A sidebar controversy to the intense debate of 2015 on how Japan's leaders would mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II sparked my interest in the phenomenon of “dark tourism,” defined in brief as touristic interest in sites associated with death, disaster and atrocity. The practice of dark tourism, with focus mainly on the creation of dark tourist sites and the messages they convey (or fail to convey), is the concern of the three papers to follow.

As the most devastating conflict between China and Japan, the Second Sino-Japanese War became an integral part of national histories in both countries during the postwar period. To commemorate this war, monuments, cemeteries, and museums were established both in Japan and China. These war memorial sites also serve the purpose of education, presenting their audiences with diverse interpretations of the same history. Today, the commemorative sites of the wartime past in China and Japan possess not only historical, but also contemporary significance. The different perceptions of the war's dark heritage intertwine with and exacerbate current politico-diplomatic tensions between the two countries, perpetuating their contest over historical narratives.

The origins of Japanese Buddhism can be traced back to the early sixth century, when the king of Paekche, occupying the southwestern tip of the Korean peninsula, sent a small bronze statue and Buddhist texts as part of a diplomatic mission to the Japanese court. This cultural exchange marked the beginning of a leading religion that would continue to develop over the following centuries in Japan. Approximately fourteen centuries later in 2013, Shikoku Henro, a famous pilgrimage circuit that visits eighty-eight Buddhist temples around the fourth largest island of Japan, became a site of national controversy when a racist organization posted signs along the route that read, “Let us protect our precious pilgrimage route from the hands of chōsenjin (Koreans).” A site with cultural and religious bonds, forged in a historic diplomatic exchange between the two countries, has instead become celebrated as a “traditional” heritage site—one structured around notions of chauvinism and cultural exclusion. Using the controversy at this location in 2013 as the starting point, my paper examines the ways in which the Shikoku pilgrimage route was presented to the public, and the ensuing claims on the emotional landscape of this site by local, national and international bodies. More than a simple story of Japanese national pride, the dark history of Shikoku Henro reveals complicated circumstances that culminated in the 2013 controversy involving a Korean pilgrim and her journey.

In 2015, the Japanese government applied to have UNESCO grant World Heritage status to “Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution: Kyushu-Yamaguchi and Related Areas.” The serial nomination was comprised of eleven key industrial sites related to iron and steel production, shipbuilding, and coal mining, all instrumental to Japan's “rapid industrialization” during the Meiji period. The “Executive Summary” of the nomination file argued that those sites were deserving of World Heritage status because of their contribution to “Japan's unique achievement in world history as the first non-Western country to successfully industrialize.” The nomination document also attempted to link Japan's modern industrial success to its current status as an economic superpower. The report begins with a letter by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, which claims that the Meiji era “reflect[s] that period of transformation, fundamental to the essence of Japan today and her position in global society.”

2018 was the 20th anniversary of Reformasi, the people-power movement that toppled authoritarian leader Suharto, after 32 years in power, and ushered in Indonesia's democratic transition. The world's largest Muslim-majority nation has since made significant reforms to its political system to become the world's third biggest democracy. The military has been removed from parliament and serving officers are banned from politics so that the military no longer has a formal role in the political process. Wide-ranging decentralizing measures were also introduced as an antidote to the stifling centralisation of Suharto's New Order regime, and the country's first direct presidential elections were held in 2004.

Itō Ken (1895-1945), a proletarian writer, stated in 1930 that his collection of short stories Shanhai Yawa (Shanghai Night Stories) was intended to be a “detective and proletarian like popular novel.” But how can a proletarian writer with a Marxist worldview change an apolitical genre such as the detective story into a weapon of proletarian literature? Could a Marxist detective reveal the crimes of capital? Examining Itō's journalistic articles and fiction within the context of mass media and detective fiction, I aim to show how Itō Ken tried to rework the detective genre into a form of proletarian literature.