Members

The imagined community of the “nation” in East Asia was rapidly constructed in conjunction with memories of war and colonial rule. To this day, it continues to be embedded within each domestic political system and international order. While in Europe, the German people tend to reflect on the Second World War through the lens of Holocaust memories linked with human rights, particularly in light of the fact that they allowed the Nazi regime’s one-party dictatorship, the Japanese people, by contrast, seem to often recall the war through the lens of atomic bomb memories linked with peace, especially by invoking the imagery of air raids over most of the cities in Japan. However, perspectives on critical issues remain far from unified even as a nation: what exactly caused the war, why it could not be prevented, and how the very existence of the empire was intertwined with its outbreak. Particularly lacking is consensus on Japan’s responsibility as a perpetrator and the suffering of other nations it inflicted.

In 1985, when it must have marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the “Russo-Japanese War,” I was a university student. It was also the 40th year since the end of World War II. From the vantage point of today, 80 years after WWⅡ, it becomes clear that, for many who lived through it, the 40th anniversary of WWⅡ was not field with a distant memory but a vivid and immediate reality. For me, a young student at the time in 1985, the event that left an impression for me was only the simple identification of the final resting place of the battleship Yamato. Yet, in the period leading up to that 40-year anniversary of WWⅡ, controversies erupted: the textbook issue and then-Prime Minister Nakasone’s official visit to Yasukuni Shrine in 1985. These events were, in hindsight, the beginning of developments that have continued to unfold into the contemporary situation of 2025.

On the 70th anniversary of the war’s end in 2015, the Abe administration issued a statement identifying two principal “astrays in national policy” as the causes of the war: first, a failure to align with the global trend of national self-determination, and second, a violation of the principle of peaceful resolution of international disputes. However, the statement did not address how Japan ought to have dealt with Korea, which had already been annexed by the time self-determination became an international principle following WWⅠ and the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference. Nor did the 70th anniversary statement refer concretely to Japan’s acquired control over the South Manchuria Railway after the Russo-Japanese War. Although the statement expressed remorse for having “lost sight of the trend of the world” by violating the principle of solving international disputes without provoking a war, the reflection was directed toward the Korean annexation and not the Chinese intention to nationalize the South Manchuria Railway company and the Trust territories of Dalian and Port Arthur.

It is relatively easy to imagine the war from the standpoint of one’s own people as victims. Indeed, the tendency to discuss war in terms of the value of universal principles has become a common standard for thought among the Japanese public intellectuals. Yet, this alone has not led to genuine reconciliation with other nations. Reconciliation studies aim to confront this reality by exploring the social conditions under which reconciliation with other peoples might be meaningfully imagined based upon concrete facts and theories over collected memories and conflicting values.

As one personal example of how memories of war are embodied and transmitted, I once had the opportunity to discuss these issues in Hague, the Netherlands, under the coordination of Professor Yukari Tangena. My reflections combined the wartime experiences of my grandparents with contemporary perspectives. For further details, I refer you to my essay published on this website, “War, Myself, and Reconciliation.” In my younger years, I had almost completely forgotten the personal memories I had internalized in childhood. Yet, as I look back now, I realize how invaluable these memories are in understanding how the narratives shared by my grandmother became internalized within me during a time when I lacked the capacity for self-objectification.

To summarize briefly: for my grandmother, the war was defined by the unbearable grief of losing her eldest son, a loss that remained the emotional core of her memory. Memory is often reconstructed in ways that allow individuals to maintain psychological balance and continue living. By contrast, the stories I heard from my grandfather about the Russo-Japanese War seemed to be interwoven with a sense of awe toward modernity, particularly the arrival of the railway, a technological marvel at the time for rural Japanese children when my grandfather has been. This impression was likely reinforced by tales of my grandfather’s grandfather (my great-great-grandfather)’s involvement in land acquisition for railway construction. My grandfather often tended to fields near the railway, and he would frequently walk alongside the tracks, perhaps reliving, in some quiet way, his memories of his own grandfather (my great-great-grandfather). These small episodes reminded me that modernity is something forged through the reflections and conscious considerations of the past by individuals who subjectively seek its meanings.

