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Synopsis

This chapter explores the roles of regional identities and local history in Japanese war memories. Museums are key sites of local memory creation. The politics of museum display (particularly when large sums of public money are involved) and the role of museums as sites of educational visits by children are discussed. The chapter also presents regional variations in air raid narratives to illustrate the reasons for the differing prominences of particular regional events within national memory.

General Resources

Japan has seen something of a war museum boom, or more accurately 'peace museum' boom, since the 1980s when the economic miracle made these expensive and generally unprofitable cultural forms possible. Museums generally represent a particular local or sectional interest (either a regional experience such as an air raid or a specific experience such as repatriation or the kamikaze). Many museums are called 'memorials' (kinenkan) or 'resource centres' (shiryokan) rather than 'museum' (hakubutsukan, which is a legal status in Japan subject to the museum fulfilling various government-set criteria). Museums tend to have clearly identifiable stances based on the aims of the financial backers, although virtually any time that public money is involved, controversy over the content of the exhibits has occured. For a general museum database click here. Otherwise, below is a selection of some of the key museums including all those mentioned in the book. Generally speaking, more progressive museums are on the left, more rightwing museums on the right and others are in the middle.