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Remembering and Forgetting the War Dead at Ryōzen Kannon: A Site of Entangled and Transnational War Memories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Daniel Milne  and
David Moreton
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Abstract

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This paper traces the history of Ryōzen Kannon, a little-known religious site in Kyoto, Japan, to consider war memorials as sites of transwar continuity and change, and as ideological tools to present certain visions of past and present wars. While Ryōzen Kannon is promoted today as little more than a typical Japanese temple, it has a remarkable history beginning in the 1950s with its establishment by the business entrepreneur Ishikawa Hirosuke. Opened in 1955, it was pitched as a Buddhist alternative to commemorating the patriotic sacrifices of the war dead. Shortly thereafter, a separate monument to Allied prisoners of war that professed world peace and reconciliation was added to the site. While accompanied by historically valuable records of these former prisoners, however, this monument was largely a homage to the Cold War-era Japan-US alliance, and it obfuscated memories of violence in East Asia from the site. Since the 1960s, Ryōzen Kannon has struggled to keep up with the times. Particularly after the death of its founder and the end of the Cold War, the site has become increasingly anachronistic. Now, it occupies an ambiguous space between remembering and forgetting.

Keywords

Ryōzen KannonIshikawa HirosukeKyotowar memorialswar deadAsia-Pacific WarCold WarYasukuni Shrine
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 11 , June 2022 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2022

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