Place, Public Memory, and the Tokyo Air Raids

8/8/2019 Place, Public Memory, and the Tokyo Air Raids

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The Geographical Review ( ): , OctoberCopyright by the American Geographical Society of New York

Dr. Karacas is an assistant professor of geography at the College of Staten Island, City Univer-sity New York, Staten Island, New York .

PLACE, PUBLIC MEMORY, AND THE TOKYO AIR RAIDS

CARY KARACAS

abstract . The one public memorial built to remember the many people killed in air raidsdirected against the civilian population of Tokyo during the Asia-Pacic War bears traces of deeper stories related to a prior catastrophe, the eff ects of the U.S. occupation of Japan, warmemory, political power at the municipal and national level, and the ability of citizens groupsto create public sites of exemplary memory. This article examines key chapters of those sto-ries by tracing the dynamics of collective memory as related to the movement to rememberthe air raids and build a Tokyo Peace Museum. It concludes with an analysis of the existingmemorial as a space of literal memory.Keyword: air raids, exemplary memory, memorials, public memory, Tokyo.

I n March Tokyos governor, Ishihara Shintar,1 presided over the unveilingof a memorial dedicated to civilians killed by therebombing of Japans capital inthe nal months of the countrys Asia-Pacic War ( ). On the occasion,thousands of bereaved relatives traveled from throughout the metropolis and country to Yokoami Park, site of the newly built structure, therst and only public memo-rial for Tokyos air-raid victims, who numbered more than , . Yet, accordingto the very citizens groups that for decades had lobbied the Tokyo MetropolitanGovernment (tmg ) to build such a memorial, theower-covered, granite Dwellingof Remembrance should not have been erected (Figure). At least not in YokoamiPark, they argued, given its status as a sacred space meant to memorialize an en-tirely diff erent catastrophe, and not without an accompanying museum that re-counted and contextualized the experience of the Tokyo air raids. Although aprevious governor had committed the city to building a Tokyo Peace Museum, uponassuming office Governor Ishihara erected the memorial as a stand-alone struc-ture.

This article contributes to the growing body of literature on the intersections of urban space, identity, and public memory, particularly as related to the memori-alization of catastrophic loss (Sturken , ; Young ; Johnson ; Till

; Foote, Tth, and rvay ; Forest and Johnson ; Foote ; Giamo; Nevins ; Hoskins ). As a case study built on the theoretical position

that material manifestations of public memory in the urban landscape are a resultof mediation among a variety of interest groups and that sites such as museumsand memorials play a pivotal role in identity construction, this particular contribu-tion may be read as one answer to the call for scholars to extend studies of thespatial dynamics of memory beyond North America and Europe (Foote and

Azaryahu ).Working from the premise articulated by Owen Dwyer and Derek Aldermanthat memorials bear traces of deeper stories about how they were created, by whom,


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and for what ideological purpose ( , ), the main portion of this article con-sists of an examination of the factors that led to the construction of the controver-

sial memorial. I focus on three intersecting factors: a citizens movement that emergedin the late s to remember the Tokyo air raids; the political inclinations of Tokyosgovernors and municipal legislators; and the s debate over war memory as re-lated to the construction of peace museums in Japan. The concluding section ap-plies Tzvetan Todorovs ideal types of literal memory and exemplary memory as ameans of interpreting the Dwelling of Remembrance memorial in Yokoami Park( ). Though to date rarely used by researchers, these ideal types can act as animportant analytical lens through which we can better understand a critical featureof memorial sites (Nevins ; Hoskins ).

Tokyo Air Raids and Public Memory

The most damaging of the more than air raids that Tokyo experienced during

the Asia-Pacic War comprisedve large-scalerebombing raids between Marchand May that collectively destroyed percent of the capital and displaced morethan million Tokyoites (Tky-to ). Among these incendiary raids, the GreatTokyo Air Raid of March commands attention for turning the citys mostdensely populated area into a sea of re that killed more than , civilians(Daniels ). Following this catastrophic event, authorities quickly buried thevictims in dozens of mass graves, where they remained throughout the early post-war period while thetmg and bereaved relatives feuded over how to deal with theunidentiable and unclaimed corpses, which constituted a majority of the dead(tik ).

