Rethinking Conflict and Collective Memory: The Case of Nanking

Abstract

This article examines the politics of collective memory and attribution theory by studying expert and popular beliefs in Japan about the 1937–1938 Nanking Massacre. Memory, when conceived as a product of political conflict, assumes pluralistic and centralized forms. Multiple memories emerge out of a context of cross-cutting interests, coalitions, power networks, and enterprises, as seen in the fate of artistic and presidential reputations, Holocaust commemoration, place-naming, monument-making, and the organization of museums. After discussing the assumptions underlying the politics of memory and attribution theory, the article considers two theories in light of the Nanking debates: the first relates history and memory to power struggles, whereas the second subsumes these struggles under conflicting causal attributions. It also looks at three carrier groups that participate in the Nanking memory war, and particularly in debates over Japan’s moral responsibility for crimes committed in Nanking: maximalists, revisionists, and centrists.

Dealing with Difficult Pasts: Memory, History and Ethics

“…Financial compensations, for instance, can be seen as necessary yet never good enough, especially when their timing does not coincide with a symbolic and meaningful implementation measure (Reynaud, 2017). Public commemorations and museums have been recognized as mechanisms that are key for the construction, reconstruction, and maintenance of collective memories (Schwartz, 2012;Isurin, 2017). Yet, as Baldwin (for the Kwibuka commemoration period in postgenocide Rwanda), as well as Doran and Basaure (on the creation of museums in Colombia and Chile), discuss in this special issue, both of these mechanisms raise questions of inclusion and exclusion of memory, as well as reveal the tensions intertwined with calls to face the past in just and ethical ways.…”

“…The pluralistic form of collective memory-or multiplicity of memory-has largely been acknowledged in memory studies as coexisting and often conflicting with its centralized (often official) form (Confino, 1997;Jelin, 2003;Schwartz, 2012;Kienzler and Sula-Raxhimi, 2019; see also Trakas, this issue). There are multiple sources of this pluralism.…”

Resistant pasts versus mnemonic hegemony: On the power relations of collective memory

“…Apart from the fact that the terms of societal reconciliation are often forced by one group upon another, and despite the importance of these relations in post-conflict societies, to focus on the clash of their historical interpretations blocks out other important sub-cultures of remembrance. Michael Schuldson and Barry Schwartz point out the simplistic version of Gramscian theory expressed in those presentist approaches that ignore the fact that the past is often resistant and cannot always be subordinated to political interests of the present (Schuldson, 1993; Schwartz, 2012). One must pay close attention to this critique because it emphasizes the very importance of the materiality of the past that has been highlighted above.…”