| The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which the representation of World War II history produces collective memory of Japan and works to construct Japanese national identity. The 1990s' construction of Japanese national identity is significant, not only for foregrounding the self-identity of victim, but also processes in which an alternative identity of Japan-as-victimizer is suppressed. Such a mechanism, then, attempts to construct a national history of Japan in order to recuperate the shattered Japanese national identity as a result of economic recession and the accusations of wartime Japan addressed by its neighboring countries.;Therefore, the rhetorical analysis in this study is twofold. First, I examine the ways in which the process of re-remembering suppresses Japanese national identity as victimizer of Asian countries, especially China. Second, I scrutinize the ways in which the representations of the United States and China vilify them in order to solidify Japanese victimhood, which is mobilized by the arguing for the victimization of the Japanese collective psyche. That is, Japanese's psychic experience of World War II and the Allied occupation is rehearsed in order to erase the 1990s' representation of Japan as the victimizer of Asian countries. Simultaneously, the representations of experience call for contemporary Japanese to identify with their grandfathers who protected Japan from external threats, and such identification encourages the Japanese should follow the same path their ancestors took.;Hence, with an understanding of history as a reality-making, rhetorical, political process, the study demonstrates not only what and how history is constructed but also how it is articulated to the present in order to establish a national identity by scrutinizing the 1990s' representations of World War II and immediate postwar histories in Japan. |
