The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 6 | Issue 9 | Article ID 2880 | Sep 01, 2008

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Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism: WarMemorial Museums in Korea and Japan

Hong KAL

Commemoration and the Construction ofNationalism: War Memorial Museums inKorea and Japan

Hong KAL

Since 1990 both Japan and Korea haveexperienced “commemoration booms,” in whichthe number of private and public memorialmuseums and monuments has tripled.[1] Theseinstitutions provide narratives of each nation’srecent past and articulate the ideals of “nation”and “citizenship.” They recompose tales of anation in order to make them relevant for publicand private life. Like writing history, themuseum collects and assembles fragments ofthe past and carefully re-contextualizes theminto a narrative of the present. Preciselybecause of its role in institutionalizing socialnorms and values, the museum plays a crucialrole in the production of national identity. Itshapes the manner in which the nation createsits history, imagines its boundaries, andconstitutes its citizenship.

Central to the “autobiography” of the nation isthe representation of wars and death, memoriesof which are cons idered essent ia l inguaranteeing the immortality of the nation.Benedict Anderson has written that:

Nations, however, have no clearlyidentifiable births, and their deaths, ifthey ever happen, are never natural.Because there is no originator, thenation’s biography cannot be writtenevangelically, ‘down time,’ through a

long procreative chain of begettings.The only alternative is to fashion it ‘uptime’ towards Peking Man, Java Man,King Arthur, wherever the lamp ofarcheology casts its fitful gleam.[2]

Since the nation has no fixed birth certificate,its biography can be written “up time” from its“originally present” toward its unlimited ancientpast. The ancestral construction of the nation,according to Anderson, is marked by thenarrative of death in reversed genealogy:“World War II begets World War I; out of Sedancomes Austerlitz; the ancestor of the WarsawUprising is the state of Israel.”[3] The warmemorial museum creates a precedent forsecuring such an inverted genealogicalconstruction of the nation’s ancient past. Itsupplies a formal structure for the nation tofashion itself toward its forefathers who died toguarantee the continuity as well as theimmortality of the nation.[4] It also posesdifficult questions. Can the forefathers be wrongwhen their wrongdoings secured “the goodnessof the nation”? Can our heroes be killers? Howshould the enemy dead be represented? Cannational war history be relational and pluralwhen it is supposed to affirm the singularity ofthe nation?

In Asia, the transformations of post–Cold Wargeopolitics have opened new possibilities forinter-Asian relations and inevitably led to arigorous interrogation of the region’s recentpast. In the question of how to representcolonialism and catastrophic wars, warmemorial museums based on the narrative ofself-sacrificial death on behalf of a gratefulnat ion have become among the most

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controversial sites. Especially as the battlesover the history within and between Korea andJapan have become more intense and divisive,war memorial museums demonstrate thetension between official and societal memoriesof the past, revealing conflicting yet mutuallyconstitutive assumptions of postcolonial Korea,divided Korea, and postwar Japan. While sharingmuch in common with other war museums,those in Korea and Japan led a life of their ownaccording to part icular temporal andgeographical condit ions.

I consider two war memorial museums: the WarMemorial of Korea (hereafter WMK) and theYushukan, a Japanese war memorial museumattached to the Yasukuni shrine, formerly anational sanctuary that enshrined the militarydead as divine deities. Located in the center ofeach nation’s capital, both play symbolic andsocially significant roles in the construction ofnationalism. In Korea, the WMK was built “tocommemorate martyrs and their service to thenation” and thus to prepare citizens “to face afuture national crisis.”[5] In Japan, located in theshrine complex where conflicting memoriesmeet, the Yushukan aims to nurture a sense of“lost” pride in being Japanese with a “glorious”history of war, posing a serious politicalquestion of how to come to terms with Japan’srecent past, colonialism, and wars. This essayexamines how they write biographies of thenation with particular historical meaning. Itfocuses on the important role of the war dead inthe creation of national immortality, anddemonstrates that the source of this nationalethos derives from the enactment of ethnicnationalisms in the two countries. I argue thatthe biographies of the nation written “up time”toward its ethnic “origins” are an attempt notonly to create a linkage to the past, but also toproduce an image of the future of the nation fortoday’s generation, who are experiencing forcesof globalization. In doing so, this essay paysparticular attention to the spatial andexhibitionary techniques to show how themuseum stages carefully developed scenarios

of the nation’s war histories and how it claimsthe heritage of patriotism and equates thattradition with the nation.[6]