These early experiences eventually shaped my scholarly path. As I became a researcher, I began to reflect on national memories etched into the minds of different peoples, and whether reconciliation between nations is truly possible. Entering university, I encountered international students who had grown up hearing stories of the colonial period from their grandparents and parents. Personal interactions with students from Taiwan and South Korea left a deep impression on me, as colonial memories contrasted with mine. For most South Korean students, colonial memory is one of a time that “should never have existed.” In sharp contrast, Taiwanese students often see the same era as “the very period through which Taiwanese identity was born.” Between these two perspectives lies the memory of Chinese students, who often perceive Japan as a modern rival or, at times, a “victor.” In any case, the emotions of people from East Asian nations cannot be disentangled from the presence of Japan. Likewise, Japanese national sentiment cannot be understood without considering the West, especially the great powers that served as Japan’s model. One could even say that the atrocities committed by Japan against Dutch civilians during the Second World War are a mirror image of such dynamics.

The path to reconciliation with each nation will inevitably differ in its concrete form. However, if one were to generalize, two fundamental conditions appear necessary for the mutual reconciliation of national sentiments. First, individuals must become capable of speaking to others about their own emotionally charged memories in a composed and reflective manner, by linking such memories to broader, more objective historical narratives. Second, there must be a conscious awareness that human emotions toward others are not monolithic, but rather an amalgam of sympathy, compassion, and fraternity (as articulated by Ute Frevert in Emotions in History: Lost and Found). Whereas sympathy presupposes emotional engagement on equal terms, compassion implies a hierarchical relationship shaped by civilizational or cultural asymmetries. Fraternity, meanwhile, is an emotion directed toward members of the same national or ethnic group.

The difficulty of reconciliation lies in the fact that these emotions are often not directed toward individuals but toward a collective national group. This abstraction prevents people from freeing themselves from emotionally entrenched national frameworks. However, if one can traverse the channel of sympathy, it becomes possible to imagine the pain of the “other” through one’s own nation’s experience of victimhood. Furthermore, as scholars of reconciliation have pointed out, emotions are often tied to different kinds of universal values. In the Japanese case, wartime suffering is frequently associated with the loss of societal elements such as material abundance, order, and stability. In contrast, the suffering remembered by many Koreans is often linked to the deprivation of dignity and freedom, values that underpin the notion of the individual. Recognizing these distinct emotional anchors could render intersubjective empathy more specific and tangible.

That national emotions are imagined constructs is well explored in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. Within such constructs, fraternity plays a pivotal role in reinforcing the cohesion of the imagined national group. The assumption that members of a nation speak the same language, share customs, and can easily communicate was largely valid until the twentieth century, until around the Second World War, with few exceptions, such as late 19th-century Switzerland. It can be argued that wars, particularly modern wars, arose precisely from the absolutization of national fraternity, mobilizing the collective emotional bond within a nation while suppressing other emotional engagements. Under such conditions, not only was sympathy toward Jews or foreign nationals politically controlled, but even compassion itself was subject to governance. This emotional repression and manipulation generated discrimination and acts of violence on a mass scale.

In total war, where not only economic power but also human psychology and the very ideas that support production are mobilized, emotions themselves become instruments of warfare. Even where institutionalized legal structures (such as imperial legal systems) formally justified discrimination, emotional regimes and emotional relationships between people were profoundly reshaped. Fraternal feelings within the nation were inflated into a superiority complex that encompassed contempt and discrimination toward other peoples. Sympathy and compassion were also embedded into these hierarchical structures. If this is the case, then the emotional experience of victimhood can indeed be linked to a genuine interest in understanding one’s role as a perpetrator. Furthermore, it is indispensable not only to acknowledge the harm inflicted but also to take responsible action in addressing and rectifying the consequences of that wrongdoing.

