Borders of memory: affirmation and contestation over Japan’s heritage

Abstract

This essay, introducing the special issue on ‘Borders of Memory’, aims to shed light on the links between memory and heritage in contemporary Japan. It does so by examining how heritage sites serve as spaces within which collective memory is both affirmed and contested. Heritage sites enable us to survey the contours of the borders of memory that exist between different memory collectives. An analysis of South Korean and Chinese objections to the Meiji Industrial Sites shows how these heritage sites work as borders of memory, spaces where the competing collective memories of neighbouring East Asian governments and societies clash and rub up against one another. This analysis is then extended to the four articles that make up this special issue. In each case, it is the competing meanings invested in the site, and the struggle over the narrative within which it is incorporated, that results in such sites coming to be demarcated as borders of memory. Understanding these heritage sites as bordered spaces allows us to see such them as being not only where antagonistic collective memories come into contact, but also spaces through which they connect. The existence of such spaces enables the political process of articulating the stories associated with different memory collectives.

Keywords:

• border studies
• heritage
• memory
• UNESCO
• Meiji industrial sites
• history wars
• South Korea
• China
• Okinawa
• Ainu

Acknowledgements

In addition to those individuals and institutions mentioned elsewhere in the article, particular thanks are due to Christopher Gerteis for encouraging the submission of this special issue. This Introduction has benefited greatly from the comments of one anonymous reviewer, together with those of Mark Fenwick, Steve Ivings and Jonathan Bull. Responsibility for any remaining inaccuracies rests solely with the author, of course.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Notes

1 Although in the case of Korea, in particular, this could be extended back to the beginning of formal colonialism in 1910, or indeed practically any point after 1871.

2 From this point forwards, references to official history or memory will not employ quote marks.

3 This is in the generally-understood sense of the term as meaning more than just history, referring rather to the inheritance of past events or objects by those in the present.

4 For a full summary of the conference and the papers delivered there, please see http://cafs.kyushu-u.ac.jp/borders/kanri/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Borders-of-Memory-Report.pdf. In addition to the funds received via the author’s JSPS grant, the conference was made possible through support provided by the War Memoryscapes in Asia Project (WARMAP), directed by Mark Frost at the University of Essex and funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and by the British Association of Japanese Studies. Many thanks to Dr Christopher Hood, Lynn Baird, and Professor Phillip Seaton for their cooperation.

5 A key institution for Vickers is the Comfort Station Memorial Museum in Nanjing, formerly a part of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall that opened in 2016. There is considerable overlap, both in narrative and institutionally, between the two events in China. See Vickers (2019) and Frost et al. (2019).

6 I understand ‘spaces of articulation’ as including both the ‘arenas’ and ‘narratives’ of articulation of Ashplant et al. (2000), as well as the ‘modes’ adopted by other scholars.

7 Which resulted in Japan temporarily withdrawing its funding from UNESCO in 2016.

8 These are: Tangible Cultural Properties (structure); Tangible Cultural Properties (fine arts and crafts); Intangible Cultural Properties; Folk Cultural Properties; Monuments; Cultural Landscapes; and Preservation Districts for Groups of Historic Buildings; together with two additional categories of Selected Conservation Techniques and Buried Cultural Properties.

9 And indeed, come to affect other sites. Following on from the Ainu case, activists are now pushing for the repatriation of human remains to Okinawa, see Kyoto Shinbun (2018).

10 This is similar to the process advocated for by Bull and Hansen as ‘agonistic’ memory. While fraught, though, I am not convinced that the process needs to be as painful as the latter notion would imply, see Bull and Hansen (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 16K17071.

Notes on contributors

Edward Boyle

Edward Boyle is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. He may be contacted at [email protected]