7 - Post-imperial Japan in Transnational Perspective

Summary

Introduction

The transnational production of Japan as a post-imperial nation

The Japanese people are often accused of their inability or unwillingness to properly remember and atone for the atrocities they committed as a colonial empire, especially during the Second World War. In the author's view this ethical assessment is fundamentally correct; yet what is being emphasized in this chapter is that the problem of forgetfulness or at least insufficient remorse in post-imperial Japan was not produced by the Japanese people alone, but was rather the result of a mutually convenient transnational collaboration of Japanese nationalists/conservatives with the US led advanced capitalist nations who were victorious in the Second World War. Moreover, this failure to adequately address the matter of Japan's imperialist past has an intimate relationship to the transnational refusal to remember that Japan's imperialism was both enabled by, and enabling the imperialism of the American and European empires.

As an entryway into discussing Japan as a transnationally produced post-imperial nation – and by the latter the author means a nation which carries the weight of the imperial past despite the dismantling of its former empire – the author would like to begin by listing some of the major flash points in the national and transnational field of memories that continue to trigger debates about Japan as a forgetful and irresponsible former imperial power. Of course, the author cannot list them all, let alone analyse them in any depth, but here are some of the most hotly contested matters in Japan, East Asia, and North America.

1. The Nanjing Massacre

2. The ‘comfort women’ or sexual slavery issue

3. The territorial disputes (especially Dokto/Takeshima/Liancourt Rocks and Daioyu/Taioyutai/Senkaku)

4. The status of former colonial subjects now residing in Japan, mostly Koreans

5. The status of former colonial subjects who were mobilized as labourers, soldiers, sailors, or military personnel

6. Japanese biological and chemical warfare testing on live human beings.

7. […]