Finally, I would like to contextualize my personal experiences and memories in light of the broader objectives of this project. My undergraduate thesis focused on the normalization of relations between Japan and the Soviet Union in 1925, following the workers’ revolution. However, what emerged then was a series of documents from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning the Korean immigrant communities in the Russian Far East. In the Diplomatic Archives, I also came across a file labeled Domestic Affairs within the Empire, which included newly released materials related to proposed legal amendments for implementing the House of Representatives Election Law on the Korean Peninsula during the final phase of World War II. This intersection of global conflict and colonial governance has remained a central theme throughout my academic career, from my master’s thesis to my doctoral dissertation, which examined the structure, origins, evolution, and eventual dissolution of Japan’s colonial legal system.

Building upon these foundations, I began to explore dimensions that legal frameworks alone could not fully capture, namely, the realms of memory, values, and emotion. This shift led to the launch of the Reconciliation Studies project in 2017 as part of a newly established interdisciplinary domain. From its inception, the project has integrated philosophical and theoretical approaches with sociological analysis, media and civil society studies, and historical research, particularly in the fields of political and diplomatic history. After this project ended, in 2023, with the addition of education as a key component, the project expanded into a more comprehensive initiative. Such a development has only been possible thanks to the unwavering collaboration of our esteemed co-researchers and the steadfast institutional support provided by the university’s administrative offices.

A central question shared across all groups in this project after 2023 is the following: how can we meaningfully communicate the experience and memory of war to generations that did not live through it? Addressing this “how” requires careful attention to the interplay and balance between emotion and reason. On this balanced foundation, it becomes essential to project such memory from a global perspective, both as a compelling academic endeavor and as an engaging form of popular culture.

For researchers working in the present era, a key intellectual challenge lies in the following goals: to approach emotion itself as an object of rational and analytical study; to examine how historically formulated collective memory, when linked with universal values, gives rise to either “national” or “civic” (a term whose very usage is politically charged) emotions; and to analyze how these emotions would intrude into discourses either of “justice” or of “lessons learned” that evaluate current political situations. At the same time, we must recognize how memory can function not only as a legitimizing apparatus for existing regimes but also as a tool for challenging both domestic and international systems of power mixed with a “Justice.” Political movements, particularly those related to democratization, gender, and human rights, often derive new emotional energy by recovering previously suppressed memories. The investigation of the political structures surrounding memory, value, and emotion, across systems and movements, and beyond the domestic/international binary, is crucial. Such inquiry liberates us from the historically shaped structure of national societies and opens new possibilities for imagining freedom for an unknown more common future. This, in essence, is the common objective shared by all groups participating in this project. I firmly believe that the fruits of this endeavor, when articulated in English, will resonate widely and meaningfully across the global academic community.

Lastly, this project’s emphasis on the dynamics of national integration, focusing specifically on East Asia, offers a unique opportunity to advance the field of international reconciliation studies. Researchers based in Japan hold a comparative advantage due to their ability to engage directly with primary sources in Chinese characters, Hangul, and kana scripts. For that reason, training young scholars with strong English communication skills within this broader research framework is not only a strategic priority but also a highly effective way to cultivate future leadership in the field. This thematic orientation represents the project’s greatest potential contribution to global scholarship. It is where the true intellectual excitement lies.

Moreover, the impact of reconciliation studies need not be confined to academic discourse. I believe that its findings can, and should, be returned to broader spheres of international cooperation. By crossing boundaries and engaging directly with the practical challenges of reconciliation and conflict, such work can yield rich, tangible outcomes. Through the cultural influence of reconciliation studies, I hope to see the emergence of a new generation of youth who are able to calmly and critically reflect on their own national emotions in relation to those of others. Even within myself, the emotions once directed by my grandmother toward her sons have lived on as a vital memory, opening a path through which I came to examine the very nature of memory itself. This project stands as the most significant public achievement born from that deeply personal emotional legacy. (For further details on these personal memories and emotions, please refer to my essay.)