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METAHISTORY AND MEMORY: MAKING/REMAKING THE KNOWLEDGE OF
HIROSHIMA’S ATOMIC BOMBING

By

Makito Yurita

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
American Studies Program

2008

ABSTRACT

METAHISTORY AND MEMORY: MAKING/REMAKING THE KNOWLEDGE OF
HIROSHIMA’S ATOMIC BOMBING

By
Makito Yurita

This study is about history and its knowledge. The transition from History to
histories challenges the total objectivity assumed in historical study. It is obsolete to
assume that there is a transcendently universal historical explanation of past events. Past
reality is not a singular, but to affirm the multiplicity of past realities is not the same as
affirming that history has diverse knowledge.

This study acknowledges the diversity of historical explanations as the present
reality. Then, it is the purpose of this study to seek knowledge in history that
encompasses the diverse historical explanations. This study stresses that the purpose of
historical study is not only constructing historical explanations but also constructing
knowledge. Knowledge in history is the mechanism to build a comprehensible
understanding of diverse historical explanations. This knowledge has been particularly
important ever since the plurality of historical explanations became irrefutable reality.

Many years have passed since History became histories. The plurality of historical
explanations has become irrefutable reality, but it is now posing different problems that
cannot be resolved by the existing notion of history and its knowledge. Different
historical explanations coexist on the basis of ignoring, avoiding, and localizing
themselves from other conflicting historical explanations. Even worse, different historical
explanations seek coexistence through domination, active suppression, and ignoring other

explanations of history.

This study argues that knowledge of history is fluid: history's knowledge is
ceaselessly made and remade in light of what becomes known after the event’s
occurrence. Fluidity, like melody, needs to be studied differently from how we study the
past substances. Past substances are like musical note that can be substantiated but they
themselves are not melody. The plurality of historical explanations, this study argues,
provides the source for our historical inquiry into how we have understood the past
differently in different moments of the past. This study thus explores how Hiroshima’s
atomic bombing has been shaped and reshaped as ahistorically significant past event in

Japan to present the fluid reality of history’s knowledge.

Copyright by
NLAKJTC)YIHKFEA

2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation was drafted mostly in coffee shops in many different corners of
the world. I like to set myself on a chair just to melt in the environment. I become a part
of the picture. I then look at the people trespassing the environment. I am there but I am
not there at all. If no one makes an active recognition of my being there, does it really
matter whether I exist there physically or not? I exist only when someone recognizes my
existence. If no one recognizes me, I became an invisible man.

To make an acknowledgement is thus an important exercise. It is human practice
to keep other human beings exist in our environment. Thence, I wish to make my
acknowledgements to even a waiter of a coffee shop where I wrote substantial part of this
study. I am thankful to her for letting me stay many hours with just a few dollar amount
of coffee. I must have been a bad customer though I have been a loyal customer.

It is perhaps customary to express here one’s appreciation to one’s advisor,
committee members, family members and friends. However, I fear I may come short of
expressing either beautifully or fairly the acknowledgements that they deserve. Beautiful
acknowledgments, I fear, sin by excluding the true merit of people who deserve
acknowledgements, as genuine gratitude is sacrificed in favor of esthetics. The
acknowledgements that are fair in expressing genuine gratitude are often simply boring
and tedious. The balance, indeed, is the key.

I acknowledge here everyone, while I send my special acknowledgements to those
whom I have much to owe. I know the people who should be noted here understand their

names, thoughts, languages, and emotions are in every page of this study. They also

know that their names, thoughts, languages and emotions will be in everything I do in my
future.

It is my strong wish to list everyone’s name here. However, writing their names is
not at all an adequate way to acknowledge their significance and contributions. This is
only a beginning. I have much more to do to truly acknowledge those important to me in

the future in a much more meaningful way than their names being noted in here.

Makito Yurita

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ v
LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................... ix
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ x
CHAPTER 1
THREE STORIES: PROBLEMS AND QUESTIONS ON HISTORY AND
HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESSS .............................................................................. 1
What Is History? .................................................................................................. 1
Iolanda’s Question ............................................................................................... 6
Historical Explanation and Its Violence ............................................................. 10
Past in the Present .............................................................................................. 14
History of Historical Explanations ..................................................................... 19
Subject of Inquiry and Clarifications ................................................................. 22
Chapter Composition ......................................................................................... 26
CHAPTER 2
HISTORY AND HISTORICAL CONTROVERSY ...................................................... 31
Historical Revisionism and Revising History ................................................................ 31
What Is History? ................................................................................................ 34
Materialism and Knowledge in History .............. 38
Rationalism and Knowledge in History .............................................................. 41
Knowledge in Substantive Philosophy of History ................................... 42
Knowledge in Analytical Philosophy of History ..................................... 46
Skepticism to History and Knowledge of History ............................................... 55
Knowledge in History Beyond Materialism ....................................................... 63
Contemporary Takes on Knowledge in History .................................................. 67
Universalism: Multiculturalism and Knowledge in History ................................ 68
Localism: Narratives and Knowledge in History ................................................ 71
Memory as Knowledge of the Past ..................................................................... 78
Proposition: Concluding Discussion .................................................................. 81
CHAPTER 3
TESTIMONIES AND MEMORIES OF HISTORICAL EVENTS ................................ 85
Historiography for Peaceful Coexistence ........................................................... 90
Testimony as a Medium ..................................................................................... 92
Testimony and Public Frameworks .................................................................... 98
Testimony and Its Contestation ........................................................................ 104
Testimony and Integrity ................................................................................... 111
Discussion ....................................................................................................... 1 l7

vii

CHAPTER 4
RATIONALIZING CATASTROPHE IN PUBLIC SPHERES: FROM CONDOLENCE

TO COMMEMORATION .......................................................................................... 121
Apocalypse of‘ Hiroshima’ .............................................................................. 121
‘Hiroshima’ and Amnesiac Particularities ........................................................ 123
This Park Is Too Clean .................................................................................... 127
Swollen Corpses .............................................................................................. 130
Latent Fury ...................................................................................................... 136
Metaphorical Representation of Fury ............................................................... 140
End of Optimism with Peace ........................................................................... 149
‘Hiroshima’ as Pedagogy for the Future ........................................................... 151
Discussion ....................................................................................................... 157

CHAPTER 5

POSTWAR OBSCURITY AND COMMEMORATION OF CATASTROPE ............. 160
Postwar Obscurity and Peace ........................................................................... 162
Intangible Peace .............................................................................................. 164
Threshold of Intangible Peace .......................................................................... 168
Fictional Pedagogy .......................................................................................... 173
From Fiction to Actual Pedagogy .................................................................... 177
I: Hiroshima’s Pedagogy: Exposition to Exhibition .......................................... 179
II: National Pedagogy: Turning Perspectives ................................................... 184

a. Peace Movement and the Nation’s Past ............................................ 184
b. Extending Universal Humanism ....................................................... 188
War Stories and the Abstract Perpetrator ......................................................... 193
Discussion ....................................................................................................... 201

CHAPTER 6

NATIONAL MUSEUM AND GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY: RECONCILIATION OF

THE HISTORICAL CONTROVERSIES IN GLOBAL AGE ..................................... 208
Museum, History and Monumentality .............................................................. 208
Audience-Study ............................................................................................... 216
Accessing Audience Relationship to Museum .................................................. 219
Background: Memorial Hall ............................................................................ 221
Monumental and Discursive Space .................................................................. 224

Indirect and Mute ................................................................................. 226
Direct and Vocal .................................................................................. 232
Visitor Engagement ......................................................................................... 235
Discussion ....................................................................................................... 240

CHAPTER 7

KNOWLEDGE AS A FLUID ENTITY ...................................................................... 252

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 280

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1:1. Hayden White’s Modes and Types of Historical Explanation .......................... 3

Table 4:1. Memorial Service Held in 1945 ........................................................... 132-133

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2:1. The Causal Relationship of Historical Explanations and History-like

Explanations ................................................................................................................. 74
Figure 4:1. Monument Stone Marks the Epicenter of the Atomic Bomb Explosion in
Hiroshima ................................................................................................................... 129
Figure 4:2. The First of Ten Pictures Mr. Masayoshi Takamoto Drew about His
Experience of Hiroshima’s Tragedy after the Atomic Bombing ................................... 131
Figure 4:3. The Skull with Kanji Inscription Symbolizing “The Grudge” .................... 137
Figure 4:4. Relief on the Atomic Bomb Monument of Hiroshima Municipal Girl’s High
School ......................................................................................................................... 141
Figure 4:5. The Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims ..................................................... 144
Figure 4:6. Children’s Peace Memorial Monument ..................................................... 154
Figure 5:1. Tezuka Osamu Depicting the Air Raid Attacks .......................................... 194
Figure 5:2. Depiction off the A-Bomb Victims in Am Wakusei no Higeki ................... 195
Figure 5:3. The Scenes from Barefoot Gen 1 ............................................................... 196
Figure 5:4. A Scene from Barefoot Gen II .................................................................... 197
Figure 5:5. A Scene from Kamino T oride .................................................................... 199
Figure 6:1. The Entrance of Memorial Hall ................................................................. 225
Figure 6:2. Monumental Icon and Surrounding Ruins ................................................. 226
Figure 6:3. Hallway to the Hall of Remembrance ........................................................ 227
Figure 6:4. Hall of Remembrance and Panorama ......................................................... 227
Figure 6:5. Ceramic Tiles Constituting the Panorama .................................................. 230
Figure 6:6. Exiting the Hall of Remembrance .............................................................. 231
Figure 6:7. Randomly Projected Portrait and the Name of Victim ............................... 232

Figure 6:8. Exhibiting Artifacts and Testimonies Linked to the Artifacts ..................... 233

Figure 6:9. Testimony Is Linked to the Computer Screen ............................................ 234

xi

Chapter 1
Three Stories:
Problems and Questions on History and Historical Consciousness

All conflicts are, whether direct or indirect, based on past realities. Past realities,
however, do not necessarily generate a common understanding of what happened in the
past, and they have formed different understandings in the present. If we understand
history as the discipline we use to build understanding of what happened in the past, we
can perhaps say that history has been one of the primary causes of generating conflicts in
the present. Yet, persisting historical controversies and their intensity also and ironically
prove our strong faith in history’s possibility to resolve conflicts through legitimizing
present conditions and bringing justice to the present. It is, on this ground, meaningful to
consider history’s responsibility to the present. The purpose of this study is to inquire
what the responsibilities of history to the present are when we practice history to
understand the past. Or perhaps it is better to say that it is the purpose of this study to
inquire what history needs to be in order to be responsible to do what it is believed to do.
Therefore, this study begins its inquiry by asking an old yet longstanding question: what

is history?

What Is History?

This question about history poses two different problems: what we understand
happened in the past and how, using the discipline of history, we understand what

happened in the past. These two issues (or questions) are closely related to each other,

and they perhaps seem the same at a glance. Yet, the first question addresses the
formation of our consciousness about what happened in the past, and the second is about
the academic practice of history as a discipline.

It is perhaps needless to state that history is not a product of nature. History is,
instead, the product of human activities in a society, and thus it is a socially constructed
product. In this respect, it is safe to affirm that the raison d ’étre of history is never
independent from a society and the constituent elements of a society. History has a
particular function in a society in which history is shaped and practiced. In other words,
we shape and practice history because it has a function necessary for the construction and
maintenance of our social organisms.

The practice of history would cease when (and if) history failed to offer what is
needed in society and/or when (and it) society itself has ceased to exist. In this respect,
when we ask how we have practiced history or how we should be practicing history, we
have to discuss the question in the context of a society in which the practice is (or is
going to be) exercised. Inquiring into the principle of practicing history is concurrent with
an inquiry into the limitations of the practice. The substance of this inquiry is not about
building unviolable understandings of what happened in the past. Instead, inquiring about
history in the context of society would lead us to consider what the ideal practice of a
particular history is in relation to a particular society.

It is perhaps useful to note in passing that Hayden White brought an eloquent
discussion on the link between history and present society in his most famous work:

Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe.l However, this

 

1 Hayden V. White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth- Century Europe
(Baltimore and London: JHU Press, 1973), 8.

study, while it takes a similar approach to challenge history and historiography, is
different in critical part from White’s argument on history. This study, in fact, aims to
undo part (not the whole) of what White’s concept of history as narrative has brought to
history and the knowledge in history. In this respect, it is useful to briefly touch White’s
argument before moving this chapter’s discussion forward.

The work of history, White argues, is a verbal structure built in a form of a
narrative prose discourse. Historians build a narrative prose discourse to provide a model
that explains the past structures and processes to the present. Historians make history by
arranging past events in a particular order, answering questions about the past, sorting
what past events to be included/excluded, and emphasizing certain past events while
subordinating other events. Every historical explanation, therefore, has a particular
discourse style that gives a structure when historians write history. White then proposes

four modes of explanation, each of which has four categorical types (Table 1:1).

Table 1:1. Hayden White’s Modes and Types of Historical Explanation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modes of Historical Explanation
Ideological Poetic

Emplotment Argument Implication Structure

Romantic Forrnist Anarchist Synecdoche
Types.“ Tragic Mechanistic Radical Metaphor
Historical . . . .
Explanation Comic OrganiCist Conservative Metonymy

Satirical Contextualist Liberal Irony

 

Through exploring historiography and history writings of the nineteenth century,

White brings forward a radical critique of the consciousness of historians by stressing

 

 

 

that history writings are fundamentally a narrative prose discourse—literary artifact. This
study is generally in agreement with White when troubling the notion of truth and
objectivity that have long been separated (and often elevated) the work of historian—
historical narrative—from other stories and narratives. White, when arguing historical
explanation is fundamentally a verbal narrative, removed the assumed distinction
between history and literary artifact. Through characterization of history as narrative,
White offers what seemed to be an exit to the scholarship of history, which was thought
to lack any real possibility to build the knowledge that is definitive. However, the exit
was not real, and it merely permits history to stand as a discipline without a method to
build the knowledge that can respond to diversifying historical narratives of past events.
White’s concept of history as narrative has gained significant recognition, and it
still offers a constructive lens to historiography. However, there have been many
historians who are strongly critical of White. There are formal criticisms that challenge
those four modes of historical explanations or how White identified the structural
framework of historical explanations. More notable criticisms challenge the concept of
history as narrative. In Postmodernism and History, for example, Willie Thompson
critically remarked that the concept is a “theology with no foundation,” and White’s
argument has its foundation and use in the “nausea of the 1968 hangover.”2 There are
also critiques holding White responsible for history’s losing its disciplinary emphasis on

the search for truth as the primary task of historians.3

 

2 Willie Thompson, Postmodernism and History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 29-30.

3 Carlo Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric and Proof (Hanover NH: University Press of New England,
1999)

This study however challenges both White's argument and the arguments against
White. In order to challenge history and historiography themselves, this study, as White
argues, pushes a radical critique on historical methodology and historians' consciousness
in the study of history. However, this study is critical to White when the concept of
history as narrative has very little (if any) to offer history and historians to substantiate
the knowledge. Today, the concept of history as narrative has turned into a conceptual
explanation for the phenomena of endlessly diversifying historical explanations. However,
White’s concept provides no solution to the contemporary problems that are generated
from the plurality of historical explanations. Present reality does not permit us to simply
embrace or accept the plurality of historical explanations or understanding the link
between history and a society. In order to seek peaceful coexistence of diverse historical
explanations in a society, history must seek the knowledge that is transcendently true in
the plurality of historical explanations.

Society in and for which we practice history is globalizing. Technological
advancements have given us more tools and easy access to those tools for constructing
what Benedict Anderson calls an imagined community. Anderson argues that an
imagined community is a product of a shared sense of common experiences through
media technology to link people who are far apart from each other.4 Today, not only
media but also transportation technology and the knowledge of natural science have
fostered global experiences through economic exchanges, political actions, cultural

movements, and so on. Even natural disasters and outbreaks of epidemics are not isolated

 

4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

events in local regions, as the recent example of the SIRS virus and so many other similar
events prove.5

To contextualize what was said about history and before moving to a more
detailed engagement about it in the following chapter, I present three personal stories to
frame the question of history and historical consciousness. Through these stories, I wish
to highlight problems and questions to be engaged in the following chapters of this

dissertation.

Iolanda’s Question

In 2003, I visited my wife’s family in Romania. We took a short trip out of
Bucharest, and visited Sinaia, a mountain resort village north of Bucharest. Romania,
since the revolution of 1989, has adopted the model of the free market economy. There
were signs of struggles in forming a new social order in place of the old one.

In Sinaia, my wife and I met a girl named Iolanda. Iolanda was eight years old,
and she came to us to beg for money. Many times we had seen children asking for money
on streets, in parks, and sometimes at cafe's. We had talked several times about what we
should do for those children begging for money. We had saved just enough from our
graduate assistant salaries to visit my wife’s aging parents in Romania. While we had
enough to visit Romania, we did not have enough money to spend any extra on ourselves.
We had agreed to give something, but we did not want to do so out of sympathy or pity.

We also did not want to be the kind of tourists whose passing sympathy and giving

 

5 This study will discuss the impacts of globalization on increasing chances of the present
controversies across different historical explanations in Chapter 2.

encouraged the practice of begging in Romania. Though it was not a well-crafted thought,
we decided to ask the people who begged for money whether they wished to work for the
amount for which they asked. Iolanda came shortly after we crafted the idea. We were
caught unprepared to put our idea into a practice. Yet, we asked her if she wanted to work
for us. Iolanda said yes, but we had no idea what we should ask her to do. So, we talked:

a conversation that lasted more than four hours.

Iolanda was Roma—of group some call Gypsies, some of whom traditionally live
off begging on the streets. They have often been called the nation-less people. Iolanda
was a very articulate girl with many interesting stories to share. From her stories, we
learned that she was living with her family and she takes the train to Sinaia to beg money
from the townspeople. Iolanda made money to support her family, and thus she had never
been to any school.

During the course of our long conversation, Iolanda asked what we do for a living.
We said that we are students. My wife has an advanced degree in mathematics and was in
a doctorate program in mathematics education. Iolanda understood what my wife was
doing, and she told us that she learned literacy through reading the labels on consumer
products, and she encountered mathematics (calculation) by counting money she earned
from begging. Then she asked what I was doing. Having no better words, I said “history.”
What followed was an unexpected question: “what is history?”

If we had not already talked with Iolanda for several hours before this unexpected
question, I would have explained in the same way I would talk to a little child. Yet, when

she asked the question, she had already shown us the depth of her observation of life that

perhaps had come from the way she grew up. Hence, her question struck me. How should
I speak about history to a child who is not like a child and who has never been to school?
Iolanda understood that history is about the past, yet she had trouble
understanding what there is to study about the past. Iolanda’s understanding of the past
came from her experiences. From her parents and grandparents, she also knew what
happened before her birth. Mythology also contributed to her knowledge about what
happened in the distant past. Iolanda’s understanding of the past was constituted from her
and her family’s experiential knowledge and from culturally shared myths. Ian Barbour
argues that myths are useful fictions that are neither true nor false, but that have
important social functions. Myths are, Barbour argues, the system of stories that helps
people map out their experiences in the present, and that they enable a people’s
integration into a community with its collective memories and aspirations.6
In this respect, Iolanda constitutes her knowledge about the past from two
sources: from what has been remembered of her and her family’s experiences, and from
what has been narrated as the stories about the past—much like those stories in the
Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales. The past beyond her and her family’s experiential
knowledge, in other words, lies in mythology. For Iolanda, knowing what happened in

the past beyond her private circle would offer little or no substance to understand her

present conditions and her environment.

 

6 Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 5.

This experience struck me as a historian.7 The question—what is history—asks
more than what history is as a disciplinary practice. It also asks what is the functional role
of history: What does history do to the present and perhaps for the future? If history’s
substance were to give an account of the whole past (this in itself is an overly ambitious
claim of history), the absolute product of history would have to be the same as to gather
all accounts of the past. However, procuring the whole account of the past is insufficient
as history’s product. Building a chronicle, no matter how complete a chronicle might be,
is not the goal of doing history. From this viewpoint, one might say that myths and epics
have better functions than history on grounds of their potential to transfer meanings from
the past to explain the present. History is not about giving complete accounts of the past
even though this is an important process in doing history.8

In fact, providing Iolanda with a historian’s account of the past would not do
anything to her present reality. Some may argue that accounts about the past would help
her understand her current conditions as a historical construction. However, we must
understand that past accounts themselves do not carry meanings of their own. The
accounts have to be elaborated and explained for certain purposes. Iolanda’s question
about history pushed me to think about the nature of historical explanation. How
historical explanation differs from myths and their explanations of the past is not a trivial
question. It is generally understood that historians should construct a historical

explanation that is fair to the past. However, when the question—what is history?—came

 

7 Though I have employed interdisciplinary approach in many of my studies, I have primarily
trained as a historian in Japan, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania.

8 Arthur C. Danto argues similarly on this point when differentiating substantive and analytical
philosophy of history in Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1985).

from Iolanda, it made me think that it is perhaps equally or more important for historians
to inquire into how their historical explanation can be fair (or bring fairness) to present

reality.

Historical Explanation and Its Violence

It is quite interesting to grow up as an outsider in a society. I grew up in Japan and
Hong Kong, and I received most of my education there. But I also had a part of my
college education, including graduate level training, in the United States. Learning
history in different places has given me a particular understanding because I have
encountered historical explanations of the past in very differing circumstances of the
present. Learning history in a classroom was not so much of a problem. However, I have
experienced historical explanations that generated difficulties in my everyday social
environment.

One incident happened when I was 11 years old. There was an intense dispute in
China over Japanese junior high school history textbooks. The dispute came from an
erroneous report of one Japanese newspaper that said the Japanese textbooks changed
their language to legitimize Japan’s wartime aggression in East Asia.9 I saw

demonstrations and protests on the streets in Hong Kong about these Japanese history

 

9 See the front-page report on Asahi Shinbun on June 26, 1982. The headline says, “Textbooks to
bring back the pre-war (Japan).” In this article, the newspaper criticized the Ministry of Education’s
certification of the textbooks by reporting that the Ministry has changed the textbook language from
“invasion” to “military advancement” or simply “advancement”. This report has ignited into international
disputes, particularly between China and Japan over how history textbooks should represent Japan’s
wartime aggression. However, there was no case of such certification, and Asahi Shinbun later admitted
the report was erroneous. For fuither information, see: Masami Kataoka, Asahi Shinbun no “sengo ” sekinin
(Tokyo: Tentensha, 1998), and Shoichi Watanabe, Banken kyoni hoeru (Tokyo: Tokuma, 1997).

10

textbooks, and it was quite frightening to see a growing hostility toward Japan and the
Japanese.'0 One day, I went to a store to buy groceries—an errand practiced almost daily.
There, the storekeeper threw dirty water on me from his spit vase. We knew each other
because my parents often sent me there to get things missing in the refrigerator. It was
quite a shock when the storekeeper threw dirty water on me. From his hostile words
thrown at me, I understood that it was because I am Japanese and I was a convenient
target for his protest against the Japanese textbook representation of history.

The people protesting in the street did not know what really was written in the
Japanese history textbooks about Japan’s wartime aggression as most of them, I am
assuming here with certainty from my experience, have not seen the Japanese textbooks
in question (and most people in Hong Kong do not read Japanese). The people acted on
the grounds of the erroneous report, and I became a target of their action. I eventually
learned that I was not the only one who had experienced similar incidents: some of my
Japanese classmates had experienced similar harassment.

Instead of getting angry, we accepted the hostility and felt bad or even guilty
about being Japanese. In the school for Japanese students (Japanese school), we had
learned the history of Japan’s aggression in East Asia. In museums and libraries, we had

seen images and read literature about Japanese aggression during the war. Movies and

 

'0 Hong Kong had been under British colony, and there was no significant hostility toward Japan
when compared to the Mainland China in which there was a history curriculum in schools highlighting the
Japanese invasion. In history curriculum, the construction of the People’s Republic of China is framed as a
result of systematic and united efforts of the Chinese people against the Japanese invasion. While in Hong
Kong, the school curriculum for history had been divided into two frames: ancient history and modern
history. In ancient history, history is taught in Cantonese language to build Chinese identity while the
modern history is taught in English without touching in details about the issues that may undermine the
legitimacy of British colonial ruling of Hong Kong. For details about this division, see Flora Kan and
Edward Vickers, “One Hong Kong, Two Histories; ‘History’ and ‘Chinese History’ in the Hong Kong
School Curriculum,” Comparative Education 38, no. 1 (Feb 2002), 73-89.

11

television dramas from Hollywood and mainland China frequently depicted the Japanese
as villains torturing and violating the locals during the war. In the Japanese school, we
also had a special history lesson about the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. It is quite
interesting to recall the lesson not because we had learned the history of the Japanese
invasion of Hong Kong in a Japanese school. It is interesting because we learned the
history written from the perspective of the British, which was also a colonial power in
Hong Kong. I remember learning how the British had heroically defended Hong Kong
from the Japanese aggression, and we got upset when learning that the Japanese army
seized the Peninsula Hotel to set up its headquarters. The Peninsula was one of Hong
Kong’s most prestigious hotels and its colonial style architecture, symbolizing the
colonial order, made it a historic landmark of Hong Kong.

I remember that, as children, we had somehow accepted the hostility against us as
Japanese. In the neighborhood, being Japanese meant being automatically assigned the
status of villain amongst the other children playing in the park. Some local people—
Cantonese—even instructed their children not to play with the Japanese children.
Interestingly, history education had given us an acceptance of this unfair condition while
it had given others legitimacy for their violent actions. This is a case in which the past
worked to obscure the present communication about the past, and history functioned as a
medium to communicate about the past to encourage a lack of (or avoiding of)
communication in the present.

Historical explanation could serve as a medium that encourages not only
miscommunication but also violence between different social groups who had had

conflicts in the past. Historical explanations have given an understanding of a past in

12

which Japanese aggression resulted in the deaths of many people in East Asia. In this
sense, we can perhaps say that, in the aforementioned case, the meaning of history is to
identify and understand past reality in which there were Japanese aggressions in East
Asia. However, from what I have narrated here, I argue that it is perhaps necessary to
consider the meaning in history in order to critically inquire into the legitimacy of
historical explanation and its effects in the present. “To demand the meaning of an event”,
Arthur C. Danto argues, “is to be prepared to accept some context within which the event

”'1 In this respect, if we were to uncritically assume the meaning

is considered significant.
of history without critically inquiring into the meaning in history, we would miss an
opportunity to understand how a particular past event became the subject of historical
inquiry in our present.

In fact, we can say with fair certainty that no event constitutes its historical
significance at the moment it was happening. It is faulty to assume that we can write
historically about an event at the time of its occurrence. Past events become the subject of
historical inquiry only with the knowledge we have attained after the occurrence of the
events. In consequence, we have limited understanding of the significance of the events
outside of the contexts that make the event significant for historical inquiry. In this

respect, it is perhaps worthwhile to consciously investigate the contexts from which we

assign historical significance to past events. Inquiring into the meaning in history,

 

H Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 13.

13

therefore, would lead us to make a systematic examination of the historical development

of the contextual conditions that are generating historical explanations.12

The Past in the Present

The diversity of historical explanations often comes with a surprise. The current
globalization and increasing human mobility make it more frequent than ever for us to
encounter historical explanations that have notable differences from the one familiar to us.
When I was teaching a university course on the subject of the US. atomic bombing of
Hiroshima, one student said in the class that the Japanese deserved the bomb because
they caused the war through a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Though I have heard the
analogy before, it was shocking to hear that analogy repeated in the classroom. I
understood that the student had a strong faith in the analogy, so much so that he recited it
in the classroom taught by a Japanese instructor. There was a time students used the word
“Japs” to castigate the Pearl Harbor attack and other violence brought by the Japanese
during the war. The students were often apologetic for using the word Japs when they
were reminded that I am Japanese, but it is always a shock to find out there is a historical
explanation legitimizing their castigation of the Japanese with disgust even sixty years
after the war’s end.

Right after the 9-11 attacks, there was a frequent use of the Pearl Harbor analogy

in the media and the public sphere of the United States. There were newspaper articles,

 

'2 The process through which the past event gains its historical significance is discussed in Chapter
4 and 5 by illuminating how the atomic bombing of Hiroshima became historically significant event in
Hiroshima and in Japan.

14

periodicals and television broadcasts portraying the terrorist attacks as the second Pearl
Harbor, the new day of infamy, and other similar phrases to align the terrorist attacks to
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. At Michigan State University, there were
several meetings to discuss the 9-11 attacks. I had expressed my concerns about the
problem of using the Pearl Harbor analogy to speak about acts of terrorism. Even though
the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor ended up being a sneak attack, many documents
have revealed that it was intended to be a surprise attack instead.l3 Furthermore, the Pearl
Harbor attack was a strategic attack against military targets, and thus it was
fundamentally different from the terrorists who targeted their attack indiscriminately
against civilian population.

I was however shocked when I was confronted by a professor. He violently
opposed my request for reflection on the Pearl Harbor analogy in connection to the
terrorist attacks. He stressed the legitimacy and accuracy of the Pearl Harbor analogy to
describe the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Similar incidents happened throughout the nation at
the time when the emotional response had silenced criticisms against any challenges to
emotionally charged reactions to the terrorist attacks.14 Yet, in the public media, the Pearl

Harbor analogy continued. For example, Henry Kissinger stated on CNN: “the people

 

’3 Sneak attack and surprise attack are different more than the difference in wording. Sneak attack
refers the military attack without an official declaration of war. However, surprise attack is military attack
done after war’s declaration.

‘4 There were some protests and challenges to initial reactions to the 9-11 attacks. Alexander
Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, was quoted in
an article, “The Next Casualty: Bill of Rights?” in Los Angeles Times (September 13, 2001) to say:
“According to the facts in the public record so far, this [9-1 1 attacks] was not an act of war and NATO
Article 5 does not apply. President Bush has automatically escalated this national tragedy into something it
is not in order to justify a massive military attack abroad and an apparent crackdown on civil liberties at
home.”

15

who did it [9-11 attacks] must have the same end as the people who attacked Pearl
Harbor.”15

The Pearl Harbor analogy is problematic not necessarily because it wrongfully
framed Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The fundamental problem of the analogy,
in the context of the United States, was to me that it ignored completely the analogy’s
frightening connotations. For example, two months after the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor, the United States government forced the relocation of the people and the citizens
of Japanese ancestry into internment camps. In fact, there were discussions about the
mass internment of Muslim population in the United States soon after the 9-11 attacks. ‘6
Moreover, the War in the Pacific had caused massive civilian casualties, and John W.
Dower characterized the war as the war without mercy. '7 The seriousness of the idea in
bringing the terrorist “the same end as the people who attacked Pearl Harbor” is evident
when considering the series of events that occurred in the Second World War. These
incidents, however, reminded me of two other unpleasant experiences built upon

historical explanations about the past war.

 

'5 CNN Henry Kissinger, interview on 11 September 2001.

16 There are multitudes of examples to show that there had been discussions to introduce mass
Muslim internment to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. These responses were quite strong
immediately after the terrorist attacks, and it still occasionally surfaces today. In response to such
emotionally charged reactions, Electric Shadows for ITVS Interactive launched a website to explore “what
it means to be an American with the face of the enemy.” (“Stories from the Aftermath of Infamy, online:
http://www.itvs.org/facetoface/intro.html (accessed May 1 1, 2008). Furthermore, there are list of
discussions and reports that parallels between the US internment of the Japanese Americans in 1949 and
the arguments surrounding on the Muslim internment in post-9-1 1. See, Discover Nikkei at
http://www.discovernikkei.org/wiki/index.php/Japanese-American_and_Arab—American_Parallelsin
(accessed, May 31, 2008).

'7 John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon,
1986).

16

The first experience came when I lived in Hawaii. I had lived there for three years.
Every time someone visited me from outside of Hawaii, he/she asked me to take them to
the Arizona Memorial. The Arizona Memorial is built on top of the USS Arizona that
was sunk by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Visitors, therefore, have to take a boat
to get to the actual memorial site. Before taking the boat, all visitors have to watch a half-
hour film. The film depicts the Pearl Harbor attack as a sneak attack—instead of a
surprise attack—of the Japanese. It was difficult to repeatedly watch the film portraying
my nation’s past act as a sneak attack, but the most difficult experience came when the
lights were turned back on afier the film had ended. Nearly always, I saw some visitors
crying at the end of the film, and I felt their eyes stabbing my skin. There were times
someone said in disgust the word “Japs.” I looked down and felt guilty about my being
there as a Japanese, yet I felt I was being unjustly castigated by the past.

The second experience came when I was spending my summer at my
grandfather’s. In the attic, I found my grandfather’s military record during the Second
Word War. I have always assumed that he had been in the war, but my grandparents
never said anything about their wartime experiences. Hence, finding his military record
was somewhat of a shock. Yet, what was more surprising was my response to finding the
record. Immediately, I compared his military record to what I had learned about the
Japanese military’s actions during the war. From the record, I found out he was in Qintao
City, China for about a half-year during the time the Qintao region had no major military
operation. I remember having experienced a sense of relief: my grandfather was less
likely to have taken part in the military and other violence of which the Japanese Army

has been accused. I wonder why I felt relieved, and I could not find any good reason

17

other than the idea that it confirmed my privilege to castigate the past acts of the nation
without a worry of putting dirt on my grandparents. I had learned the historical
explanation castigating the nation’s past war. However, when I learned that my
grandfather had taken a role in the past, I wanted to confirm whether he could be
excluded from my castigation of the past.

These two experiences expose how we comprehend historical explanation about
the past in the present. At the Arizona Memorial, the visitors receive a version of
historical explanation that is automatically and uncritically excluding Japanese and their
historical explanation. The substantiality of one historical explanation is constructed
through exclusion of those historical explanations that pose contrary views of the past.
Similarly, my grandparents kept their silence in postwar Japan where the dominant
historical explanation excluded the people who had taken a part in the nation’s war.‘8
These experiences suggest the difficulty in challenging and/or contradicting historical
explanations that have gained notable popularity in present society. In fact, there are
many similar examples where historical inquiry, no matter how rigorous the historian’s
practice may be, has not been successfiil in reconstructing what has already been a
dominant historical explanation in the present society.

These experiences presented above suggest that historical explanations often
provide legitimacy to the political deliberations and identities of the present. In this
respect, we can understand that ongoing historical controversies around the world are not
necessarily limited to the disputes over the differences in the meaning of history. Instead,

the disputes are also about how we construe meaning in history in the present. It is not in

 

'8 See the discussion in chapter 3 on historical explanation dominant in the public sphere and its
causing violence to the people who have experienced the past.

18

question whether the past is the subject of history. However, the above stories suggest an
idea that historical explanation is the subject of the present, and it is an important medium

for inquiring into the impacts of the past and past events in the present.

History of Historical Explanations

The three stories pose questions about history and its functions in situating our
consciousness of the present and its historical conditions. Iolanda’s story poses a question
about history’s responsibility to/in the present beyond the disciplinary practice of history.
The question troubles the assumed substantiality of history. The methodological inquiry
of history is doubtlessly important in doing history as a discipline, yet the explanation
generated from methodological inquiry would provide no answer that is sufficient to
Iolanda. History is not limited to a disciplinary language, but provides both responses to
and causal explanations for the present conflicts in a society. In this respect, the question
on history’s firnction in the present and its historical conditions is an important question
today. This question, however, cannot be answered through the methodological inquiries
of history alone.

Two other stories exemplify the impacts of historical explanations in the present.
The first shows how we rationalize our present actions and conditions on grounds of the
historical explanation that is dominant in our present social space. Furthermore, this story
exemplifies the case in which a historical explanation of wartime violence became a
medium to excuse the imputative punishments of the present on grounds of what

happened in the past. Then, the last story introduces the case in which historical

l9

explanations fix conditions in our understanding of what happened in the past. These
stories highlight two cases in which historical explanations that are dominant in a society
authenticate both the silencing and ignoring of other voices that may pose contrary or
different explanations of what happened in the past. Moreover, the stories illustrate the
case in which historical explanations have authenticated the present to make judgments
on past events and the people who took part in them. The story exposes the reality in
which the people who have experienced the past cannot speak safely about their direct
experience about the past when it is contrary or challenging to the way the events are
situated in a historical explanation.

The stories exemplify that historical explanations have substantial impacts on how
we understand and/or rationalize present conditions as historically situated reality.
Furthermore, historical explanations also provide us the platform on which we build
reasons for and acceptance of our actions in the present. In this respect, it is perhaps
necessary to differentiate history and historical explanation. History is a disciplinary
practice of inquiring into the past and the products generated from this practice.
Historical explanation, while it is also history’s product, is the medium through which we
understand and rationalize both past and present conditions. The substantial difference
between history and historical explanation is that the latter can be the subject of historical
inquiry. It is possible to inquire into the development of disciplinary practices and
methods of historical inquiry—what some call historiography—but it is not the same as
practicing historical inquiry. History is a discipline using particular methods to inquire
into the past. Historical explanations can be seen as the reflections of how the present

makes a sense of what happened in the past. Therefore, different historical explanations

20

are reflecting the diverse notions and ways the present relates to the past. More notable is
that historical explanations freeze the ways people made sense of their present through
what happened in the past. In this respect, we can inquire diverse ways people
constructed an understanding of their historical conditions in the past through inquiring
into past historical explanations as the subject of history.

This study will make an interdisciplinary approach to explore the history of
historical explanations in order to investigate the contexts in which past events became
the subject of historical explanations. The point to observe here is that this study makes a
claim that no event is historically significant itself, because the historical significance of
an event cannot be identified in the moment of its occurrence. It is perhaps needless to
explicate the logics of this statement, but it can be represented through identifying the
logical fallacy in a conventional saying—if I had known this would happen, I would have
never done it. This statement is a logical fallacy because, if I had known what would
happen in the future, there was no way to prevent it from happening.19 Historical
significance of an event, similarly, is given when the event became significant in the
future of the time the event had occurred. In this respect, we can perhaps say that no
event is ‘historically’ significant in itself, and thus historical significance of past events is
contextually defined. The contexts fi'aming past events to make historical explanations
are the product outside of the past. Therefore, it is the non-historical signifiers,
contextualizing past events to construct a historical explanation in the present, that define

historical significance of what happened in the past.

 

‘9 This is, in fact, a part of the questions posed by Aristotle. Further discussion on this point, see
Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 9-1 I.

21

Exploring the history of historical explanation is important when understanding
what makes particular past events into history’s subject. Through understanding the
driving force and the process in constructing historically significant meaning from the
chaotic past, we are able to understand the roles of historical explanations beyond the
disciplinary discourse of history. In the face of rapidly emerging and intensifying
historical controversies in both domestic and international contexts, it is particularly
important to identify the limitation of the disciplinary practice of history to resolve the
conflicts in understanding and/or representing what happened in the past. In this respect,
this study aims to differentiate history—history as a discipline—from historical
explanation, which is history in sociopolitical contexts of its present. It is this study’s
argument that conscious differentiation of history from historical explanation would offer
a new approach to substantiate historical knowledge and to offer dialogical resolution to

ongoing historical controversies in the world.

Subject of Inquiry and Clarifications

In order to inquire into the history of historical explanation, it is necessary to
investigate particular events in the past that are represented in the study of history and
that are widely known as historically significant events in the past. This study therefore,
explore the history of historical explanations about war violence, namely Hiroshima’s
atomic bombing. The choice of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing is two fold: first, my being
Japanese allows easier access to resources written in Japanese, and second is that this

event and its significance are recognized around the world. Perhaps, it is fair to note that I

22

initially avoided Hiroshima for this study. When a Japanese person speaks about
Hiroshima, it often invites a defensive audience. A Japanese who speaks about Hiroshima
must be biased by his sentimental connection with the nation's past.20 We all have
sentimental or emotional connection with particular past events when we study them.
However, this connection often becomes the very reason we invalidate historical
explanations. If I wish to overcome this dilemma, I should use a past event with which I
have close sentimental and emotional connection. Hence, this study employs Hiroshima's
atomic bombing and other war tragedies Japan had experienced in the Second World War
as the field.

For the purpose of this study, it is critical to have access to the resources written
in Japanese. This study will investigate how particular past events are thought historically
significant to build a historical explanation in a particular society. For this purpose, it is
important to be able to access newspapers, personal memoir and other media to explore
how the events were thought of at selected moments since the event occurred.

It is also important to note that there are diverse historical explanations of the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Smithsonian’s planned exhibition of Enola Gay, for
example, brought intense controversy in 1994 over how a public museum should
represent the past.21 Furthermore, the 9-11 terrorist attacks created a fury in Japan when
the US. media described the place where the World Trade Center used to be as Ground
Zero, which has been the phrase used to symbolize the epicenter of the atomic explosion

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1995, the US. Postal Service’s issuing of a postal stamp

 

2° I discuss this point in details in Chapter 3.

2' For further discussion on Enola Gay controversy, see Martin Harwit, An Exhibition Denied;
Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996).

23

featuring the atomic cloud with a caption, “Atomic bombs hasten the end of war, August
1945,” caused an international dispute between Japan and the United States over how the
atomic bombings of Japan is remembered. Similar controversies repeatedly surface
between the two countries even today: such as National Atomic Museum in
Albuquerque’s selling A-bomb accessories, repeated references of atomic bombing when
US. politicians spoke of the war against terrorism, newspaper columnists writing to
justify the use of bomb as saving both Japanese and American lives, and so on. These
incidents prove there are substantially different historical understandings about the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and thus it is meaningful to explore how Japan has shaped
its historical explanations about the bomb.22

Before introducing the chapter composition of this study, it is perhaps useful to
clarify what this study is not. At a glance, chapters in this study seem to discuss various
acts of wartime violence and their representations in history. It is important to note that it
is not the purpose of this study to bring such discussions on what past events and/or how
the past ought to be represented in history. I must admit, however, that at times I had
difficulties, as a Japanese, in refraining from a sense of duty for bringing certain events
forward to call wider attention to particular incidents that happened in Hiroshima afier
the atomic bombing. I have relatives in Hiroshima, and I lived there when I was very
small child. Therefore, during my investigation of the sociopolitical contexts behind the

public commemoration of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing, it infuriated me as an individual

 

22 It would be most interesting to explore how the United States shaped its historical explanation
of the bomb, and compare it with the Japanese counterpart. However, such investigation would easily
double the length of this study, and it would distort the central purpose of this study: that is, to investigate
the history of historical explanation for the purpose of presenting the possibility to substantiate historical
knowledge and to offer dialogical resolution to ongoing historical controversies.

24

person to face the fact that the US. enforcement of the censorship in Japan about the
radiation impacts of the bomb caused the delay in providing help for the survivors not
days or months, but years after Japan’s surrender to the Allied nations.23 It made me
upset to encounter the information that, when the US. military forces collected data to
study the bomb’s impacts on human populations in postwar Hiroshima, the survivors
were treated as specimens. Many survivors recall that they wrote their name in the form
where the caption was read specimen in place of name.24 Then, it made me excited when
learning that Japan’s antiwar movement during the Vietnam War helped American
soldiers who deserted the war to escape to Europe.”

It is indeed important work for history to bring those events and occurrences to

light as the facts of the past. Many historians, in fact, have already done and are doing

 

23 This study briefly discusses about the US. enforcement of censorship in Chapter 4, but the
discussion is limited to introduce the sociopolitical background in which Hiroshima’s survivors exercise
their commemorating of the atomic bomb and its victims. For detailed discussion on the US. enforcement
of postwar censorship in Japan, see Glenn D. Hook, “Roots of Nuclearism: Censorship and Reportage of
Atomic Damage and Casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 23, no.
I (1991), Kiyoko Horiba, Hyogen to ken ’etsu: Nihonjin wa do taioshita ka (Tokyo: Asahi Sensho, 1995).

24 November 1946, the Presidential Order issued by Harry Truman had launched the Atomic
Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the name of providing help to the
bomb’s casualties. However, survivors’ testimonies and the archival documents of the US. (declassified in
19805) proved that ABCC did not have any intention or legislative means to provide medical treatment to
the survivors in Japan. The booklet introducing ABCC to the bomb’s survivors, however, clearly stated
throughout the booklet that ABCC had medical doctors and staff to providing free medical help. The
booklet was published by ABCC on July 5,1949, under the title in Japanese and English, “What is ABCC?”,
and it is available in the ABCC Collection at John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center
in Houston Academy of Medicine, Texas Medical Center Library, Houston, Texas.

For further details about the ABCC, see the following studies and publications: Hiroko Takahashi,
Huinsareta HiroshimaflVagasaki: Bei kakujikken to minkan bouei keikaku (Tokyo: Gaihusha, 2008),
Hiroshi Ueno, Hiroshima sanpo (Tokyo: Chobunsha, 1997), The Japan Council against Atomic and
Hydrogen Bomb, “Genbakuhigai no inpei (sono 2): Marmot atsukai ni sareta hibakusha,” Hankaku zemi
27 (March 18, 2007), http://wwwl0.plala.or.jp/antiatom//jp/Rcrd/Basics/jsawa-27.htm (accessed March 30,
2008).

25 There are some but not many studies on this historical event. However, there is a collected work
of writings and memoirs of those who involved in the project to assist American war deserters in Japan. See,
Shigeru Sekitani and Yoshie Sakamoto, eds., Tonarini dassohei ga itajidai: JA TE C, aru shimin undo no
kiroku (Tokyo: Shiso no kagakusha, 1998).

25

much to introduce their findings of history. However, the knowledge about the past
within the disciplinary circle of history has been very slow in making changes in
dominant historical explanations. In his popular book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, James
W. Loewen challenges the ways history has been taught in American classrooms as,
“Feel-good history for affluent white males (that) inevitably amounts to feel-bad history
for everyone else.”26 Loewen’s identification of problems in history education in
American schools is perhaps useful when thinking of why disciplinary history has not
been successful in making changes to a dominant historical explanation with the new
findings or facts of what happened in the past. Therefore, this study aims at no historical
inquiry of presenting the facts about Hiroshima’s atomic bombing and other war violence
in the Second World War. Let us count on other historians to do that work. By the same
token, it is not the purpose of this study to offer better historical explanation through
challenging the existing explanations of the past. Let us also count on other historians and
history educators to do that work. Instead, this study aims to explore an interdisciplinary
approach to the history of historical explanations in order to bring a new perspective to

understand history’s subjects and the roles assigned to the past in the present.
Chapter Composition
This chapter has given a general introduction to the underlining argument of this

study, and there are six chapters to follow. Each chapter is, of course, linked to each other

throughout the study. However, I will also make each chapter stand independently.

 

26 James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got
Wrong (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 301.

26

Readers can start reading this study from the chapter that is the closest to their interests. It
is my conscious decision to organize this study in such a format because this study aims
to approach diverse audience: historians, history educators, politicians and the general
public.

For historians, it is recommended to read first the discussion on historiography in
the next chapter. Historians who are sympathetic to the Japanese discourse about what
happened in Hiroshima are advised to go to chapter 4, 5, and 3. Then move to chapter 6
and 7. Historians who are more critical of the Japanese discourse about what happened in
Hiroshima are encouraged to go to chapter 3, and progress to chapter 4, 5, and then 6 and
7. For history teachers and the practitioners of public history, it is recommended to go
chapter 3, and then jump to chapter 6 and 7. For politicians and the general public, it is
strongly recommended to read chapter 3, 6 and 7. This is how I designed this study, but
this is not intended to bind anyone from approaching this study any way they wish.

It is now perhaps useful to briefly introduce here the discussion of each chapter.
The following chapter (chapter 2) introduces historiography and its discussions about the
scholarship of history and its construction of knowledge. The chapter argues for an idea
that the knowledge of history is fluid entity—it is definitive as an existence but it is
incorporeal as an entity that is always becoming. Historical knowledge is historically
constructed knowledge as a result of historians’ studying the past. The knowledge of
history that is fluid (the fluid knowledge) is the knowledge that is transcendently true
across the diverse historical explanations of the same past. In other words, the fluid
knowledge is the knowledge in history as opposed to historical knowledge that is

conditioned by the contexts of cultural, political, social, and even methodological

27

variations of conditions. Through exploring historiography—the philosophy of history,
chapter two illustrate what makes history deficient in substantiating its knowledge. In the
chapter’s conclusion, I propose how history can move beyond its conceptual deficiencies.
In chapters three to six, I investigate the representations of Hiroshima’s atomic
bombing in different contexts and/or in different moments in postwar Japan. Chapter
three investigates the process through which personal memories become publicly
available resources to construct an understanding of what happened in the past. By
differentiating memories from testimonies, the chapter illuminates a complex process in
constructing testimonies, which allows a person’s private experiences to be used publicly.
The chapter then identifies the violence that occurs when testimonies are used outside of
their intended context to construct a historical explanation. Chapter four shifts our
perspective of inquiry from private construction of testimony to public practice of
commemorating the atomic bombing, particularly in Hiroshima. The chapter’s main
focus is to illustrate the process through which the atomic bombing became the subject to
be commemorated in Hiroshima. The bomb brought the city enormous tragedy and
painful memory, and there had been conscious efforts to actively forget many wartime
atrocities and tragedies, which include the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The chapter
thus investigates the driving discourse that made Hiroshima actively commemorate the
bombing despite the painful memory it wrought to the survivors. Chapter five
investigates the process through which Hiroshima’s atomic bombing became a nationally
shared experience. Not all wartime events became the subject of commemoration in the
postwar Japan, even though there were many events that claimed a larger number of

casualties. Instead of assuming the historical significance of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing

28

as inevitable, chapters four and five together make a genealogical inquiry into how the
atomic bombing has become a collectively shared experience in the postwar public
sphere of Japan.

Chapter six shifts the discussion to contemporary constructions of the historical
significance and the meanings about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. There are diverse
historical explanations of the atomic bombing. Therefore, there is a question as to how
we should define what to be represented and what meanings to be authenticated as the
knowledge that can stand substantial in respect to the plurality of historical explanations.
The chapter investigates Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bombing, the
newest and first national memorial museum built inside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Park, to inquire how the museum tries to substantiate its exhibition in response to the
diverse understandings and representations of the atomic bombing in the public sphere.
Through using the museum visitor notebooks, the chapter inquires about the museum as a
model case to seek the knowledge in history that is incorporeal and ceaselessly
transforming.

The final chapter, chapter seven, concludes with a proposition that history’s
knowledge is an entity while it is also an incorporeal entity that is ceaselessly changing.
Taking upon the notion of fluid knowledge generated in the previous chapter, this chapter
pushes forward an argument to propose a different kind of knowledge to history and its
knowledge construction. This chapter proposes history of historical explanation as an
additional method to push the notion of knowledge that is incorporeal not in place of but

in addition to already existing historical knowledge.

29

Again, this study does not intend to make additional historical explanations about
the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This study does not intend to challenge preexisting
historical explanations or choose any particular historical explanations. It is also not the
intention of this study to introduce a mechanism to bring hierarchy to diverse historical
explanations. This study, instead, merely proposes a new kind of knowledge for history.
However, it is my firm argument that this attempt to propose a new kind of knowledge
will introduce additional horizons to the scholarship of history and its knowledge

construction.

30

Chapter 2

History and Historical Controversy

There have been, and perhaps there still are, parts of science which
have not passed beyond the mere making of observations, the
collecting of specimens, and the like. Ordinary history might be
just such a science.

—Arthur c. Danto'

Historical Revisionism and Revising History

Historical controversy often invites challenges and criticisms to those attempting
to rewrite or revise current and presiding historical explanation(s). However, it is
important to call our attention to the fact that history is never exempt from revisions. If
we accept the generalization that history is about the past, we have to also accept the
reality that we would not have known the historical significance of past events at the time
the events were still in progress. For instance, the historical significance of the 9-11
attacks is better known today—in terms of the events complexity in history—than in the
moment immediately after the terrorists crashed the airplanes. We understand the
significance of the attacks in history in the light of many events that followed after the
attacks.

In this respect, while the facts about the past may be fixed, the meanings of the
past are never fixed so long as the future is unknown. In other words, all historical
explanations are open to revisions in light of everything that could not have been known

at the time the events occurred in the past. Therefore, the knowledge of history we have

 

' Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 4.

