In March 1976, Kurihara Sadako, a poet who had survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, published “When We Say ‘Hiroshima’” (Hiroshima to iutoki).¹ The poem asked A-bomb victims, as well as the Japanese people as a whole, the following: “When we say ‘Hiroshima,’ / do people answer, gently, / ‘Ah, Hiroshima’?” Instead of such gentle expression of understanding, Kurihara heard “echoes of blood and fire” and angry voices against Japan for its past wrongdoings: “In chorus, Asia’s dead and her voiceless masses / spit out the anger / of all those we made victims.” But why was the anger of...

The focus of the history problem, the Asia-Pacific War, was not a single, clearly bounded event. Instead, it evolved through a series of armed conflicts between Japan and China that began with the Mukden Incident in September 1931 and eventually led to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937. Japan then proceeded to war with the United States and other Allied powers in December 1941 and quickly advanced to the Pacific and Southeast Asia. But the tide of war began to turn at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, and Japan was increasingly overwhelmed by the...

On June 22, 1965, the Japanese and South Korean governments signed the Treaty on Basic Relations. The treaty dodged fundamental disagreements over how to interpret past relations between the two countries. First, the two sides agreed to disagree about the interpretation of the treaty’s second article, which read, “All treaties or agreements concluded between the Empire of Japan and the Empire of Korea on or before August 22, 1910 are already null and void.”¹ The Japanese side interpreted this to mean that the 1910 Japan-Korean Annexation Treaty had previously been valid, only becoming null and void when the Republic of...

Emperor Hirohito became seriously ill in September 1988, prompting television programs and newspapers to report his condition daily, including changes in his temperature and pulse. When the emperor fell into critical condition on January 7, 1989, all the broadcasting stations in Japan began airing special programs on the history of “Shōwa,” his reign since 1928. The special media coverage continued through January 8 when the emperor died.

Ever since SCAP and Japanese leaders had shielded the emperor from prosecution at the Tokyo Trial, it had been taboo to openly question his responsibility for the Asia-Pacific War. The special programs that...

The Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (JSHTR), launched in January 1997, attacked postwar history education for forcing Japanese citizens to lose national pride: “Especially the modern historiography treats the Japanese people as if they were criminals who must continue to atone and apologize forever. This masochistic tendency became even stronger after the Cold War ended. Right now, history textbooks in Japan present the propagandas of the former enemy countries as historical facts.”¹ JSHTR members also met with Minister of Education Kosugi Takashi, trying to persuade him to reject masochistic tendencies— the increased descriptions of Japan’s past wrongdoings—in history...

The preceding chapters have analyzed how East Asia’s history problem evolved through continuous struggles among relevant political actors competing for the legitimate commemoration of the Asia-Pacific War. These actors included the government, political parties, and NGOs in Japan; the governments, NGOs, and victims of Japan’s past wrongdoings in South Korea and China; and historians and educators from the three countries. They defined their commemorative positions by drawing differently on nationalism and cosmopolitanism and tried to influence Japan’s official commemoration by exploiting available mobilizing structures and political opportunities. I argue that one of the most important findings of this field analysis...

At first glance, historians may not look like the best candidates for facilitating a resolution of the history problem. This is because historians have traditionally used the nation as a primary unit of analysis, helping to naturalize it as a primordial entity. They have also created professional associations and delimited their membership along national borders, consistent with the nationalist logic of self-determination; for example, when Japanese historians write about the history of Japan, they often talk among themselves without consulting with foreign historians who study Japan. This nationally bounded content focus and membership reinforces the logic of nationalism that divides...

Can East Asia’s history problem ever be resolved, and if so, how? This is the question that I set out to answer in this book. In light of the field analysis of the history problem, my answer is cautiously affirmative—yes, it can be resolved if the governments and citizens in Japan, South Korea, and China find a way to unleash the potential of the historians’ debate to promote the cosmopolitan logic of commemoration. My affirmative answer is cautious because nationalist commemorations, focusing on the suffering of conationals without sufficient regard for foreign others, persist in the region, overwhelm historians’...