Contested memory of Okinawa’s colonial and war past: history teaching in and beyond formal education

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the different ways in which the Battle of Okinawa in World War II is presented in and beyond formal education, using narratives and photos in Japan’s state-authorized history textbooks and at a local museum. Specifically, this study examines 15 upper secondary school textbooks issued by six publishing companies from across the political spectrum and analyzes the narratives and photos used in these textbooks to depict and explain the Battle of Okinawa, together with the digital archives and official guidebook of the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum (OPPMM). The arguments and findings are three-fold. First, despite the line-by-line scrutiny of textbook contents by the state, individual textbooks show different narratives of the battle, and the monolithic view regarding the “Japanese textbook” is not sustained. Second, there are general differences of the battle’s presentations between the school textbooks as a group and the OPPMM. Third, a crucial gap between them in presenting the Battle of Okinawa and World War II is in the perception of the “enemy”. This gap needs to be understood, as the museum’s presentation implies, with a prolonged relationship of contestation between Okinawa and “mainland Japan”, dating back to the late 19th century.