Because the impasse continued, an American made thenal decision. InLieutenant Commander William Bunce, chief of the Religions Division in the CivilInformation and Education Section of the U.S. Occupations General Headquar-ters, directed thetmg to place the air-raid victims remains in an existing metro-politan charnel house, Earthquake Memorial Hall (Yamamoto ; Osa ). Thisstructure, housed in Yokoami Park, held the cremated bodies of many victims of the res that had destroyed Tokyo in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquakeof September . Yokoami Park itself constituted a main site of tragedy on thatday when the tens of thousands who sought refuge in the-hectare open space wereset upon by arestorm. Among the , Tokyoites killed in , up to ,died at this site alone (sk ).

Given the tragedy associated with Yokoami Park, authorities sanctied it throughits conversion into the main memorial space for the catastrophe. Centered on

Earthquake Memorial Hall and an attached charnel house holding the crematedremains of , unidentiable and unclaimed victims, by the time of theceremony inaugurating the park and celebrating Tokyos reconstruction YokoamiPark hosted numerous memorials and Reconstruction Commemoration Hall, amuseum featuring exhibits related to the disaster and Tokyos reconstruction (Fig-ure ). Via these structures and memorials the park became the principal com-


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memorative space where the city and nation remembered the Great Kanto Earth-quake and the many people who had perished in the disaster.

Between and the Tokyo Metropolitan Park Division exhumed andcremated the unidentiable and unclaimed remains of , air-raid victims.Authorities then placed large porcelain urns containing the ashes in YokoamiParks charnel house, which was attached to the officially renamed Tokyo Metro-politan Memorial Hall. Since the Tokyo Memorial Association has sponsoredBuddhist services every March and September for the victims of both theand catastrophes (tik ).

Except for these services and the establishment of neighborhood-based memo-rials near areas such as school yards and bridge crossings where many had died on

March (Figure ), public remembering of the Tokyo air raids did not beginuntil the late s. The U.S. occupation of Japan constituted therst signicant im-

pediment. Similar to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, occupation-era press-censorship codes prevented all public discussion of therebombing untilJapan regained its sovereignty in (Matsuura ). Strikingly diff erent from theoutpouring of public memories and creation of memorial spaces in both Hiroshimaand Nagasaki following the end of this abnormal interlude of silence, public re-membering of the Tokyo air raids was slow to commence (Dower , ).

Fig. The Dwelling of Remembrance memorial in Yokoami Park, Sumida Ward, Tokyo.(Photograph by the author, August )


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Conservative control of thetmg from the early postwar period until the late sresulted in little official will to remember at the local level. Except for releasing a re-port in that detailed physical damage to the capital, thetmg made no eff ort to

remember the destruction of the city, memorialize those killed in the

rebombings,or even compile the names of the dead (Tky-to ; Hoshino ). At the na-tional level, Japans cold war alliance with the United States and the pursuit of higheconomic growth discouraged the countrys political leaders from revisiting the de-struction of Tokyo and most of urban Japan. Perhaps the most telling moment of thiswill to forget occurred in when Japans prime minister awarded U.S. Air ForceGeneral Curtis LeMay, who had orchestrated therebombing of sixty-four Japanesecities while serving as head of the Army Air Forcesst Bomber Command, thecountrys highest medal for his assistance in the establishment of the air wing of JapansSelf Defense Forces (Matsuura ). Addressing these deliberate absences requireda radical shift in political leadership at the local level and the creation of a citizensgroup intent on retrieving memories of the air raids (Cochrane , ).

Remembering the Tokyo Air Raids

Depending on historical circumstances, local political leaders can play a fundamentalrole in a citys development (Flanagan ). Tokyos governor wields considerablediscretionary power, which has allowed him to translate particular convictions intoreality, especially during periods of economic growth. Initiating an era of reformist

Fig. A drawing of Yokoami Park, in Tokyos Sumida Ward. The Earthquake Memorial Halldominates the center; the Reconstruction Commemoration Hall is at the lower right.Source: tskjksj

.


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government in the capital following two decades of postwar conservative leader-ship, in Tokyoites elected as governor Minobe Rykichi, a public intellectual

and self-described exible utopian Socialist (Rix , ). For the ruling LiberalDemocratic Party (ldp ), which by proxy had controlled Tokyos administrative ap-paratus since the s, losing control of Japans largest and most important city was a spectacular defeat (jq , ).

