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Mobilizing Affect for Collective War Memory

2014; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09502386.2014.890235

1466-4348

Rumi Sakamoto,

Anthropological Studies and Insights

AbstractTaking a cue from recent works that assert the importance of affect in politics and critical theory, this paper examines affective strategies employed at Yūshūkan, a war museum attached to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Although its revisionist historiography has been generally discredited by historians, over the last decade Yūshūkan has established itself as a key public site for neo-nationalist war memory in Japan. This paper argues that to understand Yūshūkan's appeal we need to address the affective economy it produces around the stories and images of the fallen soldiers. In particular, I analyse the image of kamikaze as a ‘sticky object of emotion’ and ‘somatic marker’ that is both emotionally charged and culturally mobilized. I examine several factors that contribute to its affective capacity: the culturally specific trope of the tragic hero and the aesthetics of self-sacrifice; an emphasis on their ‘ordinariness’ as fathers and sons; and the naturalized, almost moral expectation of the current generations' indebtedness and gratitude to the war dead. A close reading of the museum exhibits, catalogue, website and visitor books suggests that Yūshūkan's rhetorical force relies on the kamikaze icon's ability to arouse visceral and intense emotions. Produced at the intersection of affect and discourse, history and memory, kamikaze is a heavily loaded sign central to Yūshūkan's affective and sub-discursive mode of communication. By illustrating how Yūshūkan mobilizes subjects into its patriotic history and identity via emotional authenticity, I hope to add an alternative approach to the current scholarship that predominantly focuses on the discursive content of Yūshūkan's historiography or religious-spiritual function of mourning. More generally it is also hoped that this study will contribute to thinking through the role of affect in collective war memory by offering a culturally and historically specific case study.Keywords: Japancollective memoryaffectwar museumkamikazeYūshūkan Notes on contributorRumi Sakamoto is Senior Lecturer in Japanese at University of Auckland. Her research interests include nationalism and national identity in post-1990s Japan, war memory in popular media and the role of affect and emotion in politics.Notes1 This is Sarah Ahmed's term. In ‘Affective Economies’ (Ahmed Citation2004c), she proposes the idea of ‘economy of affect’, urging us to see affect not as purely individual and psychic entity but as something that ‘circulates’ in society, among bodies. She shows how ‘circulating’ emotions ‘align’ some subject with others, but against others, marking the boundaries of the collective. My exploration of kamikaze here is inspired by her discussion of the capacity of emotion to construct boundaries by transforming certain objects (or ‘others’) into a source of emotion.2 Kamikaze, literally ‘divine wind’ refers to the pilots drafted into the Special Attack Forces. There were other ‘human weapons’ such as ‘Oka’ human bombs, ‘Shin'yo’ suicide boats and ‘Kaiten’ human torpedos. From here on, this paper uses the term ‘kamikaze’ to refer to all suicide missions used by Special Attack operation.3 Yasukuni has been an object of numerous public protests, extensive media coverage and international criticisms especially around prime ministers' visits. The situation was particularly tense between 2001 and 2006, because the populist-nationalist Prime Minister Mr Koizumi's annually visited Yasukuni. When Koizumi explained that his visit was ‘to express gratitude and respect to the war dead and to mourn’ this was seen by his critics as a feeble excuse for basically unacceptable behaviour.4 For example, war-related exhibits at state-run museums such as Shōwakan, Shokeikan and Rekihaku all avoid explicitly stating the reasons for Japan's wars or offering interpretations of history that led up to the war.5 The history section was added at the time of 2002 renovation to commemorate the 130th anniversary because historical context was seen indispensable for ‘accurate understanding of eirei’. Prior to the renovation, historical narrative was not part of Yūshūkan exhibits (Interview with a Yūshūkan curator, 7 March 2013).6 In 2006, when Prime Minster Koizumi's sixth (and final) visit to Yasukuni and China's strong protest to his visit attracted wide media attention, Yūshūkan's visitor numbers went up to as high as 495,000 (Interview with a Yūshūkan curator, 7 March 2013).7 O'Dwyer (Citation2010, p. 163) also briefly discusses the ‘affective value’ of Yūshūkan's practical history such as pride, reverence or respect, though not focusing on the kamikaze figure.8 I have also visited several other public memory sites in Japan, and refer to them occasionally for comparative purposes.9 Yūshūkan does not recognize the role of military censorship behind these notes and letters, instead insisting that they contain the ‘words of true sincerity expressing their will to devote their lives for a cause’ (Yasukuni Jinja Citation2011, p. 95).10 Most captions simply state that soldiers ‘led’, ‘launched’ or ‘carried out’ a ‘special attack’ without indicating whether they actually hit the target or not.11 Compared to Yūshūkan, in other museums of war and peace such as Shokeikan or Hiroshima Peace Museum, what war ‘does’ to the body is never out of sight in the form of shot, burned and wounded bodies.12 Interview, 7 March 2013.13 Eirei, or glorious spirit, is the term used by Yasukuni to revere the soul of the war dead. Once enshrined, they become kami, or Shinto