitution, and the whole dark topic of rape in war, are mentioned in none of the museums I have visited, though the issue of rape is hauntingly evoked in some Korean fiction on the war period – works like Pak Wan-seo’s Three Days in That Autumn (Geu gaeul eui saheul dongan) – as well as in Grace Cho’s Haunting the Korean Diaspora.44 Faces of Australian servicemen, as well as paintings and photographs by Australian participants in the war, line the walls of the Australian War Memorial’s Korean War display. There is, however, one noticeable difference between these images and the faces of the Chinese volunteers in Dandong, or of South Korean servicemen on the walls of the War Memorial of Korea. In China and Korea the servicemen remembered are heroes – people singled out for exceptional deeds of valour during the war. The Australian War Memorial, on the other hand, prides itself on remembering the ‘ordinary digger’ – soldiers who may have done nothing more remarkable than to survive long enough to tell their tale.

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On the other hand, this memorial conveys little impression of the wartime fate of ordinary Korean civilians. A two-sentence statement reminds visitors that ‘the war had a devastating impact on Korea. Over two million civilians were killed.’ But there are almost no images of destruction to Korean life and property, and the documentary footage of bombing raids shown on the video screens presents the bombing always from the bird’s-eye view of the pilot, not from ground level. The most detailed description of human suffering concerns the plight of Australian prisoners of war, some of whom endured interrogation, isolation, extreme deprivation and torture at the hands of their captors. The War Memorial’s display on prisoners of war discusses the issue of ‘brainwashing’, and rightly notes that ‘imprisonment under the North Koreans and Chinese was extremely harsh. Little respect was paid to the 1949 Geneva Convention.’ On the other hand, the memorial’s narrative of the war remains silent on the violence in Southern prisonerof-war camps, and justifies the UN Command’s stance on the prisoner-of-war issue by stating (incorrectly) that the ‘Geneva Convention forbade the forcible repatriation of prisoners of war’. 45 Unlike the museums in Springfield, Illinois, Pyongyang and Dandong, the Australian War Memorial seems to have no impulse to proclaim the Korean War as a ‘victory’. Australians have a long history of fighting in other people’s wars, with very mixed results, and this may help to explain a willingness to depict the war’s outcome as a stalemate. The section devoted to the Korean War flows almost seamlessly into other Cold War conflicts in which Australians took part: the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesian Confrontation, the Vietnam War. One war ended, but the Cold War went on. The memorial’s bald account of the signing of the armistice concludes with the words: ‘a peace treaty has never been signed and Korea lives on a war footing, no closer to unification than in 1950’.46 By the time visitors read this, they are already being half-deafened by the roar of the genuine working helicopter which is the highlight of the section dedicated to the Vietnam War, just round the corner.

Beyond structured absence The monuments we have explored here call themselves by various names. Some describe themselves as ‘memorials’, others as ‘museums’. But in fact, all seek to combine the tasks of commemoration and of communicating history – and therein lies a dilemma. A memorial may have multiple purposes. At one level, memorials (like graves) are deeply personal. They are places where the relatives and comrades of the dead come to remember and mourn those they loved. In this sense, there is no need for a memorial to be impartial or judicious, or to tell the whole story of a conflict. All it needs to do is to provide comfort and a focus of memory for those who have suffered loss. At another level, however, many memorials (and certainly all the ones I have discussed here) have a public and national role. They are intended not simply to speak to those with personal connections to the war but also to convey a message to the nation. In this respect all the monuments I have discussed speak with one voice (though to different audiences): their message is

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always: ‘our military fought a heroic fight against unprovoked aggression’. Some would also add the pronouncement ‘. . . and won’. Superimposed upon this ambivalent role as personal and as public memorials, all four monuments also proclaim their credentials as museums. They aim not simply to provide a material focus for commemoration but also to convey the story of the war to a generation who did not experience it. How can these three roles possibly be reconciled? How can a memorial simultaneously preserve the memories of the individual dead (whose deaths may have been dramatic and heroic or messy and inglorious), provide a positive focus for national pride and tell a comprehensive and balanced story of the war to future generations? The task is surely an impossible one, and this attempt to achieve the impossible is one reason for the depth of the divide between the versions of Korean War history presented in the museums I have discussed. This dilemma affects countries where political debate is relatively free, as well as those where it is tightly controlled. In Australia and South Korea there is far more public scope to debate and criticize the content of war memorials than there is in China or North Korea. But in all countries public memory shifts over time, and in Australia and South Korea, as well as in China and North Korea, the tensions between commemoration, national identity-making and history-telling produce structured absence. Politics and history flow into one another. Divergent memories of the Korean War fuel the fears that produce contemporary political tensions; political tensions in turn make it harder to create the dialogue that might help to reconcile divergent memories. Though traces of recent reconciliation processes are evident in sites such as the War Memorial of Korea and even in Dandong’s war museum, deep Cold War divisions still remain. Roland Bleiker and Young-ju Hoang, in their study ‘Remembering and Forgetting the Korean War’, stress the value of ‘tolerating different coexisting narrative’ of the war.47 But it is also equally important that different narratives be brought into contact with one another. The task for historians – particularly for historians who live in countries where official versions of history can be publicly debated – is to use all means made available by our globalized media to set national narratives side by side. In this way the war memorials of each country can (as it were) be virtually joined into a single space. So, perhaps, the wall surrounding each nation’s memorial may be broken down, or at least perforated, allowing the light of every national narrative (however faintly and distantly) to illuminate the darkness of the others, and enabling the perspectives of the many victims of war to emerge from the shadows.

Notes 1 One report which did raise this point appeared in The Australian on 27 May 2009. 2 Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2003. 3 Bruce Cumings, ‘The Korean War: What is it that We are Remembering to Forget?’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the

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post Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 266–90. Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004; Grace M. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Philip West and Suh Ji-moon, Remembering the ‘Forgotten War’: The Korean War through Literature and Art, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2001. On changing Korean memories of the war, see also Roland Bleiker and Young-ju Hoang, ‘Remembering and Forgetting the Korean War: From Trauma to Reconciliation’, in Duncan Bell ed., Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 195–212. See for example, David R. McCann, ‘Our Forgotten War: The Korean War in Korean and American Popular Culture’, in Philip West, Steven I. Levine and Jackie Hiltz eds, America’s Wars in Asia: A Cultural Approach to History and Memory, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997, pp. 65–83; Paul M. Edwards, To Acknowledge a War: The Korean War in American Memory, Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000, particularly pp. 23–6; Philip West and Suh Ji-moon, Remembering the ‘Forgotten War’: The Korean War through Literature and Art, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2001; Roland Bleiker and Young-ju Hoang, ‘Remembering and Forgetting the Korean War: From Trauma to Reconciliation’, in Duncan Bell ed., Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Jiyul Kim, ‘The Korean War after the Cold War: Commemorating the Armistice Agreement in South Korea’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the post Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 233–65; Bruce Cumings, ‘The Korean War: What is it that We are Remembering to Forget?’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the post Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. Ha Jin, War Trash, New York: Pantheon Books, 2004. See Charles J. Stanley, Sang-hun Choe and Martha Mendoza, The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korea War, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2001; Kill ’em All: The American Military in Korea (producer, Jeremy Williams), BBC TV ‘Timewatch’ series, first broadcast 1 February 2002. See the Korean War National Museum website: http://www.kwnm.org/history.htm [Accessed 22 August 2012]. See the Korean War National Museum website: http://www.kwnm.org//index. php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 (web page no longer functioning); the photograph is uncannily reminiscent of the famous Life magazine photograph of an abandoned little boy taken among the ruins of Shanghai’s railway station after it was bombed by the Japanese in 1937. Sun Hongjiu and Zhang Zhongyong eds., Ninggu de Lishi Shunjian: Jinian Zhongguo Renmin Zhiyuanjun Kangmeiyuanchao Chuguo Zuozhan Wushi Zhounian, Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe, 2000 (English translation as in the original). See Susan A. Crane, ‘Introduction: Of Museums and Memory’, in Susan A. Crane ed., Museums and Memory, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, pp. 1–16; Sheila Watson, ‘History Museums, Community Identities and a Sense of Place: Rewriting Histories’, in Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod and Sheila Watson eds., Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and Are Changed, London: Routledge, 2007, pp. 160–72; Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History, London: Verso, 2005, Chapter 1. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Jiyul Kim, ‘The Korean War after the Cold War: Commemorating the Armistice Agreement in South Korea’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager

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and Rana Mitter eds, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the post Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 242. War Memorial of Korea, Seoul, n.d., p. 4. The emphasis on Silla as the origin of a united Korea is disputed by North Korean historians. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Jiyul Kim, ‘The Korean War after the Cold War: Commemorating the Armistice Agreement in South Korea’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the post Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 252; Jager and Kim are here citing the work of Pai Hyung-il on Korean archaeology and national identity. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Jiyul Kim, ‘The Korean War after the Cold War: Commemorating the Armistice Agreement in South Korea’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the post Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 246–52. See for example Mun Gyong-su, Saishûtô 4.3 Jiken: ‘Tamuna’no Kuni no Shi to Saisei no Monogatari, Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2008, p. 8. Do Khiem and Kim Sung-soo, ‘Crimes, Concealment and South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 1 August 2008. For recent discussions of the Nogun Ri and other massacres, see for example Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza, ‘The Massacre at No Gun Ri: Army Letter Reveals US Intent’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 15 April 2007, http://www.japanfocus. org/-M-Mendoza/2048 (accessed 30 September 2011); Bruce Cumings, ‘The South Korean Massacre at Taejon: New Evidence on US Responsibility and Cover Up’, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 23 July 2008, http://www.japanfocus.org/-BruceCumings/2826 (accessed 30 September 2011). War Memorial of Korea, Seoul, n.d., p. 28. War Memorial of Korea, Seoul, n.d., p. 21. War Memorial of Korea, Seoul, n.d., p. 27. War Memorial of Korea, Seoul, n.d., p. 25. Hyon Yong-chol, Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang: Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, n.d., p. 6. Since 1997 the North Korean government officially has used the Juche calendar, under which years are numbered from 1912, the date of the late DPRK leader Kim Il-Sung’s birth. Steven Hugh Lee, The Korean War, Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd., 2001, p. 88. See James Mitchener, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, London: Secker and Warburg, 1953; the movie version, directed by Mark Robson and starring William Holden and Grace Kelly, was released by Paramount Pictures in 1954. Kim In-il, Outstanding Leadership and Brilliant Victory, Pyongyang: Korea Pictorial, 1993, p. 63. On the history of the memorial, see Dandong Municipal People’s Government, ‘Memorial of War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea’, press release 19 June 2005. Available online: http://english.dandong.gov.cn/2106/EN_DDS_ZF_ZWGK. nsf/0/9FB473314172410A482570250004EFA8?OpenDocument [Accessed 10 June 2009]. Explanatory panel in the Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Dandong; viewed 2 May 2009. Gye-dong Kim’s Foreign Intervention in Korea, Aldershot: Dartmouth Press, 1993, is among the works that points out the US’s seeming hesitation about defending Taiwan in 1950, p.123. Sun Hongjiu and Zhang Zhongyong eds., Ninggu de Lishi Shunjian: Jinian Zhongguo Renmin Zhiyuanjun Kangmeiyuanchao Chuguo Zuozhan Wushi Zhounian, Shenyang: Liaoning Renmin Chubanshe, 2000 (English translation as in the original). Steven Hugh Lee, The Korean War, Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd., 2001, p. 126. Controversy has surrounded these claims ever since they were first raised in 1952. In 1998 the Sankei, a right-of-centre Japanese newspaper, published excerpts from a set of

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documents which its Moscow correspondent claimed to have found in the state archives of the former Soviet Union. These documents apparently proved that public statements by the DPRK and its allies that the US had used biological weapons were deliberate lies fabricated for propaganda purposes. However, questions still surround the Japanese journalist’s research. The Sankei reporter is said to have copied the documents by hand (since photocopying was not permitted), and no other researcher has since managed to obtain access to the originals. Nor has the US government pressed the Russians to release these documents. For further details of the controversy surrounding this issue, see Kathryn Weathersby, ‘Deceiving the Deceivers: Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and the Allegations of Bacteriological Weapons Use in Korea’, Cold War International Project Bulletin, no. 11, 1998. Available online: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/ pubs/Bulletin_11_Korea.pdf [Accessed 20 August 2012]; Peter Pringle, ‘Did the US Start Germ Warfare?’, New Statesman, 25 October 1999. G. Hoffmann, ‘Rapport confidential concernant l’incident au Compound no. 7 de UN POW Branch Corps 3A, Cheju-Do du 1er octobre 1952’, in archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, file number B AG 210 056-012, Incidents dans les camps, 08.02.1952–13.04.1953. In December 1957, the Soviet Ambassador in Pyongyang, A. M. Ivanov recorded the content of a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in his official diary. During this meeting the Chinese Ambassador remarked that the withdrawal of Chinese volunteers from North Korea would benefit China–DPRK relations because it would ‘help to reduce certain abnormalities in the relationship between the [Korean] population and the Chinese volunteers’ which were associated with ‘breaches of military discipline on the part of the latter’. See ‘Dnevnik Posla SSSR v KNDR A M Ivanova za period s 14 do 20 Dekabrya 1957 Goda’, in archival material from the state archives of the former Soviet Union, held by the Jungang Ilbo newspaper, Seoul; file no. 57-4-1-3, entry for 20 December 1957. See, for example, Stephen M. Goldstein, ‘Chinese Perspectives on the Origins of the Korean War: An Assessment at Sixty’, International Journal of Korean Studies, Fall 2010, 14(2): 45–70. Ben Evans, Out in the Cold: Australia’s Involvement in the Korean War – 1950–1953, Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Veterans Affairs, 2001, p. 89. Explanatory panel in the Australian War Memorial, viewed 14 June 2009. Explanatory panel in the Australian War Memorial, viewed 14 June 2009. Department of External Affairs, Canberra, Departmental Dispatch no. 23/1949 from Australian Mission in Japan, ‘United Nations Commission on Korea’, 25 February 1949, p. 20, held in Australian National Archives, Canberra, series no. A1838, control symbol 3127/2/1 part 4, ‘Korea – Political Situation – South Korea’. Explanatory panel in the Australian War Memorial, viewed 14 June 2009. See Miyazaki Tetsunari, ‘Chōsen Sensō to Nihon: ‘Rōmusha’ no Tachiba kara Mita’, Yoseba, no. 23, May 2010, 43–73; Ōnuma Hisao, ‘Chōsen Sensō e no Nihon no Kyōryoku’, in Ōnuma Hisao ed., Chōsen Sensō to Nihon, Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2006, pp. 75–119; Ishimaru Yasuzō, ‘Chōsen Sensō to Nihon no Kakawari: Wasuresarareta Kaijō Yūsō’, Senshi Kenkyū Nenpō, March 2008: no. 11, 21–40. Explanatory panel in the Australian War Memorial, viewed 14 June 2009. Pak Wanseo, Three Days in That Autumn (trans. Ryu Sukhee), Seoul: Jimoondang International, 2001; Grace M. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Explanatory panels in the Australian War Memorial, viewed 14 June 2009. As the official history of the International Committee of the Red Cross points out, there was debate about including such a clause in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, but in the end it was shelved. The Conventions include a statement that sick and injured prisoners of war may not be repatriated against their will while hostilities are continuing, but in

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relation to repatriation after the end of a war, state only that ‘prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities’; see Catherine Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu: Histoire du Comité internationale de la Croix-Rouge, 1945–1955, Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 2007, p. 276; also ‘Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War’, on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b36c8.html [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 46 Explanatory panel in the Australian War Memorial, viewed 14 June 2009. 47 Roland Bleiker and Young-ju Hoang, ‘Remembering and Forgetting the Korean War: From Trauma to Reconciliation’, in Duncan Bell ed., Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 212.

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Art, photography and remembering Hiroshima Morris Low

Introduction This chapter examines the role of images in the framing and reframing of memories of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. While many visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum are too young to remember the war themselves, the institution is important in the production of a national identity and narrative linked to victimhood which is transmitted to all those who visit. In contemplating possibilities for future reconciliation in East Asia, we need to pay attention to how artists can subtly re-contextualize the memories and artefacts that are housed within museum walls, casting objects in a new light, capturing ghosts of the past, and creating a space for different interpretations and narratives. Contemporary art and photography can play a significant role in helping the Japanese to reinterpret the past in new and interesting ways that have sometimes met with controversy. I first visited Hiroshima in 1978 when I was a Rotary Club exchange student and took part in shūgaku ryokō, the major trip and highlight of the second year of senior high school. I still have the group photograph taken of me and my Japanese high school classmates assembled in front of the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims, located directly in front of the A-bomb Dome. In that photograph, we all look appropriately sad. Despite row after row of school girls in their sailor suits and boys in their high-collared school uniforms, the photograph is not so much a picture of people as a souvenir of the occasion itself, i.e. remembering what occurred at Hiroshima in August 1945. In many ways, the customary photo opportunity in front of the monument, the museum display and the book of comments, are all part of an apparatus for commemorating Hiroshima and, in a way, for the production of national identity linked to victimhood. As John Dower pointed out: Hiroshima and Nagasaki became icons of Japanese suffering—perverse national treasures of a sort . . . Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is, easily became a way of forgetting Nanjing, Bataan, the Burma-Siam railway, Manila, and the countless Japanese atrocities these and other place names signified to non-Japanese.1

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Figure 7.1 School group photograph being taken opposite the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1978.

But how can Japan go beyond this version of the past? As Dower reminds us, memory also involves forgetting, erasing other narratives that have claims for our attention. Photographs help us to remember. Marilyn Ivy has written of nationalist sensitivity in Japan to the inclusion of photographs of alleged atrocities in Japanese textbooks. Photographs, it seems, were a source of particular concern to the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai). The Society and its supporters questioned the indexical role of photographs, suggesting that the Chinese victims may have committed atrocities and blamed it on the Japanese. Also, the negative emotions that photographs of Japanese atrocities arouse among Japanese students is seen as something that is inappropriate. Japan’s peace museums are often the target of criticism. But the photographs relating to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima are not subjected to the same scrutiny. There is room for interpretation in photographs even when dealing with Japan as victim.2 If we are to reach reconciliation between Japan and its Asian neighbours, we need to be aware that there is scope for interpretation not only in terms of what is said to have occurred in the past and recorded in textbooks, but also in terms of the photographs that we might find in them, and the artefacts that are on display in museums. Attempts to create common history textbooks for East Asia3 may be destined to fail, given the tendency for different interpretations of that history and the way in which memories of the war are contested.