The ldp s concern grew all the more acute as the reformist Minobe, governorfor three terms from to , attempted to transform Tokyo from a city thatgives priority to industry to a city centered around people (jq , ). In thisregard Minobe worked to provide Tokyoites with numerous rights to the city inpart by achieving a civil minimum via a variety of initiativesincluding healthinsurance for the elderly, neonatal care, and pollution-control measures nancedby Japans strong economic growth and the attendant increase in tax revenues paidby Tokyo-based corporations (Muramatsu ; Hein ).

Minobes tenure also witnessed the emergence of numerous citizens groups inTokyo that addressed quality-of-life issues, including efficient garbage disposal,protection of the citizens right to sunshine and opposition to highway buildingprojects on environmental grounds (jq , ). In another citizens groupemerged when a dozen public intellectuals and air-raid survivors formed the Soci-

Fig. A neighborhood-based memorial dedicated to victims of the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March , Sumida Ward, Tokyo. (Photograph by the author, August )


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ety for Recording the Tokyo Air Raids. While Tokyos expressways and skyscraperscontinued to multiply, the society stated in a letter to the governor, the city and the

written record contained few reminders of the air raids that had destroyed Tokyo andkilled so many people. In contrast to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,argued the group, no official eff ort had been made to collect survivors testimoniesand air-raidrelated documents. With thetmg s nancial backing, the group pro-posed a multiyear project to carry out such an endeavor. As the quarter-century markof the wars end approached, representatives of the society met with Governor Minobein August , after which he off ered fullnancial backing, a support staff , and officespace in order for the group to realize its proposal (Saotome ).

The Tokyo Peace Museum

With the Society for Recording the Tokyo Air Raids acting as catalyst and model,residents in forty cities throughout Japan also formed citizens groups to begin to

recover memories and documents related to the air raids they had experienced (SaitH. ). Two years later, members of the nationwide Society for Recording AirRaids and War Damages pledged to work toward the construction of war-damageresource museums meant to convey the experience of the air raids (Imai ; my translation). In Tokyo the newly established Society to Build an Air Raid and WarDamage Museum solicitedtmg support to construct both a museum and a memo-rial dedicated torebombing victims (as ). Although Governor Minobe fa-vored the proposal and provided funds for acquisition of exhibit materials, aprecipitous decrease in Tokyos tax revenues resulting from the global oil shock of

prevented him from committing the resources required to secure a site andbuild the structures (Saotome ).

The tmg s support for the project, moreover, halted following Tokyos gu-bernatorial election. Although the winning candidate, Suzuki Shunichi, a longtimeldp politician and bureaucrat, voiced enthusiasm during the campaign for whatsome called the Tokyo Metropolitan Peace Memorial Museum (referred to as theTokyo Peace Museum), after assuming office he refused to fund its construction(Futatabi ).

Scholars have debated whether Tokyots the criteria assigned to a global city and the proportionate roles that state and capital have played in the redevelopmentprocess that led the metropolis to be ascribed as such, but they agree that Tokyounderwent a signicant spatial reconguration beginning in the s (White ;Hill and Kim ; Fujita ; A. Saito ; Waley ). Although largely unexamined in the Tokyo-as-global-city literature, Governor Suzuki played a cen-

tral role in this transformation (Iwatake ; A. Saito ). A brief explanation of this point will illuminate his resistance to build the Tokyo Peace Museum.Despite having stated his intention to embrace the local-autonomy approach

toward governance that his predecessor, Minobe, had popularized, once in officeSuzuki realigned thetmg with the central governments rulingldp and its eco-nomic policies (Iwatake ). In this regard, Suzuki worked in tandem with then


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Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, who had decided to stimulate internal consump-tion via massive investment in public-private development projects (Yasuda ).

