Seventy years after the end of World War II, living memories of the war are fast being
replaced with mediated “second-order memories” (Nora 1989). At this critical juncture,
when history turns into representation, we face many questions. How do nations keep
their war memories alive? How do young people locate themselves in relation to histo-
rical violence and trauma? What makes mediated second-order memories “memories,” not
mere “representations”? Such questions are especially pertinent in East Asia, where postwar
healing and reconciliation are desperately needed and yet not even remotely in sight. Con-
troversies over history textbooks, the Yasukuni shrine, “comfort women,” and the Nanjing
Massacre show that memories of the Asia-Pacific War continue to be sources of bitter dis-
cord within the region.
This chapter considers these questions by analyzing representations of war in Japanese popu-
lar culture and the commodification of memory against the backdrop of the “memory rifts”
(Seaton 2007) in East Asia over Japan’s wartime actions. Although collective war memories are
often associated with such formal sites as history textbooks, museums, and monuments, popular
culture and media have also become important sites for public memory-making (Morris-Suzuki
and Rimmer 2002). In the context of Japan, debate over the memory of the war during the
1970s and 1980s was largely an official matter, especially in education (e.g. the history textbook
lawsuits of Ienaga Saburo or China’s and Korea’s protests over the use of the term “advance”
instead of “invasion” in Japanese textbooks); since the turn of the century, however, entertain-
ment media such as films and manga have been increasingly drawn into the politics of memory,
as we will see later in this chapter.
The role of popular culture in transmitting historical memories cannot be underestimated.
Images of the past represented in manga, anime, and film circulate on a much larger scale than
those in textbooks or other historical works. Designed to entertain, popular culture is also highly
affective. Combining powerful narratives with visual images and sound, it excels at stimulating
emotion, empathy, and passion, all of which promote identification and emotional investment.
This means that history and memory captured in entertainment commodities could become—
especially for the postwar generations far removed from the experience of the war—not only a
source of historical knowledge but also a source of mediated collective identification and action.
As such, popular culture is increasingly relevant to our thinking through how war memories,
nationalism, and affect intersect with each other.
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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