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As the number of people who actually witnessed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima dwindle, the Peace Memorial Park itself, the ritual of folding origami cranes to suspend at the Children’s Monument, and the customary group photograph, take on increasing meaning, as do the symbols of the A-Bomb Dome and the artefacts found within the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum itself. Memory of Hiroshima increasingly relies, as the French historian Pierre Nora suggests, ‘on the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the image’.4 In place of ‘actual’ memories, we rely increasingly on places, rituals, symbols, artefacts and representations. As Philip Seaton suggests, history is shaped not only by the social and political context but by the ‘technological environments within which the past is remembered’.5 The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum embodies official memory of the war, or at least how it ended. Its display determines what is remembered, and the photographs of artefacts determine how and in what form it is remembered. This chapter focuses on the role of contemporary artists in exploring representations of Hiroshima. Alternative ways of remembering Hiroshima suggest that different memories can be constructed; memories that are less fixated on what happened to the Japanese and more open to what befell others. Disputes arising from what are perceived as disrespectful representations of Hiroshima suggest that much is at stake and change will be slow. In this chapter, I will examine some recent ways in which artists represent Hiroshima’s past. Some subvert the way that the experience of Hiroshima has been made into a type of shared cultural knowledge for a wide audience. By tracing the changes in representations of Hiroshima in the last two decades, we can get a sense of how artists have seen the burden of the memory of Hiroshima and how they have introduced sometimes subtle inflections to the national narrative of how the war came to an end. What is of particular interest is why certain representations created controversy and were rejected by local citizens. Why have certain images been well received? Preferences for certain representations suggest preferences for one version of the past over another. This reflects how representations have been interpreted and received. We need to ask why certain representations are favoured. The ability to ‘shut down’ and reject certain representations is an indication of the power of groups in Hiroshima to control memory. The work of the artists discussed in this chapter are not only personal expressions but are shaped by their gender, popular culture and the art world, and ultimately reflect their take on Hiroshima’s past. In this way, they draw on symbolic representations that exist within the larger society, and bridge the gap between past and present. The control of representations of Hiroshima serves to create a national memory, an imagined community centred on victimhood that somehow prevails despite conflict and differing views among the population regarding Japanese aggression, wartime responsibility and other related issues. We can measure the transmission and diffusion of certain images through the sales of photo-books, number of editions and reprints. Hiroshima Peace Park and Memorial Museum constitute an important place where memories are harboured. Not only is this the site of commemoration of an

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event, but it is also the repository of objects that are testimony to the dropping of the atomic bomb. The latter are particularly valued due to their link with original memory of the event. In recent years, the museum has cooperated with photographers to portray its objects in a new light.

Picturing Hiroshima The official publication of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is entitled Hiroshima o sekai ni which is interestingly translated into The Spirit of Hiroshima. A bilingual, illustrated guide to the museum and its exhibits, it has been reprinted eight times since 1999.6 Copyright is held by the city of Hiroshima. The layout is designed to make the publication as informative as possible. Ide Michio was the photographer. Ide’s photographs of the exhibits are surprisingly lacking in emotion. The objects are lit in relatively strong light and, along with the text and historical photographs, convey the sense of being further evidence of the impact of the atomic bomb. In a section entitled ‘Material Witnesses’, there is reference to the way in which the 19,000 items held in the Peace Memorial Museum tell the story of what their original owners experienced, and the sadness and suffering that they and the bereaved families had to endure. There is thus a direct linkage between the ‘spirits of the deceased’ and the objects that remain. Ritsumeikan University’s International Peace Museum publication Hiroshima Nagasaki, in contrast to The Spirit of Hiroshima, speaks to more of a Japanese audience. Part of Iwanami Shoten’s DVD Bukku Peace Archives,7 it comes complete with a DVD in Japanese with English subtitles. The text of the book is entirely in Japanese. Many of the photographs were taken once again by Ide Michio. Both Hiroshima Nagasaki and The Spirit of Hiroshima are excessive in the amount of information and images that they present to readers. Both publications highlight the role of photographs as historical evidence. More, it seems, is better; but this does contribute to a type of fatigue which may work against their goal of educating the public. In contrast, other publications are much more ‘sparse’ in their approach. They are, nevertheless, like Ide in The Spirit of Hiroshima, careful to contextualize the artefacts by providing details where known. Tsuchida Hiromi’s Hiroshima Collection8 provides captions below most of the black and white photographs explaining, in Japanese and English, what each item is, who the owner was, location at the time and the extent of injuries. They provide short narratives and humanize the disembodied objects but do not overshadow the wider message of their owners’ deaths. The focus in Tsuchida’s photobook is definitely on the objects left behind rather than the individual stories. Each image is rather ‘forensic’ and lacking in emotion. There is a distancing occurring which is almost medical. Tsuchida treats each object with respect as if to let them speak for themselves, but my impression is that they are relatively mute. Both text and images are alike in this respect. Hiroshima Collection has been printed three times since 1995. It is interesting to compare ‘Articles Left by Three Students’ as photographed by Ide and Tsuchida.

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The black and white print provides a less harsh image of the belongings left behind by three junior high school students. They look rather forlorn. The use of colour can, however, be quite effective. Ishiuchi Miyako’s photobook Hiroshima (2008) depicts objects held by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.9 Ishiuchi specifically chose items that had been in direct contact with the bodies of the victims: a flowered skirt; the tattered remains of a child’s school uniform; eye glasses with the lenses blown out of their frames. Both Tsuchida and Ishiuchi’s books serve an archival purpose of documenting the growing collection. But Ishiuchi’s gaze is a kinder one. Her eye for detail, decoration and the addition of coloured backgrounds as well as shooting on light boxes, give the artefacts an ethereal quality which is memorable.10 The objects she depicts are not anonymous. Although there are no captions below the photographs, there is a list at the back of the book giving brief descriptors and the name of the owner where identified. It is quite a remarkable collection of photographs and shows how technology can transform what we have come to expect in the way of A-bomb artefacts. Although Ishiuchi tackles the same subject matter as Ide and then Tsuchida, she is able to reveal something more in terms of our understanding of what took place in Hiroshima. Why are Ishiuchi’s works so effective? Photographs serve to anchor memory by representing traces of the actual world. Joan Gibbons has recently discussed Ishiuchi’s work and identified longstanding themes of death, loss and absence.11 Her photographs tend to memorialize the objects she photographs, giving them quiet dignity and new meaning. While the objects in her Hiroshima project are not in themselves of great consequence, it is their transformation by the atomic bomb that renders them particularly poignant. While their display in the memorial museum at Hiroshima means that they are already complicit in the production of meaning, Ishiuchi’s camera does further work and arguably imbues them with different meaning. In contrast to other images of similar objects, Ishiuchi’s gaze is able to endow them with a new tenderness and poignancy, despite the trauma that the objects have undergone. The process of rephotographing these indexical objects can be called ‘postmemory’ or ‘secondary memory’, having been constructed not by primary witnesses to Hiroshima but a different generation who have inherited the burden of earlier memories and are working their way through their meaning for today. Rather than offering counter-memory to provide alternatives to historical representations of the past, it is arguably ‘post-memory’ where the potential for reconciliation lies. But can photographs introduce new perspectives, rather than merely reinforcing established points of view? As John Taylor has written, when discussing the work of critic Susan Sontag, viewers are morally affected by photographs only if an appropriate political consciousness exists which creates an emotional charge.12 Representations of Hiroshima are highly charged. It is a real challenge for artists to capture what took place in one fateful moment. Very few photographs were taken when the atomic bomb was dropped. Only 35 photographs taken at the time survive.13 There was, furthermore, atomic censorship by the Occupation Forces. So the abovementioned photographers are helping to make the invisible visible, albeit through fragments of a larger story.

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Capturing shadows One of the most moving exhibits in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum relates not so much to the ‘objects’ that remain but rather the shadows that were cast. In the museum (and also in the book The Spirit of Hiroshima), we see a human shadow etched in stone, the only traces remaining of a person who was sitting on the steps leading to the entrance of the Hiroshima branch of the Sumitomo Bank. The person was waiting patiently for the bank to open but was sadly exposed to the heat rays from the explosion of the atomic bomb that was dropped only 260 metres away. We see a dark, ghostly shadow superimposed on the whitish, bleached stone steps.14 We can see the impact of these ghostly shadows internationally in the work of the French artist Yves Klein (1928–1962) that was exhibited in Washington DC and Minneapolis in 2010 and 2011 respectively. They throw new light on the influence of Hiroshima on the artist’s late work. Klein experienced the effects of the Second World War. In his often monochrome paintings, he sought to paint the invisible. In the late 1950s while visiting Japan, Klein saw a documentary film by Kamei Fumio entitled Ikite ite yokatta (Still, It’s Good to Live, 1956) which included footage of human shadows that were imprinted on buildings and yes, stone steps. These etched shadows directly influenced Klein’s work.15 In March 1960, Klein ‘conducted’ a performance in which several nude models applied ultramarine blue pigment to their bodies. They pressed their bodies onto large sheets of paper, using their bodies as living brushes. These body prints were called Anthropometries. They led to a series of Fire Paintings in 1961 in which nude women were placed against the canvas and sprayed with water. The surfaces of the canvases were then blowtorched. It was around this time that Klein created his major Anthropometry work entitled ‘Hiroshima’ (c. 1961, currently in the Menil Collection, Houston) which depicts the shadows of several women on paper (139.5 × 280.5 cm). These shadows have formed as a result of dry pigment in synthetic resin having been sprayed on their naked bodies. This work directly references the ghostly shadows left by the atomic bomb and are arguably as powerful as more indexical works which depict actual items left behind in Hiroshima.16 The shift towards the use of shadows, silhouettes and less literal representations is a feature of contemporary art practice. Artists are able to engage with history and at the same time refrain from fully fledged portrayals of events so as not to further traumatize the viewer. Shadows also speak to how the past continues to haunt the present, yet at the same time defying representation and recognition.17

Painting the sky The Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang and the Tokyo-based group Chim↑Pom have chosen the symbol of the mushroom cloud rather than artefacts to evoke memories of what happened at Hiroshima. The award of the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize to Cai Guo-Qiang served to enhance the profile and credibility of his work. His earlier

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mushroom cloud work entitled ‘Clear Sky Black Cloud’ in New York City shows how 9/11 was part of a history of trauma that can be traced back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ‘Clear Sky Black Cloud’ was a feature of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2006. A thick black cloud appeared above the museum’s Roof Garden every day around noon. In this way, the mushroom cloud was able to take us back in time and across geographical boundaries, making us think about the universal threat of nuclear weapons, and the specific events of 1945 in Hiroshima. Cai’s larger body of work deals with the themes of war and destruction, peace and regeneration, and often involves the use of gunpowder. If we think of the firecracker display designed to scare away ‘noxious vapour’ and usher in the Chinese New Year, one can perhaps better understand how gunpowder might lead to regeneration,18 though the black mushroom cloud does tend to aestheticize war and move the focus away from victims. The artist appropriates the energy of the atomic bomb, likening it to the Big Bang that created the universe. In his eyes, ‘history is a chain of destruction and creation’.19 His gunpowder drawings on paper are testimony to how new works can be created by its destructive force. Cai lived in Japan from 1986 to 1995, during which time he was influenced by the Korean-born artist Lee Ufan20 who has been resident in Japan since 1956, the year when Lee smuggled Chinese medicine to an ill uncle who was living in Yokohama at the time.21 Both Cai and Lee are members of the international community of artists who are not especially affiliated with any one nation and not bound by national narratives or territorial conflicts between nations. They seem to be located in a space between cultures.22 For Cai, it is somewhere between China, Japan and the United States whereas for Lee, it is between Korea, Japan and Europe. Cai’s work has been validated internationally, most recently in 2008 at the Guggenheim Museum where a major mid-career retrospective was held, and at the Beijing Olympics where he oversaw the fireworks display as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing National Stadium, in August 2008. It was against that backdrop of considerable artistic celebrity and success, that on 25 October 2008, at around 1 pm, his 1,200 ‘Black Fireworks’ were fired into the air above the A-bomb Dome, like a big sumi-e ink and wash painting in the sky, purposely devoid of colour.23 The linear trails evoked memory of the ‘black rain’ which showered local residents in 1945. In contrast, Chim↑Pom’s work has caused greater controversy and offence, leading to a public apology. Chim↑Pom is a group of six Tokyo-based artists all around 30 years of age, who hired a sky-writing plane to write the word ‘Pika’ (‘Flash’ or ‘Bang’) in October 2008, shortly before Cai’s ‘Black Fireworks’. Chim↑Pom’s ‘Pika’ was done in conjunction with an exhibition scheduled to start at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art from 1 November that year. Victims groups complained that they had not been warned in advance.24 The angry response of locals led to the cancellation of the exhibition and a public apology by Ushiro Ryūta, the group’s leader, and the curator Kamiya Yukie.25 Ushiro tried to explain that the group sought to attract the attention of

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young Japanese who had not experienced the war and Kamiya stated that ‘Art is intriguing because it raises debate from various sides . . . The opinion expressed by the hibakusha groups is not the only point of view’.26 The day after the apology, Cai Guo-Qiang’s exhibition opened, with ‘Black Fireworks’ launched above the A-bomb Dome.27 The Japanese artist Murakami Takashi sees much of post-war Japanese popular culture as having been born in the trauma and aftershock of the bombing of Hiroshima. In an exhibition held at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City in 2005 entitled ‘Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture’, he presented a work entitled ‘Time Bokan – Pink’ (2001) which appropriated an image of a skull-shaped mushroom cloud which featured at the end of each episode of the 1970s anime series Time Bokan. The image signalled the demise of the villains and gave children who watched it a happy ending. But the villains, like that other famous monster of Japanese pop culture – Godzilla – would nevertheless return in time for the next episode. By borrowing this key image, Murakami comments on how the Japanese are able to find ‘cuteness’ in the horrors of war. This tendency in Japanese popular culture can be regarded as a distancing mechanism or defence strategy, a way to deal with nuclear fears in a more palatable way.28 Murakami reminds us that local residents referred to the atomic bomb as ‘Pika-don’. Pika refers to the flash which all in Hiroshima saw and don (boom) mimics the sound which those outside of the city heard.29 Murakami posits that kawaii (cute) and otaku (nerd) cultures emerged in the aftermath. He suggests that nuclear fear became a ‘disquieting undercurrent [that] would persist in popular culture for decades to come.’30 He also sees Article 9 of Japan’s peace constitution as having had a significant impact on the Japanese psyche. It ‘prevented the nation from taking an aggressive stance’,31 casting Japan in a child-like dependency on the United States. In many ways, Chim↑Pom was referring to this in their apparently light-hearted display. Representations of the mushroom cloud can be read in a variety of ways. While Chim↑Pom’s ‘Pika’ and Murakami’s ‘Bokan’ might seem playful and facile, they critique how we see the bomb and the lessons that can be drawn from the experience of the bombing. Beyond the tragedy of war, they seem to suggest, there are further contemporary lessons to be learnt. Not only does Japan’s popular culture reflect the immaturity of Japan as a nation, but the tendency to portray reality through anime reflects the way the Japanese have not truly grappled with the meaning of Japan’s defeat32 and the war-related issues that prevent reconciliation.

Conclusion The artists discussed in this chapter show the diverse ways in which Hiroshima has been approached in recent times. They have, of course, been selective in their representations of Hiroshima. Rather than portray actual hibakusha, atomic bomb victims, in the way that Japanese artist Maruki Toshi sought to do in earlier decades,33 they have preferred to depict less terrible images of Hiroshima. We have seen how artists have focussed on clothing or other artefacts, and on the

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mushroom cloud itself, in an attempt to engage with viewers, rather than to repel. While Cai Guo-Qiang and especially Chim↑Pom were controversial in the way that they recalled what occurred in August 1945, the artists discussed in this chapter give new life to the past. The differing responses to their work suggest that representations of Hiroshima are still open to critical engagement. My reference to ‘Hiroshima’ and what happened there acknowledges the difficulty of describing in words the events of August 1945. Artists such as Tsuchida have continued to ask, over the decades, what Hiroshima is. Tsuchida has studied not only artefacts held by the Peace Memorial Museum, but also the city and the way it has changed over the years. His photographs provide more than information: they enable us to witness anew what took place at Hiroshima, albeit in changed contexts. He has thus sought to capture both the past and present of the atomic bomb victims.34 In Hiroshima Monument II, he photographs buildings and structures that survived the bomb, photographing them in 1979, one year after I first visited, and then again in 1990. Parts of the city continue to act as a reminder of the bombing, but the context is ever changing. This is something that Chim↑Pom sought to communicate. Artists will continue to grapple with how to remember Hiroshima long after the bomb. The history of the art of painting is said to have begun when a potter’s daughter traced the shadow cast by a young man, whom she loved, and who was about to go abroad. Her art was driven by his anticipated absence and the desire to record and remember him.35 Artists continue to trace such shadows. The visual strategies that have been employed to seek to capture these ghosts have changed with a tendency to move away from painting and documentary photography to something less indexical. The trend towards performance and happenings occurs at the same time as the number of Hiroshima survivors, those who experienced the bomb in all its horror, is fast declining. The bodies have thus become increasingly absent. We can only imagine what they witnessed and grasp at the fleeting shadows they left behind.

Notes 1 John W. Dower, ‘The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory’, Diplomatic History, Spring 1995, 19(2): 275–95. 2 Marilyn Ivy, ‘Revenge and Recapitation in Recessionary Japan’, South Atlantic Quarterly, Fall 200, 99(4): 819–40. 3 Mitani Hiroshi, ‘The History Textbook Issue in Japan and East Asia: Institutional Framework, Controversies, and International Efforts for Common Histories’, in Hasegawa Tsuyoshi and Togo Kazuhiko eds, East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport Connecticut: Praeger Security International, 2008, pp. 83–93. 4 Pierre Nora, ‘From Lieux de mémoire to Realms of Memory’, preface to Pierre Nora and Lawrence D. Kritzman eds, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, New York, 1996, cited in Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, London: Reaktion Books, 2006, p. 16. 5 Philip A. Seaton, Japan’s Contested War Memories, London: Routledge, 2007, p. 10.