Turning away from Governor Minobes approach to Tokyo as a life space in whichthe local government prioritized the needs of citizens, Suzuki viewed the city pri-marily as an economic space meant to accommodate the many corporations thatused Japans capital as a center for their global operations (Hill and Kim ;Sorenson ). As a main member of the troika composed of thetmg , the centralgovernment, and private enterprise, Suzuki often took the lead in the eff ort to trans-form Tokyo into a vast container for capital accumulations by enabling corporateexpansion through land speculation and large-scale development projects (Oizumi

, ).Following the national governments deregulation of the urban real estate mar-

ket and the abolition of building-restriction codes in the s, Tokyo witnessedrapid increases in land prices, which fueled a growing real estate bubble that origi-nated in the center of the capital and quickly enveloped the entire city and much of the country (Machimura ; A. Saito ; Waley ; Shibata ). Resultingtax revenues pouring into thetmg s coff ers allowed Suzuki to build numerous ar-chitectural projections of power central to his vision of a global city (Coaldrake

, ). These included: the Edo-Tokyo Museum, the largest metropolitan mu-seum in the world; the New Tokyo Metropolitan Government Headquarters, thelargest single set of buildings to be constructed in Japan in the twentieth century(Coaldrake , ); and the massive public-private Tokyo Waterfront Sub-Center development built on reclaimed portions of Tokyo Bay (Yasuda; Oizumi

; Sand ). While embarking on these and other monumental projects, Suzukiignored repeated demands made throughout the s that he build the Tokyo PeaceMuseum, an act that would contradict his vision of transforming Tokyo into adepoliticized global city known for its cultural amenities, attractiveness to capital,and position as the center of one of the worlds greatest economic powers (Futatabi

; Iwatake ; Sait H. ).Suzuki, however, lost signicant political power following his fourth andnal

election as governor in . In addition to his estrangement from the centralgovernments rulingldp , which had opposed his reelection bid, a coalition of lib-eral parties took control of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly and pressed the gov-ernor to build the Tokyo Peace Museum. Acceding to the assemblys demands, in

Suzuki announced the directive to plan the structure and pledged to completethe design phase by March , the ftieth anniversary of the Great Tokyo Air Raid(as ).

A gubernatorial advisory committee composed of tmg assemblymen and bureaumanagers, professors, writers, and architects planned the museum over the followingtwo years. In itsnal report, the committee stated the museums size and contentswould make it deserving of its designation as Tokyos twenty-rst-century symbol of peace (Tky-to , ; my translation). With an exhibition area centered on theexperience of the Tokyo air raids anchoring the building, the museum would also


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feature additional exhibits, a -seat lecture and concert hall, meeting rooms, a refer-ence library, and even a gift shop (Tky-to ).

As for the museums location, the governors office announced a candidate site,close to the city center, on a portion of land in Ch Ward newly designated askawabata River City, then under joint redevelopment by thetmg and the MitsuiReal Estate Group (as ). Although the gubernatorial advisory committee statedthat it could not grant the requests for the separate charnel house outside YokoamiPark that some community members had demanded, it pledged to build a memorialdedicated to the air-raid victims next to the museum (Tky-to ; Yamamoto ).

Importantly, the Tokyo Peace Museum, via its proposed exhibits and compa-rable to other peace museums built in Japan in the s, would attempt to chal-lenge and transcend the national victimology discourse that had dominated publicwar memory for decades. In the s Japan had embraced a national identity inrelation to the Asia-Pacic War based on the notion of Japanese victimization dueto the countrys exceptional status, repeated mantra-like over the years, as the only nation ever to have been atom-bombed (Orr , ). The atomic destruction of two Japanese cities facilitated a narrative of victimhood and suff ering that simulta-neously obscured the devastating results of Japanese wartime aggression and exon-erated both the Japanese state and its people from their actions (Field ; Yoneyama

; Giamo ).Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wrote the historian John Dower, be-

came a way of forgetting Nanjing, Bataan, the Burma-Siam railway, Manila, and thecountless Japanese atrocities these and other place names signied to non-Japanese( , ). The large-scale suff ering and urban devastation caused by air raids onsixty-four Japanese cities, however, never became an integral part of the national

victimology that determined public war memory because Japan could not claiman exclusive experience. In addition to the many residents in cities throughout Eu-rope that were aff ected by air raids during World War II, civilians suff ered heavily asJapanese Imperial Navy bombers carried out indiscriminate attacks on citiesthroughout China (Peattie ; Maeda ).