31

today is also open to revision because we have no definitive knowledge about what will
happen in our future.2 Explanations of the past that refuse to be revised are not history.
Instead, they would merely be myths or epics that are history-like but not history.

The fiftieth anniversary of the Second World War invited many historical
controversies across the nation-states that had violent encounters in the past. These
controversies made us aware that we lack a system to separate historical revisionism from
an honest process in the scholarship of history—the act of revising existing historical
explanation of the past. The problem is not that we cannot intellectually understand the
difference between historical revisionism and the revision of historical explanations.
Rather, the problem that needs to be highlighted here is that we, including historians,
often use historical revisionism as a convenient label to rule out any undesirable
challenges to the presiding (or dominant) explanations of the past.

Furthermore, when there is an instance of historical controversy, both historians
and non-historians frequently cite the historical facts to introduce hierarchy into the
plurality of historical explanations. Emphasizing historical facts to authenticate historical
explanation is a rational practice of history. However, it is only useful when we need to
differentiate historical explanations from fiction, myths and epics. In fact, when we
emphasize historical facts, we assume those facts as the knowledge with which we can

define the authenticity and hierarchy of historical explanations. Knowledge is equated to

 

2 The relationship between our inability to know about the future and the present limitation in
constructing definitive historical knowledge is the application of an Aristotelian dilemma, as well as the
application of the notion of regret. If we know what will happen in the future, we cannot do anything today
to change the future. If we can do something to prevent something from happening in the future, we will
not be able to know the future. Consequently, we can identify the meaninglessness of regret if we take it
literally. If we had known something would happen in the future, we still would not be able to do anything
to avoid something from happening in the future. See Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge, for
further discussion on this point.

32

a material property that can be owned, accumulated, and exchanged to construct
historical explanations. In current historical controversies, for example, we often discover
history seeking a political mediation in place of historical inquiry to resolve conflicts
between different historical explanations of the past.3 The plurality of historical
explanations, therefore, remains the field in which political conflicts are waged to secure
the property value of one’s own historical explanation against the historical explanations
of others.

The purpose of this study is to inquire into history that constructs the knowledge
to permit and promote the peaceful coexistence of diverse histories and the values
embedded in them. Therefore, let us start this study with a premise that the plurality of
historical explanation is the present reality. This study thus does not aim at adding
another discussion merely to confirm the importance of or the problems with the plurality
of historical explanations. To take the plurality of historical explanations as reality, this
study argues that history constructs knowledge that is infinite. More precisely, history
constructs the knowledge that is comprised of incorporeal entities which are “neither
agents nor patients, but results of actions and passions”4 in our practice of inquiring into
the past. This chapter challenges the current practice of history that uncritically positions

its knowledge as physically attributed properties. For the purpose of a peaceful and

 

3 This chapter will discuss this point with actual examples of historical controversies. However, for
the examples of politically resolved historical controversies, we can recall the controversy of the
Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and its planned exhibition of the Enola Gay in 1994-1995.
This controversy was met by a political resolution in 1995 with the Smithsonian’s cancellation of the
original exhibition plan and the firing of Martin Harwit, then director of the National Air and Space
Museum. However, the controversy resurfaced around the same issue when the museum relocated the
exhibition in 2003. This event shows that the political resolution of historical controversy did not provide
resolution to the issues that are historically controversial.

‘ Gilles Deleuze, “Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects,” in The Logic of Sense, ed.

Constantin V. Boundas, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press,
1989), 4-5.

33

historical mediation of differentiating and conflicting historical explanations, this chapter
explores historiography to identify the problems in physically attributing knowledge in
history. I will then conclude the chapter’s discussion with a proposition for history to
introduce consciousness of a kind of knowledge that is logically and dialectically

attributed.

What Is History?

This question has itself a long history, and troubled historians and philosophers of
history. The origin of the scholarship of history is said to have begun when Herodotus
wrote The History. Before Herodotus, there was no history other than chronicles and
epics to preserve knowledge of the past.5 On the occasion of writing about Xerxes’
expedition against the Greeks in the early fifth century BC, Herodotus made an attempt
to inscribe knowledge of the past in a form of historiai—an enterprise described in the
opening of The History:

I, Herodotus of Halicamassus, am here setting forth my history [historiai],
that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being,
nor those great and wonderful deeds, manifested by both Greeks and
barbarians, fail of their report, and, together with all this, the reason why
they fought one another.6

Historiai is the Greek plural of historia, and it refers to the knowledge attained through

research and investigation. Herodotus made a clear distinction that The History is neither

 

5 This statement only refers to the European world. In Asia and South Asia, the scholarship of
history or history-like practice developed somewhat differently from European space of thought. This
chapter will briefly touch on this point later.

6 Herodotus, The Famous History of Herodotus (New York: AMS Press. 1965). Parenthesis mine.

34

a chronicle—a simple record of the past events—nor epics—stories that mystify the past
by indifferently prescribing facts and fictions.

’ Most notably, Herodotus approached the past as a philosophical problem with
which one could procure knowledge about human behavior—specifically, why people
fought one another. Historiai takes the past not merely as an object to be preserved but
also as the subject of analysis with which people in the present seek meanings. Drawing
from Herodotus onwards, history canonically is different from chronicles or epics on two
accounts. First, history regards understanding the past as a philosophical problem: that is,
the study of history is meant to interpret what happened in the past. Interpretation is,
therefore, a necessary practice of history to procure the explanations of why and how
something has happened in the past, and its meanings in the present. Second, history
works within the changes that happened in the past. Historians are in the present.
Historians investigate the changes in an event between two temporal endpoints of time in
order to establish a causal relationship around the changes that took place in the past.
These two points suggest that history is different from searching the chronically kept
facts of the past. In fact, as the word historiai—the plural form of historia—suggests, the
plurality of historical explanations was a reality even when Herodotus wrote The History
in fifth century BC

Recent transition from History to histories symbolically suggests that knowledge
in history is indeed fluid. This transition is an active and progressive recognition of the
plurality of historical explanations, and it has introduced diverse perspectives to the
reading of what happened in the past. However, it is important that the diverse

perspectives brought active recognition of the plurality of historical explanations (and the

35

plurality of historical knowledge also), not the plurality of knowledge in history. The
plural reality of history is conceptually problematic if we fail to make a clear distinction
between the product of historical explanations (or historical knowledge) and knowledge
in history. If we uncritically accept the idea that the plurality of historical explanations
comes with the plurality of knowledge in history, it would likely lead history to
altogether abandon its project for constructing its knowledge.

For instance, in Re—thinking History, Keith Jenkins characterizes history as a
discipline that is “epistemologically fragile.”7 Jenkins argues, that past facts and truths
are impossible to reach from the present, and thus what we deal with in history is not the
past itself but the historian’s perception of past occurrences. Therefore, every historian
will reach different conclusions about the past so long as they do not hold the same
perspective when studying the past. Jenkin’s argument can bring forward the notion of
knowledge in history that is much like a construction through patchwork—we get the
picture of the whole past through the accumulation of the whole range of different
readings of past events. This chapter stresses repeatedly that the accumulation of whole
accounts of the past would make a good chronicle at best, but that it will never be
anything like history. Jenkins is correct to differentiate history from the past itself. Yet,
because history makes interpretive approaches to the past, Jenkins’s argument is
conceptually problematic when he stresses that different readings of the past would
eventually bring us to a better understanding of what happened in the past.

If we make a collage of diverse historical explanations to understand the whole

past, we then need a perspective that encompasses the whole perspectives of the past.

 

7 Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History (London and New York: Routledge, 1991).

36

This means that we need to have the ultimate perspective that is omniscient and that is
also free of historical time. If we are unable to attain such an ultimate perspective to
make a collage of diverse historical explanations, we are then required to wait for the
absolute end of history to begin building the collage. This chapter noted a little earlier
that historical significance of past events is not inherent to the past events themselves.
Historical significance of past events is conditional to the present contexts that provide
explanation to the past, and thus historical knowledge is always open for reinterpretation
in light of everything that has happened after the events that became the subject of history.
Therefore, until we come to the moment after which absolutely nothing will occur any
more—the endpoint of history, we cannot build a collage to understand the whole past.
However, such a moment is the end of our existence, and history, as well as everything
else, would not have any meaning after such moment. We can also understand that
accumulating the whole range of perspectives and experiences of the past does not
provide us an absolute and unified historical explanation about the past. Instead, the
accumulation of diverse perspectives and experiences of the past would merely give us a
chronicle of different perspectives in the past.

There is an assumption of materialism when we authenticate our historical
explanations, and the current historiography seems to place heavy emphasis on
materialistic faith when defining the nature of knowledge for history. On one hand, the
plurality of historical explanations is current reality. On the other hand, there is a strong
emphasis on accumulation of accounts and/or perspectives of the whole past. It is the
argument of this chapter that it is neither possible nor desirable to continue insisting upon

a materialistic emphasis on the knowledge for history, because this limits the scholarship

37

of history to the pursuit of endless accumulation of the whole past. The accumulation of
the whole past is both empirically and theoretically endless, and thus if we assume having
an absolute historical explanation at the end of accumulation, history cannot construe its
knowledge so long as we practice history.8

Let us then examine past historiography to identify what has been held as the
definitive factors construing the knowledge in the scholarship of history. Inquiring into
historiography is necessary in order to move the scholarship of history “beyond the mere

making of observations, the collecting of specimens, and the like.”9

Materialism and Knowledge in History

Enlightenment marked the pivotal point by bringing the pursuit of knowledge
about the past to the office of historians. Authoritative interpretation of past events was in
the hands of theologians before the Enlightenment. Reading past events was identical to
the act of understanding divine intention in the West. The work of history was to give
legitimacy to each successor of the governing power in East Asia where it was thought

the governing power was entrusted to each dynasty from the Heaven.l0 In other words,

 

3 Refer back the quote of Arthur C. Danto cited at the very beginning of this chapter. Danto also
criticizes history as being a part of science that has done nothing but accumulate past accounts without
really constructing anything to be called historical knowledge. See Arthur C. Danto, Narration and
Knowledge.

9 Danto, Narration and Knowledge. 4.

'° For another example of history and its development, Hidehiro Okada argues that the civilization
of South Asia—India in particular in his discussion—was inherently incapable of having a concept of
history. The civilization that emerged in South Asia held the belief of reincarnation. Therefore, Okada
argues, the civilization that emerged in South Asia had developed a historical consciousness which situated
people to comprehend the present as the result of past life and the cause of future life, at the same time.
Okada argues that history, because of its technicality, would never go together with the idea of
reincarnation because, while history deals with the world of humans, reincarnation establishes causality

38

before the modern practice of history, the world was viewed mostly as a reflection of the
Higher Intention—whether it was of Heaven, God, or other Divine Power. The
knowledge about the past, once generated by the theologians, was definitive and it was
hardly open for reinterpretation. In fact, revising that explanation of the past was seen as
an act of sacrilegion.

Montesquie (Charles de Secondat) asserted in his Considerations on the Causes of
the Greatness of the Romans and their Rise and Decline that there was a general principle
of mundane rather than occult nature governing the whole rise and decline of monarchies
in the past.ll Montesquie’s statement is significant because it marked the beginning of an
era when the mode of historical explanation was transferred to the realm of human reality
from the realm of supernatural entities. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire of
Edward Gibbon and La Philosophie de L ’historie of Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)
also marked the divorce of historical explanation from mysticism, by actively negating
forces outside human agencies from interpreting the past events. '2 This is the moment
when historical explanations were differentiated from mythologies, and when the
meanings of what happened in the past became open to reinterpretation in human circle.

However, the work of history has not been quite as successful at divorcing the

transcendental metaphysics from ruling the interpretation of what happened in the past.

 

beyond the human world—which includes the world of death, spirits, animals and God. For further
discussion, see Hidehiro Okada, Rekishi towa Nan ika (Tokyo: Bunshun Shinsho, 2001).

” Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Rise and
Decline, trans. David Lowenthal (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999).

‘2 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and F all of the Roman Empire (London: Wordsworth Editions,

1998). Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire, The Philosophy of History, trans. Thomas Kieman (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1965).

39

Martin C. D’Arcy, for example, reasserts forces beyond human agencies when
constructing historical explanation in his book, The Sense of History:

It would not do for a student to answer every question in history by saying

that it was the finger of God. Not until we have gone as far as most in

tidying up mundane events and the human drama are we permitted to

bring in wider considerations.”
D’Arcy argues here to oppose religion and other supernatural entities in constructing
historical explanations. However, he still ends the statement with a highly problematic
and anachronistic remark about bringing “in wider considerations” to the office of history.
Edward Hallett Carr critically characterized D’Arcy’s argument: D’Arcy’s argument is
“to treat religion like the joker in the pack of cards, to be reserved for really important
tricks that cannot be taken in any other way.”14

It is generally accepted today that bringing back secularism or mysticism to works

of history is not just unwise but also distorting of history and its knowledge construction.
However, it often goes unnoticed that we are also guilty of uncritically emphasizing
various isms—such as nationalism, localism, ethnocentrism, and even multiculturalism—
in the same way that religious dogma and supernatural entities are emphasized to
authenticate historical explanations. It can be said here that a historical explanation is
construed by something that is not the past itself—non-historical factors. The scholarship

of history, then, cannot authenticate any historical explanations by simply stressing past

facts if non-historical factors are making past events into the subject of our historical

 

‘3 Martin Cyril D’Arcy, The Sense of History: Secular and Sacred (London: Faber and Faber,
1959), 164.

1" Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History? (New York: Vintage Books. 1965), 95.

40

inquiry. Therefore, treating any historical explanations as the product of materialistic
accumulation of past accounts is a false assumption.

The accumulation of raw accounts of past events itself does not construct
historical explanations. Instead, historical explanations are made of not only things that
happened in the past but also non-historical factors that make the past a significant
subject for present inquiries. Materialism, assumed when constructing historical
explanations, is only accurate when knowledge in history is nothing but a mere
representation of the raw account of the past. However, past events cannot be empirically
confirmed in the present, and thus we deal with traces of the past. Therefore, treating
historical explanations with an assumption of materialism would lead us to deconstruct

history as a discipline by situating a false end for the pursuit of the knowledge.

Rationalism and Knowledge in History

Enlightenment removed mysticism, and human rationality has replaced the
supernatural entity in the interpretation of past events. Rationalism transformed past
events into the subjects of historical inquiry, and historians, instead of theologians, took
the office of interpreting the past as reflections of human actions in the schema of
rationalism.

Rationalism formed two distinctive approaches when inquiring into the past. In
Narration and Knowledge, Arthur C. Danto identifies substantive and analytical
philosophies of history as two approaches of history to study the past. First, the

substantive philosophy of history can be represented as an empirical inquiry into the past

41

meant to build knowledge of the past. It primarily argues for the methodology of
historical inquiry when it emphasizes knowledge in history as being the product of
accumulating accounts from the past. Hence, Danto argues that the substantive
philosophy of history “is not really connected with philosophy at all, any more than
history itself is.”15 The analytical philosophy of history takes on a theoretical approach to
the past.16 Consequently, the analytical philosophy of history is itself a philosophy
“applied to the special conceptual problems which arise out of the practice of history as
well as out of the substantive philosophy of history.”'7 Let us then look closely at each
philosophy of history and the kinds of knowledge produced and/or assumed in each

philosophy of history.

Knowledge in Substantive Philosophy of History

First, Enlightenment and its emphasis on human rationality brought an empirical

approach to inquiry into the past. To uncover the whole past, rationalism brought an

empirical approach to the accumulation of whole accounts of the past from documents

 

'5 Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 1. This chapter will later discuss in detail the
substantive philosophy of history.

‘6 The analytical philosophy of history is often identified as the speculative philosophy of history
in many philosophical study of history. However, this chapter follows Danto to identify certain approach to
history as “analytical” rather than “speculative.” This chapter will discuss in details about the analytical
philosophy of history, but its approach to history is most symbolically marked by its theoretical inquiry to
the past. Theory is not a product of speculation. Furthermore, to categorize a particular approach to history
as “speculative” could bring a connotation that theoretically constructed history’s knowledge is
“speculative” product, and thus it is not real. In order to better represent the rationale behind the analytical
philosophy of history, and in order to represent the analytical philosophy of history as a fair counterpart of
the substantive philosophy of history, this study makes intentional choice not to represent theoretical
approach to history as speculative one.

'7 Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 1. Italics mine.

42

and other traces of past happenings. The historian’s work is to rebuild the past in the
present through the accumulation of traces of the past; and thus knowledge in history
means the same as the past in itself without any adulteration. This approach to the study
of history was the product of the nineteenth century, when in Germany history became
institutionalized as a disciplinary department of universities. The institutionalization of
history came with an emphasis on rigorous objectivity, and Wilhelm Dilthey and other
neo-Kantian scholars sought to study the past as an historical science, much like Kant had
pursued natural science in the study of nature. Because of its emphasis on past
substances—the empirical traces of the past, Danto identifies this approach to history as
the substantive philosophy of history, and its emphasis on empirical knowledge of the
past is also more commonly identified as Romanticism or Romantic historiography.

In his review of history writings of Romanticism tradition, Lionel Grossman
argued that Romanticism sustains the View that history is to subsume and transcend what
was constructed from the past.18 Romantic historiography is contrary to the analytical
philosophy of history, and it is critical of teleological readings of the past. Leopold von
Ranke, a pivotal historian of Romanticism, challenged a hypothetical goal of history as
being necessary for a teleological inquiry into the past. Hypothetical goals would
introduce something that is not the past into historical inquiry into the past. Ranke argued,
if history permits teleological inquiry into the past, it would assign history “to the office

of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages.”'9 A

 

'8 Lionel Gossman, “History as Decipherment: Romantic Historiography and the Discovery of
Other,” New Literary History 18, no. 1 (Autumn. 1986).

'9 Leopold von Ranke, The Secret of World History: Selected Writings on the Art and Science of
History, trans. Roger Wines (New York: Fordham University Press, 1981), 21.

43

historian’s work is, instead, to explicate past events without forgeries and the
falsifications of subjective adulterations (or interpretations) of the past. The primary work
of historians is, therefore, to attain the truth about what the past essentially was (wie es
eigentlich gewesen).20

Romanticism therefore equates knowledge in history with past accounts
themselves. Romantic historiography, thus stresses the importance of rigorous criticism
of sources as well as the primacy of using primary sources in order to construct historical
explanation that is representing the past itself. In this respect, we can argue that
Romanticism aims to build historical explanation in two ways: (1) by minimizing
subjectivity in the past accounts; and (2) by discovering past accounts that are
unavailable today. Romantic historiography is still evident in our present practice of
history and history’s authenticating knowledge embedded in historical explanations. We
can find the tradition of Romanticism when we casually characterize the historian’s work
as the act of discovering past truth—like archeological findings, and even those fictional
explorations of Indiana Jones that are presented partly as an historian’s adventurous
search for past truths.

In his lecture at Cambridge, Edward Hallett Carr brought a challenge to
Romanticism and its emphasis on objectivity of historical knowledge. Romanticism, as
the substantive philosophy of history, stressed that historical knowledge should be
substantive when history is empirically accumulating nothing but facts about the past.
There is, however, a critical assumption in the substantive philosophy of history: that is,

it treats past facts “like sense-impressions, that impinge on the observer from outside, and

 

2° Ranke, The Secret of World History, 21.

44

are independent of his consciousness.”2' Carr’s challenge is especially noteworthy when
it is examined along with the recent emphasis on multiculturalism in the scholarship of
history.

The substantive philosophy of history provides rationality to multiculturalism in
the study of history. Multiculturalism would bring more empirical accounts to what the
past essentially was through discovery of other experiences that have long smoldered
beneath the dominant experiences of past events. Yet, the substantive philosophy of
history pursues the knowledge of history through the attainment of absolute objectivity
regarding past accounts without any subjectivity from the present. Historians are required
to accumulate past accounts that are free from any contemporary readings and
interpretations of past facts. However, historians have no definitive means to differentiate
the present emphasis on (desire for) multiculturalism from the multicultural realities of
the past. Hence, multiculturalism in the study of history necessarily—though we may be
reluctant to say it—constructs knowledge of history that is conditioned by cultural,
political, ethnic, racial, religious, gender, class, and other constituents of present diversity
of perspectives.

The substantive philosophy of history can, therefore, push for the plurality of
historical explanations in order to accumulate more accounts of the past. However, the
substantive philosophy of history is intolerant to the plurality of historical explanations
because it assumes the knowledge in history to be made of transcendental and timeless
accounts of the past without any conditions. In other words, knowledge in history is

assumed in the substantive philosophy of history is seen as a permanently fixed and non-

 

“ Carr, What Is History?, 6.

45

conditional entity. It can be said that such knowledge resembles the accounts in a
chronicle—a record of everything that happened in the past without any added meanings
and interpretations. In this respect, the ultimate goal assumed in the substantive
philosophy of history is to construct the complete chronicle, indiscriminately recording
everything that happened in the past. We can conclude with certainty that the knowledge
attributed to the substantive philosophy of history is a fixed property, and thus it cannot

coexist with the plurality of historical explanations.

Knowledge in Analytical Philosophy of History

Benedetto Croce, a Hegelian philosopher and historian, argues that all history is
ultimately a contemporary history of thoughts. This is because history is inevitably
written with the perspectives of the historian’s present.22 Robin G. Collingwood further
develops Croce’s point when arguing that historians are never able to attain complete
knowledge about the past. Historians recognize past facts in relation to documents (texts
and traces), and documents preserve only what was subjectively thought to be important
at the time they were recorded.23 Hence, historians always work with limited and
subjectively selected accounts of the past when they seek knowledge in history. More

recently, Johan Huizinga, a cultural historian, asserts that historical thinking always takes

 

22 Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty (London: George Allen & Urwin, I941).

23 Robin G. Collingwood, The Idea of History: With Lectures 1926-1928. edited with introduction
by Jan van der Dussen (1945, reprt. London: Oxford University Press, 1994).

46

a teleological path—both implicitly and explicitly—as the concerns and conditions of the
present would inevitably drive the historian’s motivation for studying the past.24

These arguments all suggest that both historians and the historian’s subjects—the
records of the past—cannot be totally objective, and thus the substantive philosophy of
history has a philosophical deficiency. The claim to empirical accumulation of objective
accounts of the past is, in fact, “an extraordinary boastful claim, and one which a man

”25 when it is literally understood. Even if it is possible to empirically

cannot live up to
attain totally objective accounts of the past, we can only procure a chronicle instead of
history. No historical explanation is a mere collection of records about what happened in
the past; instead, it is a deductive description of what happened in the past rather than “a
complete and total description of everything that has ever happened.”26

The analytical philosophy of history, therefore, takes a theoretical approach to the
past. The past is the historian’s subject in seeking universal and timeless general laws that
will be instructive to the present. A. R. J. Turgot and Marquis de Condorcet
(Montesquieu), prominent philosophers of history in the era of the Enlightenment,
introduced the notion of progress to align past events with what was viewed as the
necessary course of progress in human history. In The Future of Progress in Human
Mind, Montesquieu affirmed that enhancement of the human mind has driven human

society toward progress. Taking examples of the betterment of human conditions, such as

inventions in preventative medicine and the enhancement of social organization for

 

2‘ Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art
in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth centuries (Garden City, N Y: Doubleday, 1954).

25 Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 131.

2“ Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 1.

47

controlling environment, and the improvement of dietary practice, Montesquieu argued
that human society has ceaselessly progressed toward a construction of a society that is
free of disease. Montesquieu presumed here that sickness and death are the two
conditions undesirable to all human societies transcendentally throughout time. Through
identifying consistent improvement in human health conditions, he affinned inductively
that progress is the universal and timeless force that has driven the development of
human history.

However, to conceptually interpret the past is often problematic because the
historian remains “a creature of time, place, circumstance, interests, and culture.”27
Historians are also the product of history, and thus their understanding of the future is
also the construction of their own historically conditioned perspectives. Taking
Montesquieu’s argument, a society without disease as an example—and the goal for
people to enjoy longer life—must have appeared to be a desired goal throughout human
history. However, it is important to note that a disease-free condition and a longer life
expectancy would not necessarily constitute the transcendental and universal factor for
progress in human history. The society without disease could contribute much greater
poverty and war, once that society’s population growth reached its saturation point.
Moreover, the increasing needs of one society for sustenance could lead to the seizure of
resources via conquest, seizure and colonization of a neighboring society. Progress in one

society, therefore, could presage a simultaneous regression or decline of another society.

In this respect, conceptually interpreting past events could lead to involuntary distortion

 

27 Charles Beard, “That Noble Dream,” The American Historical Review 41, No. 1 (1935).
Reprinted in Fritz Richard Stern, ed., The Varieties of History, from Voltaire to the Present (New York:
Meridian Books, 1956), 324.

48

of the knowledge of history by simplifying what really were complex interdependencies
of diverse elements and events of the past. Consequently, the analytical philosophy of
history is often fallible when historians make convenient appropriation of past events in
lieu of depicting a particular vision of the past as the transcendental and universal course
of human history.

Nonetheless, the notion of progress is a widely practiced vision in the analytical
philosophy of history. Two of the most prominent contemporary examples are articulated
in The End of History and the Last Man, originally published as an article in The
National Interest by Francis F ukuyama, and in The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order written by Samuel P. Huntington, which may be taken as a
counter argument to Fukuyama’s theoretical approach to history.28 Here, let us look
closely at F ukuyama’s argument in order to exemplify the characteristics and the
problems embedded in the analytical philosophy of history and its constructing the
knowledge.

In The End of History and the Last Man, social philosopher Francis Fukuyama
argues that the fall of the Soviet Union would mark the end of history: that is, history as a
dialectical sociopolitical struggle would come to an end with the triumphs of Western
liberal democracy and free-market economy. Instead of taking history with “a
conventional sense as the occurrence of events,” Fukuyama presumed history to be “a

single, coherent, evolutionary process. . .most closely associated with G. W. F. Hegel.”29

 

2“ Some, particularly the scholars emphasizing the substantive philosophy of history, may argue
that the works of Fukuyama and Huntington are not writings of history. However, they are historical
writing of the rationalist tradition because they establish instructive explanations from past events by way
of projecting what has been the rational course of actions in human history.

29 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London and New York: Penguin
Books, 1992), xii. Also see, Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History,” National Interest (Summer 1989).

49

Fukuyama harbors what is remarkably similar to the progressivism vision of history,
which carries the notion that there is a theoretical endpoint to the history of human
evolution. Through applying Hegelian dialectics—the notion that history moves forward
by conflicts and struggles in human society, Fukuyama argues that history is a play with
an apathetic finale that gives itself a triumphant exit from the stage with the victory of
one paradigm (liberal democracy) to end all ideological views.3'0 The end of Cold War,
therefore, marks the end of history because it brought “the end point of mankind’s

ideological evolution”3'

to form a human government. History, as the study of inquiring
into ideological progress, will cease to continue after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the
end the Cold War.

Expectedly, there were many criticisms of F ukuyama’s argument. However, most
of those criticisms have wrongfully presumed F ukuyama’s argument. These critiques
have challenged Fukuyama from the standpoint of the substantive philosophy of history,
and they have argued that it is wrong for Fukuyama to presume an end to history.
Speaking from the perspective of the substantive philosophy of history, the end of history

means the end of all happenings, and that there will be nothing worthwhile to record in

human history in the future.32 The end in the analytical philosophy of history is not the

 

3" This view is similar to the way Karl Marx interpreted Hegelian historicism to argue that human
history reflects dialectic materialism. Marx thus holds the vision that human experiences of the past are
purposefully interpreted progressing toward the condition in which material inequality and its associated
problems will be resolved through Bolshevik revolution and other progressive changes.

3‘ Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 2.

32 Perhaps it is needless to note here that such criticisms to Fukuyama’s theoretical approach to
history are misdirected. Fukuyama did not equate the end of history to the end of all happenings in human
society because there are numerous contradictions within any given liberal societies still causing domestic
(or international) conflicts and struggles. Even between so-called liberal democratic nations conflicts on
issues surrounding the national interest, such as related to economics, migration of laborers and resource
management, persist. Hence, the end of history does not mean the end of all happenings that construe

50

same as the empirical end of all happenings. To adequately challenge F ukuyama’s
argument, we have to examine the framework with which Fukuyama built his explanation
of history.

Fukuyama, when he argues the end of history, ignored the possibility that
conflicts and struggles within and between liberal democratic societies could still drive
human history onward. F ukuyama holds a deterministic view about such possibilities
when assuming that the triumph of liberal democracy would end all ideological struggles
for the formation of human governance. Fukuyama’s deterministic approach to the past is
most evident when he writes, “[w]hile they [differences within liberal democratic
societies] may constitute a source of conflicts for liberal societies, this conflict does not
arise from the fact that the liberalism in question is incomplete.”33 Fukuyama thus offered
a teleological explanation of the past to promote his deterministic interpretation of the
history; that is, the present is at the endpoint of ideological development for human
governance. His theoretical approach to history depicts human history as a purposeful
interplay of transcendental causes and general laws, and it brings a deterministic lens
when interpreting both the past and the future.

From what Fukuyama’s deterministic vision of the past has missed, we can
illustrate more about possible problems and shortcomings in the analytical philosophy of
history. With his teleological interpretation of the past, Fukuyama overlooked
possibilities such as (I) currently ongoing conflicts in liberal democratic societies to form

a new political ideology other than what we have already known so far, (2) revival of

 

history. Fukuyama argues that history as an ideological struggle would end after the triumphs of the liberal
democracy as an ultimate form of human governance.

33 Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 20.

51

other political ideologies that were once defeated, and (3) the conflicts that are actually
the products of liberal principles in liberal democratic societies. Today, we understand
that Fukuyama’s teleological explanation of past human development depends largely on
his conviction that liberal democracy is the ultimate form of human governance.
Fukuyama’s argument, therefore, is only true within the theoretical framework that was
built to substantiate his vision of liberal democracy.34 Therefore, Fukuyama’s teleological
explanation of the past seems incomplete and naive to present eyes, and we can perhaps
say that it is an extreme example of what the analytical philosophy of history produces as
the knowledge of history.

However, must all analytical philosophy of history be so naive and deterministic?

A strong supporter of the progressive view of history, J. E. E. Dalberg-Action, promoted

 

3‘ It is arguably true that progressivism, as represented in Fukuyama’s theory, has its future
determined prior to the interpretation of past events. Identifying what brought defeat to fascism at the end
of the last world war, for example, Fukuyama remarked that “Japanese fascism (like its German version)
was defeated by the force of American arms in the Pacific war, and liberal democracy was imposed on
Japan by a victorious United States” (12). Fukuyama argued here that fascism is political ideology that is
bound to fail because of its structural deficiency of expansionist ultranationalism, which has brought people
into ceaseless conflict with other parts of the world. Therefore, there were many places Fukuyama seemed
to have no trouble when explaining past events, even those events highly controvertible.

For example, Fukuyama provides his teleological explanation to the atomic bombings as: “the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed this (fascist) ideology on the level of
consciousness as well as materially, and all the proto-fascist movements spawned by Germany and
Japan...withered after the war” (54). However, many studies have offered diverse readings of the impacts
of the atomic bombings in bringing the war to an end. The nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, which Fukuyama casually characterized as the killers of fascism, have still been the center of
ongoing debates to settle their meanings in history. Furthermore, Fukuyama completely ignored the
multitudes of debates on what led Japan to accept its defeat in the last world war, as well as what led the
people to abandon fascism.

In his Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning book Embracing Defeat, MIT professor of
history John Dower elaborated the importance of complex circumstantial events behind the liberalization
that occurred in postwar Japan. The war destructions the Japanese experienced throughout their nation
made it difficult for the Japanese people to see themselves solely as the aggressors in the war. The United
States led Tokyo Trial, which provided no representation for the Japanese people, further contributed to the
Japanese positioning themselves as the victims of the war and ill-fated national government. Throughout
the study, Dower argued that liberal ideology was politically and carefully situated as the only course of
action to defeated Japan, in order to prevent the growing popularity of communism. Therefore, we can say
that Fukuyama’s statement that the atomic bombings crushed fascism and brought the triumph of liberal
democracy was an overly deterministic and naive reading of the past.

52

history as a progressive science in The Cambridge Modern History. Dalberg-Acton
stressed the need for human history to have certain directions: “we are bound to assume,
as the scientific hypothesis on which history is to be written, a progress in human
affairs?” Like F ukuyama, Dalberg-Acton outlined human history as the progress toward
liberal society in which “every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his
duty against the influence of authority, and majorities, custom, and opinion.”36 However
the difference lies in Fukuyama holding the notion of liberal progress as the universal
and timeless reality while Dalberg-Acton argued that the same notion is merely a
scientific hypothesis (thus it is arguable and requires empirical investigation) for
interpreting the past. Withholding a rigid presupposition (that is, that liberal democracy is
the ultimate form of political ideology in the evolution of human governance), Fukuyama
has interpreted past events in the light of a predetermined goal rather than considering of
their preceding events.

The analytical philosophy of history and its theoretical analysis of past events
would not be able to offer knowledge that encompasses the plurality of historical
explanations because it does not have an internal mechanism within the theory to
examine the validation of its hypothesis. Because historians make teleological inquiry
into past events, the analytical philosophy of history projects a historical explanation that
is not historical. Yet, history is different from chronicles, and the purpose of studying

history “is not to know about actions as witnesses might, but as historians do, in

 

3’ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Baron et al., The Cambridge Modern History (London:
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1902-12). Quoted in Carr, What Is History?, 147. Emphasis mine.

3° John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Baron, The History of Freedom and Other Essays
(London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1907), 3.

53

connection with later events and as parts of temporal wholes.”3 7 For historians to abandon
their teleological inquiry into the past “would be silly, and historically disastrous, as well
as unfulfillable.”38 Historians like Fukuyama and Dalberg-Acton have the privilege of
knowing what the actors and witnesses of past events could not have known when the
events were still ongoing. Hence history and its knowledge are to some degree always
signified by something that is teleological and possessing non-historical attributions.

From above examinations of substantive and analytical philosophies of history,
we can come to the conclusion that neither approach to history has the means to
substantiate knowledge in history by itself. Furthermore, we can also discover that neither
approach to history offers the knowledge that enables pluralism of historical explanation.
The subject of the substantive philosophy of history is in the past, and thus no historical
referent exists outside of historical texts—past traces—themselves. Similarly, the subject
of the analytical philosophy of history is timeless and transcendental in force. Thus
historical referent exists always outside of history. “At the level of discourse,” Roland
Barthes argued, “objectivity, the absence of any clues to the narrator, turns out to be a
particular form of fiction, the result of which might be called the referential illusion,
where the historians try to give the impression that the referent is speaking for itself.”39
To recognize the historian’s subjective intervention in the process of constructing

historical explanations and historical knowledge embedded in them would foster

 

37 Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 183.
3" Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 183.

39 Roland Barthes, “Historical Discourse,” in Michael Lane, ed., Introduction to Structuralism
(New York: Basic Books, 1972), 149.

54

skepticism to both empirical objectivity of the substantive philosophy of history, and to

the theoretical hypothesis of the analytical philosophy of history.
Skepticism to History and Knowledge of History

Long before E. H. Carr delivered his lecture, Friedrich Nietzsche pushed his
criticism of the rationalism assumed in history and its knowledge construction. Nietzsche
argues that study of history is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.40 Nietzsche
thus introduces relativity of historical knowledge, and his argument highlights the same
important challenges to modern historiography and its heavy emphasis on rationality.
However, it was natural science that brought more influential criticism to history and that
posed skepticism toward knowledge in history that encompasses all diverse historical
explanations.

Albert Einstein, for example, transformed the nature of knowledge in natural
science with his theory of relativity in 1913. This theory gained widespread recognition
immediately after astronomical observation had confirmed Einstein’s argument in 1919.4‘
Einstein’s general theory of relativity highlights that the aspect of things observed is
attributed to the position of the observer. This development in natural science then gave
theoretical reinforcement to Nietzsche’s proposition of the relativity of knowledge in

history.

 

‘0 Friedrich W. Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, trans. Adrian Collins (New York:
Liberal Arts Press, 1957).

4' Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, a Popular Exposition, trans.
Robert W. Lawson (London: Mathuen, 1954).

55

The constructive (active) consciousness of the observer’s position and its impacts
on forming the knowledge of history brought historians a dilemma: The science of
history stresses the importance of the objective construction of knowledge about the past,
but (1) the subjective nature of the practice of interpretation in an historian’s work and
(2) historians’ inability to physically observe their subject makes objectivity a mirage, if
not a luxury. Many historians like Charles Beard were in despair of history’s inability to
attain a positivistic mode of knowledge about the past. Beard bemoaned that history
suffers from a philosophical deficiency because historians have no capacity to objectively
observe their subjects. Historians, unlike other scientists—chemists, biologists, geologists,
and even sociologists—who can observe their specimens in the fields or laboratories—
can neither observe nor reproduce the past in their present.42 Historians’ inability to make
physical observation of the past from the perspective of their present invites plain
skepticism to history, and doubt of its ever-attaining knowledge that is relevant and
significant to all people concerned. Moreover, the inability of historians to observe their
subjects has been repeatedly emphasized when negating history as scientific discipline
and when promoting history’s inclusion in literary genres.

However, Jean Francois Lyotard offers a lens to scrutinize the frank skepticism of
history and its knowledge construction. Lyotard situates relativism not with the
knowledge of history itself but with the process of interpreting the past—with
interpretation being seen as key to the process of transforming a chronicle into history.
Knowledge in the postmodern condition, Lyotard argues, “is and will be produced in

order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production:

 

‘2 Beard, “That Noble Dream,” 323.

56

in both cases, the goal is exchange.”43 In a highly technolocized complex society,
historical knowledge, too, would not be concrete to all people in all conditions since
knowledge carries no transcendental use or value in and of itself. Lyotard thus challenges
the rationalism assumed in historiography and its pursuit of positivistic value of
knowledge that is universal and transcendentally timeless, with the following three
argumentative points: firstly, that there is no transcendental objectivity of knowledge
because knowledge is contingent to the state of society. Secondly, that what comes to be
knowledge depends on the modes of inquiry, which control our access to its production
process. Finally, the value of knowledge is in its use-value, and thus knowledge may
resemble a commodity that has no value in itself.

These points reinforce Carr’s observation that “the historian, before he begins to
write history, is the product of history?“ The standpoint from which historians interpret
past events is itself the projector of their social and historical backgrounds. Therefore,
both Lyotard and Carr warn, when relativism is applied to history’s constructing of
knowledge, relativism will challenge history to stand as a scientific discipline. Relativism
ends up supplying a philosophical support to such historiography that treats the past as “a
child’s box of letters with which we can spell any words we please.”45 Historiography
emphasizing the relativistic knowledge offers nothing to the actual problems surrounding

the plurality of historical explanations. Relativism, instead, would lead historiography to

 

’3 Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff
Bennington and Brain Massumi, in Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 10 (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984), 4-5.

“ Carr, What Is History?, 48.

‘5 James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects (New York: Charles Scribner and
Company, 1883), 21. Quoted in Carr, What Is History?, 30.

57

push history forward to a deconstructive end by inviting plain skepticism of the practice
of history, and to its ability to construct knowledge.

For example, postmodern challenges to historiography, such as those posed by
Keith Jenkins and Frank Ankersmit, promote the notion of a total relativity of knowledge
in history. Radical emphasis on the postmodern view takes on historiography and argues
that the past is simply unknowable, since the present has no way to attain transcendental
truth about what the past essentially was.46 Historians’ products are only a matter of
present perspectives of what happened in the past, and are perspectives construed from
diverse past experiences.47 These arguments assume the kind of the knowledge pursued
in the substantive philosophy of history. In fact, taking on the substantive philosophy of
history and its assumption of what construes knowledge in history, the arguments of both
Jenkins and Ankersmit are impeccable because historians can only work with their
subjects that are in the present, not those in the past. Historians’ products can never be
representative of what the past essentially was, as their products necessarily embody
something that is not the past.48

Such argument would only be repeating criticisms to the substantive philosophy
of history. Yet, Lyotard and Carr have introduced relativism to inquire into the process of
the construction of knowledge in history, instead of merely challenging the substantive
philosophy of history. Lyotard thus stresses the relativistic nature of knowledge in history

that is in accordance with the use-value, in order to bridge the knowledge of history,

 

‘6 Frank R. Ankersmit, Historical Representation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002),
and Frank R. Ankersmit, “Historiography and Postmodernism,” History and Theory 28, No. 2 (1989).

47 Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History.

‘8 Refer back to the earlier discussion on the substantive philosophy of history.

58

assumed in the substantive and the analytical philosophies of history. Similarly, Carr
introduces relativism to highlight that the authenticity of historical explanations is
attributed to the historical conditions from which historians made their interpretation of
the past. Both Lyotard and Carr stress relativism from the standpoint of the analytical
philosophy of history. Thus, they never really deny the possibilities of objectivity when
they challenge the assumption of total objectivity of rationalist historiography. Carr
elaborates on this point:
It does not follow that, because a mountain appears to take on different
shapes from different angles of vision, it has objectively either no shape at
all or an infinity of shapes. It does not follow that, because interpretation
plays a necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no
existing interpretation is wholly objective, one interpretation is as good as
another, and the facts of history are in principle not amenable to objective
interpretation.49
Carr challenges the claim of total objectivity emphasized in the substantive philosophy of
history, but he does not deny objective reality in itself. No historical explanation can
sustain its legitimacy outside of serving discourse that is situating what comes to be
historical knowledge to begin with. In other words, history is never independent in itself.
Instead, history is always dependent on the historical conditions under which historical
explanation is formed and circulated to make historical knowledge about the past.
Therefore, “the sensitivity with which he [a historian] recognizes the extent of his

”5

involvement in the construction, as well as subscription (consumption), of the grand

narrative is indispensable to transcend the socially and historically situated understanding

 

49 Carr, What Is History? , 30.

5° Carr, What Is History? , 54.

59

about the past.5 1 Knowledge in history thus is never concrete because the elements of the
past are open to ceaseless interpretation and reinterpretation insofar as there is
multiplicity of discourse in a society. Each discourse is locally and individually situating
interpretation of the past, and thus there is no grand theory that is universally and
timelessly transcending all discourses to define how the past should be interpreted.52 The
historiography with an emphasis on relativism to its process of knowledge construction
promotes history that is found in multiplicities. The multiplicity of historical knowledge
then promotes History to be replaced by histories. The transition from History to histories
shows that history has abandoned its constructing of the knowledge that encompasses the

multidimensionality of perspectives that are generating diverse meanings of the past.53

 

5' Lyotard challenges the analytical philosophy of history because each grand theory proposed in
constructing the knowledge in history “has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict
with, another kind of knowledge.” See Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 7.

52 This point closely resembles Delleus’ argument on fluidity. For more details, see Tetsuya
Higaki, Delleus: Tokenai toi wo ikiru, Series: Tetsugaku no essence (Tokyo: NHK Shuppan, 2002).

53 For instance, the overwhelming majority of PhD. dissertations and other publications in the
field of history borrow from relativism and its rationale to challenge history’s knowledge that is built upon
both the substantive and the analytical philosophies of history. History’s knowledge pursued in the
substantive and the analytical philosophies of history faces a challenge that says it is not being inclusive or
conscious of marginalized experiences and voices in history. Oral narratives, popular culture, and various
other aspects of human behaviors have thus gained validity as history’s artifacts from which historians
could furnish more and extensive empirical data and/or perspectives to provide historical explanations
alternative or supplementary to already existing historical explanations that are dominant in the public
sphere.

Taking an example from Early America, the late twentieth century saw a proliferation of voices
that put forth their own explanations that had found no place before in the standing explanation made by
the Founding Fathers, and the great Puritan value represented in the metaphor of the City upon the Hill.
The experiences of Native Americans, women, Black slaves and others who have long remained invisible
in the standing explanation of Early America have now formed the knowledge rationalized through
relativistic challenges to rationalist historiography. For the Native American view of early America, see Jill
Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip ’3 War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Knophf,
1998). For women’s experiences in Early America, see, for example, Laurel Ulrich, A Midwife ’s Tale: The
Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, I 785-1812 (New York: Knopf, 1990). For the Early America
narrative from the perspectives of slaves, see Peter M. Voelz, Slaves and Soldier: The Military Impact of
Blacks in the Colonial Americas (New York: Garland, 1993).

60

Most historians today would agree that history’s diverse representation of
experiences and voices has brought and will continue to bring us enhanced understanding
of the past. Relativism has challenged the assumption of the singularity of historical
knowledge, and it has introduced multidimensional interpretations of past events that are
construing diverse historical knowledge. It is important to note here that relativism has
simultaneously subjected historical explanations to constant reinterpretation. Relativism
has instead, given us a way to produce a multiplicity of historical explanations from the
same past events, without substantiating the requirement for ensuring how and if we
could ever attain coherent understanding of the past and its meanings. Therefore,
relativism emphasizes on historiography—not as the product of a relativistic
historiography—has made the plurality of historical explanations possible. Yet, we must
note that the plurality of historical explanations became possible by forgetting the actual
pursuit of knowledge in history that encompasses diverse understandings of the past. If
the knowledge of history is attributed to the discourse in which it has use-value, we can
theoretically have a kind of knowledge that is forever multiplying. Forever multiplying

knowledge, however, would not stand as knowledge when there is no substantive

requirement to pursue a coherent end. Forever multiplying knowledge resembles trivia—
a set of information bits disconnected from each other—that can be used and exchanged,

but hardly producing anything more than being itself a piece of information.54

 

’4 This trivialization of historical knowledge is vividly and commonly represented in public
discussion of historical subjects. For example, history curriculum and textbooks used in public schools
often have historical interpretation of the mainstream constituting the central narrative about the past.
However, alternative interpretation with multidimensional interests of gender, race, and other minority
groups is usually represented in boxes and other specially assigned space that is disconnected from the
central narrative of the textbooks and curriculum. Browsing bookstores, the same pattern is evident. The
history section is often divided between History and other hyphenated histories all independently
occupying the shelves subaltem to the section for History.

61

Relativism has thus questioned the rationalist historiography by highlighting the
inherent philosophical and pragmatic limitations: that is, in presupposing historians’
ability to (1) have the knowledge of the future to draft a grand theory for
deterministically interpreting the past and (2) have access to transcend time and space, to
construct the knowledge that is free from all subjectivities. However, relativism lacks the
method to link diverse positions, each of which builds its own knowledge of history.
Hence, relativism ends up reinforcing plain skepticism of the scholarship of history, or it
brings back the materialistic notion of historical knowledge by transforming knowledge
into trivial property.

It arrives at the point where Danto cynically characterizes how the scholarship of
history has turned out to be a discipline that cannot construct knowledge, in the opening
of Narration and Knowledge:

There have been, and perhaps there still are, parts of science which have

not passed beyond the mere making of observations, the collecting of

specimens, and the like. Ordinary history might be just such a science.55
The plurality of historical explanations became a reality under the relativistic approach to
historiography. However, relativism has a philosophical deficiency, in drawing
knowledge from forever multiplying historical explanations. Historians are caught
between substantive and analytical philosophies of history when searching to build
authenticity for each historical explanation. Yet those who employ relativism to explain
what the study of history produces—knowledge—need to be aware of the dangerous

temptations to permit the plurality of historical explanations by abandoning the pursuit of

knowledge that is coherently linked to diverse explanations of the past. If we have no

 

’5 Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 4.

62

mechanism to identify such temptations, the scholarship of history would definitively be
turned into an ahistorical discipline, and history becomes a skeleton—what was once a

body becomes mere remains of the body.

Knowledge in History Beyond Materialism

Though it may be a little repetitive, it is useful to restate some key points in
respect to the contemporary approach to the knowledge in history, before bringing in this
chapter’s concluding argument. Let us therefore depict history education and its
knowledge as practical examples, in order to effectively situate history that is being
practiced, in a contemporary context.

History in general is a part of the core curriculum of public schooling in most
places around the world. Many scholars agree that history education has substantial
impacts on students learning, and it shapes their national identity and ideological
affiliations.56 More precisely, history education has an important role in constructing and
preserving the sense of membership in what Benedict Anderson calls an imagined

community.57 By promoting a shared understanding of what happened in the past, history

 

5" For example, see: K. Barton, “A Sociocultural Perspective on Children’s Understanding of
Historical Change: Comparative Findings from Northern Ireland and the United States,” American
Educational Research Journal 38, No. 4 (2001), 881-913; T. Epstein and J. Shilla, “Perspective Matters:
The Teaching and Learning National History,” Social Education 69, No. 4 (2005), 201-204; P. Seixas,
Theorizing Historical Consciousness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); J. W. Wersch, “Is It
Possible to Teach Beliefs, as well as Knowledge about History?” in P. N. Stems, P. Seixas and S.
Wineburg eds., Knowing, Teaching, Learning History: National and International Perspectives (New York
& London: New York University Press, 2000): 38-50.

’7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). A similar argument can be found in Ella Shohat and Robert Stain,
Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
Shohat and Stam argue that media shapes our identity in the postmodern era by “experiencing community
with people never actually seen. consumers of electronic media can be affected by traditions to which they

63

education provides people with a sense of belonging to a community. This community,
however, is an imagined one, because these people who are geographically so far apart
have had no direct physical interaction with each other and yet have come to share a
common destiny as if they were in a coherent community. Today, it is commonly

received reality that the same past events are not necessarily represented in the same way

in each country’s history textbooks. Furthermore, there are different representations of

what happened in the past within a nation, and we have seen such differences causing
historical controversy and fueling disharmony between diverse communities within an
imagined community.

Taking the historical controversy over the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space
Museum exhibition plan for the Enola Gay—the first plane that dropped the atomic bomb
upon human populations—for example, there were disputes between the United States
and Japan over what historical meanings we should draw from the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was also another set of historical controversies within the
United States over who should have the right to define the historical meanings to be
represented in public institutions. The controversies, however, did not bring about a
dispute regarding the past facts themselves.58 Thus, the substantive philosophy of history
could offer nothing to resolve the dispute, because both ends of the dispute have no

quarrel with the fact that the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

 

have no ancestral connection”, for example. Citation is from page 347 of Shohat and Stain.

5" This statement, of course, does not include those historical controversies in which there are
disputes on positivistic facts construing the difference between historical explanations of what happened in
the past. For example, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are past reality, and the fact that
they occurred in the past has never really been the subject of controversy. Historical controversy questions
the occurrences of the events themselves—such as Holocaust denialists claiming that there was no
Auschwitz—is not the subject of this chapter’s discussion.

64

Furthermore, we must note that the controversies did not pose challenges to the
fact/possibility that Japan and the United States had differing analytical frameworks
when the atomic bombings are examined as the subject of history.

The historical controversies over the Smithsonian’s exhibition of the Enola Gay
were disputes not of historical knowledge but of the ownership of the right to dictate the
defining power of constructing/representing the knowledge, which is to be encompassing
diverse historical knowledge generated on the atomic bombing. In other words, this
historical controversy was a political dispute over the ownership of history and its
construction of knowledge in history. Political controversies regarding history and its
knowledge are commonly understood as historical controversy. This vague differentiation
between politics and history suggests that each nation-state assumes its dominion of
history as a vested right when history education is utilized to construct and/or defend the
righteousness of the national identity in the present. When there is a representational
difference regarding what happened in the past, it frequently develops into a serious
dispute when two or more nation-states have shared the events in which they had engaged
with force—such as wars, colonization, annexation, seizure and so on. By the same token,
both historians and the public assume their ownership of history and its explanatory
function. Taking the Smithsonian controversy as a political dispute not directly related to
history or to the fact that it is building the knowledge on the atomic bombing in history,
for example, we can understand that the dispute was about defending the right to
construct historical meanings to be represented in public museums.

Historical controversies, if we exclude those disputes on empirical matters, are

disputes over the ownership of history that has been assumed as a vested right. In other

65

words, the disputes were not over disciplinary matter in building the knowledge in history.
I argue in this chapter that knowledge in history is (and has been) assumed to be a
physically defined material entity. The practice of history, thus uncritically applies a
materialistic assumption to equate historical knowledge—the substances
constructing/constructed in historical explanations—with knowledge in history that is
encompassing the plurality of historical explanations. History has treated its knowledge

as the object for accumulation, exchange, seizure, and control. We can find that historical
controversies more often meet political resolutions to balance property ownership than to
firrther history’s resolution, by constructing knowledge in history through examining the
constituent elements of historical explanations.

