Popular culture and historical memories of war in Asiaalternative histories do more than repeating the past trauma: they “rehabilitate” the trauma of
Japan’s defeat. Even though these fictional entertainment works are not about real war and his-
tory, they still recontextualize history by emphasizing some aspects over others, avoiding some
elements and amplifying others.
As Gerow (2006) points out, fantasy war chronicles are not just monolithic pro-war nation-
alist propaganda; they contain conflicting perspectives towards war and nationalism, reflecting
the diverse opinions that exist within Japanese society itself. Yet they are part of the landscape of
post-bubble popular nationalism and revisionism, insofar as they glorify militarized masculinity
and aestheticize soldiers’ self-sacrifice for the larger cause of protecting their loved ones and the
fatherland. As entertainment commodities, they are designed to evoke affect, and this is typically
done around images of heroic battle with cool heroes in military uniform and a strong, militarily
capable Japan. With powerful narratives, images, and sounds, they can make a strong impression
on the audience. Meanwhile, Japan’s victimization of other Asian people goes unmentioned, and
Japan’s victimhood, defeat, and weakness recede into the background. As Trent Maxey points
out, they offer an escape from reality (where Japan is held accountable for its wartime aggression
and violence) by providing a fictional past that does not allow for the recriminations of Japan’s
victims (Maxey 2012).
Collectively, these fantasy war narratives of post-bubble Japan offer new mediated and com-
modified imageries of war and nationalism to their consumers. They have significantly shifted the
landscape of second-order war memory in Japanese popular culture. In this new genre, the earlier
anti-war ethos, pacifism, and generalized sense of tragedy of war without an “enemy” is giving
way to more explicitly nationalistic representations of a strong, masculine Japan that can fight.
Manga, revisionism, and historical “truth”
If fictional war tales offered stories and images that impact on the way audiences perceive and
relate to the past, revisionist manga take a more direct and didactic approach. This genre began
with Kobayashi Yoshinori’s bestseller Sensōron (On War, 1998) and has since become an impor-
tant platform for neo-nationalist ideas.^1 They are essentially opinion pieces in manga form and
they are intended to preach and persuade as well as entertain. Authors of this genre have used
manga’s multimodal communication (i.e. freely combined text and image, fiction and facts,
histo rical documents, interviews, photographs, and the reconstruction of past events) to promote
national pride and to reinterpret Japan’s imperial past and role in the Asia-Pacific war.
One characteristic of these revisionist manga is the negative portrayals of China and Korea.^2
These xenophobic representations emerged as the genre developed in response to the con-
flict over historical memory in East Asia during the 1990s and early 2000s. That Japan’s Asian
neighbors are making unfair accusations about Japan’s past and that it is high time to set the
record straight is a recurrent theme in this genre. More recently, territorial issues and the per-
ceived threat of a rising China have also found their way into these manga. As a whole, they
are xenophobic, alarmist, and sensationalist (McNeil 2007), dominated by an us-versus-them,
we say–they say dichotomy.
Kobayashi has been most prolific and influential, and his manga, especially the Gōmanizumu
(Arrogant-ism) series, still define the genre. Mirroring the wider political discourse of neo-
nationalism and revisionism (Kobayashi was one of the founding members of the Japan Society
for History Textbook Reform, which was created by neo-nationalist ideologues), this series has
justified Japan’s colonial rule in Taiwan, questioned the testimonies of “comfort women,” and
insisted that the Nanjing Massacre was fabricated. It also refuted the legitimacy of the Tokyo
Tribunal and urged people to visit the Yasukuni shrine to show their respect.