Beginning in the late s, however, Japan experienced a shifting economy of self-understanding as victims and aggressors (Field , ), in part due to a grow-ing sense of urgency aboutxing the meaning of the war in national memory(Hammond , ). Museums became an important site of this memory xing,especially in terms of whether they should recall only a selective suff ering experi-enced within the Japanese national space or go beyond borders to consider large-scale suff ering inicted by the Japanese state and people (rkk ; Hammond ;Smith ). In this regard, the countrywide emergence of peace museums, a con-cept that originated in early-twentieth-century Europe and that Japan has embracedmore than any other country, constitutes a fundamental aspect of this shift (Duff y

; Buruma ; Seltz ; Hein and Takenaka ). In addition to focusing onthe urban devastation and suff ering experienced in Japan, these peace museums,which most prominently include the Osaka International Peace Center (or Peace


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Osaka), Ritsumeikan Universitys Museum for World Peace in Kyoto, Peace Aichi inAichi Prefecture, and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, sought to challenge theprevalent victim consciousness by expanding the geography of wartime memory through a critical appraisal of Japanese aggression and atrocities committed duringthe Asia-Pacic War. To one extent or another, each peace museum attempts toupset the normative production of an official war memory that exclusively focuseson Japanese suff ering.

Peace Osaka, for example, in addition to a gallery that off ers a detailed accountof the Osaka air raids, contains an equally large exhibition space dedicated to an in-depth discussion of Japans invasion, colonization, and annexation of parts the Asiancontinent, the emergence of and reprisals against Korean and Chinese resistancemovements, and the carrying out of numerous state-sanctioned atrocities by Japa-nese troops. Similarly, the Tokyo Peace Museums pedagogical function as outlinedin the proposed exhibits would include a discussion of Japans wars of invasion inits Path to the Tokyo Air Raids display (Figure), with a suggested focus on theJapanese Imperial Navys air raids on Chinese cities. Militarized Tokyo, anotherproposed exhibit, would discuss the role of the capital in Japans war eff ort ( ).

Fig. A preliminary exhibit proposal for the Tokyo Peace Museum.Source:Adapted from Tky -to. (Diagram by the author)


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The accompanying memorial would also convey a conciliatory tone by simulta-neously mourning those killed in the Tokyo air raids and the worldwide victims of

the war (Tky-to , ; my translation).Confusion of Tragedies

In the derailment of the Tokyo Peace Museums construction began. In that year, another gubernatorial task force, the Tokyo Metropolitan Peace MemorialMuseum Construction Committee, received an unexpected announcement fromthe governors office, now headed by Aoshima Yukio, a former comedian and Japa-nese Diet member who, upon assuming office in , curtailed thetmg s spendingbinge in order to bring the citys budget into line with the economic realities of Japans continued recession (Itoh ). The governors office revealed to the com-mittee its plan to build the museum in Yokoami Park, the public space dedicated topreserving the memory of the Great Kanto Earthquake. The parks small size,

however, required a radical downsizing of the museum, with the exhibit space cutfrom , to square meters and the auditorium eliminated. Even with thisreduction, the governors office claimed that space constraints within the park re-quired the partial demolition of Reconstruction Commemoration Hall. The city proposed merging the two surviving outer walls of that structure, along with itsexhibits about the earthquake, with the new museum (Tky-to ).

Following the announcement, a chorus of opposition arose from dissentingcommittee members, air-raid survivors, bereaved families, local residents, and ar-chitectural historians (as c). Many voiced concern that Yokoami Park could notaccommodate the memorialization of two separate catastrophes. Given the scale of suff ering experienced on the site in , claimed committee member and air-raidsurvivor Hashimoto Yoshiko, not enough room was left to represent another trag-edy. Yokoami Park, a sacred space for the victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake,Hashimoto claimed, was where we mourn those who died in , a place wherewe think about that disaster (Tky-to , ; my translation).