There is the difficulty that no one has actual ownership of the past itself. The past
is not in the present, and thus there is no physical entity to be claimed for ownership. In
this respect, it is everyone’s vested right to interpret the past. This is the same as saying
that no one has the vested right to claim a definitive interpretation of the past. Today, we
seem to have no definitive differentiation between historian’s disciplinary product
(knowledge in history) and the products of the popularized practice of history (the
plurality of historical explanations found in the public sphere). Historians are thus unable
to claim any special and/or disciplinary privilege to define their interpretation of the past
as the legitimate works of history that is different from the casual interpretation or
appropriation of the past in the public sphere. Therefore, if history cannot define
knowledge that goes beyond its affirming plurality, history would, at worst, become a

mere methodology bereft of knowledge.

66

Contemporary Takes on Knowledge in History

The correlation between history and politics can perhaps lead to a truism: we have
not yet known a common ground to build a history that encompasses all humans. The
truism thus promotes the argument that history can never escape from nationalism and
other known isms until we build an imagined community that encompasses the whole
human population. The truism also brings forward the argument that the past has infinite
meanings. History and its constructing of knowledge have to be infinite in order to reflect
the complex political, social, and cultural realities of the present. Neither arguments,
however, offer any alternative nor do they overcome the condition that prevents history
from constructing knowledge. More importantly, neither arguments answer to what the
truism originally posed as history’s dilemma in constructing its knowledge. Instead, they
simply restate the truism not as history’s dilemma but as the necessary condition of
history to seek knowledge. It is logically false to explain the problems identified in the
truism by simple restatement. Therefore, both arguments provide nothing but
deconstruction of history’s pursuit of knowledge.

If history (and history education) seeks knowledge that goes beyond the
ideological framework of the present, it is necessary to authenticate knowledge in history
outside of the truism. Today we find two dominant approaches to authenticate knowledge
in history that corresponds to the plurality of politically conditioned historical
explanations. First, there is a drive toward universalism that validates the knowledge by
making it infinitely inclusive of all diverse historical explanations of the past. Then, there

is a tendency to localism that authenticates the knowledge by defining it as only existing

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within the contained context of each historical explanation. In the following few pages,
let us also briefly discuss each approach to history before bringing the chapter to its

concluding discussion.

Universalism: Multiculturalism and Knowledge in History

Knowledge in history validated under universalism seeks to be inclusive of all
historical explanations. History, as noted earlier, has an important role in installing and
maintaining a sense of belonging to an imagined community. In this respect, it is
politically critical in liberal democratic nations to shape history (and history education)
that is inclusive of all people who constitute the nation. Multiculturalism is one of such
discourses with an emphasis on universalism; it provides political rationality for history
to pursue knowledge that is universally inclusive of all people in the present public
sphere.

Multiculturalism challenges the attempts for constructing a definitive historical
explanation to define the knowledge in history. Defining such definitive historical
explanation would necessarily introduce the relationship between the core and subaltem
discourses constituting historical knowledge. Hence, what has become the core discourse
would inevitably monopolize history and its knowledge construction, through selective
inclusion and general exclusion of historical explanations of others. Multiculturalism
frames knowledge as an inclusive product without a defining core. It should almost
indiscriminately embody diverse readings of what happened in the past. The ultimate

ownership of knowledge in history, consequently, belongs to no particular institution—

68

including the office of history. Furthermore, we can also find transnational
multiculturalism that aims to build a historical explanation that is inclusive of all human
populations beyond nation-state boundaries.

In this respect, multiculturalism ultimately seeks the knowledge that is to build an
imagined community through implementation of a cosmopolitan identity that is
supposedly inclusive of all diverse people and their experiences. Hence, we can argue
that knowledge constructed upon a base of multiculturalism is the product of the
analytical philosophy of history. Multiculturalism takes a theoretical approach to the past,
and it draws meanings from past events to construct cosmopolitan identity. However, as
does analytical philosophy of history, multiculturalism has a philosophical deficiency in
its own theoretical approach to the past. Knowledge built upon multiculturalism permits
plurality of historical explanations and their construction of multiplicity of identities.
Multiculturalism, however, could also be antagonistic to those historical explanations that
authenticate the knowledge of history through subtraction of and differentiation from the
historical explanations of others. In this respect, multiculturalism invalidates its own
theoretical approach of inclusiveness by being exclusive of those discourses that are
actively excluding other people’s discourses.

More serious challenge to the multiculturalism approach of history comes from
how multiculturalism validates its construction of knowledge in history. Multiculturalism
stresses the inclusiveness of diverse representations of what happened in the past, and
thus holds more perspective about past events, and is linked to strengthening the
authenticity of the scholarship of history to study the past. History under multiculturalism

therefore seeks out the underrepresented voices of the past to make knowledge in history

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more inclusive of diverse voices. In this respect, multiculturalism takes a very similar
approach to the substantive philosophy of history when validating its approach to
constructing knowledge in history. The substantive philosophy of history stresses the
empirical accumulation of whole accounts of the past. Multiculturalism challenges the
total objectivity assumed in the substantive philosophy of history, but it also stresses a
historical explanation that is inclusive of all perspectives of the past.

Hence history under the multiculturalism will face the conceptual problem that is
similar to that identified in the substantive philosophy of history. The substantive
philosophy of history has the conceptual problem that, when it succeeds in accumulating
the accounts of the whole past, it would at best construct a complete chronicle—not a
history—of the whole past. Similarly, the accumulation of whole perspectives of past
events will construct a complete set of anthologies about the past. Neither chronicle nor
anthologies are the product of history, and thus they are not knowledge in history in
themselves. However, we must note that multiculturalism poses another severe
philosophical deficiency in its construction of knowledge in history.

Substantive philosophy of history has a theoretical endpoint when accumulating
accounts of what happened in the past. However, multiculturalism has no theoretical
endpoint to its accumulating perspectives of what happened in the past. It is conceptually
problematic to authenticate a historical explanation through what has been accumulated
as perspectives of what happened in the past. Perspectives, once accumulated, become a
fixed property. Therefore, perspectives accumulated to construe history that is inclusive
of diverse historical explanations would not be the same as the present perspectives that

are ceaselessly changing. In other words, there is an assumption that the present is a fixed

70

moment of time in which we can locate and accumulate perspectives that are fixed in the
present. However, time is an entity that does not have a physical attribution. The present
is always coming into being and passing away without their being any definitive entity to
be accumulated. Multiculturalism can accumulate what was once the present perspective
about what happened in the past, because all present perspectives are ceaselessly
becoming ex-present (obsolete) perspectives. In other words, multiculturalism assumes
knowledge in history as an imagined product that can be attained, external to the structure
of time.

Multiculturalism makes knowledge in history unattainable property.
Multiculturalism provides no philosophical means to construct knowledge in history
more than what has already been discussed in modern historiography. Instead, it simply
provides a similar illusion proposed in the substantive philosophy of history, and it
validates the illusion with the analytical philosophy of history. It is false to say that
materialistic accumulation of historical explanations will construe ultimate knowledge in
history, and it is also false to claim a theoretical framework that can be inclusive of all

diverse historical explanations about what happened in the past.

Localism: Narratives and Knowledge in History

Localism provides another approach to history that aims to substantiate the

knowledge in history while acknowledging the plurality of historical explanations. E. H.

Carr argues that “Knowledge is knowledge for some purpose”, and therefore “the validity

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of the knowledge depends on the validity of the purpose.”59 In this respect, the use value
of knowledge in history can be defined similarly by the narrative structure of each
historical explanation. Localism positions knowledge in history as the locally constructed
product; and thus this knowledge is validated within the narrative structure of each
historical explanation.

Many philosophers of history such as Maurice Mandelbaum and Author C. Danto
have argued that historical explanations are fundamentally narratives, and thus the
explanation of history takes on the narrative structure. It is important to note that, when
they argue that historical explanations are fundamentally narratives, it is not the same as
saying that narratives themselves construe knowledge. Narrativism stresses the narrative
structure as constituting historical explanations, and thus it positions past accounts as
merely components that make up historical narratives. Thus, narrativism poses a
challenge to the substantive philosophy of history that assumes that past accounts
themselves are constituent elements of knowledge in history. Instead, past accounts are
only fragments, and they do not make up knowledge by themselves without narrative
structure that provides a structural network in which all past accounts are in
subordination to each other. Narrativism thus stresses the narrative structure as the
necessary medium to construct the knowledge in history. 60

Perhaps we can recall here the earlier discussion of Aristotle’s dilemma. If we

know what is going to happen in the future, we will not be able to prevent the fiiture we

 

5" Carr, What Is History?, 31.

60 It is not only Maurice Mandelbaum and Arthur C. Danto but also many philosophers of history
argue the same point since late l960s to respond to emerging relativistic criticisms to history and history’s
knowledge. See for example, Maurice Mandelbaum, “A Note on History as Narrative,” History and Theory
6 (1967), 416-17; and A. R. Louch, “History as Narrative,” History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969), 54-70.

72

know from happening. Hence, if we claim we can understand the meanings (or
significance) of the past event at the time it happened in the past, we need to have
complete knowledge of our future that may affect how we assign significance to the past
event. History then has no function, since history provides nothing when everything is
determined. History, instead, seeks knowledge that is built from what becomes known
about events in light of all things we came to know, after the events occurred in the
past.6| Therefore, history’s ability to understand the past significance is limited by our
inability to access the future, and this limitation becomes a serious constraint for
knowledge in history assumed in the analytical philosophy of history.

Narrativism, instead of marking our inability to access the future as a deficiency,
stresses limitation as the given condition for history to substantiate its knowledge. No
historian can physically observe the past, and no historian has definitive knowledge of the
future. Therefore, no historian can provide definitive and timeless interpretation of what
has happened in the past. Instead, historians establish narrative structure to provide a
causal relationship between the time something has not yet happened and the time
something has already happened, When no historian can physically observe the past, the
subject of history is not to identify what happened in the past; instead, the subject of
history is the changes that occurred in the past. Hence, all historical explanations have a
particular kind of causal relationship built between two temporal axes of time (Figure
2:1).

Knowledge in history therefore is constituted of two factors: there are past

accounts representing traces of what happened in the past, and there is narrative structure

 

6' See an earlier example of the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the events’ historical significance.

73

that brings a causal relationship to past accounts that are themselves fragmented. In this
respect, historical knowledge, as well as historical explanations, is open for revision in
light of emerging and/or changing perspectives of the present. Furthermore, it is
mathematically valid to argue that a historical explanation is infinitely open for revision,
because the present is infinitely providing the resources to draft a more complete
historical explanation as we move toward the future. We can therefore understand that
narrativism explicates the structural mechanism of historical explanation, suggesting that
knowledge in history is an infinite entity that has no positivistic attributions, so long as
we have no definitive knowledge about the future. Hence, narrativism argues that history
needs validate historical explanations in light of two factors construing each explanation.
Most importantly, narrative structure of historical explanation is a conceptual mechanism
through which we build historical explanations, and it also provides us the perspectives to

examine the authenticity of the claims found in diverse historical explanations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahistorical Explanation
{r ' / {r
Past \ Present \ Future
Historical Explanation Prediction

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2: l. The Causal Relationship of Historical Explanations and History-like
Explanations

Narrativism, as a conceptual mechanism, is different from localism. Localism
approaches knowledge so as to situate the plurality of historical explanations. However,

many historians and history educators today recite the narrative structure of historical

74

explanations to give legitimacy to an historical explanation that is locally contained
within a particular context. Localized historical explanation seeks to make whatever has
use-value within the localized context into knowledge in history. Yet, making a historical
explanation responding only to such localized context isolates such contextually
conditioned knowledge from other historical explanations that may pose contrary views
of what happened in the past. This isolation of knowledge within a localized context
gives the historical explanation a seemingly inviolable position against any challenges.
Thus it gives an illusion of timeless and inviolable substantiation of localized knowledge
in history.

For example, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum replaced its
original exhibition plan of the Enola Gay with a whitewashed exhibition that introduces
the plane as a technological wonder rather than a carrier of weapons of mass destruction.
This new exhibition also provides a historical explanation that is construed from both
past accounts, and narrative structure, to highlight the technological development of
military aircraft in the Second World War. Through keeping the Enola Gay within a
localized context of military technology, the exhibit clearly isolates the historical
explanation to construct the knowledge that is structured by the official narrative of the
museum. Similarly, in Japan, the Association for Advancement of Unbiased View of
History argues that history is “the story of a people or peoples, from their origins, their
adventures, their success and failures.”62 The association stresses history as narratives to

justify the history textbook that affirms the national identity as opposed to “the

 

62 The Association for Advancement of Unbiased View of History, ABC of Modern Japanese
History, online: http://www.jiyuu-shikan.org/ (accessed May 12, 2008).

75

masochistic view of history” that favors vague transnationalism.63 Instead of stressing the
narrative structure to make a critical inquiry into each historical explanation, the
association takes a view that stresses narrative as the knowledge of history itself.

In these two examples, narrativism is misappropriated to validate actively
ignoring all other possible historical explanations in the present through localizing one’s
focus upon a particular narrative structure and its historical explanation. Narrativism
localizes historical explanations not as its goal but as a method to highlight the narrative
structure of historical explanations. However, when localism misappropriates the
narrative structure to explain the infinite diversities of historical explanations, narrativism
does nothing but resurrect the aforementioned truism in order to provide an explanation
for the problems identified in the same truism. Instead of simply stating that it is
impossible to construct knowledge in history that encompasses the whole human
population, localism appropriates narrativism to argue that history can construct the
knowledge that is only valid within the narrative structure producing the particular
historical explanation. Localism takes narrativism as an end, and thus it provides nothing
to bridge diverse historical explanations. Instead, localism validates knowledge through

elimination of all different historical explanations.64

 

63 Throughout the postwar period, Japan has been repenting the nation's past misdeeds that caused
enormous casualties and destruction both in the nation and in the regions outside Japan. Immediately
following the war's end, the Japanese people began to attribute the nation's war responsibility to “only those
people who have committed unlawful acts to provoke the war.” Nationalism, therefore, has carried an
undertone of wartime militarism throughout postwar Japan; and thus, history education in postwar Japan
has been generally antagonistic and/or skeptical of anything promoting stronger national identity.
Furthermore, the rapid rise of international communism in postwar Japan pushed the Japanese to become in
favor of history education that seeks transnational and international identities. However, rapid globalization
has brought awareness that history education pushing for transnational and international identities has
weakened national identity in Japan. Hence, the aforementioned association stresses the urgency of
reinstating history education that frames past events in the localized framework of the nation-state.

6" Historians generally disagree with the notion of history-as-narrative when such notion is used to
provide a support to the total relativity to history’s knowledge. However, we can find the notion of history-
as-narrative emphasized frequently when there is intense historical controversy across political, social,

76

The knowledge embedded in a particular historical explanation, therefore, will
continue to be invalid in the narrative structure of other historical explanations; and thus
localism cannot promise anything to build knowledge that responds to the plurality of
historical explanations. Emphasizing narrative structure of historical explanations thus
became a convenient method to dodge difficult problems that emerged from the plurality
of historical explanations. Through casually stressing the narrative structure, localism
utilizes narrativism to validate the whole process of historians’ subjective practice of
selection (as well as non-selection and ignoring), of analysis, and of interpretation of past
events. Thus the subjectivity in the study of history becomes a mere component of
historical explanations that are not only fundamentally, but also ultimately, narratives.

Today narrative structure of historical explanation is often emphasized to project
historical knowledge of specific issues in a particular localized context. We do not see
narrative structure as mediating diverse historical explanations for the purpose of
searching knowledge that gives coherence to the plurality of historical explanations and
their narrative structures. In this respect, we can perhaps argue that history is
monopolized within a localized framework of historical explanation, if not monopolized
by those who can define and/or construct their own fi'amework to promote their own
historical explanations. Narrativism, when it is misappropriated, has transformed history

into a captive practice within each localized explanation of what happened in the past.

 

cultural and other groups over the different historical explanations about the same past event. The emphasis
and/or affirmation of the history-as-narrative are, therefore, not active affirmation of the plurality of
historical explanations but they are passive resistance to defend one’s historical explanation from the
criticisms and challenges brought by other historical explanations. For example, see Hiroshi Aoyagi,
“Learning the History as Narrative,” The Technology in Education, Utsunomiya University Bulletin of the
Center for Educational Research and Training 20 (April 1997), 122-135; Hidenori Mashiko, Ideorogii to
shiteno nihon (Tokyo: Sangensha, 2003); and Masako Watanabe, Jojutsu no sutairu to rekishi kyoiku
(Tokyo: Sangensha, 2004).

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Consequently, narrativism defines knowledge in history that allows the plurality of
historical explanations. But each explanation of history exists independently as if there

were a principle of non-intervention.

Memory as Knowledge of the Past

This chapter's discussion brings one substantial fact into view: neither past
accounts nor present perspectives of the past, in themselves, construes the knowledge in
history. The accumulation of diverse accounts of the past necessarily better represents
what happened in the past. The substantive philosophy of history is true when it stresses
the importance of empirical accumulation of past traces to show what really happened in
the past. However, the analytical philosophy of history provides a meaningful challenge
to historiography that faithfully stresses empirical accumulation of past accounts. Both
knowledge in history and historical knowledge are different from records kept in the
chronicle. Thus, the analytical philosophy of history stresses the use-value of the past by
searching for the universal law that is timelessly true.

Then relativism provides a meaningful challenge to history and its knowledge.
Relativism approaches history by questioning the positivism assumed in the scholarship
of history. The accumulation of past accounts is not necessarily accumulation of past
facts, because past accounts are not free from the subjectivities of both the past and the
present. Furthermore, we can construct universal law only relative to our ability to access
all the complexities of our present. Similarly, knowledge in history is timeless only

relative to our ability to see the whole past and the whole future at the same time.

78

Relativism provides an approach to history that lends a sense of legitimacy to diverse
historical explanations that have been silenced and/or hidden beneath the historical
explanation that is dominant in the public sphere. However, relativism has lifted the
dominant framework to define the truth as the knowledge in history. Relativism’s
approach to history has made the plurality of historical explanations into present reality,
but it also has invited outright skepticism into the scholarship of history.

Both multiculturalism and localism approach history with contemporary attempts
to substantiate knowledge in history, after the plurality of historical explanations has
become reality. Multiculturalism challenges historical knowledge by questioning that
construction of the knowledge encompassing the diverse understanding of the past would
be simplifying past complexity, and it stresses that knowledge in history should be
inclusive of diverse historical explanations. It assumes the universal framework that
encompasses historical explanations of whole human populations, transcending cultural,
social, political, and even individual frameworks. Yet, multiculturalism provides no
means to construct a fi'amework that encompasses the whole human populations.
Therefore, multiculturalism offers a goal that is unimaginable as well as unreal.
Localism, on the other hand, argues for the knowledge that responds only to a particular
context that is fragmented from all other past contexts. It places historical knowledge
within a localized context in order to secure the use-value of the knowledge within the
particular context of the present.

These two contemporary approaches to history are in common when they do not
provide any means to introduce constructive communication across different historical

explanations. Multiculturalism pushes for a historical explanation that is universally

79

inclusive of whole human populations and their diverse historical explanations. However,
while it emphasizes the knowledge that is inclusive, multiculturalism offers no means to
respond to actual conflicts between diverse historical explanations within its universal
framework. Multiculturalism stresses inclusiveness as the means to attain an end.
However critical is that it has no end. In fact, when the future has infinite possibilities, it
is conceptually problematic for multiculturalism to offer an endpoint to its process of
inclusion. Similarly, localism approaches history by stressing diversity of historical
knowledge in light of infinite possibilities of narrative structure, to build diverse causal
explanations of what happened in the past.

Both multiculturalism and localism thus have no quarrel with the coexistence of
diverse historical explanations. Multiculturalism introduces a universal framework of
history that is inclusive of all historical explanations, and localism stresses narrative
structure in order to argue for the sovereignty of building a historical explanation that
authenticates the doing of history within a particular past context. These approaches are,
however, quite successful in avoiding answering the most important question—what
should knowledge in history be when the plurality of historical explanations is the present
reality? This chapter thus argues that neither multiculturalism nor localism, in reality,
provide any means to build knowledge that gives coherence to the present diversity of
historical explanations. Instead, we can only see individual and collective memories
replacing history’s knowledge as the product of history study.

Recent emphasis on memory can be seen as the outcome of history’s war against
subjectivity. Memory is private property which embodies subjective remembering of

what happened in the past. Collective memory (or collective remembrance) is often

80

emphasized in order to speak of localized knowledge within the narrative structure of a
particular historical explanation. Similarly, memory is simply a paraphrase of historical
knowledge embedded in each historical explanation that constitutes a part of the
overarching historical explanation of multiculturalism. Therefore, memory study has
gained popularity and it is now replacing history. History has also turned to emphasizing
memory and collective memory as the product of history, instead of making efforts to
construct knowledge in history that is responding to the present plurality of historical
explanations. In other words, the recent emphasis on memory is the inevitable outcome of
the assumption that knowledge in history has to be definitive in the present.

If knowledge in history needs to be definitive in the present, then conflicts and
contradictions within the plurality of historical explanations cannot be rationalized
without actively validating the subjective practice of history. The recent emphasis of
memory, therefore, can be understood as the defeat of history. Memory (and even
collective memory) may be a medium to construct historical knowledge, but it is not
knowledge substantial across diverse historical explanations. Therefore when memory
takes the place of knowledge in history, the study of history ironically becomes not only

ahistory but also anti history.

Proposition: Concluding Discussion

The present visions and interests regarding a particular future influence how we

identify and attach meanings to past events, and by thus doing, we make particular past

event into the subject of history in order to construct what we call knowledge in history.

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History produces an inverse projection of a particular vision of the future upon events
that have happened. This inverse projection acts to select, highlight and map the sources
and stories of events so as to support the construction of the desired future. However, the
future is always in the making. Therefore, we can argue that the future is an entity of
whose existence we have knowledge, but that it is also non-entity that has no physical
attribution. If the present construction of historical explanation is inevitably linked to
present subjectivity aimed at the construction of a desired future, then knowledge in
history has to be the entity that has no physical attribution as well.

Therefore, history constructs the knowledge that is in the making so long as there
is the future. Therefore, knowledge in history is incorporeal entity that is not made only
of a definitive entity but of a ceaselessly transforming entity that existence is defined by
the change itself. This is, in fact, an application of the argument of Gilles Deleuz on the
notion of becoming.65 Furthermore, when rejecting naturalism (or monological
consciousness), Charles Taylor argues that the identity of human subjects is a dialogical
construction through relationship with others.66 Knowledge in history, as well as identity
of human subjects, is always becoming, and thus it has no fixed entity—that is, it is
something that has already finished becoming. Hence, knowledge in history cannot be
substantiated on ground of materialistic presuppositions, because no one can claim the
ownership of knowledge when it is ceaselessly becoming. It is only possible for us to

claim ownership of dominating power to control the practice of history, or it is may be

 

“5 Gilles Deleuz, The Logic of Sense, and also see Gilles Deleus, Difference and Repetition, translated
by Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

66 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Boston. Harvard University
Press, 1989).

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possible to claim ownership of those that have stopped becoming. However, we often
disagree with those who actively overpower our freedom to study the past and force their
historical explanation upon us. In fact, what has already finished becoming is no longer
knowledge in history, because it has seemed to become an entity that is physically
attributed.

This chapter proposes knowledge in history has to incorporate the understanding
that it is becoming. Through exploring the construction of historical explanations around
a particular past event that is known around the world today, the following chapters will
demonstrate the history of constructing the knowledge about the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are known around the world, and they are particularly known in Japan as
unforgettable landmark events of the past. However, the atomic bombings have not
necessarily brought consistent meaning throughout postwar Japan, and there was a time
the bomb was lost firom the memories of the Japanese people. Therefore, the following
chapters will explore the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to reveal the reality that
knowledge in history needs to incorporate the understanding that is always becoming.

Taking on such a perspective to knowledge in history is a necessary approach to
substantiate the plurality of historical explanations. Proposing knowledge that is an entity
with no physical attribution—fixed knowledge—seems to be anti-knowledge. However,
it is important to differentiate the argument regarding knowledge that is becoming, from
those arguments that come from misappropriating the postmodern deconstruction of
knowledge. Postmodern deconstruction, when misappropriated from the context of

deconstruction, often negates all rationality and reduces everything to the exercise of

83

political power. The argument of this study is to provide constructive dialogue for
building knowledge in history that is substantiating the plurality of historical explanation.
In so doing, I propose history to consciously seek knowledge that is ceaselessly becoming.
For history to incorporate such knowledge, we need to introduce a new notion of
knowledge that is not a definitive entity like what we usually call a product of history.
Instead, we will discuss knowledge as a fluid entity—fluid knowledge—that is
ceaselessly constructing a dialogical condition in which the plurality of historical

explanations can be a constructive and welcomed reality for the discipline of history.

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Chapter 3

Testimonies and Memories of Historical Events

In such occasion [atomic catastrophe in Hiroshima],
no one can hold on to anything. People would run
away leaving everything behind, even their parents

and their child.
——Toshi Maruki, “Genbaku no zu no koto”1
Hiroshima became the first target of the atomic bombings on August 6, 1945. Iri
and Toshi Maruki entered the city to search for their relatives only a few days later. Five
years after witnessing Hiroshima's catastrophe, they began painting the Hiroshima
Panels, depicting the horror they saw. The Marukis focused their efforts on art “because
we had seen Hiroshima, and we thought there had to be some record of what had

”2 Like the Marukis, Miyoko Saito expressed in a Chugoku shinbun article on

happened.
the experiences of Hiroshima’s survivors, that she had always wanted to tell her
experience to her grandchildren, but she was afraid of inadequately representing what
happened after the bomb.3 She kept her memory to herself, but at the age of 69, an illness
almost took her life. After recovering, she began to write her story of surviving the bomb.

This narrative was written on only seven sheets of scratch paper, but it took Saito four

long years to complete.

 

I Toshi Maruki, “Genbaku no zu no koto,” Asahi shinbun, August 6, 1964. Throughout this
chapter, I have translated all sources that are only available in Japanese language unless noted otherwise.

2 [ii Maruki et al., The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki (Tokyo:
Kodansha lntemational, 1985), 125.

3 Miyoko Saito, Chugoku Shinbun, June 19, 2005.

85

These testimonies are vital resources in learning how the survivors of the atomic
bomb have dealt with what they experienced. While historians decipher the facts,
testimony of living witnesses has been vital since the time Herodotus wrote the first
historical account of the Persian Wars in the fifth century BC. Today, personal
memories, oral narratives, poetry and other literary accounts of living witnesses are
frequently employed as a form of counter-history, a form of struggle against the dominant
meta-narrative that is superimposed on the understanding of what happened in the past.4
These two stories of Hiroshima's tragedy show that giving a testimony is neither a casual
nor easy exercise of will. There are many examples of people feeling unable to speak of
their past experiences. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Hiroshima
National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims provide visitor comment
books at the end of their exhibitions in order for people to leave their impressions. In
these notebooks, many survivors have expressed that they see it as their duty to give
testimony about the atomic bombing yet it is overwhelmingly difficult for them to talk
about it. Behind each testimony, we can safely say, there is a struggle.

This chapter is not an attempt to present/represent a balanced view of Hiroshima's
history by way of resurrecting alternative or silenced voices about the past catastrophe.
Rather, this chapter aims to highlight the fact that metaphysical violence occurs when we
uncritically demand and presume it possible to effect a ‘balanced’ representation of the
past. Balancing how we represent past events is, in fact, an approach that is dismantling

the notion of historical continuity and coherence that Foucault has challenged.5 Yet,

 

4 See Michel Foucault’s argument on this point in Language, C ounter-Memory, Practice: Selected
Essays and Interviews (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977).

5 See Michel Foucault, Archeology of Knowledge (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).

86

while translating the challenge put forth by Foucault into critical views of history
constitutes an end purpose in itself for contemporary practice of history, the strive to
ensure balanced representations of history and fairness to testimonies should be viewed
as a process of means to that desired purpose. In this respect, the process of ‘balancing’
translates to acts that are essentially political in nature. Thus, the process of balancing
representations of history should be itself examined for its potential to endanger and even
suppress the very discourses (and testimonies) they hold as underrepresented and intend
to rescue.

In fact, there have been many efforts to build a transnational understanding of
history. In 2005, a joint Chinese-Japanese-Korean project for writing a common history-
textbook for the tri-country’s past, for example, resulted in an alternative textbook, Mrai
wo hiraku rekishi (History to open up the future). Its preface stated: “Intellectuals,
teachers and citizens from three countries came together for this textbook project. In the
three-year project, there were at times conflicts over the difference of opinions. Through
dialogue and debate, we have reached a shared understanding of history, which we are
publishing in three countries.”6 A critical examination of this statement would reveal that
history, in contemporary thought, is no longer the domain reserved exclusively or
primarily for the historian's craft. History, instead, is under the contingency of popular
practices in the public domain, and has become a practice itself outside of the historian's

rigor and historiography. Popularising history that came with both theoretical

 

6 Nichi-Chu-Kan Sankoku Kyoutuu Rekishi Kyozai linkai, Mirai wo hiraku rekishi (Tokyo:
Koubunken, 2005), Preface.

87

developments in traditional disciplines and societal changes, has, in fact, challenged
conventional historiography, and it has brought the “shift from history to histories.”7

The popular practice of history has also brought an audience-centered approach
when history is represented in the public spheres.8 The Enola Gay controversy of the
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum provides here a pivotal example in which
public/popular practice of history and the discipline of history have collided. The
Smithsonian's controversy presents an actual case in which diverse representations of a
historical event were balanced out by political rather than historical acts in the public
sphere. In this process, testimonies given by atomic bomb survivors were invalidated as
they were silenced in a site where a certain public exercised influence over the history
represented.9

It is generally accepted that testimonies provide useful insights that offer more
balanced representations of the past. However, the political lens of the present often

evaluates the authenticity and validity of the testimonies made available in the public

 

7 Louis A. Montrose, “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture,” in The
New Historicism, ed. H. A. Veeser (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 20.

8 Museum studies have been more commonly approached than history about the public
representation and practice of history as the subject. The studies of audience-centered approach in museum
studies highlight the issues of museum's representing history's events in public spheres. For example, see
John Kuo Wei Tchen, “Back to the Basics: Who Is Researching and Interpreting for Whom?,” Journal of
American History 81 (December 1994): 1004-10; Barbara Franco, “Doing History in Public: Balancing
Historical Fact with Public Meaning,” Perspectives: American Historical Association Newsletter 33
(May/June 1995), 5-8; and David Glassberg, “History and Memory: Public History and the Study of
Memory,” Public Historian 18, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 7-23.

9 Enola Gay exhibition is not an isolated case where certain testimonies are invalidated. For
example, Lisa Yoneyama, when exploring the politics of Hiroshima's remembrance in Japan, presents that
testimonials of H iroshima's atomic bombing have also been shaped to serve diverse actors and their own
purposes. In the end, many survivors kept their experiences private. Kenzaburo Oe also exposed in
Hiroshima Notes that the survivors of atomic bombing failed to relate their experiences to the testimonies
presented in public spheres. See, Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Notes (New York: Marion Boyars, 1995), and
Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1999).

88

sphere. Metaphysical violence is perpetuated at this point if testimonies are uncritically
sorted out to serve particular interests and perspectives in contemporary society. The
struggles behind each testimony are overlooked when we become indifferent to the
process by which people's private experiences in the past are transported to a public
domain. I submit that this violence is metaphysical in nature because no definitive subject
who acts against those who have given their testimonies may be identified. Therefore, it
is important to carefully study the miscommunication between different practices of
history: political practice of history in public spheres and the disciplinary practice of
history that is rigorously defined with historiography.

Political practice of history is the history seeking historical significance that is not
quite historical in nature. The Enola Gay exhibition, for example, invited political
controversies of whether a publicly funded museum should represent past events in a way
that is critical to the national past or not. The controversy was, in fact, not necessarily on
history even though history became the field of a political controversy. The knowledge is
relative to ahistorical factors in the practice of history. Disciplinary practice of history is
the history seeks the knowledge that is historical. It is assumed that the knowledge should
be substantial. Therefore, the disciplinary practice of history stands contrary to the
knowledge that is relative to the diverse political, social, cultural and other conditions of
those and in which history is being practiced. To put this in a sentence, the difference
between political and disciplinary practices of history comes from the different
assumption we have about the nature of historical knowledge.

I begin with a brief investigation of the mechanism of how memories of individuals

come to shape testimonies. This is to say that personal testimonies are the exposed

89

memory of individuals constructed from their experiences. In this respect, memory and
testimony are different entities even though they both come from the same entity—an
individual person. We need to make a conscious distinction between when memory and
testimony are made. Memory is essentially a private property generated from personal
involvement in past events; and it is an act of resistance against forgetting something that
happened in the past. Testimony, on the other hand, is a communicative act to make some
impact on others and inform their understanding of what happened in the past. Therefore,
testimony is an exposed memory of a person; and thus it presumes an audience other than
oneself.

Secondly, I argue that accepting testimony as raw and unadulterated accounts of
history would result in overlooking the conditions in which individuals decided to share
their memories in the public sphere as testimonies. These individual decisions should not
be reduced to a matter of choice or desire independent from their political and historical
conditions. To make these arguments, I examine literary presentations of individual
experiences of wartime violence, as well as the conflict that testimonies presented in
literary format pose against private memories. This analysis identifies testimonies as a
medium through which private memory and collective remembrance are negotiated to
alter historical consciousness over particular events in the past. This negotiation aims to
reshape the presiding historical consciousness, and it consequentially alters our present

perception of the past and the future at the same time.

Historiography for Peaceful Coexistence

90

Today, our global society is endangered by many conflicts that are sprouting
across the planet. Intractable political and cultural clashes are threatening to dismantle the
efforts for coalitions, as well as justify violence in the name of self-preservation of
sectarian identities. The last decade has seen many coercive measures driven by military
and economic powers, instead of the construction of a dialogue to resolve disagreements.
In response to such measures, we have seen political activists, states, historians, and the
media employ personal testimonies for the building of a counter-narrative to challenge
those who support the perpetrator’s historical, political, and moral righteousness.lo

It is, however, commonly accepted today that historical consciousness is not
globally invariable. Rather, it is the product of an ongoing complex process of synthesis
and distillation of values, norms and historical contexts that are pedagogically promoted
in the public sphere of a particular collectivity. In this respect, the emergence of a new
global collectivity requires the concurrent construction of a new historical consciousness,
which needs to embody a new set of pedagogies to entrust collective identity that is
global. Such historical consciousness would likely cause conflict with the presiding ones

and the values held within each nation or smaller collectivity. Historical controversy in

 

'0 Economic globalization, which employs meta-narrative of free trade and prosperity to all, has
faced challenging testimonies given by living-witnesses of exploited workers of sweatshops, as well as
those who live at the bottom of the social economic ladder. Furthermore, in the current case of the global
war on terrorism, military operations have faced challenges from innocent bystanders who were caught in
the middle of unwanted violence. The media transmit the images of dead children, crying women and the
destruction of cities to contradict the meta-narrative of this global terror war. For the first example, see
Evelyn Hu-Dehart, “Globalization and Its Discontents: Exposing the Underside,” Frontiers, 24 (2003):
244-60; Naila Kabeer and Simeen Mahmud, “Globalization, Gender and Poverty: Bangladeshi Women
Workers in Export and Local Markets,” Journal of International Development 16, no. 1 (2004): 93-109;
Saadia Toor, “Child Labor in Pakistan: Coming of Age in the New World Order,” The ANNALS of
American Academy of Political and Social Science 575, no. 1 (2001): 194-224; and Bill Bigelow, “The
Human Lives Behind the Labels: The Global Sweatshop, Nike, and the Race to the Bottom,” Phi Delta
Kappan 78 (1997): 112-20. For the latter example, please refer Robert L. Ivie, “Evil Enemy versus
Agonistic Other: Rhetorical Construction of Terrorism,” The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural
Studies 25, no. 3 (2003): 181-200; and Ehud Sprinzak, “The Lone Gunmen,” Foreign Policy 172 (2001 ):
72-73.

91

East Asia, for example, has mounted to dangerous heights in the last decade. Yet, the
actors of the controversy were not necessarily historians; instead, it was nonspecialists in
political and public arenas.ll In the case of controversy over conflictive historical
consciousness, the differences are not merely on historical matters. Instead, the
controversy is about the future prospects that may be generated from different historical
consciousness kept in other collective groups.

It is critical to negotiate conflictive relationships at an international level when
constructing a global community. Dialogue of tolerance, which pursues a peaceful
coexistence of differences, is desired in order to ensure an ongoing process of
synthesizing different values and ideas, their mergers and acquisitions for constructing
fractioning collectivities based on the principle of mutually accepted multiplicity of
differences.'2 This dialogue, however, requires that we transform our minds by
renouncing our desire to uncritically subscribe to the pre-existing epistemological pattern.
The study of history continues to be important. Yet, in order to respond to ongoing and
emerging disputes in a globalizing society, this study argues that historical inquiry in
itself is insufficient when building a consensus over conflicted understandings of past

events since the conflicts are not necessarily historical in nature, but political.

Testimony as a Medium

Paul Ricoeur argues that, “there is no document without some question, nor some

 

” See earlier discussion on the Chinese-Japanese-Korean history textbook project.

'2 Michael Walzer, 0n Toleration (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997).

92

question without an explanatory project.”'3 No testimony is independent from the
historical consciousness on which it intends to impact, and no historical consciousness is
independent from a testimony’s bringing its explanation to the past and past happenings.
Memories of individual persons entail both a desire to remember and a struggle not to
forget certain meanings and emotions assigned to particular acts in the past. In this
respect, memories constitute a document (evidence) for the study of history, and
testimony is the medium that takes memory into the operation of historiography with its
epistemological process to allow memories to be shared collectively in the public
spheres.

Testimony, however, is a limited medium because memories are often an
incomplete reflection of the past. Moreover, the dead did not leave testimony about their
death and the present cannot access the memories of the deceased. Therefore, for
survivors to speak of the past is to shoulder the responsibility of speaking for the dead,
those who are unable to represent themselves or protest against what is being said about
them in their absence. Furthermore, the dead might have not had any desire to be
represented in the present. In such case, the survivors, when speaking of the dead, have to
take the blame for violating the will of the dead. For survivors of war, to speak of their
memories is a particularly difficult act. Too many have lost their lives in war; hence, the
violence of inadequately representing the dead and their will is inevitable when giving
their testimony.

Two poems of a Holocaust survivor, in fact, reflect very clearly about the enormous

difficulties in the act of testifying. Primo Levi, one of three Italian Jews who survived

 

‘3 Paul Ricmur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 182.

93

from Auschwitz, wrote:

‘I came from very far away

To bring bad news.

I flew across the mountain,

Pierced the low cloud,

Mirrored m belly in the pond.

I flew without resting,

A hundred miles without resting,

To find your window,

To find your ear,

To bring you the sad tidings,

That taint your bread and wine,

Lodge every evening in your heart.’
This is the way he sang, dancing, vicious,
Beyond the glass, upon the snow.
As he fell silent, he looked about, malign,
Marked a cross on the ground with his beak,
And opened his black wings wide.l4

Levi wrote this poem, titled The Crow ’s Song, in 1946. In the poem, Levi traces himself
into a vicious craw that brings bad news. In his testimony of what happened in
Auschwitz, Levi writes: “No one must leave here [Auschwitz] and so carry to the world,
together with the sign impressed on his skin, the evil tidings of what man’s presumption
made of man in Auschwitz.”15 Levi, however, survived from Auschwitz and came back
to his home. His existence/survival itself thus became a medium that delivers bad news
that remind all persons what a man can do to other human beings. The Crow ’s Song
vividly exposes Levi’s struggle: while he desires to testify his memory to keep the
remembrance of Auschwitz, he does not want to become the vicious crow by bringing the

sad tidings.

 

H Primo Levi, Collected Poems, trans. Ruth F eldman and Brian Swann (London and Boston:
Faber and Faber, 1992), 8.

'5 Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz; and, the Reawakening: Two Memories, trans. Stuart Woolf
(New York: Summit Books, 1986), 61.

94

Levi also left a poem just a few years before his suicide under the title, The
Survivor. The poem presents graphically Levi’s burden to isolate his private experiences
and memories from the meanings and judgements bestowed on him by the present
readers of his testimonies:

Once more he sees his companion’s faces

Livid in the first faint light,

Gray with cement dust,

Nebulous in the mist,

Tinged with death in their uneasy sleep.

At night, under the heavy burden

Of tehir deams, their jaws move,

Chewing a nonexistent turnip.

‘Stand back, leave me alone, submerged people,

Go away. I haven’t dispossed anyone,

Haven’t usurped anyone’s bread.

No one died in my place. No one.

Go back into your mist.

It’s not my fault if I live and breath,

Eat, drink, sleep and put on clothes.16
Levi calls out his needs to speak of his memory and his experiences in this poem to
satisfy the “submerged people” wholse lives were lost in Auschwitz. However, Levi
seems to be haunted here not just by the dead, but also by the living who suspect Levi’s
survival as a result of Levi has “usurped [anyone’s] bread” and “dispossed [anone]? Both
Levi’s lived memory of Auschwitz and what later became the remembrance of Auschwitz
in the public sphere strangled him between the past memory and the present
consciousness of what happened in the past. His past turns itself into a vicious crow
knocking in his window, as well as in everyone’s window. The submerged people of his

past have never left him alone in his home that is far away from the past. The present

casts its judgements on the vicious crow that brings bad news. The remembrance of the

 

‘6 Primo Levi, Collected Poems, 64.

95

past is never satisfactory, and the remembrance in the present does not recognize Levi’s
whole self, which includes both his present and his past, in its structure. Constrained in
between of these two remembrances, Levi chose to terminate his own life perhaps to
resolve his burden of not only his surviving the Auschwitz where many people like him
died but also his living as a survivor of Auschwitz in the present.17

Indeed, testifying about the past entails the recognition of the heavy heritage
whereby the survivors are compelled to undertake the memories of and for the dead.
Testimony is thus not a pure reflection of the survivor’s memory; instead, it is a
dialogical product that reflects the survivor’s relationship with the dead from the past and
the living-contemporaries in the present. Consequently, memories are rarely exposed
outside of a private realm because there are overwhelming fears of misrepresenting past
events and the heavy burden of representing the past.

I argue, in the sense of Ernest Laclau, that the past itself is an empty signifier that is
filled with meaning in several ways that interest this discussion: the frameworks of
History, Public/Pedagogy, and Private/Emotion.18 History (in the sense of academic and
disciplinary exercise) assigns meanings to the past in a disciplinary frame. Rigor in
history as a discipline is, according to nineteenth century historian Leopold von Ranke,
“to show how it really was.”'9 My argument here focuses on two other frames that signify

the past and past understanding, and that are often juxtaposed to history as a discipline to

 

'7 Some may argue what Levi suffered was the survivor’s guilt. While I make no challenge to such
argument, it is important to note that Levi committed suicide not only to escape from his past but also to
escape his present, which sees him as Auschwitz survivor—a vicious crow.

‘3 For the argument of Earnest Laclau mentioned here, please refer, New Reflections on the
Revolution of Our Time (New York: Verso Press, 1990).

‘9 Cited in Edward Hewlett Carr, What Is History? (London and New York: Macmillan and St.
Martin’s Press, 1961), 5.

96

approach the past: Public/Pedagogy and Private/Emotional frameworks.

The framework of Public/Pedagogy outlines the past to construct or defend
collective psychology. The ways that Japanese people in general situate Hiroshima’s
catastrophe are undoubtedly different from the ways that people in the United States
frame it in their collective psychology about the past. Museums, media, schooling,
commemoration, public memorials, and other public methods of remembrance are not
accidental products, but are calculated exercises to strengthen and define the sense of
collectivity. Therefore, historical controversy often occurs when two or more different
collectivities begin transgressing each others’ realm.20

The Private/Emotional framework often stands in conflict with other frameworks.
However, such conflict is often overlooked because the past is outlined by a person’s
emotional involvement with an event in the past. Hence, it is insignificant historically and
pedagogically outside the realm of the private. Memory is the past that has emotional
significance to the individuals, and it is stored within the realm of the private. It is usually
kept outside of history’s interest, unless memory itself is the subject in history’s study.
For example, no one would really care about the memory of an unknown individual
regarding an unknown event in the past, while the memory of Harry Truman about his
decision to drop atomic bombs in Japan may become the subject of inquiry.

These three frameworks do not stand independently. Instead, they meet one another
in the braid of our consciousness when constructing the past. The validity of what is
being testified may be examined academically in the frame of history by comparing it to

other traces from the past, such as documentary records and contextual balances. Yet,

 

2° This realm can be said of national one, as well as those of ethnic group, gender group, racial
group and other categories of groups within a society.

97

when one’s memory (raw material) becomes a testimony (evidence to be used in other
frameworks), there is dialogical exercise across different frameworks and our historical
consciousness is the product of this dialectic communication amongst historical, public
and private fiameworks.

Testimony is incumbent to historiography because it bridges the private/emotional
framework and the public/pedagogical framework when constructing historical
consciousness. There are many writings about the atomic bombings, and they would
provide rich resources to provide critical look at testimonies that were significant in
constructing the historical consciousness in post-war Japan. This chapter’s inquiry into
those testimonies ultimately aims to reinstate the dynamics of testimony as a dialogical
medium to bring private experiences into the public sphere, and reshape historical
consciousness to carry certain pedagogy in the public spheres from the past experiences.
Therefore, testimonies selected for this study were not chosen for their literary qualities
or popularity, nor do they offer a thorough survey of the literature of atomic bomb
survivors. My enquiries focus only on those testimonies written or spoken by the
survivors themselves. I used extensively the writings of Sadako Kurihara for two
purposes. First, Kurihara experienced the tragedy firsthand. Second, she was an activist
in the anti-war and anti-nuclear armament movements throughout her life since the end of

the last world war.

Testimony and Public Frameworks

98

Sankichi Toge was 28 years old when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima. Although
he died very young in 1953, Toge published one of the earliest testimonies of the
catastrophe. Poems of the Atomic Bomb was first published two years before his death.
Because it was printed in mimeograph only to be distributed within a close circle, Toge’s
intended not a specific audience outside of Hiroshima. His audience was mainly the
survivors of the bomb in Hiroshima. In fact, Toge dedicated this anthology to four
audiences: victims, survivors, witnesses, and those who abhor atomic bombs. “Dedicated
to those whose lives were taken by the atomic bombs dropped August 6, 1945 on
Hiroshima and August 9, 1945 on Nagasaki, to those who have continued down to the
present to be tormented by the terror of death and by pain, to those who as long as they
live have no way of extinguishing their agony and grief, and finally to those throughout
the world who abhor atomic bombs.”2|

Toge opened his anthology Poems of the Atomic Bomb with a very abstract yet
direct rage against the bomb that took away human beings, “Bring me back! Bring back
the human beings I had contact with!”22 Toge, however, in all other poems in his
anthology, did not rage against the past event exclusively. Instead, he emphasized his
decision to shoulder the difficult responsibility of speaking of the catastrophe to appeal
for present and future peace. Following the prelude, Toge presented his poems in a
chronological order: “August 6”, “Dying”, “Flames”, and so on to depict what he saw

from August 6, 1945 until 1950:

The brilliant flash—who can forget it?

 

2‘ Richard H. Minear, ed., Hiroshima: Three Witnesses (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1990), 304.

22 Minear, Hiroshima, 298.

99

In a split second, 30,000 in the streets vanished;

the screams of 50,000 pinned under in pitch black

died away.23
The “brilliant flash” was then followed by the death and by his witnessing of the dying
people crying in “the lonely dark”:

Ah!

Why?

Why here

by the side of the road

cut off, dear, from you;

why

must

I

die

924

The decreasing syllable count strikes those who read the poem because they can hear the
last breath of the dying person on a roadside. Death coming in a flash taking over their
regular summer morning—and to most eyewitnesses, not preceded by the vision of a
plane dropping the bomb—subscribed the event to the realm of human disaster rather
than a socio-political or historical act. Upon surveying the early writings of atomic bomb
survivors, one finds hardly any discussion on the historical contexts surrounding the
bomb.

Tamiki Hara, who survived the bomb by being merely 1.5 kilometres from the
hypo-centre, also left his testimony. He committed suicide in 1951, so his early
statements were also his last as with the case of Sankichi Toge. Hara wrote about what he
witnessed in a notebook as he ran for safety. His memo later became the foundation of

his published testimony, entitled Summer Flowers. In the notebook, Hara described the

 

23 Minear, Hiroshima, 306.

24 Minear, Hiroshima, 310.

100

catastrophe with a very calm tone. The memo contains no words of condemnation
towards those who dropped the bomb. In the opening sequence of Summer Flowers, Hara
evenly described the event without making any accusations to either actors or the
contexts that brought the catastrophe to him and Hiroshima.

John W. Treat, highlighting the dominance of poetry and poetry-like writing in
early testimonies of the A-bombs accounts for the, “romance of poetry [that] would
transcend the details of the experience and grant it a universal significance”. Then he
argues that testimonies often, “resist the moves to change the experience in any way and
instead pretend to freeze it in a ‘catalogue’ of vivid and unmediated memories.”25 Treat
suggests here that the survivors and witnesses of the A-bomb and its catastrophe chose
poetry as an act to resist critically reflecting on the bomb outside their emotions.

Yet, Hara’s personal memo shows the absence of his personal agony and emotions.
In Summer Flowers, Hara wrote many phrases hinting to his incapacity of finding his lost
emotion after the atomic annihilation. “It was an encounter too sad for tears”,26 “Every
face was miserable beyond words”,27 and other similar phrases suggest the incapacity of
having any type of emotional response after directly confronting the catastrophe. Hara
jotted down that, “Miraculously I am not hurt; must be the Divine wish to keep me alive

and to report the state of chaos. Hence my duty is enormous.”28

 

25 John W. Treat, “Early Hiroshima Poetry,” The Journal of the Association of Teachers of
Japanese 20, no. 2 (November 1986): 227.

26 Kenzaburo Oe and Shoichi Saeki, The Catch and Other War Stories (Tokyo and New York:
Kodansha lntemational, 1981), 132.

27 Oe and Saeki, The Catch and Other War Stories, I36.

28 Tamiki Hara, “Genbaku shaker” (1950; rprt., in Nihon no genbaku bungaku I , Tokyo: Horubu,
1983), 340-1.

101

Throughout his poems, Sankichi Toge also carefully controlled his emotions. In all
except the first, Toge did not openly expose his own emotions. Instead, Toge channelled
his poems towards describing the victims’ pain to seek the emotional commitment to
build peace and rage against the atomic bomb. Toge depicted the disaster without
complex historical context, as Treat argues. However, his poems reveal that he
consciously resisted contextualizing his poems in order to change certain experiences of
his fellow survivors:

Ah, that was no accident, no act of God.

After precision planning, with insatiable ambition,

humanity’s first atomic bomb

was dropped, a single flash,

on the archipelago in the eastern sea,

on the Japanese people;

you were killed,

one of 400,000 victims who died horrible deaths.29
In this verse, Toge emphasized the presence of those responsible. At a time when most
writings regarding the A-bomb depicted it as an accident or disaster, this statement is
notable. Furthermore, Toge employed the passive voice to appeal to the survivors and
witnesses to reflect without targeting of blaming specific actors or contexts.

Hara and Toge never once mentioned the United States, America, or Americans
when depicting the atomic annihilation. Ex post facto censorship was enforced even in

remote areas of Japan.30 Both Hara and Toge carefully controlled their private emotions

in their narratives partly in response to the censorship and post-war political environment

 

29 Minear, Hiroshima, 362.

3° Masami Nakagawa, “Genbaku hodo to ken 'etsu,” ZOseiki media kenkyuujo 3 (2003): 42-47.

