This essay investigates the relationship between art and politics by exploring the wartime activities of a Japanese photographer, Natori Yōnosuke, during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945). Natori was an active participant in the production of propaganda photos and photo magazines that were aimed particularly at reaching non-Japanese speaking audiences, such as different groups of Asians living in Asia or Americans and Europeans in North America and Europe. Germer analyzes the political significance of Natori's aesthetics, his wartime political agency in China, his activities in the contexts of tourism and imperialism, and his direct involvement in the state's cultural propaganda. The author focuses on Natori's political agency as it is reflected in three particular areas: his creative work, his visual strategies, and the management of magazines that he edited.

Germer introduces some of the representative state-sponsored photo magazines in which Natori was directly involved, such as Shanghai (1937), which justified Japan's invasion in China, and Manchukuo (1940), which represented Japan's rule of Manchuria as benevolent. This essay discusses the format, visual strategies, and the management of the state-sponsored magazines and the private Nippon; and problematizes Natori's postwar silence about his wartime activities. This essay includes images of photo magazines and provides Natori's views on the role of photographs in propagating wartime ideologies.

This essay looks at two war memorial museums that commemorate military dead in their respective nations: the War Memorial of Korea (hereafter WMK) in South Korea and the Yushukan, the Japanese war museum located in Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, both of which play crucial roles in enhancing conservative patriotic nationalisms in the two countries. Like other war memorial museums, the WMK commemorates the war dead who sacrificed their lives for the defense of the nation and imbues with patriotic spirit the younger generations who have no memory of war. Yet it also constructs an “ethnic” lineage of the nation, a sacrifice of forefathers for the children of the nation. It seeks to form a national subject based on the idea of Korean ethnic nation as originated from ancient times. The author shows how the museum constructs a tradition of military patriotism in terms of shared ancestry, ethnic purity, and familial belonging and how this process of making a “we” is closely related to the construction of “others,” namely North Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. For a comparison, it examines how the Yushukan seeks to revive imperial Japan's glorification of war based on the idea of the ethnic superiority of the Japanese. Comparing war museums in Japan and Korea, the author argues that despite their antagonistic discourses, they display similar strategies of representation: staging a ritual dedicated to the war dead as an embodiment of national identity. Although embedded in conflicting historical experiences of colonialism and postwar geopolitics, the two war museums demonstrate the growing obsession with the ethnic origin of the nation, which may develop into hostile attitudes towards resident ethnic minorities and foreigners in the increasingly globalizing contemporary social environment.

This essay compares museum representations of WWII from Japan and the USA and discusses how museum curators responded to the changing international and domestic environment in their exhibits. The authors also identify challenges that museum curators in these countries have often faced. In Japan, for example, when the newly opened peace museums in Osaka, Kawasaki, Saitama, and Kanagawa began to depict Japan's role in the Asia-Pacific War from a critical angle by including photographs of the Nanking Massacre, they drew heated criticism from conservative nationalist groups. This in turn eventually led some of the museum curators to revise their exhibitions, while other museums like the Peace Osaka remained firm about keeping their original exhibitions. This kind of tension was also evident at the National Air and Space Museum in the USA, where the curators’ initial plans to display war artifacts such as the Enola Gay (the airplane used to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima) had to be restructured to be more “American” due to pressure from veterans’ groups. What to display in exhibitions and how to display it are sensitive issues for museum curators, who are expected to serve racially and culturally diverse audiences, and this is one reason why the pedagogic role of the public museum has become increasingly challenging since the 1990s. The authors of this essay introduce the ways in which museum curators in these regions have developed their strategies to accommodate public demands in ways that contribute to a more inclusive environment.

The Nanjing Massacre (also called the Nanjing Atrocity or Incident) is a much-contested historical event that has generated heated debates among historians and the general public on questions ranging from the validity of the reported number of victims to criticism of some documents as having been fabricated. (For a discussion of these issues, see Joshua A. Fogel, “Response to Herbert P. Bix, ‘Remembering the Nanking Massacre,’” Japan Focus). The Nanjing Massacre has become a site of “competing narratives” between China and Japan, since it was mobilized to legitimize an “official” history of each nation, and this is the underlying issue at stake. The Nanjing Massacre Memorial's (hereafter NMM) presentation of the victimization of Chinese people by Japanese militaries has been challenged by the Japanese government. By re-examining historical debates on the incident in the context of recent China-Japan relations, the author shows how the memory of war is constructed in the newly renovated NMM and how the memorial has further encouraged antagonistic attitudes between Japanese and Chinese citizens.