Thereafter, longtime Tokyo Peace Museum proponents allied themselves with agroup of architects to lobby thetmg to preserve Reconstruction CommemorationHall andnd a more suitable location for the museum (as b). In response, thegovernors office developed a plan that simply heightened tensions: It would buildTokyos twenty-rst-century symbol of peace underground in Yokoami Park in orderto keep the existing memorial structures intact. Although activists labored for overtwo decades to build the Tokyo Peace Museum, they now found themselves uniting inOctober to form a group led mainly by women who had either experienced the

Great Tokyo Air Raid or lost family members in itthat vigorously lobbied thetmg tohalt its plans to construct the museum in Yokoami Park. Over the course of the nexttwo years the group conducted signature drives, held public meetings, and regularly petitioned the tmg to build the museum in one of the areas larger metropolitanparks. Additionally, the group pressed thetmg to build a separate charnel house out-side Yokoami Park for the air-raid victims cremated remains (tdkhhtk ).


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As protests against the construction of the Tokyo Peace Museum in YokoamiPark continued, a local manifestation of a national backlash by conservatives against

the message promoted by Japans peace museums erupted. The opposition was ledby conservative members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly and a public intel-lectual well known for his eff orts to combat what conservatives viewed as a TokyoWar Crimes Trial version of history that found Japan bearing responsibility for theAsia-Pacic War.

Just as liberal control of the metropolitan assembly had forced Governor Suzukito plan the Tokyo Peace Museum in the early s, conservative recapture of theassembly later that decade constituted a central part of this backlash. During aAssembly Education Committee meeting, for example, the newly elected Assem-blyman Tsuchiya Takayuki charged that Communist and Socialist party assembly-men had stacked the Tokyo Peace Museums exhibit design committee withindividuals sympathetic to their leftist orientations. He then raised a formal objec-tion to the proposed exhibits before the entire assembly, claiming that they woulddishonor the many Japanese soldiers who died on the Asian continent during thewar by positioning them as ruthless aggressors rather than heroes who fought forthe liberation of Asia from European colonialism (as a).

Tsuchiya allied himself with Fujioka Nobukatsu, a professor of education at TokyoUniversity who came to prominence for his role as a founder of the Advancementof a Liberal View of History Study Group, which conservatives formed as a reactionagainst some public school history textbooks containing descriptions of Japaneseatrocities committed during the countrys military engagements in Asia (Nelson

). The people that does not have a history to be proud of, wrote Fujioka inresponse to the textbooks, cannot constitute itself as a nation (Fujioka , ,translated in McCormack , ).

Acutely aware of the role of museums in transmitting history and instilling asense of group identity, Fujioka also took a strong position against the messageconveyed in Japans peace museums. Although he could only protest the exhibitcontents of existing museums, he could act to prevent the Tokyo Peace Museumfrom being built altogether. Beginning in late Fujioka carried out a full-courtpress to generate public opposition to the museum by giving lectures throughoutthe capital, writing opinion pieces for conservative newspapers, meeting with Gov-ernor Aoshima to urge him to postpone construction, and forming a group calledCitizens Concerned about Peace in Tokyo that carried out protests in Yokoami Park(Fujioka a, b, c).

Mirroring his critique of certain textbooks, Fujioka asserted that the Tokyo Peace

Museums proposed exhibits promoted an anti-Japanese and self-masochistic historical viewpoint ( b, ; my translation). The Path to the To-kyo Air Raids exhibit and its discussion of Japans invasion of other Asian coun-tries generated most of his concern. Representing Japans involvement in Asia as anact of aggression a debatable matter, according to Fujiokawould trample on thehearts of children and exert mind-control over them by causing museum visitors


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to conclude that the destruction of Tokyo was nothing more than just retributionfor Japans actions on the Asian continent (Fujioka b, ; my translation).

Importantly, Fujioka appropriated some of the long-standing concerns of To-kyo air-raid survivors by calling on thetmg to construct a memorial and separatecharnel house for air-raid victims outside Yokoami Park. While Tokyo was buildingthose structures, Fujioka argued, citizens could debate the contents of the TokyoPeace Museums proposed exhibits (Fujioka c). By and large, however, air-raidsurvivors actively opposing construction in Yokoami Park believed that a museumwith exhibits that discussed Japanese aggression in Asia was essential. When, forexample, air-raid survivors and bereaved family members gathered at a public meet-ing hall to discuss their opposition to thetmg s plan, they were surprised tondFujioka on the panel and proceeded to argue with him about their diff erent his-torical perspectives (tdkhhtk , ; my translation).