102

in Japan.31 By keeping emotional aspects within the subtext of their narratives, they
transcribed their memories into testimony that can be circulated in the post-war political
context. Contrary to Treat’s analysis, divorcing wartime contexts in early A-bomb
narratives was not necessarily an uncritical act. Rather, it was a conscious act of
pedagogically altering the historical consciousness on the A-bomb catastrophe held at the
time when testimonies were given.32

Narrating one’s memory is an intrinsic part of testimony. However, testimonies are
inevitably contextualized in a present collectivity and its historical consciousness of an
audience. When removed flom the original context in which testimony was given, we are
in danger of committing violence against those who have exposed their memory by
approaching the testimony merely as one of many stories of the past. In this respect, it is
difficult for survivors to give their testimony because (1) one’s emotionally flamed
experiences have to be transplanted in the context of historical consciousness shared
collectively in the public sphere; and (2) the members of a collectivity do not necessarily
share the same emotional dispositions, which leaves the experience of the narrator

solitary and isolated from the interest of a general public.

 

3' There might be other reasons other than censorship for their controlling their private emotions.
However, when comparing the immediate increase of emotionally charged testimonies and other writings
of Hiroshima after the lift of censorship suggests that the censorship was one of major factors controlling
the survivors to publish their testimonies in early postwar Japan under the Allied Occupation.

32 This phenomenon was not endemic to Japan. John Hersey gave a testimony of what he saw in
Hiroshima for the New Yorker magazine, which became the first and most widespread account of its kind in
the United States. Hersey began his narrative with a chapter titled, “A Noiseless Flash”, which is followed
by the testimonies of six people from Hiroshima who survived and witnessed the blast of the first atomic
bomb. Yet, in his book, Hersey also dropped all critical factors that would cast light on the decision and act
of dropping the bomb in Hiroshima. Furthermore, the testimonies of the six individuals Hersey selected for
his book were descriptive rather than emotional accounts of their experiences. See John Hersey, Hiroshima
(New York: AA. Knopf, 1946).

103

Testimony and Its Contestation

Sadako Kurihara, also a survivor of the blast of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima,

once confessed the difficulties she had experienced in giving her testimony as a victim of
the A-bomb:

When we say “Hiroshima,”

do people answer, gently,

“Ah, Hiroshima”?

Say “Hiroshima,” and hear “Pearl Harbor.”

Say “Hiroshima,” and hear “Rape of Nanjing.”

Say “Hiroshima,” and hear of women and children in Manila
thrown into trenches, doused with gasoline,

and burned alive.

Say “Hiroshima,”

and hear echoes of blood and fire.33

Kurihara wrote this poem twenty-five years after the blast. While Sankichi Toge and
Tamiki Hara died soon after publishing their first sets of testimonies, Kurihara had a long
life and spent much time as an advocate for a nuclear-free world, using her poetry as a
medium for delivering her testimony. Yet, because of this, Kurihara faced a unique
challenge, one that many survivors have not openly faced, to resituate her testimonies in

social and political contexts that have been transformed over time.34

 

33 Sadako Kurihara and Robert H. Miner, When We Say “Hiroshima Selected Poems (Ann Arbor,
MI: Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, 1999), 20-21.

34 There are testimonial stories that were financially successful and escaped challenges. For
example, Hadashi no Gen [Barefoot Gen] is a very successful graphic novel series about the author’s lived
experiences of the atomic bomb, and there were films that featured the atomic bombings, such as Nippon
no ichiban nagai hi [Japan ’s Longest Day] (1967) and Nikudan (1968). However, these testimonies have
taken a form closely identified as fictional aspects with an image of reconstruction.

104

Ian Burma, through the analysis of the paintings of Hiroshima survivors, argues
that they depict their experiences in isolation flom everything in the world.35 This
isolation, Burma points out, transformed Hiroshima into a medium that indulges Japan’s
wartime guilt while emphasizing the enormous atomic annihilation without the historical
contexts that brought it on Japan. Those who have experienced Japan’s wartime
aggressions are suspicious of Kurihara and her intention to give testimony simply as a
victim without reference to her assailant face. Thus, the rhetoric in early testimonies has
been thoroughly scrutinized and Kurihara lived long enough to respond to such scrutiny.

In fact, the remarkable recovery of Japan’s social economic structure in the 19603
brought the world much closer. In 1964, 220,000 Japanese travelled abroad after the
government deregulated overseas travel for the first time after the war. When Kurihara
wrote the above poem in 1972, almost 1.4 million Japanese had travelled abroad, and
724,000 foreigners had visited Japan.36 Japan then was experiencing people’s increased
mobility and frequent communication beyond its national boundary. This movement has
brought very different historical consciousnesses into the nation’s public spheres.

Kurihara sent the People’s Republic of China, both to Mao Zedong and to the
National Broadcasting House, a poem bemoaning the death of a young girl in the atomic
catastrophe in protest to the PRC’s nuclear testing. In reply, the PRC sent Kurihara a
message, which said: “Production of A-bomb is the victorious event to all people in

China. Our people will support making of A-bombs even if they have no trousers to

 

35 Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York: Farrar,
Straus, Giroux, I994).

36 Ministry of Transport, Unyu hakusho (Tokyo, 1964),
http://www.milt.go.jp/hakusho/transport/shouwa29/ (accessed November 26, 2006); and Ministry of
Transport, Unyu hakusho (Tokyo, 1973), http://www.milt.go.jp/hakusho/transport/shouwa48/ (accessed
November 26, 2006).

105

wear.”37 Kurihara received severe responses to her testimony from Americans as well. In
protest against the Vietnam War, Kurihara wrote her testimony to be printed as an op-ed
in the Washington Post on April 3, 1964. While she received many supporting letters
from the readers, Kurihara also received some letters belittling what she had undergone
as an A-bomb victim. Kurihara wrote in the Beheiren News: “We thought our
experiences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have easily been understood around the world.
But, as seen in the reactions [from the United States], it [the rejection] is just so violent.
Knowing this as a reality, we must do whatever we can do to bring a peace in Vietnam, to
rescue Vietnam from the agony we have experienced before, and to prevent possible
nuclear war in the future by emphasizing our past experiences.“8
Facing such international realities and Japan’s role in the Vietnam War as a supply

base for the US. war efforts in Vietnam, Kurihara found herself no longer merely an
innocent victim of the A—bomb. Instead, she found herself a part of a collectivity that
plays (and has played) the role of assailant in the contexts outside of Japan. For
Kurihara’s testimony to be communicated to public spheres, she had to narrate her
memory in a context transcending her own nation-state collectivity. Hence, in the same
poem, Kurihara argues for the immediate need to re—transcribe her memory in a
transcendental framework, one that recognizes all victims of war.

Say “Hiroshima,”

and we don’t hear, gently,

“Ah, Hiroshima.”

In chorus, Asia’s dead and her voiceless masses

spit out the anger
of all those we made victims.

 

’7 Asahi shinbun, August 4, 1965.

’8 Beheiren nyuusu (July 1967). Emphasis mine.

106

That we may say “Hiroshima,”

and hear in reply, gently,

“Ah, Hiroshima,”

we must in fact lay down

the arms we were supposed to lay down.
We must get rid of all foreign bases.

Until that day Hiroshima

will be a city of cruelty and bitter bad faith.
And we will be pariahs

burning with remnant radioactivity.39

Voices calling attention to the significance of Hiroshima reverted to the Japanese
via the people in East and Southeast Asia. In the past, Japan had caused much suffering in
Asia. At the time of her writing, Kurihara emphasized that Japan was still producing new
victims by allowing the US. to hold military bases in Japan and sending troops from
there to Vietnam. Through acknowledging all victims of war and wartime atrocities (both
in the past and in the present), Kurihara sought to transform her narrative to be archived
as a narrative of all war sufferers.

Kurihara once expounded in 1952, “As a survivor, I wish first of all to be a human
being.”40 However, Kurihara, as a survivor, is only invited to give her testimony as a
human being when her emotion is complementary to the historical consciousness
endorsed in a particular collectivity. Her testimony, if it stands contrary to the historical
consciousness, is minimized or even dismissed in the collectivity.

The Enola Gay controversies of 1994 and 2003 can perhaps elaborate how validity

of testimonies were contextually defined. In 1994, the Smithsonian removed all

reference to the nuclear atrocities from the plane exhibition, “to stop emotional

 

39 Kurihara and Minear, When We Say ‘Hiroshima ', 20-21.

’0 Kurihara and Minear, When We Say ‘Hiroshima ", 29.

107

manipulation?“ Hirotomi Yamada, the director of the Nagasaki Council of A-bomb
Sufferers, commented furiously on NASM’s calling off the original exhibition plan in
1995: “They [Americans] did something terrible that they can never speak to the world;
and thus they hid what they did. It is just like a psychology of criminals.”42 Furthermore,
in 2003, Terumi Tanaka, the director of the Japan Confederation of A-Bomb and H-
Bomb Sufferers Organization, bemoaned receiving a cold response from the
Smithsonian: “As victims of the A-bombs, we can’t bear to have the Enola Gay, which
killed thousands of Hiroshima residents, on public display without including details of
the destruction it wrought.”43

However, many in the US media undervalued such criticisms by arguing that Japan
places too much focus on painting a picture of their victimization by the A-bomb. In
2003, many US media organs published the editorial of Neil Steinberg, a columnist for
the Chicago Sun-Times, with the headline: “U.S. owes Japan no apology at Hiroshima
plane exhibit.”44 His article has been reprinted in many different newspapers around the
US, and it continues to be recited on the Internet. In the concluding paragraph, Steinberg
writes:

The United States does indeed have things to be ashamed of. But World War

II is not one of them. Shameful chapters—such as the intemement of our own
Japanese citizens—~——must be compared to the unchecked brutality in much of

 

’1 The Air Force Association, Memo to the Military Coalition and Associated Members on the
Subject of Further Actions on Enola Gay Exhibit (September 19, 1994),
http:l/www.afa.org/media/enolagay/02-03.asp (accessed November 28, 2006).

‘2 Asahi shinbun (January 21, 1995): 21.

’3 Associated Press, “Group to Protest New Smithsonian Exhibit” (December 2, 2003),
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/lP1-87955740.html (accessed December 1, 2006).

44 Neil Steinberg, “U.S. Owes Japan No Apology at Hiroshima Plane Exhibit,” Chicago Sun-
Times (December 5, 2003).

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the world at the time. Before we honor the victimhood of others, we should
honor our own. Before some group of A-bomb survivors guilts the
Smithsonian into kneeling on a rail over the atomic bomb, I wish a delegation
of Bataan Death March survivors or men maimed at Pearl Harbor would
whisper their side... Harry Truman, a haberdasher from Missouri, perhaps the
most ordinary American ever to serve in the presidency, was absolutely right
to drop the bomb. The Japanese nation earned the Enola Gay’s visit. The rest
is just present day politics and the posturing of those not in any position to
complain.
In the article, Steinberg argues that history is an argument much like a war, and the
Americans are losing because with “our standards and sensitivities, we paint a picture of
ourselves that is extraordinarily bleak.” The article concludes, “The Japanese nation
earned the Enola Gay’s visit. The rest is just present day politics and the posturing of
those not in any position to complain.”46 Kurihara roared her fury against such voices
justifying the use of atomic bombs: “If the dropping of A-bomb is an act of mercy so is
the Imperial Army’s massacring of 200,000 people in Nanjing and the Nazi’s murdering
of 6,000,000 in the gas chambers. All those were perhaps acts of mercy, too.”47
Kurihara’s long journey to give her testimony of her A-bomb memories met, once
again, another dead end. Her testimony was again rejected because it would, “play on

emotions,”43 and its audience is, “likely to get a distorted understanding of history.”49

“We first must / wash the blood / off our own hands.”50 Kurihara has actively tried to

 

‘5 Ibid., italics mine.
4“ Ibid.
4’ Sadako Kurihara, “No Title”, Asahi shinbun (November 19, 1994).

48 John Correll, Memo to Monroe Hatch on the Subject of Analysis of A ir & Space Museum Script
(April 7, 1994), http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/04-07-94.asp (accessed November 28, 2006).

49 The Air Force Association, Memo to the Publisher, Magazine Staflon the Subject of A ugust 31
Revision of Enola Gay Script (September 9, 1994), http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/08-31-94.asp
(accessed November 28, 2006).

50 Kurihara and Minear, When We Say ‘Hiroshima’, 20-21.

109

wash the blood from her hands by consciously standing against all wartime atrocities. For
the victims, forgetting would mean to accept the rationale drawn by the collectivity of
their aggressors. For the aggressors, acknowledging the emotionally signified meanings
in testimonies of their victims would mean to give their victims authority to challenge
forevermore the legitimacy of the frameworks of the collectivity. Although between
individuals it is perhaps easy to accept emotion in a person’s testimony, acknowledging
the emotional baggage of a testimony, however, is problematic between different
collectivities whose pedagogical frameworks sets contrary visions of history.

Yet, the survivors’ memory is itself not conditional on the framework imposed by
any collectivity. The memory of private individuals exudes the meaning out of their
emotionally framed experiences. One’s experience may be influenced by the historical
consciousness and its pedagogy, but the memory, which one has attained through
experience, in itself is inviolable by anyone so far as it is kept within one’s private
sphere. However, the state of facts today makes it possible to discuss the legitimacy and
righteousness of one’s testimony only in relation to the public/pedagogical framework
imposed in each collectivity (and its pedagogical intent). When any specific collectivity
is not identified, all testimonies should be as authentic as personal narratives are authentic
to their narrator.

Kurihara had ceaselessly worked towards delivering her testimony until she died in
her home on March 6, 2005. Facing continuous challenges to her testimonies and
attempts to give testimonies, Kurihara, in her later years, shaped her words to have
transcendental appeal:

Hiroshima, Auschwitz: we must not forget.

 

110

Nagasaki, Auschwitz: we must not forget.

Even if the first time was a mistake,

The second time will be calculated malice.

The vow we made to the dead: we must not forget.51
By tying it with Auschwitz—almost universally recognized as a wartime atrocity never to
be repeated—Kurihara attempted to free Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the relativistic
contextualization of the frameworks of multiple nation-state collectivities. The truth
Kurihara held within her private memory, her lived experience of Hiroshima after the
atomic explosion, came out into the collective sphere through multiple filters of historical
consciousness endorsed in different collectivities. Her memory, when exposed in the

public spheres as testimony, is already a negotiated product between Kurihara and the

public spheres in which she speaks of lived experiences.

Testimony and Integrity

In the case of memory, its receptacle and actor (preserver) are one and the same
entity: an individual person. A collectivity is the receptacle of historical consciousness.
However, historical consciousness is not invariable because collectivities are fluid, with
components and contexts always transforming. For example, ‘Japan remembers the A-
bombs’ is a common phrase in public spheres. However, Japan as a nation-state
collectivity is not in itself capable of performing the act of remembering. The actor
remembering the atomic bomb is not ’Japan’, but the people. Remembrance, as a private
act of storing the person’s experiences (memory) or a pedagogical act of commemorating

the past to be shared in the public spheres (historical consciousness), is ultimately the act

 

5’ Kurihara and Minear, When We Say 'Hiroshima ’, 54.

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of the people. If no Japanese talks about the bombs, they will soon be forgotten and
become oblivious in the historical consciousness of the nation-state collectivity and the
public spheres of Japan. In this respect, the historical consciousness of a collectivity is
permanently a product of the present communication about the past; and as such,
historical consciousness in itself reflects the image of the past as shared among the
present contemporaries, and not the actual past.

Yoshitaka Matsusaka was a medical student at the time of the bomb blast in
Hiroshima. Responding to Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Prize-winning writer, who became
known of his advocating the voices of Hiroshima survivors, Matsusaka once talked about
the unwillingness of Hiroshima survivors to speak of their experiences. The people in
Hiroshima, Matsusaka said, do not want to do anything with people who might try to use
the A-bomb experiences to carry out their purposes in political circles. Many intellectuals
and writers had lectured Hiroshima’s people about the unrighteousness of keeping silent;
but, Matsusaka continued, we have nothing but abhorrence against those who cannot
even comprehend the sentiments kept in silence.52 In fact, those who give their
testimonies do not share the same perception with those who use their testimonies in the
present. To keep the integrity of their private experiences from being adulterated by
politicized contextualization in the public spheres, the survivors kept what they have
experienced and witnessed under Hiroshima’s catastrophe deep inside of their memory.

Iri and Toshi Maruki entered Hiroshima soon after the atomic blast to help their
family. Toshi spoke for a newspaper article: “On such occasions [like the one in

Hiroshima], no one can hold on to anything. People would run away leaving everything

 

52 Translated and paraphrased from the article published in Yomiuri shinbun (August 6, 1965).

112

behind, even their parents and their child... We were put into hell where no humanity can
stay alive.”53

Hiroshi Mitsuda who publicized his tanka-poems on the A-bomb 38 years after the
atomic blast wrote, “As I was walking on the corpses of boys and girls who were killed
by the bomb, I instinctively chanted a prayer to the Buddha.”54 Mitsuda has long suffered
the shame and guilt of having asked for his daughter’s whereabouts of the people whose
faces were swollen like blackened rubber balls near the hypocenter. Kuniyoshi Aikawa
was 12 years old at the time of the bomb and gave his testimony 57 years later. He wrote
with an illustration of his guilt of having left behind a woman asking for his help from
under the wreck. He tried, but the physical strength of a l2-year-old boy was not enough
to help her out on that day.

The feeling of shame and guilt comes from one's reflecting on one’s private actions
in the light of collective or moral virtues of the public space. Many survivors began
telling their stories as their lives were drawing to a close. The survivors no longer feared
facing criticisms and evaluation from contemporaries who never experienced what they
went through. Recent testimonies show emotional struggles and deep agony from not
having been able to help family members, neighbours and those who begged for their
help from the roadsides where they were running to safety. We may note Maruki’s

phrase, “it was the hell where no humanity can stay alive; but many survivors have

shown their pain of not being able to do humanly acts of saving others.”55 In this respect,

 

5’ Asahi shinbun (August 6, 1964).

5’ Hiroshi Matsuda, Sanga Dokoku (year unknown), under “Sanga Dokoku”,
http://www.catv296.ne.jp/~cactus/sanga.pdf (accessed November 15, 2006).

55 Asahi shinbun (August 6, 1964).

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the survivors, instead of creating a dialogue, feared that their past acts would be
castigated by present contemporaries when exposing their past experiences as
testimonies.

A survivor visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall and left a message in its
visitor notebook in 2003: “Wake up! You, Hibakusha56 Our time is now scarce, yet you
waste time complaining as victims. Get out and scold society; make some efforts for
scolding society; brighten your life until you burnt out.”57 This survivor encourages
living survivors to make an active commitment to carry out pedagogical projects in the
public sphere, and scolds society for being still too far from making peace in the world.
Yet, his statement also reflects the current reality that many survivors are still in fear of
speaking out.

Many survivors still take their memories to their graves. Hajime Sueyama wrote
about his private experience of the A-bomb in a notebook, but it was kept private until his
son found it after he died of cancer in 1997. He wrote:

I do not know why I thought of writing about the bomb. I have never
spoken any word about it until this moment. I am now 63 years old, and it
perhaps is because I feel somewhat loneliness in being forgotten
gradually. I have experienced the bomb directly. As such, I will never
forgive the statespersons [who politicize the bomb and talking about the

bomb]. They have not experienced the bomb, but they praised themselves
as the forerunner of Peace Movement. “I cannot forgive the A-bomb.”

 

5" Hibakusha is in Japanese term to represent the persons (1) who were exposed to radiation and
(2) who were the victims of atomic bombs.

57 Translated from the comment left on Museum Visitor Notebook at the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Hall. This visitor left his message on the notebook with his name and affiliation. While the
Memorial Hall reserves the rights to publish whatever the comments left on the visitor notebooks, it says
the Memorial Hall does so without disclosing the authorship of the comments. Thence, in this chapter cites
this visitor’s comment with anonymity by mentioning it a comment of “a survivor”.

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Yet, those I cannot forgive more are the people who make their living
from my opposition to the bomb.58

Sueyama is perhaps not in the minority. He feared that his testimony would end up
feeding the people who live off of the testimonies of survivors. Moreover, he was
anguished against those who politicize the discourses around the atomic bombings. The
survivors cannot just be human beings who have experienced tragedy; instead, they are
forced to submit their testimonies within the frame of a politicized discourse that now
situates the historical context for the atomic bombings. Sueyama expressed his fear that
his testimony would be appropriated to fulfil the political desire of his contemporaries.
His fear is valid since there is nothing to ensure the integrity of his memory as a private
and real experience.

Testimony, when archived in a historical consciousness and its public/pedagogical
framework, cannot be withdrawn or altered by the will of those who gave it. Moreover,
testimony does not reflect the whole memory that embodies people’s emotions and the
complex contests surrounding the past and kept within the realm of the private. Today, in
response to the misappropriation of people’s testimony in the public spheres, individuals
who gave their testimony have only two options. One is to continuously adjust their pasts
according to the shifiing historical consciousness and its pedagogical framework. The
other is to persist with their views of past events in their memories despite the challenges
or criticisms from labile contemporaries and their historical consciousness.

Not having any other options would constitute metaphysical violence against those

who have testified of their experiences; and this sometimes results in actual violence

 

58 Hajime Sueyama, Genbaku (1997), http://www.remus.dti.ne.jp/~syapy/atomic%bomb.html
(accessed November 20, 2006).

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without an actor. Tamiki Hara committed suicide by throwing himself in front of an
incoming train in 1951. By killing himself, Hara ended the battle with transcribing his
memory into a testimony. In his suicide note to his friend, Hara described explicitly how
he wanted to see his own testimony: “Viewed from the platform of a ship leaving from
the land, the land gradually appears like a dot. My literature, too, will become a dot in my
eyes; and it eventually disappears in my eyes.”59
No More Hiroshima is a phrase that became one of the most frequently copied lines
throughout the world when calling for nuclear disarmament. However, Hara once
stressed that he often said the phrase to himself. What No More Hiroshima meant to him
was that he was fed up with Hiroshima. He was fed up thinking about and writing about
the A-bomb.60 To one of his acquaintances, Hara wrote before his suicide, “1 hope you
live joyfully.”61 In this phrase, Hara wrote with a tone hinting that he himself could not
live joyfully, perhaps because of what became expected him. A Song of Sadness was the
poem enclosed in his suicide note, and one verse reads: “a sad song is expected in me.”62
The desire and vocation to testify about what happened in the past made the
survivors into living symbols of the Hiroshima catastrophe in public/pedagogical
frameworks. Hara could no longer write anything other than his A-bomb experiences.

Others, afraid of being symbolized and politicized in the public spheres, or of being

responsible to respond to the politicized discourses, kept their experiences as memories

 

5” Tamiki Hara, Isho (1978; rprt., Online: Aozora Bunko, http://www.aozora.gr.jp/, 2002).

60 Tamiki Hara, Nagasaki no Kane ( 1949; rprt., Online: Aozora Bunko, http://www.aozora.gr.jp/,
1983)

6’ Tamiki Hara, Isho.

(’2 Tamiki Hara, Isho.

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within the realm of the private, occasionally opening up when near death. The present
contemporaries, though unintentionally, robbed Hara of his ’self’, of him as a writer and
a person. As a result, Hara was forced to represent the very thing he wanted to forget,
clearly evidenced when he said “No More Hiroshima!”

Hara committed suicide. Kurihara was forced to keep responding to the changing
historical consciousness in public/pedagogical framework, and many other survivors are
fearful of consequences when speaking of what they experienced in the past. It is thus
important to learn the struggles and fears in exposing private memories in the public
sphere as testimonies. Being oblivious to the actual struggles experienced by the
survivors from the past is to permit our controlling the past through limiting certain
testimonies to appear in our public/pedagogical frameworks. It is, therefore, important to
acknowledge that testimony contrary to our historical consciousness would hardly come
out in the public spheres unless we make conscious efforts to challenge the metaphysical

violence imposed on the medium that brings memory into historical consciousness.

Discussion

In the field of history, oral history is now a part of important media through which
historians construct historical explanations. Oral accounts of what happened in the past,
therefore, are the constituent elements of historical explanations as much as the written
texts and other traces from the past, when historians explore the diverse experiences and

interstitial accounts of past events. Although there are some challenges over the ways

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historians sustain testimony as evidence in the study of history, the importance of
testimony in today’s historical study cannot be disregarded lightly.

In The Idea of History, R. C. Collingwood argued that, “the past simply as past is
wholly unknowable; it is the past as residually preserved in the present that is alone
knowable.”63 However, when analyzing testimony as a medium that transmits personal
memories to the public sphere and for having an impact on a presiding historical
consciousness, it is no longer possible to uncritically assume testimony merely as an oral
account of the past. History, Benedetto Croce emphasized, “consists essentially in seeing
the past through the eyes of the present and in the lights of its problems.”64 However,
those who give their testimony of an event in history have undergone the past event as the
present. Memory keeps what they have experienced in the past, thus the survivors (of the
past event) would have two sources (own memory and testimony of others) when
resurrecting the past. In this respect, how survivors approach the past is distinctively
different from the way history and other contemporaries would approach it.

It is important to acknowledge the critical challenge in substantiality that history as
a discipline faces when history “enters popular circulation at the beginning of the twenty-
first century.”65 In addition to historical accounts of past events, it is non-historical
writings/texts (such as popular cultral media and mass-mediated representations of the
past) that have shaped our contemporary understandings of the past and its meanings.

Testimonies are not written or circulated as historical texts; they are made into

 

6’ R. C. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 5.

6" Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, trans. Sylvia Sprigge. London: G. Allen and
Unwin Ltd., 1949, 19.

65 Geoff Eley, “Finding the People’s War: Film, British Collective Memory, and World War 11,”
The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 819.

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constituent elements of our historical consciousness in the public sphere. This is not to
question the methods of inquiry in presently accepted historiography. Rather, it is an
imperative to critically examine the foundation of historical knowledge that transgresses
the approach to multiple frameworks set in the discipline.

However, historical consciousness is not a fixed attribute of a particular
collectivity, but rather has a dynamics of its own, the product of a complex process of
synthesis and distillation of values and norms. We recognize that this process is
supported by particular frameworks that reflect broader aspects of the present and that
can encompass geopolitical, economic, diplomatic, environmental, human and ethnic
factors. Such frameworks generate visions of the future and interests of the present, and,
as we add with this analysis, leave the past open to reinterpretations in synch with the
dynamics of the frameworks that generate the present. Historical evidence and
discussions about the past, therefore, need to be grounded in the moment of present
public/pedagogical frameworks prevalent in a collectivity. The consideration for the
dynamics of these frameworks, their present state and the visions of future they support,
is indispensable in order to construct a sensible dialogue to overcome or coexist with
differences in historical consciousness.

This chapter’s discussion thus alludes to the fact that we have not had substantial
attainment of any comprehensible and coherent visions of the future. Therefore, we lack a
systemic structure that factor in the dialogue for constructing the remembrance at the
transnational or global level. By failing to build such ground, we run the risk that one
overpowering collective might dominate and regulate discourse and consequently

historical consciousness in other collectivities. At this point, our global society is

119

vulnerable to the dominant public/pedagogical framework that has greater access to the
widespread of language, means of mass communication, media technology, political
capital, economic capital, and military forces. Such framework has the ability to
forcefully remove any challenge or contrary testimonies archived in other collectivities
with different public/pedagogical frameworks. In fact, just recently, we had witnessed an
enormous emphasis on the dichotomy perspectives over the conflicts in the Middle East,
in East Asia, and other corners of the world. This dichotomy between good and evil, right
and wrong, democratic and dictatorial, for example suggests the shortage and/or
shortcomings of attempted dialogue of tolerance when building a new framework to serve
the global collectivity.

In this respect, the currently ongoing controversy over history textbooks in Japan
and their representation of different historical consciousnesses is, for example, a rare
opportunity to co-construct a new global framework. Therefore, it is indispensable to
have a dialogue that searches for shared visions of the future in order to constructively
approach and overcome the ongoing disputes in East Asia about the past. It is of extreme
importance today to make explicit that major visions of the future upheld within each
collectivity come in addition to, not in substitution of, the ongoing debates over the
epistemological truth about the past. The outcome of such efforts has the potential to
create a vision of the future that ensures tolerance in a global society, and that endorses

the peacefirl coexistence of different histories, cultures, and identities.

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Chapter 4
Rationalizing Catastrophe in Public Spheres]:

From Condolence to Commemoration

Apocalypse of ‘Hiroshima’

Hiroshima, today, reminds us of troubling yet undeniable realities: (1) science and
technology can literally annihilate a whole city and its residents indiscriminately; and (2)
human rationality can substantiate the annihilation of humans, ironically, in the name of
humanity. When Harry Truman spoke to the Congress on October 3, 1945, be affirmed
the atomic bombs as “a powerful and forceful influence toward the maintenance of world
peace instead of an instrument of destruction.”2 It is important to note that Truman’s
statement reflects a troubling belief in progress in both science and technology and in
human rationality. Theodor W. Adomo’s frequently cited proposition that “to write
poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”3 indeed marks the wOrld entering a new era in which
we can no longer rejoice at the notion of progress without a criticism.

In fact, the report on Hiroshima’s tragedy had mobilized an unprecedented level

of international and transnational collaborations. There were even discussions in many

 

' This study takes an approach that there are multiple public spheres within a public sphere that is
globally transcendent to all human populations. What we consider “public” differs by historical, cultural,
ethnic, racial, gender, and other political conditions in which individual persons have a sense of belonging.
Therefore, this chapter has the plural “public spheres” to indicate that this study is aware of the absence of
the public sphere that is transcendental to all human populations today. Throughout this study, 1 use the
singular “public sphere” to refer a particular public sphere that is geopolitically defined (such as Hiroshima,
Japan, and the United States). I then use the plural “public spheres” to refer the public sphere in general.

2 Harry Truman, Reported in New York Times, October 3, 1945.

3 Theodor W. Adomo, Rolf Tiedmann, and Rodney Livingstone, Can One Life after Auschwitz?:
A Philosophical Reader, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 162.

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levels of a society considering the possibility of launching a world government.4 In the
United States, even a conservative magazine like Reader 's Digest wrote in response to
Hiroshima’s tragedy that “the atomic bomb has made political and economic nationalism
meaningless”; and thus, world government “has now become a hard-boiled, practical, and
urgent necessity.”5 Hiroshima’s tragedy became a global medium that mobilizes
transnational awareness of the immense danger of nuclear armament threatening the
peace and survival of humanity at large. Yet, it is often overlooked that Hiroshima is an
organic body with a history and identity like Rome, Paris, Kyoto and so on. It was the
atomic bomb that generated ‘Hiroshima’ as a commemorative language signifying the
atomic bomb and the discourses that are derived from the city’s atomic bomb experiences.
‘Hiroshima’ signifies the remembrance and discourse of the atomic bomb in public
spheres; and thus it is a product of an abstract collective consciousness, while Hiroshima,
the city, is bound by geopolitical specificities. ‘Hiroshima’ as a collective consciousness
is therefore negotiated out of diverse and historical experiences related to the events
around the world created by the release of the atomic bomb at the end of the Second
World War.

This chapter aims to investigate the process through which Hiroshima’s tragedy
has shaped ‘Hiroshima’—a commemorative language underlining the pedagogy for a
global peace. Through critically analyzing monuments built to commemorate and/or built

in remembrance of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb tragedy, this chapter inquires into the

 

4 Paul Boyer, By the Bomb ’s Early Light (New York: Pantheon, 1985).
5 Quoted in “Hiroshima’s Shock Wave Continues First Atomic Bomb Achieved Victory in World

War, Anxiety for Generations,” U. S. News & World Report, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, published in
Rocky Mountain News (August 6, 1995).

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implicit curriculum beneath the act of public commemoration of the tragedy. Taking
Eisner’s argument on implicit curriculum, this chapter approaches what is not said in the
public spheres, that it “is not simply a neutral void; it has important effects on the kinds
of options one is able to consider, the alternatives that one can examine, and the
perspectives from which one can view a situation or problem.”6 Investigating the hidden
text beneath the public commemoration of Hiroshima’s tragedy, we will be able to
explicate the construction of ‘Hiroshima’ and its pedagogy for world peace. This
explication is important for acknowledging the commemoration of the past event as
pedagogical act, and thus it is never an apolitical endeavor. Through explicating our
memory of the past as a political act, this chapter aims to set a ground for introducing a
political inquiry of our construction of historical consciousness of what happened in the

past.

‘Hiroshima’ and Amnesiac Particularities

It is perhaps useful to first elaborate the way Japanese language situates
Hiroshima. Like every other cities in Japan, Hiroshima is generally represented in
simplified kanji, which was adapted after the war. However, when representing
Hiroshima, letter-styles are carefully and intentionally selected according to the specific
subjects and the objectives of which each letter-style intends to denote. This

representational multiplicity and its denotative meanings of Hiroshima offer a useful

 

6 Elliot Eisner, The Educational Imagination: 0n the Design and Evaluation of School Programs,
3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan College Publishing, 1994), 97.

123

insight on how Hiroshima is positioned in contemporary commemorative space of atomic
bomb.

Hiroshima, when written in simplified kanji 012%), simply represents the local
administrative unit of Japan. In public announcements, bulletins, and official-leaflets,
Hiroshima is also presented in hiragana letters (U 73 L i). Hiragana originates in the

writing developed and used by the women of the aristocracy more than a thousand years
ago. Hiragana is also a phonogram; and thus it is the first alphabet-like letters people
learn when learning to write in Japanese. In this respect, hiragana often procures an
image of unadulterated purity since it embodies the image of maternal kindness and the
innocence of small children. Hence, the city government and other bureaucratic units
favor the use of hiragana in their publications in order to divert negative images often
associated with bureaucracy of government and politics. Consciously choosing these two
letter-styles to represent the city’s name is a general exercise throughout Japan. These
letter-styles are to represent the geopolitical framework and the identities in the present
time.

However, Hiroshima, unlike most other cities in Japan, has two additional letter-

styles to represent itself: traditional kanji (Efiy) and katakana (I: U V7). When written

in traditional kanji, Hiroshima resurrects the milieu of pre-modernity with the images of

Japan’s militarism and archaic political atmosphere with a trace of semi-feudalism.7

 

7 1 use here “semi-feudalism” to characterize the political atmosphere of Japan under the Meiji
Constitution. Japanese political environment, despite popular belief, did not take a form of fascism. In view
of the political relationship between the central government and regional administration, regional
administration and local district, local district and citizens, one can find the political atmosphere of the
period somewhat a kin to feudalism. However, in many critical points, it was not at all feudalism.
Therefore, in order to cultivate a sense of feudalistic political atmosphere in a political structure that is not
feudalism, as well as to avoid unnecessary criticisms, this paper uses “semi-feudalism".

124

Traditional kanji also resurrects a sentimentalism of everyday life before the atomic
bomb. Hiroshima officially became a city in 1889 under the Imperial Order, and the city
had been the seat of the Fifth Division Army. The city’s progress owed, at least partially,
to the Japan’s militarism and its aggressions in East Asia. Hence, Hiroshima written in
traditional kanji inevitably carries negative connotations of the city’s involvements in
militarism and aggressions in its past.

Hiroshima is represented in katakana in reference to the tragedy of the atomic
bomb. In Summer Flowers, one of the earliest literatures on Hiroshima’s tragedy, Tamiki
Hara wrote Hiroshima with katakana letters to visualize the “urgency and intensity”8 for
symbolizing Hiroshima and its tragedy of the atomic bomb. Furthermore, the “Spirit of
Hiroshima”, phrasing the yeamings for a global commitment to build peace through
remembrance of Hiroshima’s tragedy, is always written with katakana in all publications,
monuments, and messages. The significance of using katakana-letters to represent
Hiroshima becomes evident only when it is analyzed with the specifics of katakana in
Japanese writing system.

Katakana phonetically transcribes words from foreign languages into the
Japanese writing system. For example, katakana transliterates gasoline to “ga-so-ri-n” in
order to enrich Japanese vocabulary without putting any effort necessary when translating
foreign words. More importantly, katakana enables onomatopoetic transliteration of

sounds, atmosphere, and actions. “Ga-aan”, for instance, is an onomatopoetic

 

The transition of H iroshirna in writing (from traditional kanji to katakana) is also mentioned in
Nobuo Takahashi, “Hiroshima kara Hiroshima e,” Rekishi chiri kyoiku 683 (April 2005): 78-81.

8 John W. Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 149.

125

representation of shock and all emotional turmoil upon facing unfortunate or unexpected
news. It phonetically describes the sound of a gong. In fact, onomatopoetic use of
katakana codifies what is indescribable in ordinary command of language.

Taking these functions of katakana in Japanese writing system into account,
representing Hiroshima in katakana-letters seems to embody a contradictory approach
when commemorating Hiroshima’s tragedy: (l) to codify Hiroshima’s tragedy as
universally shared human experience through (2) avoiding detailed codification of
historical and political particularities behind it. The desire to codify Hiroshima’s tragedy
in global discourse colludes with the desire to shy away from detailed historical and
political scrutiny on what is being codified. The use of katakana for ‘Hiroshima’ permits
assigning signified emotional meaning to Hiroshima’s tragedy with historical
particularity and political universality.

In fact, no other language has a systematic differentiation to emphasize the
connotative difference between Hiroshima's past and the present. My interview with a
vice-director of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall, a curator of Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum and a librarian of Hiroshima City Library confirmed that there is no standard
prescription to make a denotative differentiation when writing Hiroshima in any
languages other than the Japanese. In this respect, Hiroshima is a proper noun with
multiple connotative realities in local/national contexts. ‘Hiroshima’ however reflects
what Lisa Yoneyama calls “nuclear universalism”, which is the idea that “Hiroshima’s
disaster ought to be remembered from the transcendent and anonymous position of

humanity, and that the remembering of Hiroshima’s tragedy should invoke natural and

126

commonly shared human thoughts, sentiments, and moral attitudes not limited by cultural
boundaries.”9

The practice of differentiating ‘Hiroshima’ from other Hiroshimas perhaps
suggests that Hiroshima’s nuclear universalism is a product of amnesiac elisions of the
whole Hiroshima (of its past, present, and the future) when commemorating ‘Hiroshima’
in public spheres of Japan. In this respect, ‘Hiroshima’ may have been serving as an
ideology of nuclear universalism that endorses the divorce of historical and political
particularities from the central commemorative subject; and, though contradictory and
ironic, it is built upon the particularity of atomic bomb experience.

Today, sixty years after Hiroshima, the world is witnessing the reviving faith in
the nuclear deterrent, as well as the failure of nuclear nonproliferation treaty. I say this
with regret, but overwhelming evidences suggest ‘Hiroshima’ and its nuclear
universalism have failed to produce a universal language to speak about the nuclear
armament. Therefore, restructuring ‘Hiroshima’ through reexamination of its construction

should be our priority in order to make it more responsive in today’s global environment.

This Park Is Too Clean

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and The Hiroshima Atomic Bomb
Memorial Hall have notebooks in which visitors can freely write their thoughts,
reflections and messages after visiting their exhibitions. Many visitors have left messages

praying for peace, sharing their emotional pain in learning about the victims, expressing

 

9 Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1999), 15.

127

their fear and fury against war, and so on. In one notebook, a visitor, who himself was a
victim of the atomic bomb, left this comment: “This park is too clean. There is nothing
here to remind me of how it really was on that day [when the atomic bomb was
dropped]?'0

An uncle of mine who was a banker in the city throughout its reconstruction until
his recent retirement was telling of a ‘Hiroshima’ that used to be found everywhere in the
lived memory of survivors and the actual traces lefi by the atomic bomb. Yet, the traces
of the bomb have been cleared away one by one and replaced with monuments displaying
art styles from classic to abstract contemporary. Taking me through the city’s busy street,
he pointed out that Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park reserved no trace of the barracks in
which the atomic bomb victims once dominated the space; and the city-owned modern
commercial building adjunct to Hiroshima Station removed all traces of black-market
that once stood there in postwar years. Small marble monuments with photographs were
erected throughout the city to present what the place was like shortly after the atomic
explosion. Yet, they seem as if to pardon the actual amnesia (Figure 4:1). In the eyes of
my uncle, Hiroshima’s monuments and commemorative space are too clean to represent
‘Hiroshima’ he had lived with throughout his career.

For most visitors to Hiroshima, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park embodies
‘Hiroshima’. The city has become a geopolitical and economic center in the region, and
the park is surrounded by commercial, business, and residential spaces where everyday
life is ongoing much like all other cities in Japan. In the geopolitical center of the city,

however, there is Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and it is adjunct to the epicenter of

 

'0 An entry in museum visitor notebook placed at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima
City, Japan. '

128

the atomic bomb. It houses the Peace Memorial Museum, the Atomic Bomb Memorial
Hall, the International Conference Center, and many memorial monuments to the atomic
bomb, its victims and the prayer for world peace. The conference center regularly hosts
many peace related conferences: the World Conference of Mayors for Peace, Hiroshima

Conference for Peace, and other anti-war and anti-nuclear armament meetings.

 

Figure 4:1. Monument stone marks the epicenter of the atomic bomb explosion in
Hiroshima. This monument can be found approximately fifty meters outside of
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The park is also known as the site where the Mayor of Hiroshima delivers the
Peace Declaration to the world every August 6 to commemorate the tragedy of the atomic
bomb and pray for peace. It is indeed a very clean park with many monuments
commemorating the atomic bomb and delivering the message of peace to the world. The
park thus serves as the central medium and space of ‘Hiroshima’ today. The visitor’s
comment lefi on the notebook and my uncle’s story however reveal that ‘Hiroshima’

became clean physically and rhetorically over time. In fact, it perhaps became too clean

129

to remind of the atrocities and horror that the atomic bomb has materialized in the city
sixty years ago.

Hence, it is important to identify what has hindered people from keeping the
original traces to represent ‘Hiroshima’ when they replaced them with a clean
representation in the public sphere. Through the careful analysis of memorial monuments
with the contexts in which the monuments were erected, it is perhaps meaningful to
inquire into the process through which ‘Hiroshima’ became “clean” for the broad public
as an embodiment of the remembrance of atomic bomb and the experiences derived from

it.

Swollen Corpses

Nine days after the annihilation of Hiroshima (six days after Nagasaki and the
Soviet Invasion of Japan), Japan accepted the defeat. Reconstruction of Hiroshima began
alongside with the searching for the survivors and the bodies of deceased. The smell of
decayed corpses was everywhere, and the smoke of burning corpses overwhelmed the
city’s sky for many days. The city’s record office noted that the burning of corpses
continued day and night for about four months after the atomic bomb.ll

The pictorial narrative of Masayoshi Takamoto, for example, offers an insight to
the traumas and emotional transitions of atomic bomb survivors (Figure 4:2). He
recollects many corpses were floating and swelling like a balloon, and the tide carried

them back and forth. For a period of a month, Takamoto was just watching the

 

” City of Hiroshima, Hiroshima shin shi: shityou hen 2 (hukkou hen) (Hiroshima: the City of
Hiroshima, 1982).

130

transformation of the corpse: it lost its head first, and then its arms and legs fell off. He
regained a sense of pity for the last corpse of a female student floating around his boat
over a month after the atomic bomb. He poked the swollen body to rid gas and buried her
to the riverbed.12 Many survivors have described the corpses with such words like rubber
ball, sardines, chunk, log, and mannequin. This pictorial narrative reveals Takamoto was
unable to reinstate an ordinary structure of relationship between the signifier (corpse) and
the signified (the female student killed by the atomic bomb), for over a month. Takamoto
concludes his narrative with an image of a burial he made for the student. This image
metaphorically suggests that Hiroshima’s postwar reconstruction had to begin with the

recovery of human psychology.

   
     
    

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Figure 4:2. The first of ten pictures Mr. Masayoshi Takamoto drew about his
experience of Hiroshima’s tragedy after the atomic bombing. He worked some
distance away from the city center, and he gave this illustration to narrate what he
saw the day after the bombing. Photographed at the Special Exhibit at Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum.

 

'2 NHK Hiroshima, “Genbaku no e: shimin ga nokosu Hiroshima no kiroku,” NHK Special August
6, 2002.

131

Providing the memorial services for atomic bomb victims was thus a necessary
act to the city that lost so many of its citizens and framework altogether by the bomb.
Reviewing the local newspaper of Hiroshima, Chugoku shinbun, reveals that many
memorial services were held throughout the city by city offices, schools, neighborhoods,
and business offices during the first year after the atomic bomb (Table 4: 1). By the end of
1945, citizens began to write a letter to local newspaper and city offices to stress the
urgency for organizing a memorial service as a whole city undergoing the reconstruction.
Haruhiko Mochizuki, for example, argued for erecting a memorial monument collectively
to comfort the souls and remains of the deceased persons in order to provide emotional

reconstruction prior to actual physical reconstruction of Hiroshima.'3

Table 4:1. Memorial Services Held in 1945

 

Date Name or Unit of Organizing Body
8.31 Hiroshima Correspondence Office

9.5 Japan Express, Hiroshima Branch Office

9.6 Hiroshima Prefecture Office

Chugoku Region Surface Carrier Office

Hiroshima Railway Office

Elementary and Junior High Schools in Hiroshima City
9.9 Chugoku Region Coal Distribution Office

9.14 Hiroshima Association for Agriculture

9.16 Hiroshima City Junior High School

9.20 Hiroshima Post Office

Hiroshima Women’s High School

Aki Women’s High School

Sanyo Junior/Commerce/lndustrial/Women’s High School
9.21 Chugoku Electric Co.

Hiroshima Railway Co.

9.22 Mizuno Kumi, Ltd., Shipyard

Hiroshima Prefecture Energy Distribution Association
Toyo Industry Co.

The City of Hiroshima

Chugoku Region, Regional Administration Office Printing Co.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘3 Haruhiko Mochizuki, letter to the editor, Chugoku shinbun, December 24, 1945.

132

Table 4: 1. Continued

 

9.23 Japan Telephone Co., Chugoku Regional Office
Tamonin Temple, Hiroshima

Hiroshima Gas Co.

9.25 Hiroshima Prefecture Cargo/Track Co.

Aburaya lndustry Co., Hiroshima Factory

9.27 Hiroshima, Army Kaikosha Affiliated School
9.30 Hiroshima Ministry of Finance

1 1.6 Hiroshima Women’s Teacher Preparation School
Yamanaka Women’s High School affiliated to Hiroshima Women’s Teacher
Preparation School

Hiroshima Banker’s Association

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

l 1.1 1 Chugoku Region Filming Industry Group

11.12 Hiroshima City Shipbuilding School

Hiroshima City Credit Union

Hiroshima City Shiratori Elementary School

1 1.13 Seicho-no-ie, Hiroshima Missionary Branch

Hiroshima City Kanzaki Elementary School

1 1.15 Japan Red Cross, Hiroshima Branch

11.20 Hiroshima Prefecture, Steel Distribution Unit

1 1.30 Shima Hospital, Wakai Children’s Section

12.6 Hiroshima City, Shimoyanagi Cho Neighbor Association
Hiroshima Restaurant Tax Collector’s Union

Hiroshima Produce Distribution Co.

Hiroshima City Ote Machi 3 Chome Neighbor Association
12.9 Former Chugoku 7161 Unit

Koijo En Co.

12.10 Hiroshima High School

12.1 1 Shintoku Women’s High School

12.13 Hiroshima City Kannon Elementary School

12.14 Hiroshima City Otemachi Elementary School

12.16 Morinaga Food lndustory, Hiroshima Branch Office

12.17 Hiroshima Prefecture Hiroshima First Women’s High School
12.20 Federation of Non-Life Insurance Agencies

Hiroshima City, Hiratsuka Cho Neighbor Association

Daitoa Food Co.

12.21 Hiroshima City, United Neighbor Associations in Otemachi School District
12.23 Hiroshima City, Honkawa Elementary School

12.25 Kansai Industrial Co.

12.26 Hiroshima Light Steel Co.

12.27 Hiroshima City, United Neighbor Associations in Otemachi School District

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Translated from the table prepared by Akira Ubuki in his book, Heiwakinen
shikiten no ayumi (Hiroshima: Hiroshima Heiwa Bunka Center, 1992), 5. The
memorial events listed here were only those reported in Hiroshima’s local newspaper,
Chugoku shinbun.

Erected on May 1946, Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound is one of the earliest

monuments standing in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Located in the northwest corner

133

of the park, the Memorial Mound stores the ashes and remains of atomic bomb victims
who remained unidentified. The Society for Praying for the War Dead, an
interdenominational organization, built this Memorial Mound. This earliest collective
commemoration of atomic bomb aims primarily to provide a space to condone those
victims whose ashes were unidentified and who were literally evaporated by the intense
heat wave of atomic explosion reached to 300,000 degrees Celsius.

Nonetheless, it is notable that the Memorial Mound takes the style of an imperial
mausoleum of the Momoyama period (1573-1603), and symbolizes the atomic bomb
victims as the casualties of war or war dead. In Japanese, “casualties of war” refers to
the deceased combatants, and it is not the same as referring to the sufferers (victims) of
war. For example, the Tokyo (Air) Raid of March 10, 1945 claimed over one hundred
thousand lives and one million people lost their homes. During the war, Tokyo received
air raids over 100 times and the population of 6.8 million had dropped to 2.5 million at
the time of war’s end.l4 Despite the size of the atrocity experienced by the people of
Tokyo, the victims of Tokyo Air Raids are marked as sufferers, never “casualties of war”.
Furthermore, the fact that the Memorial Mound took the style of imperial mausoleum and
was built by the Society for Praying for the War Dead may suggest that the Memorial
Mound enshrined the atomic bomb victims as war casualties for Imperial Japan and its
reign.

However, the imperial reign had met its end by defeat, and what is more,
Hiroshima became a living witness of the enormous destructive power of the atomic

bomb. In this respect, it is too superficial to conclude that the Monument Mound

 

M The Center for Documenting the Tokyo Raid and War Damages has collection of data and
artifacts of Tokyo Air Raids.

134

enshrines the atomic bomb victims as war casualties for the Imperial reign by taking the
style and language of the mound as the proof. The thunderous defeat of the Japanese
Empire was not just hearsay, but an actual reality in the rubbles of Hiroshima. The
perseverance and allegiance to the Empire and Imperial Order therefore would no longer
provide rationality to the death and destruction the atomic bomb brought to the people.

In his letter, Mochizuki positioned the victims as honorable casualties who have
reinstated the peace in the present as if to rationalize the death and destruction caused by
the atomic bomb. He also argued to set August 6 as a memorial day for world peace, and
asked the City of Hiroshima “to provide hope to the citizens to revive Hiroshima as a
modern city of peace.”15 In this respect, the language of peace perhaps has taken the
place of the Imperial reign’s rhetoric to offer a rationale to comprehend the enormous
loss of wartime in postwar Hiroshima. Emphasizing the atomic bomb as the end would
situate the victims as the examples of defeated militarism in Japan’s past. Therefore,
when rationalizing the victims as honorable casualties whose sacred sacrifice brought the
peace, atomic bomb had to be emphasized as a new beginning instead of the end or
outcome of imperial reign and militarism. In fact, Hiroshima quickly mobilized the
language of peace in its first anniversary event to commemorate the atomic bomb and its
victims. Yet the styles and language of the Memorial Monument still suggest that the past
that led to the fatal end of atomic bomb has escaped from critical examination in postwar
Hiroshima.

However, the victims did not die with a conscious desire or awareness of their

being the sacrifice to end the war. Japan was at war and as such they were inevitably

 

'5 Haruhiko Mochizuki, letter to the editor, C hugoku shinbun, December 24, 1945.

135

participants in war in a broad sense. Still, who should become the victim of atomic bomb
was a rather accidental than an inevitable choice. Having situated the atomic bomb as the
beginning of the present peace process has been serving to give a rationale to the
enormous death tolls of Hiroshima. Yet, such rationale was concurrent to the fact that
critical examination on what brought the war and its end was both forgotten in the public
sphere. No rationale of why they had to be the ones sacrificing their lives was offered just
as no soldier would ever get his reason why he should be the one who should be killed in
combat. Any critical examination of the past that led to so many death tolls was obscured
through burying them under the symbolism of the imperial mausoleum and treating them
as casualties for peace.