The current conflict between China and Japan over the NMM, however, is not entirely shaped by a state invoking patriotism from its own citizens. It has also been influenced by small yet powerful interest groups who mobilize media to generate blatant nationalist sentiments among the public, sometimes more vigorously than the government wishes. By looking at the museum's display of artifacts, documents, and statistical data, this essay inquires into the way state patriotism and popular nationalism are entwined to produce monolithic views of history.

This essay introduces three different generations of artists whose works deal with experience, memory, and trauma derived from World War II. The first generation refers to artists who experienced the war: they are harsh critics of the wartime government for the victimization of both Japanese and non-Japanese citizens, such as Koreans. The second generation of artists were born in the 1940s and 50s. These artists do not have direct memories of the war, yet they challenge less-explored issues in relation to the time period, such as women's participation in the war effort. The third generation can be characterized by their desire to participate intergenerational and transnational dialogues with the older generations and with other artists and social-justice activists. The authors explain how these artists engage with viewers about the importance of remembering the war. Some older artists incorporate their direct war experience as a way to redress the atrocities imposed on their people while others reflect on family histories that were largely shaped by Japanese imperialism and war. Although they use different media and explore various issues, what binds them together is a message to the younger generation “not to forget” the brutality of war, and to critically reflect on their identity in relation to history. The essay also provides a number of images of relevant artworks with informative descriptions.

The documentary Yasukuni, directed by LI Ying, problematizes the enshrinement of war dead (including both Chinese and Koreans) in the Yasukuni shrine, formally a State Shinto shrine that became a private religious institution during the U.S. occupation period. It was screened in two dozen theatres in Tokyo in May 2008 but was soon removed due to enormous pressures from Japanese right-wing groups and a member of the Japanese legislature, the Diet. Li states that he did not intend to evoke anti-Japanese sentiment but was trying to explore conflicting feelings towards the shrine from ordinary people including families and relatives of dead soldiers as well as a 90-year-old sword-maker whose thousands of swords were used during the war. Nonetheless, the attacks from right-wing groups on the director as well as the theatres screening the film were threatening enough to prevent Li from producing any more films in Japan. Despite having spent nineteen years in Japan, after this controversy Li decided to move back to China where he continues his filmmaking to this day.

In this article, David McNeill introduces the documentary, Yasukuni, and its controversies, followed by an interview with Li Ying conducted by John Junkerman a few weeks before the film's cancellation from theatres. In the interview, Li presents the ideas that he used in the film and shares his experience of filming it in Japan.

Japanese popular culture has engaged with experiences and memories of WWII since the 1950s, starting with manga (comic books) and moving on to some of the most widely known and memorable animated war films that have been produced since the 1960s, such as Barefoot Gen (1983) and Grave of the Fireflies (1988). A number of animation artists have expressed loss and hope in their works on this subject. As Napier argues, Japanese animation has explored history and memory beyond simple entertainment and has presented important issues still relevant to the audience today. This essay analyzes two futuristic science fictions, one TV and one film series, made over two decades apart: Space Battleship Yamato (produced in the 1970s) and Silent Service (in the 1990s). Both explicitly refer to WWII: in Space Battleship Yamato, after having been sunk to the bottom of the ocean off Okinawa towards the very end of the war, the battleship Yamato is revived by the Japanese government in order to save humanity from an alien attack, whereas a constant battle between Japan and international communities over the ownership of a nuclear submarine occurs in Silent Service. After a brief introduction of the narratives of the two animation series, the author examines their reception at the time of their production, and discusses the ways in which they rework the memory of loss and vision of hope in response to contemporary national and international politics.

TEZUKA Osamu (1928-1989) was one of the most important manga writers in Japan; his contribution to the popularization of manga and anime cannot be overstated. Tezuka's handling of the confrontation and reconciliation between human and machine, and his vision of humanity with a global perspective, for example, have fascinated many readers both domestically and internationally. Following his creation of a human robot character, Astro Boy (1951), Tezuka frequently wrote about the various impacts of science and technology on humanity. As Tanaka explains, Tezuka witnessed the destructive consequences brought about by the particular use of science and technology during the U.S. bombings of Japan during WWII, which in turn motivated him to explore themes such as war, peace, and humanity in his works. This essay introduces Tezuka's family background and his upbringing, and discusses how his history and personal experience of the war influenced him in the creation of manga heroes and narratives that are closely connected to real-world problems, such as the Vietnam War and nuclear issues. Focusing on Tezuka's early works, the author analyzes some of the most representative manga expressing the artist's observations and ideas about war and peace, as well as his imagination of the future.

