The Japanese and the War: Expectation, Perception, and the Shaping of Memory (Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture)

Japanese memories of World War II exert a powerful influence over the nation's society and culture. Concentrating on the years immediately before and after the war (1937 to 1952), Michael Lucken explores in __The Japanese and the War__ how WWII manifested in the literature, art, film, funerary practices, and education reform of the time, creating an idea of Japanese identity that still resonates in everything from soap operas to the response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japanese memories of World War II exert a powerful influence over the nation’s society and culture. Michael Lucken explores how the war manifested in literature, art, film, funerary practices, and education reform, creating an idea of Japanese identity that still resonates from soap operas to the response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Memories of World War II exert a powerful influence over Japan's culture and society. In The Japanese and the War , Michael Lucken details how World War II manifested in the literature, art, film, funerary practices, and education reform of the time. Concentrating on the years immediately before and after (1937 to 1952), Lucken explores the creation of an idea of Japanese identity that still resonates in everything from soap operas to the response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Lucken defines three distinct layers of Japan's memory of World War II: the population's expectations at the beginning, the trauma caused by conflict and defeat, and the politics of memory that arose after Japan lost to the Allied powers. Emphasizing Japanese-language sources, Lucken writes a narrative of the making of Japanese cultural memory that moves away from Western historical modes and perspectives. His approach also paints a new portrait of the U.S. occupation, while still maintaining a cultural focus. Lucken sets out to capture the many ways people engage with war, but particularly the full range of Japan's experiences, which, he argues, the Japanese state has yet to fully confront, leading to a range of tensions at home and abroad. "This book examines the culture and society of Japan primarily during the years immediately before and after WWII (1937-1952), but it also reaches back to the 1920s and even touches upon events as recent as the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In doing so, Lucken argues that the ways of remembering WWII continue to define the present in Japan and elsewhere. His cultural focus includes not just literature and art, but topics such as propaganda films, clothing restrictions, and educational reform, with a particular emphasis on representations and ideas transmitted through mass media. The most important aspect of the study is the use of Japanese-language sources which have not always been adequately used in Western historical studies of the period. The argument which emerges is that the historiography and cultural memory of the era in Japan has been distorted by English-language, mostly U.S., scholarship. This approach also leads to a reexamination of the US occupation, among other events, while still keeping the cultural issues at the forefront"--Provided by publisher Table of Contents Acknowledgments A Note on Names Introduction 1. The Nation Out to Conquer 2. A Totalitarian Dynamic, 1940–1945 3. The Meaning of the War 4. Heroes and the Dead 5. Fear and Destruction 6. Postwar Complexities 7. The American Occupation, or the Present Versus the Past 8. The Plurality of History 9. Individual Conscience and Collective Inertia 10. Memory and Religion 11. From Monument to Museum: The Difficult Path to Healing Conclusion Notes Index