Why Does Japan Keep Lying About Its History?
Japan's postwar grief wasn't driven by remorse for the suffering they caused across Asia, it was driven by the profound shame of defeat. In this video, we trace Japan's failed denazification, the rise of a nostalgia industry built on whitewashing imperial atrocities, and how a blurred vision of the past allows opportunistic state actors to construct their own memory. This is the story of how decolonization was never truly finished, and what that means for Japan today.
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Sources / Further Reading:
Tamanoi, Mariko Asano. Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan. U of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009.
Watt, Lori. "Third Party Decolonization and Post-Imperial Japan." In When Empire Comes Home. Harvard University Asia Center, 2009.
Futamura, Madoka. War Crimes Tribunals and Transitional Justice. Routledge, 2008.
Scalapino, Robert A. The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966. U of California Press, 1967.
Schonberger, Howard. "American Labor's Cold War in Occupied Japan." Diplomatic History 3, no. 3 (1979). jstor.org/stable/24910112
Walker, Gavin, ed. The Red Years: Theory, Politics, and Aesthetics in the Japanese '68. Verso, 2020.
Lee, Yong Wook. "The Origin of One Party Domination." Journal of East Asian Affairs 18, no. 2 (2004). jstor.org/stable/23258199
National Diet Library. "The Red Purge." Modern Japan in Archives, 2006. ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha5/description12.html
Cumings, Bruce. "Korea, A Unique Colony." Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 19, no. 21 (2021). apjjf.org/2021/21/cumings
Choi, Deokhyo. "Fighting the Korean War in Pacifist Japan." Critical Asian Studies 49, no. 4 (2017).
Beckley, Michael, et al. "America's Role in the Making of Japan's Economic Miracle." Journal of East Asian Studies 18, no. 1 (2018). jstor.org/stable/26856285
Benjamin, Walter. "Theses on the Philosophy of History." In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. Schocken Books, 1969.
0:00 intro
5:50 patreon
6:24 American Occupation
14:50 Korean War
18:13 the economic miracle & angel of history
22:30 conclusion