War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945- 2005

Recently I have read the following book. Its main points in chapters one to two are:

Book title: Seraphim, Franziska. 2006. War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.

 Main points:

-ch.1. -  for some Shintoists, taking responsibility for the defeat was a quick and decisive matter, along with several military leaders the chief priest committed suicide in 1945.(35) On 3 February 1946 Shrine Shinto formally dissolved all institutional ties to the state and established a new umbrella organization, the Association of Shinto Shrines.(37)

-the US politics of ‘demilitarization and democratization’ set the stage for Shinto to resist against the US occupation in Japan as well as its cooperation with it. (38) The ‘Bill of Right’ removed all restriction of political, civil, and religious liberties. (38) MacArthur chose to ignore Shinto’s religious character. (39) SCAP wanted the Assn.  of Shinto Shines to be divorced from the state to become a public agent of Shinto. It also wanted to keep the Emperor not as sacred, but as the locus of Japan’s ‘essence’. This represented a continuity through 1945 which was deemed central by the US. The Emperor made Japan ‘Japanese’. (41)

- the Assn. of Shinto Shrines founded in 1946 was a private organization. (45) In sharp contrast to progressive civic groups that formed in the early postwar years that claimed a break with the war time era, Shine Shinto based its claim on historical continuity that crossed 1945. The Assn. of Shinto Shines had always been the moral leaders of the people; they believed that if the shrines bore responsibility for the war, the responsibility was qualified by the shrine’s won victimization in the hands of militarists. The shrine world claimed that they had suffered like the common people. (47)

- for Shintoists, remembering the war meant restoring to public legitimacy the status of shrines as the concert embodiment of the idea that Japan, as a national entity, possessed a spiritual core which resided in the Emperor’s unchanged relationship to the Japanese people through history. (53)

- by the early 1950s, they no longer stressed Shinto priest’s mandate as popular spiritual leaders, but instead highlighted the importance of nationalism. This change reflected a shift in the political climate: the US occupation’s reverse course. The American turned around from supporting progressive interest to siding with conservative and anti-communist politics. (54)

- the Assn. launched its new life movement, and showed its commitment to restore Shinto to its prewar place as a pillar of public life rather than merely as a political interest. The Assn. advanced a view of Japan’s recent past that played down the historical break of 1945. It insisted on an unchanging system of public values that firmly anchored on traditions. It tried hard to erase the postwar perception of Shinto as militaristic. They participated in special interest politics, strengthened relation with both the Imperial Household agency and the right wing of LDP. It influenced public memory of the war by encouraging an ethnocentric, apolitical and ahistorical view of international conflict while discourage criticism of the Emperor. (59)

Ch.2. in February 1946, one week after the Japanese government had terminated pension payments, Makino appeared on the NHK radio to all for the establishment of the War Victim Bereaved Families League. (69) A year later, Otani campaigned to draw local war-bereaved groups into an organization committed to remembering the war dead and their relatives, and to recreate a positive identity rather than a sense of victimhood. In November 1947 the ‘Japanese League of the Welfare of the War Bereaved’ was founded. (69)

- the league focused on two interrelated goals: 1. creating a consciousness of a war-bereaved problem in society; and 2. pressing concrete issues of special interest to all or part of its membership through political channels.(76)

- the US reverse course in 1947 facilitated the emergence of the war bereaved as a political interest group in ways similar to the experience of the Assn. of Shinto Shrines. They took advantage of the increasingly conservative political climate by lobbying government institutions. (78)

- the military pension law that was introduced in 1953 represented an explicit revival of wartime pension. The pension law was revised 56 times between 1953 and 1995. Most importantly was in 1955, when the families of convicted war criminals became eligible and that the execution of war criminal was officially treated as ‘death incurred in the line of duty’. This provision established the ground on which Yasukuni Shrine enshrined Class B and C criminal, based on a name lists made available in 1966. It also served as the basis on which 14 Class A war criminals were enshrined secretly in 1978. (79)

-in 1952, the Leagues’ policy further changed so as to allow families of the executed war criminal to join. (81) Various changes and adjustment culminated in the League’s official re-establishment as the ‘Japan Association of War Bereaved Families’ in 1953. (81)

- organizationally, Shrine Shinto was much more severely constrained by the constitution. The Assn. of War-Bereaved Families was able to compete equally with other interest groups for state support. These two ultraconservative groups pursued similar politics of celebrating national unity and national strength as exemplified by the Meiji state. (85)

(to be continued)