It is also evident that the peace emphasized in early Hiroshima indicates merely
the absence of war. Through the amnesiac elision of the past which led to the enormous
death tolls of the atomic bomb, Hiroshima failed to have a conscious dialogue on how we
should construct the peace in the postwar world. The past was therefore not in the
consciousness of Hiroshima undergoing the reconstruction; and commemorating the

atomic bomb in the public spheres was strictly for the purpose of present reconstruction.

Latent Fury

Barefoot Gen16 is an autobiographical pictorial narrative (manga) of Keiji

Nakazawa who survived the atomic bomb as a child. Over ten million copies were sold in

Japan, and most public and school libraries have a copy of the series on their shelves.

 

'6 Keiji Nakazawa, Hadashi no Gen (Tokyo: Shobunsha, 1976).

136

Although the series was for children, the author’s fury against the war and the atomic
bomb is vividly presented with horror throughout the narrative. In particular, one scene in
which Gen, the main character of the story, sold skulls of atomic bomb victims displays
author’s agony against those who dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. The skulls had
inscriptions of “grudge” printed in kanji on the forehead; Gen sold them to American GIs
searching souvenirs from Hiroshima (Figure 4:3). He sold the skull to send the vengeance
of atomic bomb victims to the United States. This scene reveals the anger within the
victims of atomic bomb, yet we hardly see such sentiment circulated in the public spheres

when commemorating the atomic bomb today.

 

Figure 4:3. The skull has a kanji inscription that symbolizes “the grudge” on
its forehead. The man characterizing an American GI says here: “Oh, nice
design.” From Nakazawa’s Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen).

The invisibility of unsettling feelings against one of the critical actors who

brought the horror of atomic bomb is not an accidental product. Immediately after the

war, the General Headquarters/ Supreme Commander of the Allied Power (GHQ/SCAP)

137

put Japan under its command for the period of seven years. The US. Occupation Forces
made up the large part of GHQ/SCAP; and it introduced the Civil Censorship
Detachment (CCD) to administer censorship in occupied Japan. It was a thorough
censorship, which even prohibited making any reference to the GHQ/SCAP enforcement
of censorship. In fact, it was only in the 19808 that the researchers of postwar Japan
began investigating the details and impacts of censorship during the period of occupation.

CCD first banned Domei T sushin from distributing news reports for 24-hours on
the day GHQ/SCAP enforced the censorship. A few days later, Tokyo Asahi was also
prohibited its operation for 48 hours. Domei T sushin was the only news distributor at the
time, and Tokyo Asahi was one of the major nationally circulated newspaper. Specific
reason for suppression was never provided. Yet, Domei T sushin had distributed an article
antagonistic against those who dropped the bomb just before its suppression. The article
said that only savages would ever have a capacity to release the destructive power of the
atomic bomb as a weapon against others. Furthermore, CCD banned the operation of
Tokyo Asahi when the paper had printed a statement of Ichiro Hatoyama, who argued
critically against the use of atomic bomb as an act against the principles of International
Law.17 The suppression of two prominent news agencies sent a clear message from
GHQ/SCAP directly to the press and journalists throughout Japan about the censorship
and the consequences of violation.

Recent research on, and testimonials of CCD personnel however reveal that no

key-log was ever recorded within CCD to prohibit reporting on the atomic bombs and the

 

’7 Monica Braw, The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan
(Annonk, NY: Sharpe, 1991).

138

atrocities experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.'8 The censorship attained its purpose
when it became practiced as a voluntary subscription of Japanese journalists, fearful of
GHQ/SCAP suppressing their business operation. CCD did practice the censorship, but
the censorship was most effectively practiced through creating a fear of suppression in
Japan. It was too costly for any publishers and printers to risk suppression as papers and
other materials necessary for printing were scarce in the postwar Japan.19 In fact, Tokyo
Asahi had quickly drafted an internal code to deal with the Press Code administered by
CCD.20 Joumalism’s participation to the censorship attests to the fact that the postwar
journalism has suffered amnesia about their participation in war and wartime propaganda
under imperialism. Much like the Memorial Monument taking the form of the imperial
mausoleum and symbolizing the victims of atomic bomb as war casualties, the postwar
journalism has detached their past for the sake of immediate necessity (survival) in the
present.

More important here, however, is not the fact that the journalism had surrendered
to the censorship itself, but the fact that the censorship was highly successfirl in postwar

Japan. Without having an explicit guideline to prohibit reporting of the atomic bomb, the

 

‘8 Braw, The Atomic Bomb Suppressed, 1991.

'9 To study the CCD practice of censorship in the postwar Japan, we can access to Prange
Collection at the University of Maryland. Gordon W. Prange Magazine Collection has the collection of
print publications issues in Japan during 1945-1949. Prange worked in the Civil Censorship Division, and
he was responsible for reviewing Japanese publications. He brought back those publications submitted to
CCD, and now his collection is stored at the Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of Maryland.

2° Since the censorship itself was prohibited to become public knowledge, publishers had to fill the
space of banned article with other articles. The cost and tell of reediting and reprinting were too high to risk
their business operation, the censorship was effectively enforced the printing companies to voluntarily
cooperate in the censorship. Critical examination on the journalism in occupied Japan is indeed necessary
to highlight how the journalism had voluntarily cooperated to the censorship by way of prioritizing
commercial interest over journalistic responsibility. See also Masami Nakagawa, “Genbaku houdou to
ken ’etsu,” Intelligence 3 (October 2003): 42-47.

139

censorship attained its goal through self-censorship in the public spheres. CCD
administered the censorship in the public sphere of occupied Japan. However, it was the
public sphere itself that fostered psychological condition in which the circulation of
certain experiences and emotions of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) was prohibited rigorously
but voluntarily. In this respect, it is reasonable to argue that sociopolitical atmosphere in
occupied Japan must have had a great impact on commemorating the atomic bomb and its
victims in the public sphere.

Indeed, public commemoration of the atomic bomb and its victims during the
period of occupation did not embody the actual voices of sorrow and begrudging from the
survivors and the bereaved. In the parameter of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, there
are two monuments erected in the period of GHQ/SCAP administration: The Atomic
Bomb Monument of Hiroshima Municipal Girl’s High School (1948) and the Cenotaph
for the A-Bomb Victims (1951-52). Both monuments make no explicit remark on the
voices of the survivors and the bereaved. Nonetheless, detailed analysis of these two
monuments reveals the undercurrent of survivors’ voices beneath the innocent and

neutral faces put up in the public commemoration of the atomic bomb victims.

Metaphorical Representation of Fury

The Atomic Bomb Monument of Hiroshima Municipal Girl’s High School (Girl’s

Monument) was erected in 1948 within the parameter of the school campus, and was

relocated in 1957 to the west end of the Peace Bridge. It is the place where all 544

students and 8 teachers lost their lives on August 6, 1945 (Figure 4:4). The Girl’s

140

 

Figure 4:4. Relief on the Atomic Bomb Monument of Hiroshima Municipal Girl’s
High School. The student in the center wears the school uniform for mobilized
student during the war. She has a corona and wings. She is also holding Einstein’s
Equation of Mass and Energy. Thence, the relief suggests this student was killed
by the atomic bomb. The other students on both sides wear contemporary school
uniform with skirt. They offer flower-band and dove representing memory and the
peace without scribing it in writing.
Monument has three high school girls engraved on its surface. One schoolgirl in the
center wears the uniform worn under the war; and she has angel’s wings and is holding
Einstein’s formula for mass-energy. This formula clearly but implicitly represents the
atomic bomb; and the angel’s wings and her school uniform tell us that she represents the
victims of the atomic bomb. Two other students wearing modern school uniforms protect

both sides of her: one student offers a flower wreath symbolizing the reverence for her

memory; and the other student holds a dove, which symbolizes the peace. On the back of

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the monument, there is a poem written by the principal at the time of the bombing: “Rest
in peace within this grassy hill / Protected by a wall of friends.”21

This Girl’s Monument is a peace monument to commemorate the students who
lost their lives together at the same place. The inscription taking a form of poetry does
not say anything more than what a gravestone would say. However, the student in the
center looks at the eyes of the student who offers a flower wreath while turning her back
to the dove that acknowledges peace. The flower wreath represents the reverence for the
memory of the sacrificed. The student holding a dove, too, extends her hand to reach the
wreath offered to the student in the center. We can safely assume the primary message of
the Girl's Monument is in reverence for memory rather than peace. Erected by a school
that had lost 552 of their students and teachers, this monument harbors the covert
yearning for condolence and for commemorating the dead as victims of the atomic bomb.

The organizational body for erecting the Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims (the
Cenotaph) was much more official and political than the Girl’s Monument. The
construction of the Cenotaph was a public project launched just a year before the
reinstatement of sovereignty to Japan. Moreover, the planning of the Cenotaph took place
against the background of the intensifying Cold War. The official name of the Cenotaph
is Memorial Monument for Hiroshima, City of Peace: and it has no mention of the atomic
bomb or its victims.

The Cenotaph has a stone-casket as its central piece, which contains the register

of names of the persons who perished by the explosion and radiation of the atomic bomb

(Figure 4:5). The casket has an inscription engraved only in Japanese, and the English

 

2’ Yoshiteru Kosakai, Hiroshima Peace Reader, 12th ed. (Hiroshima: Hiroshima Peace Culture
Foundation, 2002), 75.

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translation of it is in the guiding post placed next to the Cenotaph: “Let all the souls here
rest in peace; For we shall not repeat the evil.”22 The inscription does not have the
nominative pronouns “we” when written in Japanese; and the absence of nominative
pronouns has invited intense controversies over who proclaims not to repeat the evil to
the victims of atomic bomb.23 Those controversies over the inscription are the product of
how inscription can be grammatically interpreted; and thus it is not the interest of this
paper. However, studying how the wordings of the inscription came to be phrased is
important to investigate how Hiroshima, as a representative body of the citizens, has
negotiated against the sociopolitical atmosphere when commemorating the atomic bomb
in the public spheres.

In Japanese language, dropping the nominative voice is a common practice since
nominative voice is often determined from the context in which the sentence is presented.
Nominative voice in Japanese language is fluid if there is no definitive context; and thus
it is the context of an audience that dictates the ultimate meanings of a sentence. The
original inscription has no nominative pronoun; thus the nominative pronoun “we” was
assigned when translating the inscription into English. Hence, the context in which the
inscription is being presented needs to be taken into consideration: the English inscription
appears only in the guiding-panel of the Cenotaph, while the Japanese inscription is
engraved on the casket in which victim’s name is kept. In English, the nominative
pronoun “we” determines the audience that is, the people who read the translated

inscription in the guiding-panel. However, in Japanese, the victims, as well as those who

 

22 Inscription on the Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb Victims, Hiroshima.

2’ Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces,1999.

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read the inscription, both constitute the subject, since the inscription is engraved on the

casket.

 

Figure 4:5. The Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims. When facing the Cenotaph,

the visitors can see the inscription on the stone chest with the Pond of Peace, the

Peace Fire, and the Atomic Bomb Memorial on a single line.

Differentiating the nominative subject of the inscription becomes particularly
important in the context of one additional translation glitch in the inscription. The
translated inscription says “not to repeat the evil”; but this is not quite the accurate
translation of the original message. The inscription says in Japanese not to repeat “ifi %
(ayamachi)? Ayamachi implies “a regretful mistake” and it has a connotative meaning

of regretting certain act committed in the past. While “the evil” is transcendentally

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negative value in all contexts and all time, “ayamachi” was merely one of many possible
and reasonable actions that became regretful from the present perspectives. Hence, the
Japanese inscription therefore says not to repeat the regretful mistakes that have caused
the atomic annihilation of the city. The fact that inscription is on the casket places the
victims of atomic bomb, as well as the survivors, as subjects who made them express, and
now regret for the mistakes. At the same time, the inscription does not make any request
for actual examination of what exactly were the mistakes and how the mistakes were
made in the past.

The translated inscription however sets a different context for English speaking
audiences. First, the Cenotaph made English-speaking visitors to read the inscription with
the nominative pronoun: “we”. Then, the inscription they read says: we shall not repeat
“the evil”. Very few foreign tourists had visited Hiroshima at the time the city erected the
Cenotaph; and the most foreign visitors were American occupation personnel. It is thus
reasonable to consider that this translated inscription intended Americans as its primary
audience. The English “we” does not include the atomic bomb victims whose names are
stored in the casket. Nothing substantial has ever suggested that the inscription makes a
conscious differentiation of its audience to metaphorically express the latent fury against
the atomic bomb and those who brought the atrocity to Hiroshima. Yet, reviewing the
sociopolitical contexts in which the city has erected the Cenotaph reveals the lurking
anger and the underlying desire for vengeance against the atomic bomb.

These undercurrents are however hardly visible in the public sphere. In 1947,
Hiroshima organized the First Peace Festival with enthusiastic support from GHQ/SCAP.

General Douglas MacArthur (SCAP) himself sent a message to the festival (second

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festival received a message from Sir Horace Robertson, Lieutenant General and
Commander of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan).24 It was not an
ordinary practice for MacArthur to send his message to a city-organized event; and thus
his sending messages serves as a proof that GHQ/SCAP had its earnest interests in the
festival. Having full support from GHQ/SCAP consequentially informs us that the Peace
Festival, from its planning stage, was kept uncontroversial to GHQ/SCAP and the act
(actors) of dropping the atomic bomb.

The festival was merely a public demonstration to the world showing the joy and
happiness of Hiroshima with peace brought by the atomic bomb. The New York Times
reported MacArthor’s statement on August 6, 1947. MacArthor said: “The peace festival
is to be held with the idea that Aug. 6 is the date which must be remembered as the day of
the arrival of peace and the day on which the citizens of Hiroshima can renew their
determination to contribute to the peace of the world.”25 Furthermore, Time Magazine
described the Peace Festival:

The Doves. Last week, on the second anniversary of The Bomb, the
people of Hiroshima stood with bared heads bowed around a 43-ft. peace
tower to hear a specially cast bell toll for Hiroshima’s dead. Muffled sobs
stopped when giant firecrackers began to slam like .50-caliber machine
guns. Tiny parachutes bore peace festival streamers above the crowd.

Thereafter, Hiroshima observed its day of disaster with singing, dancing
and boating. Boys & girls pulled peace floats through unshaded streets. 6

 

2’ Detailed accounts of the reactions from GHQ/SCAP and Gen. MacArthur to Hiroshima’s
organizing the Peace Festival can be found in the memoir of the first Mayor of Hiroshima City after the war.
See, Shinzo Hamai, Genbaku shicho: Hiroshima to tomoni 20 nen (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun sha, 1967).

25 New York Times, August 6, 1947, [22; italics mine].

2" Time, August 18, 1947.

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The telegrams sent to the city were introduced as “congratulatory telegrams”27, and there
were fireworks, singing, dancing and boating that overwhelmed the sobs of condolence to
the atomic bomb victims. Much as the press voluntarily participated in the censorship of
the atomic bombs, the Peace Festival consequentially concealed the voices and emotions

that were not “stressing construction and optimism” 28

through the peace brought by the
atomic bomb.

The New York Times expressed sympathy for the victims of atomic bomb in its
editorial: “The pitiful commemoration Observances in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must
move the hearts of all humane persons everywhere.” However, the same editorial still
affirmed a postulate that “The bomb put a quick end to a slaughter which would have
been much greater without it and thereby justified its use.”29 President Truman expressed
in 1949 that “he would not hesitate to use the atomic bomb again if it were necessary for
the welfare of the United States and the democracies of the world.”30 The Soviet Union
declared to the world that they possess atomic bombs on September of the same year; and
the world entered into the era of nuclear armament race. In 1950, the Korean War
materialized the Cold War in actual military conflict; and Truman once again stressed the

possible use of atomic bomb in Korean War “to assure victory.”3 I In such circumstances,

GHQ/SCAP ordered Hiroshima to cancel its Peace Festival in 1950; and the festival on

 

27 Chugoku shinbun, August 7, 1947.
28 Time, August 18, 1947.
29 Editorial, New York Times, August 6, 1947.

30 Anthony Leviro, “Atom Bomb Ready for Use If Needed, Truman Declares,” New York Times
(April 7, 1949), 1.

3’ Anthony Leviro, “Truman Gives Aim, ‘Just, Peaceful World’ Is Goal,” New York Times
(December 1, 1950), l.

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the following year was highly regulated. In fact, the Hiroshima Police Department
stressed that they would arrest anyone who participated in any anti-Japan or anti-
GHQ/SCAP activities during the Peace Festival. It is important that the police statement
warned that anti-Japan/GHQ/SCAP activities would disguise themselves as peace events.
In fear of being arrested, citizens found participation in the festival became difficult. In
this respect, it proves that the sociopolitical atmosphere in which the Cenotaph was
designed was thus highly sensitive to any activities and discourses that could be
antagonistic to the United States, GHQ/SCAP, and the atomic bomb, which was used
against Japan and which may have been used in the Korean War.

In both memorial monuments, peace served as an expedient to publicly endorse
the remembrance of the atomic bomb itself under GHQ/SCAP administration.
Emphasizing peace made it possible to commemorate the atomic bomb without naming
those accountable for the atrocities brought by the atomic bomb. Although it seemed
there was a consensus on the idea that the atomic bomb brought peace to Japan, the
detailed examination of the memorial monuments demonstrates the underground
resentment against such interpretation and the festivity of peace in the public sphere.
GHQ/SCAP administration, as well as the voluntary participation of the Japanese to the
censorship, kept the fury and actual voices of the victims invisible in the public sphere
during the seven-year occupation. Indeed, the self-censorship enforced within, as well as
the external censorship on commemorating the atomic bomb are also evident since the
reinstatement of sovereignty has brought what was kept invisible into the public sphere

when commemorating the atomic bomb.

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End of Optimism with Peace

The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed on September 1951, came into effect on
April 22, 1952. This treaty reinstated the sovereignty of Japan. A flood of first-hand
accounts of atomic bomb tragedy become available and were published soon after the
treaty."2 Asahi Graph, a photographic journal printed the photographs of the atomic
annihilation of Hiroshima in its special issue on August 6, 1952. Those photographs were
the first image of the destruction of Hiroshima made available to the general population
in Japan after the war.

Notably, most publications from this period signified the destruction of the atomic
bomb as a disaster. Kaizo, for example, titled its featured issue on the atomic bomb as

“T. @lfiifiifil (this a-bomb disaster)”.33 This letter “#51 (ka)” symbolizes the divine curse,

and it represents an unexpected disaster in Japanese. Kaizo took a rather antagonistic
editorial stance against the United States since its editorial team had Marxist/socialist
inclinations. Referencing the atomic bombs as a disaster (not a tragedy or damages)
perhaps suggests two conceptions in the shared ideas of the Japanese: (1) the atomic
destruction was a natural course of action they had invited to themselves (like a man-
made disaster); and (2) it was pointless to search for the liable party for the destruction of

atomic bombs. In this respect, the survivors, when giving their narratives about the

 

32 Shin Nagata, ed., Genbaku no ko: Hiroshima no shounen shoujo no uttae (Tokyo: lwanami,
1951), Iri Maruki and Toshiko Akamatsu, Genbaku no zu (Tokyo: Aoki, 1952), Sankichi Toge, Genbaku
shishu (Tokyo: Aoki, 1952), Sankichi Toge, ed., Shishu: genshi kumo no shita yori (Tokyo: Aoki, 1952),
Hyo Umino and Yoshihiro Tajima, Genbaku dai ichi—go: Hiroshima no shashin kiroku (Tokyo: Asahi,
1952), no author, Hiroshima: senso to toshi (Tokyo: lwanami, 1952), and others, for example.

33 “Kono genbaku ka,” Kaizo (November 1952), 208.

149

atomic bomb, seem to have had no consciousness to learn a lesson from Hiroshima’s
tragedy.

In fact, most publications about the atomic bombs were geared toward adults
when surveying the published work that came out in the public spheres in the period of
few years since the return of sovereignty. One of earliest published work for children on
the subject of the atomic bomb appears in a periodical, King, published by Kodansha in
1956. From the list of children’s literature prepared by the Hiroshima City Children’s
Library, the earliest children’s book identified is Minami no Kaze no Monogatari (the

story of south wind), which was published in 1961.34

The absence of narrative targeting
the next generations suggests the speaking of the atomic bombs perhaps came from a
therapeutic desire to archive the experiences than a sense of responsibility to teach
something from their experiences for the future.

Signifying the atomic atrocity as a disaster is therefore important proof that there
was no or very little desire/need to build pedagogy to prevent an atomic atrocity in the
firture. Peace was already an attained property in postwar Japan; and thus people felt safe
from atomic atrocities so long as they lived in peace. The lyrics of Hiroshima Song of
Peace, which is sung at the Peace Memorial Ceremony, reflects an optimistic vision of
peace. Hiroshima Song of Peace sings primarily in praise of the peace and prosperity of
modern Hiroshima, but it sings neither a condolence to the victims nor condemnation of
atomic bomb itself. In this respect, we can suppose that there was a shared sentiment that

no disaster like the atomic annihilation is possible in postwar Japan so long as the people

sing in praise of peace.

 

3" Hiroshima City Children’s Library, Kodomotachi e genbaku wo kataritsugu hon: soushu ban
2005 (June 2005), under http://www.library.city.hiroshima.jp/child/img/bomb.pdf (accessed March 14,
2008)

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Hiroshima’s optimism for the peace did not last long however. In March 1, 1954
on the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands, fishermen of No.5 F ukuryumaru became
victims of a nuclear (hydrogen) bomb. Exposed to the US. hydrogen bomb testing, the
F ukuryumaru returned to Yaizu port on March 14, 1954 with severe radioactive
contamination. Six-month later, Aikichi Kuboyama, one of 23 crew members, died of
radiation sickness. Kuboyama’s message became known to the public: he said just before
dying, “after my death, please make no more victims of atomic and hydrogen bombs.”35
This incident was a wakeup call for many Japanese. The atomic bombs are no longer the

disaster possible only in time of war, but instead, it is realistic threat to life even in the

moment of peace.

‘Hiroshima’ as Pedagogy for the Future

The F ukuryumaru incident gave the Japanese people a global awareness with a
realization of an ongoing nuclear armament race in the postwar world. The news media
reported on the radioactive contamination of the fish brought back by the F ukuryumaru,
as well as the fact that there were many fishing vessels operated within the same radius of
F ukutyumaru. The fear of radioactive contamination of marine products has skyrocketed

throughout Japan, and mothers have mobilized a grassroots movement to oppose nuclear

 

’5 Statement was made in Japanese. For original quote, see Tokyo Prefectural Exhibition Hall for
Daigo Fukuryumaru at Yumenoshima Park, Yumenoshima 3-2, Kotoku, Tokyo, Japan.

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testing. The death of Kuboyama and his message then ignited the movement into a major
national outcry for anti-atomic and anti-hydrogen armament.36

This movement is in fact the milestone of an important development in the
discourse around atomic power: it marks the shift of discourse from the frame of war to
the frame of peace. In the frame of “war”, the atomic bomb was a war strategy, and the
destruction produced was inscribed under the consequences of war involvement.
Therefore, the ultimate resolution to avoiding the atomic disaster is non-involvement in
war and the praise of peace. The answer to the atomic bomb and its consequences on
human life and society in the context of war is “peace” and applause of it. Therefore, we
do witness a push for the rhetoric of peace attainment coming to shape in the
commemoration of the atomic bomb in the context of war.

However, the F ukuryumaru incident shifted the context for the nuclear threat:
death happened from nuclear impact not times of war, but in times of peace. Furthermore,
the victims were not participants in a war, but were innocent bystanders caught by
radiation during the performing their everyday chores for living. Moreover, the radiation
proved capable of affecting the food chain and the living environment of peaceful people
and their unawareness of everyday life space. The radiation effect of the atomic bomb is
what hibakushas have long suspected, but it has not been in a clear awareness for most
Japanese as the atomic bombing and its radioactive impacts have been censored for many
years after the war. F ukwyumaru incident made the Japanese realize that not only had the

atomic threat become much more pervasive and invasive, but there was no longer a

 

’6 See Chapter 5 for further discussion on Fukuryumaru incident and its impact on the public
movements for the peace in Japan’s national public sphere. Also see, the memoir of Matakichi Oyama, who
was one of the crewmembers on Fukuryumaru. Matakichi Oyama, Koredake wa tsutaete okitai bikini jiken
no omote to ura (Tokyo: Kamogawa Shuppan, 2007).

152

simple answer to the atomic threat that could make an effect with one political stroke:
like ending war involvement. In the context of peace, the affliction of atomic radiation
was no longer contained to a limited space that could be identified by means of strategic
criteria. Instead, the space that the radiation would affect is unidentifiable as it can hit
anywhere without criteria, and leaving people defenseless to a defirsed phenomenon that
once unleashed may have no clear borders or placement.

The awareness that anyone can fall victim to the atomic threat regardless of their
political allegiance, ideologies, philosophical positions and principles of any kind became
wheels of pedagogy that is to challenge the universal threat of nuclear armament for
ensuring the future survival. After the F ukuryumaru incident, memorial monuments
began emphasizing a pedagogical significance in commemorating the atomic bomb for
the future. The Children’s Peace Monument, which was erected in 1958 in Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Park, offers a pivotal example of the pedagogical significance of the
commemoration of atomic bomb (Figure 4:6).

The Children’s Peace Monument commemorates Sadako Sasaki who died of a
radiation sickness (leukemia) in Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital ten years after the end of
war on October 1955. Her story of fighting the radiation sickness is known around the
world today as the story of the thousand paper cranes; and the monument receives many
paper cranes sent from all over the world in memory and with wishes for peace. The
incident of F ukwyumaru brought awareness of the link between the atomic bomb and
radiation sickness, which was a long kept secret during the occupation period.37

Newspapers began reporting about the outbreak of radiation sickness in Hiroshima and

 

37 Mainichi shinbun, July 30, 1954.

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Nagasaki; and it shocked people once again with the lingering effect of atomic bomb
many years after the war’s end. Her classmates were also the survivors of the atomic
bomb, and their inability to do anything for Sadako led to the idea of erecting a

monument to comfort Sadako’s soul.

 

Figure 4:6. Children’s Peace Memorial Monument.
Since many schools have the story of Sadako Sasaki in their reading list, it is
the most popular memorial monument for students visiting the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Park. Many schools throughout the nation and abroad send
paper cranes, and they are kept in the cases surrounding the monument.

In order to erect the memorial monument, the students began a campaign at the

National Convention of School Principles. Backed by the heightened national outcry for a

nuclear testing ban and fear of radiation, the campaign caught national attention and news

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media began to follow through the campaign. More than 3,200 schools nationwide
contributed to the fund to build the memorial monument. The Children’s Peace
Monument became the first memorial monument erected by the people’s firnd generated
nationwide in order to commemorate the victims of the atomic bomb and to send wishes
for the peace. The inscription of monument, which was written by a student, says: “This
is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in the world.”38 The direct and explicit
declaration of building the peace and the monument’s embodying the collective will for
the peace both suggest that the atomic bomb tragedy has formed the peace pedagogy in
the public sphere through commemoration of it.

The monument emphasizes the innocence of a child who became the victim of the
radiation sickness that claimed her life years after the war’s end. The innocence of the
victim was put in contrast to the political and strategic discourses legitimating the use and
possession of atomic bombs for years to come. By 1953, newspapers were printing
articles sympathetically projecting the moral dilemma experienced by Truman, as well as
other personnel who had to make a decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Featuring what might have gone on when Truman and his administration made
a decision to use the atomic bombs against Japan, one newspaper printed the article's title
with largest-font as: “Use of Atomic Bomb Necessary: Defense Is the Priority.”39 The
article sympathetically presented the moral dilemma that Truman might have had before
his making the decision to drop the bomb to save many lives that would otherwise have

been lost without use of the atomic bombs.

 

38 Inscription on the Children’s Peace Monument inside Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park,
Hiroshima-city, Japan.

39 Shakai Times, August 7, 1953.

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Yet, Truman, in his interview with Edward R. Murrow broadcasted on CBS
television on February 195 8, said that he “had no qualms” on the use of atomic bombs:
and as long as one has the weapon with the power to win the war, it is “foolish” not to
use it to win a war.40 His statement expressing no remorse at the use of atomic bombs
invited national outcry throughout Japan. The mayor of Hiroshima drafted a strong
protest letter to Truman, claiming that his remarks were “undoubtedly a bold challenge to
the common sense of man and a violation of international law.” It then continued to
express that the city hopes “Mr. Truman will reflect on his opinionated remarks that he
felt no compunction after ordering the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”41
No newspaper in Japan defended Truman’s statement. Many people throughout Japan
sent letters to the newspapers in protest of Truman’s remarks in the name of humanity
and peace. For example, a man from Miyagi prefecture, which is over 500-mile northeast
of Hiroshima, denounced Truman’s remarks as a challenge to all humans, and
emphasized that it is the responsibility of Japanese people to act for a nuclear-free
world.42

Responses from the media and the public Truman’s remarks show that Hiroshima
had become a reminder of a new awareness throughout Japan. Peace is incompatible with
nuclear armament and its justifications. Peace does not simply mean the absence of war

within one's own environment. Instead, peace requires active commitment to remove the

threats against all humans. In front of the death of a child who was innocent in the last

 

’0 Harry Truman, interview by Edward R. Murrow, See It Now, CBS, February 2, 195 8.
“New York Times, March 23, 1958.

‘2 Asahi shinbun, February 8, 1958.

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war, anyone legitimizing the atomic bombs in the framework of national politics and
strategic reality would invite an outrage against humanity and peace. Hiroshima thus
became a collective consciousness of the people as ‘Hiroshima’ throughout Japan. This
consciousness is now a pedagogical product that positions the innocence of victims
against nuclear weapons and everything that legitimizes the use of such technology

against other people.

Discussion

Hiroshima became pedagogical under the stress of humanist ethical norms that
were linked to the atomic bomb victims and their individual innocence. Yet, as
demonstrated in this paper, commemorating Hiroshima’s tragedy began as a therapeutic
desire or subterfuge by way of archiving the experiences of survivors and the memory of
the dead. A therapeutic approach to comprehending an unprecedented atrocity in human
experience was necessary in Hiroshima and its public sphere to move forward with the
reconstruction of ordinary life in postwar Japan. The amnesiac elisions worked as a
strategy to remove from the public space of commemoration the malice and the
smoldering thought of vengeance. Moreover, it enabled the oblivion to avoid facing
unacceptable justifications or undesired explanations of why Hiroshima had received the
visit of nuclear annihilation. Through reading monuments and other early
commemorative exercises such as Peace Festivals and publications as text, it reveals that
this oblivious attitude toward the past is a negotiated product of sociopolitical contexts. It

has enabled the victims to move forward with present realities of reconstruction under the

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occupied Japan, while it has disabled antagonistic sentiments against the occupied force
to overgrow in public spheres. Remembrance of Hiroshima’s tragedy in public spheres
therefore began with amnesiac elisions of the past context for therapeutic intent.

However, both people and the city of Hiroshima were not oblivious to the
unprecedented nuclear atrocity itself. When the mysterious deaths of atomic bomb
survivors became known as radiation sickness and F ukwyumaru became the third victim
of the nuclear bomb, the heightened awareness that anyone can fall victim of nuclear
threat even in Peace times had shifted the context for the remembrance of atomic bomb in
the public sphere. Radiation sickness claimed the innocent life of Sadako Sasaki more
than a decade after the war’s end, which marked the Era of a new form of social unrest
related to the long-term effects of nuclear blasts. Her classmates’ effort to erect a
memorial monument differentiated Hiroshima from all other war destructions
experienced throughout the nation. The post-war loss of life re-framed the discourse of
Hiroshima’s tragedy in the context of political stability and peace. Furthermore, the death
of children who were not accountable to carry out the last war has generated a
consciousness that nuclear weapon is the absolute antonym of innocence and people
itself.

Heightened awareness of unsuspected aspects of nuclear threats became an
influential pedagogy of humanity particularly in response to voices that attempt to
legitimize nuclear annihilation on account of national or political interests. Ahistorical
reconstruction of Hiroshima’s experience in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster thus
formed the ‘Hiroshima’ discourse with an emphasis on the importance of

commemorating Hiroshima’s tragedy as a means to learn that the nuclear threat is in fact

158

transcendental of all humanity. ‘Hiroshima’ has come about as a discourse about the past
with orientation toward the future progress. It emerged from the innocence of the victims
of the atomic bomb and the long-term effects of radiation measuring the rhetoric of
political and national interests and the progress of science and technology to develop,
use, and justify nuclear armament.

Yet by reading the text of the events that construe the commemoration
monuments, literature, press and public events, we note an underlining flow of voices and
emotions that remained unresolved by the mere change in public rhetoric of commitments
to political peace. These voices point to a hidden curriculum shadowing the new
pedagogy of peace embodied in ‘Hiroshima’. That is a pedagogy that, in its best
intentions to uphold values of humanity, plays emotionally the discourse of peace at
international, transcendental consciousness of mankind life preservation, nonetheless in
this process silences voices, exercises regulatory control on the legitimacy of personal
experience and even obscures the emotions of very population directly hit by the atomic
disaster. In a study follow this, I will unfold a hidden curriculum of the ‘Hiroshima’
discourse and present the transformations that ‘Hiroshima’ undergoes in this day when

taken into the frames of a Global Society.

159

Chapter 5

Postwar Obscurity and Commemoration of Catastrophe

August 15, 1945, the Emperor Shéwa gave a radio broadcast to announce that
Japan had accepted the terms of the surrender to the Allied Powers. Japan, unlike
Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, sustained the nation’s political structures even
after the defeat.l The Emperor delivered the official declaration of the end of the nation’s
war in the Imperial Diet that was convened only after half a month after the defeat.
Instead of defeat (hai-sen), the Emperor denoted the war’s conclusion simply as an end of
war (shit-sen). Even today, Japan commemorates August 15tb as the day of war’s end
(shit-sen kinenbi), not the day of the nation’s defeat (hai-sen kinenbz).

Symbolizing the war’s conclusion without a denotation of the defeat suggests that
the Japanese situated the war’s end as the new beginning rather than the defeated end.
Thus, there was merely minute attention to inquiry into the war and war responsibilities.
For example, the first postwar parliamentary session was convened on September 1945,
but there was no discussion on the war responsibility of the nation’s political institutions.
Instead, the war responsibilities were put on the people who miscarried the Imperial

intent and brought the defeated end to the war.2 In the Imperial Script, it was stressed that

 

' In fact, Japan’s Imperial Diet was convened five times after the nation’s defeat until March 1947,
when the new Constitution dismantled the Imperial Constitution on March 1947.

2 The Prime Minister, Higashikuninomiya, delivered his statement to the Imperial Diet assembly.
In his statement, Higashikuninomiya stressed that all Japanese people must accept their sin in response to
the war’s end. However, his statement said that the people should have a guilty conscience to the Emperor,
and that the people failed to carry out the Imperial Order throughout the war. Hence, the people caused
troubling of the Emperor, who took action to bring the war to the end in order to save the lives of the
people. See, Higakushikuninomiya-Naruhikooh’s statement in the Plenary Session of the House of Lord,
No. 2, on September 5, 1945.

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the Imperial Diet “should move forward to construct a nation of peace which contributes
substantially toward world peace and advancement of human civilizations”.3 The
Imperial Diet thus began debating the reconstruction of the nation, instead of spending
time to examine the defeated war and war responsibilities. In fact, Japan began debate on
war responsibilities only after the Allied Occupation Forces began making arrests of war
criminals. Even then, the debates were mostly focusing on defining the acts that should
be excluded from war crimes.

When exploring the ways Hiroshima’s atomic tragedy has come to be
remembered in the national public sphere, how Japan and the Japanese people have
symbolized the war’s conclusion carries notable impact. Hiroshima today symbolizes the
world peace and the anti-nuclear movement, and its historical significance is recognized
throughout the world. Yet, without needing to give so much justification, we can safely
assume that such symbolisms are not built in a brief space of time. Newspaper articles of
the 19605 reveal that Hiroshima’s tragedy was kept alive mostly within localized
remembrance of the war (we will discuss this point later in this chapter). People knew
about the fact that an atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, but there was little knowledge of what
really took place in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb hit the city. This absence of
knowledge suggests that Hiroshima’s tragedy was not a significant detail to build
remembrance in the national public sphere until the 19603.

Today, however, we put a great emphasis on highlighting in details about
Hiroshima’s tragedy when we speak about the atomic bombing, nuclear armament and

wars. In Japan, all history textbooks, for example, note the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

 

3 Hirohito. September 4, 1945, Plenary Session on both Houses.

161

and the tragedy it brought to the people. More and more people in the world recognize
the historical significance of Hiroshima’s horrific experience as many countries are now
including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in their history textbooks.

Subsequently, this chapter will inquire how wartime experiences became
significant subject to be remembered in the public sphere. More specifically, this chapter
will explore the process through which we make otherwise elusive experiences of the
past into a significant event in history. This chapter will also pay particular attention to
the notion of peace, which is almost consistently set together with the discourse on war
and war violence. By way of exploring the process of making war violence to be
represented as a historically significant experience and identify the notion of peace in the
public sphere, this chapter aims to elaborate both the process and the product of
remembering the war and war violence as historically significant past in the public sphere.
This inquiry intends to offer an insight into the historians’ subjects that are themselves a
historical product, and thus they could (or perhaps should) also be the subjects of

historical inquiry.

Postwar Obscurity and Peace

When drafting a new Constitution in postwar Japan, Joji Matsumoto, the
chairperson of the committee for drafting the Constitution, aimed to give the general
public an exemption from war crimes. Matsumoto stated:

Every citizen is asked to make a total commitment to the nation and its war
efforts once there is a war’s occurrence. The people who have sacrificed

everything for the nation’s war efforts, therefore, should not be held
accountable for their roles in the war. It is only those people who have

162

committed unlawful acts to provoke the war who should hold war
responsibility.4

Matsumoto placed the war responsibility on the people who drove the nation into the war
by their unlawful conduct. However, he did not identify any individual persons who
acted unlawfully or any particular unlawful acts that led the nation into the war. A part of
Matsumoto’s statement is often quoted to state Japan’s active acknowledgement of war
responsibility. However, reading through the whole statement, it is clear that the
statement criticized the Japan’s war, but it did so to avoid incrimination of any particular
individual persons for the war and its defeated end.

Indeed, there is substantial evidence to say that the general population of Japan
did not think of war responsibility as their own or personal issue. Yoshio Yasumaru
analyzed the early postwar sociopolitical atmosphere of Japan in 19705. In his study,
Yasumaru identified that the Japanese comprehended the defeat and the postwar
circumstances by believing that they were the victims of deceit from military factions that
misled the people throughout the war.5 From here, we can understand that the general
public also isolated war responsibility to abstract institutions like the military factions.6
John Dower, through inquiring cultural and social experiences of the Japanese of the

19403, similarly characterized the human landscape of Japan under the Allied Occupation

 

4 Joji Matsumoto, November 30, 1945, the House of Lords, the Imperial Ordinance No. 542: 8.
5 Yoshio Yasumaru, Nihon nashonarizumu no zenya (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun, I977), 214.

6 This is in fact similar to the way Matsumoto and other parliamentary members assigned the
responsibility to unidentified individuals who committed unlawful acts. For the examples of the statement
made by other parliamentary members, see Mitsuo Miyata, a parliamentary member, argued exactly along
the same lines in the Diet on November 29, 1945. Miyata stressed that the military factions took not only
Americans but also the Japanese people into the morass of war by their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It
is suggested here that Miyata positioned the Japanese people as the war’s victims as much as Americans
were the victims in the surprise attack of the Pearl Harbor. See, Mitsuo Miyama’s statement in Plenary
Session No. 2 at the House of Lord on November 29, 1945.

163

by the title of his book, Embracing Defeat. The defeat indeed seemed to be embraced in
the public sphere because it liberated the general public from the deception of the
military factions. The defeat also saved the general public from the nightly air raids and
possibility of dying in the war. This embracement, however, suggests that there was
complete oblivion among the general public about the fact that they were active
participants in materializing the war consequences.

The Tokyo Tribunal of War Crimes prosecuted war criminals in Japan, but it did
not become a national experience in Japan’s public sphere. The parliament kept the
general population outside of the war responsibility, and the strong future—orientation in
postwar Japan left the prosecution outside of Japan’s postwar experience. Japan and its
general public, thus, lost its opportunity to systematically reconcile its active involvement
in the war. Instead, the population was positioned as victims of military factions that had
been deceiving the people throughout the war. It is important to stress here that this
obscuring of war responsibility came along with the strong future-orientation for peace in
the public sphere of Japan in its early postwar years. Emphasis on peace in Japan’s
postwar public sphere, therefore, was conditioned by the oblivion to the need to inquire

into the nation’s wartime past and the people’s active participation in the war.

Intangible Peace

Bypassing critical inquiry on war responsibility allowed Japan to make concerted

efforts to reconstruct the nation. The annual economic growth rate of Japan marked

almost eight percent in the 19503. In fact, the 1956 Economic White Paper declared that

164

Japan had exited the postwar period by quoting the fact that the economic condition of
the nation had recovered to the level of what it was just before the start of the war. The
nation’s economic recovery came with rapid industrialization and urbanization of the
national landscape, but it also brought the social problems of pollution, housing shortages,
labor exploitations and other unfavorable byproducts.7 The 19503, therefore, saw an
increasing membership of reformist political parties and labor unions by absorbing social
dissatisfactions from the people who were left behind in the nation’s economic recovery.
Political tensions became more visible than ever in the public sphere when the
San Francisco Peace Treaty (signed on September 8, 1951) reinstated national
sovereignty to Japan.8 The treaty was exchanged without the presence of the Communist
Bloc Nations. Immediately after exchanging the Peace Treaty, the Japanese government
also exchanged the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (TMCS) with the United
States. TMCS was to permit the United States to keep its military forces in Japan even
after Japan’s reinstatement of its national sovereignty. These two treaties, in other words,
defined Japan as a strategic outpost of the Western Bloc Nations in East Asia. The
treaties, thus, drove Japan right into the midst of the rapidly developing Cold War

structure as an active participant in the East Asian front.

 

7 Yutaka Kosai, Kodo seicho no jidai (Tokyo: Nihon hyoron sha, 1981), also see Hajime
Shinohara and Akiko Wada, Kodo seicho no hikari to kage (Kawasaki, Japan: Kawasaki shimin academy,
2003).

8 Reinstatement of national sovereignty lifted US censorship in Japan, and the voices suppressed

under the censorship began surfacing in the public sphere. See Chapter 4 for further discussion about the
postwar censorship in Japan.

165

The continuing presence of US military forces in Japan invited fear that the
United States would take Japan into the war.9 The Korean War, for example, continued to
leave military and political tensions in the Korean Peninsula even after the ceasefire
agreement on July 27, 1953. Furthermore, in the United States, there were discussions of
using atomic bombs once again to win the war in the Korean Peninsula. Through
stressing the fear that the United States would bring wars to Japan, the reformist parties
accumulated even more political capital in the public sphere. For instance, the Japan
Teachers’ Union (JT U), one of the most vocal and influential unions, defined the United
States as the militant force threatening the peace around the world. In parliamentary
hearings, JT U repeatedly condemned the United States for bringing war to the whole
world.'0

In fact, Japan saw intensifying discord between the political canon and its
opponents when the renewal of TMCS was approaching in 1960. The discord grew into a
mass protest movement, which marked a pivotal point in Japan’s social, political and

cultural scenes.ll The opinion poll taken in 1959 revealed that 21.5 percent of the

 

9 See, for example, the statement of Manzo Tanaka, a Chairperson for the Committee on Peace
Treaty and TMCS, in his statement at the Plenary Session in Lower House, No. 8, on October 26, 1951.

'0 See, for example, the statement of Manji Yoshida in the Plenary Session No. 12 at Lower House
on February 25,1951.

” The major protest started on March 28, 1959, when the Socialist Party (SPJ), Sohyo (United
Convention of Union Workers) and 132 other organizations called a protest to prevent the renewal of
TMCS. The reformist party members barricaded the National Diet in order to prevent the Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP, which was the party in majority) to push the bill to renew TMCS. It was the first
time after the war that 500 police personnel were brought into the Diet to remove protesting members with
force. Without the presence of the opposition parties, the bill to renew TMCS went through the parliament
on May 19, 1960. From this day to June 23 (the day the renewed TMCS went into effect), Japan saw mass
protests throughout the nation demanding to overthrow the LDP-controlled government. 5,600,000
National Railway workers went on strike on June 10. 130,000 protesters besieged the National Diet
Building on June 15. The number grew up to 330,000 in three days. More on this protest, see: Miehitoshi
Takahata, “Taishu undo no tayoka to henshitsu,” in Nihon seiji gakkai, ed., 55nen taisei no keisei to hokai
(Tokyo: lwanami, 1979): 323-359.

166

respondents believed TMCS would ensure peace in Japan, while 44.5 percent said TMCS
would bring war to Japan. The same opinion poll exposed an even smaller portion of the
respondents (11.3 percent) willing to approve the renewal of TMCS. However, the same
poll result also revealed that only 20.4 percent openly opposed the govemment’s decision
to renew TMCS. Reading this data suggests that the large majority of Japanese (68.3
percent) were ambivalent or lacking any substantial interest in the renewal of TMCS
despite the massive protest movements ongoing in the public sphere. The mass protest
movement brought a referendum election on November 20, 1960 in order to end political
turbulence. The election result, however, confirmed the poll result. Despite the
heightened political consciousness that brought the election, the voter turnout showed a
decline of 3.48 percent from the previous election. Furthermore, the election brought the
greatest triumph to LDP, which gained 63.4 percent of the Diet by winning nine
additional seats.

The poll result and the election outcome both provide substantial ground to say
that the general public was alienated from or indifferent to the political discord over how
Japan should ensure its peace within the framework of the rapidly developing Cold War
structure. More notably, the general public revealed its orientation toward maintaining
the status quo through the election. This election asked the people how Japan should
ensure its national security in respect to the Cold War—whether Japan should align with
the United States or terminate alliance with the United States. However, we need to note
that there was no substantial debate on how Japan should maintain its national security
after removing the United States, or about how (or if) Japan should (or could) stay out of

the indisputable reality of the Cold War.

167

It must be noted from what has been said above, there was a total lack of realism
about the international contexts of the postwar world in Japan. Regarding the notion of
peace, Japan can be said to have been purely introverted into own national space, and
Japan’s postwar peace was not relevant to both the political realities and the historical
consequences of the postwar world.l2 Having no consciousness of how their present
peace had been ensured, the peace emphasized in early postwar Japan was merely an
intangible one in principle. The notion of peace assumed in Japan was, therefore, a
product of oblivion, which permitted the Japanese to be ignorant of the postwar realism

outside of their nation-state context.

Threshold of Intangible Peace

The heightened nuclear armament race was, however, an indisputable reality in
the postwar world. The Soviet Union declared that it had successfully conducted its first
atomic bomb test on August 29, 1949. However, Japan’s antinuclear sentiments grew
only after the US. hydrogen bomb testing killed another Japanese citizen in 1954.
Japan’s late response to ongoing nuclear armament race is another proof that Japan’s
general public thought they were free from nuclear threat so long as they stay out of wars.

When Japanese fishermen became victims of a nuclear bomb testing, a signature

drive calling for a nuclear testing ban began spontaneously in Japan. This signature drive

 

'2 The reformist parties negated the presence of the US. military forces in Japan. However, they
also offered no debate on the issues mentioned in here. Newspapers and other publications of that period
equally failed to cultivate any substantial debate in the public. This absence, therefore, suggests the total
lack of consciousness in Japan and its public sphere of the United States’ having provided the physical
means to ensure Japan’s national security throughout the postwar years. Reviewing many antiwar
movements and other peace movements organized in Japan, we can even identify the consistency of the
same lack of consciousness today.

168

accumulated over 32 million signatures throughout Japan, and over 670 million
signatures were sent from all over the world.13 The number of signatures vividly reveals
the magnitude of the antinuclear sentiments when we consider the facts that Japan’s total
population was only 89 million, and that the voting age population was only 51 million at
that time.14 Initially, the Japanese government did not submit any protest statement to
US. nuclear bomb testing. Even when the fishermen became the latest Japanese victims
of the US. hydrogen bombing, the government made no protest statement.15 The
signature drive, however, grew too enormous to be ignored in Japan’s political scene.
Hence, on March 24, 1955, the Prime Minister, Ichiro Hatoyama, made an official
declaration firmly opposing the nuclear armament and its test for the first time after the
war.16

In the public sphere, the signature drive led to the establishment of the Japan
Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb (Gensuikyo). Gensuikyo became a leading
organization uniting the voices against ongoing nuclear armament testing of the United
States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union; Gensuikyo also organized The World

Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs annually to raise non-partisan voices

against the countries conducting tests to develop nuclear armaments. Furthermore, when

 

’3 Akita Ubuki, “Nihon ni okeru gensuibaku kinshi undo no shuppatsu (The opening of the
nationwide movement against atomic and hydrogen bombs in Japan: On the signature campaign against
atomic and hydrogen bombs in 1954),” Hiroshima Peace Science 5, (1982): 199-223.

M Statistics Bureau, Japan. Wagakuni no suikeijinko (Demographic Changes in Japan), under e—
stat: http://www.e-stat.go.jp/ (accessed April 6, 2008).

'5 For example, only two weeks after the Japanese fishermen became the victims of the US.
hydrogen bomb test, Toru Nakagawa, the chief of Asian Affairs Bureau in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
affirmed before the Lower House that the US. nuclear testing was of benefit to Japan’s national security.
See, Committee on Transportation No. 28 in Lower House, March 27, 1954.

'6 Ichiro Hatoyama, Plenary Session No. 5, Lower House, March 24, 1955.

169

one of the fishermen died of radiation sickness six months after he was exposed to the
radioactive ashes came from the testing of the bomb, newspapers began printing articles
inquiring about radiation effects of nuclear bomb testing. It was at this moment that
many Japanese newspapers began devoting pages to delivering the stories of Hiroshima
survivors and their experiences of radiation sickness. F rom here, we can understand that
it took more than a decade for Japan’s public sphere to develop serious antinuclear
sentiments, despite the tragedies experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was in this social climate that the City of Hiroshima opened the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum on August 24, 1955. The nuclear armament race was still
continuing. The public concern about the nuclear armament race was reflected in the
number of museum visitors: during its inaugural year alone (in which the museum
opened less than one half of a year), the museum received 115,369 visitors.17 The fear of
radioactive contaminants from the nuclear testing and the establishment of Gensuikyo
gave Hiroshima impetus to symbolize an international discourse for opposing nuclear
armament testing. Here, we can identify the development of the ethos of Hiroshima as
pedagogical discourse to bring people together to oppose nuclear armament, in pursuit of
world peace.

The Fourth World Conference of Gensuikyo, however, became a ground for
political strife that was divided along the line of ideological discord. At the conference,
the group affiliated to the Japan Communist Party (JCP) pushed an agendum to define the

Western Bloc Nations as the enemy of peace. JCP and other reformist parties assumed a

 

’7 The City of Hiroshima, “Nendo betsu Hiroshima heiwa kinen shiryokan nyukansha su” (April
17, 2007), under Heiwa kinen shiryokan no nyuukannsha nado no gaikyo nit suite,
http://www.city.hiroshima.jp/ (accessed April 6, 2008).