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6 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima o sekai ni (The Spirit of Hiroshima), Hiroshima: The Museum, 2008. 7 Ritsumeikan University International Peace Museum, Hiroshima Nagasaki (DVD Bukku Peace Archives), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2007. 8 Tsuchida Hiromi, Hiroshima Collection, Tokyo: NHK, 1995 (2007). 9 Ishiuchi Miyako, Hiroshima, Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2008. 10 Ishiuchi Miyako, (trans. Gavin Frew), ‘For Things That Remain Forever’, in Ishiuchi, Hiroshima, p. 76. 11 Joan Gibbons, Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance, London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 12 John Taylor, Body Horror: Photojournalism, Catastrophe and War, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998, p. 18. 13 Chūgoku Shinbunsha, ‘Q&A about Hiroshima/The Atomic Bomb: How Many Photographs Were Taken on the Day of the Atomic Bombing in Hiroshima?’, (2005–2007). Available online: http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/hiroshima-koku/en/ exploration/ [Accessed 21 August 2012]. 14 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima o sekai ni, (The Spirit of Hiroshima), Hiroshima: The Museum, 1999, 2008, p. 57. 15 This is discussed in the following: Stephen Petersen, ‘Explosive Propositions: Artists React to the Atomic Age’, Science in Context, 2004, 15(4): 579–609. Petersen cites Segi Shinichi, Klein’s Japanese friend: Segi Shinichi, ‘Le Realiste de L’Immatériel’ in Musée National d’Art Moderne, Yves Klein, Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1983, pp. 81–7. See also Klaus Ottman, Yves Klein: Works and Writings, Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2010, p. 112. 16 Kerry Brougher, ‘Involuntary Painting’, in Yves Klein, Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010, pp. 18–41. Cited work illustrated on pp. 168–9. See also illustration in Klaus Ottman, Yves Klein: Works and Writings, Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2010, p. 79. 17 Lisa Saltzman, Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, p. 53. 18 Kamiya Yukie, (trans. Pamela Miki), ‘Not a Conquerer or Raider, But a Traveler Bearing Fire’, in Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, The 7th Contemporary Art Prize: Cai Guo-Qiang, vol. 1, Hiroshima: The Museum, 2008, pp. 30–3. 19 Suhama Motoko, (trans. Pamela Miki), ‘Preparing to Welcome Cai Guo-Qiang Back to Hiroshima’, in Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, The 7th Contemporary Art Prize, vol. 1, pp. 46–8, especially. p. 46. 20 Ellen Pearlman, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang with Ellen Pearlman’, The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics, and Culture, April 2008. Available online: http://brooklynrail.org/2008/04/art/cai-guo-qiang-with-ellen-pearlman [Accessed 21 August 2012]. 21 Mika Yoshitake, ‘Chronology’, in Alexandra Munroe ed., Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity, New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2011, pp. 179–87, especially p. 179. 22 Azade Seyhan, Writing Outside the Nation, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 128. 23 Kamiya Yukie, (trans. Pamela Miki), ‘Not a Conquerer or Raider, But a Traveler Bearing Fire’, in Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, The 7th Contemporary Art Prize: Cai Guo-Qiang, vol. 1, Hiroshima: The Museum, 2008, pp. 30–3. 24 Edan Corkill, ‘Poof! Goes the Art Work as Taboos Broken’, The Japan Times, 30 October, 2008. Available online: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fa20081030ec. html [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 25 Japanese Art Scene Monitor, 15 November 2008, 2(41): 1. 26 ‘ “Pika” in the Sky, a Controversial Work of Art’, Hiroshima Peace Media Center, 22 October 2008. Available online: http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/mediacenter/ article.php?story=20081028150126841_en [Accessed 22 August 2012].

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27 Ozaki Tetsuya, ‘Chim Pom’s Cancelled Exhibition’, Out of Tokyo, 18 November 2008. Available online: http://www.realtokyo.co.jp/docs/en/column/outoftokyo/bn/ozaki_198_ en/ [Accessed 22 August 2012]. 28 Takashi Murakami ed., Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture, New York: Japan Society and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, pp. 12–4. 29 See for example, Maruki Toshi, Hiroshima no pika (The Flash of Hiroshima), New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shephard Books, 1980. 30 Takashi Murakami ed., Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture, New York: Japan Society and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, pp. 19–20. 31 Takashi Murakami ed., Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture, New York: Japan Society and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, p. 22. 32 Takashi Murakami ed., Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture, New York: Japan Society and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, p. 123. 33 See Maruki Toshi, Hiroshima no pika (The Flash of Hiroshima), New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shephard Books, 1980. 34 Tsuchida Hiromi, Hiroshima Monument II, Tokyo: Tōseisha, 1995. 35 Saltzman, Making Memories Matter, especially Chapter 1, ‘Notes on the Indexical: An Introduction’, pp. 1–24.

8

Heroes, collaborators and survivors Korean kamikaze pilots and the ghosts of war in Japan and Korea Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The unseen memorial The reframing of memories challenges the very vocabulary with which we speak about the past. Terms like ‘hero’, ‘traitor’, ‘partisan’, ‘collaborator’, and even ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ are opened to new scrutiny. The complex processes of reconciliation that we have explored in this volume have shaken simplistic nationalist certainties, opened new topics of debate and made silenced voices audible. But the process is ongoing and difficult. This chapter takes one long-silenced voice – the voice of an individual participant in the Asia-Pacific War – as a basis for considering the unending retelling of history across the frontiers of the East Asian region from a micro perspective. How are individual lives affected by East Asia’s history wars and by the search for reconciliation? How far can one person’s private history open windows onto new perspectives for public memory? The starting point here, as in the Introduction to this volume, is a single statue; but in this case, the nature and shape of the statue remain a mystery. This monument, wrapped in blue plastic sheeting, stood in a suburban park in the South Korean city of Sacheon. Its shape and bulk suggested a substantial piece of bronze or masonry, perhaps in human form. Peering beneath corners of plastic that flapped in the wind, passers-by could see a black marble plaque inscribed in Japanese and Korean: the inscription began with the words ‘homecoming prayer memorial’. But the monument itself stayed hidden beneath its protective robe for several months, and was then banished from public view altogether before it could be unveiled. It had been erected in May 2008 on the initiative of a group led by Japanese actress Kuroda Fukumi to commemorate the life and death of Tak Gyeong-hyeon, who was born in Sacheon in 1920, moved to Japan in childhood with his family, was recruited into a Japanese tokkō (kamikaze)1 squadron, and died on a suicide mission over the Pacific on 11 May 1945.2 But the impending unveiling of the statue caused a minor local furore. Although some Sacheon people had helped to raise money for the memorial, many regarded service as a pilot (particularly as a suicide pilot) in the Japanese imperial forces as an act of collaboration, a betrayal of the Korean nation. It was in response to protests from local nationalist groups that the monument was removed.3

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Yet, despite its short life, while it still stood in the open, the wrapped Tak Gyeong-hyeon memorial served as a disturbingly eloquent representation of the troubled memories of Japan’s colonization of Korea and its human consequences. Swathed in unresolved pain, conflict and resentment and surreal as a Christo artwork, it spoke of the unspeakable nature of history. It commemorated a past that is still too troubled to be fully commemorated. Like the workings of a mind that represses dark memories, the layers that concealed the invisible statue made its presence all the more potent, unforgettable, impossible to ignore. The story of the wrapped memorial has its origins both in the violence of colonialism and in the fractured creation of a post-colonial Korea. After 35 years of formal colonial rule, and half a century or more of eroded sovereignty and economic exploitation, Korea gained its freedom in 1945, but in divided form. In South Korea, the US-backed regime of President Syngman Rhee (Yi Seung-man) adopted policies which, rather than healing the internal fissures of colonialism, served (in some respects at least) to embed them more deeply than ever. On the international stage, Rhee adopted a fierce anti-Japanese nationalism, publicly castigating the former colonial ruler for its past and present misdeeds; but domestically, the Rhee government gave senior administrative posts to a number of those who had reaped the benefits of close collaboration with the Japanese colonial authorities before 1945. Indeed, the leading figures in the creation of the South Korean air force included several pilots who had served in the wartime Japanese military.4 Throughout the post-war decades, while the Japanese government showed little inclination to redress the wrongs of the colonial era, the uneasy coexistence between those who had fought against colonial rule and those who had thrived under the Japanese imperial order created semi-submerged frictions in South Korean society. North of the 38th parallel, collaborators were punished with a ruthless zeal that extended to generations born decades after liberation; in the South, the spectre of collaboration continued to haunt the halls of parliament and the bureaucracy and the boardrooms of the chaebol. The issue was exposed again to harsh light of day 60 years after liberation, when the government of the late President Roh Moo-hyun created a Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaboration with Japanese Imperialism. Between 2005 and 2010, lists of over 1,000 prominent colonial-era collaborators were compiled, and steps were taken to confiscate assets from leading pro-Japanese (chinilpa) figures. The proceeds were to go to the descendants of prominent freedom fighters, and to projects commemorating the deeds of great patriots. The investigation evoked intense debate. Some saw it as a politically motivated witchhunt against individuals who were by then either dead or very elderly.5 Roh’s successor Lee Myung-bak wrapped up the enquiry in 2010, and – against the background of reconciliation events marking the centenary of Japan’s annexation of Korea – sought to seal the matter by issuing a public statement pardoning the collaborators. But this did not end the controversy. Some Korean commentators argued that Lee’s statement was hasty and inappropriate, since the Japanese government has yet to show true remorse for the violence of colonial rule, or to provide individual compensation to its victims.6

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Suicide gods or reluctant recruits? The cases of the Korean kamikaze pilots were particularly complex. An unknown number of Koreans were recruited into Japan’s suicide squadrons in the final year of the war, and at least 16 died in action.7 During the colonial era, the Japanese authorities enthusiastically used both Japanese and Korean media to depict Korean recruits to the tokkō squadrons as loyal imperial subjects whose willingness to sacrifice themselves for the Emperor equalled or even exceeded that of their Japanese contemporaries.8 The 1945 movie Love and Vow (Sarang gwa Maengse), co-directed by Japanese and Korean directors and released in Korea three months before the end of the Asia-Pacific War, depicts colonial power and colony united even unto death through the devotion of a Korean who volunteers for service as a tokkō pilot.9 The narrative of loyal colonial subjects has been maintained in some right-wing Japanese circles to the present day. The 2007 Japanese movie For Those We Love (Ore wa, Kimi no tame koso Shini ni Iku), whose scriptwriter and executive producer is the nationalist Governor of Tokyo Ishihara Shintarō, includes a character based on Tak Gyeong-hyeon. Here the Korean kamikaze, although presented as a somewhat troubled and tragic figure, is nonetheless a fully integrated member of his suicide squadron. His presence is used to embellish a story of comradeship and heroic self-sacrifice, in which Japan is cast as the liberator of Asia and as a welcomed bringer of order and stability to its colonies. Not only in Japan but also elsewhere, the image of the kamikaze as devoted patriot, burning with zeal to die for the Emperor, has proved to have long-lasting appeal. In the United States and Great Britain, there seems to be a fascination with the Japanese suicide pilot as exotic other – inscrutable, fanatic and yet somehow admirable in the extremes of his self-sacrifice to the nation. American author Albert Axell, for example, depicts the kamikaze pilots, raised on a diet of Bushido and Shinto mythology, as ‘passionate advocates of Japanese rectitude’, ‘ready to give up [their] life for nation and throne without a murmur’.10 Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods, co-authored by Axell and right-wing Japanese commentator Kase Hideaki, includes a brief chapter on the Korean suicide pilots.11 Although this book mentions the conflict of identities experienced by the Korean members of suicide squadrons, it focuses almost entirely on the cases of Tak Gyeong-hyeon and one other pilot, Kim Sang-pil, both of whom are portrayed as going willingly and heroically to their deaths. Kim’s parting message, we are told, consisted of the words ‘patriotism’ (K. aeguk / J. aikoku) and ‘long live his Majesty the Emperor’ (K. Chonhwang Pyeha manse / J. Tennō Heika Banzai), written in both hangeul and katakana.12 Categories like chinilpa (shinnichi-ha in Japanese) are not simply a product of Korean discourse, then, but are the outcome of an implicit conversation between historical narratives simultaneously generated in Korea, Japan and elsewhere. When Japanese nationalists triumphantly parade the stories of ‘pro-Japanese’ Koreans to justify their own history of colonial rule, it becomes all the more difficult for Korean commentators to challenge stereotypes of ‘collaboration’, for fear

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that any attempt to empathize with the ‘collaborators’ might weaken the foundations of the Korean nationalist narrative, and play into the hands of Japanese right-wing revisionism. Most South Koreans accept that the colonial subjects conscripted into the lower ranks of the Japanese armed forces were victims of colonialism rather than collaborators, but suspicion still surrounds those who served in the higher echelons of the imperial forces. After some debate, the Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaboration with Japanese Imperialism decided to extend its investigations to Korean members of the Japanese military who held the rank of second lieutenant and above.13 Ironically, suicide pilots who completed their missions were posthumously promoted, thus in death being retrospectively enrolled by the colonizing power into the legion of collaborators.14 In memory and history, however, the kamikaze pilots have many faces, and the image of the samurai suicide god is just one of the multiple and contested versions of their story. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, whose research focuses particularly on relatively élite and well-educated Japanese student recruits to the naval suicide squadrons, offers a picture of intellectually sophisticated young men, often deeply critical of the war and agonized by the prospect of impending death. Despite the official rhetoric, the image of suicide pilots as enthusiastic volunteers is a sweeping over-simplification. Some, to be sure, chose to enrol in the suicide squadrons out of a sense of duty, or out of a belief that they were certain to die in the war in any case, and would therefore prefer to die a ‘martyr’s’ death. Others could not bear the thought of remaining alive while their friends and comrades died. Others again were cajoled, threatened, or were simply ‘tapped on the shoulder’ by their superiors, who singled them out for tokkō service regardless of their personal wishes.15 Family members of several Korean tokkō pilots have emphatically denied that their relatives were volunteers. The sisters of Pak Dong-hoon, a Korean tokkō pilot who died in March 1945, campaigned energetically and successfully to have his name removed from the official list of ‘collaborators’ on the grounds that he had been conscripted, rather than volunteering for service.16 Kim Sang-pil’s sister-in-law, interviewed many years after his death, argued that colonial power relations rendered the notion of ‘volunteering’ hollow. Kim and others, she suggested, were put in a position where refusal to ‘volunteer’ would be interpreted as treachery.17 In fact, Kim Sang-pil remains a mystery – a man whose personality and beliefs were seen in profoundly different ways by the various people who knew and remembered him, and whose death itself remains to this day shrouded in a fog of confusion and uncertainty.18 Yet another perspective on the motives of Korean kamikaze pilots is provided by the 2001 Japanese movie Firefly (Hotaru), which (like Ishihara’s 2007 film) features a character based on the story of Tak Gyeong-hyeon. In this case, Tak (who here and in For Those We Love is given the name Kanayama) is presented as being a proud Korean who dies, not for the colonial rulers and their Emperor, but for the Japanese woman he loves and for ‘the Korean people’ (Chōsen minzoku) – his parting proclamation to his comrades-in-arms (spoken in Japanese) is ‘Chōsen minzoku banzai!’ (Long live the Korean people!). The movie weaves

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the memory of Kanayama/Tak into a story of reconciliation between Japan and Korea. After the war, the woman whom Kanayama loved marries a Japanese survivor from his suicide squadron and, decades later, the couple finally meet Kanayama’s Korean family: a climactic encounter in which initial unease and suspicion dissolve into shared tears of emotion as the two families find rapprochement in their common love for the dead man. Some relatives of the Korean kamikaze pilots reportedly appreciated the depiction of Kanayama/Tak in Firefly,19, but, as other commentators have pointed out, the movie contains its own troubling undertones. Kanayama’s defiant transcendence of his dilemmas of identity seems implausible, and the film’s narrative centres on the Japanese protagonists’ desire for and achievement of forgiveness. Viewers are given no real insight into the sufferings of Kanayama’s family, who appear only in the final scenes, in a picture-perfect rural Korean landscape, to bestow their blessings on the Japanese survivors. Igarashi Yoshikuni, in a fine critique of the film, observes that: Korea and its colonial past, much like the scenery of the countryside, serve only as a stage where Shûji and Tomoko [the Japanese couple at the centre of the narrative] can finally relieve themselves of the burden of the past. What appears to be the film’s postcolonial sensitivity turns out to be a disguise for the desire to present Japan’s colonial history exclusively as a Japanese drama.20 These multiple and contending tokkō narratives, in the end, simply point to the fact that the dead cannot speak for themselves. Their silences (or random gnomic utterances) are blank canvasses on which interpreters can project their own images of the past. Tak Gyeong-hyeon, on the night before he flew his suicide mission, sang the Korean song Arirang. The scene of the Korean pilot singing this haunting song of parting and nostalgia is depicted again and again, in writings on the Korean kamikaze and in the films For Those We Love and Firefly. But in each retelling of this story, Tak’s performance of Arirang is given a different meaning.21 Like the voicelessness of trauma victims who cannot turn their memories into words, the silence of the suicide pilots ‘sets few limits on interpretation. . . while making any such interpretations hard to contest.’22

The martyr as terrorist Around the time when the controversy over the Tak Gyeong-hyeon monument was being fought out in Sacheon, I visited three memorials to Yoon Bong-gil: another Korean who died a tragic and violent death in the colonial era, but one whose place in public memory is far removed from that of the suicide pilots. Yoon, who was born in South Chungcheon Province in 1908, has an unchallenged position in the pantheon of Korea’s greatest nationalist heroes: for he died, not as a member of the Japanese military but at their hands – executed by a firing squad in Japan in 1932. His heroic status has, indeed, become almost inseparably