My main concern here is ethnocentricnationalism in the two countries as staged inthe war museums. Clearly they are embeddedin different forms of nationalism, for Korea andJapan have mutually antagonistic historicaltrajectories—one the colonized and the otherthe colonizer. The conflicting experience ofcolonialism has harnessed them with differentburdens over how to deal with histories. Evenwithin national boundaries of each country, adiscourse of the nation and nationalism hasevolved in various ways in changing geopoliticaland international contexts. In particular, Japanhas experienced a shift in the dominantdiscourse of “Japan,” from the multi-ethnicempire to the mono-ethnic nation. [7] However,as Harumi Befu has elaborated, what hasremained intact is a sense of Japanese ethnichomogeneity, uniqueness and superiority,enunciated as “nihonjinron.”[8] Also, while theWMK is a state-sponsored public museum, sincethe American occupation, the Yushukan hasbeen an ostensibly private institution. However,given that the Yushukan attachment to theprewar State Shinto shrine, which is stillstrongly associated with the linked images ofemperor, state, and nation,[9] the twomuseums are comparable in their politicalsignificance. Both demonstrate a growingobsession with ethnocentric nationalism. Mycontention is that the question of reconciliationwith historical injustice cannot be seriouslydealt with without problematizing ethnocentricnationalism, which is defensive, exclusive, andthus constraining. The self-reflection ofnationalism is indeed at the core of the issue ofreconciliation within as well as between nations.

I. The War Memorial of Korea (WMK)

The WMK, conceived in 1988 under the Roh TaeWoo government, was opened at the site of theformer Korean Army Headquarters in downtown

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Seoul in 1994.[10] Despite public discomfortover its military appearance, the WMK survivedthe demise of the military dictatorship and wasembraced by the civilian regime headed byPresident Kim Young Sam as a reminder toKoreans of the ongoing threat posed by NorthKorea.[11]

Like other war memorial museums, the WMKcommemorates the war dead who sacrificedtheir lives for the defense of the nation andimbues the younger generations who have nomemory of war with patriotic spirit. It provideshistorical grounds for safeguarding the countrywith “awareness of national security.”[12]However, there is something particular aboutthe museum. It not only constructs a narrativeof patriotism but also, more problematically, an“ethnic” lineage of the nation, a sacrifice offorefathers for the children of the nation: theKoreans. By doing so, it seeks to form a nationalsubject based on the idea of Korean ethnicnation as originated from ancient times. Thediscourse of ethnic nationalism posits the state,nation, and ethnicity as identical categories.Ethnic nationalism has been a key organizingprinciple in Korea, yet its historicity, eternity,and naturalness have not been seriouslyquestioned.[13] In the following, I explore anarrative construction of ethnic nationalism byanalyzing the architectural and visualmechanisms of the museum. I focus on theways in which the museum constructs theKorean ethnic nation in terms of war, kinship,and familial sacrifice and how this process ofmaking “we” is c losely related to theconstruction of “others,” namely North Korea,Vietnam, and Japan.

The spatial order of the memorial hall:national ritual in the ancestral temple

The WMK is designed like a temple secludedfrom the secular world outside. It neverthelessoverpowers its surroundings with its perfectsymmetry in classical Greco-Romanic style(Figure 1).[14]

(1) War Memorial of Korea

Despite this Western façade, however, I wouldargue that the organizing principle of themuseum space is that of a Confucian temple.The WMK memorial site is organized in thespatial sequence of the pathway, the steps, themoat, and the plaza. The spatial sequence ofWMK creates a formal temporal sequence forvisitors to follow. [15]

Upon entering the main gate, people embark ona ritual passage programmed by the museum.The spatial and temporal sequence heightens asense of solemnity. Passing the pathway, thesteps, the moat, and the plaza, all organizedalong the North-South axis, visitors are drawn tothe museum building. They continue theprocession by ascending to the Central Hall, around room with a skylight in its domed ceiling.The Central Hall opens onto a long corridor linedon both sides with half-body statues of heroicwarriors. This corridor ends at the hemisphericaldomed Memorial Hall, the innermost “shrine,”located at the north end of the museum (Figure2).

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(2) Memorial Hall at War Memorial ofKorea

Concealed behind the layers of space along theaxial line, the Memorial Hall recalls theancestral inner shrine. At the apex of the dome,a blue beam is projected straight down onto abowl. With the concentrated light from the sky,the bowl resembles an ancestral altar wherevisitors can contemplate and perhapscommunicate with the war dead. The bowl andthe light are the focal point where the spirit ofthe war dead meets with the living.

The movement from the exterior to the interioris thus a journey back to the “origin.” The tripfrom the present to the past is a search for alinkage with tradition to legitimize the currentregime. Yet there is more to it than that. Thelogic of reversed genealogy is designed in theConfucian order of time, space, and origin. It isin the scenario that the patriotic present paystribute to its ancestral past where it was born

and to where it should return. The journey tothe innermost shrine is not only for the living,but also for the dead. Like the living, the spiritof the dead returns to, and becomes part of, thefamily of ancestors from whom they came. Boththe dead and living find themselves returning tothe ancestor from whence they came and wheretheir sacrificial life for the nation is legitimized.

