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17 - The Enduring Challenges of History Issues

from Part V - Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2021

By
Mary M. McCarthy
Edited by
Takeo Hoshi  and
Phillip Y. Lipscy
Takeo Hoshi
Affiliation:
University of Tokyo
Phillip Y. Lipscy
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

The Abe administration had two goals with regard to historical legacy issues: to enrich national pride through historical revisionism; and to change the global narrative of Japan as perpetrator. Unfortunately, these goals were fundamentally incompatible. Further, they failed to take into account that public memorialization today is not only the purview of the state. It has democratized to include various domestic, transnational, and international actors. Through case studies of comfort women, Yasukuni Shrine, and Pearl Harbor, this chapter explores the degree of success for the Abe administration in achieving its goals in each of these areas and what the enduring challenges are that make these goals difficult to achieve.

Keywords

historyhistorical revisionismYasukuni Shrinecomfort womenPearl HarborSouth KoreaUnited States
Type
Chapter
Information
The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms , pp. 511 - 533
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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