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attached to his name itself: in Korea, he is commonly referred to as ‘the Martyr Yoon Bong-gil’ (Yoon Bong-Gil Euisa). Yoon Bong-gil’s memorial museum in the suburbs of Seoul – officially known as the Mae-hyeon Memorial Hall23 – is a fitting monument to a national martyr. A great grey edifice of granite and marble, built in neo-traditionalist style, its displays tell an unequivocal story of idealism and devotion to Korean independence. Yoon experienced the 3.1 Revolution of 1919 – the greatest Korean uprising against Japanese colonial rule – at an age when he was just old enough to have a clear political awareness. Appalled at the destruction of Korean culture and self-respect by the forces of colonialism, he immersed himself in study and, while still in his teens, established an evening school to educate the children of local farmers. But heightening political repression made him aware of the limitations of piecemeal educational and agrarian reform, and in 1930, leaving his wife and two children in Korea, he escaped to Shanghai to fight colonialism with the Korean provisional government in exile. Working closely with nationalist leader Kim Gu, Yoon developed a plan to attack a Japanese military celebration being held in Shanghai’s Hongkou Park (now known as Lu Xun Park), on the occasion of Emperor Hirohito’s birthday. On 29 April 1932, the day of the celebration, Yoon entered the park carrying a lunchbox and water bottle packed with explosives. As the final strains of the Japanese national anthem died away, Yoon hurled the water bottle at the podium packed with Japanese dignitaries, killing General Shirakawa Yoshinori, the commander-in-chief of Japanese forces in Shanghai, and Kawabata Sadaji, the head of the local Japanese community association. Six other people were seriously injured in the attack, among them diplomat Shigemitsu Mamoru, who lost a leg in the explosion but survived, later going on to sign Japan’s formal document of surrender at the end of the Asia-Pacific War and become a post-war Japanese Foreign Minister.24 Yoon had launched his attack knowing that it would cost his own life. He was captured alive at the scene, before he could explode his second bomb, and was taken to Japan, where he was interrogated, swiftly sentenced to death and executed at an army base on a hillside above the city of Kanazawa on 19 December 1932. The Japanese military photographed Yoon’s last moments for their records. Dressed in a suit and waistcoat, he kneels blindfolded amongst the tall grass and bamboo on the hillside, arms outstretched in the attitude of crucifixion.25 The story of Yoon’s martyrdom, as told in the Mae-hyeon Memorial Hall, seems to lie beyond the realms of controversy. The family photographs, letters and other items arrayed in glass cases around the sombre display rooms convey an image of filial piety, self-sacrifice and dedication to the nation. Outside the hall, a huge statue of martyred nationalist points skyward, directing successive generations of his fellow citizens towards a brighter future. Yet even in this heroic landscape, the uneasy currents that run through Korea’s modern history are faintly visible. Outside the front door of the Memorial Hall a bronze plaque records the names of the donors who contributed to the building of this monument. One name in particular attracts attention: that of Chun Doo-hwan (the former general who

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became an autocratic president of Korea from 1980 to 1988), conspicuous not just because he is probably the most famous donor on the list, but also because someone has applied a sharp implement to the plaque and tried very energetically but not entirely successfully to erase Chun’s name. The process of creating and re-creating of Korea’s heroes and villains is, of course, an ongoing one.26 Not long before I visited the Mae-hyeon Memorial Hall, a further historical controversy had been played out in the Korean media and on the internet, when a visiting foreign scholar lecturing at a Korean University made comments to his class of students which were interpreted as implying that Yoon Bong-gil and Kim Gu were ‘terrorists’. This provoked protests from some of the students and a press report in the national JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. The scholar, Anders Karlsson of London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, responded by criticizing inaccuracies in the JoongAng Ilbo article, and explaining that his purpose had not been to denigrate the nationalist heroes, but rather to explain to his students how the implications of the term ‘terrorism’ have changed over the course of the past century.27 Indeed, if we accept the literal dictionary definition of the term ‘terrorist’ as ‘partisan, member of a resistance organization or guerilla force using acts of violence’,28 then Yoon Bong-gil was self-evidently a terrorist. But this simply highlights the fact that the word ‘terrorist’ carries a heavy cargo of emotion and value judgement, not obvious from the bald phrases of dictionary exegesis. ‘Terrorist’, ‘martyr’, ‘patriot’, ‘collaborator’ – what polemical burdens all these terms carry. Timothy Brook reflects on this point in his study of ‘collaboration’ in the wartime Chinese context, and his reflections might equally be applied to terms like ‘terrorism’: for the historian rather than the polemicist, collaboration is a difficult word to use. Its almost inarguable moral force sensationalizes the acts of those who fall under its label . . . The capacity of the word to judge, even before we know upon what basis those judgments are being made, interferes with analysis, however. As soon as the word is uttered, it superimposes a moral map over the political landscape it ventures to describe and thus prevents the one from being surveyed except through the other. Historians must legitimately ask how the moral subject that collaboration presupposes was fashioned, not retrospectively judge that subject’s acts . . . Our task . . . is to look through the moral landscape to the political one underneath and figure out what was going on.29 Brook’s analysis is powerful and persuasive. But I would argue that it is important not simply to consider the political map, but also to observe the fine-grained detail of everyday life through which the subject is formed. For each individual, the moral demands of ideology, community, nation, family, friendship, work and sheer survival coexist, intertwine and often pull in opposite directions. Negotiating paths through these contending force fields, people make cumulative chains of choice that may ultimately lead them to a point where they become enclosed in the absolute category of ‘hero’, ‘collaborator’ or ‘terrorist’. This category captures

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only one moment in the long journey through time that is a human life. The task of the historian is to unearth both the conflicting force fields and the chains of individual choice; to rediscover the life that overflows categorical boundaries. The choices are of course unique. Every Korean and Japanese who joined a suicide squadron, every Korean who died fighting for the nationalist cause, reached this decisive point in life by a different path, and with distinctive attitudes and beliefs. No one story can represent all. But tracing one story in detail can remind us of the complexities and ironies concealed behind the grand labels of the moral narrative.

The obelisk and the empty grave Rain was pouring from an oppressive summer sky on the day when I went to visit the two memorials to Yoon Bong-gil that stand near a hilltop on the outskirts of Kanazawa in western Japan. After his death, Yoon was buried in an unmarked grave close to Kanazawa’s vast Nodayama military cemetery. Following the liberation of Korea, a group of Koreans in Japan, many of them members of the regional branch of the Korean League (J. Chōsenjin Renmei [Chōren for short]; K. Joseonin Yeonmyeong), searched for Yoon’s resting place and managed to find his remains, which were returned to Korea and interred with great ceremony in the National Cemetery in July 1946. In 1992, the sixtieth anniversary of the Shanghai attack and Yoon’s death, a nationwide appeal headed by then South Korean President Kim Young-sam raised money for a large, traditional Korean-style stone obelisk commemorating Yoon to be erected near to the place of his execution. Mounted on a stone turtle and surmounted by carved dragons, the great black stele is inscribed with the words ‘Memorial to the Martyr Yoon Bong-gil, who Laid Down his Life for the Nation’ (see Figure 8.1). The construction of the monument was supported by the mayor of Kanazawa, who saw it as a symbol of reconciliation between Japan and Korea. But predictably, its presence has provoked protests and even physical attacks on the monument by Japanese rightwingers, who define Yoon as a terrorist in the most negative sense of the word and regard the monument as an insult to Japan. Others too, however, felt a different kind of unease at the official Kanazawa monument. A group of Korean residents in Japan (Zainichi Koreans)30 living in Kanazawa argued for a more modest memorial to be maintained on the spot where Yoon had been buried. It was a leading member of that group, Pak In-jo, who showed me round the memorial site in the pouring rain of a June day in 2008. Pak’s father had been a typical colonial-era Korean immigrant to Japan: the son of a farm family that had fallen on hard times, he first came to Kanazawa in the 1920s in search of work, and found employment as a labourer digging gravel from the local river beds. The rest of the family followed the father to Kanazawa in 1932, the year of Yoon Bong-gil’s execution. Pak In-jo, who was five years old when he first arrived in Japan, recalled how he and other Kanazawa school students had been required during the war to clean the military graveyard, collecting and burning twigs and leaves on the very spot under which, he later

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Figure 8.1 Memorial to Yoon Bong-Gil, Kanazawa.

realized, Yoon Bong-gil’s remains were buried. As a young adult, Pak In-jo had been one of the group of Kanazawa Koreans who found and unearthed Yoon Bong-gil’s remains, and he had devoted the rest of his life to the task of preserving and honouring the memory of the fallen independence fighter. Pak In-jo had campaigned long and hard for the creation of a monument to Yoon Bong-gil in Kanazawa, but he felt uncomfortable with the stony formal grandeur of the official memorial stele. It was, he said, too static, pompous and lifeless. Once it was constructed, there was nothing you could do with it: it simply stood there, visited intermittently by groups from Korea but very rarely by Japanese; though Pak himself did try to enliven it by placing arrangements of flowers at the turtle’s feet. Meanwhile, however, he and other members of the Korean community in Japan had created their own alternative memorial a little way down the hill-slope, at the site of Yoon’s now empty tomb. They designed this like a regular grave, decorated with photographs, memorabilia and the offerings left by visitors. Pak set up a notice with a detailed explanation in Korean and Japanese, and even constructed an on-site device that played stirring Korean songs at the press of a button. The effect was oddly touching: removed from the funereal encasing of marble that surrounds his life and death in Seoul’s Mae-hyeon Memorial Hall, here at last the martyr-hero seemed human and real. When I met Pak In-jo, the guardian of Yoon Bong-gil’s empty grave, in the summer 2008, he was already in his eighties, but still drove a van at terrifying speed and worked full time as an electrician. Pak had lived most of his life in a Japan where members of the Korean minority had very few rights. Until the 1980s, Zainichi Koreans had no access to state pensions, government housing or

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most forms of welfare, and very little access to employment in large private firms. Reforms introduced from the early 1980s onward had come too late for Pak In-jo, who was by then close to retirement age, and (since he had not had a chance to contribute to a pension scheme) was left without superannuation, forced to go on earning his living until his death.

In the house of memories Pak In-jo remembered and recorded everything. His little house in Kanazawa had a room crammed to the ceiling with photo albums, letters, newspaper cuttings, video recordings, notebooks and diaries. He collected everything that he could lay his hands on about Yoon Bong-gil and about Kanazawa’s Koreans. He still possessed albums containing every one of his own primary school annual reports. His memory for events and dates was phenomenal. Memory was for him a kind of compulsion, through which (I think) he tried to give shape to the extraordinary vicissitudes and reversals of his own life. Most vividly of all, he remembered the two years before he joined the hunt for Yoon Bong-gil’s remains: the time when he had served as a pilot in a Japanese suicide squadron. Although I cannot be sure how he interpreted this himself, it is clear that Pak In-jo’s dedication to the memory of the nationalist martyr Yoon Bong-gil was deeply intertwined with his own experience as a kamikaze pilot for the Japanese army. At one level, Pak was desperately anxious to avoid the stigma of ‘collaboration’. His story indeed suggests that he was far from being the devoted imperial subject of propaganda myth; yet his role in preserving the memorial of the nationalist hero could be seen in part as expiation for service in the armed forces of the colonizer. At another level, though, Pak himself had experienced something akin to the emotions of a person sentenced to death: knowing that he was inescapably destined to fly a mission that would end in oblivion. And this surely helps to explain the intensity of his identification with the fate of Yoon Bong-gil, led out to his certain death on the Kanazawa hillside. Pak In-jo’s treasure-house of memories is also particularly valuable because it shows us how the detail of an individual’s life, examined at close hand, fragments and perturbs the grand historical categories of ‘freedom fighter’, ‘hero’, ‘collaborator’, ‘patriot’, ‘victim’ or ‘aggressor’. Following his story, we are forced to reflect on the issue of individual choices, and to consider more deeply how free will interacts with circumstance, and how ‘voluntary’ decisions are made within the constraints of historical forces that the individual can only dimly perceive. As a child at school in Kanazawa, Pak achieved high marks, and had a particular passion for machines. After graduation, he joined the Japanese National Railways Corporation, hoping to be a train driver, but discovered that, as a colonial immigrant from Korea, the highest position he could aspire to was that of ticket collector. He then applied to become a civilian pilot on mail delivery flights, but found that this too was barred to Koreans. By now, however, the Asia-Pacific War had broken out. In 1938 a system allowing Koreans to volunteer for service in the Japanese military had been introduced, and in August 1943 a new law

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extended military conscription to the Korean Peninsula (although it took more than a year for the law to be implemented). In October 1943, Pak applied and was accepted for training as an army pilot (Japan having two separate air forces, one attached to the army and the other to the navy). His entry into the Japanese military was reported in glowing tones in a local newspaper, which praised ‘Hōnoki’ (Pak’s Japanese name) and another Kanazawa-based ‘young man from the Peninsula (i.e. Korea)’ for their determination to show that ‘we too are subjects of the Emperor and will not be outdone by the people of naichi (Japan proper)’.31 The words are presented in the article as a direct quotation, but it is unclear who is really speaking here. (The article also contains several factual mistakes, giving the wrong date for Pak’s arrival in Japan, and describing him as having been accepted for pilot training by the navy rather than the army.) Pak was unquestionably a volunteer for service, but his voluntary decision was made within an iron framework of constrained choices. Sixty years on – and in a very different world – the only explanations he gave for his decision to volunteer for service were that he liked aeroplanes and ‘I thought there would be relatively little discrimination in the military’.32 Pak In-jo’s training followed a series of stages common to most wartime recruits to the army’s air force. In October 1943 he went to Tokyo for a week’s intensive aptitude assessment, during which recruits were divided into three groups: those who would become pilots and those who would be trained in aircraft maintenance or communications. The war was now at its height, and the intake was enormous: around 6,000 young men, of whom, Pak guesses, around 200–300 were probably Korean. Pak was selected for pilot training, and sent to a base near the city of Fukuoka for six months of flying practice, which culminated in a further grading of recruits into fighter, bomber and reconnaissance squadrons. Pak, like other recruits from that era, recalled the harsh conditions of barrack life and the frequent beatings meted out by superiors. He also remembered the discriminatory mutterings of some Japanese pilots about Koreans. But he made lasting friendships with fellow recruits, and was to some extent protected from hostility by a Korean officer at the training base. He was selected to serve as a fighter pilot and later in the year was transferred to serve in Manchukuo, Japan’s client state in the Chinese region of Manchuria. He and his comrades-in-arms travelled by boat to Busan and then by rail to their base in northwestern Manchuria. It was the first time that Pak had set foot on Korean soil since the age of five. By the time they reached Manchuria, winter was setting in, and it soon became bitterly cold. Once a week, on Sundays, they could leave their base to visit a nearby town where they picked up fragments of news from conversations with local people. As Japan’s military position deteriorated from early 1943 onward, some senior military figures began to discuss the use of suicide squadrons as a last line of defence, but the proposal was controversial, and it was not until October 1944 (the month when Pak was deployed to Manchuria) that the first naval suicide squadron was formed by vice-admiral Ōnishi Takajirō in an effort to defend Japan’s position in the Philippines.33 Initially, the shock value of suicide attacks seemed to

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have considerable effect, and soon, both the naval and army commands decided to expand the operations in the hope of halting the advance of US forces towards Okinawa. In January 1945, the army command issued orders for the creation of 30 suicide squadrons.34 Pak In-jo recalls that it was around the beginning of 1945 that the request arrived at his base for volunteers to join the tokkō forces. The pilots were given pieces of paper on which to record one of two options: expressing enthusiasm or hesitation to volunteer. Their officers addressed them in sympathetic tones, reassuring the young pilots that their families would be taken care of by the military after their deaths, and insisting that no-one was being forced to sign up. The problem, however, was obvious. Pak In-jo (and probably most of his fellow pilots) had absolutely no desire to die; but they faced the prisoner’s dilemma. None was sure how the other pilots would respond, and each was fearful of the consequences if he were the only person in his squadron to express reluctance. In the end, Pak reckoned that out of the 70 or 80 pilots at his base at least a handful would probably be hesitant to volunteer, so he chose not to put himself forward as enthusiastic to join the ranks of the tokkō. He was, as it turned out, not the only non-volunteer – but the number of others was very small. In Pak In-jo’s squadron, as in others described by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, the façade of ‘volunteering’ thinly veiled the reality of extreme pressure: those who failed to volunteer were named and shamed – called before the officers and berated as a disgrace to the force. But Pak’s reluctance saved his life. He was not included in the first group of recruits, who left for the tokkō base of Chiran in Kyushu on 14 February 1945. He recalls that, before their departure, those first volunteers were summoned to Xinjing (Shinkyō), the show capital constructed under Japanese supervision for the state of Manchukuo, where they were rewarded with a gift of cigarettes from the hands of the Emperor of Manchukuo, Pu Yi himself. Pak In-jo also vividly remembers waving off those 45 pilots, including people who had become his close friends. None of them survived the war. On 3 March 1945, Pak and his comrades were given a second opportunity to ‘volunteer’ for tokkō service, and this time he feared that any sign of reluctance would result in draconian punishment. So, still in his teens, Pak In-jo became a suicide pilot. He and his companions were given a ceremonial send-off from the Manchurian city of Shenyang (then known as Mukden) on 2 April 1945, and flew south via Pyongyang to Seoul, where they expected to stay one night before leaving for Japan. Now that they were destined for certain death, the pilots were treated as heroes in the making, and given a degree of indulgence unknown in other parts of the armed forces. Their planes, however, were decrepit, and the collapse of Japan’s military was beginning to make itself felt even far from the front line. Although they were supposed to fly to Seoul in formation, several planes were delayed by engine trouble, and it soon became clear that their stay would have to be prolonged for another day or more. It was at that point that Pak In-jo decided to seize the opportunity to absent himself from his squadron so that, following Korean tradition, he could pay

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his respects to graves of his ancestors before he died. This was easier said than done: Pak’s family came from a small village in South Gyeongsang Province, and he had not been there since he was a small child. He managed to catch a train to the local town of Yeongcheon, where he used his impressive military credentials to persuade the local police to give him a lift in a charcoal-powered car to a village near his family home. After wandering around the locality making enquiries of the villagers, who regarded him with understandable awe and suspicion, he finally found his sister-in-law’s family home, where he stayed the night. He visited the graveyard and spoke his words of farewell to the ancestral spirits, and then tried to work out how to get back to Seoul before his absence caused serious problems. The method he chose was to borrow a plane from a nearby airfield. Flying south from Manchuria over the Korean Peninsula, Pak had noticed how all the airfields seemed to be full of planes – many had been moved to Korea from Japan to avoid the worsening air raids on Japanese cities. Inventing a plausible story about a military mission, Pak persuaded the local army airfield to entrust him with one of their unused aircraft. It was only after take-off that he realized the flaw in his plan: he had forgotten to ask them to lend him a map. In retrospect, Pak recollected with enormous amusement his increasingly frenzied circling through the skies over the southern part of the Korean Peninsula as he attempted to follow railway lines that disappeared into tunnels or rivers that dwindled to streams, all the time becoming increasingly convinced that he was going to be shot for desertion. Eventually, with fuel running short, he landed at another airfield claiming to have suffered engine trouble on a military mission, and with the assistance of the local commander, finally made his way back to Seoul. By this time, his absence had attracted attention, and he was severely beaten by a commanding officer as a punishment for his escapade. Still in pain from the after-effects of this episode, Pak sought the help of his maintenance engineer, who had developed a technique for discreetly puncturing the tyres on planes to make them temporarily unusable. The following day, the remainder of the squadron left for Kyushu, while Pak remained behind alone until he and his plane were in a condition to fly. He then flew from Seoul to Japan, where he stopped off in the city of Kumamoto. ‘I thought at that moment,’ Pak recalled, ‘that tomorrow I will go to Chiran, and that will be the end.’