The WMK seeks to produce a national subjectbased on ethnicity by encouraging people torecognize their shared origin and not to forgetthose to whom they owe their being. Themuseum suggests that as long as visitorsidentify with the dead, they will recognize theirsacrifice, as well as their blood relationship, andtherefore be united in a national community. Infollowing the order of the exhibition, people paytribute to the dead and reaffirm the sharedancestral heritage to which “we” all belong. Likean ancestral temple, the museum representsthe origins of a lineage by reminding people ofthe historical existence of their ancestor andtheir duty to keep such a memory alive.

The war history room: constructing theliving war dead

The museum tells of the linkage of the nationaldead and the national living. The dead and theliving mirror each other to ensure the continuityof the nation within which ethnic Koreans areembedded. The exhibition sequence fromexterior to interior and from secular to sacred isprogrammed to awaken the national dead tointerpolate the l iving, demanding thecooperation of all the war dead to perform asthe ancestors of the living. As an apparatus forthe production of ethnic nationalism, themuseum claims to speak for “Korean” war deadwho did not know themselves to be such. Bybringing together wars from the Great Victory atSalsu (612) to the Korean War (1950-53), themuseum provides coherence for a largerhistorical context of a lineage of patrioticKorean ancestors. Speaking on behalf of theancestors, the museum also speaks subtly to

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visitors about who they are in relation to thewar heroes. The War History Room, for instance,narrates a history of Korea from the prehistoricage to the present. I t stages weaponstechnology and military tactics of each period ina standardized format which enables visitors tosee them as similar to each other and thereforesharing the same heritage. The display ofmilitary uniforms also operates by such aparallel logic. A window display presents a lineof mannequins in variously styled militaryuniforms of the Taehan Empire (1897–1910).Yet the facial expressions of the mannequinsare identical. There seems no need for themuseum to explain who the military men were,not only because they all look alike but alsothey all look like “us,” Koreans, who are capableof changing costume. This group is immediatelylinked to another group from the ChosonDynasty, which is again linked to others fromancient times (Figures 3 & 4).

(3) Military uniforms of the Taehan Empire

(4) Military uniform of the late Chosondynasty

The question is not how different but howsimilar they are to each other. Who else wouldfit into this series of armor and helmets except“we” ethnic Koreans? They are standing thereto represent a continuing military traditionacross time, emblematic of an identical andcollective Korean heritage.

The museum impresses people with the vastnumbers of the war dead. A series of memorialpanels in polished black marble inscribed withthe names of Korean soldiers and policemenkilled in the Korean War and the Vietnam War islocated in the left and the right gallery wingswhich extend from the main exhibition building.The 170,585 names of the dead are orderedaccording to the year they fell and the militaryunits. Their names appear in a standardizedformat and the rows of panels remind one oftheir mass sacrifice rather than their

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individuality. The 200 meter long galleryappears more like the space for the tomb of theunknown soldiers. Anyone can be there for thesame reason. There seems no need topersonalize any of them. Their presence anddeath for the survival of the nation are all thatmatter (Figures 5 & 6).

(5 & 6) The gallery with the black panelsinscribed with names of the dead

One could say that personal memories are notencouraged in the Confucian temple built forcollective identification. Visitors can only seethe names as interchangeable with one anotherand assembled as the collective body ofnational heroes. In the attempt to nationalizethe war dead, no other identities are allowed

except that of ethnic Korean. It in this ethnicitythat official nationalism lives. The museumprobably modeled its exhibition technique onthat of the National Memorial Cemetery(Kungnip hyo’nch’ung won) which was built in1956 as a military burial ground shielded byauspicious mountains and the Han River.[16] Asa site of national mourning, it enshrines remainsof soldiers and patriots as national heroes,physically and symbolically. In it, the individualdeath becomes standardized and identicalunder the collective category of the Koreannation.[17] By rescuing the dead from obscurityand giving them a national meaning, themuseum creates not only political legitimacybut also the “ethnic” lineage of the state. Oncethe war dead are enshrined as Korean heroesfor all to see, the state claims its legitimacy asthe rightful bearer of a Korean ethnic nation.

Just as the museum represents the war dead asequivalent Koreans, regardless of their gloriousor shameful deeds, and regardless of rank, italso seeks to embrace visitors as collectiveKoreans. When the spirit of the dead conjuresup a Korean ethnic collectivity, the past deadand the present l iving become one andindivisible. The exhibition also prepares theground for the future war dead. Today’s youngpilgrims to the memorial are placed in theposition of future fellows of the dead. It isperhaps more than a coincidence that themuseum provides an auxiliary facility forwedding ceremonies. This brings together theidea of normal family, unconditional loyalty, andthe future reproduction of the “pure” nationalsubject, as if ethnic purity itself guarantees thefuture of the nation. Who will guarantee theexistence of the ethnic nation? The museumperhaps answers that it is the children.Moreover, it is for those yet-to-be-born“Koreans” that we work hard, sacrifice, and, ifnecessary, sacrifice our lives. Crucial to theunborn is the implied meaning: the innocentunborn descendants will honor us for giving lifeto them. The museum looks forward byconstructing the idea of national (ethnic)

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“purity” against the fears of nationaldegeneration. The sanitized space shows themuseum’s obsession with “cleanliness” as abasis for “national health” and “national youth.”The task of the museum is thus to ensure thenon-decay of the nation and to celebratenational virility.