god.14 A variation of theme is the double-suicide stories, which is also common in Japanese cultural texts. From Edo period's popular shinjū stories and kabuki theatre plays to contemporary writers like Murakami Haruki, aestheticization of suicides for/with loved one is common in Japan.15 011 anime that recorded the largest DVD sales in TV anime history since Evangelion. Other examples of popular anime with self-sacrifice include Giant Robo, Good-bye Jupiter, Mobile Suit Gundam Char's Counterattack, Nausica, Bokura-no. Although similar themes can be found popular culture outside Japan (Alien 3 is a good example), the theme of self-sacrifice in Japanese popular culture seems to appear much more frequently than it does in Hollywood films.16 For example, Tokko [Special Attack Island] (2006); Ore wa kimi no tame ni koso shini ni yuku [I am going to die for you] (2007); Nadeshiko-tai [Nadeshiko troop] (2008); Eien no zero [zero forever] (2010).17 It is interesting to compare this with Chidorigabuchi national cemetery – a state cemetery that holds bones of for anonymous soldiers and civilians who died overseas (Manchuria, China, the Philippines, South East Asia, Soviet Union and the Pacific) in the WWII. Since anonymous soldiers have no name, no face and no stories, Chidorigabuchi seems to resist articulation of their deaths into any specific narratives of war and national identity. Because of such emptiness it has attracted different groups (e.g. religious, secular, state, private) to perform their own commemoration practice, attaching different meanings to this site. At the same time, it is not a well-known or popular site for individual visitors, and I suspect the emptiness and lack of articulated meaning is part of the reason.18 Interestingly, Korean and Taiwanese kamikaze (see Yamaguchi Citation2010 for a detailed study) who were conscripted as the colonized subject are singled out in a glass case, with some Korean Hangul alphabet marking the otherness. They seem to be both subsumed in the national story of sacrifice and a reminder of what Ahmed, citing Sturken, called a ‘hierarchy of the dead’ (Ahmed Citation2004a, p. 157). Compared to civilian deaths, deaths by starvation or illness, deaths of PoWs and so on, the aestheticized deaths of kamikaze, even when they are colonized subjects, seem to be privileged. Their ‘otherness’ and reference to Japan's colonization also offers a possibility of critique and resistance to the dominant narrative of the museum.19 In Himeyuri Peace Museum, for example, each individual's personal stories are told in much more detail. Personal perspectives are also incorporated in a form of video interview of survivors.20 During the war, Yasukuni was indeed a place to mourn, a place meet the ‘spirits’ of the war dead as is shown in the oft-mentioned ‘let's meet at Yasukuni’ kamikaze and other solders said to each other. Bereaved families, too, visited the Shrine to ‘meet’ the spirits of the loved ones after the war. As recent as 2005, a Yasukuni scholar John Breen has observed that Yasukuni is a place of ‘intimate personal memory’ for the war veterans based on interviews he conducted with them. These veterans went to Yasukuni to ‘keep alive personal memories, to keep the promise they made to meet again at Yasukuni’ (Breen Citation2005).21 For example, see Ahmed's analysis of the Aryan Nations website narrative: ‘Together we hate and this hate is what makes us together’ (Ahmed Citation2004b, p. 26). Jay Winter, along with ‘mourning’, mentions ‘anger’ and ‘despair’ as an expression of bereavement. If mourning is traditional way of healing grief and trauma of war in Europe, then anger points to the existence of that which cannot heal, where violence has reached the limits of language. (Winter Citation1995, p. 5, Fierke Citation2004, pp. 471–472). Needless to say, this is a very different economy of affect from that at Yūshūkan.22 Museums and their exhibitions are never static but change to reflect the demands of the time; so in the context of current diplomatic tensions between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands, for example, it is not entirely inconceivable that some images of ‘Chinese as the enemy’ may sneak back into the exhibit in future.23 In this regard, Yūshūkan's choice of kamikaze rather than state leaders or army generals as its central icon is indicative. As I have mentioned earlier, Japan's wartime leaders were executed at the end of the war as war criminals, having been deemed to have committed ‘crimes against peace’ and ‘crimes against humanity’. This makes them unsuitable candidates for postwar Japan's national heroes. They are too close to the uncomfortable question of war responsibility and war guilt. Emphasizing lesser soldiers' tragic deaths allows the visitors to bypass the issue of war responsibility.24 There are plenty of examples of such representations of kamikaze in contemporary Japan. See footnote 15 for some examples.25 And it is not the case that kamikaze image been permanently etched into a shared collective memory of the majority of Japanese in the way Yūshūkan constructs them. It is not beyond contestation and is still open to different interpretations. For instance, Himeyuri Peace Museum in Okinawa records a survivor-witness's story of some members of kamikaze Special Attack Forces chasing Okinawan school girls out of the caves so they could hide there to avoid the US attack; a small private kamikaze museum in Kyushu tells a story of a kamikaze pilot who kept abandoning his mission to see his girlfriend – till finally under pressure from the superior he crashed his plane into a rice paddy in despair; and the existence of Korean and Taiwanese kamikaze introduces some ambivalence to the ‘national’ stories of kamikaze, even at Yūshūkan.