The survivor’s story Pak In-jo had given interviews about his memories once or twice before I met him, and had doubtless told parts of his story to close friends. He was, however, very reticent in speaking publicly about his military past, and many of those who knew him as the guardian of Yoon Bong-gil’s memorial were unaware that he had once been a suicide pilot in the Japanese army. Rather than telling his story to others, he had retold it endlessly to himself in the long nights of his post-war life when he lay awake, racked by insomnia. In the process, he had fashioned his tokkō experience into a series of episodes, narrated with dramatic flair and a powerful

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sense of black humour. But the silences that interspersed his tumbling torrents of words were sometimes as telling as the words themselves. When I asked him about his impressions on returning to Korea for the first time since his early childhood, I had vaguely expected some response about his feelings for the national landscape or culture or ethnic identity. But in fact, as it turned out, the one thing that really impressed Pak In-jo about his Korean homeland was the discovery that Korean railways, though built by the Japanese as part of their colonial expansion, were wide-gauge, while Japanese railways were narrowgauge. Much later, long after the war (he said), he realized the reason for this: the Korean railways had been designed to link up with the railways of Manchuria and Siberia. In other words, they had been planned from the start with Japan’s future imperial expansion in mind. In this small fragment of memory, I think we can see two overlapping layers of Pak’s sense of his past and identity. The first and older layer contains the lingering impressions of a young man who loved machines but was not interested in politics: the man who, more than 60 years later, could remember every detail of the aircraft he had flown. The second and superimposed layer is the reinterpretation of those impressions by Pak in middle age, at a time when subsequent experiences had impelled him to rethink his life politically. Pak’s account of his experiences suggests the multiplicity of ways in which national identity can be felt and expressed. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the sort of person who would have chosen to go to his death as a tokkō pilot with the words ‘Chōsen Minzoku Banzai’ on his lips. Yet his feelings for the traditions of Korean family lineage were powerful enough for him to take considerable risks to say his farewells to his ancestors. Like many of the Japanese pilots described by Ohnuki-Tierney, he seems to have seen his national identity not through the prism of abstract ideologies and symbols but through the personal bonds of family relationships. Pak’s experiences as a Korean interacting with Japanese military and civilians were similarly nuanced and multi-faceted. The route that had taken him to the brink of death had been shaped by discrimination; but at the very moment when death seemed inescapable, a strange event occurred: an unexpected relationship with a Japanese family, which helped to save his life. This episode might seem implausible but for the fact that, in these final months of the war, a surreal atmosphere was gradually enveloping Japanese society. Many of those in positions of power within the government and military knew that defeat was not far off. Commanders were aware that the suicide pilots were being sent to futile deaths. The rhetoric of victory against all odds was of course maintained, but it was becoming increasingly hollow. When he arrived in Kumamoto, Pak found himself staying alone in an inn which, in the spring and summer of 1945, specialized in hosting suicide pilots on their way to Chiran. Early in the evening, he was unexpectedly summoned to the telephone to take a call from a man he had never met, but whose name he knew well. The caller was an eminent and famous Kumamoto citizen: more than 60 years later, Pak still refused to divulge the name, for fear of embarrassing the man’s surviving family. The caller told Pak that he and his wife had decided they

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would like to offer their hospitality to a tokkō pilot, and they invited him to dinner. Pak was disconcerted by the invitation. He did not want to go alone to a formal dinner – ‘I thought, oh no, I won’t know how to hold my knife and fork right, and all that.’ However, it seemed impolite to refuse, so, soon after, he was collected by a chauffer-driven car and taken to the most imposing mansion he had ever seen in his life, where the eminent man, his wife and two daughters and a formal dinner awaited. As they talked over dinner, the family became more and more distressed at the idea that their young guest was about to depart to a certain death, and before the evening had ended Pak’s host (who had powerful political connections) had made a phone call to an acquaintance who was one of the senior military commanders in the Kyushu region, and obtained permission for Pak to delay his travel to Chiran. For almost a month, Pak remained as a guest in the mansion in Kumamoto, where his host’s family had devised a further plan to rescue him from his suicide mission altogether. Under this plan, they would officially adopt him as their son, which, they assured him, would enable them to obtain his discharge from the suicide squadron. Pak was naturally tempted by the offer, but was afraid that it might end in disaster. He was overwhelmed by fears of being shot for desertion: a death even more miserable than that of a suicide pilot, and without the compensating benefits of earning posthumous honours and financial support for his family. He therefore took advantage of his temporary reprieve from death to invite his mother and elder brother to visit him in Kumamoto, but, after spending some time with them, he left the comfortable refuge of the Kumamoto mansion and on 5 May 1945 he rejoined his squadron at the tokkō base in Chiran. By that time, 12 out of the 15 members of his 104 Squadron (104 Shingeki Butai) had already flown to their deaths,35 as had 10 of the 16 Korean pilots known to have died on suicide missions.36 Some accounts of Pak’s 104 Squadron list Hōnoki Nisaku (Pak In-jo) as having died on a suicide mission undertaken from Kumamoto on 22 May 1945.37 But in

Figure 8.2 Pak In-jo and his memories.

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fact, by the time Pak reached Chiran, the operations of the tokkō base were in increasing disarray. After the initial element of surprise wore off, US naval forces became better able to resist suicide attacks. Meanwhile, the state of the tokkō planes was deteriorating, and many crashed into the sea without ever reaching their targets. The Chiran base itself had become the target of US bombing raids, and for a while Pak and his fellow pilots were sent to nearby mountain areas to escape the bombings. Pak recalled that each member of his squadron was assigned a young woman from the Women’s Volunteer Corps (Joshi Teishintai), and that many had sexual relations with women at two brothels in the local area. It was not unusual for pilots to leave the base at night, returning only just in time for the 9 am roll call. Soon after he arrived in Chiran, Pak received an unexpected visit from a middleaged woman and her teenage daughter: local residents who turned out to be distant relatives of his benefactor in Kumamoto. The two women befriended him, and he began to stay at their home overnight without official permission. In the highly charged atmosphere of Chiran, where every day Pak and his comrades expected to hear the words of the ‘order to attack’ (shutsugeki meirei) which would send them to their deaths, the relationship took on strongly emotional overtones, and the mother urged Pak to become engaged to her daughter. One night before dawn, when he was staying at the women’s house, Pak heard the rumble of a convoy of trucks passing along the road outside the front door, apparently heading in the direction of the air base. He guessed that this meant that the order had come for an attack: tokkō squadrons commonly left around 4 am for the flight to Okinawa, aiming (as Pak put it) to ‘hit the Americans as they were eating their breakfasts’. Pak jumped up and dressed in his uniform, ready to race to the base before his absence was recorded. But his host and her daughter believed that, if he went, they would never see him again, and they implored him not to go. Pak wavered. The worst that would happen to him if he were absent at the moment of his ‘order to attack’, was (he guessed) that he might be beaten or sent to the Shinburyō, a prison-like punishment centre in Fukuoka, set up by the army in May 1945 to hold army suicide pilots who evaded or aborted their missions.38 Either way, he would have gained at least a few more days of life. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I took my uniform off again and went back to bed, and then turned up at the base at 9 am, the time roll call was normally held.’ The base was eerily quiet. The order to attack had indeed been issued, and most of the other pilots had departed on the one-way journey to Okinawa. Just one man from Pak’s squadron had remained behind because his plane was out of action, and had stood in for Pak at the roll-call, which had been held in the dark before the pilots departed on their mission. Pak succeeded in convincing his superiors that his plane was grounded because of engine trouble, and he was ordered to make temporary repairs and then take the plane to an airfield at Kikuchi (near Kumamoto) to be fixed. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I tell people that I flew on my mission, but was attacked by American Grumman fighters and had to turn back. But actually that’s just a story. In fact, from that day onward I did not receive another order to attack until 15 August 1945.’

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Pak’s story suggests the growing collapse of the tokkō project in the final stages of the war. A number of suicide pilots did in fact return from their missions alive, either because their plane’s engines failed while they were still within reach of land, or simply because, at the last moment, they could not face the thought to going to a death that would achieve nothing. Others sabotaged their own planes in order to stay alive – an act that was difficult to detect, because by this time so many planes were no longer airworthy. It was to conceal the embarrassing presence of these reluctant suicide pilots that the army established the Shinburyō, where ‘failed’ suicide pilots were confined, disciplined and punished until they were ready to ‘volunteer’ once more, and were then released to be sent to their deaths. Around 80 pilots are believed to have been confined there by the end of the war.39

Two shrines of remembrance As Okinawa and Iwojima fell to the Americans, as the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even as Japan surrendered, ‘orders to attack’ continued to be issued, and young men continued to be sent to futile deaths as suicide pilots. With hindsight, we see the end of the war approaching, and know that Pak In-jo will survive, but in June, July and early August 1945, all that Pak himself could see was interminable war and the inescapable approach of his death sentence. When I spoke to him in 2008 he remarked, ‘I would have been willing to die fighting in battle, but not like that’. He told his story of survival with a wry cynicism, the words cracking apart into laughter at the folly of it all. By the time he returned to Chiran from Kikuchi, the rainy season had begun, and his plane was damaged by the torrents of rain that descended on southern Kyushu in the last summer of the war. Again sent back to Kikuchi for repairs, he was forced by engine trouble to make an emergency landing at a naval airbase en route. Japan’s military was plagued, not only by a worsening lack of equipment, but also by chronic rivalries between the army and navy, and the naval command at the base refused to contact the army staff at Kikuchi on his behalf. Unfamiliar with the airfield, Pak managed to steer his plane into a concealed drain as he was attempting to take off, further damaging the already battered craft. Towards the end of July, he headed back to Chiran but was forced by bad weather to land instead at the nearby Bansei airbase, where he was confined in a punishment cell for his repeated absences and insubordination. By the time he emerged, most of the remaining pilots from Bansei had been sent north to Nagoya to prepare for the anticipated US assault on the main islands off Japan. Many of those left in Kyushu – the pilots released from the Shinburyō and other miscellaneous stragglers – had gathered in a large inn nearby, the Flying Dragon Inn (Hiryūsō), where Pak joined them. They became known as members of the ‘squadron of delinquents’ (guren taiin).40 Pak recalls how the young woman who had befriended him in Chiran somehow discovered his whereabouts, and walked the 20 km from Chiran to look for him. And then suddenly, his laughter seemed no longer to be laughter but tears. Pak wept when he remembered the young woman and her mother who had cared for

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him. He cried for their humanity in the midst of inhumanity; but also, I think, for the profundity of loss – lost lives, lost friendships and memories. In a world turned upside down, Pak In-jo and others like him were about to be abandoned, left to drift into an unimaginable future by the collapsing empire that had demanded the gift of their lives. On the morning of 15 August 1945, Pak In-jo and a group of fellow survivors at Bansei finally received their ‘order to attack’. The officers told them that conditions on the front line were unknown: reconnaissance aircraft had been sent out to gather information in advance of the attack, but none had returned. The only parting message from the army command was ‘we pray for your success’. The tokkō planes were laden with 250 kg bombs, which made them dangerous if not impossible to land once they had taken off. Before departing on their mission, the pilots were given a special breakfast including unheard of luxuries such as a large bar of chocolate, and a sandwich which (Pak believed) was laced with methamphetamine to speed the pilots on their journey.41 Pak In-jo had an abscess on one knee, which had been left untreated because no proper medical care was available. His leg was badly swollen and painful, and he was feeling feverish and dizzy as he boarded his plane for the final take off. As his plane lifted off the runway just behind the leader of this small squad of five or six aircraft, the pain and stiffness in his leg made him unable to manipulate the controls, and he plummeted back to earth again. For one long moment he was seized by terror, convinced that the bomb below his seat was about to explode as his plane careered uncontrollably down the runway, clipping the wings of two other aircraft before finally coming to rest, still intact, in a camouflaged dugout. The planes that soared skyward as he climbed shakily from his cockpit were the last to fly a suicide mission before Japan’s surrender.42 Pak In-jo remained on the ground. By now the army command knew that the end had come. It has been suggested that, in issuing an order to attack on the morning of the very last day of the war, senior officers were exacting revenge on the ‘squadron of delinquents’.43 At midday of the same day, Pak and the handful of remaining pilots were ordered to gather and listen to a radio broadcast by the Emperor. Hearing the Emperor’s voice for the first time, Pak In-jo and his comrades could make no sense of the ambiguous and euphemistic phrases of courtly Japanese, spoken in a high, quavering voice and broadcast throughout the empire on crackling, static-laden radio waves. ‘I didn’t understand a word of it,’ he recalled, ‘and when I asked the others, they said, “Hm, probably His Majesty is asking us to keep up the good fight”.’ It was only the following morning, as he prepared again for his sortie, that Pak In-jo realized that services would no longer be needed. The war was over. He was sent to Chiran, where about 30 surviving pilots and support staff had gathered for demobilization, and where the surviving suicide pilots were ordered to hand in their weapons. Pak In-jo observed that most (including himself) chose to keep and conceal their pistols. Pak also salvaged and kept the tubular red steering column from his aircraft, which was hanging on the wall of his house in Kanazawa when he died more than six decades later. Then he was dismissed – free to go, cut loose into the chaos, to return from his unachieved death and attempt to rediscover

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his life. He travelled to Kumamoto and finally found his way on slow, irregular and desperately overcrowded trains back to Kanazawa. Everywhere, confused and displaced people laden with backpacks and belongings were on the move. Pak’s family initially planned to return to Korea after the war, but transport was hard to arrange. Those who had been brought to Japan as forced labourers had priority in the repatriation process, and as the family awaited a chance to return, the political situation in Korea deteriorated. In 1946, Pak In-jo joined the newly formed Korean League, created to represent and protect the interests of Koreans still living in post-war Japan. He attended classes run by the League in Tokyo, where he studied Korean language and learnt a new version of recent history: a Korean version totally at odds with everything that he had been taught before. On his return to Kanazawa, he became involved in the search for the remains of the nationalist martyr Yoon Bong-gil. By the late 1940s he had risen to be an official in the local branch of the Korean League, but ultimately resigned because he felt that the organization tried to exert too much control over its members’ lives. After the outbreak of the Korean War, he was contacted by a prominent member of the Korean community in Osaka, who suggested that he should volunteer to serve in the North Korean military (which was attempting to create its own airforce). But by then Pak In-jo had had enough of war. Rather than smuggling himself across the sea to North Korea and retuning to the front line, he chose to remain in Kanazawa. He worked as an electrician, married, and devoted his spare time to the tasks of protecting the rights and preserving the memories of Koreans in Kanazawa, developing connections between his home city and Korea, and above all honouring the memory of Yoon Bong-gil. In 1952, at the end of the allied occupation, the Japanese government unilaterally rescinded the Japanese nationality of former colonial subjects, including those still living in Japan. In the process, Koreans and Taiwanese who had served in the Japanese imperial forces were redefined as foreigners and deprived of their right to military pensions. For the Japanese state, the traces of empire that survived on the soil of Japan were uncomfortable reminders of lost dreams and humiliated power. These traces, as far as possible, were to be removed, ignored or rendered invisible. In this world of forgetting, Pak In-jo created and sustained two memorials, one public and one private. The public, visible memorial stood on the Kanazawa hillside where Yoon Bong-gil had died. The private and largely invisible one was tucked away in a corner of the house where Pak lived out the rest of his life. Although in some ways they stood in antithesis to one another, the two memorials were also similar. They were places full of small, mundane objects that linked past to present; for memory is not just a matter of mental images, but a process that engages all the senses: ‘the artifact can provoke the emergence, the awakening of layered memories, and thus the senses contained within it. The object invested with sensory memory speaks . . .’.44 In the Yoon Bong-gil memorial there were photos of Yoon and of various commemorations of his life and death, gifts from Yoon’s family, incense sticks, a Korean bell and the music that issued from Pak’s specially designed cabinet of recorded Korean national songs (see Figure 8.3). Working with Zainichi Koreans

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Figure 8.3 Pak In-jo’s public memorial.

Figure 8.4 Pak In-jo’s private memorial.

and some Japanese supporters, from the 1980s onward Pak not only campaigned for and created this site of memory, but also arranged visits by Korean groups to the place of Yoon’s execution and organized study tours from Japan to sites in Korea linked to Yoon’s life. By bringing Japanese and Koreans into contact with the physical landscapes and objects of the executed nationalist’s existence, he helped to make visible the material traces of empire that the state sought so eagerly to erase. The second, private memorial nestled under the roof beams of Pak In-jo’s living-room (see Figure 8.4). It contained a piece of 1940s rail track from the time when he had worked with Japan National Railways; a photograph of a young and

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vulnerable looking Pak in his Japanese army pilot’s uniform; the steering column of his suicide plane (which he had expected to hold in his hands as he died); and the tools of his trade as an electrician in post-war Japan. Through these tangible objects, Pak In-jo clung to the reality of a past which the devastating forces of political change threatened to sweep away. The objects that he collected knitted together the moments of his fractured life. These objects said: the past is real. Ideologies change; disasters and deeds of heroism are forgotten; labels are created and discarded. But the things that humans have experienced can never be un-experienced. They never go away; and they alter everything that happens afterwards. The Korean pilots who returned to South Korea and helped build that country’s air force became members of a new military elite, but those like Pak who stayed in Japan remained part of a marginalized minority. When I met him in 2008, he had recently approached the Japanese authorities to see whether he might be eligible for a pension on the grounds of his brief service with Japan National Railways in the 1940s. His application was unsuccessful, but he had been told that, 63 years after the end of the war, the Japanese government was considering finally introducing a law to grant pensions to surviving colonial subjects who had served in the war-time military. Something, it seemed, might be done about this in the course of the next year. Nothing came of these hopes, though; and on 9 October 2009 Pak In-jo, out walking his dog in the Kanazawa autumn evening, was struck down by a heart attack and died before he could reach hospital. A large gathering of people from Kanazawa and beyond attended his wake, remembering him, not as a surviving kamikaze pilot, but as the man who preserved the memory of Yoon Bong-gil. There is no public monument to honour the life of Pak In-jo, but not long after his death his friends and family planted a fir tree in Kanazawa to remember him.

