Okinawan War Memory

As one of Okinawa's most insightful writers and social critics, Medoruma Shun has highlighted the problems and limits of conventional representation of the Battle of Okinawa, raised new questions and concerns about the nature of Okinawan war memory, and expanded the possibilities of representing war through his groundbreaking and prize-winning fiction, editorials, essays, and speaking engagements. Yet, his writing has not been analyzed in regard to how his experience and identity as the child of two survivors of the Battle of Okinawa have powerfully shaped his understanding of the war and his literary craft. This book examines Okinawan war memory through the lens of Medoruma’s war fiction, and pays particular attention to the issues of second-generation war survivorship and transgenerational trauma. It explores how his texts contribute to knowledge about the war and its ongoing effects — on survivors, their offspring, and the larger community — in different ways from that of other modes of representation, such as survivor testimony, historical narrative, and realistic fiction. These dominant means of memory making have played a major role in shaping the various discourses about the war and the Battle of Okinawa, yet these forms of public memory and knowledge often exclude or avoid more personal, emotional, and traumatic experiences. Indeed, Ikeda’s analysis sheds light on the nature of trauma on survivors and their children who continue to inhabit sites of the traumatic past, and in turn makes an important contribution to studies on trauma and second-generation survivor experiences. This book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Asian literature, Japanese literature, Japanese history, war memory and Okinawa.

In 1983, concerned about the need to record and explain the experiences of Okinawans caught up in Battle of Okinawa, the local Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper carried out several hundred interviews with survivors. With explanatory comment added, this was published first in serial form, then later as a book. Tens of thousands of Okinawans were killed in the relentless bombardment by American forces, ten of thousands more local recruits died in Home Guard units, thousands of starvation and malaria in places away from the fighting, hundreds of young students died in the Blood and Iron Student Corps or as nurse's aides tending to wounded soldiers in hospital caves, and hundreds of evacuees lost their lives in ships sunk by U.S. submarines or aircraft. There were even people who took their own lives, or the lives of loved ones, to avoid what they had been told by the Japanese Army would be a far worse fate at the hands of American captors. Descent into Hell is the story of this apocalyptic struggle as told by those Okinawans who survived.

How do the Japanese and Okinawans remember Occupation? How is memory constructed and transmitted? Michael Molasky explores these questions through careful, sensitive readings of literature from mainland Japan and Okinawa. This book sheds light on difficult issues of war, violence, prostitution, colonialism and post-colonialism in the context of the Occupations of Japan and Okinawa.

A powerful and thought-provoking novel that raises important questions about World War II, war memory, and US imperialism and blowback.

Japan's Contested War Memories is an important and significant book that explores the struggles within contemporary Japanese society to come to terms with Second World War history. Focusing particularly on 1972 onwards, the period starts with the normalization of relations with China and the return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, and ends with the sixtieth anniversary commemorations. Analyzing the variety of ways in which the Japanese people narrate, contest and interpret the past, the book is also a major critique of the way the subject has been treated in much of the English-language. Philip Seaton concludes that war history in Japan today is more divisive and widely argued over than in any of the other major Second World War combatant nations. Providing a sharp contrast to the many orthodox statements about Japanese 'ignorance', amnesia' and 'denial' about the war, this is an engaging and illuminating study that will appeal to scholars and students of Japanese history, politics, cultural studies, society and memory theory.

The controversy over official state-approved history textbooks in Japan, which omit or play down many episodes of Japan’s occupation of neighbouring countries during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945), and which have been challenged by critics who favour more critical, peace and justice perspectives, goes to the heart of Japan’s sense of itself as a nation. The degree to which Japan is willing to confront its past is not just about history, but also about how Japan defines itself at present, and going forward. This book examines the history textbook controversy in Japan. It sets the controversy in the context of debates about memory, and education, and in relation to evolving politics both within Japan, and in Japan’s relations with its neighbours and former colonies and countries it invaded. It discusses in particular the struggles of Ienaga Saburo, who has made crucial contributions, including through three epic lawsuits, in challenging the official government position. Winner of the American Educational Research Association 2009 Outstanding Book Award in the Curriculum Studies category.

This book explores how narratives, exhibitions, media representations, and cultural heritage sites that communicate memories of conflicts in East Asia between 1930 and 1945 spread, interact, and are re-packaged for post-war audiences across national divisions. The contributors examine individual case studies of grassroots engagement with war memory, and collectively demonstrate the necessity of remaining aware of the researcher as participating in another kind of engagement with war memory. Contributions showcase a number of ways of doing research on war memory, alongside case studies from diverse regions of the world. Taken together, they bring a fresh perspective to scholarship on war memory, which has tended to focus on space, text, exhibition, or personal narrative, rather than bringing these elements into dialogue with one another.

The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature provides a comprehensive overview of how we study Japanese literature today. Rather than taking a purely chronological approach to the content, the chapters survey the state of the field through a number of pressing issues and themes, examining the ways in which it is possible to read modern Japanese literature and situate it in relation to critical theory. The Handbook examines various modes of literary production (such as fiction, poetry, and critical essays) as distinct forms of expression that nonetheless are closely interrelated. Attention is drawn to the idea of the bunjin as a ‘person of letters’ and a more realistic assessment is provided of how writers have engaged with ideas – not labelled a ‘novelist’ or ‘poet’, but a ‘writer’ who may at one time or another choose to write in various forms. The book provides an overview of major authors and genres by situating them within broader themes that have defined the way writers have produced literature in modern Japan, as well as how those works have been read and understood by different readers in different time periods. The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature draws from an international array of established experts in the field as well as promising young researchers. It represents a wide variety of critical approaches, giving the study a broad range of perspectives. This handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Literature, Sociology, Critical Theory, and History.