Rumi Sakamotoflow seems beneficial for a common future, trans-Asian circulation of affective images and snip-
pets of stories from popular culture may in fact reinforce mutual wariness and suspicion rather
than creating a new sociality that promotes shared memory and reconciliation. As the tone of
the debate over war memory in East Asia becomes increasingly antagonistic and emotional,
such a context burdens the future-oriented task of the shared working-through of traumatic
historical memories.
Conclusion
Historical memory and nationalism are not just subjects of intellectual or political discourse
but are increasingly entangled in the world of commercial entertainment. Post-1990s Japan
saw an intensifying symbolic struggle between revisionists and their critics over the meaning of
the past. This is reflected in the popular culture, which functions as an alternative public sphere
to the state-dominated official public sphere. In popular media, various representations of the
past are constructed and consumed. Many affect-laden imageries and stories circulate: innocent
victims, national heroes, atrocities, perpetrators, enemies. They have become portable, transfer-
able, digitizable, and circulatable forms of “second-order” memories—that is, vivid and affective
“memories” of events people did not experience directly. Although films, manga, and games are
just entertainment commodities, they are consumed by large audiences and have a considerable
affective impact. For this reason—as we approach the 70th anniversary of the end of the Asia-
Pacific War—popular cultural articulations of the past will play an increasingly important role in
“second-order” memory-making in East Asia.
Popular cultural memory production, negotiation, and consumption are becoming increas-
ingly transnational. Popular culture’s affinity with digital life means that a significant amount
of border-crossing consumption is now taking place. Inter-Asian popular cultural flows have
created economic, social, and cultural transnational connections, yet it is still unclear if and how
transnational movements of popular culture have affected East Asian conflicts over history and
memory. This is an area that requires more research. We also need more empirical studies to learn
how consumers relate to popular cultural representations of war and history. Not everyone is
interpellated as a national subject, national victim, or national hero when they watch a “nation-
alistic” film. For that reason, the question of audience, interpretation, and multiple contexts—
both personal and social—is important.
For now, it seems the potential of popular culture to become a site for a shared historical
memory that transcends nationalism is yet to be realized. As a space constituted by creative and
affective art forms, popular culture is certainly capable of offering an alternative to political and
ideological polarization, and it is also capable of exploring an open and dialogical understanding
of pain, suffering, atrocity, and trauma. Will it be possible to use popular culture to redraw the
affective geography around East Asian historical issues? Will East Asian popular culture lead to
reflection, reimagining, and re-experiencing something new, outside the familiar rigid, formulaic,
and nationalistic discourse? Will it let us imagine our future together, as well as remember the past?
Notes
1 Examples include Hyakunin-giri hōdō o kiru (Slashing the report on the one-hundred men cutting com-
petition, Hatake 2004); Manga de yomu showa-shi: “Nankin daigyakusatsu” no shinjitsu (The truth of the
“Nanjing Massacre” in manga, Hatake and Oyakata 2007).
2 Yamano Sharin’s bestseller Kenkanryū (Hating Korean Wave, 4 vols, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009) is well-
known. Others include Chūgoku Nyūmon (Introduction to China, Ko 2005); Manga de wakaru chūgoku
hyaku no akugyō (China’s 100 evil acts in manga, Ajiamondai kenkyūkai 2006); Ken-chūgokuryū