History and the ethics of survival The value of history, as mid-twentieth-century British historian Herbert Butterfield once observed, lies in ‘the richness of its recovery of the concrete life of the past’, in its concern for the ‘web spun out of the play of time and circumstance’. Rethinking the complexities of the colonial past demands attention to the fine threads of that web. But I do not believe that this attention prevents us from making value judgments about the past, or confines the historian (as Butterfield wished to do) to the role of ‘detective’ rather than the role of ‘judge’.45 At least in as far as the recent past is concerned, we cannot help making value judgments; for the past flows seamlessly into the present, and therefore, if we are unable to apply ethics to the past, we also become incapable of applying them to the present. As E. P. Thompson put it, the past ‘has always been, among other things, the result of an argument about values. In recovering that process. . . we must, insofar as the discipline can enforce, hold our own values in abeyance. But once history has been recovered, we are at liberty to offer our judgment on it.’ Our judgement, he added, must be

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appropriate to the circumstances and ideas of the era we study. As historians in dialogue with the past, we must try to reach a reasonable conclusion about the options that were open to the people of that time and place. But having done so, we can endorse some actions and choices and express regret at others. Our ‘vote’ on the paths taken by people in the past will, as Thompson put it, change nothing: and yet, in another sense, it may change everything. For we are saying that these values . . . are the ones which make this history meaningful to us, and that these are the values that we intend to enlarge and sustain in our own present . . . In the end we also will be dead, and our own lives will lie inert within the finished process, our intentions assimilated within a past event which we never intended. What we may hope is that the men and women of the future will reach back to us, will affirm and renew our meanings, and make our history intelligible within their present tense.46 There have been individuals in recent history who have performed extraordinary acts of courage and self-sacrifice. There have also been those who have profited from the misery of others, or who have betrayed their families, their friends or their own ideals. And there have been those who, in devoting themselves to ideals they believed in, have brought untold suffering to the people around them. But these are the exceptional extremes in a vast and complex landscape, where most people struggle to chart an acceptable path through the jungles of everyday life and of conflicting moral responsibilities. This journey becomes particularly arduous and hazardous in societies like modern Korea, which have experienced colonial subjugation, war and civil war. It becomes yet more arduous for those who have lived their lives across boundaries, not only as colonized people but also as migrant minorities in the colonizing power; and above all for boundary crossers living in the politically charged environment of war and Cold War. It is, I think, becoming easier now to explore the complexities of the wide terrain of colonial history. In doing so, we should forget neither the violence, nor those who profited from that violence, nor the courage of those who resisted. But now at last, I hope, we can start to find a greater place in our memorialization of the past for people like Pak In-jo, whose path through the landscape of history was circuitous and idiosyncratic. Volunteer recruit to the Japanese imperial forces, reluctant suicide pilot, Korean community activist, guardian of the grave of a national hero, Pak In-jo in the end was one of that important category of people whose contribution to history is, above all, to survive; and in surviving, to remember.

Notes 1 The squadrons are generally referred to in Japanese as tokkōtai, an abbreviation of tokubetsu kōgekitai (special attack squadrons). Although the terms ‘kamikaze’ and ‘suicide pilots’ are not generally used in Japanese, I use them here because they are the most familiar terms in English. The term ‘gamikaje’ is sometimes used in Korean.

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2 Yamaguchi Takashi, Tasha no Tokkō: Chōsenjin Tokkōhei no Kioku, Gensetsu, Jitsuzō, Tokyo: Shakai Hyōronsha, 2010; plans for a memorial dated back to the 1980s, and had attracted ongoing controversy; see Bae Yeong-mi, Sakai Hiromi and Nogi Kaori, ‘Chōsenjin Tokkōtaiin ni Kansuru Hitokōsatsu’, in Morimura Toshimi ed., Shikaku Hyōshō to Shūgōteki Kioku – Rekishi, Genzai, Sensō, Tokyo: Junpōsha, 2006, pp. 255–88. 3 ‘ “Gamikaje Uiryeongbi” ap e seon Ilbon Yeobaeu ui Nunmul’, Ohmynews, 10 May 2008. Available online: http://photo.media.daum.net/photogallery/culture/0804_ culturenews/view.html?photoid=3102&newsid=20080510165510497&p=ohmynews [Accessed 16 August 2011]; Yamaguchi Takashi, Tasha no Tokkō: Chōsenjin Tokkōhei no Kioku, Gensetsu, Jitsuzō, Tokyo: Shakai Hyōronsha, 2010, pp. 61–2; Bae Yeonbong, Chōsenjin Tokkōtai: ‘Nihonjin’ toshite Shinda Eireitachi, Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho, 2009, pp. 108–9. 4 Bae Yeon-Bong, Chōsenjin Tokkōtai: ‘Nihonjin’ toshite Shinda Eireitachi, Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho, 2009, pp. 156–62. 5 See for example Bae Yeon-Bong, Chōsenjin Tokkōtai: ‘Nihonjin’ toshite Shinda Eireitachi, Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho, 2009. 6 ‘New Korea–Japan Era’, Korea Times, 1 May 2010. Available online: http://www. koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinion/2012/10/202_58471.html [accessed 7 September 2011]. 7 Bae Yeong-mi, Sakai Hiromi and Nogi Kaori, ‘Chōsenjin Tokkōtaiin ni Kansuru Hitokōsatsu’, in Morimura Toshimi ed., Shikaku Hyōshō to Shūgōteki Kioku – Rekishi, Genzai, Sensō, Tokyo: Junpōsha, 2006, p. 256. 8 On colonial Korean media depictions of the Korean tokkō pilots, see Bae Yeong-mi, Sakai Hiromi and Nogi Kaori, ‘Chōsenjin Tokkōtaiin ni Kansuru Hitokōsatsu’, in Morimura Toshimi ed., Shikaku Hyōshō to Shūgōteki Kioku – Rekishi, Genzai, Sensō, Tokyo: Junpōsha, 2006, pp. 255–8. 9 The film’s Japanese co-director was the renowned film maker Imai Tadashi; see ‘Il Haegun edo Joseonin Gamikaje Teukkongdae isseotda’, Chugan Joseon, no. 2117, 9 August 2010. Available online: http://weekly.chosun.com/client/news/print.asp?nNe wsNumb=002117100008&ctcd=C04 [Accessed 21 August 2012]. 10 Albert Axell, ‘The Kamikaze Mindset’, History Today, September 2002, 52(9): 3–4; Raymond Lamont-Brown similarly writes. every Japanese soldier, sailor and airman believed that he had a sacred mission. This was to die for the Emperor . . . Consequently it was never necessary to command a Japanese fighting man to fight to the last round, then perish; for to turn one’s back on the enemy and flee brought dishonour to the name and to Dai Nippon Teikoku (Empire of Great Japan). Raymond Lamont-Brown, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Samurai, London: Arms and Armour, 1997, pp. 18–9 11 Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods, London: Longman, 2002, pp. 164–8; Kase was a leading member of the team who produced the 2001 movie Merdeka which, like For Those We Love, presents wartime Japan as a benign liberator of Asia. 12 Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods, London: Longman, 2002, p.167. 13 Bae Yeong-Mi, Chōsenjin Tokkōtai: ‘Nihonjin’ toshite Shinda Eireitachi, Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho, 2009, p. 43. 14 This point was emphasized in a documentary broadcast by the Japanese national broadcaster NHK as part of a series commemorating the centenary of the Japanese annexation of Korea: NHK Special Nihon to Chōsen Hantō, episode 3, first broadcast 20 June 2010; Axell and Kase also note that Kim Sang-Pil was posthumously promoted two steps, from second lieutenant to captain, ‘as was the custom for Special Attack pilots’;

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see Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods, London: Longman, 2002, p. 165. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002, Chapter 5. NHK Special Nihon to Chōsen Hantō, episode 3, first broadcast 20 June 2010. Yeong-Mi Bae, Chōsenjin Tokkōtai: ‘Nihonjin’ toshite Shinda Eireitachi, Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho, 2009, pp. 39–40. Axell and Kase state that Kim, having led his squadron to Okinawa, landed his plane at an Okinawan base and reported the success of the mission, and then ‘boarded his plane and took off, shortly afterwards hurtling himself at the target below: a huge American off-shore fleet’. Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods, London: Longman, 2002, p. 167. It was, however, absolutely unprecedented for a tokkō pilot to land on Okinawa (then under heavy US attack) to report on his mission. The fact that Kim did so has given rise in some quarters to speculation that he in fact deserted and flew his plane from Okinawa to China. There is, however, no evidence to support this supposition, and nothing is known about Kim’s movements after his unscheduled landing in and take off from an Okinawan airfield. The most likely hypothesis is that he crashed somewhere into the sea off Okinawa. See Yeong-Mi Bae, Chōsenjin Tokkōtai: ‘Nihonjin’ toshite Shinda Eireitachi, Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho, 2009, pp. 27–34. See Yamaguchi Takashi, Tasha no Tokkō: Chōsenjin Tokkōhei no Kioku, Gensetsu, Jitsuzō, Tokyo: Shakai Hyōronsha, 2010, p. 51. Yoshikuni Igarashi, ‘Kamikaze Today: The Search for National Heroes in Contemporary Japan’, in Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter eds, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 99–121, quotation from p. 112; the ‘Japanese-centred’ narrative of the film is also noted by Yamaguchi Takashi; see Yamaguchi Takashi, Tasha no Tokkō: Chōsenjin Tokkōhei no Kioku, Gensetsu, Jitsuzō, Tokyo: Shakai Hyōronsha, 2010, pp. 65–6. In For Those We Love, Tak’s rendering of the song appears merely personal and forlorn, while in Firefly it is a proud affirmation of his Korean origins. Akabane Reiko, whose mother ran the restaurant where Tak sang Arirang before his mission and who witnessed the event, depicts him as expressing deep ambivalence about his Korean identity (see Akabane Reiko and Ishii Hiroshi, Hotaru Kaeru, Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2001, p. 133–6). Axell and Kase tell us that he prefaced the song by saying ‘I want to go on a special attack mission at the earliest possible moment for our Empire’ (though there is considerable room for doubt about the authenticity of these words); see Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods, London: Longman, 2002, p. 165. Susannah Radstone, ‘What Place is This? Transcultural Memory and the Locations of Memory Studies’, Parallax, 2011, 17(4): 109–23, quotation from p. 117. Mae-Hyeon was the name bestowed on Yoon Bong-gil by his teacher when Yoon established his own rural school. On Yoon Bong-Gil’s life, see Yun Bong-gil Ueisa Ueigeo Jye–60junyeon Kinyeom Saop Chujin Uiweonhoi ed., Dorok: Yun Bong-Gil Ueisa, Seoul: Bime, 1992; Kim Hak-chun (trans. Pak Soon-In) Yoon Bong-Gil: Sono Shisō to Sokeseki, Tokyo: Sairyûsha, 2010. These photographs and other documents relating to Yoon’s interrogation and execution are preserved in the online archives of the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (Ajia Rekishi Shiryō Sentā): http://www.jacar.go.jp/ [Accessed 21 August 2012]. Chun Doo-hwan was an army general who seized power following the assassination of Park Chun-hee in 1979. In May 1980, he was responsible for the brutal suppression of a protest uprising in the city of Gwangju, resulting in many civilian deaths. He held the position of president from 1980 to 1988, but following the democratization of South Korea was tried and sentenced to death for his role crushing the Gwangju Uprising. His

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sentence was later commuted by Kim Dae-jung when the latter was elected to the presidency in 1997. ‘ “Kim Gu neun Tereoriseuteu” rago han jeok eoptda’, Ohmynews, 13 August 2007 Available online: http://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_ CD=A0000428072 [Accessed 21 August 2012]. G. N. Garmonsway and J. Simpson, The Penguin English Dictionary, (Second Edition) London: Penguin Books, 1969, p. 727. Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 5. Zainichi Koreans literally means “Koreans resident in Japan”, and is a term normally applied to Koreans who migrated to Japan during the colonial era and their descendents. ‘Hantō Shōnen, Amahare Taikū e Tobidatsu’, Hokkoku Shinbun, 20 October 1943, article copy supplied by Pak In-jo. Except where otherwise indicated, details of Pak In-jo’s life are derived from a recorded interview conducted with Pak In-jo, Kanazawa, 28–29 June 2008. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Ikuta Makoto, Rikugun Kōkūtai Tokubetsu Kōgekitai Shi, Tokyo: Bijinesu Sha, 1977, p. 155. See Ikuta Makoto, Rikugun Kōkūtai Tokubetsu Kōgekitai Shi, Tokyo: Bijinesu Sha, 1977. Bae Yeong-mi, Sakai Hiromi and Nogi Kaori, ‘Chōsenjin Tokkōtaiin ni Kansuru Hitokōsatsu’, in Morimura Toshimi ed., Shikaku Hyōshō to Shūgōteki Kioku – Rekishi, Genzai, Sensō, Tokyo: Junpōsha, 2006, p. 256. See ‘104 Shinbutai’, from the website Shinbutai Henseihyō: http://www5b.biglobe. ne.jp/~s244f/shinbutai_hensei–078.htm [Accessed 2 August 2011]; see also the Japanese Wikipedia entry on Miyakawa Saburō (the squadron’s most famous member). Available online: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/宮川三郎 [Accessed 23 August 2012]. Five members of Pak’s squadron flew to their deaths from the Bansei Airbase at Kaseta, Kyushu (close to Chiran) on 12 April 1945, and four more flew their missions on 13 April. One, Igarashi Jirō, flew to his death on 28 April. Miyakawa Saburō had departed on the 12 April mission, but turned back because of engine trouble. He was redeployed to the Chiran base on 11 May, and flew to his death on a mission on 6 June 1945. On the evening before his death, Miyakawa visited the Tomiya restaurant in Chiran, which was frequented by suicide pilots. Knowing that he was about to die, he consoled the restaurant’s owner, Torihama Tome (who had become a close confidant), by telling her that he would return after death as a firefly. According to the memoirs of Torihama’s daughter, Akabane Reiko, on the day of Miyakawa’s death, a firefly flew in through the window of the restaurant, and she and her mother interpreted this as a sign that Miyakawa’s spirit had returned to them. The story of the ‘firefly tokkō’ was made famous by Akabane’s memoirs, and provides a core theme for the movies For Those We Love and Firefly. See Akabane and Ishii, Hotaru Kaeru, pp. 160–7. Pak and one other pilot were the squadron’s only survivors. On the history of the Shinburyō, see Hayashi Eidai, Rikugun Tokkō Shinburyō: Seikansha no Shūryō Shisetsu, Tokyo: Tōhō Shuppan, 2007; also the NHK Special documentary Gakutohei: Yurusarezaru Kikan – Rikugun Tokkōtai no Higeki, first broadcast 21 October 2007. Hayashi Eidai, Rikugun Tokkō Shinburyō: Seikansha no Shūryō Shisetsu, Tokyo: Tōhō Shuppan, 2007, p. 277. Hayashi Eidai, Rikugun Tokkō Shinburyō: Seikansha no Shūryō Shisetsu, Tokyo: Tōhō Shuppan, 2007, p. 276. On the use of methamphetamine in the Japanese imperial forces, see for example Leslie

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Iversen, Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin: The Science of Amphetamines, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 116. Many official accounts give the date of the last ‘order to attack’ as 13 August 1945, and many also note that Vice-Admiral Ugaki Matome and a small group of other pilots deliberately flew to their deaths immediately after Hirohito announced the surrender (see for example Ikuta Makoto, Rikugun Kōkūtai Tokubetsu Kōgekitai Shi, Tokyo, Bijinusa Sha, 1977; Raymond Lamont-Brown, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Samurai, London: Arms and Armour, 1997, pp. 168–71; Denis Warner and Peggy Warner, Kamikaze: The Sacred Warriors, 1944–45, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983). Hayashi Eisai’s account of the Shinburyō, which draws on the accounts of its former inmates, is one of the few books to describe the 15 August mission (and also notes the aborted take off of one of its planes). Hayashi Eidai, Rikugun Tokkō Shinburyō: Seikansha no Shūryō Shisetsu, Tokyo: Tōhō Shuppan, 2007, p. 277. Hayashi Eidai, Rikugun Tokkō Shinburyō: Seikansha no Shūryō Shisetsu, Tokyo: Tōhō Shuppan, 2007, p. 277. C. Nadia Seremetakis, ‘The Memory of the Senses, Part I: Marks of the Transitory’, in C. Nadia Seremetakis ed., The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity, Boulder: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 1–18. Butterfield did acknowledge that, having conducted their detective work on the past, historians could (as it were) take off their ‘historian’ hats and make moral judgments about the past, but he refused to accept that this was part of the work of the historian himself (Butterfield’s historians were always ‘he’). See Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1951. E. P. Thompson, ‘The Poverty of Theory, or an Orrery of Errors’, in E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays, London: Merlin Press, 1978, pp. 193–397; quotations from p. 234 (emphasis in the original).

