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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Like most people, museum professionals generally dislike being at the center of a firestorm of criticism. Yet in recent years, many Japanese and American museum curators have suffered this fate for their exhibits on World War II. As many scholars have noted, war remembrance is fraught with difficult issues, prominently including how to portray the motives, policies, and conduct of one's own government during the war. In both countries, curators, particularly those at public institutions, faced a sudden increase in vitriolic political criticism in the mid-1990s over how to remember the wartime past.
[1] Asahi News Oct. 25, 1993 and January 3, 1996. Kamata Sadao “Nagasaki genbaku shiryokan no kagai tenji mondai, Kikan senso sekinin kenkyu 14 (Winter 1996), 22-31.
[2] Boei hakusho 12 nendo-ban, shiryo-hen: jieitai no koho shisetsu nado. Accessed May 27, 2005. Harada Keiichi, “Senso to heiwa no shiryo ni tsuite: Jieitai gokoku jinja no shiryokan tanbo-ki,” Kikan senso sekinin 14 (Winter 1996):15-21.
[3] The Asahi newspaper started an annual exhibition in August 1975, as did the Yomiuri newspaper. In 1977, groups such as “The Group to Record War Experiences (Senso taiken o kiroku suru kai),” the Osaka branch of the “Japan China Friendship Association (Nitchu uko kyokai),” and the “Osaka History Educators' Association (Osaka Rekishi Kyoikusha Kyogikai),” collaborated to mount the exhibition series “War and ourselves (Watashitachi to senso).”
[4] Otsuki Kazuko interview with Akiko Takenaka, February 3, 2005, Osaka.
[5] Koyama Hitoshi, “Peace Osaka mondai: saikin no keika ni tsuite,” Hisutoria 159 (April 1998), 133-136. Also Senso shiryo no kenko tenji ‘tadasu kai’ Osaka de Kessei, Sankei March 2, 1997l.
[6] Steven Lubar “Exhibiting Memories,” in Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian, Amy Henderson and Adrienne L. Kaeppler eds., (Washington, 1997), 15-27.
[7] See website of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans. Accessed June 22, 2004.
[8] Tanaka Nobumasa, Senso no kioku“ sono inpei no kozo: Kokuritsu senso memoriaru o toshite (Tokyo, 1997), 21-22. Ogawa Naotaro, ”Showakan to sono shuhen,“ Rekishi chiri kyoiku 597 (Aug. 1999), 98-102. For a brief account in English, see Ellen Hammond, ”Commemoration Controversies: The War, the Peace, and Democracy in Japan,“ in Laura Hein and Mark Selden eds., Living with the Bomb, M.E. Sharpe, 1997, 100-121. For Showakan, Watanabe Kazuhiro interview with Akiko Takenaka, Tokyo, Jan. 26, 2005.
[9] Furudate Yutaka interview with Akiko Takenaka, Tokyo, January 30, 2005.
[10] Accessed June 3, 2005. This exhibit is now only on line.
[11] Quotes from Lonnie Bunch interview with Laura Hein, May 28, 2004 and Steven Lubar “Exhibiting Memories,” p. 24.
[12] Quotes from Lonnie Bunch, “Fighting the Good Fight,” Museum News, 21 (March-April 1995), 32-35, 58-62 and Leslie Bedford, Director, Leadership in Museum Education Program, Banks Street College of Education, interview with Laura Hein, May 21, 2004.
[13] Tom Crouch, interview with Laura Hein, June 29, 2004.
[14] John Breen, Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory, Japan Focus, June 3, 2005.
[15] Japanese Visitor Experiences at the Arizona Memorial,“ Yujin Yaguchi, in Laura Hein and Daizaburo Yui, Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, Center for Pacific and American Studies, The University of Tokyo, 2003, pp. 138-151.
[16] Available here.
[17] Robert Archibald, “Epilogue to ‘The Last Act,‘” Museum News November-December 1996, pp. 22-23, 56-57, quote p. 57
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