Panel 45: Japan at and after War

Chair: Julia Thomas, University of Notre Dame

Panelists

Matthew Winters, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Japanese Attitudes Toward National Security Posture and Development Assistance”

A perennial topic of debate in Japanese society is whether or not to revise Japan’s “peace constitution.” Because of Japan’s Article 9 renunciation of war, to a greater extent than other global powers, Japan has used international development assistance to pursue its foreign policy goals. Among the mass public, how do attitudes about Japan’s national security posture relate to attitudes toward development assistance? To study this relationship, we make use of validated batteries of questions that measure individuals’ support for a more aggressive national security posture and individual’ support for development assistance from an N=3,000 online survey conducted in 2023.

Ray Matsumoto, Washington State University, “An Analysis of Japanese Identity and Collective War Memory through the Japanese Settlers Abandoned in Manchuria”

Following the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (August 9, 1945), high-ranking Japanese Army officers and their families escaped to the homeland, leaving many of the Japanese settlers behind. While most of the men were taken as war prisoners, the rest of the Japanese, mainly women and children, either attempted to escape or committed suicide. Those who escaped managed to survive due to the generosity of Chinese locals. However, in many cases, these individuals became scapegoats for wartime Japanese actions and suffered from Chinese violence. These Japanese survivors became known as the chūgoku zanryū hōjin (Japanese settlers abandoned in Manchuria). This project examines the zanryū hōjin and the concept of Japanese war responsibility, focusing on themes of family, collective memory, and national identity. The analysis derives from interviews and memoirs by zanryū hōjin, as well as Japanese historiographical frameworks of war memory studies. It argues that concepts of Japanese responsibility and collective war memory must go beyond traditional nationalistic and ethnic dichotomies of Japanese perpetrators vs. Asian victims by incorporating transnational perspectives. This discussion will culminate in a reinterpretation of postwar responsibility and war memory where concepts of “Japanese identity” and in turn “war criminal” and “victim” become blurred. Not only is this topic generally excluded from Japanese war memory studies, but it is largely absent in Western scholarship as a whole. This analysis will serve as a way to bridge Japanese and Western historiography and present a new perspective on memory studies.

Ran Wei, Washington University in St. Louis, “The Power of Nostalgia: Materiality, Solidarity, and Resistance in the 16mm Film The Kamagasaki Cauldron War (Tsukiyo no Kamagassen, 2017)”

Set in Osaka’s biggest day-labor area, Kamagasaki, the 16mm film The Kamagasaki Cauldron War (Satō Leo, 2017) centers on a fight over a stolen cauldron among different local groups. The film uses the stolen cauldron to evoke the shrinking living space of the people of the real-world, many of whom have been forcibly evicted from their homes by the Osaka government. Dawing on the theories of nostalgia and the history of 16mm stock and Japanese independent filmmaking tradition, this article examines how Satō’s project in using 16mm film involves his social, ethical, and aesthetic concerns. It argues that Satō’s use of 16mm stock both pays homage to Japanese leftist filmmaking traditions and reconstructs a communal space both within and outside the site of production. Satō aims to raise class consciousness among the residents of Kamagasaki and attract the audience’s attention to social issues facing the neighborhood. Through this case study, this essay rethinks how an artistic production engages with questions of social justice and equality and how film can be viewed as a form of social resistance.