170

position overlooking, if not supporting, the nuclear armament policies of the Communist
Bloc Nations. For example, Koichiro Ueda, an intellectual leader of JCP, justified the
nuclear armament of the Communist Bloc Nations as the force necessary to defend the
world peace. Ueda argued that, while the Communist Bloc Nations produced the
irreducible minimum level of nuclear armaments, the United States continued to pursue
nuclear armament to the fullest of its ability. From this viewpoint, Ueda and JCP
opposed the World Conference to challenge the nuclear policies of the Communist Bloc
Nations.18

Gensuikyo and its World Conference thus saw a breakdown when the delegates
from West Germany and the United Kingdom withdrew from the World Conference of
1959. A little before the conference, the People’s Republic of China declared its plan to
develop its own nuclear program. The conference, led by JCP and other reformist parties,
refused to make any protest against China’s declaration. Instead, the conference pushed
its attack against the Western Bloc Nations along the same line of JCP’s perspective on
the nuclear policy. Furthermore, when the City of Hiroshima invited the Crown Prince to
participate in the city’s peace ceremony August 6, 1960, Gensuikyo protested the city’s
decision to invite the Imperial family and moved the World Conference from Hiroshima
to Tokyo. The Crown Prince’s participation in the ceremony symbolizes that

Hiroshima’s tragedy became the national experience. However, the removal of the

 

’8 Koichiro Ueda, “Hutatsu no heiwa taikai to shusei shugi riron,” Marx shugi to heiwa undo
(1962; repr., Tokyo: Otsuki shoten, 1965) : 121-126. For JCP’s perspectives on the United States, see the
statement Sanzo Nosaka, who was the JCP Chairperson, brought in front of the Upper House on June 27,
1959. Nosaka stressed that the renewal of TMCS would incorporate Japan as part of the US. Empire and
its nuclear strategies. In fact, many reformist parties spoke of US. imperialism as “the common enemy of
humanity around the world” in the parliamentary sessions of the 1950a and early 19603. Quoted text is
from Nagatoshi Mukai, Plenary Session No. 14, Upper House (December 11, 1965), and Sanzo Nosaka,
Plenary Session No. 5, Upper House (June 27, 1959).

171

World Conference from Hiroshima to Tokyo symbolizes the departure of the antinuclear
discourse of Gensuikyo from Hiroshima’s empirical experiences to Tokyo’s
political/ideological discourse. The relocation of the World Conference to Tokyo—
Japan’s political center, therefore, symbolically suggests that Gensuikyo’s antinuclear
discourse became primarily a political one.

Moreover, it is perhaps useful to note that not only the political sphere but also the
public sphere was oblivious to the actuality of ongoing global conflicts that were
threatening peace. Taro Okamoto, one of the most renowned Japanese artists, became
disheartened when he observed the visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park:

“Everyday, people visit the Cenotaph. Some come to pray, and some also
take pictures of it. People seem content when they finish praying at the
Cenotaph. ‘Well, we saw what we came to see, and we prayed at the place
where we came to pray.’ There is an expression of mixed relief and
slyness on their faces. The expression shows that they were just content to
confirm that they were not the ones standing on the receiving end of the
atomic bombs.”19
Okamoto described Hiroshima’s commemorating space as having turned into a tourist
destination. By the mid-19603, 2,000,000 Japanese and 70,000 foreigners visited
Hiroshima annually. A. M. Rosenthal (1965) wrote an article for The New York Times
describing Hiroshima in a manner similar to Okamoto’s observation:

“From early morning until long after dark, convoy after convoy of buses
unloads Japanese at the museum, a long modern crackerbox on stilts,
where the bits of seared clothing and the pictures of men roasted and
children’s faces without skin are preserved. They walk around the park,

rather gaily, toll the great bronze Peace Bell, picnic on the scraggly lawns,
line up for group pictures and then go home in their buses.”20

 

'9 Taro Okamoto, “Amarinimo sanbunteki...Genbaku wo odaimoku ni sumai,” Asahi shinbun
(August 3, 1960).

20 A. M. Rosenthal, “The Taste of Life in Hiroshima, Now, Twenty Years After,” New York Times
(August 1, 1965), 8M4.

172

Rosenthal’s description painted an image in which the site for commemorating
Hiroshima’s tragedy became one of many tourist destinations.

Throughout Hiroshima, the traces of atomic bombing could still be found. Some
of those traces were in the process of being preserved to remind the people of the tragedy.
However, both Okamoto and Rosenthal described that these traces had turned into tourist
destinations at which the people confirmed their present peace in contrast to the tragedy
of the past. From here, we can conclude that Hiroshima and the traces of atomic
bombing did not work as a pedagogical medium to transmit the ethos of Hiroshima in
Japan’s public sphere. Instead, Hiroshima—including Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum and the monuments in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park—became the site for
tourism.

These observations give us substantial ground to conclude that the partisan
politics had dismantled the ethos of Hiroshima and its pedagogy as early as the beginning
of the 19603. Millions of people visited Hiroshima annually, but their visits did not give
them any connection with Hiroshima’s empirical experiences of the past tragedy and their
ongoing reality that was threatening peace. The political turmoil that led to the
breakdown of Gensuikyo, in fact, suggests that the importance of peace emphasized in
Japan’s public sphere was merely a theme, and that there was no substantial discussion

aimed at materializing peace in the world.

Fictional Pedagogy

173

The traces left by the atomic bombing reminded Hiroshima’s survivors of their
horrific experiences. Hence, many survivors expressed their mixed feelings over
preserving the traces. Though they knew the importance of keeping such objects to tell
their stories, they were also eager to get rid of any traces that would keep reminding them
of the tragic experiences of the bomb. Yoshimi Kishida survived the bomb, but she lost
three sisters in the blast. Her parents also died within a few days after the bomb. She
found her husband dead when she roamed around in the ruins. Kishida recalled that
Hiroshima’s peace ceremony began spontaneously when the victims and the bereaved
came together to share their stories of the 1033. However, Kishida said to a journalist that
she, as a survivor, no longer participated in the Peace Ceremony that is held annually on
August 6 in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The ceremony, Kishida stressed,
“became a fiction—something that is not real”21 to the survivors.

It is evident that Hiroshima became the site for both partisan politics and tourism
when Hiroshima’s survivors and their experiences were alienated from the
commemoration. We note today that Hiroshima’s tragedy was indeed a pivotal event in
the Second World War. However, most cities and the people throughout Japan had
experienced their own tragedies of air-raid attacks during the war’s finale. The Ministry
of Works has data stating that 215 cities throughout Japan were bombed during the war.22
Moreover, the United States used frrebombs in the air raid attacks, and those attacks

against major cities claimed more lives during a single mission than the atomic bomb did

 

2‘ Asahi shinbun (August 5, 1965).

22 For the data on the air-raid attacks to the Japanese cities, see the following resources and
studies: Nichigai Associates Co. Ltd., T aiheiyo senso tosho mokuroku (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005):
446-7; Takahide Nakamura, ed., Shiryo taiheiyo senso higai chousa hokoku (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku
shuppankai, 1995): 255-381; Hitoshi Koyama, Nihon kushu no zenyo: Beigun shiryo (Tokyo: Toho
Shuppan, 1995); and no arthor, Nihon no kushu 10 (Tokyo: Sanseido, 1981): 87-172.

174

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To most Japanese people, the nation’s defeat meant the end
of their wartime reality, and they were freed from the fear of being killed by air-raids and
other aggressive force from the enemies. In this respect, peace was conceptualized in
postwar Japan simply as a state in which the people did not need to face the wartime
reality of the past.

Hiroshima’s survivors had different realities. Even after the war’s end, both
survivors and the bereaved who entered the city after the bomb kept dying. The defeat, in
other words, did not mark a closure to the wartime realities in Hiroshima’s public sphere.
The defeat had indeed ended the physical destruction of the city. However, many people
continued to fall sick and die for many years after the end of the war. Though we know
today the cause of their sickness and death, no substantial explanation was made
available to the victims for many years after the war.23 The wartime realities, therefore,
persisted as the present realities for Hiroshima’s victims. Hiroshima’s public sphere,
therefore, commemorated the atomic bombing not merely as the tragedy of the past.
Instead, the commemoration was to seek reconciliation to both the sudden loss in the past
and the continuing loss in the present. In short, Hiroshima’s commemoration was a way
to comprehend the past and its persisting impacts in the present, in Hiroshima’s public
sphere.

Keisuke Hanada, for example, became a victim of the bomb about 2,000 meters
away from the epicenter. Hanada said that everything he had experienced in the
aftermath of the bomb became frozen like the images in photographs. No interpretations

given to the bomb and the tragedies it wrought, he continued, could penetrate the images

 

2’ See chapter 4 on US. censorship enforced on reporting of any details about the atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early postwar Japan.

175

that were frozen in his memory.24 For Hanada and other survivors of Hiroshima, the
bomb was not in their past because the bomb continued to pose a threat in their present.
In Hiroshima, their past continued to leave unresolved problems in the present even after
the war’s end. Therefore, we can understand that Hiroshima’s public sphere held the
tragedy as the subject of inquiry, rather than an object to be commemorated in a
ceremony.

In contrast, Hiroshima’s tragedy was one of many localized wartime tragedies in
Japan’s national public sphere. Let us remind of the fact that Hiroshima’s atomic
bombing became a symbolic event in Japan when the Japanese fishermen became the
newest victims of the US. hydrogen bomb test in 1954. The antinuclear sentiments grew
enormously both in Japan and globally, in response to the world that was quickly moving
into the Cold War. Hiroshima, as the first city that had experienced the destructive power
of the atomic bomb, became a reminder to the present of what could happen in wars
waged with nuclear weapons. In this respect, we can recognize that Japan’s national
public sphere responded primarily to the present threats of ongoing nuclear testing and
the enhanced possibility of nuclear wars when commemorating Hiroshima’s tragedy.
Therefore, we can also understand that the national public sphere stressed almost nothing
about understanding the tragedy in itself, when commemorating Hiroshima.

Hiroshima’s public sphere, because the survivors continued to suffer the scars left
by the bomb, sought peace as a goal in which the people would not be under the threat of
war. Yet the national public sphere assumed peace as a condition in which they would

not actively engaging war with anyone. No inquiry into war’s context is required if we

 

2" Keisuke Hanada, “Genbaku no kioku,” Asahi shinbun (August 7, 1964).

176

are simply negating all wars in general. Hence, ignoring the historical contexts of the
bomb has minimized the bomb merely as a necessary consequence of the nation’s
involvement in war, in Japan’s national public sphere.

The commemoration of Hiroshima’s tragedy was intended to elicit the
remembrance of the event. Yet, the commemoration, although oblivious by its historical
context, merely offered a confirmation of the condition in which wartime reality, such as
Hiroshima’s tragedy, is not the reality of the present. Therefore, there was no inquiry
into the past in which war was the reality, in which peace ceased to become reality, and
in which the rationality of war had dominated the public sphere. Hiroshima’s tragedy,
therefore, gave only fictional pedagogy to Japan’s national public sphere because it
pushed the people toward oblivion instead of building an understanding of the past and its

impacts upon the present realities.

From Fiction to Actual Pedagogy

Toshi Maruki painted the Hiroshima Panels, which are internationally known
paintings that depict Hiroshima’s tragedy. Maruki has been a strong advocate of antiwar
and antinuclear discourse since the day she saw the tragedy with her own eyes. In her
article contributed to Asahi Shinbun in 1964, Maruki stressed the meaninglessness of
political ideologies, ethos, and all other discourses that have ever rationalized nuclear
armament and the use of nuclear arms. Maruki wrote:

“August 6, 1945. The day of the atomic bombing, you have destroyed
your honor, freedom, equality, philanthropy and justice with your own

hands when you dropped the bomb. The Atomic Bomb robbed hundreds
of thousands of human lives in a fraction of a second. No justice would

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ever be able to prove its righteousness, once that rationality has permitted
the use of such a weapon.”2

Maruki disallowed any justifications that might be given to the use of nuclear armaments
in the past or in future. Furthermore, Maruki stressed the meaninglessness of any
discourse presuming to have superior moral virtues, because “the hand that pressed the
button to release the bomb upon Hiroshima had also been educated with the ethos of
freedom, equality and philanthropy”.26
Exploring the newspaper articles printed in Japan during the 19603, as we have
seen, reveals that there was increasing criticism against making the atomic bomb site into
a tourism resource. These criticisms challenged the rhetoric of JTU, JCP, and Gensuikyo
that defended the nuclear armament of Communist Bloc Nations as a peaceful force.
There contributed to be challenges to the political canon that hesitated to firmly oppose to
the nuclear armament of Western Bloc Nations for many years. Newspapers began
printing many articles arguing for the need to depoliticize Hiroshima’s tragedy when

Gensuikyo was split into two organizations—Gensuikyo and Gensuikin—along the line of

partisan politics in 1965.27

 

25 Toshi Maruki, “ 'Genbaku no zu ’ no koto: Gendai ni tsunagaru higeki,” Asahi shinbun (August
6, 1964).

26 Maruki, Ibid. It is also notable here that this question on the moral virtues is parallel to the
question on rationality posed by Theodor Adomo in his writing of 1944 in Minima Moralia.
“The idea that after this war life will continue ‘normally’ or even that culture might be
‘rebuilt’—as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its negation—is idiotic.
Millions of Jews have been murdered, and this is to be seen as an interlude and not the
catastrophe itself. What more is this culture waiting for?” Theodor Adomo, Minima
Moralia (1951; rprt., London and New York2Verso, 2005), 55.

27 The split of Gensuikyo carries significant meaning when analyzing Japan’s peace movement
around Hiroshima’s tragedy. However, it would carry us too far away from the purpose of this paper is
intended to introduce this issue in detail. In the interest of clarify in this chapter’s argument, we may leave
the details to other researches available in the field. For the details of sociopolitical atmosphere of this split,
consult Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Note (1965; rprt., New York: Grove Press, 1996).

178

When Gensuikyo moved its World Conference from Hiroshima to Tokyo in
protest to Hiroshima’s inviting the Crown Prince to its Peace Ceremony of 1960, Taro
Okamoto ridiculed them, saying “Hiroshima has turned into a platform for a bizarre
comedy in which people clown around in the name of the atomic bomb.”28 The party
politics causing the split of the antinuclear movement called forth many criticisms. More
notably, however, these criticisms brought a new awareness to the national public sphere,
revealing that it had been both oblivious and ignorant of the tragedies experienced by
Hiroshima’s people.29 This awareness became the ground to call the pedagogy for
transmitting the ethos of Hiroshima to the national public sphere in the mid-19603 as an
opposition to the politicized representation of Hiroshima’s tragedy.

This opposition came from both Hiroshima’s local public sphere and Japan’s
national public sphere. These different public spheres, simultaneously yet independently,
generated pedagogy—a way to teach about Hiroshima and the city’s experience of the
atomic bombing—that aimed to push forward Hiroshima’s ethos. For the moment, let us
look closely into the pedagogy built in each public sphere before turning to the analysis

of pedagogical representation of Hiroshima’s tragedy as a historical event.

I: Hiroshima’s Pedagogy: Exposition to Exhibition

 

2" Taro Okamoto, “Hiroshima '63 (ge)? Asahi shinbun (August 4, 1963).

29 For example, in an editorial of Asahi shinbun on August 6, 1965 explicitly cautioned that the
Japanese people had been both oblivious and ignorant of the atomic bombing. The editorial then argued
that they (the Japanese people) must commit to serious self-criticism for having failed to understand the
realities of Hiroshima’s tragedy for two decades after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

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There were 215 cities throughout Japan that had experienced air raid attacks by
the end of the war. The nation’s concerted war effort was turned immediately towards
reconstructing the nation from war ruins, once the defeat concluded the war. Hiroshima,
however, had implemented a plan to preserve the war devastation in order to make it into
a tourism resource. Yet, like other cities in Japan, the people of Hiroshima were also in
favor of removing war ruins to make way for reconstruction. The 1947 City in Brief of
Hiroshima, for example, listed more than a dozen buildings and bridges as potential sites
for preservation in order to memorialize the atomic bombing. Thel953 City in Brief,
however, had only the ruins of Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Hall (later became
known as the Atomic Dome) and Hiroshima Castle on its list. They were both on
government property, and thus they escaped complete removal.

Today, the Atomic Dome stands as a symbol of Hiroshima’s tragedy, and of
global peace. However, we should note here that there were strong voices against
preserving Hiroshima’s ruins—including the Atomic Dome—throughout early postwar
years. In particular, the Atomic Dome stands at the heart of the city. Therefore, there
were voices characterizing the ruin as the giant gravestone constantly reminding the
people of the tragic memories they wish to forget.30 Like Japan’s national public sphere,
it seems Hiroshima’s people were also in favor of forgetting the tragic memories of the
past by way of emphasizing the present reconstruction and the future, in early postwar
years.

Yet, Hiroshima’s reconstruction was not easy because the bomb devastated the

whole city. Hence, in 1949, the national government passed legislation to channel special

 

3° “Chinmoku shitai hibakusha,” Yomiuri shinbun (August 6, 1965).

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funding to reconstruct Hiroshima as “the City of Peace”. The 1949 City in Brief openly
stated the plan to make the whole city into tourism resource. The City of Hiroshima,
upon receiving the special funding, thus drafted a blueprint to build “the Memorial
Monument for Hiroshima, City of Peace (the Cenotaph)” and what later became the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The actual construction for both projects began in
1951, and the Cenotaph was completed the next year. The museum then opened its doors
in August 1955, and it exhibited “materials such as tiles and other items from the disaster
which had been subjected to intense heat rays and had important historical significance as
silent witnesses to what happened in Hiroshima.”3 ’
In his visit to Hiroshima to participate in the Ninth World Conference of
Gensuikyo in 1963, Kenzaburo Oe, later became a Novel Prize winner, witnessed the
detachment of Hiroshima’s people from the Peace March and other ceremonies that were
to commemorate the tragedy. In Hiroshima Note, Oe quoted Hiroshima’s Mayor, Shinzo
Hamai, who spoke of the need for a new peace movement that comes from Hiroshima’s
experiences, as:
“Whatever course is taken hereafter, there can be no peace movement that
disregards the original spirit of Hiroshima. I think it is time to break off
all relations with the Jappn Council against A- and H-bombs and to begin a
new peace movement.
The mayor’s statement suggests that both the people and the city of Hiroshima were fed

up with the failure to transmit the ethos of Hiroshima (the original spirit of Hiroshima)

into the people who had not experienced the bomb.

 

3 ' Yoshiteru Kosakai, Hiroshima Peace Reader (1980; rprt., Hiroshima: Hiroshima Peace Culture
Foundation, 2002), 52.

32 Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Note, 53.

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The conscious desire to save Hiroshima fiom politicization has pushed the city to
actively exhibit the memories of the bomb and the tragedy it brought, instead of simply
exposing what the city has preserved. The ruin of Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Hall
had been left standing on the bank of Motoyasu River, but the city assembly passed a
resolution on July 11, 1966 to actively preserve the ruin as the Atomic Dome, to
commemorate the bomb’s destructive power. This resolution was particularly pivotal
because it came with the Mayor’s initiative to organize a national fund-raising campaign
to make reinforcement work to permanently preserve the ruin. The permanent
preservation of the ruin is notable transition in the way Hiroshima had come to deal with
its memory, and the fundraising made the preservation efforts not only the work of
Hiroshima but also national and international proj ects.33

In the 1967 Hiroshima Peace Declaration, Mayor Setsuo Yamada of Hiroshima
stressed that the world should share the duty to remember Hiroshima’s tragedy.34 It was
the first time the Peace Declaration emphasized the responsibility of remembering
Hiroshima to the people around the world. He stressed in the statement, “Eloignment
(removal) from sight begets oblivion.” 35 Thus the City of Hiroshima and the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum began organizing a traveling exhibition from this year to
actively present the realities of the tragedy to the people residing outside of Hiroshima.

The preservation of Hiroshima’s tragedy was initially thought of as tourism resource,

 

33 The fundraising accumulated over 66,000,000 yen from all over Japan. Yet, there were
donations sent also from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, India and England. The
reinforcement was completed in 1967, and the long abandoned ruin became known as the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial; better known today as Genbaku Dome (A-bomb Dome).

3’ Shinzo Hamai (The Mayor of Hiroshima), “Declaration for Peace” (Public Address, Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1967).

35 Shinzo Hamai, Ibid., parenthesis mine.

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because many soldiers and the people of the Occupation Force had been visiting
Hiroshima to see the city that had been destroyed by the atomic bomb.36

Sukeharu Morihito, the Director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, said
after the traveling exhibit in Tokyo that he was astonished to learn that people in Tokyo
knew almost nothing about Hiroshima’s tragedy.37 The six-day traveling exhibit had over
50,000 visitors in Tokyo. A college student of Kawasaki wrote that the exhibit should
travel also to the nations that possess nuclear weapons. He stressed, “if the people
supporting nuclear armament saw [the traveling exhibition], there would be rekindled the
same kind of humanity and compassion that made them take a stand against the
Holocaust after the Second World War.”38

In Hiroshima, it was not only the city but also the people who took active roles to
pass down their experiences of the bomb to the next generations. In the 19703, teachers
who were survivors themselves of the atomic bomb began taking initiative to organize
Peace Education as a part of the school curriculum. In the national assembly of the 1969
Japan Teacher’s Union in Kumamoto, teachers from Hiroshima warned that the memory

of atomic bombing was waning even among Hiroshima’s school-age children?9 Akira

 

’6 The City of Hiroshima, for example, had issued a booklet with ten images of Hiroshima’s ruins
in 1947 as a way to attract visitors to the city. The booklet is titled “Hibaku Jukkei (ten sights of atomic
bombing)”, and the organizational body for planning the peace celemony (Heiwasai kyokai) published it.
Heiwasai Kyokai, Hibakujukkei (Hiroshima: Heiwasai Kyokai, 1947).

37 “Wakai sedai ni ikari to odoroki,” Asahi shinbun (September 11, 1967).
38 Yazaki, “Kaku motsu kuniguni nimo ‘Genbakuten ’ wo,” Asahi shinbun (September 13, 1967).

39 Teachers who had themselves experienced the atomic bombing organized “Heiwa kyoiku
bunkakai (Subcommittee on Peace Education)” in Hiroshima Teacher’s Union. This subcommittee
emphasized the importance of preserving the memories of atomic bombing and other wartime experiences
to prevent the occurrence of another war in Japan. In 1969, the subcommittee made a decision to put
particular emphasis on their atomic bomb experiences to oppose the nuclear armaments and the
international race to develop nuclear armaments. For further details, see: Takashi Hiraoka (former Mayor
of Hiroshima), Kibo no Hiroshima: Shicho wa uttaeru (Tokyo: lwanami, 1996). Furthermore, the

183

Ishida, the director of the surviving teacher’s association recalled, Hiroshima’s peace
education grew from the teachers explaining to their students about their keloid scar left
permanent markers of their horrific experiences of the atomic bomb.

It is notable that both the people and the city of Hiroshima made concerted efforts
to resurrect the experiences of the atomic bomb in the public sphere. We can understand
from here that the memory of Hiroshima’s tragedy began losing ground seriously within
a mere quarter century after the atomic bombing. This attrition was serious enough even
in Hiroshima’s public sphere; and thus there were efforts to launch peace education as a
way to prevent further loss of knowledge about their past. In response to this reality,
Hiroshima has transformed its ruins into pedagogy to emphasize the importance of peace.
Instead of being weary of war and/or simply negating wars in general, the negation of
forgetting the war tragedies became the central discourse for peace pedagogy in

Hiroshima’s public sphere.

II. National Pedagogy: Turning Perspectives

a. Peace Movement and the Nation’s Past
Let us now return to the point where we left off by exploring the political tension
developed around TMCS in Japan. Many intellectuals were observing the protests

against TMCS and its losing support. Keiichi Matsushita was a political scientist

 

subcommittee’s efforts to develop peace education created a textbook on peace education. This textbook
was revised several times, but it became the ground for teaching Hiroshima’s atomic bombing experiences
in Japan until 19803. See, Hiroshima heiwa kyoiku kyozai henshu iinkai, ed., Hiroshima: Genbaku wo
kangaeru (Hiroshima: Hiroshime heiwa kyoiku shuppanbu, 1969).

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observing both development and decline of the protest.40 Matsushita then identified the
primary cause of the protest’s decline was the alienation of the populace to the partisan
politics behind TMCS protests."l

The early 19603, indeed, saw many civic movements emerging in Japan. These
civic movements stayed well away from TMCS protests even though they were also
pressing the contention for peace. The Japan “Peace for Vietnam!” Committee
(Beheiren) was one of those civic movements. Beheiren grew into one of the centripetal
civic organizations; it was perhaps the most pivotal movement for peace in Japan
throughout the 19603 and the 19703.42 It is notable, however, that Beheiren had neither
the organizational constitution nor the list of members. Beheiren was formed as such in
negation to the partisan politics that alienated TMCS protests from their initial goal—
desire for peace by opposing war and anything that poses threat of war. Therefore,
Beheiren kept its organizational structure loose in order to bring together anyone,
regardless of their political and national affiliations, so long as they opposed the war in
Vietnam. In this respect, we can place Beheiren as a successor to the previous peace

movements in Japan’s national public sphere; and thus we will inquire more carefully

 

‘0 Keiichi Matsushita, Shimin seiji iron no keisei (Tokyo: lwanami, 1959); Sengo Minshushugi no
tenbo (Tokyo: Nihon hyoron sha, 1965); and Sengo seiji no rekishi to shiso (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1994). There
are also other scholars who were studying the TMCS protest in the midst of the protest movement. See,
Takesaburo Ide, ed., Anpo toso (Tokyo: Sanichi shobo, 1960).

4‘ For example, Momo Iida, who was ousted from the Japan Communist Party in 1965, openly
condemned the partisan politics that had distorted the mass movements for peace. Memo Iida, “Shiminteki
minshushugi undou no ronri to rinri,” Shiryo Beheiren undo II (1965; rprt., Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha,
1974), 24-35.

’2 Beheiren was a civic organization established immediately following the US. bombing of North
Vietnam. The organization inherited the fundamental principle of peace that was initially stressed in
TMCS protests.

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into Beheiren in order to discover the fundamental ideas of peace and the pedagogy to
deliver peace embedded in and developed through the Beheiren movement.
Beheiren introduced its organizational principle in its very first public statement.
Minoru Oda, one of the leading organizers of Beheiren, stressed in this statement:
“We say only this: ‘Peace in Vietnam! ’ This is not just our voice. This is
the voice of the majority in the world. This is the voice of the human

race... This voice may be small now, but the echo will be heard
worldwide, even in the United States, China and of course in Vietnam.”4

3
Beheiren created many publications, leaflets and appeals, and made a consistent
statement similar to the one quoted here. Furthermore, Beheiren emphasized repeatedly
that it was the organization and the movement of ordinary people and of ordinary citizens.
The organizational principle of Beheiren emphasizing the movement for and of ordinary
people was, however, not merely a statement to negate the partisan politics. In fact, we
can see that it was also an embodiment of the belief in Beheiren that the human desire for
peace “is transcendentally common to all people across different nationalities and ethnic
groups.”44

This transcendental humanism (or universal humanism) assumed in the Beheiren
movement should not be taken lightly. It is neither important nor useful to raise a
problem that no humanism has ever attained universal consensus. The primary issue here
is the fact that peace was assumed to carry transcendental value to all humans in Japan’s

national public sphere, which was fully behind the war only fifteen years ago. It is also

implied here that the nations (and people) waging wars are enemies of humanity when

 

’3 Minoru Oda, “Yobikake,” Shiryo Beheiren undo II (1965; rprt., Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha,
1974), 5.

4’ Minoru Oda, “Sekai e hiraku undo wo,” Shiryo Beheiren undo II (1965; rprt., Tokyo: Kawade
Shobo Shinsha, 1974), 13.

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they violate peace, which was supposed to be a universal value of humanity. From these
points, we can see that there was an absolute negation to the nation’s past war at the
starting point of Beheiren movement in Japan.
However, Momo Iida stressed when he was ousted from Japan’s Communist

Party: “Japanese people have the advantage to elevate peace that comes from our tragic
experiences of the atomic bombing.”45 Furthermore, in Heikintekijinrui no negai (Wishes
of ordinary humankind), a science fiction writer and an active supporter of Beheiren,
Sakyo Komatsu, wrote of the meaninglessness of political and ideological explanations of
war’s rationality. Komatsu recalled the moment he felt both political and ideological
slogans meant nothing, when he was standing in the middle of war ruins, as:

“The fire showered down from the sky and houses were burned down.

Skin burned and girders impaled children. Crops perished. People ran

dodging the bombs. They were ourselves. They were our families. And

they were our loved ones. They were our parents and grandparents who

had crawled on the burning field trying to flee from the bombs.”46
Komatsu wrote what is quoted here with mixed verb-tense (original in Japanese) as a
technique to make the readers to juxtapose their parents who were bombed in the
immediate past and the victims in Vietnam who were being bombed in the present. It is
visible here that Komatsu intended in this statement to bring solidarity between war
victims both in the past and the present, as well as the solidarity between war victims
both in Japan and in Vietnam. The readers were asked to resurrect their past memories of

the war to evoke the imagination of the people in Vietnam who were undergoing the

same experiences of air raid attacks in the present.

 

45 Momo Iida, “Shiminteki minshushugi undou no ronri to rinri,” 25.

’6 Sakyo Komatsu, “Heikintekijinrui no negai,” Shiryo Beheiren undo II (1966; rprt., Tokyo:
Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1974), 135.

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Both statements, instead of ignoring the nation’s past war, resurrected the wartime
memory to encourage transnational and trans-historical solidarity of the people against
war. This solidarity was promoted on the grounds of war victims and their experiences in
order to construct the people’s opposition, across political, ideological and national
solidarity against war. Hence, the antiwar pedagogy constructed in Japan’s national
public sphere made assumptions regarding the universality of humanism transcendental
to any political, ideological and national frameworks. More importantly, this pedagogy
for transcendental humanism for building antiwar solidarity was not a product of
forgetting the past war. Instead, this antiwar pedagogy was built upon the memories of
the wartime tragedies. Moreover, it also suggests that the wartime tragedies were not
localized experience in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were nationally shared
experiences of the Second World War. However, this antiwar pedagogy and its absolute
negation of all war suggest that the remembrance of the war was built mostly on the
grounds of the people’s personal wartime experiences as war victims. In other words, we
can understand from the antiwar pedagogy and its emphasis on assumed universal
humanism that Japan’s national public sphere had consciousness of the war not as

national experience but primarily as individual human experience.

b. Extending Universal Humanism

The universal humanism assumed in Japan’s antiwar sentiment was the product of
highlighting the remembrance of the past war and the tragedies it brought to the people.
Emphasizing universal humanism was also a product of an active departure of Japan’s

peace movement from partisan politics, which had turned peace into a conditional goal

188

and divided the discourse for peace along the line of party politics. At the same time, we
have seen that this assumed universal humanism for peace was built upon the experiences
of individual war victims. Japan’s antiwar pedagogy, as we discovered, defined war in
general as the primary perpetrator of all wartime tragedies. This antiwar pedagogy in
Japan’s national public sphere is, at a glance, similar to the one in Hiroshima’s public
sphere. They both aimed to reinstate the remembrance of wartime tragedies—tragedies
experienced throughout the nation and tragedies of atomic bombings—in order to bring
forward absolute negation of wars and nuclear armament.

However, Beheiren and its movement made a pivotal development when the
United States began bombing North Vietnam in March 1965. The Vietnam War gave
opportunity to the Japanese to link their wartime experiences to the ongoing experiences
of the Vietnamese. Responding to the US. bombing of North Vietnam, Minoru Oda
drafted the Proposed Principle for Peace in 1966 in order to push the Beheiren movement
forward to reify its opposition to the war in Vietnam. This proposed principle is a very
long statement. However, it is useful to quote some portion of it here in order to illustrate
the impacts of the Vietnam War in reshaping the notion of peace in Japan’s public scene.
This transformed notion of peace, I argue, made the most pivotal impact in framing the
way the Japanese remembered Hiroshima’s tragedy, and thus it is worthwhile to examine
the notion of peace reified in the Proposed Principle for Peace.

The principle exposes a critical shift in the relationship between Japan’s general
populace and their war responsibility. It is clearly emphasized here that wars make
individual citizens not only the victims but also the perpetrators of war violence.

There are photographs of the cruel acts in Vietnam, and we see pitiful
images of victims. Yet, my eyes also find the hands that are perpetrating

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the cruel acts in the photographs... Those hands could perhaps be my
hands... The state (nation-state) ordered us to fire bullets against our will.
Having been unprepared to launch a firm opposition against such an order,
I may end up shooting the bullets (by obeying the order of the state). Then,
I will be violating my own firndamentals principles (to not kill other
human beings). In this respect, I am a victim of the nation-state. However,
in the eyes of the people who became victims of my bullets, I am nothing
but a perpetrator. The Vietnam War exposed us to this complex
mechanism (of war). 47
It must be noted here that this statement deconstructs the dichotomized structure that
categorizes individuals into victims and perpetrators when building a consciousness of
war and war violence.

We should, however, notice here also that this deconstruction was limited to the
dichotomy between individual victims and individual perpetrators of war and war
violence. Through deconstructing the dichotomy, this statement made the nation-state
institution into the ultimate perpetrator forcing its citizens to violate their own
fundamental principles. The statement positioned the nation-states reserving war as a
sovereign right are, in fact, also reserving the rights to force the citizens to bring war
violence to other people. In this respect, we can recognize that a different dichotomy was
emphasized when deconstructing the dichotomy between individual victims and
individual perpetrators of war violence. Making the nation-state institution into the
ultimate perpetrator, universal humanism is positioned as a counterpart that is
fundamentally innocent and antagonistic to nation-state institutions.

From this antagonism to the nation-state institution, Oda emphasized civil

disobedience as rational and righteous course of action to challenge the nation-state

institution that violates the fundamental principles of individual citizens. The civil

 

‘7 Minoru Oda, “Heiwa e no gutaiteki teigen,” Shiryo Beheiren undo I] (August 1966; rprt., Tokyo: Kawade
Shobo Shinsha, 1974), 108-110.

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disobedience argued here was, however, transcendental beyond nation-state boundaries
because it came from the antagonism to all nation-states that reserve the right of
belligerence. In this respect, we can find that civil disobedience against wars assumes the
global citizenship as the reality on grounds of the same assumed universal humanism
against war. In the proposed principle for peace, Oda exemplified civil disobedience that
goes beyond nation-state borders to take action to stop the Vietnam War, as:
Japan may be a victim of the United States. The Japanese government
thinks that they cannot say anything firmly to oppose the United States.
As such, Japan is indeed a victim of the United States. However, Japan’s
inaction makes Japan a perpetrator against the people in Vietnam.
Japanese citizens may be victims of their nation-state because individual
persons have no choice but to take a part in what their state has decided to
do (or not to do). However, because we take a part in our nation-state, we
are, by association, perpetrators against the people in Vietnam. 48
Individual persons are victims of their state when the state makes war and/or when the
state does little to abolish all wars. Yet, as stated in the principle for peace, individual
citizens are, so long as they are part of the nation that permits war as a sovereign rights
and/or does nothing about ongoing wars, perpetrators against the people who are on the
receiving end of war violence.
Japan, as a nation-state, was not a direct participant in the Vietnam War, but
TMCS tied Japan to the presence of the United States in Asia. Therefore, TMCS made
Japan indirect participant of the Vietnam War. The Japanese, who failed to make firm
opposition to the ongoing war in Vietnanr, were reminded that they were perpetrators by

silently approving Japan’s supporting the US. carrying out the war in Vietnam. Building

upon this principle for peace, Beheiren pushed the idea that Japan and the Japanese

 

‘3 Minoru Oda, Ibid., 109-110.

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people were guilty of the present war in Vietnam even though Japan was not directly
involved in the war.

In order to free us from being a perpetrator of war violence, Beheiren repeatedly
emphasized the need for the horizontal solidarity of individual citizens across nation-state
boundaries. The horizontal solidarity was thought necessary to make transnational
opposition against war and the nation-states that wage war because war makes individual
people into victims of their states. Many leading activists in Beheiren movement
followed Oda’s proposed principle for peace. Yoshiyuki Tsutsumi, who was one of the
intellectual giants throughout the Beheiren movement, stressed that Beheiren was a
unique and significant movement because it succeeded in promoting civil disobedience in
pursuit peace beyond nation-state boundaries.49

From what has been discussed above, we can understand that the nation-states,
because they make war to resolve international conflicts, became the ultimate perpetrator
of all wars. Thus, we can again confirm here the rationale in which the nation-states

became a target of both criticism and antagonism in Japan’s national public sphere.50 In

 

49 Yoshiyuki Tsurumi, “Nihon kokumin to shiteno dannen: ‘Kokka ’ no kokuhuku wo ikani heiwa undo ni
kesshuu suru ka,” Shiryo Beheiren undo I] (September 1967; rprt., Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1974),
242-253. In fact, the Beheiren movement also applied the deconstructed dichotomy between individual
victims and individual perpetrators to the American soldiers in the Vietnam War. On grounds of universal
humanism, Beheiren emphasized that individual American soldiers were also victims of their nation-state
because they were forced to fight in the war between the nations and make violence against other human
beings. Even though individual soldiers who were bombing Vietnam and who were thus immediate
perpetrators against the Vietnamese people, the principle for peace recognized them also as victims of the
war and their nation-state.

so We may briefly note here, in passing, that the Japan Technical Committee for Assistance to US.
Anti-War Deserters (JATEC), which was a semi-underground organization affiliated with (or part of) the
Beheiren movement. JATEC was similarly organized and functioned like the Underground Railroad of the
American past. It had no substantial organizational structure, and it had no list of members. JATEC was
made of ordinary citizens and very few members knew each other. And there was no person who knew of
the whole organizational body of JATEC. JATEC members were the people who carried out an
underground operation to help American soldiers abandon their military duties. JATEC did that to help
American soldiers flee from their nation-state (the United States) that forced violence against the people in
Vietnam. The war deserters became heroes, to some degree, in Japan’s national public sphere because they

192

this respect, the antiwar movement constructed pedagogy that pushed individual Japanese
to accept their war responsibility in both past and- present wars by way of highlighting
horizontal solidarity of human victims of war and the nation that makes war. However,
this deconstruction has led to strengthen universal humanism even more when the nation-
state institution has been presented as the ultimate perpetrator that brings violence to all
persons. In other words, Japan’s antiwar pedagogy continued to identijy no real
perpetrator of war and war violence. Instead, we began to see the abstract entity like the
nation-state institution become the target of criticism as the perpetrator of all wars and

war violence in Japan’s national public sphere.

War Stories and the Abstract Perpetrator

Many war stories were published when Beheiren stressed peace and universal
humanism against war, to break away from partisan politics and its distortion of Japan’s
peace movement. This period, in particular, saw many war stories published in the form
of manga (graphic novels). Children and youth were the primary audience of manga

media, and thus we can understand that war stories were published with some

 

were the actors who stood against the nation-state oppression of their individual liberty not to kill. In fact,
JATEC sent the US. war deserters as far as Northern European countries to avoid the prosecuting hand of
the United States. Furthermore, at the time of the Vietnam War, Japan had a very small number of
foreigners. JATEC and its underground operations were, therefore, only possible because there were
substantial numbers of Japanese who volunteered to risk harboring American war deserters in their private
homes.

JATEC itself is worth exploring in detail. However, its fuller study lies outside of what can be
accomplished in this study. No substantial study is available in the English language to illuminate JATEC
and its operation because of the organization’s secrecy in operation. The organizational structure is still
unknown, and there are very little publications to illustrate JATEC in details. For earlier testimonies and
memoirs of JATEC participants, see, Shigeru Sekitani and Yoshie Sakamoto eds, T onari ni dasso hei ga
itajidai: Aru shimin undo no kiroku (Tokyo: Shiso no kagaku sha, 1985); Taketomo Takahashi,
Watashitachi wa dasso amerika hei wo ekkyo saseta: Beheiren/JA T E C saigo no mitsu shukkoku sakusen no
kaisou (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 2007).

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pedagogical intent to transfer the wartime experiences to the generations who had not
experienced the war firsthand. War and wartime experiences depicted in manga,

therefore, offer a substantial resource to understand what has been deemed important

when narrating the war in the public sphere.

 

 

 

Bar-A rm _rn-~r-n-~—-3a
Figure 5:1. Tezuka Osamu depicting the air ral Snacks?l
Osamu Tezuka, for example, is one of the most known manga-artists of all time.
He survived the war, and much of his work has a consistent antiwar theme. Though
small in number, some of Tezuka’s work explicitly illustrates the Second World War. He
gave the most vivid and direct depiction of the war in his short piece, Canon, which was

first published in 1974. In this story, Tezuka reserved one filth of the pages to capturing

 

5’ Tezuka Osamu, "Canon," in Canon (1974; rprt., Tokyo: Daitosha, 1989), 15 and 18.

194

the air raid attack that killed a teacher and all classmates of the main character (Figure
5:1). We can notice that Tezuka illustrated the death brought by the air raid attacks as an
abrupt interruption to ordinary life, and this interruption transformed human beings into
inanimate objects. Through the voice of the main character, Tezuka described the teacher
who was killed by machinegun fire as splattered watermelon.52 Clearly, Tezuka
illustrated the air raid attacks as the act of wanton cruelty against human beings in order

to, in his short piece, press his strong opposition to war.

 

Figure 5: 2. Depiction of the A- bomb victims in Aru Wakusei no Higekr

 

’2 Metaphorically describing the dead as inanimate objects is similarly found 1n the narratives of
Hiroshima survivors describing the dead. See chapter 3 for details.

5’ Asaoka, Mitsushi (graphic) and Tatsuo Kusaka (story). Aru wakusei no higeki: Zai
Tokyo/Hiroshima ni okeru hibakusha no kiroku (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1969), 42-43.

195

There is, however, another point to observe here. Contrary to his vivid and
explicit illustration of the war victims and the violence they experienced, Tezuka gave no
clear illustration to depict the actors perpetrating the war violence. The fighter planes
shooting machineguns at the students in schoolyard, as well as the bomber planes
dropping the bombs, were illustrated only with a silhouette. Unlike comic books, manga
has a distinctive narrative technique, which uses detailed graphical illustration to support
storytelling. This technique is much like storyboarding in movie making, but manga
authors give far more detailed illustrations. Hence, drawing the actors that brought war
violence in silhouette should be understood as the manga author’s conscious act to keep

the identity of those who perpetrated war violence in abstraction.

 

 

 

            

Figure 5:3. Scenes from Barefoot Gen I
They are two different scenes depicting the victims of the atomic bomb54

Not only Tezuka but also most other manga-authors illustrated the actors of war

violence without any details. Hiroshima’s tragedy was also published as a manga-style

 

5‘ Keiji Nakazawa, Hadashi no Gen: Aizoban (1973; rprt., Tokyo: Shobunsha, 1988), vol. 2, 2 and
66.

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narrative in the late 19603 to the 19703. Koji Asaoka, for example, transcribed the
testimony of a Hiroshima survivor into manga—style narrative in Am wakusei no higeki (A
planet '3 trageay) in 1969 (Figure 5:2). Keiji Nakazawa illustrated his own experience of
Hiroshima’s atomic bombing and its aftermath in Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) in
1972. In their narratives, both authors gave intensely detailed descriptions of the victims
of the atomic bombing and their experiences (Figure 5:3). However, similar to other war
narratives published during this period in Japan, they described nothing about the actors

who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

 

 

 

 

 

 

.~ .A
Figure 5:4. Scene rom H

An individual hesitating to volunteer for Kamikaze mission is pressured to volunteer in
this scene.

 

55 Keiji Nakazawa, Hadashi no Gen: Aizoban (1973; rprt., Tokyo: Shobunsha, 1988), vol. 1, 150.

197

Identifying no real adversary forces in narrating war violence suggests that the
narratives did not intend to push blame on any particular subjects for the war violence.
This is not the same as saying that the Japanese thought of war violence as inevitable, as
those caused by the nature. Instead, manga authors place blame for war violence on
abstract subjects behind war, such as military factions, nation-state institutions, and the
masses that have uncritically accepted the war. In Hadashi no Gen, for example,
Nakazawa opened his narrative by describing the harassment the central character and his
family experienced during the war because of his father’s open war opposition.
Nakazawa presented his open criticism of those people who were uncritical of the
nation’s war by illustrating their harassing the main character and his family, and by
painting those people’s faces with ugliness and slyness (Figure 5:4).

There are a small number of illustrations of the wartime enemy—Americans, in
particular—in manga-style narratives of war violence. In Nakazawa’s narrative, there is
a scene in which the survivors of the atomic bomb are beating the corpse of an American
P.O.W., who also died in the atomic bombing. Nakazawa illustrated the agony of A—
bomb victims who were beating the corpse of the American soldier who was also the
victim of the bomb. Yet, the main character could not join in beating the corpse even
though he runs to the body intending to beating it. Through the voice of the main
character, Nakazawa depicts the emptiness of blaming enemies because they were also
made victims by their own nation’s act of war.56 Moreover, in his semi-autographical

narrative, Tezuka similarly illustrated the scene in which the mob was beating an

 

’6 There are many testimonies of Hiroshima’s survivors mentioning this American P.O.W. Many
of those testimonies are archived at The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims,
which is located within the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima, Japan.

198

American pilot who died in a plane crash while bombing one of the cities in Japan.
Tezuka, through the main character in the story, runs to whack the pilot whose bomb
killed his classmates and burned his girlfi'iend’s face. Yet, when he sees the pilot whose

face has been rendered grotesque by beating, Tezuka abandons his fury. Instead, he

becomes troubled about whom he should blame for the war and its violence (Figure 5:5).

 

 

 

a
a,

‘ -_.- W (6 .,
: 1 .7 l. I" ‘1‘, . v
" 1-,/ k 3

Figure 5:5. A Scene from Kamino Toride”
The main character, Tezuka himself, was unable to strike the American pilot. Then, he
left the scene wondering whom to be blamed for the war.

  
   

   

 

We can notice here that manga authors highlighted human suffering when
constructing the awareness that war makes victims on both sides. On grounds of such

human suffering, the fury against enemies and perpetrators loses its impetus; instead, the

 

’7 Osamu Tezuka, “Kami no toride,” in "Sense manga " kessakusen (1974; rprt., Tokyo:
Shoudensha, 2007), 41-42.

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fury targets the war and the people who are uncritical of war. In Tezuka’s narrative, he
depicts the people who were whacking the American pilot with ugliness and slyness, and
Nakazawa depicts the people who were uncritical of the war in the same manner.
Through introspectively narrating the war, they target their criticism of the war itself
because it transformed the people into uncritically perpetrators of violence against each
other.

Furthermore, they do not make wartime enemies into the target of reproach for
bringing war violence to the Japanese. Instead, Nakazawa and other manga-authors bring
their criticisms to the uncritical populace that, directly and indirectly, supported the
nation’s war and its constructing of victims. The point to observe here is that Nakazawa,
Tezuka and other manga-authors illustrate the war from the perspective of victims while
their illustration does not point out enemies as the perpetrator of war violence. Instead,
the perpetrators were themselves—the general populace—who participated in the
nation’s war whether they were active participants or not.

Through emphasizing their wartime experiences from the perspective of victims,
it is notable that manga-authors depicted their wartime experiences beyond the
dichotomy between victims and their perpetrators. There is absolute negation to war in
general, and the general populace being identified as the perpetrators of their own
experiences in the Second World War. Making absolute opposition to the war when
delivering the stories of war tragedies is common in both the nation’s and Hiroshima’s
pedagogy. These pedagogies aimed to prevent the loss of wartime experiences being able
to bring forward the absolute negation to war and atomic bombing. Yet, Japan’s national

public sphere shaped its antiwar pedagogy that is actively identifying the populace not

200

only as war victims but also as war perpetrators. Emphasizing their own participation as
war perpetrators is a pivotal shift of the antiwar pedagogy that teaches wartime
experiences to the future generations.

This pedagogical shift brought the deconstruction of the dichotomy between
victims and their perpetrators in Japan’s national public sphere; and we need to note that
behind this deconstruction was the universal humanism assumed in Japan’s peace
movement. The pedagogy, which stressed the remembrance of war violence, therefore,
constructed in Japan’s national public sphere active negation to (1) the people’s uncritical
participation to the nation’s war in the past, (2) the people’s uncritical inaction regarding
the ongoing war in the present, and (3) the nation—state institution itself for its reserving

war as a sovereign right.

Discussion

Throughout the chapter, we explored the variability of the meanings emphasized
in the act of commemorating the past event—in particular, the atomic bomb and other
war violence the Japanese have experienced in the Second World War. Instead of
discussing the details represented in the commemoration of war violence, this chapter
explored the process and the background in which the past event became the subject of
commemoration in Japan and its postwar public sphere.

From what has been discussed in this chapter, it is evident that the Japanese
commemorated the war and war violence to stress the postwar peace. It is also observed

that, despite a consistent emphasis on the peace, the commemoration did not produce a

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consistent meaning from what happened in the past. While the commemoration of the
past events (namely war violence) has been ceaselessly practiced in postwar Japan, the
meanings emphasized when the past event is commemorated in the public sphere have
shown dynamic transformations over time. Through exploring the different meanings
emphasized while consistently stressing peace, this chapter has explored the roles
assigned to the public commemoration of past events. From this inquiry, one general
point has become evident: that is, that public commemoration is fundamentally
pedagogical, for it shapes a particular understanding of past happenings to align the past
into the context of the present. To put this in other words, the public commemoration is
pedagogical because it sorts out diverse and complex experiences of equally diverse and
complex persons to shape a collective remembrance regarding what happened around the
past event.

This chapter, in particular, traced the public commemoration of Hiroshima’s
tragedy and other war violence in Japan’s postwar public sphere. Subsequently, as
mentioned above, we have identified that, while the public commemoration consistently
emphasized peace, the commemoration did not promote a consistent meaning of peace.
In this respect, we can safely say that the notion of peace has never been concrete. In fact,
this chapter demonstrates that peace has been a fluid notion in postwar Japan, and thus
what constitutes peace has shifted repeatedly in response to how the Japanese have
understood their past in respect to their present sociopolitical conditions.

The previous chapter illustrates that people have commemorated the atomic bomb
tragedy in Hiroshima’s local public sphere to bemoan their personal and instantaneous

loss. The commemoration was to remember the past loss, and it was like many other

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commemorations of natural disasters at first. In opposition to the nation’s taking any
future roles in war, Hiroshima’s tragedy entered into Japan’s national public sphere
symbolizing what could happen in war. Hiroshima’s tragedy served as one of the most
effective reminders to the Japanese people of the war devastations brought about by the
US, and it reflected the public fear of the nation’s alliance with the United States and the
US. military presence in Japan and Asia. This commemorating of Hiroshima’s tragedy
had its pedagogy of maintaining the postwar peace (or celebrating the condition in which
they are not in war) at first when the commemoration entered the national public sphere.
However, when the US. military presence became the present reality and the wartime
realities became lost in the lights of Japan’s rapid national reconstruction, the pedagogy
began losing its impact.

Through exploring the public discourses in early postwar Japan, this chapter
identifies that the Japanese people understood of the peace as an attained condition at first.
The war had ended, and thus they were already in peace. Therefore, the
commemoration’s subject—war and war violence—became things of the past, and the
details of wartime experiences were quickly forgotten in the present. This chapter thus
demonstrates that the commemoration of Hiroshima’s tragedy had quickly turned into a
mere habitual exercise in Japan’s national public sphere. The commemoration site
became a tourist destination, and the commemoration’s subject became a political tool for
the present partisan politics. These phenomena expose the fact that Hiroshima’s tragedy
had once faced oblivion in spite of the magnitude of casualties and/or the ongoing

practice of commemoration.

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Therefore, when the City of Hiroshima aimed to resist the oblivion, in the public’s
mind, of the tragedy brought by the atomic bombing, and when Beheiren launched a new
movement for peace, it began from reinstatement of pedagogy that would build active
and collective remembrance of what happened in the past. Hiroshima’s traveling exhibit,
for example, sought to build active negation to nuclear armament and war by way of
actively preserving the remembrance of war tragedies. Beheiren’s introducing the new
notion of peace, transcending the dichotomy between victims and their perpetrators, has
transformed the commemoration of Hiroshima’s tragedy and other war violence to bring
active negation to ongoing war outside of the people’s immediate public sphere.
However, each approach has shaped different meanings, and meanings that are different
from how Hiroshima’s tragedy had been commemorated at first in Hiroshima’s local
public sphere. From this inquiry, we can confirm that Hiroshima’s tragedy had been
understood differently even though the commemoration has consistently been practiced,
to promote peace, at the same site since the end of the Second World War to the present.

