Anomalies in Collective Victimhood in Post-War Japan: ‘Hiroshima’ As a Victimisation Symbol for the Collective National Memory of War

Abstract

In the aftermath of war, people need visions that (re)unite them and overcome the psychological wounds they have incurred. The post-war Japanese needed narratives that could help them to rebuild their war-torn self-image. They subscribed to a story of Hiroshima being the first city to be demolished by an atomic bomb. Through this, Hiroshima became a national symbol, and the Japanese regarded themselves as victims of war, which effectively overrode their sense of shame and of responsibility for the war. As this process was aimed internally to serve as the backbone of post-war recovery, it did not turn the Japanese against the United States, and thus Japanese collective victimhood includes the following three anomalies: first, the absence of an enemy; second, a lack of aggressiveness; and third, the irrelevance of recovery. This article, therefore, challenges the existing theory of collective victimhood using the case of post-war Japan.