Representing the invading others: TheU.S. and North Korea in the Korean War

Consistent with the discourse of ethnicnationalism, the WMK degrades North Koreancommunism as anti-nation (ban minjok) whichneeds to return to the “normal” state (SouthKorea) to recover true Korean nationhood. Themajor focus in the exhibitions of the KoreanWar, seen as one of the most critical threats tothe nation, is less the Cold War competitionbetween hegemonic powers and more theconfrontation between the two Koreas over thequestion of who is the rightful heir of Korea.[18]The Korean War Room, the largest exhibitionsection, presents the dominant narrative of thevictimization of “innocent” South Koreans bythe invasion of “tainted” North Koreancommunist aggressors backed by China. Twostrategies of representation can be discernedhere. First is the display of victimhood, andsecond the determinacy of South Koreans(especially civilians and students) to resist.Interwoven into this progression is theinvolvement of U.S. and U.N. forces in fightingfor the “free world” against the Communistforces of North Korea and China. The firstexhibition section of the Korean War indicatesclearly that the war was started by North Korea.Civilians are shown suffering from the brutalacts committed by North Korean soldiers. Themuseum carefully explains the involvement ofthe U.S. as helping defend the territory of SouthKorea, emphasizing that the U.S. got involvedonly after the collapse of the crucial SouthKorean defense line at the Han River. The keymessage is that the U.S. (and later U.N.international forces) joined in only after SouthKorea had long sought to defend against

invading North Korean forces.

The Korean War, however disastrous, is recastto highlight the resilience, idealism, andfulfillment of the Korean nation under theleadership of the South Korean state. In thisnarrative, the participation of U.N. forces on theside of South Korea is portrayed as anexpression of international solidarity to defendthe “free democratic world”, which includesSouth Korea. Several panels, some withdocumentary videos, depict scenes of battles,weapons and wounds showing South Koreanand U.S. soldiers working hand in hand to pushback the North Korean invaders. The U.S. ispresented through images of DouglasMacArthur, rifles, aircraft and medical support,all to help South Koreans to defend, to launch acounter offensive and even to move north tocapture the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.The museum depicts the success of thiscooperation as an indication of the capacity ofSouth Korea to work together with nations ofthe “free world” to fight communism. The U.S.supporting role in the War is best illustrated inthe dioramic scene of “Medical Activities by theField Hospital.” Along with the panel descriptionthat “the medical support capability of the ROKarmed forces were extremely insufficient. Butthrough medical support from UN forces, thewounded were treated in timely ways,” thediorama scene displays the U.S. presencethrough the aid boxes at the entrance to thehospital (Figure 7). The message is clear. TheU.S. came here to aid, but South Koreans werethe major actors at the scene.

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(7) Field hospital with aid boxesemblematic of the US army

The U.S. is a major supporter of South Korea,but the survival of the nation relies on theresilience of the nation itself. Nothing moreclearly demonstrates this than the depictions ofthe involvement of South Korean studentvolunteers and the Civilian Commando Units infighting against the North Korean invasion. Thedisplays of civilian voluntary forces seem morepowerful than the war machines mobilized byforeign supporters. Right next to the panel onU.S. and U.N forces, the museum showsstudents fighting with bloody spears, their fallenbodies displaying university hats, school buttonsand of course the Korean flag stained withsignatures from students and traces of theirstruggles. The body, soil and blood representmost affectively the patriotic South Koreancivilians who willingly and spontaneouslyformed their commando groups “to defend theircountry.” This patriotic spirit extends to Koreanstudents overseas. Korean students in Japan aredisplayed alongside their counterparts in Koreain their fight against the North Korean invaders(Figures 8 and 9). With those (even foreigntroops) who sacrificed themselves to defend thenation, visitors to the museum are asked toremember the goodness of the Korean nation.The nation is presented through the death andsacrifice of its “innocent” volunteering youthsand embraces the free world.

