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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
In April 2015, Peace Osaka, a publicly-funded museum famous for its hard-hitting exhibits about Japan's wars of the 1930s and 1940s, reopened after a “renewal”. In the new exhibits, discussion of Japanese aggression and atrocities has been completely removed and the stance of the museum has changed from progressive to conservative. Based on a photographic record of the pre- and post-“renewal” exhibits, this essay discusses in what ways and why Peace Osaka has changed under three headings: physical conversion, mission conversion and ideological conversion. The process of conversion started with nationalist campaigns to revise and undermine the exhibits during the 1990s and was ultimately realized under conservative local governments in the 2010s. The conversion is not simply a sign of the recent “shift to the right” in Japanese politics under the administration of Abe Shinzō. Instead, it reveals a longer-term issue of nationalist assaults on the narratives in local peace museums and the vulnerabilities of progressive official narratives.
1 See here.
2 Reiji Yoshida (2013) “Hashimoto looks to deflect sex slave blame”, The Japan Times, 28 May 2013; AFP-Jiji/Kyodo (2014) “Hashimoto says WWII Allies set up ‘comfort stations’ after soldiers committed D-Day rapes”, The Japan Times, 16 June 2014.
4 The Asahi Shimbun (2015) “Peace museum, caving in to threats of closure, scraps wartime ‘aggression’ exhibits”, 1 May 2015.
5 For a more detailed explanation of my definitions of progressive, conservative and nationalist, see Philip Seaton (2007) Japan's Contested War Memories: the “memory rifts” in historical consciousness of World War II, London: Routledge, pp. 20-28.
6 See for example Ian Buruma (1995) Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, London: Vintage Edition, pp. 229-32; Roger B. Jeans (2005) “Victims or Victimizers? Museums, Textbooks, and the War Debate in Contemporary Japan”, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 69(1), pp.172-7. I described some of the disputes over Peace Osaka's stance in Philip A. Seaton, Japan's Contested War Memories, pp. 174-6, 220-1. The controversies surrounding Peace Osaka's exhibits have been covered in greater detail by Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka (2007) and Akiko Takenaka (2014). Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka (2007) “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus; Akiko Takenaka (2014) “Reactionary Nationalism and Museum Controversies: The Case of ‘Peace Osaka‘”. The Public Historian, 36(2), pp. 75-98.
7 Takenaka, “Reactionary Nationalism and Museum Controversies”, p. 81-2.
8 Yoshinori Kobayashi (1998) Sensōron, Tokyo: Gentō1sha, pp. 156-157.
9 Peace Osaka (2013) “Pīsu Ōsaka tenji rinyūaru kōsō”, p. 1.
10 Takenaka, “Reactionary Nationalism and Museum Controversies”, p. 85.
11 Takenaka, “Reactionary Nationalism and Museum Controversies”, p. 83
12 Asahi Shinbun (2000) “Ōsaka no heiwa hakubutsukan de Nankin daigyakusatsu kenshō kōenkai, kaijo mae, 150-nin kōgi”, 24 January 2000; Asahi Shinbun (2000) “Shimin dantai ga kōgi kaigō, Pīsu Ōsaka de Nankin daigyakusatsu hitei shūkai”, 9 April 2000.
13 Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States”.
14 Asahi Shinbun, “Ribati Osaka, Osaka-shi no hojokin haishi kettei”, 3 June 2012.
15 For various Liberty Osaka documents related to the land issue, see http://www.liberty.or.jp/cp_pf/municipally owned land.html
16 Bunya Yoshito (2013) “Pīsu Ōsaka no kiki to shimin undō”, Shimin no Iken No. 139, 1 August 2013, p. 21.
17 Takenaka, “Reactionary Nationalism and Museum Controversies”, p. 85.
18 Narratives of victimhood can feature in war responsibility debates, either regarding the Japanese military's responsibility for provoking the bombing by attacking the United States, or surrounding the military's responsibility for failing to protect Japanese civilians from bombing by the Allies. A particularly well-known example in this latter context is the debate over whether the A-bombs could have been prevented if the Japanese military had accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration earlier.
19 Peace Osaka, “Pīsu Ōsaka tenji rinyūaru kōsō”, p. 3.
20 Peace Osaka, “Pīsu Ōsaka tenji rinyūaru kōsō”, p. 6
21 Takenaka, “Reactionary Nationalism and Museum Controversies”, pp. 88-89
22 A similar issue of nationalist opposition to graphic images of war violence being used as cover for an objection to a progressive narrative can be seen in the nationalist campaigns to remove the manga Barefoot Gen from school libraries. See Matthew Penney (2012) “Neo-nationalists Target Barefoot Gen”, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
23 This is the policy adopted by museums such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which recommends its exhibits as appropriate only for those aged 11 and older, and provides guidance on suitable exhibits for children under 8. See United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Plan Your Visit”.
