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"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

History Wars in Japan: Stopping the Erasure of Coerced WWII "Suicides" in History Texts

"History is hot (and) unceasingly controversial because it provides so much of the substance for the way a society defines itself and considers what it wants to be..."
– History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past

The parallels between the history wars between Japan's neoconservative politicians and progressive and grassroots Japanese and American neoconservative politicians and progressive and grassroots Americans is astoundingly similar, as well as those in other nations. The common denominator comes down to the conflict between those who seek to impose their party line authoritarian versions of history that glorify the state, and those who support critical histories that encourage multiple perspectives and multiple voices in ongoing debate and dialogue.

I just finished taking a second look at Edward T. Linenthal's and Tom Engelhardt's History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, which critiques one of America's "sacred national narratives," along with History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past by Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree and Ross E. Dunn, and Jonathan Zimmerman's Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools.

According to Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn, many of the world's nations have been experiencing similar conflicts over history, as they explain in their chapter "History Wars Abroad." In the U.K., the New Right's desire to maintain the centuries of glorification of British empire and history has clashed with progressives who seek to emphasize the UK's "gloomy record of social conflict, struggle, and change." In Russia, the clash over how to critically examine the glorification of Leninist ideologies has taken a huge step backward as recent police state advocates seek to mitigate past totalitarianism to legitimate current repression. In South Africa, educators have had to totally reconstruct an educational paradigm built on a century of white supremacist ideology. And in Japan, we see another generation continue the legacy of Ienaga Saburo's challenges of censorship of wartime history.

Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn see a hopeful aspect in all these history wars:
"That a rash of history wars should occur in the United States and several other countries in the 1980's and 1990's is no coincidence...Public contests over history are characteristic not of totalitarian regimes but of countries where democracy is either blooming or persevering."

Throughout the world, we are also seeing an incredible reclamation of erased histories, from Harriet Washington's brilliant Medical Apartheid:The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present detailing how African Americans were used in unbelievably inhumane forced medical experiments from colonial times to the present -- to Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya which sets the record straight on Britain's brutal torture and ethnic cleansing (genocide?) of 1.4 million Kikuyu people in Kenya -- to Jean Pfaelzer's DRIVEN OUT: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, about the ethnic cleansing of Chinese Americans in numerous towns in the western United States.

In this light, it's buoying to see the recent protests by 100,000 Okinawans and other Japanese against the state's attempt to omit the established fact that the Japanese Imperial military coerced suicides in Okinawa after the war. These activists are stopping the erasures of history before the erasures can happen, by amplifying authentic voices and passing down truthful, personal stories to the next generation now.

I am now wondering if the most dynamic public debates over official histories happens in Japan -- from heated dialogue over war responsibility to how to construct collective memories. I haven't observed anything like this in the United States since the conflicts over the Enola Gay exhibition at the Smithsonian, which was won by the official party-liners, although a huge interest in popular critical histories has exploded in the U.S.

Jean Pfaelzer said that she was surprised that there was a bidding war on her book, published this year, on the ethnic cleansing of Chinese Americans throughout the American West -- she thought it wouldn't sell. I know that critical histories have been popular in Japan since the 1970's. Historian Yoshihiko Amino's <http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol4no1/amino.html> brilliant revisionist histories challenging the idea of a homogenous Japanese monoculture from "time immemorial" has had a following among a huge Japanese readership.

So, more power to the Japanese and Okinawans demanding critical histories that include diverse voices. I see these grassroots activists as kindred spirits of those around the world in similar loggerheads with authoritarian politicians still trying to push simplistic glorified party lines on their citizens. It seems all people know instinctively that the truth really does set us free. Is that why authoritarians are so afraid of the truth?

Martin Frid has a great photograph and link to a Daily Yomiuri article:

"Yomiuri Shinbun reports that 110,000 people in Okinawa, southern Japan, participated in the peaceful demonstration this weekend. They rallied against the Education Ministry's order to modify school textbooks describing how Japan's Imperial Army forced civilians to commit mass suicide at the end of World War II. It is the biggest demonstration since the island was returned to Japan by the United States in 1972, Kyodo News agency said."

David McNeill has a good overview in The Independent:

"In March, Japan's Education Ministry ordered publishers of secondary school history textbooks to delete references to coercion by Japanese troops. "There are divergent views of whether or not the suicides were ordered by the army and no proof to say either way," a ministry official told the Stars and Stripes, the US military's daily newspaper.
"One passage in a textbook was changed from: "Japanese forces made [residents] commit mass suicide and kill one another using hand grenades that [the Japanese forces] had distributed." To: "Using hand grenades that Japanese forces had distributed, mass suicide and the killing of one another took place."

"'It's an Orwellian move,' says Doug Lummis, a local academic and former American soldier. 'This is an attempt to send these peoples' memories down the plughole of history. They're not going to stand for it.'

"The Battle of Okinawa raged for three months in 1945 and took 200,000 Japanese and American lives, including about a quarter of the local population. Japanese troops were ordered to stall a full-scale invasion of the mainland. Mass suicides of families indoctrinated by military propaganda, including mothers and their babies, have been well documented.

"The American invasion, and the presence of thousands of US troops as part of the US-Japan military alliance has had a deep impact on the area. Dozens of peace monuments dot the island and resentment at what many locals see as Tokyo's arrogance runs deep.

"Okinawa's local government has reacted with fury to the Education Ministry directive, issuing an unprecedented unanimous statement in June demanding that the government reverse its decision. "It is an undeniable fact that mass suicides could not have occurred without the involvement of the Japanese military," said the statement.

"More than 100,000 signatures have been collected against the directive and Hirokazu Nakaima, the island's governor and a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is taking part in today's demonstration, an embarrassing snub to the central government. School children will tell the protesters why they will not use the censored textbooks and witnesses of the battle will recount their stories..."

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