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to images ‘n’ refers to notes 3.1 Revolution of 1919 (Korean uprising) 169 9/11 terrorism, portrayal in art 159 38th Parallel 128 1937 Nanjing/Don’t Cry Nanjing (movie) 78 Abagaitu Islet territorial dispute 32–3 abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea 5 academic collaboration and exchange; China–Japan 83, 86, 94–5; East Asia Collaborative Workshop, 88, 91, 93, 95, 99–101; Japan–Korea 49, 58n25, 93–5; North–South Korea 45–7, 57, 58n25 Academy of Korean Studies (South Korea) 45 agreements, declarations and treaties: Armistice Agreement (1953, Korea) 42, 135 142, 147; Complementary Agreement between the Peoples Republic of China and the Russian Federation on the Eastern Section of the China–Russia Boundary (2004) 32–3; Gando Convention (1909) 42; Joint Declaration promoting peace and reconciliation (2000, North–South Korea) 45; Peking Convention (1860) 34; Protocol on State Border Demarcation (2004, North Korea– Russia) 34; Pyongyang Declaration (2002) 5; San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951) 4–5, 30–1, 57, 121; Treaty of Basic Relations (1965, Japan–South Korea) 5; Treaty of Peace (1978,

Japan–China) 5; Treaty of Portsmouth (1905, Japan–Russia) 42 Ahn Jung-geun (An Chung-gun) 122 Ainu 87–8, 91 allied occupation of Japan 15, 119–20, 146 American soldiers: portrayal in Chinese war movies 77; portrayal in Japanese museums 116 amnesia see forgetting animals in war 144–5 anime: portrayal of atomic bombing 160 ‘Anthropometries’ (artwork) 158 apologies: Germany 7; Japan 6–8; Mistubishi Heavy Industries 99; Nishimatsu Construction Company for Korean forced labour 99 apologizers, Japanese 10–11 archives: Korea 133; Red Cross 151; Russia 150–1; Sakhalin (Karafuto) 97; United States 118, 136 Arirang (Korean song) 168 Armistice Agreement (1953, Korea) 42, 135 142; portrayal in museums 147 Armstrong, Charles, 52 art and artists 21, 36–7, 65–6, 82, 113, 120, 153–61; and memory 21, 153–5; see also photography; sculpture ‘Articles Left by Three Students’ (photograph) 156 Asian Women’s Fund 3, 10 Asia-Pacific War 164–85; 50th anniversary 6, 93; forced labour 87–93, 96, 100; suicide pilots 164–85; veterans 20, 87–9; see also Sino-Japanese War, Second (1937–1945) Aso Tarō 88

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Association of Shinto Shrines 21 Association of War-Disabled Korean Veterans in Japan 121 atomic bombings 31, 180; compensation 22n14; historiographical dispute 31; ‘cute’ (kawaii) and ‘nerd’ (otaku) cultures as response 160; memorials and museums 94, 113, 155, portrayal in art and photography 21, 153–61 August First Studio (Chinese military film studio) 67 Australia: 144–5; ‘forgetting’ of Korean War 128; in Cold War conflicts 147; in Korean War 137; see also prisoners of war Australian War Memorial 144–7 Autumn Rain (Qiuyu) (movie) 64, 72 Axell, Albert 166 B-52 Bomber (US) in War Memorial of Korea 131, 133, 134 Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism 51–2 Balhae/Bohai cultural and territorial dispute 31, 41 Barkan, Elazar 8 Basic Treaty see Treaty of Basic Relations (1965, Japan–South Korea) 5 Battle of Kapyong 145 Battle of Okinawa 108, 114 Battle of the River Cheongcheon (Qingchuan) 141, 144 Bend it Like Beckham (movie) 53 biological warfare 30–1; portrayal in museums 142 ‘Black Fireworks’ (artwork) 159–60 Black Sun: The Nanjing Massacre (Heitaiyang: Nanjing Datusha) (movie) 78 Bleiker, Roland 48, 148 blogs see cyberspace Blood Brothers /Secret Reunion (Eui Hyeongje) (movie) 54 Bohai/Balhae cultural and territorial dispute 31, 41 Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island/Heixiazi Island territorial dispute 32–3 Bonner, Nicholas 52–3 book banning by South Korea 51 Breen, John 107–8, 114, 116 ‘bridal doll marriage’ (mukasari) 115–16; ‘Bridal Dolls Dedicated to Heroic Souls’ (exhibition) 115

Bridges at Toko-ri, The (movie) 138, 150 British Empire and forgetting 18–19 British soldiers: portrayal in Japanese museums 116 Brook, Timothy 170 Brotherhood of War (Taegeukgi) (movie) 54 Buddhist temples destroyed during Korean War 37 Butterfield, Herbert 184 Butterflies Bring Reunion (Yuse hudie) (movie) 63, 69 Cai Guo-Qiang 158–60 Cannes Film Festival 56th 73, 75 cannibalism during war 72 Carr, Edward H. 44 Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War Two 120 censorship: books 51; cyberspace 51–2; photographs of atomic bombing aftermath 157 Central Committee of the Buddhist Federation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 37 Central Intelligence Agency (USA): portrayal in South Korean movies 55 Chang Ha-jun 51 Chen, Lillian 51 Cheong Ji-young 53 Children’s Monument (Hiroshima) 155 Chile 18 Chim↑Pom (Tokyo artists) 158–60 China Youth Daily 82 China: Civil War 30; economic rise 13, 144; in Korean War 134; residents’ attitudes to Japan 60–2 China–Japan Intellectual Community Dialogue 58n25 China–Japan joint history project 83, 86 China–Japan relations 5, 60, 68; intermarriage 72; normalization 70 China–North Korea relations: cultural and territorial disputes 9, 31, 139–40; portrayal in museums 139–44 China–Russia territorial disputes 31–3 China–Taiwan territorial dispute 33 China–United States relations 144 Chinese Communist Party 64, 78, 82, 86; portrayal in museums 140 Chinese People’s Volunteers 137,141–4, 151 Chinese soldiers: portrayal in Japanese museums 116

Index Chinese war movies 63–83; see also movies Cho, Grace 19, 129, 146 Chol Pass 138 Chosun Daily 51 Chun Doo-hwan 169–70 Chung Chien-peng 33 City of Life and Death (Nanjing! Nanjing!) (movie) 78–82 civilians in war: employees of Imperial Japanese Army 121; portrayal in museums 134, 138, 146–7 ‘Clear Sky Black Cloud’ (painting)159 Cold War 9, 41–3, 56–7 144, 147–8 collaboration in war 8, 75, 136, 164–7, 170, 173 Collingwood, Robin 43–4 Collins, John 38 colonialism 3, 6, 10, 16, 29–31, 40, 43, 47, 56, 88, 108, 136, 165, 167, 169 combat movies 63, 67; see also movies ‘Comfort Woman’ (statue) 1–3, 2, 122–4 ‘comfort women’ 1–3, 6, 10, 16–17, 19, 31, 80, 115, 179 Communications Secrecy Protection Act (South Korea) 51–2 communism, portrayals in Chinese war movies 64, 78, 82; portrayal in museums 129–30, 140 compensation: cases and claims 22–3; ‘comfort women’ 3; Korean forced labourers 99; Korean victims of atomic bombings 6, 22n14; Korean war criminals 121; Taiwanese recruits to Japanese military 6; Taiwanese wartime bond holders 22n14; see also reparations Complementary Agreement between the Peoples Republic of China and the Russian Federation on the Eastern Section of the China–Russia Boundary 32–3 Confucius 31, 50 Convention of Peking 34 Country of my Skull: Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa 95 Cow (Dounju) (movie) 86 Croce, Benedetto 43 Crossing (movie) 54 cultural disputes 9, 31, 41, 55 cultural studies 17 Cumings, Bruce, 128 cyberspace: activism 50; censorship and control in Korea 50–2; as means of

193

distributing knowledge of history 50; surveillance in North Korea 52 cycloramas in museums 138, 141 Daejeon 138 Damansky Island/Zhenbao Island territorial dispute 31 Dandong memorial see Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (China) ‘Dan-O’/Tano festival (Korea) 50 ‘deliberative approach’ to historiographical disputes 64 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea see North Korea democratization 6, 11–13, 43, 49 ‘demon’ (guizi) Japanese soldier in Chinese war movies 20, 64–7, 70, 82 demonstrations: Armistice Agreement 135; Japan–South Korea treaty 5; about Korean refugees in China 50; Okinawa over history textbooks 115; portrayals in Chinese war movies 75; Russian Cossacks 32; about Tibet 50; Tiananmen Square 67 Deng Xiaoping 62, 67; 1978 visit to Japan 68; 1979 message to art workers 68 denial of history 3, 10, 12, 18, 88, 100 Denton, Kirk 17 Derrida, Jacques 22 Devils on the Doorstep (Guizi Laile) (movie) 63–4, 73, 75–82 Diaoyu Islands/Senkaku Islands territorial dispute 3, 30–1, 62 dioramas in museums 120, 135, 138, 145 directors see documentary films; movies disabled Japanese soldiers; pensions 119, 121; portrayal in museums 119–21 documentary films 49; atomic bombing 158; Korean War 129, 147; North Korea 53, 56, 129; suicide pilots 186n14 Dog King (Quan Wang) (movie) 67 Dokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt Rocks territorial dispute 30–1 Don’t Cry Nanjing/1937 Nanjing (movie) 78 Double Agent (Ijung Gacheob) (movie) 54 Dower, John 123, 153 Dream Geumgang: Mount Geumgang as Seen through 300 Years of Art (art exhibition in South Korea) 36–7 Dudden, Alexis 8 Dulles, John Foster 136

194

Index

Dumangang/Tumen River territorial dispute 34 East Asia Collaborative Workshop, 88, 91, 93, 95, 99–101 East Asia Historical Forum for Critique and Solidarity 58n25 East Sea/Sea of Japan territorial dispute 30–1 Eastwood, Clint 129 economic competition 30; China 13, 144 economic cooperation between North and South Korea 35–6 Ehime Women’s History Circle 93–4 Eighth Route Army: portrayals in Chinese war movies 64–7 electronic media see cyberspace; mass media empire and forgetting 18–19 Evidence of Massacre (Tucheng Xuezheng) (movie) 78 Faisons la Reconciliation Franco-Allemande (Let us Create Franco-German Reconciliation) (pamphlet) 12 family portrayals: in Chinese war movies 67–72; in Japanese museums 107, 110, 112, 118 family reunions in Korea 36 family separation in Korea; portrayal in movies 55 Fatherland Liberation War Museum see Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum (North Korea) feminism 6 films and film-makers see documentary films; movies Firefly (Hotaru) (movie) 167–8 Fire in the Mist: The Nine Girls Who Perished at the Karafuto-Maoka Post Office (Kiri no hi: Karafuto Maoka Yūbinkyoku ni chitta kyūnin no otometachi) (movie) 115 Fire Paintings (artworks) 158 ‘First Korean War’ 41–2 Flowers of War (Shisan Chai) (movie) 86 forced labour: Asia-Pacific War 87–93, 96, 99, 100; ‘Lily Corps’ (Japanese school girls) 114–15, 120; repatriation of Koreans 182, 100–1; Uryū Dam 91–3, 96–7, 96, 100 forcible transportation (kyōsei renkō) 88–90

forgetting 144; of atrocities 153–4; by British Empire 18–19; culture of 18–19, 21; by United States and allies 128 For Reconciliation (book) 12 For Those We Love (Ore wa, Kimi no tame koso Shini ni Iku) (movie) 166–8 ‘Forgotten War’ 128–9, 139; see also Korean War Forum for Historical Consiousness and East Asian Peace 58n25 Founding of the Republic, The (Jianguo Daye) (movie) 86 France 8, 12, 17, 49 Fukuzawa Yukichi 108 Gaesong, tours conducted by Koryo Tours 52 Gaesong Industrial Park 36–7 Gaesong Special Economic Zone 37 Game of Their Lives, The (movie) 53 gamikaje see suicide pilots Gando Convention (1909) 42 Gando/Jiandao territorial dispute 42 Gaoguloi/Goguryeo disputed cultural relics 31, 41, 50; portrayal in movies 55 Gayle, Curtis 93 gender and museum displays 114 Geneva Convention, 1949 147, 151 geographical disputes see territorial disputes Germany: Holocaust 11, 17; reparations for forced labour 6; war criminals 8 ghosts: Hokkaidō 98; Korean War 129; Vietnam 97–8 Gibbons, Joan 157 ‘Goddess of Peace’ (sculpture) 113 Goethe-Institut 49 Goguryeo/Gaogouli cultural relics dispute 31, 41, 50; portrayal in movies 55 Go Masters (movie) 69–71 Gordon, Avery 19 Gordon, Daniel 53, 58n44, 59n43 Gran Torino (movie) 129 grassroots history movements 88, 103n27 Grassroots House Peace Museum 94 Great Britain: culture of forgetting 18–19, 128; in Korean War 137 Great Korean Empire 42 ‘Greater East Asia War’ 110, 112 Grimm, Freidrich 12 Guerrillas of the Plain (Pingyuan Youjidui) (movie) 65, 67, 75

Index Guomindang: portrayal in movies 75–80, 82, 86 Gwangju Uprising and Massacre 9, 187 Ha Jin 129, 143 Ha My Massacre 97 Haebaru Army Field Hospital 114–15 Hands Up (Juqi Shoulai) (movie) 67 Hanjok peoples (ancient Korea) 46 ‘haunting’ of victims of war 19–20, 43, 97, 129 Haunting the Korean Diaspora 146 Hayashi Ryūko 94, 98 He Baogang 31 Hein, Laura 116 Heixiazi Island/Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island territorial dispute 32–3 heroisim: portrayal in museums 138, 146–7 Hero: The Musical 122 Himeyuri Gakutotai (’Lily Corps’ of school-girl nurses) 114–15, 120 Hinago Jitsuzō 112 Hiroshima see atomic bombings Hiroshima Art Prize, 7th 158 Hiroshima Collection 156 Hiroshima Monument II 161 Hiroshima Nagasaki 156 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park 94, 153–61, 154 Hiroshima (photobook) 157 historians, 29, 45–7, 49,57, 83, 86, 88, 91–5, 92, 99, 143, 148; see also academic collaboration and exchange Historical Materials Hall for the Wounded and Sick Retired Soldiers (Tokyo) 107 historical responsibility: 4–12, 14, 21, 23n22; 88, 93, 95 historiographical conflicts 29; Korea 40, 43–7, 57 historiographical reconciliation: 31, 47–9, 57, 154 history textbooks 14–17, 44, 48–9, 115; see also Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform History that Opens the Future: The Contemporary and Modern History of Three East Asian Countries, A 48–9 Hoang, Young-jin 148 Hokkaido, 87–8, 91–4, 96–8 Holocaust 11, 17

195

Hong Kong: residents’ attitudes to Japan 61–2; transition from British to Chinese rule 62 Hōnoki see Pak In-jo Hosokawa Morihiro, 1993 speech of apology 6–7 Huang Jianxin 86 Hundt, David 31, 48 Hyundai Asan Corporation 36–7 Ide Michio 156 Ienaga Saburō 15 Igarashi Yoshikuni 168 Illusive Utopia: Theatre, Film and Everyday Performance in North Korea 18 Ilmin Art Gallery (Seoul) 36 Imai Tadashi 186 Imperial Japanese Army: Korean and Taiwanese civilian employees 121 Incheon Landing 130 inter-marriage, Chinese–Japanese 72 International Committee of the Red Cross 143, 151 International Labour Organization 90 International Women’s Day 94 internet see cyberspace Irokawa, Daikichi 94 Ishihara Shintarō 166 Ishiuchi Miyako 157 Itō Hirobumi 122 Ivanov, A. M. 151 Ivy, Marilyn 154 Iwanami Shoten 156 Jae Man-jin 92 Jager, Sheila Miyoshi 9, 128, 131–2 Japan: Chinese tourists 60; colonialism 165–6, 169; colonization 91; demilitarization 118; imperialism 177; Ministry of Education 15–16; peace constitution 160; people’s attitudes to China 83; post-war reparations agreements 4–5; trade with China 60 Japan Association of War-Bereaved Families 116 Japan–China Collaborative History Research Committee 94 Japan–China joint history project 83, 86, 94–5 Japan–China relations 5, 60–8; intermarriage 72; normalization 70 Japanese culture, popularity in China 61–2 Japanese Red Cross Society 114

196

Index

Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform 7, 15–16, 18, 88, 90, 93, 96, 154 Japanese soldiers: contemporary attitudes to 61–2; portrayal in Chinese war movies 19–21, 64–7, 70, 77, 82 Japan–Korea Collaborative History Research Committee 49, 94–5 Japan–Korea Collaborative Workshop 93 Japan–Korea Joint History Research 94–5 Japan–Korea relations 2–3, 5, 165 Japan–Philippines relations 5 Japan Teachers’ Union 21 Jeju Island 93, 133, 143; prisoner-of-war camp 143 Jiando/Gando territorial dispute 42 Jiang Wen 82 Jiji shinpō 108 Jin Jang 54 Jizō statues 98 Jogye Order of Buddhism (South Korea) 37 Joint Declaration promoting peace and reconciliation (2000, North and South Korea) 45 Joint Security Area (Gongdong Gyeongbi Guyeok: JSA) (movie) 54 Journals of Musan (Musan Ilgi) (movie) 54 Jucheism (North Korean ideal of selfreliance) 44–6, 58n11; Juche calendar 150 Kal Hong 17 Kamei Fumio 158 kamikaze see suicide pilots Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods 166 Kamiya Yukie 159 Kanazawa see Pak In-jo Kang Dong-won 56 Kang Je-gyu 54 Karafuto/Southern Sakhalin 29, 42, 97, 115 Karlsson, Anders 170 Kase Hideaki 166 Kawabata Sadaji 169 Kawamura Gozō 112–13 Kill ‘em All: The American Military in Korea (BBC documentary) 129 Kim Chong-Rok 47 Kim Dae-jung 35, 43, 132 Kim Gu 169–70 Kim Il-sung 137, 150 Kim Jiyul 131–2 Kim Jong-il 5, 35

Kim Mikyoung 16–17 Kim Sang-pil 166–7, 186n14 Kim Seo-gyeong 3, 123 Kim Suk-young 18 Kim Un-seong 3, 123 Kim Young-sam 171 Kimura Kan 49 Kinoshita Naoyuki 120 Kitamura Seibō 113–14 Klein, Yves 158 Kobayashi Yoshinori 16 Koike Kikō 94 Koizumi Junichirō 5, 7 Koje-Do (Geoje-Do) prisoner-of-war camp 143 Kōkenji 91 Kōno Yōhei 6 Korea 40–57; see also academic and cultural exchanges; cultural disputes; Korean Peninsula; Korean War; museums; North Korea; reconciliation; South Korea; territorial disputes Korea–China territorial disputes 31 Korea Communications Commission 52 Korea International Travel Company 53 Korea–Japan joint history research project 58n25 Korea–Japan Solidarity 58n25 Korean Association of Social Scientists 45 Korean Cultural Wave (Hallyu) 54 Korean League 171, 182 Korean Liberation 1945; portrayal in movies 53 Korean Peninsula 41, 43, 46; conscription 174; negotiations on 128, 130; portrayal in museums 136–7, 139–40; territorial dispute 53, 139–40 Korean People’s Army: portrayal in museums 136–7 Koreans living in postwar Japan (Zainichi Koreans) 89–90, 101–2, 171–2, 182 Korean volunteers in Japanese military 173–5, 180 Korean War 37, 128; armistice 128, 140; and Australia 144–7; and Chinese historians 143; historiographical conflicts 31; lack of treaty 9, 147; portrayal in movies 53–4, 129; portrayal in museums 122, 129–48; Second Korean War 42; Third Korean War 42 Korean War National Museum (USA) 129–30, 139 Korean War Tower 122