(8) Korean Student volunteer corps

(9) Belongings from Korean student corpsin Japan

While try ing to minimize the histor icdependency of South Korea on US forces, themuseum finds ways to acknowledge the role ofthe U.S. In remembering the patriotic sacrificeof the children of the nation, it does not forgetthe American and transnational soldiersmobilized by the U.S. and the U.N. to fight onbehalf of South Korea. One section of thememorial panels in the gallery wings isdedicated to these international soldiers whowere ordered according to their nations andunits. The U.S. with the largest number of wardead (33,642 out of a total of 37,645) occupiescenter stage. Unlike Korean soldiers who do not

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need to be introduced since they are all from“Korea,” Amer ican so ld iers demandidentification of where they were from. Thefallen American soldiers are identified by theirhome states. Above the memorial panelsdedicated to the U.S. and the U.N. soldiers killedin the Korean War, an inscription says “Ournation honors her sons and daughters whoanswered the call to defend a country theynever knew and a people they never met,” aquotation from The Korean War VeteransMemorial in Washington D.C. In some ways, thewillingness of the children of “all” nations to diefor South Korea in the fight against Communismseems to convey on South Korea a legitimacy toexist as a nation of the “free world.”

The Vietnam War and the recovery of thenational self

The emphasis on the agency of the SouthKorean nation continues in the battle ground ofVietnam. In many ways, the section on Koreanparticipation in the Vietnam War represents thepsyche of the nation in overcoming the historyof the Korean War. It shows not only Koreanleadership in fighting against communism, butalso in bringing Vietnam to the “civilized” worldof freedom– something that South Korea wouldwish to do for North Korea in future. In thissense, the panels on the Vietnam War tell usmuch about the psychic recovery and the post-Korean War syndrome of South Korea, whichwas expressed in Vietnam with a vengeance.The sending of Korean troops to Vietnam(between 1965 and 1973) is thus representedas an act of a member of “freedom crusadersfor world peace” and a chance to gain“confidence and experience in building a moreself-reliant defense force” as well as a righteousmission to bring Vietnamese the democracy,freedom and peace that only become possiblein the anti-communist state.[19] In addition tomilitary operations, it highlights the Koreanarmy’s engagement in the reconstruction ofVietnamese civilian facilities. For example, themuseum displays at the center of the exhibition

room Korean soldiers building a school, helpingthem mechanize r ice product ion andconstructing a new bridge in concrete (Figure10).

(10) Korean solders constructing a new“superior” bridge in Vietnam which

presumably rendered obsolete the oldVietnamese bridge seen in the background

Both North Korea and Vietnam are representedas objects of the patronizing mission of guidingcommunists to the “free world.” Yet there is afundamental difference in the museum’sportrayal of Vietnamese and North Koreans.While the communist Vietnamese are portrayedas inhumane and barbaric perpetrators, theNorth Koreans are presented as dangerouscommunists yet “brothers” who have goneastray and pitifully left the family by adopting“foreign” communism. On this front it isinstructive to examine the museum’s portrayalof a North Korean. Outside the museum there isThe Statue of Brothers, a monument whichdepicts two solders in different military uniformsholding each other on a cracked hemisphericalpedestal (Figure 11).

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(11) The Statue of Brothers

According to the catalogue, the two soldiersrepresent brothers who met on the battlefieldas enemies, but finally reconcile with “brotherlylove.”[20] The younger brother, here virtually achild, represents a North Korea soldier,politically communist yet ethnically Korean who,after losing everything in future will return tothe embrace of the elder brother, the heir of thefamily’s house.[21] Here, a North Korean soldieris humanized as a “younger brother” whoreturns to the “elder brother,” who haspreserved the unbroken heritage of the nation.The military heritage is then presented in themonument located at the other side, the replicaof the memorial stele (erected in 414) dedicatedto the military achievement of King Kwanggaetothe Great from the ancient Koguryo kingdom.These two monuments meet at the newstructure, The Korean War Monument, whichwas built to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary ofthe Korean War with ancient and contemporarysymbols of prowess. Erected at the centre of themuseum complex, the 32 meter high monumentin the shape of a divided bronze sword flankedby two gigantic groups of patriotic Koreans (4meters high) embodies the museum’s obsessionwith masculinity (Figure 12). As indicated bySheila Miyoshi Jager, “the masculinist logic ofthe official commemorative culture” makes aconnection between “the military, manlinessand nationalism.”[22] The association of familial

piety and national virility further suggests thatthe future reconciliation would be framed withinthe code of the patriarchal ethnic family.

(12) The Korean War Monument

Where has Japanese colonialism gone?

The representation of Japanese colonialism inthe WMK reveals another aspect of the politicalculture of postcolonial Korea. Despite the factthat modern Korea was profoundly affected bythe colonial experience, the WMK virtuallyignores Japanese colonialism. As Jager observes,the embarrassing time of colonialism becomes“a mere blank period” in the Korean militaryhistory narrated in “the masculinist language ofthe national self-definition.”[23] It isunderstandable that the museum pays closeattention to the ChosÇ’n dynasty, in contrast tothe peripheral position of the colonial period, toprove Korean “manliness”. However, more is atstake than an enterprise to overcome a sense of

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being emasculated. The invisibility of thecolonial past implies that Japanese occupationdid not change the character of the Koreanmilitary tradition but merely proved Koreanprowess.