In March the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, citing concern over the contro-versy surrounding the exhibits, passed a resolution requiring its approval before thegovernor could commence construction of the museum. The resolution also declaredthat the memorial for Tokyos air-raid victims henceforth should be considered sepa-rately from the museum and that it be built without delay in Yokoami Park. Contrary to the original plan, the resolution proscribed any mention of worldwide victims of the war on the memorial and allowed references only to air-raid victims, mourn-ing, and peace (tt a; my translations).The death knell for the Tokyo PeaceMuseum sounded in August when another assembly resolution froze its con-struction altogether and reiterated the demand that the memorial be built immedi-ately (tt b). Two months later, newly elected Governor Ishihara Shintar, aconservative known for inammatory nationalist and xenophobic statements who, asa candidate, had refused to support construction of the Tokyo Peace Museum, movedforward to build the memorial in Yokoami Park. Simultaneously, those citizens mostactive in the movement to remember the Tokyo air raids, writing that they had lostthis one battle to those who affirmed and gloried Japans war of aggressions, beganto work toward the construction of a private resource center to serve as a substitutefor the peace museum (thkksk , ; my translation).

Spaces of Literal and Exemplary Memory

Applying Todorovs ideal types of literal memory and exemplary memory to this casestudy provides a useful theoretical lens through which to understand the politicaldimensions of representing catastrophic loss in the urban landscape ( ). Accord-ing to Todorov, literal memory involves a singular focus on the one catastrophe being

remembered. Exemplary memory, on the other hand, contains an explicitly ethicaland cosmopolitan dimension through its simultaneous focus on the local catastrophicevent being remembered and on other events of suff ering. By creating a model tounderstand new situations with diff erent agents (p. ), exemplary memory becomeslinked to justice and better relations with others (Hoskins , ). The applica-tion of these ideal types to actual places of memory can help researchers further un-


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derstand the intended functions, limits, and possibilities of a particular memorial site.Regarding this case study, it becomes apparent that, although citizens groups attempted

to construct an exemplary space of memory by linking the suff ering experienced inthe Tokyo air raids to the experience of suff ering by other groups on the Asian conti-nent, the tmg opted to create a literal space of memory.

This is evidenced in the way in which thetmg has attempted to graft Tokyo air-raid memories onto the commemorative space for the Great Kanto Earthquake.Because thetmg could not claim a Hiroshima- and Nagasaki-like exclusivity of experience in representing the catastrophic deaths associated with the Tokyo airraids, it instead reverted to the representational trope of heroic death. The norma-tive power of memorials, at once reecting and reproducing social ideas about thepast, and thereby shaping their future (Dwyer and Alderman , ), is evi-denced here through the declamatory strategy presented on the dedication plaquenext to the memorial. In addition to mourning the dead, the purpose of the Dwell-ing of Remembrance is to remind succeeding generations that todays peace andprosperity was built on the sacrices of many precious lives.

Although state sanctication of a space associated with catastrophic loss oftenrepresents the deaths of civilians as a sacrice made for a greater good, it is instruc-tive to examine the notion of sacrice as related to those killed in the Tokyo air raids(Foote ). The inherent danger of literal memory, wrote Todorov, is that it ren-ders the event impossible to go beyond [and] comes back in the last analysis tosubmitting the present to the past ( , ). Applying this concern to the Dwellingof Remembrance monument, the wording on the dedication plaque suggests a re-turn to the prewar and wartime state-promulgated notion of the Japanese people asimperial subjects who are expected to embrace an unquestioning ethic of self-sacricein the name of the emperor and the country. This approach, however, runs counterto the postwar concept of the Japanese people as a collection of self-aware, autono-mous citizens from which certain forms of civil society originate (Barshay ).

An important conclusion to draw from this case study is that, although publicmemory stems from a uid process of negotiation (Till , ), attempts tocreate sites of exemplary memory will meet resistance, largely due to the fact thatthe national paradigm continues to reign supreme in relation to the produc-tion of historical memory (Conrad , ). This tendency makes the endeavorrealized or not to establish such sites all the more remarkable and worthy of greater attention.

Note

. Following convention, I place Japanese surnames before given names.References

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Documents

Place, Public Memory, and the Tokyo Air Raids