Remembering Colonial Korea in Postwar Japan

Abstract

Japan’s defeat in 1945 was a turning point in its relations with Korea as it facilitated pacifism among the citizens and provoked many Japanese to understand Japan’s wartime policies and actions in the Pacific Basin from the viewpoints of an aggressor. Although not all crimes that the Japanese empire had committed were revealed to the public, Japan’s wartime atrocities and misconducts in Korea and elsewhere were reported in detail among the citizens. Often dismissed by the mass media and non-Japan specialists are the initiatives driven by individuals and grass-roots organizations in order to atone for Japan’s wartime aggression and atrocities, to educate their fellow citizens on Japan’s colonial rule in Korea, and to promote historical reconciliation between Japan and its neighboring nations. My chapter traces the developments of numerous scholarly and non-scholarly writings, films, gatherings, and other movements among pacifists in postwar Japan. It challenges a presumption that attempts to illuminate postwar Japan as a monolithic nation with people who whitewash its colonial past.