In this essay, two U.S.-based visual artists discuss a selection of their works that represents history, memory and the trauma of war. They use different artistic media, aims, and methodologies in dealing with these subjects. However, their conversation converges on common ground as they discuss the role of art and artists in remembering war atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre, the Hiroshima bombings, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, among others. The conversation shows how artists express their interests in history by incorporating empirical and theoretical elements into their artwork, and looks at the way they explore physical, emotional, individual, and collective perspectives of war and trauma through art.

Though these two artists do not have firsthand experiences of war, they are motivated by historical events and historical figures, both distant and recent, that are pertinent to their works. Truong is interested in the way history is produced by individuals. In her video installation, A Measure of Remorse, Truong features an American-born Chinese historian, Iris Chang, and presents the ambiguity of individuals’ acts of speaking about and against the past. Slavick's cartographic drawings, Protesting Cartography, on the other hand, feature images of the U.S. testing ground for weapons and provide both well-known and lesser-known facts about U.S. bombings since Hiroshima. By presenting informative texts alongside images, Slavick aims to educate others about the U.S. military interventions that have taken place since 1945 in 60 different parts of the world. The essay includes a number of Slavick's drawings and a link to an audio clip used in Truong's work - a conversation among Iris Chang; the Ambassador of Japan, Kunihiko Saito; and a journalist, Elizabeth Farnsworth. The conversation was held by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1998.

Reorienting the southern half of the Korean Peninsula away from the former Japanese colonial government's anti-democratic, anti-American and militaristic ideology while establishing orderly government was among the goals of the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK, 1945-1948). To help achieve this aim on a wide front and as quickly as possible, USAMGIK's Motion Picture Section in the Department of Public Information arranged the exhibition of hundreds of Hollywood films to promote themes of democracy, capitalism, gender equality and popular American culture and values. While U.S. troops in the field enjoyed the increased availability and calibre of American feature films, the Korean government-in-waiting was affronted by their perceived immorality. Standard Korean film histories focus on the hardships endured by Korean filmmakers, and the conflicts among them, and on Hollywood's monopoly of the screen in the era, a situation which USAMGIK film policy - strikingly similar to the ordinances previously set in place by the Japanese - assisted. This study demonstrates how many of these ‘spectacle ’ films, which have hitherto largely gone unlisted, were designed to inculcate Western notions of liberty among Koreans, while distracting them from a tumultuous political scene. However, the films exhibited did not always live up to this lofty purpose. Along with positive portrayals of the ‘American way of life ’, representations of violent, anti-social and misogynistic behavior were foreign to Korean cultural and aesthetic traditions, and often provoked negative responses from local audiences.

This essay introduces and compares works and lives of two war painters, Ogawara Shū (1911-2002) and Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1998). It also provides a critical perspective on the museological discourse about Fujita and reassesses Ogawara by examining recent exhibits of their works in Hokkaido, Japan. Ogawara, a prewar surrealist painter, collaborated with the military and produced war propaganda paintings in the early 1940s. Fujita was an internationally renowned Japanese artist who resided in Paris since 1913, but came back to Japan and produced propaganda paintings in the 1930s and 40s. After the ear, they were criticized harshly by the public for their war responsibility, and largely forgotten in the Japanese art scene since then: Ogawara isolated himself in Kuchan, Hokkaido while Fujita left Japan permanently and lived in France until he died.

The author analyzes some of the most representative works produced by each artist including war paintings, and compares their different responses to their wartime activities: Ogawara expressed his war responsibility publicly since the 1970s whereas Fujita never commented on it. Apart from presenting each artist's attitude towards his past, the author problematizes the way Fujita and his war paintings were interpreted at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in 2008: he was represented as a “Renaissance humanist” who produced “anti-war” paintings. The author argues that the nationalistic impulse of the contemporary Japanese art community was behind the misrepresentation of Fujita as a “tragic hero” and raises critical questions that need to be investigated further such as the way modernism and nationalism was intertwined in Japan during the war years.