Index Koryo Tours travel agency website, banning by South Korea 52–3 Krog, Antjie 5 Kurile Islands territorial dispute 29–33, 42 Kuroda Fukumi 164 Kwon Heonik 97–8 kyōsei renkō see forced labour labour conscription see forced labour Labour Conscription Ordinance, 1944 (South Korea) 89 Lee Myung-bak 2, 37, 51–2, 133, 165 Lee, Steven Hugh 137 Lee Tae-ho 37 Lee Ufan 159 lettters: in museums 146; to the dead 92 Liancourt Rocks/Takeshima/Dokdo territorial dispute 30–1 Life magazine 149 ‘Lily Corps’ (forced labour of Japanese school girls) 114–15, 120 Lim Byung-sik 137 Lind, Jennifer 10–11, 13 Linn, Ruth 18 ‘Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture’(artwork) 160 Lou Ye 74 Love and Vow (Sarang gwa Maengse) (movie) 166 Love Impossible (Namnam buknyeo) (movie) 54 Lu Chuan 78, 82 Macherey, Pierre 128 Mae-Hyeon Memorial Hall 169, 172; see also Yoon Bong-Gil Maek peoples (ancient Korea) 46 Manchuria 31, 34, 41–2, 47, 174–7; portrayal in Chinese war movies 73, 75 Mao Anying 141 Mao Zedong 50: 1942 Yan’an talk on art 65; glorification/‘triple elevation’ (santuchu) portrayal in Chinese war movies 65; and Japan 68 Maoka Post Office (Karafuto) 115 Martin, Bradley 51–2 Maruki Toshi 160 masculinity museum displays 107–8, 110–11, 114–15, 118–19, 121–2 mass media: and historical memory 17; and reconciliation 49–52; see also cyberspace Meiji Era (Japan) 91, 108, 113

197

Meiu Railway: forced labour 91–2 Memorial Hall for Children of the War Dead see Shōwakan war museum Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (China) 130, 139–44 memorials see museums, monuments, memorials and shrines memory 144; and art 21, 153–7; and cyberspace 50; contested memories 130; 154; control 18; memory boxes 129; ‘memory fatigue’ 21; memory studies 17–20; mnemologic turn 17; and museums 120, 130–1; post-memory (secondary memory); public memory 20, 48, 107, 122, 130, 146, 148, 164; transnational 9 Min Jun-gi 55 Mine Warfare (Dileizhan) (movie) 63–5, 67, 75 Minshūshi see Sorachi People’s History Forum Mistubishi Heavy Industries′ apology to forced women labourers 99 Mitter, Rana 9 Miyadai Shinji 90 monuments see museums, monuments, memorials and shrines Mount Baekdu (Changbaishan) 34 Mount Geumgang Tourist Resort Complex (North Korea) 35–7; tours by Koryo Tours 52 Mount Taebaek (Taebaek) (movie) 53 Mount Taihang (Taihangshang Shang) (movie) 67 ‘Mountain Ranges’ (Yamanami) grassroots peace movement 103n27 movies: Chinese war movies 63–83; combat movies 63, 67; South Korean movies 55; see also documentary films Murakami Takashi 160 Murayama Tomiichi, 1995 speech of apology 7 museums, monuments, memorials and shrines: Australian War Memorial 144–7; Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Park 153–8, 154; Mae-Hyeon Memorial Hall 169, 172; Memorial of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (China) 130, 139–44; and memory 120, 130–1; Nagasaki Peace Park 113; National Museum of Korea 45; purpose 147–8; Oka Masaru Memorial Nagasaki Peace

198

Index

Museum, 94; Pak In-jo 183; Shōkeikan war museum 20, 107, 119–21, 123; Shōwakan war museum 20, 107–8, 116–18, 117, 120, 123; Sinchon Museum (North Korea) 138; statues and obelisks for forced Korean labour, Hokkaido 98–9; Taipo memorial (‘antiJapanese heroes’ arch) 83–4; Tak Gyeong-Hyeon 164, 168; takobeya labour 99; Uryū Dam obelisk 99; Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum (North Korea) 135–9, 137; War Memorial of Korea (South Korea) 107, 122–3, 129, 131–3; Yasukuni Shrine; 7, 10, 107–16, 109, 115; Yoon Bong-Gil 169, 171–2; Yūshūkan War Museum 10, 20, 107–9, 110, 114–15, 120, 122 My Lai Massacre 97 Nagasaki 31, 153, 180; Oka Masaru Memorial Nagasaki Peace Museum 94 Nagasaki Peace Park 113 Nanjing Massacre; description in Japanese history textbooks 15–16; contemporary attitudes 60–1; portrayals in Chinese war movies 73, 78, 80, 82, 86 National Intelligence Service (South Korea) 51–2 National Museum of Korea 45 National Sanatorium Hakone Hospital 120 National Security Act 1947 (South Korea) 51–2 nationalism 19, 32; China 9, 62; Japan 10–11, 154, 164, 166; Korea 9, 44–6, 133, 136, 165, 173; Russia 43 Neri, Felino 5 New History of Korea, The (New Edition, 1996) 46 New History Textbook (Japan) 16 New York Times 88 Night Raid (Yexi) (movie) 67 Nihon to Chōsen Hantō (suicide pilots documentary) 186n14 Nishimatsu Construction Company 99 Nishimori Shigeo 94 Noda Yoshihiko 2 Nogi, General (sculpture)113 Nogun-Ri Massacre: portrayal in movies 129 Noktundo Island 33–4 Nora, Pierre 17, 155 Northern Territories/South Kurile territorial dispute 31, 33

North Korea: cyberspace control 51–2; Demilitarized Zone 35–6, 38; documentary films 53, 56, 129; Mount Geumgang Tourist Resort Complex 35–7; Rajin-Seonbong Special Economic Zone (North Korea) 34–5; surveillance of mobile phones 52; tours by Koryo Tours 52 North Korean Partisan in South Korea (movie) 53 North Korea–China relations: portrayal in museums 139–44 North Korea–Russia relations 33–5 North Korea–South Korea relations 35–8, 40–57;128; see also Korean Peninsula; Korean War; reconciliation; Sunshine Policy nurses 114–15, 120, 146 Oakeshott, Michael 43 obelisks 140, 171 Ogawa Ryūkichi 87–8, 101 Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 167, 175, 177 Ōji Paper Company 91, 99 Oka Masaru Memorial Nagasaki Peace Museum 94 Okhotsk People’s History Forum 94, 98 Ōkuma Ujihiro 108 Old Chaoxian/Joseon dispute 41 Ōmura Masujirō statue 108–9 Ōnishi Takajirō 174 orphans: portrayals in Chinese war movies 64 Oshin (Japan TV drama) popularity in China 62 Pacific War: portrayal in history textbook 15; prisoner-of-war camps 121 paintings see art and artists Pak Dong-hoon 167 Pak Hae-bok 100 Pak In-jo 171–85; memorials 183 Pak Wan-seo 146 Panmunjeom 139 panoramas in museums 136 Parhae/Bohai cultural and territorial dispute 41 Park Chan-wook 54 Park Chung-hee 5, 132 Park Wang-ja 37 Park Yu-ha 12–13 Patriot Ahn Jung-geun Memorial Hall 122 peace constitution (Japan) 160 Peace Memorial Park (Hiroshima)155

Index Peace Prayer Hall for Commemoration of the War Dead see Shōwakan war museum Peking Convention (1860) 34 pensions 119, 121, 182 People’s History (Minshūshi) 94 People’s Republic of China see China Philippines–Japan relations 5, 12 photography 120, 129–30, 135–6, 138, 142, 149, 153–7, 161 ‘pika-don’ (atomic blast) 160 Pokrovskii, Mikhail 43 Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaboration with Japanese Imperialism (South Korea) 165–7 prisoners of war: 88–9, 121, 132–3, 142–3, 147, 151n45 Progress of the Country, The (Kuni no Ayumi) 15 propaganda claims: against Koryo Tours 52–3; against United States 150 protests see demonstrations Protocol on State Border Demarcation (2004, North Korea–Russia) 34 Pu Yi 175 Purple Butterfly (Zhi Hudie) (movie) 63–4, 73–5 Pyongyang Declaration (2002) 5 Pyongyang International Film Festival 53 Rabson, Steve 115 Railroad Guerrillas (Tielu Youjidui) (movie) 65 railway projects linking China, Korea and Russia 35 railways, Korean 177 Rajin-Seonbong Special Economic Zone (North Korea) 34–5 rape in war 19, 79, 90, 115, 146; see also ‘comfort women’; women, war crimes against reburials 98–100 reconciliation 9–22, 44,164; and art 37, 153; through film 53–9, 68, 71–2; and geography 31–8, historiographical 16, 24n26, 31, 47–9, 57, 93–5; Japan– Korea 48, 165; and the mass media 49–52; in museums 131–2, 148; North Korea–South Korea 36–57 Red Cross 36; Japanese 114 Remembering the ‘Forgotten War’ 129 reparations, 4–6, 8–9, 12, 31 Republic of China see Taiwan

199

Republic of Korea see South Korea ‘Resistance War’ (kangzhan) 61; portrayals in Chinese war movies 64, 82 return of remains of Korean forced labourers 92–3, 98–100 Reunion Centre for separated Korean families 36 Rhee, Syngman see Yi, Seung-man Ritsumeikan University 156 Roeder, George H. 120 Roh Moo-hyun 35, 131–3, 165 Roh Tae-woo 132 Russia 6; archives 150; invasion of Japan 115 Russia–China territorial disputes 31–3 Russia–North Korea relations 33–5 Russia–South Korea territorial disputes 33–4 Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) 42 sacrifice for war: portrayal in Japanese museums 110–11 Saikung memorial (‘anti-Japanese heroes’ arch) 83–4 Sakhalin (Karafuto) archives 97 ‘Salute of the Injured Soldier’ (statue)113 San Francisco Peace Treaty (1951) 4–5, 30–1, 57, 121 Sankei (newspaper) 150–1 San Sebastian Film Festival 78 Satō Nami 115 school history textbooks see history textbooks Schwartz, Barry 17–18 Schwarz, Bill 18 sculpture 1–3, 109–13, 122–4, 132 Sea of Japan/East Sea territorial dispute 30–1 Seaton, Philip 155 Second Korean War 42 Second Sino-Japanese War: portrayals in Chinese war movies 63–8 Secret Reunion/Blood Brothers (Eui Hyeongje) (movie) 54 Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands territorial dispute 3, 30–1, 33, 62, 83 Seraphim, Franziska 21, 118 shadows and art 1, 3, 120, 123, 158, 161 Shanghai, 1930s; portrayal in Chinese war movies 75–6; photograph 149 Shigemitsu Mamoru 169 Shinburyō (prison for ‘failed’ suicide pilots) 179–80 Shin, Gi-wook 11

200

Index

Shingyesa Buddhist temple (North Korea) Shining Yasukuni Tales (Kagayaku Yasukuni monogatari) 111 Shirai Uzan 113 Shirakwa Yoshinori 169 Shiri (movie) 54 Shōkeikan war museum 20, 107, 119–21, 123 Shōkonsha shrine see Yasukuni Shrine Shōwakan war museum 20, 107–8, 116–18, 117, 120, 123 shrines see museums, monuments, memorials and shrines Shumarinai 91, 96–7 Silk Shoes (Pidan kudu) (movie) 54 Sinchon Museum (North Korea) 138 Sin Yong-ha 46–7 Singapore: memory control over Japanese Occupation 18 Sino-Japanese War, First (1894–1895) 41, 108, 112 Sino-Japanese War, Second (1937–1945) 108; contemporary Chinese attitudes to 60; portrayals in Chinese war movies 60–82 slavery 90 Smith, Kerry 118 So Near Yet So Far (Ying-Sakura) (movie) 63–4, 68–9 Sontag, Susan 157 Sorachi People’s History Forum 87–8, 91, 94, 100 Sound of the Bell of Qingling Temple, The (Qingliangsi de zhongsheng) (movie) 70–1 South Africa: reconciliation 9, 11; Truth and Reconciliation Commission 95 Southern Sakhalin 29, 42, 97, 115, 155 South Korea: Communications Secrecy Protection Act 51–2; demands for postwar Japan apology and compensation 12; democratization 6; economic rise 13; freedom of expression 51; National Intelligence Service 51; National Security Act (1947) 51–2; nationalism 165–6; ‘Sunshine Policy’ 13, 35–6, 44, 48, 53, 55–7, 131, 133; Truth and Reconciliation Commission 11, 133; Vietnam War participation 8–9 South Korea–Japan relations 2–3, 5, 165 South Korea–North Korea relations/ reconciliation 44 South Korea–Russia territorial dispute 33–4

South Kurile/Northern Territories territorial dispute 31, 33 Soviet Union see Russia spies, portrayal in movies: Chinese 73–5; Korean, 54–6 Spirit of Hiroshima 156, 158 Spy Girl (Geunyeon-eul Moreumyeon Gacheob) (movie) 54 Spy Li Cheol-jin (Gancheob Li Cheol- jin) (movie) 54 ‘Statue of a Special Attack Hero’ 112 ‘Statue of Brothers’ 122, 132 ‘Statue of Mother’ (Haha no zō) 110, 111 ‘Statue of Peace’ 113 Stern, Steve 129 Still, It’s Good to Live (documentary film) 158 ‘study circle movement’ (Japan) 93 Suh Ji-moon 129 suicide in war 80, 114–15 suicide pilots 110, 115, 134, 164–85 Sullivan, Michael 109 Sun Yat-Sen 50 ‘Sunshine Policy’ of South Korea 13, 35–6, 44, 48, 53, 55–7, 131, 133 Syngman Rhee 42 Taipo memorial (‘anti-Japanese heroes’ arch) 83–4 Taiwan: and Civil War in China 30; colonization by Japan 3–4; democratization 6, 12–13; economic competition 30; history education 16; and Korean War 140, 142, 150n30; liberation from Japan 29; media 32 Taiwan–China territorial dispute 33 Taiwanese civilian (gunzoku) employees in prisoner-of-war camps 121 Taiwanese serving in Japanese imperial forces 182 Taiwanese wartime bond holders 22n14 Taiwan–South Korea relations 50–1 Takahashi Tetsuya 7–8, 107, 110 Takenaka Akiko 116 Takeshima/Dokdo/Liancourt Rocks territorial dispute 30–1 Tak Gyeong-hyeon 164–9 takobeya labour 92, 94, 97–8, 100; memorial to 99 Tamanoi, Mariko Asano 20 Tarabarov Island/Yinlong Island 33 Taylor, John 157 territorial disputes 29–38, Abagaitu Islet 32–3; Balhae/Bohai 31, 41; Bolshoy

Index Ussuriysky Island/Heixiazi Island 32–3; China–Korea 9, 29; Damansky Island/ Zhenbao Island 31; Dokdo/Takeshima/ Liancourt Rocks 30–1; Dumangang/ Tumen River 34; East Sea/Sea of Japan 30–1; Gando/Jiandao 42; Gaoguloi/ Goguryeo 31, 41, 50, 55; Kurile Islands 29–33, 42; Liancourt Rocks/Takeshima/ Dokdo 30–1; Old Chaoxian/Joseon 41; Senkaku Islands/Diaoyu Islands 3, 30–1, 33, 62, 83 ‘terrorism’ in war context 170 textbooks see history textbooks Thai–Burma Railway 116 Third Korean War 42 Thompson, Edward Palmer 184–5 ‘thousand stitch belts’ (senninbari) 118 Three Days in That Autumn 146 Tiananmen Square protest 67 Time Bokan–Pink (artwork) 160 Tkachenko, Boris 32 Tōgō Kazuhiko 10–11 tokkō see suicide pilots Tokyo Trial (1946–1948) 31 Tokyo War Tribunal 83 Tonohira Yoshihiko 91 tourism: Chinese to Japan 60; North Korea 52 Toyotomi Hideyoshi 132 trans-Korean railway 35 Trans-Siberian Railroad 35 treaties see agreements, declarations and treaties Treaty of Basic Relations (1965, Japan– South Korea) 5 Treaty of Peace (1978, Japan–China) 5 Treaty of Portsmouth (1905, Japan– Russia) 42 Trilateral Joint History Editorial Committee (China, Japan, Korea) 48, 58n25, 95 Truth Commission on Forced Mobilzation under Japanese Imperialism (South Korea) 89, 99 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa) 11, 95 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Korea) 11, 133 Tsuchida Hiromi 156, 161 Tumen/Dumangang River territorial dispute 34 Tunnel Warfare (Didaozhan) (movie) 63–4, 66–7, 75 Typhoon (Taepung) (movie) 54

201

UNESCO 50 United Nations Command 42, 130, 135, 138; portrayal in museums 141, 145–6 United Nations Commission on Korea 145 United States: 9/11 terrorism portrayal in art 159; imperialism 138–9; in Korean War 128, 140, portrayal in museums 137–45; role in Japan’s post-war settlements 8 Uryū Dam: forced labour 91–3, 96–7, 96, 100 Uryū Electrical Power Company 91, 99 Ushiro Ryūta 159 USS Pueblo 139 Variety Special–The History of Women (Baraietê – Josei no Ayumi) (play) 94 Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum (North Korea) 135–9, 137 victory/triumph, portrayal in museums 129, 133, 138–9, 143 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) 2 Vietnam War: historiographical dispute 31; Korea’s involvement 8–9; 97; portrayal in Korean museums 133 Volunteer Corps scheme (Teishintai) during Asia-Pacific War 89 Wakakuwa Midori 109 war crimes and war criminals 7–8, 30, 108, 121; see also women, war crimes against War Memorial of Korea (South Korea) 107, 122–3n129, 131–3 ‘War of Righteous Armies’ 122 War Trash 129, 143 War without Mercy 123 Watanabe Osao 113 Watt, Lori 20 Weizsäcker, Richard von 7 Welcome to Dongmakgol (movie) 54 West, Philip 129 Western modernity in Japanese sculpture 113–14 Western-style representations in Japanese museums 109 Whistle Princess (Hwiparam Gongju) (movie) 54–5 Wilson, Sandra 119 women, war crimes against 6, 94; forced prostitution 19, 89, 146; nurses; rape in war; portrayal in Chinese war movies 79–80; portrayal in museums 110–11,

202

Index

114, 122, 146; see also ‘comfort women’ Women’s Volunteer Corps (Japan) 179 Wong, Diana 18 Yalu River 142 Yamaguchi Momoe 62 Yasaymaru Yoshio 94 Yasukuni Shrine 7, 10, 107–16, 109, 115; controversial visit by Jiang Wen 82 Yasumaru Yoshio 94 Yeo Gyun-dong 55 Ye peoples (ancient Korea) 46 Yi Ki-baek 46 Yim Gwon-taek 53 Yinlong Island/Tarabrov Island 33

Yi Seung-man (Syngman Rhee) 128, 136, 165 Yokoyama Natsuki 111 Yoneyama, Lisa 17 Yoon Bong-gil (Mae-Hyeon) 168–73, 176, 182, 184, 187n23; memorial 169, 171–2 Yoshida Shigeru 146 Yoshida Takashi 107 Yu Jie 82–3 Yūshūkan War Museum 10, 20, 107–9, 110, 114–15, 120, 122 ‘Zero Fighter’ 110, 116 Zhenbao Island/Damansky Island territorial dispute 31

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