The Long Defeat

How do memories of national trauma remain relevant to culture and society long after the event? Why do the memories of difficult experiences endure, and even intensify, despite people’s impulse to avoid remembering a dreadful past and to move on? This book explores these questions by examining Japan’s culture of defeat up to the present day. It surveys the stakes of war memory in Japan after its defeat in World War II and shows how and why defeat has become an indelible part of national collective life, especially in recent decades. Drawing on ethnographic observations and personal interviews as well as testimonials and other popular memory data since the 1980s, it probes into the heart of the divisive war memories that lie at the root of current disputes over revising Japan’s pacifist constitution, remilitarization, and the escalating frictions in East Asia that have come to be known collectively as Japan’s “history problem.” This book examines this divisive national project, drawing on the sociological insights of cultural trauma theory and collective memory theory. Contrary to the Western stereotype that describes Japan as suffering from “collective amnesia,” Japan’s war memories are deeply encoded in the everyday culture and much more varied than the caricatured image suggests. The book identifies three conflicting trauma narratives in Japan’s war memories—narratives of victims, perpetrators, and fallen heroes—that are motivated by the desire to heal the wounds, redress the wrongs, and restore a positive moral and national identity.