This chapter also highlights the assumption of universal humanism in Japan’s
postwar peace movements. The earlier pedagogy, in commemorating the war tragedies,
focused primarily on highlighting the war tragedies brought to the Japanese a3 a result of
the Second World War. When evaluating war from the perspective of victims and their
personal loss, and when being oblivious to their recent past in which they had actively
supported the nation’s war efforts, it seems reasonable that the Japanese came to assume
that all persons ought to be inherently against war and war violence. This assumed
universal humanism made it true that all persons are victims of a nation’s war when

highlighting the tragedies that were brought to the people as a consequence of the war

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between nations. This new pedagogy, because war makes all persons into victims by the
nation’s war, pushed the deconstruction of the dichotomy dividing between war’s victims
and perpetrators. Thus, it also became true that all persons are perpetrators of war
violence by their uncritical allegiance to the nations that make and/or permit wars.

The awareness of war responsibility of individual persons made the Japanese
build collective remembrance about the past war in a critical light when they have
commemorated war violence brought to Japan in the past. To put this in other words, the
Japanese became more conscious of having their hands in the nation’s war, which
brought war tragedies back onto themselves. Thus, as discussed in this chapter, the
commemoration of Hiroshima’s tragedy has departed from solely emphasizing the
remembrance of tragedies brought by the war. Instead, the commemoration called for
active criticism against the people’s uncritical allegiance to the nation-states and other
institutional discourses that permit wars as a means to attain an end. According to this
paradigm shift, all Japanese became responsible for war violence. Moreover, this shift
made individual Japanese persons particularly responsible for the violence that Japan
committed against people outside Japan’s national public sphere.

There was a substantial change behind this shift in representing/speaking about
what the past war brought to the Japanese in the public sphere. Those who had lived to
experience war violence firsthand were made responsible for having uncritically
supported the nation’s war in the past. Therefore, when the survivors of war violence
speak of their personal experiences, there were criticisms against their speaking primarily
from the perspective of victims. Discussed in details in chapter three, those criticisms

accused the survivors testifying to their experiences as distorting the fact that they too

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took a role as perpetrators in the war that brought war violence to other people outside
Japan.

There were pedagogical differences between the national public sphere and the
survivors when remembering Hiroshima’s tragedy through commemorating the event in
the public sphere. The pedagogical differences produced the violence, as has been
discussed in detail in the chapter three. To take one example, Sadako Kurihara, a
Hiroshima survivor, expressed her resentment when her narrative of the atomic bomb
was met with criticism in the public sphere outside of Hiroshima. Kurihara, as a survivor
of the bomb, began writing about her experiences as a victim soon after the bomb.
However, just when the Vietnam War led to shape a new antiwar pedagogy in Japan,
Kurihara began experiencing criticism that challenged her testimonies of Hiroshima’s
tragedy. Moreover, Kurihara’s narrative also met severe challenges in the United States
when she delivered her antiwar message to oppose the Vietnam War by reciting her
experience as an atomic bomb victim. Many criticisms were thrown at Kurihara,
challenging that she was a perpetrator against those who became victims of Japan’s war
violence, and asserted that she should recognize her own perpetration in the Second
World War if she wanted her stories to be heard.

From what has been said above, it is evident that the past events constitute no
historical consciousness by themselves, and no historical consciousness is ever removed
from defining the meanings from what happened in the past. In this respect, we can
perhaps come to an agreement with Herbert Luthy’s argument that: “All history is history

of the present, because the past cannot be experienced as past.”58 The central point of this

 

5" Herbert Luthy, “What’s the Point of History?,” Journal of Contemporary History 3, no. 2 (April
1968), 21.

206

chapter, however, is not the reciting of such truisms about our historical consciousness.
Instead, it is the purpose of this chapter to explicate the impacts the historical conditions
make on our conceptualization of the present, and the impacts the present
conceptualization makes on our historical consciousness of what happened in the past. If
we borrow the phrase of Michel Foucault, this chapter's purpose is to ask how "a

"59 shapes the pedagogy, which defines

historical awareness of our present circumstance
the ways we understand what happened in the past. In other words, this chapter has
questioned pedagogy that is building present consciousness on what happened in the past.
Through chronologically exploring such pedagogy and its shifts, this chapter’s discussion
demonstrates the variable reality of the pedagogy shaping the present consciousness
about historical reality.

Through making historical consciousness into the subject of inquiry, this chapter
studies the history of historical awareness about Hiroshima’s tragedy and other war
violence that was brought to Japan during the Second World War. It becomes evident
from this chapter’s discussion that there has been consistent impact from present political
circumstances on how the particular past event came to be commemorated in the public
sphere. Furthermore, this chapter identifies the pedagogy in our historical consciousness,
of what happened in the past. Inquiring of historical consciousness in the public sphere is
to explicate why particular past events came to be commemorated in the public sphere.

Yet, more importantly, it would also explicate the pedagogy for which the past events

became conceptualized in the public sphere of the present.

 

59 Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics, by Hubert L. Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow, and Michel Foucault (London: Hervester Wheatsheaf,
1982), 209.

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Chapter 6
National Museum and Global Responsibility:

Reconciliation of the Historical Controversies in Global Age

Museum, History and Monumentality

For the past two decades, we have seen many controversies over museums
representing historical events. A museum must choose whose voice and which gaze to
include in representing past events, and therefore frequently face challenges and invite
controversies in our diverse and rapidly globalizing public sphere.l It is, therefore, more
and more brought to awareness today that museums, particularly history museums in this
discussion, are guilty of privileging some voices whilst quietly silencing other voices in
the public sphere.2 Furthermore, whether it is a conscious act or not, museums are
sometimes guilty of endorsing what Henri Lefebvre has described as monumentality.

”3 Privileging a

Monumentality is a “singular spatial representation of collective identity.
particular representation in constructing a monument often conceals the diversity of

audiences and the diverse experiences of audiences within the monument’s or museum’s.

 

I Walter Warner argues for the analytical concepts to interpret the authorship of texts: the eight
concepts are, (l) representation, (2) the gaze, (3) voice, (4) intertextuality, (5) absence, (6) authority, (7)
mediation, and (8) reflexivity. Warner draws these concepts from cultural studies. The analytical
framework posed by Warner is applicable to read museum’s exhibitions and their representation of past
events as social texts. The purpose of this study, however, is not investigating in details about what is
already being exhibited in the museum. Therefore, I will not apply Warner’s analytical framework to
inquire into what is being exhibited. However, it is worthwhile to mention here that Warner’s framework
gives an approach to investigate the museum and museum exhibition (as well as monument and
monument’s monumentalizing practice/subjects) as the texts that can be read and interpreted. For Warner’s
analytical framework, see Walter Warner, “Reading Authorship into Texts,” Theory and Research in Social
Education 28 no.2 (Spring 2000); 193-219.

2 Steven C. Dubin, Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in the American Museum (New
York: New York University Press, 1999).

3 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), 221.

208

Museums often participate involuntarily in constructing such monumentality not by what
they represent, but rather by what they do not represent in their museum space.

When the state launches a new public history museum, it also crafts a new
monumentality around the museum’s subject. Museums may end up crafting
monumentality to privilege certain personal/private voices by offering them official
representation in museum’s official space. Hiroshima Memorial Hall for the Atomic
Bomb Victims (Memorial Hall) was first opened its door to the public in 2002 as the first
museum of the national status commemorating the atomic bomb victims. Memorial Hall,
for example, approaches past events in a twofold way: it consecrates memorial space in a
public monument and serves the function of an archive, researching, preserving, and
exhibiting artifacts and first-hand accounts of the atomic bomb victims. In this respect,
Memorial Hall’s space endorses a singular and national monumental representation of
atomic bomb victims. Furthermore, the Arizona Memorial Museum in Pearl Harbor, the
Smithsonian’s exhibition of the Enola Gay, the Anti-Japan War Memorial Museum in
Beijing, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (established and managed by the City
of Hiroshima), and many other museums are, one way or another, crafting a similar
monumentality for events that took place during the Second World War.

Museum institutions have their origin in the nineteenth century mode of
Enlightenment with its aim of storing and defining knowledge in order to educate the
public. However, for the past two decades in particular, museums in most industrialized
nations have faced a challenge to their long assumed role as Enlightenment institutions.
Theoretical developments in social and cultural studies in later half of the twentieth

century have challenged the Enlightenment and its traditions. In the past two decades, we

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have seen the criticism of the Enlightenment extending to problematize the museum’s
monumentality on grounds of being neither inclusive nor adequate in representing what
happened in the past. However, museums face a dilemma in that monumentalizing past
events can seldom be inclusive of all voices. It is because of this dilemma that the act of
determining representation involves a frame for evaluating what is to be represented in
museum space. Alternatively, if we assume museums can be inclusive of all voices,
museums would have to give up the idea of making adequate representation that satisfies
all because we have no value structure that define what constitutes the representation that
is globally adequate.

Under these circumstances, it is not useful to seek both an adequacy of
representation and an inclusive representation in museum spaces at the same time,
without responding to the tension between these two goals. In fact, seeking for a museum
space that has either an inclusive or a transcendently adequate representation of the past
events does not offer any fruitful discussion. Instead of approaching the analysis of
museum spaces as merely fixing representations of past events, this chapter proposes to
explore museum spaces as a contested zone, in which diverse voices and experiences in
fact struggle in the process of building monumentality in the public sphere.

Indeed, many criticisms brought to museum institutions have argued that the idea
of a monumental museum space fails to account for the social and cultural dynamics of
its users that are fluid and never fixed (or dead). Theodore Adorno offered a criticism of
museum institutions when he wrote “museum and mausoleum are connected by more

than phonetic association.”4 In the same paragraph, Adorno uses the German word,

 

4 Theodore W. Adorno, “Valery Proust Museum,” in Prisms, translated by Samuel Weber and
Shierry Weber (Cambridge: "MIT Press, 1994), 175.

210

museal (museumlike), which “describes objects to which the observer no longer has a
vital relationship and which are in the process of dying.” The preservation of those
objects is, therefore, submitting “more to historical respect than the needs of the
present.”5 In Japanese, the world museum carries a similar connotation when people say
something is museum quality. “Museum quality” often refers to assigning objects
substantial value. However, it is much more commonly used to designate objects too
archaic to have any real use in the present space, other than being exhibited in museums.
The second connotation is similar to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s alignment of museum to
“the historicity of death.”6 These analogies and popular connotation given to museums
suggest museum space is the place between this world and Hades.

To swerve analysis away from stale points suggested by the above, perhaps a
more constructive approach to museum is the analogy with what Michel Foucault calls
the heterotopias.7 Foucault first defined utopia as the placeless places that are to present
the perfected from of a society. Heterotopias are, on the other hand, localizable places
that comprise an “effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all other real sites that

can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and

 

5 Ibid.

6 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, trans. John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1973), 73.

7 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” (1960), in Foucault. info. Translated by Jay Miskowiec.
http://www.foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/ (last accessed on November 16, 2007)

211

inverted.”8

Foucault found museums as examples of “heterotopias of indefinitely
accumulating time.”9 He writes:
[The] idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general
archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all
tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of
time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a
sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place,
this whole idea belongs to our modernity. The museum and the library are
heterotopias that are proper to western culture in the nineteenth century.10
From here, we can find that Foucault’s description of museum institutions leads us to
infer his critical description of the power embedded in an institution’s built environment,
as in prisons and schools.ll
Foucault’s criticism of museums has called attention to the need for transforming
museums to be more accessible and available to the public. Increased attention to the
long overlooked relationship between museums and their audiences have also come along
with the theoretical developments in social and cultural studies that have challenged the

museum’s role in defining knowledge by collecting, categorizing and exhibiting objects

within an institutionally controlled environment.12 The push for pluralism has thus

 

8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
‘0 Ibid.

” For examples of the institution’s built environment, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and
Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), and Michel
Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in P. Rabinow ed., The Foucault Reader, 76-100, New York:
Pantheon, 1984. Also see examples of applications and reframing of Foucault’s argument in Janie
Leatherman, ed., Discipline and Punishment in Global Politics: Illusions of Control (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008). ‘

'2 For further discussion on this point, see Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of
Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1992), and Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (London:
Routledge, 2000), Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London: Routledge, 1995), and Timothy W.
Luke, Museum Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

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become an important agendum of museums partly in response to such challenges. Yet, it
is important to notice here that the framing of museum-space as a field or medium by
which to materialize the idea of pluralism in a society, ironically affirms museums as
Enlightenment institutions that bring certain ideas (or sometimes ideologies in the case,
for instance, of the state controlled museums) to the public. Furthermore, the act of
inclusion is inevitably concurrent to the act of exclusion, as inclusion presupposes those
that are left outside by stating the need to include them in a space. Inclusion that is not
conscious of perpetuating the inclusion/exclusion dichotomy, therefore, would support
only a fetishism of diversity. It is this particular fetishism of diversity that sheds light on
museums as heterotopias that accumulate everything in a space “itself outside of time”
and its ravages. In this respect, Foucault’s alignment of museums to heterotopias seems
to lead us only to a view of museums as Enlightenment institutions.

Here, I want to call to attention to the cemetery, which is another example
Foucault uses for heterotopias. The cemetery, as a heterotopia, is not an ordinary cultural
living space. Yet, it is a localizable place connected with all other spaces in the present
because “each individual, each family has relatives in the cemetery.”13 Foucault uses
archaeological inquiry to identify that the cemetery was within the environment of living
social space until the end of the eighteenth century. In Europe, we can sometimes find a
cemetery or traces of a cemetery in the town-center, inside the place of worship or even
within the courtyard. From here, he argues that the cemetery constituted a part of sacred
and immortal space in western culture until the nineteenth century. He elaborated that the

cemetery was a strange heterotopia where the dead serve as a cause of illness for the

 

’3 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” online.

213

living, and the presence of the dead within the proximity of the living “propagates death
itself.” In other words, the cemetery became a heterotopia representing Hades—the
placeless place belonging only to the dead. Cemetery, therefore, was driven further from
the proximity of the living, as it was perceived foremost as the gruesome space that is
ceaselessly accumulating the dead.

We can see that Foucault’s identification of heterotopias was not necessarily with
the purpose of bringing criticism to them. Instead, Foucault proposed heterotopias to
invite archaeological inquiry into institutional spaces that have deviated from, but still
have a relationship to living, present spaces. Therefore, using the analogy of heterotopias
to characterize museum-space helps situate us in an approach to museum-space not
merely as an institutionally constructed environment, but also a space that has a
relationship to the present living. Museums, then, became not simply a field or medium
to represent an ideology of diverse experiences and perspectives. Similarly, museum
institution became not merely a field or medium to give monumentality to particular
experiences and perspectives.

This chapter identifies the Memorial Hall as one of the institutions that is
consciously trying to do both: It is a memorial that is monumentalizing the atomic bomb
victims; and it is a museum that aims to represent all voices from all around the world.
Memorial Hall, therefore, aims to be a heterotopia by symbolizing the past while it aims
to be ceaselessly inclusive of all voices to abandon the idea of fixing the past symbolized
in its space. This chapter is, therefore, not going to inquire what Memorial Hall has
accumulated in its memorial/museum space. Inquiring of what has been accumulated

ofien leads us to assume that we can have an omniscient view of everything museum

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should (but do not) accumulate in their space. It is pointless however to discuss today
whether or not we can be outside or even above the subject represented in museums.
There has been a great deal of such discussion since it was once fashionable to do so.
However, we have so far seen few substantial strides from such discussions, other than
re-confirming the significance of the original point, which challenged the assumed
objectivity of what is being represented in museum-space. This chapter, therefore, takes
no part in debating the objectivity of the museum’s representation of the past.
Furthermore, focusing primarily on what has been accumulated in museum-space
is often consistent with endorsing museums as heterotopias of accumulating everything.'4
“The most beautiful monuments”, Henri Lefebvre writes, “are imposing in their
durability?”5 Lefebvre argues here that the imperishable appearance of monuments
suggests that they will be able to transcend the inevitable decay of human reality. It is
here important to illuminate that a museum’s monumentality does not only reside with
the imperishable looks of the building itself, but also with museum’s potential for storing,
preserving and assigning monumentality to what has been accumulated in the museum-
space. In this respect, monumentality is the product of a museum’s potential in making

artifacts imperishable, lasting beyond and against temporal reality of humans.

 

'4 It is perhaps helpful to remind readers that Foucault did not condemn heterotopia itself (much
like he did not condemn institution in itself). Foucault criticized museums as “heterotopias of
accumulating everything” without connecting to the present living. In this sense, such heterotopias lose its
quality as heterotopias because the present has no access to them. This is much like Lefebvre’s critique of
monumentality that assumed it is fixed (and thus never fluid). Monument gains monumentality on grounds
of its imperishability—fixation—in the light of our perishable reality that is always fluid and never fixed.
Foucault’s argument is often used to merely condemn museums as cemetery in the US. However, in this
study, I argue with Foucault by stressing that museum should be heterotopia that is not merely
accumulating of everything but making its space available to the present for constant dialectic negotiations.

’5 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 221.

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However, focusing on what is being represented in a museum-space will not give
us any tool for discussing the ways museums can substantiate their roles in the present
that is constantly fluid and permanently defers and eludes any attempts to fix its
meanings. Museums could lose their monumentality when they push for the fixed
meanings; and, in the face of an ever-changing present, such museums would not be able
to maintain their monumentality in the public sphere of the present living. To respond to
the times’ challenge then, museums strive to reflect what Richard Handler called the
objectification of culture by acquiring a plethora of artifacts as vastly heterogeneous as
possible, each acquisition designated to signify awareness and respect of some cultural
perspective.“5 Museums can lose their monumentality when their initial monumentality
had fixed meanings that were relative to the contexts of time and place in which the
museums constructed their monumentality. Thus, museums losing their monumentality
are now in danger of losing their raison d ’étre and becoming what Foucault has identified
as the heterotopias of accumulating everything.

Hence, as mentioned earlier, this chapter proposes to explore museum space as a
contested zone. It is this chapter’s purpose to seek a constructive end for the diverse
voices in constant struggle to build and participate in monumentality in the public sphere.
To this end, this chapter looks into one of the newest contestations museums institutions

are facing today: that is, the relationship between museum institutions and their audiences.

Audience-Study

 

'6 Richard Handler, Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1988).

216

Recently, more and more museums have begun investing their efforts in
investigating their audiences by systematically accessing the information about museum
visitors and their interaction with the museum-space. Indeed, the past two decades have
seen many attempts to study museum audiences and their behaviors in museum-space.l7
This shift to studying audience’s experiences in the museum is counter to the museum’s
traditionally heavy reliance on the transmission model. In the latter model, museums
sought primarily to maintain and control the effects of what they represent to their
audiences. Instead, museums began to pay greater attention to the ways in which
audiences make meanings through actively engaging with the exhibits.18 Here, we can see
that museum-spaces strive to shift fi'om institutionally controlled environments to
environments where audiences actively engage with the museum’s subject.

There have been many approaches to studying museum audiences and their
behaviors in museum-space. Audience-studies put emphasis on understanding the
learning experiences of museum visitors. Indeed, the studies focusing on audience’s
learning have made substantial impacts on study of museums. The degree of learning for
visitors, for example, is an important criterion when evaluating museums and their
exhibitions.19 This type of audience study features museums as institutional mediums that

affect their audiences, seen as consumers of the museum experience. This approach to

 

'7 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, “Studying Visitors,” in Susan Macdonald ed., A Companion to
Museum Studies (New York: Blackwell, 2006).

’8 For museums attempting to control the effects on visitors, see Hooper-Greenhill, “Studying
Visitors,” and Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn, eds., The Audience Studies Reader (London: Routledge,
2003)

'9 David Dean, Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice (London and New York: Routledge,

1994), and Ross Loomis, Museum Visitor Evaluation: New Tool for Management (Nashville, TN:
American Association for State and Local History, 1987).

217

museum audiences has developed from a two-step transmission model proposal by Paul F.
Lazarsfeld and his two-step flow of communication.20 The inquiry of audience
experiences thus became a method to study what museums can do to guide their
audiences to have better learning experiences.21
It is important to utilize the audience-study for satisfying the raison d ’étre of
museums as institutions meant to educate the public. Presuming museums as agents of
educating the public, however, entails positioning museum-institution as “the educator”
outside and apart from the public “to be educated.” In fact, the role of educating the
public that museum institutions assume becomes very complex considering that museums
are at the same time the subject to be educated as an institution in the public sphere. In
view of these complexities, this chapter considers museums as institutions within the
public sphere because museums are vital to the dialectic system/lifeworld.22 My inquiry
into museum-spaces takes them as mediums where dialectic negotiations take place
between the museums’ assumed agency to educate the public, and their own condition of
being themselves an organic part of the public. The system-lifeworld thus is closely

related to the notion of heterotopia as it talks about the bridge between institutional space

and the meanings generated through interactions with and to the visitors.

 

20 Paul F. Lazarsfeld, The People '3 Choice: How the Voter Make Up His Mind in a Presidential
Campaign (New York: Columbia University Press, l968[l944]). For more details about Lazarsfeld’s two-
step flow of communication, see Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: the Part Played by
People in the Flow of Mass Communications (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955).

2‘ For example, see Paulette M. McManus, “Oh Yes They Do! How Visitors Read Labels and
Interact with Exhibit Texts,” Curator 32 no. 3 (1989), 174-89.

22 Jfirgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of
F unctionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (New York: Beacon Press, 1989).

218

Memorial Hall, as the first national memorial museum to commemorate the
atomic bomb victims, provides us with an ideal field for inquiring into such dialectics in
museum-space. There was the institutional will to commemorate victims of the atomic
bombing. There were also public concerns that the nation’s monumentalizing of the
victims would minimize its responsibility in causing war catastrophes for the people. This
chapter, therefore, is going to inquire into the kind of relationships Memorial Hall has
with its audiences in its museum-space. This is particularly because Memorial Hall, even
before the first nail was struck, has been a contested zone, the subject of dialectic

negotiations as a public museum/memorial representing and monumentalizing the past.

Accessing Audience Relationship to Museums

Museum visitor notebooks provide material for inquiring into the ways museum
visitors have positioned themselves in relation to the Memorial Hall’s efforts to
monumentalize, archive, and memorialize atomic bomb survivors. Many museums offer
visitor notebooks. In fact, the practice of keeping visitor notebooks or similar utilities is
long standing and dates back to the dawn of museums. Furthermore, museum visitor
notebooks are perhaps the only source where we probe museum audiences and inquire
into their experiences of the museum’s past exhibitions. Therefore, when we want to
explore how museum visitors thought of the museum over time, visitor notebooks are the

most crucial documentary source for us.

219

However, Tamar Katriel asserts that visitor notebooks make for a poor source for
studying museum audience.23 Katriel identified that, when museums display appreciating
visitor comments, visitors often write similar responses to make themselves a part of a
museum’s exhibition. In this respect, it cannot be denied that museum could exercise
some control over visitors’ mindset when they think of what to write in visitor notebooks.
Museum visitor notebooks thus often become a stage in which visitors fulfill their “role-

”24 to socially and culturally defined norms in relation to

performance or self-alignment
the subject matters represented in museums.

Questioning the sincerity of a visitor’s comment in the notebook, however, is a
fruitless task. More importantly, the lack of sincerity itself is irrelevant when studying the
relationships between museums and museum audiences. In fact, we should be able to
explore the kinds of performance museums are permitting to visitors through their visitor
notebooks. For example, when visitor notebooks have comments that are all appreciative
of the museum, we should be able to raise a concern that the museum is either not
inviting visitors or not connecting to visitors to engage in the museum’s subject. In fact,
we can even suspect that visitor’s unanimous appreciation came from the assumption that
a museum should store what they hoped to keep in museum-space. This presumption

points to a similarity of museums with cemeteries containing the dead—something

irrelevant and outside of our living space.

 

23 Tamar Katriel, Performing the Past: A Study of Israeli Settlement Museums (Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997).

24 Susan Emily Reid, “The Exhibition Art of Socialist Countries, Moscow 1958-9, and the
Contemporary Style of Painting,” in S. E. Reid and D. Crowley, eds., Style and Socialism: Modernity and
Material Culture in Post- War Eastern Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 122.

220

F urthermore, my reading of visitor notebooks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
suggests that many visitors wrote their comments assuming that audiences are other than
museum curators. Many assumed as their audience fellow visitors to the museum,
politicians and other influential people, children, and even the deceased. There were also
many comments that responded to the comments previously left by other visitors.
Museum visitor notebooks thus work somewhat like a comment space on the Internet:
comments are chronologically aligned, and visitors often read other people’s prior
comments before writing their own. Another similarity is that visitors write their
comments immediately after walking the museum-space as they would after reading a
webpage. Hence, most visitors do not have abundant time to make substantial and
complex reflections on what they have just experienced. Therefore, we can assume most
comments are rather immediate and unadulterated reactions, rather than the product of
sophisticated reflection upon what visitors have just experienced.

Therefore, it is neither fruitful nor useful to become an adherent of sincerity in
what visitors wrote. It is also misleading to use visitor notebooks to measure the
museum’s ability to educate audiences. Therefore, this chapter, instead, uses the visitor
notebooks of Memorial Hall to inquire into the kind of relationships Memorial Hall has
nurtured with and also in its audience. This inquiry thus does not presume a dichotomous
relationship between the museum and its audience. Instead, this inquiry aims to explore
the relationship between museum and its audience that goes beyond the dichotomy

between educating and educated, or to put in other words, system and lifeworld.

Background: Memorial Hall

221

Before turning to a closer examination of the relationship between museum and
museum audience, let us briefly identify the tensions and challenges evoked in the
construction of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims—the
national institution to commemorate the atomic bomb victims. During the first half of the
19905, there were many projects to commemorate the fiftieth anniversaries of the atomic
bombings.25 These projects, however, revealed the absence of a trans-nationally coherent
consciousness of the atomic bombings even fifty years after the event. For example, the
Smithsonian’s decision to exhibit the Enola Gay with no explicit reference to
Hiroshima’s tragedy not only brought a protest from US. historians but also caused both
resentment and disappointment toward the US. in Japan.

It was no coincidence that, shortly after the Smithsonian’s decision on the Enola
Gay exhibition, the National Diet of Japan passed Legislation 117 that, in its preamble,
defined the atomic bombings as an important collective experience of the nation.
Furthermore, concurrent with the Smithsonian’s controversy, there was another dispute
over the United States Postal Service’s plan to issue an A-bomb stamp to commemorate
the atomic bombs as responsible for bringing the end to the Second World War. The
proceedings of the committee that discussed the details of the Legislation reveal that the
committee members thought it necessary for Japan as a nation to respond to the evident

differences in understanding on the atomic bombings between the United States and

 

25 See for example, Roy Rosenzweig, “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times,” Journal of Social
History 29 (1995), http://www.proquest.umi.com (accessed January 11, 2008); Jeffery P. Brown, “History
in an Era of Change,” The Public Historian 18 no. 3 (Summer 1996), 11-22; and Victoria A. Harden,
“Museum Exhibit Standards: Do Historian Really Want Them?,” The Public Historian 21 no. 3 (Summer
1999), 91-109.

222

Japan.26 It was in such political and social atmosphere that the National Diet ratified the
Legislation 1 17.

The Legislation’s Article 41 compelled the national government to take a role in
deepening public awareness of the tragedies brought by the atomic bombs, to pass down
to future generations the knowledge about the bombings, and to develop a program for
consoling the souls of the deceased victims. Memorial Hall thus opened its doors to the
public in 2002 as the first museum to execute this Legislation. However, we can notice
here that the opening of Memorial Hall took almost eight years from the passing of the
Legislation. Even after the proclamation, there were two prominent discourses opposing
the construction of Memorial Hall.

First, there was an opposition that claimed building yet another monument to
commemorate the atomic bombings and the victims was a waster of public resources. In
1955, the City of Hiroshima opened the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and it has
been the flagship institution for preservation and exhibition of the remains from atomic
bombing “as reminder of the past and contribution to a fixture of lasting peace.”27 The
opposition to build the Memorial Hall almost adjacent to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum would have been reasonable if the Memorial Hall was to offer nothing
substantially different.

Second, there was an opposition in building Memorial Hall as a national
memorial/museum to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombings. In his study of

social and cultural environments of postwar Japan, the Pulitzer Prize winning Embracing

 

2" For example, see the discussion in Upper House session no. 12 on December 9, 1994.

27 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima Peace Site, http://www.pcf.city.
hiroshima.jp/index_e2.html (accessed April 20, 2008).

223

Defeat, John Dower writes that the general public of Japan came to comprehend their
defeat by way of understanding the war as an act of the nation-state detached from the
acts of individual people.28 Hence, a national institution that memorialized the victims
was seen as an attempt to construct a monumentality that aligns Japan, as a state, with the
victims. This alignment was seen as a threat to obscure a needed critical examination of
the nation-state(s) that brought the catastrophe of nuclear weapons as a tragic but
necessary consequence of the war.

We can understand that Memorial Hall, from its incipient planning, shouldered
the responsibility to answer both existing and potential criticisms in order to authenticate
its raison d ’étre. Furthermore, Memorial Hall also had to respond to the ongoing
controversies brought from the United States. Ministry of Health, the ministry in charge
of Memorial Hall, formed a preparatory committee that is independent fi'om the
government sectors to brainstorm what roles to be assigned to Memorial Hall. This
committee drafted a recommendation in 1998. The recommendation defined the public
mission of Memorial Hall as different than the existing Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum.

Let us thus explore the actual museum-space inside Memorial Hall in the
following section of this chapter. Then, this chapter is going to inquire into the visitor
notebooks to illustrate a kind of relationship Memorial Hall has constructed with its

visitors.

Monumental & Discursive Space

 

28 John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton
and New Press, 1999). Also see the chapter five for detailed discussion on this point.

224

Memorial Hall is a three-story building, most of which is underground. Walking
toward the Atomic Dome from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, visitors find a
fleet of long steps drawing a slow curve down to the structure’s entrance (Figure 6:1). As
they walk towards the entrance, visitors face the epicenter (where the bomb was actually
dropped, and this movement is made suggestively, according to the building’s architect,
to “slice out “the moment” that is otherwise flowing ceaselessly.”29 The building’s roof—
at eye-level before climbing down the stairs—frames a monumental icon surrounded by
the ruins that were excavated when constructing the building (Figure 6:2). This icon

symbolically represents the time the bomb exploded in Hiroshima’s sky on August 6,

1945.

 

Figure 6: l. The entrance of Memorial Hall

 

29 In this statement, Tange intends to say his architectural design has an intention to bring the
moment of the bomb’s impact to the present as frozen moment. Kenzo Tange, “Kokuritsu Hiroshima
Genbaku Shibotsusha Tuitou Heiwa Kinenkan,” Kensetsukai 77 no. 9 (2002), 131.

225

 

a

Figure 6:2. Monumental icon and surrounding ruins.

Indirect and Mute

Entering Memorial Hall, visitors walk down the slow spiral slope
counterclockwise to the Hall of Remembrance. This pathway intends to lead visitors “to
travel back in time from the present to the moment in which the atomic bomb struck
Hiroshima?” The pathway is dimly illuminated with indirect lighting concealed behind
exposed concrete walls. It has five panels with very little explanation about the atomic
bombings (discussed later) (Figure 6:3). The Hall of Remembrance is at the end of the
long slope, and visitors find a laver at the center of an orbicular room.

The laver is lit by the sunlight coming through the ceiling, and the sound of gently
flowing water reminds those who enter the room to take notice of the silence dominating

the space. Both the pathway and the Hall of Remembrance are of concrete walls and

 

3° Chugokuchihou Seibikyoku Eizenbu, “Kokuritsu Hiroshima Genbaku Shibutsusha Tuitou
Heiwa Kinenkan: Irei/koukyu heiwa heno inori to shimin no ikoi no ba,” Kensetsukai 27 no. 3 (2002), 35

226

 

Figure 6:3. Hallway to the Hall of Remembrance, and one of fivepanels explaining about
the atomic bombing.

 

Figure 6:4. Hall of Remembrance and panorama.

227

stone flooring--all cold materials. Indirect lighting keeps the hall dark. Yet the sunlight
on the laver and the white-oak benches placed around the room comprise a few warm
locales inside the space. This contrast between coldness and warmth constructs a sacred
atmosphere for remembering of the victims.3 ' When entering the Hall of Remembrance,
visitors also face a panoramic image depicting Hiroshima after the strike of the atomic
bomb. The panorama covers the entire wall of the orbicular space (Figure 6:4). Visitors,
walking closer to the wall, would notice that the cyclorama is made of small ceramic tiles,
each one uniquely engraved to constitute a part of whole image (Figure 6:5). There are
140,000 ceramic tiles constituting one huge panoramic image, and each tile represents
one victim whose life was taken by the atomic bombing from the moment of its explosion
until the end of 1945.

The Hall of Remembrance is thought to offer a space to represent all victims of
Hiroshima’s tragedy. Identifying the names of all victims, however, is an impossible task
even with today’s technology, since the atomic explosion literally evaporated entire
families and their records near the epicenter. Furthermore, defining the victims to be
represented in the hall was another task because thousands of victims lost their lives years

after the day the bomb exploded on Hiroshima.32 We should note that there still are

 

3 ' There is a similar space at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Hall of
Remembrance is placed at the end of exhibition at the US. Holocaust Memorial Museum in order to
provide a simple space for ceremonies and individual reflection. There is an eternal flame and visitors can
light memorial candles. However, visitors also find the space is conveniently utilized for school groups and
other visitors to get together before moving to their next destinations. The different ways visitors utilizing
and/or responding to memorial space is worth examining in details in respect to political, social and cultural
environments around the subjects being exhibited/commemorated in nationally funded institutions.
However, due to the space and time allocated for this study, I will leave this subject by just mentioning here
to indicate my intent for the future study.

32 Exact number of the casualties of the atomic bombing is undetermined for three reasons: First,
the bomb devastated most of city’s infrastructure, and there was no capability to estimate the number of
casualties and the size of destruction for some time after the bombing. Second, the atomic explosion
literally evaporated both people and towns near the epicenter. Therefore, it became impossible to estimate

228

people dying of radiation related sicknesses,33 and there are second and even third
generation of victims who are suffering and who live in fear of radiation effects. In fact,
many survivors still hesitate to testify to their experiences in fear of having their children
become victims of the prejudice and discrimination. Survivors and their children are
sometimes socially stigmatized because of fears over radiation exposure and its genetic
impacts.34 Because of this potential for discrimination, identifying who should be
represented and how was one of many challenges Memorial Hall had in its planning.

The panoramic picture of Hiroshima’s ruin, comprised of 140,000 tiles is,
therefore, the way that Memorial Hall represents all victims in its space without exposing
individual identity and yet while recognizing the individuality of victims. Each one of the
ceramic tiles is unique and each piece represents an individual victim of the atomic
bombing. Thus, the museum represents the volume of casualties without exposing the
identity of those victims wishing to remain anonymous. Further, the many tiles show the

visitors the volume of casualties without transfiguring individual victims into mere

 

the number of victims by body count or by records. Third, the censorship enforced in Japan during the
Allied occupation period prevented the City of Hiroshima to make organized effort to measure the size of
destructions caused by the atomic bomb until 19505 when the ABCC requested the national government to
survey the number of casualties in a restricted district of Hiroshima (see chapter 4). The total survey of
Hiroshima’s 114 districts was done for the first time during the period between 1969 and 1976. The Peace
Declaration of 2006 claimed the number of deceased (by the bomb’s explosion and radiation affects)
reached 247,787. For more details about the number of casualties in English language resource, see Martin
Hawit, An Exhibition Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New York: Copernicus, 1996).

33 Impact of radiation brought by the atomic bombing is still examined today, sixty years after the
bombing. For medical discussion, see Dale L. Preston, Yukiko Shirnizu, Donald A. Pierce, et al., “Studies
of Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors, Report 13: Solid Cancer and Noncancer Disease Mortality: 1950-
1997,” Radiation Research 160 no. 4 (October 2003), 381-407; Donald A. Pierce and Dale L. Preston,
“Radiation-Related Cancer Risks at Low Doses among Atomic Bomb Survivors,” Radiation Research 154
no. 2 (August 2000), 178-186.

3" See the discussion in chapter three.

229

numbers.35 As mentioned earlier, visitors entering the orbicular room first see the
cyclorama representing the whole body of victims of the atomic bombing. Then, upon
realizing that the cyclorama is made of many individually unique tiles and each of which

is representing a deceased victim, visitors get a strong sense of the amplitude of loss of

individual lives.

  

 

Figure 6:5. Ceramic tiles constituting the panorama.

Exiting the Hall of Remembrance, visitors are taken to a small connecting lobby
in which there is a wall-sized screen made of twelve 42-inch monitors showing the

portraits and names of victims (those who permitted Memorial Hall to present their

 

3’ We can find similar representation of individual victims in Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington DC. where personal photographs of individuals are covering all walls as high as three stories,
thousands of shoe occupying one corner of exhibition room reminding the visitors the size of casualties.
These objects and photographs directly remind visitors of the size of victims. However, there are just too
many of the same thing (shoe) or too many of random thing (snap photographs); and thus the anonymity of
victims is maintained. The Hall of Remembrance is interestingly different here. The hall is presenting too
many of different things (tiles) constituting one coherent picture—a catastrophic scene afier the strike of
the bomb—to represent the bomb and its victims.

230

individual identities). Memorial Hall has accumulated and identified the names and
photographs of 12,002 victims.36 With the permission of victims and their families,
Memorial Hall exhibits the names and portraits of victims for thirty seconds at a time
(Figure 6:6). Thirty seconds, in fact, are long enough to allow visitors to draft an identity
from the anonymity of victims, and the exhibit speaks directly to the audiences about the
individual lives lost to the atomic bombs. Furthermore, there are four individual computer
monitors placed on the wall. When sliding their leaflet (which they receive, in their
language of choice, upon entering Memorial Hall) into the machine, visitors are
introduced to one victim with his/her name and portrait but no explanatory description
(Figure 6:7). Visitors can also search the names of victims here, and they can inquire into

the testimonies of victims in the archives.

 

Figure 6:6. Exiting the Hall of Remembrance

 

3" Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, “Kokuritsu Hiroshima Genbaku
Shibotsusha Tuitou Heiwa K inenkan Hibaku taikenki nadono shushu/shorijoukyou nit suite,” Intemal Data
(June 17, 2006) released to the author, July 2006.

231

It is consistent here that Memorial Hall provides almost no description throughout
its memorial/museum space. Instead, Memorial Hall situates the visitor as a subject who
makes his or her own understanding of the images, portraits, and names emerging in the

silence of the space.

 

Figure 6:7. Randomly projected portrait and the name of a victim.

Direct and Vocal

Visitors then take an escalator to what is called as “the Garden of Light”. As
visitors enter this space, the sunlight welcomes them and gives a sense of stepping out of
the tomb——a memorial space—in which silence was kept to show respect to the deceased.
The sunlit path leads to another lobby-like space with a very small number of physical
artifacts. A computer-assisted book accompanies each artifact, and the book contains a
survivor’s testimony with some ties to the exhibited artifacts (Figure 6:8). When visitors
turn the pages, the computer screen displays related information, such as photographs and

maps, to assist visitors to get more information than just seeing the artifact or just reading

232

the testimony (Figure 6:9). Even though only a handful of artifacts are exhibited in the
small space, visitors are able to access rich information (photos, maps, and testimonies)
behind the artifacts by way of using an interactive technology. The main artifact here is
the testimony of individual survivors providing their personal account of what happened
in the past, and physical artifacts invite visitors to interactively engage to the testimony

of survivors.

 

Figure 6:8. Exhibiting artifacts and testimonies linked to the artifacts.
In addition to such computer assisted artifacts and testimony, Memorial Hall
offers a space to electronically browse and search over 100,000 testimonies given by the
survivors of the atomic bombs. Photographs, films and video recordings of testimonies
are made available to any visitors. Memorial Hall collects testimonies, and then those
testimonies are continuously transcribed digitally to build an archive that gives easy
access to the contents of all collected testimonies. Many surviving families have had no

resource to investigate where and how their relatives lost their lives when the atomic

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bomb hit the city. Through digitized testimonies and indexes of names and geographical

markers, Memorial Hall has offered a tool to map diverse experiences and perspectives of

what happened after the bomb hit the city.

 

Figure 6:9. Testimony lS lrnked to the cornfiputer scieen.
Through the Hall of Remembrance and the pathway leading up to it, Memorial
Hall silently emphasizes what happened in Hiroshima and to its survivors. However, in
contrast to this silence, the museum/memorial space introduces visitors to individual
victims and their testimonies, and they encounter much vocal and direct representation of
what happened after the bomb. However, Memorial Hall makes almost no direct attempt
to explicate why and how Japan became the target of the atomic bombs. Memorial Hall
provides its own description of the historical context of Hiroshima, but this description
constitutes only about 400 words and is was divided into five panels that are placed along
the pathway down to the Hall of Remembrance. However, these descriptions along the

pathway were in response to critics’ challenges of Memorial Hall before its actual

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construction (discussed earlier). In general, visitors hardly find that Memorial Hall, as an
institution, puts forth any particular explanation of what brought the atomic bombings to
Japan.

As introduced earlier, some scholars and civic groups feared Memorial Hall
would transform the victims into an abstraction of noble sacrifice. They brought
criticisms to the plan to build Memorial Hall because it would obscure the needs and
efforts for critical inquiry into what led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, visitor
comments suggest the fact that Memorial Hall does not whitewash complex issues on
representing the atomic bombings by way of painting an image of victims in its space.
Let us recall that there had been numerous challenges and skepticisms thrown to
Memorial Hall as a nationally initiated project for commemorating the atomic bomb
victims even before its promulgation. However, since its opened the doors to the public,
there were only 10 out of 2,502 visitor comments, which were recorded in the notebooks
for a period of four years, are openly critical of Memorial Hall and what it exhibited in its
memorial/museum space. This number is impressively small when considering the many

criticisms thrown to Memorial Hall from its incipience to its actual construction.

Visitor Engagement

Now, let us turn our attention to what and how museum visitors wrote after

visiting through Memorial Hall. From this inquiry, this chapter aims to focus more on

how visitors thought after walking through Memorial Hall, instead of focusing on what

visitors wrote about Memorial Hall and its representation.

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Many visitors commented about their getting a feeling of reverence when they
were taking the long pathway down to the Hall of Remembrance. A visitor noted that
walking the dark pathway had given him/her a sense of walking inside the tomb where
victims were put to rest (4-10).37 Another visitor made the remark that the pathway gave
him/her a deep and calm feeling that was very different from the way he/she felt in the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (7-33). This visitor’s comment is interesting
because the visitor notebooks at Memorial Hall have far fewer comments that express
fear (of the atomic bomb, of war, and of death) than those at the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial Museum.

Many visitors wrote about the Hall of Remembrance and its use of 140,000
ceramic tiles to represent casualties. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the Hall of
Remembrance makes an intense emotional impact on those who enter the space. For
example, a visitor wrote, “[the tiles] gave a visual and emotional realization about the
size of the tragedy that was missed by a mere listening to the number for the first time
ever” 7-6). Furthermore, another visitor wrote reflecting on the panoramic image: “the
tragedy is not about the number as a total, but about each one life in that total” (6-30). It
is not too far from the truth to say that the Hall of Remembrance works not merely as a
memorial space, but also harbors a dialogical space in which visitors construct their

knowledge about the destruction and the deceased victims through aural communication

 

37 Reference to the comments left in visitor notebooks is given in the following structure. The first
number stands for the volume number of the notebook as assigned by the Hiroshima National Peace
Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims. The second number after the hyphen indicates the page
number of the notebook. Memorial Hall informs its visitors that Memorial Hall reserves its right to publish
any comments left in the notebooks. However, it also states that it will keep the identity of those who
wrote the comments anonymous. Many visitors left their comments with their name (and sometimes with
their address and emails), but I removed any information that could violate their anonymity when quoting
their comments. Lastly, I translated all comments from their original languages unless otherwise noted.

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with the silent exhibition of the casualties. Indeed, many commented that they realize
through the cyclorama in the Hall of Remembrance that expressing casualties by a mere
rendition of a number often falls short from offering a better sense of the magnitude of
destruction than simply hear or read the number of casualties.

Moreover visitor notebooks show that the digital projection of victim’s names and
portraits has given an opportunity to reflect upon the atomic bombings in a different way
than the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the rest of Peace Memorial Park did.
Some visitors developed a daunting sense of individual lives behind the abstraction of the
screen. One student in particular found a victim who share his/her last name and went on
to read the victim’s testimony (6-47). Here, we can see that the Memorial Hall has
constructed an opportunity for visitors to make a connection to the past through the
medium of a testimony. The living and the dead are brought together into the same
memorial/museum space in which visitors are actively constructing an understanding of
what happened in the past through victim’s experiences.

There are many comments hinting of visitors’ thought processes and desire to
know more about victims and their experiences. However, it is also important to note that
many visitors provided no reference to the historical context behind the atomic bombings.
In my interview with Memorial Hall’s vice-director, he explained that Memorial Hall
intends to cast no historical interpretation of its own. In visitor notebooks, there were
very few comments questioning the Memorial Hall’s lack of explicit reference that would
lead to a particular historical interpretation. This is significant when we compare the
notebooks with similar notebooks at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. There is no

trouble finding comments that challenge or even negate the historical context in which

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the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum positioned the atomic bombing. Ironically, the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has worked extensively to exhibit the atomic
bombing as an important historical event through responding to many criticisms and
demands to represent the event in an appropriate historical context.

Very small number of visitors wrote their comments expressing their
dissatisfactions when not finding Memorial Hall making open apology or condemnation
of Japan’s wartime aggression. A visitor from the People’s Republic of China remarked,
“Why not regret Nanjing Massacre!” (3-3 8). Another visitor wrote in English, “There is
no mention of the systematic wiping out of 550 villages in China using chemical and
biological weapons between 1937 and 1944 by Japan killing somewhere between
3,000,000 and 10,000,000 civilians. Everyone has dark secrets” (4-73). One Japanese
visitor also challenged Memorial Hall and wrote, “There would be no progress if the past
aggression is not acknowledged” (3-23). These criticisms, we can notice, all bring up the
concern that Memorial Hall obscures a crucial inquiry into the role of Japan, as a nation-
state, in receiving the atomic bombing as a tragic consequence of its drive towards war. It
is also notable that the same line of criticism is frequently found in the visitor notebooks
of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. However, we must also notice here that,
among those comments criticizing the fact that Memorial Hall does not make its
historical interpretation, there was absolutely no comment argued Memorial Hall should
exhibit its historical interpretation to challenge those who dropped the atomic bomb. In
this respect, we can understand that it is widely assumed that Japan must casti gate its own

war aggression when Japan is to exhibit/speak anything about the Second World War.

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However, an overwhelming number of comments say nothing about the Memorial
Hall’s lack of historical context. Instead, most visitor comments suggest that the
Memorial Hall has made its audiences think about the past in reference to present issues
the living face when constructing their firtures. In fact, there are many comments that
simply state the importance of peace and their disfavor of war. Yet, many visitors also
provide reasons for leaving their note for peace. Some of them openly apologized for
having no words to express what they thought after visiting Memorial Hall. One wrote in
English, “I don’t think any comments are necessary, nor can they do any justice to the
tragedy” (6-70); another visitor also wrote in English, “we aren’t sure what we can say”
(6-72). Recognizing the individualities construing the generality of victims, visitors are
situated to face past event as individual persons in the present somewhat outside of their
present norms and conditions. It is well represented in what a visitor wrote in the
notebook: “I cannot judge what is described here, and I cannot say to anybody ‘you did
bad’, because who am I to judge anyone [here]” (8-8).

It is also notable that the visitor notebooks function here as the final space in
which visitors reflect and communicate with Memorial Hall and its other visitors about
the present and the future. Reading through the visitor notebooks, I found no visitors
asking questions or making assertions on whom to be blamed on what happened in
Hiroshima. Instead, those comments with questions are asking their contemporaries for
the purpose of the future. Many visitors linked the tragedy of the atomic bombings to the

victims of contemporary wars and conflicts, such as the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the war on

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terrorism, and so on.38 Then, these contemporary issues are frequently followed by such
questions asking what needs to be done to prevent wars and tragedies like Hiroshima

from happening again. In this respect, we can find that Memorial Hall does not serve as a
sanctuary for merely accumulating the testimonies of the atomic bomb victims. Memorial
Hall hardly designates a closure to the past by divorcing the past from the present visitors.
Instead, the visitor notebooks suggest that a large portion of visitors to Memorial Hall left
with complex issues in the space of the present living: that is, what needs to be done to
construct the future with no wars or no nuclear weapons.

We can recognize here that the past is brought into the space of the living. Having
connection between the past and the present living, the past is no longer detached from
the present; and thus visitors—the present living—are looking at the past to think about
the present issues for the future. In this respect, the past represented in Memorial Hall
serves as a heterotopia: the past is a placeless place in the space of the present living, yet
the past represented in Memorial Hall is a localizable place through which the present

living became conscious of their present realities.

Discussion

Highly contested as a needless public expenditure at the time of the construction,

Memorial Hall has defended its worth as a discursive space with a distinctive

representation of the atomic bomb victims. Memorial Hall was born in the midst of

 

38 For example, in the year the United States and coalition forces began its attack against Iraq, the
number of visitor comments mentioning about the war against terrorism jumped ten times more than the
previous year.

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historical controversies through which the Japanese people confronted the complex
consciousness and understanding of nuclear weapons outside of their national public. The
controversies around ways to represent the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
created tensions in the international political environment even fifty years after the war’s
end. Memorial Hall, for example, has approximately 200,000 visitors every year.39 There
is no data among which how many are foreign visitors, but there are approximately ten
percents of comments written in languages other than Japanese: there are English,
Chinese, Korean, Portuguese (in fact, quite many comments are written in Portuguese),
Spanish, Dutch, German, French, Greek, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Arabic, and so on.
Needing to respond to these ongoing and even intensifying tensions, Memorial Hall
occasions a shift in the level of discourse, from a macro-political setting of an historical
event of global importance to the micro-psychological and personal dimension of the
event

In fact, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has been the only museum inside
the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park for many years. This museum has long received
criticisms for what it exhibits (also, what it does not exhibit) in its museum-space. This
may sound somewhat puzzling, but the museum has repeatedly become a target of intense
criticism because it gives substantial attention to the devastation brought by the atomic
bomb. Those criticisms were quite similar to what Sadako Kurihara and other survivors

of Hiroshima have experienced when testifying their experiences of the atomic bombing.

 

3” Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, “Kokuritsu Hiroshima Genbaku
Shibotsusha Tsuitouo Kinenkan no nyukansha nado no jokyo nit suite,” Press Release, April 27, 2006.

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4° The museum was built by the City of Hiroshima to preserve and exhibit what was
brought to Hiroshima by the atomic bombing, and the museum also became the target of
criticisms because of its focusing on the atomic bomb and its destruction of the city.”l
The criticism said that, when the museum emphasizes the devastation of the bomb, it
conveniently overshadows Japan’s acts of war violence. The museum is, therefore,
accused of perpetuating the discourse that overlooks the violence Japan had caused to
others.

Even today, the ways to represent the atomic bombing and the devastation it
brought are almost ceaselessly inviting conflicts and controversies around the museum. In
2007, for example, Steven Leeper, the Chief Director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum, said that there are substantial voices in Asian countries that the atomic
bombings had liberated them from Japanese colonization. Leeper thus proposed the need
to invite voices from those Asian countries to make exhibition more appealing to diverse
people from all different countries.42 In 2001, he also criticized both the Japanese and the
City of Hiroshima for ineffectively spending money for the peace:

...the Japanese and Hiroshima city governments for spending huge sums
on decorating the city through massive public works projects. They would
gain far more benefits in the long run if they invest in projects to prevent

violence, resolve conflicts and solve problems between rivaling parties in
the international arena...43

 

’0 See chapter three for details about the criticisms thrown toward the survivors who testified their
experiences of atomic bombing.

4’ See chapter five for details why Hiroshima’s focusing on exhibiting and speaking of the atomic
bombing became the target of criticisms.

’2 Chugoku Shinbun, May 31, 2007.

’3 Kyodo News lntemational, “Feature: ‘Peace Industry’ Key for Hiroshima to Achieve Peace,”
Japan Policy & Politics (August 13, 2001).

