ASST 486
The Pacific War in Japanese Historical Memory
Last Offered Fall 2013
Division II Writing Skills
Cross-listed HIST 486 / JAPN 486
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Almost seven decades after Japan’s surrender, the enduring question of how to remember the Pacific War continues to provoke controversy both within Japan and between Japan, South Korea, and China. This tutorial will explore how this difficult past has been remembered in postwar Japan, and how and why these memories have changed from 1945 to the present. Our focus will be on certain sites of memory–museums, shrines, literature, textbooks, and films–and how they have expressed and shaped memories of various aspects of the war from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to military comfort women and the Nanking massacre. Key issues include how various Japanese have tried to make sense of death and personal sacrifice in the name of a lost war; the implications of Japan’s unique position as both perpetrator of wartime atrocities and victim of atomic bombings; the relationship between memory and nationalism; and what it means to come to terms with pasts contested both within and between countries.