By emphasizing heroism and resistance undercolonialism, the museum projects the colonialpast as a world absolutely divided into “we,”Koreans, and “they,” Japanese. “We” arerelated across generations in a homogeneousethnic bond against “ they.” Japan iscounterpoised against Korea. These twoantagonistic political forces confirm the ethniccoherence of the Korean nation, which was infact constructed as a reaction to the Japanesecolonial ideology that Japanese and Koreansshare a common ancestor. The obsession withethnic distinction as well as military strengthindicates that the museum functions to redeemthe humiliating experience of being colonizedby staging a coherent story of the nationthrough images of family, ethnicity, patriotism,and masculinity. In this sense, the absence ofthe colonial period in fact actively constructs anethnic l ineage of the nation’s mil itarypatriotism. Japanese colonialism is a humiliatingpart of Korean history, one which remainsdifficult to integrate into the nationalimagination. Out of this selective forgetting andremembering of Japanese colonialism, a“patriotic” community of the Korean nationemerged. In creating a seamless familial historyof the Korean ethnic nation, the museumdissociates postcolonial Korea from colonialKorea.

The WMK’s effort to construct the nation’smilitary patriotism based on the idea of acommon bloodline and shared ancestry isclosely associated with the making of Korean“others,” namely North Korea, Vietnam, andJapan. These others, while constitutive ofKorean nation, are featured so as to highlightthe continuity of Korea. In this sense the nationis not created out of historical rupture butrather it lives on the basis of continuity while

“others” serve to highlight its continuingprowess. A good illustration of this is the twogroups of wall sculptures depicted on thepedestal of the museum building. On the left isthe Righteous Army formed at the end of thedynas t i c e ra and on the r igh t i s theIndependence Army created during the colonialperiod to fight against Japanese occupation(Figures 13 and 14). The effort to makeconnections with military tradition is clear, butin the museum there is no mention of howJapanese colonial rule contributed to theformation of the South Korean Army. Assumedhere is the sameness, that is, the essence ofbeing “Korean."

(13 & 14) The Righteous Army (top) andThe Independence Army (bottom)

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North Korea has a particular significance as themost threatening but ethnically related other.Therefore, this otherness has to be reconciledbut at the same time maintained as a politicalground on which the South Korean stateproclaims its legitimacy or at least superiority interms of anti-communism, a dominant stateideology throughout the second half of thetwentieth-century. Anti-communist nationalismhas lost its hegemonic position over theemerging discourse of peaceful unification assymbolized by the the summit meeting betweenthe leaders of the two Koreas, Kim Jong Il andKim Dae Jung, in 2000. The WMK neverthelessmaintains a tone of anti-communism as anunderlying narrative of postwar history. It seeksto construct legitimacy for the South Koreanstate by staging ethnic patriotic nationalismagainst “others” from inside as well as outside.

Through selective remembering, the WMKcreates a seamless history of the nation’smilitary patriotism based on a commonbloodline and shared ancestry. The process ofmaking a national subject of Korea is closelyassociated with the making of Korean “others,”namely North Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. NorthKorea has a particular significance. It issimultaneously the most threatening and anethnically related other. Therefore, thisotherness has to be reconciled but at the sametime maintained as a political ground on whichthe South Korean state proclaims its legitimacyor at least superiority in terms of anti-communism. The museum seeks to positionKorean visitors as an ideal citizen with a sharedmemory of the war. It does so, however, bysuppressing discordant memories of the warsuch as the massacre of non-combatantprisoners by South Korean authorities in Taejonin July 1950 and the killings of villagers by theU.S. soldiers at Nogunri. The violence of SouthKorean and U.S. authorities have not found aplace to be remembered. Likewise, the brutalityagainst Vietnamese civilians is nowhere hintedat in the museum.[24]

II. The Yushukan and Japanese HistoricalMemory

The most important Japanese museumrepresentations of the Asia-Pacific War indeedof any modern war involving Japan during theimmediate postwar decades were the HiroshimaPeace Memorial Museum and the NagasakiAtomic Bomb Museum. In emphasizing thehorrors of nuclear war, and in presenting thepeople of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as thevictims of that war, the museums underlined aJapanese commitment to peace and elided themilitary past that had culminated in empire,war, and defeat for Japan and had brought greatsuffering and mass death to the people of Chinaand other Asian nations. The peace museumsthus produced a narrative of the Japanesenation as both the victim of war and a force forpeace. The resultant “peace culture” made itpossible for many Japanese to “forget” thehistory of Japanese imperialism and aggressionin Asia.[25] This peace culture has beencountered by the new refurbished war memorialmuseum, the Yushukan in Tokyo. Situated atYasukuni Shrine, it urges visitors to “remember”Japan’s “glorious” imperial past, and celebratesthe Japanese who sacrificed for emperor andnation in the Asia-Pacific War.