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His statement, however, invited many criticisms to Leeper, as well as the Mayor who had
appointed Leeper—an American—as the chief director. The primary criticism came from
those who stressed the importance of remembering the atomic bombing and its aftermath.
Hiroaki Hirano, a representative of Hiroshima city government, expresses his deep
concern that Hiroshima became a discourse for peace without remembering or
confronting the difficult reality of the atomic bombing and its aftermath. Peace is indeed
more universal, but Hiroshima has responsibility to remember and work for those a-bomb
victims who are living with restless fear of the long-term and genetic impacts of the
bomb.44 The criticisms thus came from concerns that Hiroshima’s experience becomes an
icon for peace with a price of losing serious inquiry and remembering of the details of
what the atomic bombing brought to the city and its people.

In fact, how we represent past events is ultimately leading to the question of
choice. It is a choice of what should be preserved and passed on to the present and future.
It is from such choices that we construct a historical narrative as an embodiment of our
rational understanding of the past and the meaning generated from the past. In this
respect, history museums are shouldering the responsibility of making the right choice,
while they have no means to dictate what should be the right choice. Furthermore,
making any choice often invites controversies in the context where there is no
transcendentally common or peremptory discourse to define what constitutes the right
choice. Whether focusing on peace by actively including Japan’s wartime aggressions

and Asian victims or focusing on the atomic bombing by making exclusively discussing

 

’4 Hiroaki Hirano, “Zenbei genbakuten kaisai no igi,” Watashi no omoi 237 (March 21, 2008)
online newsletter for political office, http://www.hirano-hiroaki.com/my_thinking/20080321.htrnl
(accessed July 1, 2008).

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about the bomb and its impacts is the question of choice. It is not the question of
empirical truth over the subjects being represented. Museums, history museums in this
discussion, are, therefore, public institutions that embody conflicting ends when
representing the past: it has to make a particular choice, yet it also is expected to be
inclusive of all that constitutes the public.

Memorial Hall, however, seems to have made a unique choice. In response to
intensifying political struggles of how we should represent the atomic bombings,
Memorial Hall made an explicit decision to construct its presentation through testimonies
of those who have experienced the bomb (thus, testimonies are not exclusively those of
the victims). By this approach, Memorial Hall is not a memorial/museum space that is
simply storing whatever of their choosing. There are diverse testimonies written from
multiple different perspectives from Japan, Korea, China, US, Australia, and whoever
have direct or indirect experience of the atomic bombing. Visitors are even invited to
make their own contributions in visitor notebooks, and we can find the a-bomb survivor
themselves wrote their testimonies on such visitor notebooks.

It is however important to note that Memorial Hall’s attempting to make no
choice of what it represents in its memorial/museum space does not mean that it aims to
act (or pretends to be) apolitical. Instead, the emphasis here is that Memorial Hall was
making a political decision to stay away from politics and a singular historical narrative
that might create turmoil. In fact, when exhibiting testimonies as the centripetal artifacts
in its space, Memorial Hall seems to construct the space that is similar to what historians

of memory now call the Realm of Memory.45

 

’5 Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

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Lieux de mémoire—the Realm of Memory—comes from the genre that is
commonly referred as histoire des mentalités. This emphasis on memory came out of
French historians who sought to move out from the nineteenth century determinism and
the linearity of Marxist historiography in history writings. Nora’s Realm of Memory
intends to map the vicissitudes of France and French national identity that are
conceptualized in the relationship between history and memory. This was initially an
attempt to actively recognize the polyphony and polysemy of memories generated in and
around France as a nation and its past. The field of memory studies, indeed, generated
many works of memories, such as the works by David Lowenthal, John Bodnar, Raphael
Samuel, and Simon Schama to name but a few. Recently, however, the Realm of Memory
seems to be positioned as a convenient frame to construct historical narrative in
conjunction with collective memory and national identity. The past decade has seen many
projects that have taken the Realm of Memory as a way to overlook the polyphony and
polysemy of the past represented in memories. The Realm of Memory is, in fact, an
active acknowledgement of the polyphony and polysemy of memory as the problem
when representing the national past, yet it also seeks to be a history in multiple voices.

Memorial Hall has constructed a memorial space that embodies the polyphony
and polysemy of memories from diverse people who have experienced the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima. These people include not only the direct victims of the bomb, but
also those individuals who have lost their relatives, who knew the victims, who became
the victim of radiation by entering the city, and who have the desire to leave their stories
of direct and indirect experience of the bomb. Furthermore, Memorial Hall stores and

exhibits the testimonies from the diverse people who were, at the time of the bombing,

 

245

infants, children, students, adults, citizens, prisoners, laborers brought from Japanese
occupied territories, soldiers and others. Moreover, Memorial Hall accumulated and is
still accumulating testimonies directly from people, as well as narratives and stories
printed/presented in multiple media, such as television programs, newspapers,
community papers, diaries, letters, and of course visitor notebooks. Memorial Hall aims
to construct a discourse for peace through indifferently encompassing testimonies on the
atomic bombing; as such, its space can be seen as an embodiment of what Nora intended
in Lieux de mémoire.

It is important to highlight here that the visitor notebooks fimction as a substantial
space in themselves for constructing a dialogue across diverse memories and
consciousness about the past. First, the notebook form manages a major breakthrough in
bringing the living—the visitors—to think of the past event in great relevance to the
present times. Second, the comments and reflections left on the visitor notebooks have
equal authenticity when the notebooks become a space in which there is a dialogue
among diverse visitors across different perspectives, experiences, and political positions
on the atomic bombing.

I noted little earlier that the Realm of Memory became a convenient goal
(product) for writing history by way of bypassing the polyphony and polysemy as the
invincible reality of our present consciousness about the past. The visitor notebooks,
however, permit the living—visitors in the present—to continuously hinder the
completion of the Realm of Memory. In fact, the visitor notebooks allow representation
of the present consciousness of past events in reflection to what people have narrated

about what happened in the past through diverse testimonies kept and exhibited in

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Memorial Hall. The visitor notebooks are a part of the discursive space of Memorial Hall,
and are open to other visitors. Hence, the memorial/museum space constructs and
reconstructs the Realm of Memory through dialogue between the represented past and the
consciousness of the present.

Memorial Hall, not taking on a vocal interpretation of its own choosing, exhibited
the atomic bombings through the testimonies of personal experiences. The visitors, thus,
find themselves at the receiving end of the emotional impact communicated directly
through speech and imagery provided by the tragic testimonies of other humans. It
follows that the history of atomic bombings is thus mediated through reflective
interpretations at a personal and emotional level. This approach seems to contribute in
offering the present living a sense of direct participation in the experience of the past
event in which they have not directly lived through it. This is evidenced by the fact that
many comments in visitor notebooks question the humanity that has capacity to
materialize such tragedy.

Those comments in the visitor notebooks of Memorial Hall suggest that Memorial
Hall, in fact, brings to the foreground a mode of experience circumvented by the
approach taken in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: that is, instead of playing up
the historical/informative dimension, it builds upon the moral/humane dimension of a
historical event. Through providing almost no explicit institutional interpretation of the
past when representing the past event with diverse testimonies, history (existing historical
consciousness) retired to a background of diverse experiences represented through those
testimonies. It is here, people conversely internalize the fact (what happened in the past)

represented with diverse perspectives and memories of those experienced the event.

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Having exposed to the diversity of experiences, perspectives and memories
reflected in testimonies, it seems visitors were made to aware of the fact that the victims,
much like us present living, lived with diverse consciousness of their present. This
awareness then brings another consciousness that we all may become victims, as well as
those victimizing others, regardless of our individual moral/humane virtues. This
consciousness, I argue, is a product of deconstruction of the dichotomy between victims
and those who are not victims when approaching the past events. Furthermore, it is also a
product of deconstructing the dichotomy between the past and present, which has long
shouldered the present’s detaching from the past by holding the latter as what has already
happened and as what the present has already overcome. In fact, many visitors who left
their comments in the visitor notebooks reflected on the atomic bomb victims and their
testimonies in relation to the War on Terrorism, political/military conflicts, poverty and
other major issues the world is facing at the time of their visiting the Memorial Hall.

We can reasonably assume here that the visitors to Memorial Hall, particularly
those who spent a moment to jot down their comment in visitor notebooks, drafied a
sense of responsibility from the past event toward their present. Memorial Hall offers
itself as a site in which to reconsider the past in terms of the human beings itself, with its
fragility and innocence caught in war and political conflicts concocted at structural levels
beyond the reach of individuals. Indeed, the victims of the atomic bombings were the
agents of the war themselves (and thus they were directly and indirectly responsible for
what happened to them), as some of the criticisms have emphasized in historical
controversies of defining the meanings of what happened in the past. However, such

criticisms ofien purport another violence of contemporaries against the individuals in the

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past because the innocence of individual persons is stripped when they were projected
onto the political context of Japan’s participation in the war (see Chapter 3). The visitors’
comments in Memorial Hall site the individual/private and innocent human statements to
call back a sense of political responsibility on all human sufferings as a whole.

It is perhaps necessary to mention that the visitor notebooks accounted for some
antagonistic reactions—albeit small in number but significant in substance—to Memorial
Hall. Memorial Hall became the target of criticisms because of its privileging of the
human suffering of atomic bomb victims was thought as an attempt to minimize the
sufferings experienced by the victims of Japan’s own war aggressions. The challenge
brought to Memorial Hall incipient to its construction, as well as in the visitor notebooks,
is a question of justice. This question is important yet it cannot be answered fully when
recognizing the past event in which those victimizing and those victimized were not
clear-cut in dichotomy.

In fact, when approaching to any event happened in the past, we can reasonably
say that there are diverse perspectives to give a rational understanding of the event, that
there is no transcendental perspective to understand the event, and that there is no way to
re-experience what happened in the past. Without needing to recite postmodern criticisms
on historiography, presenting the past in the present, since it is not possible to exhibit
entire past, involves the act of framing—it is a choice on perspectives to understand the
past. It can be seen that the visitors who wrote their comments along the line of such
challenging dynamics engage direct dialogue to Memorial Hall by examining the

legitimacy of the history surrounding atomic bombings and how Memorial Hall elicits the

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event in its space. The visitor notebooks then became a space in which such engagement
is also making a contribution to prevent the completion of the Realm of Memory.

It is important to call our attention that Memorial Hall is also asking the question
of justice when it represents diverse voices and experiences of individual persons
searching to understand the meanings of the event that took place in the past. The visitor
notebooks, thus, function in Memorial Hall as a dialogical space in which the present
living (visitors) makes their own inquiry not about what happened in the past but what
the present living should comprehend from the past. Hence, instead of directly
responding to the question of justice framed or fi'aming the past event in a particular
historical context, Memorial Hall seems to encourage its visitors to construct historical
context centering on the particular event it exhibits in its space.

The visitor notebooks serve here as vehicles not only for reflections but also
examination and challenge. Memorial Hall did not situate its visitors to be polite guests
who are invited to provide “an audience-contributed gesture of closure, not really to

”46 to the visitor notebooks.

provide well-balanced feedback on their museum experience
Instead, the notebooks work as an open-ended and dialogical space where there are more
questions than the statements to define a particular understanding of the past event.

In fact, Memorial Hall seems to make its visitor notebooks a kind of heterotopia
of the present that seeks to construct the future through reflecting of the past event. The

visitor notebooks became a placeless place that permits visitors to become individual

persons outside of their political and historical constraints to view of the event that

 

‘6 Tamar Katriel, Performing the Past: A Study of Israeli Settlement Museums (Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997), quoted in Sharon Macdonald, “Accessing Audiences: Visiting
Visitor Books,” Museum and Society 3, no. 3 (2005), 121.

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happened in the past. Visitors were able to think about the past victims and their tragic
experiences not merely political framework of history but also individual personal
experiences of human beings. Furthermore, visitors of Memorial Hall make direct link
between the past tragedy and the diverse issues in the present, from military conflicts to
political responsibilities on poverty and so on. The fact visitors are actively constructing
this link is noteworthy when considering that Memorial Hall makes no explicit attempt to
bridge the issues in the present to the past events (Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
and other peace museums sprout throughout Japan do make such connection in their
museum space).

Memorial Hall, having exposed almost no choice of its own when representing
the past, became a heterotopia. It is an institutionally constructed placeless place where
any political frameworks are not explicitly challenged and multiple political frameworks
are equally confronted by the diverse voices of individual persons who became victims of
the atomic bombings. The Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic
Bomb Victims is therefore an interesting site for ftu'ther inquiry, because of its
embodiment of multitudes of political frameworks (instead of constructing legitimacy
around a particular political framework). Having no explicit challenge to any political
frameworks and the presuppositions they carry, Memorial Hall shows possibilities and
potentials to bring dialogical representation of history: that is, history that is inclusive of
diverse experiences, yet this diversity is not supporting the fi'agmented understandings of
the past. Diverse understandings of what happened in the past are dialogically
substantiating toward a historical understanding that constantly aims substantiality yet

transfonnative in a globalizing society.

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Chapter 7

Knowledge as a Fluid Entity

“A choice is always defined in terms
of what it excludes, and a historical
project is a logical substitution.”

—Gilles DeleuzeI
In Empiricism and Subjectivity, Gilles Deleuze puts together the philosophical
contributions of David Hume and his projects for the creation of a science of humanity.
Deleuze, when identifying Hume's fimdamental project, writes:
A choice is always defined in terms of what it excludes, and a historical
project is a logical substitution. Hume's project entails the substitution of a
psychology of the mind by a psychology of the mind's affections. The
constitution of a psychology of the mind is not at all possible, since this
psychology cannot find in its object the required constancy or universality;
only a psychology of affections will be capable of constituting the true
science of humanity.2
The study of the human mind and the study of the human past are in common when the
subject of their inquiry is an entity that has no physical attribution. Psychology works
with the human mind, but it has no physical entity upon which to make an empirical
observation. Psychologists observe human behaviors and actions, but their objects of
observation are the reflections of the mind, not the mind itself. Historians study the past,

but their subject of inquiry is not the past itself, it is the traces of the past that are

reflecting the past in the present.3 The past itself is similarly inaccessible because the past

 

' Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume ’3 Theory of Human Nature,
trans. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 21, italics in original

2 Ibid. Italics are in original text.

3 For example, Arthur C. Danto argues, “it is logically possible that the world was created just five
minutes ago, intact with us and all our memories, and containing all those bits and pieces of things we take

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itself has no entity that can be observed in the present. Deleuze identifies that the
fundamental project of Hume is the shift from a psychology of the mind to a psychology
of the mind’s affection. This study, similarly, proposes the substitution of a history of the
past itself by a history of historical explanations, which are the representations of how we
have understood past events, as one of the fundamental agents to establish knowledge in
history.4

The preceding chapters examined the constituent elements of our understanding
of what happened in the past. Memory is a private understanding of what happened in the
past and it is constituted with experiential remembrance of the past events. Testimony is
the memory made available in the public domain, and it is the constituent element of both
history and collective understanding of past events (chapter 3). The collective
remembrance of the past is not the product of nature, but it is the product of active
resistance to oblivion in the public sphere of past events. The collective remembrance
provides history both as the subject and the resource for inquiring into the past (chapter
4). However, the actors who are remembering the past event are ceaselessly transforming
in the present; and thus, our collective and individual remembrance belongs to the present

as a constituent element of historical explanations (chapter 5).

 

as evidence for a much older world than we inhabit. The whole present complexion of the world might be
just as it is, independently of when the world was created, and the world, as we now know it, is compatible
with an astoundingly brief history of itself. But then, if it were created five minutes ago, there would have
been nothing for statements purportedly about the past to refer to.” George Orwell, in his popular novel,
I984, writes differently to challenge documentary empiricism for understanding the past. In the Ministry of
Truth, the main character of the story, Winston, was ceaselessly rewriting the documents from the past.
“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to day. In this way, every prediction
made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct...” Historians in the
present have no means to negate the cases hypothesized by Danto and Orwell, Hence, we can say historians
do not study the past itself but the past traces in the present. Quotes are from, Arthur C. Danto, Narration
and Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 30; and George Orwell, 1984 (New York:
Penguin Books Ltd., 1998), 40.

4 See the preface to the English edition of Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, x-xi.

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Viewed in light of the inquiries in the preceding chapters, historical explanations

are fluid and never concrete. The significance assigned to a past event—the atomic

bombing of Hiroshima, for example—is not the product of nature. In fact, there have

been conscious efforts to make the atomic bombing of Hiroshima into the subject of
history. Having no conscious effort made in assigning significance to past events, the
events would be abandoned to our oblivion. Nothing becomes the subject of history
without human consciousness to make past events into the subjects of historical inquiry.
Therefore, it is the subjective element of our present that makes the past into the subject
of history.

Knowledge in history thus inevitably includes subjective elements from those
who made a particular past into the subject of history, and of those who subscribe to the
existing historical explanations. It then follows that substantiating the knowledge that is
embedded in each historical explanation cannot bridge the controversies across different
historical understandings of what happened in the past. Consequently, if we assume
knowledge in history is about the past itself, we will never be able to attain the kind of
knowledge necessary for responding to the plurality of historical explanations as the
present reality. This study, therefore, argues from the position that diversity does not and
should not be applied to the knowledge. The plurality of historical explanations means
that there are diverse historical explanations, and it does not mean the same to say that
the knowledge in history is diverse. This study thus argues the knowledge is always in the
making to negate the notion that claims the knowledge in history is diverse.

Memories of private persons are never consistent because memories are

ceaselessly shaped and reshaped in light of the person’s present conditions and

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experiences. Memory is thus the entity that ceaselessly flows and is always in the
making. The substance of testimony is such memories. However, it captures only a
fraction of memory that is always in the making. The preceding chapters demonstrated
that the collective consciousness of the past has also been ceaselessly in the making in
respect to political and historical conditions of the present. The constituent elements of
historical explanations are consequently just such substances that cannot be substantiated
because they are the entities that are always in the making. History employs such
substances that cannot be substantiated definitively. This leads us to a new level of
understanding history and its knowledge: that is, it is not possible to substantiate history’s
knowledge by only substantiating the substances constructing historical explanations.
Historical explanations are also substances that are constructing knowledge in history.
Therefore, substantiating the substances constructing another substance would not be able
to definitively substantiate history and its knowledge.

History has to substantiate its knowledge with constancy and universality in order
to stand as a discipline. If history fails to substantiate its knowledge, the practice of
history would have to be continuously fragile and it endangers history by turning it into a
discipline without an end point. To differentiate historical explanations from myths and
epics requires knowledge with constancy and universality. Historians thus seek
rigorously to substantiate the substances constituting historical explanations. However,
their substantiation has led the discipline of history into an ironic condition, which Arthur
C. Danto reluctantly characterizes by saying:

There has been, and perhaps there still are, parts of science which have not

passed beyond the mere making of observations, the collecting of
specimens, and the like. Ordinary history might be just such a science.5

 

5 Danto, Narration and Knowledge, 4.

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The postmodern approach to history has stressed the impossibility of constructing
positivistic knowledge about the past. It is valid to argue that subjective interventions by
present historians are inevitable in the process of selecting certain past events as the
subject of history. Knowledge in history is thus defined by the context and the moment
by which we give meanings to the past.

However, when we push postmodern critique on history and its knowledge
construction to the extreme, we face a danger of making a relativistic localization of
knowledge without making inquiry of diverse aspects and power structures that gave rise
to meaning. The knowledge emphasized in the relativistic approach to history, for
example, offers neither constancy nor universality. In fact, relativism defines knowledge
by the context in which the past is interpreted. Relativism thus ends up offering no
comprehensive means to bridge different knowledge constructed in different contexts. In
this respect, relativism has turned history to push forward pseudo-knowledge by opening
the avenue to the deconstruction of history’s disciplinary framework. To apply relativism
to explain the plurality of historical explanations would lead history to indefinitely ramify
the context to authenticate the knowledge to the level of individuals, and thus it ends up
constructing pseudo-knowledge if not anti-knowledge.

It is also important to note that, if we continue assuming knowledge in history to
have a definitive property about what happened in the past, the knowledge has forever to
be ramified because everyone has perspectives that are constructed in relation to their
present historical conditions. Yet, it is perhaps more problematic to draft definitive

meanings of the past, as history would require halting the continuous flow of time.

 

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History, when it freezes the flow of time, can claim a body of knowledge that has a
definitive value. However, the knowledge produced through stopping the flow of time
would have to refuse further interpretations of the past because such knowledge is
substantiated through active negation to the continuous flow of time. Therefore, when
such knowledge to be open to further interpretations, it has to challenge what has given
the knowledge a definitive body—the definitiveness of the knowledge came from
freezing the flow of time, and being open to reinterpretation requires the active
recognition of the flow of time. History, therefore, needs to embody a system that makes
a constructive recognition of the possibilities of occurrence of future events that may
change the meanings assigned to the past in the present moment.

The significations of what happened in the past are constantly made and remade
in light of the future of the events that became the subject of history. This study, hence,
has repeatedly stressed that knowledge in history is a ceaseless construction that has only
a conceptual endpoint. If past events themselves have significations that have the
required constancy and universality, to do history is to build a complete chronicle of what
happened in the past. The significations of past events, however, are not the product of
nature because the same past events often become an element for constructing historical
explanations that are in conflict with each other. It follows from here that knowledge in
history cannot be authenticated only through substantiation of the substances constituting
historical explanations and their significations. Furthermore, if we assume history to
construct a fixed entity with a definitive value, history would become the discipline that

is forever trapped in the endless accumulation and substantiation of the substances in the

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present that are constantly transforming.6 History, then, is implicitly abandoning its
intellectual purposes that are necessary quality to make history into a discipline.

Narrative emphasis on history thus casts new light to define knowledge in history.
Narrativism focuses on the fact that historical explanations of what happened in the past
are necessarily built on a narrative structure.7 Historical explanation is fundamentally a
narrative that makes a causal explanation from two or more events that occurred in
different moments of the past. History, in this respect, constructs the narrative structure
that gives meanings to the past through establishing a causal relationship between the
events happening in two different temporal moments of the time. Narrativism thus
provides legitimacy to the knowledge that is ceaselessly in the making and the remaking.
The past is what was once the present, and the future is what is going to be the present.
The present is thus the state that is always becoming. In this respect, the present, in
reality, is not a distinct state. Instead, the present is a substance that cannot be
substantiated outside of its relations with the context in which it is poised. In other words,
the present has substance only when the present is poised in particular contexts.
Therefore, it is not possible to substantiate knowledge in history as something with the
required constancy and universality beyond time. There is neither a rigid substance nor a
distinct state from which to construct definitive meanings of the past. In fact, the

substances constructing historical explanations are the constituent elements of what

 

‘5 The present is constantly transforming and thus it is never definitive. In short, the present is only a
conjuncture between the past and the future, and it is only a moment in which the future becomes the past.
Therefore, the signification of the past event may be established as definitive property in the present, and
the property value is never definitive in light of what may become known to us in the future. See chapter
two for the discussion on Aristotelian logic of time.

7 For the narrative structure of historical explanation, see the discussion on historiography in
Chapter 2.

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Bergson often calls as the continued melody of the continuous flow of time and events.8
Melody is indivisible. Musical notes are the constituent elements of melody, but they
themselves are not melody. Similarly, time is an indivisible flex, and thus history can
only seize its knowledge through institutionalization of our understanding of what
happened in the past.

It is important to call to our attention that knowledge about what happened in the
past assumes time is a divisible unit to be treated much like physical science treats
motion as divisible property. In fact, most history departments in universities habitually
organize their programs by dividing the continuous flow of time. For example, a history
department is often constituted of divisions dividing the past into time periods—Ancient,
Romantic, Modern and Contemporary history. Furthermore, recent multicultural
emphasis on history study has established many sub-divisions of history into gender,
race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality and other categories, to approach the past. Today,
history in liberal democratic societies seeks knowledge that is inclusive of diverse
understandings of the past as an approach to make a fair representation of what happened
in the past. However, we need to note that, behind the argument for inclusiveness of
history, the past is already and uncritically assumed as a divisible property: the distinction
being between the past that is included and the past that is excluded. History is thus
thought to be much like solving a jigsaw puzzle that is made of diverse constituent

elements that form a complete picture of what the past essentially was.

 

8 For Bergson’s using metaphor of melody, see Susanne Gueriac, Thinking in Time: An Introduction
to Henri Bergson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), and James M. Curtis, “Bergson and Russian
Formalism,” Comparative Literature Review 28 no. 2 (spring 1976), 109-121.

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In fact, knowledge that is inclusive of everything is, in principle, anti-knowledge.
If inclusiveness is the primary requirement for constructing knowledge, we need to
measure the substantiality of knowledge by empirically measuring the amount of
substances constituting that particular knowledge. The substances representing past
events are indeed critical constituent elements of historical explanations. However, the
substances themselves are merely the constituent elements of chronicles if there is no
narrative structure to assign a causal relationship between those substances.9
Inclusiveness, in this respect, can constructively complicate history through
authenticating the introduction of diverse readings and consciousnesses of the past.
Nonetheless, inclusiveness does not answer how we should construct knowledge that
encompasses not only the complexities of the past but also the present readings of the
past. The plurality of historical explanations is thus a welcomed outcome of the

inclusiveness of history’s knowledge. Still, inclusiveness provides no solution to the

conflicts between different historical explanations.

The narrative structure of historical explanations also makes it clear that the
process of assigning significance to past events necessarily involves selection. Selection
is fundamentally a choice that is “always defined in terms of what it excludes.”10 In fact,
even those who argue for knowledge that is inclusive assume that a historical explanation
is firndamentally a product of exclusion. To emphasize inclusiveness in doing history is
in fact the same as recognizing the fact that currently held historical explanations are the

products of exclusion. To practice history in the postmodern condition of the present,

 

9 See chapter 2 for detailed discussion on this point.

’0 Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, 21 .

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therefore, we face a serious dilemma. Knowledge in history, like knowledge in other
disciplinary fields, is a product of selection that is defined by what it excludes. Yet,
history is asked to be inclusive of all diverse understandings in the public domain of what
happened in the past.

Chapter six, therefore, demonstrated this dilemma being materialized when
constructing a public museum about a historical event. Public museums of history in
general face the same dilemma when representing past events. Public museums, unlike
their private counterparts, are asked to represent diverse voices and perspectives available
in the public domain, as well as diverse experiences of the people who constitute the
public. Furthermore, as publicly funded institutions, public museums need to demonstrate
their raison d ’etre by constructing a definitive representation of their exhibited subject to
the whole public.H To construct knowledge that is inclusive of all diverse voices and
experiences of the past is in fact a boastful project, because such a project requires that
museums reconstruct the whole past, or exhibit the entire, chaotic perceptions of the past
existing in the present.

It is also important to note that building a public museum about a past event is
concurrent to endorsing a particular interpretation of the event as the dominant
explanation in the public domain. Public museums, through imposing their imperishable

appearances, often craft monumentality around the subjects that are represented in the

 

” Recall the historical controversy occurred when the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space
Museum announced its original plan to exhibit the Enola Gay. One of primary subjects in the controversy
stressed the role of public museums in constructing collective understanding of what happened in the past
for the public, from whom the museums receive their funding. Furthermore, see the discussion on the
relationship between history textbooks (and nation’s representing the past events) and the construction of
national identity, in chapter two.

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museum-space.12 This monumentality is the product of selection. The construction of
public museums of past events, therefore, is a useful medium to inquire into the practice
of making a logical substitution for building history’s knowledge that would be
substantive in the public sphere. The museum-space thus becomes a physically attributed
field in which diverse perceptions of the present and their construction of the meanings of
past events are scrutinized, pursuant to becoming constituent elements of the public
representation of what happened in the past.13 Hence, chapter six discussed the
construction of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims to
inquire into knowledge that encompasses a complex plurality of historical explanations
on the atomic bombing and its meanings in history.

In 2003, just before the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb
Victims opened its doors to the public, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space
Museum relocated its Enola Gay exhibition to the museum’s new wing. The primary
firnction of the new wing is to provide a physical space to exhibit the aircraft that cannot
be physically stored in the Mall. From the contextual reading of how the Smithsonian
shaped the exhibition, we can understand the Smithsonian’s determination to avoid
risking another controversy like the one in 1994. However, visitors to the museum would
not likely learn much about anything than what is being exhibited in the museum-space.

The Smithsonian, by definitively limiting the exhibition to present the Enola Gay
as a constituent element of the history of aviation technology, controls the significance to

be derived fiom the Enola Gay. In other words, the Smithsonian isolated the Enola Gay

 

‘2 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK and Cambridge: Balckwell, 1991).

'3 For elaboration of this point, see chapter six of this study and also Kenneth E. Foote, Shadowed
Ground: America ’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1997).

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within the narrative framework of aviation history when responding to controversies and
conflicts in the present plurality of historical explanations. The exhibited artifact and the
significance assigned to the artifact are, therefore, made into a definitive property by
isolating the exhibition—the product—from any interpretations and reinterpretations of
the present and the future.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims takes an ahnost
contrary approach when exhibiting the subject, which has invited diverse and even
conflicting interpretations. Memorial Hall exposes to the visitors the diversity of
understandings and consciousnesses generated from empirical experiences of the atomic
bombing. The complexity of the testimonies stored and exhibited in the museum-space
provides no definitive explanation to the museum’s subject. Memorial Hall, in other
words, provides no definitive historical explanation that permits visitors to be a
receptacle to passively subscribe to a simplified causal framework to comprehend the
past. In this respect, visitors are pushed to become active agents confronting the past
dynamics and their complexity, much like historians practicing the discipline of history.

Memorial Hall functions like an archive of testimonies, and visitors have access
to all the diverse and complex testimonies—each of which makes a unique causal
relationship to provide a historical explanation of the atomic bombing and its context.
However, Memorial Hall is not an archive; the architecture of the museum, in fact,
provides a particular framework to the visitors’ entering the museum-space. This is to say
that Memorial Hall, instead of building a framework to condition past substances
(testimonies) to be exhibited in the museum-space, builds a condition for the visitors who

are reading the past substances from the present time.

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The architecture of the museum building suggests, for example, that entering the
museum-space is much like going inside a mausoleum—~—the place belonging to the
deceased. This architectural makeup provides a clear dichotomy between the deceased
and the living, as well as between the past and the present. More importantly, this
dichotomy does not draw a rigid and definitive line to simultaneously differentiate the
past from the present. Instead, the dichotomy was a necessary condition to illuminate the
ceaseless continuation between the past and the present. Memorial Hall therefore,
introduces a particular kind of dichotomy when exhibiting diverse and complex
testimonies of the past. While this dichotomy evidently differentiates between the past
and the present, the differentiation exists only conceptually, and is without physical
attribution. Through constructing the museum-space where the past and the present are
coexisting in one place, Memorial Hall has created an imagined environment in which the
deceased are speaking to the living.

The diverse and complex testimonies stored and exhibited in the museum-space
therefore would not deconstruct the raison d ’etre of Memorial Hall as a public museum.
Even though Memorial Hall offers no definitive explanation to make visitors comply with
a particular causal explanation of the atomic bombing, the visitors are made aware of the
complexity and dynamics of past realities and the meanings generated from them. In fact,
museums exhibiting a particular historical explanation would inevitably have an exhibit
that is anachronistic. History works with time that is ceaselessly flowing. Hence, when a
museum exhibition holds a particular historical explanation as the definitive one, the
exhibition inevitably turns into an example of anachronism. It is because such an

exhibition uncritically assumes the past itself has significance that is naturalistic and

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transcendently timeless, and thus it denies the transforming realities of the present.
Visitors to Memorial Hall instead face the plurality of historical explanations in diverse
and complex testimonies; and more importantly, these visitors are made to realize that
there is no definitive historical explanation, with the required constancy and universality.

Memorial Hall thus is a space where visitors engage with complex testimonies of
individual persons. Each testimony is a causal explanation of the atomic bombing, and
each testimony is the product of different historical conditions of individual persons who
have exposed their memories to the public domain. In the eyes of present visitors, the
museum-space is replicating the ultimate plurality of historical explanations, because
testimonies are in themselves historical explanations drafted with the frameworks of
individual persons. Visitors experience diverse and complex testimonies of individual
persons, regarding the atomic bombing. It is important to recall that Memorial Hall has an
architectural makeup that invites visitors to experience the testimonies with their own
historical conditions from the present. The visitors consequently approach the testimonies
not simply as narrative explanation about the past. More importantly, when there is no
definitive narrative explanation to organize diverse testimonies, visitors are forced to be
aware of the fact that they lack the means to make definitive explanation to deal with a
difficult past.

Chapter six, in fact, showed visitors seeking to build coherence from complexity,
in understanding the atomic bombing. The visitor notebooks revealed that visitors have
dialogical interactions with the testimonies stored/exhibited in Memorial Hall. Many
visitors have made direct reference to wars, incidents of terrorism, social unrest and to

other problems that are ongoing in their present contexts, when writing their comments in

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the notebooks. In this respect, we can affum that the testimonies stored/exhibited in the
museum-space are not made into a property by which the visitors can confirm or
challenge their contemporary understanding of the atomic bombing. Instead, visitors
employ the testimonies of the atomic bombing to generate meanings that are
comprehensible and useful in understanding their present conditions and problems.

Thus we see that Memorial Hall, when exhibiting diverse testimonies without a
definitive narrative framework to push forward a particular historical explanation,
situates its visitors in a particular condition. The visitors are conditioned to understand
that the diverse testimonies are “neither agents nor patients, but results of actions and
passions.”14 The point is that Memorial Hall makes no logical substitution of diverse
testimonies with a comprehensible historical explanation when constructing the museum-
space for exhibiting the atomic bombing. Memorial Hall brings forward no defining
framework that seeks to freeze the meanings of the past within a particular historical
explanation that is definitive to a particular historical condition of a particular present
context. Instead, Memorial Hall substitutes a representation of the past event itself with a
representation of how the past event has been understood after the event’s occurrence. In
this respect, Memorial Hall exhibits in its museum-space not only past consciousnesses
of the atomic bombing—as represented in testimonies—but also contemporary
consciousness of the atomic bombing. Visitors are, therefore, the subjects who make
active inquiry into constructing a comprehensive explanation of the atomic bombing.
Then the contemporary construction of the comprehensive explanation of the atomic

bombing becomes the object to be exhibited in the museum-space.

 

” Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, 4-5.

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We can argue that testimonies are the constituent elements of the present
construction of historical explanations, while they are also historical explanations given
in the past. Neither past substances nor historical explanations are themselves able to
constitute complete knowledge in history, because they are interdependently
substantiating themselves in the present context. History, therefore, is not about
identifying what the past essentially was, nor is it about making a comprehensive
explanation of the whole past. When the present moment is ceaselessly becoming the past
and the present is merely a temporal moment, we cannot make the present be the ground
for substantiating the past identified or explained in historical explanations. Present
reflections of past events are an incorporeal entity that is infinitely transforming, and thus
knowledge in history is substantial only when it is being shaped and reshaped.15

It is then necessary to consider how knowledge in history that is an incorporeal
and fluid entity approaches the plurality of historical explanations differently from the
relativistic approach to history. We need to note that to stress history's knowledge as an
incorporeal and fluid entity is not the same as arguing that history cannot construct its
knowledge. In fact, by asserting knowledge as a fluid entity, we attempt to reinstate
knowledge in history that does have the required constancy and universality, in respect to
the plurality of historical explanations. The relationship between past testimonies and

present visitors in Memorial Hall, for example, suggests that the fluidity of knowledge

 

15Bergson uses the metaphor of melody to identify what is being discussed here. Similarly Deleuze
uses a metaphor of the law of change of the water and its relationship to the permanence of the river to
elaborate the notion of fluidity as repetitions. Deleuze writes, “The constants of one law are in turn
variables of a more general law...So at each level, it is in relation to large. permanent natural objects that
the subjet of a law experiences its own powerlessness to repeat and discovers that this powerlessness is
already contained in the object, reflected in the permenet object wherein it sees itself condemned... In
every respect, repetition is a transgression. It puts law into quiestion, it denounces its nominal or genral
chanarter in favor of a more profound and more artistic reality.” Quote is from Gilles Deleuze, Diflerence
Empiricism and Subjectivity, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 2-3.

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can be institutionalized in the public sphere in which there is plurality of historical
explanations. The institutionalized subject, however, is not the past substances or the
narrative structures for substantiating a particular historical explanation about the past. In
place of the past substances or narrative structures, the subject being institutionalized
here is the present historical conditions themselves from which we make inquiries of the
past.

The plurality of historical explanations poses problems to history if history is to
construct a definitive explanation that is timelessly constant and universal. However,
when historical explanations become incontrovertibly definitive, it is only because (1) the
past being explained has no historical significance that is relevant to the present
condition, or (2) the past being explained is controlled by something outside of history. If
we assume knowledge in history to be a definitive property, history study would
inevitably situate its inquiry to substantiate past substances or the framework to draft a
definitive historical explanation.

Indeed, historians are able to employ textual analysis and even scientific
examinations to substantiate past substances. However, as this study has repeatedly
stressed, to substantiate past substances is merely to provide elements for constructing a
complete chronicle. The atomic bombing, for example, is a significant event in itself, and
it is incontrovertible that it happened in the past. However, as the preceding chapters
demonstrated, the historical significance assigned to the atomic bombing had no
constancy and universality in Japan throughout the postwar years. The historical
significance assigned to the atomic bombing is, in fact, rooted in the present, and thus

historical significance is not a property that is naturally inhibited in the past. Historical

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explanations are, instead, the products of present reflections of what happened in the past.
Consequently, historical explanations are either incorporeally fiesh or anachronistically
definitive. The plurality of historical explanations is thus a necessary condition where
history works with the past that has significant impact in the present.

Plurality suggests that there is a definitive diversity in our historical conditions in
the present. Historical conditions of our past made us experience the same event—the
atomic bombing, for example—differently. Thus, past events impacted people
differently, even if they experienced the same past. Having been impacted differently by
the past, we come to have diverse historical conditions in the present. Therefore, we
experience the past differently, and our historical conditions in the present situate us
differently when we understand both the past and present realities. Historical conditions
are always in the making, as in the famous saying in Latin, Tempora mutantur, et nos
mutamur in illis—time changes, and we (and our historical conditions) change with time.

It is not possible to illustrate our present historical condition for the same reason
that we cannot construct a definitive historical explanation of what happened in the past.
However, it is feasible to investigate those historical conditions constructing historical
explanations about what happened in the past. History, Gilles Deleuze writes, “studies the
relations between motive and action in most circumstances, and it also exhibits the
uniformity of the human passions.”l6 The plurality of historical explanations, in other
words, is the signifier of the fact that the past being explained is a significant subject for
the present—motive—to do history—action. Knowledge in history is definitive only

when it embodies a mechanism that is revising itself. Though it sounds contradictory,

 

l6Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, 22

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knowledge in history is definitive when it definitively affirms its fluidity by revising
itself in respect to the present. Previous chapters demonstrate that history would have no
knowledge that can be substantiated in the present if history continues to study only the
things happened in the past.17 However, if we take fluid knowledge as knowledge in
history, we can move history beyond mere accumulation of past accounts. Instead, we
can make diverse historical explanations as the subject of historical inquiry to identify
non-historical elements constituting each historical explanation. These non-historical
elements then expose us how we have understood the past. More importantly, those non-
historical elements provide us insight into the problems around which we constructed
historical explanations to understand in our present time.

If we take as our point of departure that knowledge in history needs to be
substantiated in the present as a definitive property, we can position diverse historical
explanations as representations of present historical conditions and their interpretation of
the past. Interpretation is a necessary practice of history to procure the reason why and

how something has happened in the past. More importantly, however, interpretation of

 

'7 Previous chapters in fact demonstrate just such history. Chapter three demonstrated the
relationship between the historical conditions and the testimonies (historical explanations) of individual
survivors of the atomic bombing. Survivors of the atomic bombing gave their testimonies, but their
testimonies became an embodiment of themselves in the public sphere. Hence, when their testimonies
became substantial substance to construct the historical condition of the public sphere, the survivors found
themselves petrified in the historical condition from which they made their testimony. Individual survivors
became the embodiment of their testimonies when the testimonies became substantial substances to
construct historical explanations in the public sphere. Yet, in the eyes of public, the survivors cannot have a
historical condition that is shifting and transforming according to their present; instead, their historical
condition is frozen in the past in which they made their testimonies.

Chapter four and five identified the relationship between political intentions and historical
conditions when constructing historical explanations in the public sphere. Through exploring chronological
developments of historical explanations in light of the political atmosphere and social movements that are
behind each historical explanation, those chapters illustrated that historical explanations are constituted not
only by elements of a historical nature, but also by those elements that are not from the past, and thus are
non-historical elements. Having non-historical elements to construct historical explanations makes it clear
that historical explanations cannot be substantiated by identifying or inquiring about the past itself.

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the past provides meanings of the past in the present.18 The survivors of Hiroshima's
atomic bombing offered their historical explanations as testimonies with diverse reasons
over time: First, many survivors approached the past to seek emotional compensation for
their loss by transliterating what they experienced and saw in the aftermath of the atomic
bombing. Then, we saw the survivors approach the past to seek public remembrance of
the atomic bombing, to exhibit the war's consequences. It then became emphasized in
order to display the horror of the human ability to destroy whole human populations. In
each moment, the survivors responded to a historical condition particular to the moment:
the survivors were responding, for example, to (1) the end of wartime reality, (2) postwar
oblivion, and (3) the Cold War and spread of nuclear armaments as imminent danger to
the present. To propose the history of historical explanations is to situate the plurality of
historical explanations as the representation of present interpretations of past events. It is
the purpose of such history study to inquire into the meanings of the past in the present.
Furthermore, through investigating past historical explanations, we will be able to
identify the construction of meanings of the past as well. The plurality of historical
explanations, then, is not a problematic reality that is preventing our constructing
knowledge that is definitive. Instead, plurality is a necessary condition for history to
construct knowledge that is a fluid entity, which is ceaselessly flowing toward a
conceptual endpoint.

Multiculturalism also affirms the plurality of historical explanations. However,

there is an important difference in the way multiculturalism affirms plurality.

 

l8See Chapter 2, and the same points have been made repeatedly in the past. See, for example,
Danto, Narration and Knowledge; and Herodotus, The Famous History of Herodotus (New York: AMS
Press, 1965).

271

Multiculturalism, for example, rationalizes plurality of historical explanations on the
ground of active recognition of diverse historical and cultural conditions. However,
multiculturalism has a severe conceptual deficiency in constructing history when the
plurality of historical explanations in itself is implied as the product. Having implied
plurality as an end in itself, multiculturalism has permitted infinitely multiplying
historical explanations without providing a conceptual means to utilize the plurality
constructed as a result. Multiculturalism thus ends up promoting the assumption that each
socio-cultural group has (or owns) a historical explanation of its own. In consequence,
history focuses on seeking hidden perspectives in order to add different interpretations of
what happened in the past. Therefore, while there are infinitely diversifying historical
explanations, we have rarely seen meaningful discussions that build knowledge that has
the requisite constancy and universality. Multiculturalism thus provides a political reason
to give legitimacy to the plurality of historical explanations as the present reality. In other
words, it is assumed that the diversity of historical explanations is thought as the way to
distribute the power of interpretation equally to all groups in a society. Multiculturalism
approaches historical explanations as a property to which everyone may claim ownership.
The plurality of historical explanations, however, originates in our diverse and
complex historical conditions from which we construct and read historical explanations.
The historical condition is the incorporeal state that is defined by the past and our present
consciousness of the past. It is incorporeal and fluid because the present is ceaselessly
becoming the past, and also because the future is ceaselessly becoming the present. The

plurality of historical explanations is not an endpoint of our historical inquiry. Instead,

272

plurality is the reality on which history has to practice its inquiry. Furthermore, plurality
is the necessary outcome when we practice history to interpret what happened in the past.

The history of historical explanations is a necessary approach to comprehend the
plurality of historical explanations as both a necessary condition and an inevitable
product of history. In fact, the preceding discussions have repeatedly stressed the
limitations in the existing approaches to history when constructing knowledge that
encompasses the plurality of historical explanations. For example, Arthur C. Danto
argues that history has two philosophical approaches to knowledge: the substantive
philosophy of history and the analytical philosophy of history. These two philosophical
approaches to history, however, are the same when they both inquire into the past to
substantiate knowledge in history. The substantive philosophy of history seeks empirical
traces showing what happened in the past. The analytical philosophy of history inquires
of the past to identify the structural mechanism that can explain whole events that
happened in the past. These two philosophies of history assume knowledge in history
(whether empirical substances or structural mechanism) is primarily in the past. History
thus studies the past that is free from the distortions and biases of the present. In
consequence, when we stress that the scholarship of history is about the past, we are
making a serious assumption: that is, they assume that a positivistic past truth is out there.
The work of history, therefore, has been to claim, rescue, and accumulate them to build a
substantive historical explanation.

Indeed, were history is to validate its knowledge on the grounds of past
substances, history would have to focus on either identifying or representing past

substances in the present. Present interpretations of the past, in this respect, are those

273

elements distorting past realities. However, as discussed in earlier chapters, history is not
a complete chronicle of the whole past, and thus history requires interpretations of past
meanings. The act of interpreting the past may constitute undesirable intervention of the
present into the past when we construct a complete chronicle of the whole past. However,
interpretation is a necessary practice of history in the present, to understand past
meanings in light of the impacts that the past has brought to the present. The point that
needs to be highlighted here is that present interpretations constitute an undesirable
intervention when we hold an uncritical dichotomy between the past and the present. It is
important to notice that the present can be perceived as the agent distorting the past when
we perceive that the past is completely disconnected from the present. The disconnection
of the past from the present is in fact a necessary presupposition when past substances are
assumed to be validating a particular historical explanation in the present. The past
becomes a material property with which the present constructs history's knowledge.

This study proposes the history of historical explanations to make conscious
negation of the disconnection of the past from the past. This study, however, does not
propose the deconstruction of the dichotomy between the past and the present; instead,
the history of historical explanations is an attempt to highlight the dialogue that is
ceaselessly ongoing across the dichotomized structure that divides history's subjects (the
past) and the subjects doing history (historians and the present contemporaries). In his
argument to seek a science of humanity, Hume proposes to substitute a psychology of the
mind with a psychology of the mind's affections.19 The history of historical explanations

is a similar attempt to substitute a history of past meanings for a history of past events, in

 

l9Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, 21

274

order to institutionalize knowledge of human actions and passions that are constructing
our historical conditions.

The history of historical explanations seeks knowledge that is in the present. This
knowledge, therefore, is incorporeal in regard to the future because the historical
condition of the present will certainly be changing as we move toward the future. The
plurality of historical explanations is thus the constituent element representing past
meanings in the present. The primary purpose of proposing such history is (l) to bring a
constructive challenge to the definitive dichotomy between the past and the present in the
practice of history, and (2) to negate misappropriating of postmodern/post—structural
critique of history that only celebrates locality of knowledge without inquiring into those
aspects making those localized knowledge into the status of knowledge. The history of
historical explanations aims to propose knowledge that is additional to the knowledge
constructed through the substantive and the analytical philosophies of history.
Knowledge pursued through the history of historical explanations, in other words, does
not aim to challenge knowledge constructed through substantive and analytical
philosophies of history. Instead, the history of historical explanations provides knowledge
for history to better utilize preexisting approaches to the past.

It is not a constructive criticism to simply identify present impacts on our
understanding of the past, because it is at best a negation of history and its disciplinary
ability to construct knowledge. This study has introduced such criticism to history
through relativism and the postmodern approach to history. Both relativism and
postmodernism have contributed to history by challenging the positivism assumed when

constructing knowledge in history. However, when responding to the plurality of

275

historical explanations, they have affirmed it as present reality by negating knowledge
that has the required constancy and universality. The negation of history’s ability to
construct the knowledge, in fact, comes from the assumed dichotomy between the past
and the present, and thus we have seen the misappropriating of both relativism and
postmodern challenges to history.

Therefore, the history of historical explanations aims to remove the assumption
that the scholarship of history is to study the past. In fact, to study the history of historical
explanations is to build an active consciousness that the past has made substantial
impacts in constructing the historical conditions of the present. This consciousness also
brings us to awareness of the complex reality that: (1) the past had its own historical
conditions, that (2) past historical conditions brought diverse responses to the same event;
and that (3) the initial response to the past event would likely be different from the
responses made over time, because historical condition shifts in respect to what else
happened after the past event. In this respect, historical explanations are ceaselessly
diversifying so long as the subject being explained remains significant. Therefore, the
plurality of historical explanations is the necessary product of history, and thus history, to
substantiate past substances will not, by itself, provide an answer to the conflicts and
dilemmas that have originated in and from the plurality of historical explanations.

In order to constructively respond to the conflicts and dilemmas generated in/fiom
the plurality of historical explanations, we cannot just stress empathy to accept
coexistence of diverse historical explanations. Coexistence is possible when difference is
not threatening the authenticity, validity, and legitimacy of others. Emphasizing the moral

virtue of empathy perhaps works in the discourse of social justice. However, it is

276

problematic to relay moral virtue, for the application of the virtue is limited within what
is already understood, accepted or recognized in the present. Therefore, that which is
difficult to understand, accept or recognize cannot receive the attribution of moral virtue,
as discussed earlier, regarding multiculturalism and its approach to history.

History requires a systematic approach to explicate its practice of excluding not
only past truths but also the present diversity of historical conditions. History makes a
selection through exclusion of the complexity of both the past and the present in favor of
constructing a comprehensible understanding of past meanings in the present. It is valid
to define past historical explanations of what happened in the past as past meanings
constructed through exclusions, in the past. Past meanings here are the products that are
as substantive as past substances constituting historical explanations. In short, I argue that
to do history of historical explanations is to access the desires and the motivations that
have kept particular past events historically significant.

In this respect, the history of historical explanations exposes two constituent
elements of historical explanation. First, the history of historical explanations enables us
to make inquiry about the motives that made and have been making a particular past
event into the significant subject of history. This identifies the reasons why certain past
events became the subject of history, and if the reasons for studying the particular past
events have been constant and/or universal. Then, the history of historical explanations
also exposes the presuppositions, political intentions, present historical conditions and
other factors outside of history constituting the existing historical explanations. These
elements are both implicit and often hidden when history constructs a historical

explanation as a product of historical inquiries into the past. These elements are also what

277

the existing historiographies have challenged as biases and non-historical elements that
distort historical explanations. However, if we aim to construct fluid knowledge that
encompasses the plurality of historical explanations, it is necessary to position each
historical explanation both as a product of history and as a constituent element for a new
historical explanation. Then the plurality of historical explanations is made into the
constituent elements for generating a historical explanation that is comprehensible for the
historical condition of the present. The new historical explanation then becomes a
constituent element for other historical explanations that are responding to the historical
conditions constructing the future. This fluid knowledge is thus incorporeal and
ceaselessly transforming, since it is knowledge about the past that is ceaselessly
becoming a part of constituent elements for present historical conditions.

This study thus proposes the history of historical explanations to seek knowledge
that is ceaselessly in the becoming, and proposes that this knowledge will enable history
to study not only the past but also the present construction of past meanings as the subject
of history. It is the intention of this study to open/reinstate comprehensive dialogue across
conflicting historical explanations that have come from conflicting historical conditions
of the past and the present. The historical explanation of a terrorist, for example, would
be incommunicable with the historical explanations of the nation-states that have been
threatened by terrorism. The historical explanations of wartime events have also invited
many historical controversies over incommunicable differences in the meanings assigned
to the past. These incommunicable differences can no longer be kept within the
frameworks of each nation-state, ideology, culture, ethnicity and other diverse human

categories.

278

This study has attempted to explicate the process through which Japan's
contemporary historical explanation of Hiroshima's atomic bombing has been
constructed, and what has been selected/excluded in favor of constructing particular
meanings from the past for the present to understand. In consequence, the history of
historical explanations enables us to comprehend that what seems the most rational and
authentic historical explanation in the present is, in fact, a slice of what is otherwise an
incorporeal and fluid entity. This consciousness of the fluidity of historical explanation, I
argue, could introduce a platform for a constructive dialogue between pe0ple who have
been unable to communicate with each other. Through seeking such possibility of
dialogue, this study foresees the possibility for materializing the peaceful coexistence of
people with different historical conditions by means other than stressing on the empathy

and other moral virtues.

279

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