The Power of Memory in Modern Japan. Este artículo no está disponible.The Power of Memory in Modern Japan

Due to their symbolic and iconographic meanings, expressions of ‘collective memory’ constitute the mental topography of a society and make a powerful contribution to its cultural, political and social identity. In Japan, the subject of ‘memory’ has prompted a huge response in recent years. Indeed, it has been and continues to be debated at many levels of Japan’s political, social, economic and cultural life. For the historian and social scientist the opportunity to access recorded memories is invariably welcomed as a valuable building block in research and a determinant in establishing balance and perspective. This volume brings together a selection of the most significant research on memory relating to modern Japan. Thematically structured (Politics and International Relations; Memorials, Museums, National Heroes; Popular and Intellectual Representations of Memory; Realms of Memory: Centre and Periphery) the subjects treated include the Nanjing massacre, comfort women, the fate of war monuments, the political use of national memory in post-war Japan and remembering the atomic bomb.

Sven Saaler is an Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He is author of Politics, Memory and Public Opinion. The History Textbook Controversy and Japanese Society (2005), co-editor of Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History (2007) and co-author of Japanische Impressionen eines Kaiserlichen Gesandten. Karl von Eisendecher im Japan der Meiji-Zeit (2007).
Wolfgang Schwentker is Professor at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, where he teaches comparative social and intellectual history. Among his books are Max Weber in Japan (1998) and Die Samurai (2003). He co-edited Erinnerungskulturen. Deutschland, Italien und Japan seit 1945 (2002).