The Yushukan and Yasukuni Shrine

The history of the Yushukan tells of Japan’smodern history. It was first built in 1882 in orderto honor soldiers who fell in combat at the timeof the restoration that inaugurated the Meijiimperial state. It was expanded in 1908 toaccommodate the increased collections afterthe Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-JapaneseWar and rebuilt in 1932 after the Great KantoEarthquake. With Japan’s surrender in 1945, themuseum was closed. Restored in 1986, it wasreopened after renovation in 2002 with a newexhibition hall. Sharing much in common withwar museums of other former imperial powers,the Yushukan is notable for its association withthe symbolism of “emperor, war, nation and

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empire.”[26]

The Yasukuni shrine where the museum islocated is notable for its close ties to theemperor and its links to modern Japanesewarfare. Built in 1869 on the order of theemperor Meiji, it enshrines as deities over 2.4million Japanese military dead from 1853 to1945, the vast majority of whom died in thefinal year of the Pacific War.[27] It also includesKoreans and Taiwanese who fought and diedwith the imperial army as well as Okinawans,not just soldiers but also youths such as nursesand the male corps that were called up in thefinal days of the war. In return for sacrificingtheir lives for the emperor and the nation, theshrine rewarded them by elevating them asdeities, hence objects of worship by the nation.In short, Yasukuni shrine glorifies self-sacrificialdeath while celebrating the imperial legacy. Theauthority of the shrine in fact depends on thepractice of visiting, in which the living and thedead constitute a mirror image of the circle ofdecay and renewal, death and rebirth andbequeath and inheritance. One of the mostspecial rites was attended by the emperor (inthe person of his emissary) with offerings to thedeities which in turn would bestow theirblessings upon the emperor and the wholenation.[28] Although under the US occupationthe shrine was formally separated from thestate and made a private religious institution,the Showa emperor continued to visit, and hisemissary participated in major rites each year.In addition, Prime Ministers, cabinet membersand diet members regularly visited the shrine,in most cases in a private capacity. When PrimeMinister Nakasone Yasuhiro visited in his formalcapacity in 1985, a storm of controversy led toan end of the practice until 2001, when KoizumiJunichiro made the first of five successiveofficial visits. The visits both divided theJapanese polity and sparked criticism in China,Korea and other Asian nations, given theshrine’s association with the wartime ideologyof emperor-centered nationalism.[29] Withinthis context, after several years of renovation,

the Yushukan was reopened in 1985 and again,with new exhibits in 2002, its mission to renewa sense of pride in being Japanese by displayingthe nation’s “glorious” war history.

Like Yasukuni, the Yushukan poses politicalquestions that reverberate beyond Japan’sborders. The reopening of Yushukan isemb lemat i c o f the r i se o f J apaneseneonationalism which celebrates the nation’smilitary past. In the 1990s neo nationalistslaunched a campaign to rewrite a “new history”that neither imposes “victim complex” on Japannor assigns all blame for the catastrophic warson the Japanese military state.[30] Stronglyopposed to any apology or compensation forJapanese war atrocities, they claimed thataffirmation of wartime Japan is the path towardfull realization of Japanese identity, which wasforcefully suppressed and abandoned underU.S. hegemony. The revival of the Yushukan isone important attempt to connect the presentto the imperial past, a link that they believe hasbeen undermined by the peace culture.

The Yushukan presents a version of the nation’smodern, which elevates the war dead as asymbol of sacred patriotism and celebrates itsmilitary past. In this sense the museum not onlylooks back at the imperial past as a proudtradition but also looks forward to reconstructthe nation on foundations of empire and war. Inwhat follows, as in the WMK, I analyze themuseum’s exhibition displays and spatialarrangements and examine how they rewritenationhood.

Into the exhibition space: The spirit of thesamurai

Yasukuni shrine is protected by a series of Toriigates that create a hierarchy of spatialtransition from the world of mortal beings to therealm of the Shinto deities (kami). Passing thethree gates built along the east-west axis,visitors proceed to the Inner Shrine where theycan worship the war dead transformed intodeities through a rite of apotheosis. Behind it is

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the Main Sanctuary, which is unapproachable byvisitors and hidden from the view. The arbitrarydenial of entry and the partial revelation of theshrine grant visitors a glimpse of the worldbeyond, while suggesting that the ultimate truthis reserved for those privileged to enter: the wardead and the priests who perform the rituals ofapotheosis and propitiation. This deepest site iswhere the priests, accompanied by the imperialrepresentative and others, make offerings tothe deities and in return receive blessings fromthem for the nation. Located at the north side ofthe Main Sanctuary, the war museum seeks toincorporate the deification of the war dead intoits exhibition space by conveying the aura ofsacrificial death.

