The Politics of Memory: Nation, Individual and Self

Abstract

The Japanese political world has splintered to pieces in the aftermath of the cold war. The same splintering has occurred among intellectuals as well, as one distorted claim invites another, until one hasn't a clue who is conservative and who is progressive. The present focus of the confusion is the so-called comfort women problem. Holocaust revisionism has created scandals in the past in Japan as elsewhere, but this time the fire has ignited on our own doorstep. With the emergence of a Japanese version of historical revisionism, the comfort women issue has become a litmus test of attitudes about war responsibility and the construction of public memory.