24 Peace Osaka, “Pīsu Ōsaka tenji rinyūaru kōsō”, p. 6
25 See Nikkan Gendai (2006, trans. Nobuko Adachi) “Becoming an Ugly and Dangerous Nation! The Deterioration of Japan's Fundamental Law of Education”, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
26 The latest development within textbook screening is for the Ministry of Education to insist that textbooks must state the government's position alongside any alternative positions expressed by the authors of textbooks. This has effectively forced textbooks to converge around the government's view on issues such as war history and territorial disputes. See Tawara Yoshifumi (2015) “The Abe Government and the 2014 Screening of Junior High School Textbooks”, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
27 “Fifteen-Year War” emphasizes the connections between Japan's wars starting with the 1931 Manchurian Incident and ending with defeat in 1945. The “China Incident” is preferred by nationalists because war was not officially declared between Japan and China and “incident” contains no overtones of aggression; and Great East Asia War is preferred as the Japanese name for the war used during the war (in other words, it is not a term forced on the defeated Japanese by the victors, such as Taiheiyō sensō, the Pacific War). Nanjing (great) massacre clarifies that a serious atrocity occurred. Nationalists, meanwhile, say iwayuru “Nankin gyakusatsu”, so-called “Nanjing massacre”, to indicate they disagree there was a massacre, and “Nanjing incident” contains no overtones of atrocity.
28 There are two versions of the video: a longer one aimed at adults and a shorter one aimed at children. I will refer to the longer one because it provides Peace Osaka's new “grand narrative” starting in the late nineteenth century and ending in 1945 with the Osaka air raids and Japan's defeat.
29 The wording is from the English subtitles of the video.
30 This includes the work of Brett L. Walker, Michele Mason, Richard Siddle, David L. Howell, Koike Kikō, Inoue Katsuo, Oda Hiroshi and others. For a full literature review of these texts and discussion of homegrown Japanese imperialism, see Philip Seaton (2015) Local History and War Memories in Hokkaido, London: Routledge, Chapter 2.
31 See for example Watanabe Shōichi (1995) Kakute Shōwa shi wa yomikaeru: jinshu sabetsu no sekai wo tatakitsubushita Nippon, Tokyo: Crest Sensho, p.275. The reference to the Tongzhou Mutiny in Watanabe's book was picked up by Kobayashi Yoshinori in Sensōron (p. 135-136). A more recent indication for the importance of the Tongzhou mutiny to nationalists is a news item (posted 9 April 2015) on the website of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai) announcing that its school textbook had passed the Ministry of Education's screening, Tsukurukai proclaimed, “The birth of the only history textbook which does not write about the fabricated ‘Nanjing Incident’ but does write about the actual ‘Tongzhou Incident’”. The Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (2015) “Kyokō no ‘Nankin jiken’ wo kakazu, jitsuzai no ‘Tsūshū jiken’ wo kaita yuiitsu no rekishi kyōkasho ga tanjō! Jiyūūsha no ‘Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho’ ga Monkashō no kentei ni gōkaku”, 9 April 2015.
32 Sankei Shinbun (2013) ‘“Nankin daigyakusatsu’ tekkyo e, Pīsu Ōsaka kaisō an, jigyaku tenji yōyaku seijōka e”, 18 September 2013.
33 Sankei Shinbun (2015) ‘“Nankin daigyakusatsu’ shashin haiki, ianfu tenji mo tekkyo, henkō tenji / jigyaku shikan to hihan uke, Pīsu Ōsaka kaisō ōpun”, 30 April 2015.
34 Yomiuri Shinbun (2015) “Ōsaka kūshū no tenji chūshin ni. Pīsu Ōsaka, kaisō ōpun”, 30 April 2015.
35 Mainichi Shinbun (2015) “Pīsu Ōsaka: saikai, kūshū to fukkō, jiku ni ‘jigyakuteki’ hihan”, 30 April 2015.
36 Asahi Shinbun (2015) “(Sengo 70 nen) Kieru ‘shinryaku’, chijimu kagai tenji, Pīsu Ōsaka, shisetsu sonzoku e zentekkyo”, 1 May 2015.
37 The Asahi Shimbun (2015) “Peace museum, caving in to threats of closure, scraps wartime ‘aggression’ exhibits”, 1 May 2015.
38 Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States”.
39 See here.
40 See here.
41 See here.
42 See here.
43 See here.
44 See here.
45 Abe Shinzō, “Address by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Eighty-Sixth Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead”, 15 August 2013.
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