Bloody Memories: Affect and Effect of World War II Museums in China and Japan

Abstract

For political elites in any nation, war museums serve as powerful storytellers. They may reflect and even help shape collective identity. But the effect is especially strong in the case of authoritarian regimes that are able to tell a consistent, coherent narrative about a past conflict. In this analysis, drawing on insights from commemoration studies, comparative politics, and international relations, I look at three museums in Japan, which is politically divided over how to remember World War II, and three museums in China, which has achieved a revised, but still top‐down consensus over that war. The comparison suggests that all of these museums use “affect,” more or less successfully, to tell their stories. But it also reveals that the shared history recalled in Chinese war museums is more effective and thus “useful” for Chinese elites than competing histories recalled in Japanese museums are for Japanese elites.