Hiroshima: Representations of war in contemporary Japan

The main objective of this project is to show how Japan's many narratives of the bombing of Hiroshima in particular, and the experience of World War II in general, have contributed to a repression of other narratives, like those of Japanese wartime aggres sion. Narratives of Japan's war tend to be channeled into two dominating story-lines: the "victim's story" and the "peace rhetoric." This study will examine a wide range of "narratives," from public memorial sites, monuments and museums, to popular cultur e's adaptations of the war experience. My focus will be twofold: On the one hand I wish to uncover how these diverse narrative sites construe their story of the war. On the other hand my aim will be to examine how some equally important stories remain rep ressed. Throughout, the study will cast a critical gaze on the consequences that the memorization of Hiroshima has had, and still has, on postwar Japan, both with regards to the country's relationship to its close neighbors, and with regards to the develo pment of the country's own sense of postwar identity.