War Memory in Japan

However, there are other aspects that complicate this picture. Even though Japan renounces war in its Constitution, it has a viable military unit called the "Self-Defense Forces," complete with an army, navy, and air force. As a "peace nation" Japan prides itself on containing its defense expenditure, which means containing it to one percent of GNP (Gross National Product), yet the total defense spending in absolute terms is the fourth largest in the world.

How did this state of the nation come about? To answer this question we need to look beneath the surface, and look back in history over the course of the past fifty years. We need to look for the motivation that led Japan to develop its self-image as the "peace-loving" nation.

To understand the fundamental motivation of a defeated nation like Japan, it is important to focus on the idea of recovery. This is the notion that you've had a setback, you've incurred some losses, and now you have to exert extra effort to make up for these losses. From this perspective, Japan has indeed been very active in recovery work over the past decades. First, there was much economic recovery to do. Japan put a great deal of effort in bringing recovery to its economy. This was especially true in the immediate postwar decades. Japan achieved spectacular double-digit economic growth, which became known as the "economic miracle." Second, there is another kind of recovery that is as important as economic recovery. This is the moral recovery: the recovery of national dignity and honor, and the re-establishment of "good standing" in the world.

How did the Japanese go about their moral recovery, and how did they formulate their postwar identity and their new self-definition from it? The Japanese sought this goal-the recovery of their dignity and moral standing-by promising peace, by promising to become a peaceful, reliable, and trustworthy nation. That is, Japan adopted peace as their atonement for the past and as a way to redeem itself in the eyes of others, and themselves. The pledge for peace and the renunciation of war and arms, Article 9 of the Constitution, became the supreme act of redemption for the Japanese: their ticket to recovering their standing in the world. It did not matter that this pledge was originally written by the Americans; once it was written and adopted, Article 9 and the act of renouncing war took on its own meaning for the Japanese.

In 1997, sixty-nine percent of Diet members still opposed amending the constitution and cited their pride in it as their reason for opposing a change. The discursive practice of peace has occupied a central place in Japan's national identity through the end of the twentieth century. The majority of the Japanese believe that their declaration of peace is absolutely unique, but in fact, as many as 124 nations in the world have, in one way or another, included clauses in their constitution that applaud peace and denounce war.

However, since the first Gulf War, Japan has been reconsidering its long-standing peace strategy; but as of yet, there is no dominant alternative that replaces the old one. This is the problem that lies at the heart of the current political controversy about national defense. In the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world, a new vision to replace the peace strategy is difficult to find.

Akiko Hashimoto

Akiko Hashimoto (retired) was Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her areas of interest are cultural sociology, comparative and global sociology, collective memory and national identity, generational and cultural change, family and education, aging and social policy.