The renovated Yushukan features a newextension which has transparent glass walls andslightly tilted roofs (Figure 15). In stark contrastto the old Japanese imperial style of the mainexhibition building, the new extension ismodern and contemporary. As if to connect thepast to the present, the new extension functionsas an entrance lobby. It creates a brighter,modern, welcoming atmosphere where theindividual and the national subject can be linkedin “love of nation.”[31]

(15) The Yushukan exhibition brochure

Upon entering the new lobby, a semi-open plazawith transparent glass walls, visitors firstencounter the Zero fighter, the leadingJapanese plane and one which frequentlyoutclassed US fighters in the early phases of thewar. Standing like a sublime object on thesanitized floor with no trace of blood and no hintof the disaster that confronted the Japanese airforce, the immaculate object has been elevatedinto a sanctified object. The care that has beenput into polishing the aircraft signifies the livingwho care for the dead. Cleanliness is indeednext to godliness. Once used by the war dead,the military artifact embodies their spirit.Preserved by the l iving, it becomes aninheritance that can be bequeathed to future

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generations to remind them of those whosacrificed their lives for them.

The Yushukan is organized to create circularmovements starting from and returning to theZero fighter in the hall (Figure 9). From theentrance lobby, visitors ascend from theentrance lobby to the exhibition halls, a passagethat resembles the crossing of a bridgeconstructed to divide the realm of the livingfrom the domain of the dead. This movementfrom the profane to the sacred also leadsvisitors to the past, from where the nationstarted. As the WMK traces back its militarytradition, the Yushukan looks to the timeless“spirit of the samurai.”

In the middle of the dimly lit room named theSpirit of the Samurai, a vertical glass caseenshrines a sword labeled “a marshal’s saber”with an explanation that “When the nation wasin crisis, warriors were bestowed a sword fromthe emperor. Also in the modern battlefield,soldiers placed the sword on their waists. Sincethe age of the gods, the sword has reflected thespirit of Japan and the soul of the warrior. Thesword is a symbol of justice and peace.” As themilitary weapon turns into a sacred object, waris given a noble and transcendent meaning. Thissingle object represents “pure Japaneseness,”and in this purity “the spirit of Japan” issecured. This messages echoes from the scrollshanging at the four corners of the hall. One ofthe scrolls writes, “We shall die in the sea, weshall die in the mountains. In whatever way, weshall die beside the emperor, never turningback.” Then, who is “we”? It continues, “Thepainful lives of those who cared for their countrypiled up and up, protecting the land of Yamato.”The story then goes back thousands years ago,“More than 2,600 years ago, an independentnation was formed on these islands… Japan’swarriors fought bravely, defending their homes,their villages, and the nation.”[32]

The museum asks visitors to value its antiquityas containing the spirit of the warrior which is

the spirit of the nation. The museum is, itclaims, precisely the place where people canwitness and experience the timeless essence ofheroism, loyalty and self-sacrifice for the nation.In this exhibition space, war death becomes anhonorable and righteous act of obligation for alife of the nation inhabited by ethnic Japanesefor thousands of years.

Liberating Asia

Like the WMK, the YÅ«shÅ«kan displays anunbroken tradition of the sacrificial spirit of thenation that invokes Japanese military prowess.The Japanese war museum, however, long faceda dilemma: how to represent the aggressive anddefeated war. This no longer seems a problem.The museum stages a seamless history of“glorious” warfare leading up to “the GreaterEast Asian War.” Before proceeding to themodern wars, it puts on display the rooftop ofthe (Ise) Shinto shrine decorated with forkedfinials and reminds visitors of the significance ofthe spirit of Shinto renewal in the foundation ofthe Japanese modern state. This link betweenthe ancient Shinto shrine and the modernnation-state prepares visitors to understandthat war is not a mere human tragedy but asacred mission for the renewal of Japan andfurther to assure “the peace of Asia.” Themuseum presents Japan’s unavoidable yetheroic actions to achieve pan-Asian peace in theface of the encroachment of Western powers,including the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the invasion of China and theAsia Pacific War. In this narrative, theannexation of Korea is presented as liberationfrom China.[33] The story ends with celebrationof the legacy of Japan for postwar independencemovements in Southeast Asia: “When the warended the people of Asia returned to theirhomes. Those whose desire for independencehad been awakened were no longer theobedient servants of their [Western]colonizers… One after another the nations ofSoutheast Asia won their Independence andtheir successes inspired Africa and other areas

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as well.”[34]

The museum thus offers a history which affirmsJapan’s military acts in Asia as a holy anddefensive mission to protect the “Greater EastAsia Co-Prosperity Sphere” from Westernimperialism. In doing so, it not only erases theatrocities committed by Japanese forces butalso revives the imperial discourse of pan-Asianism.

Ethnic nationalism in the Yūshūkan

While invoking the wartime rhetoric of pan-Asianism, the YÅ«shÅ«kan renew the concept of“Greater Japanese Empire.” In the exhibitionsection dedicated to “Mementos of war heroesenshrined at the Yasukuni shrine,” the wall iscovered with individual photographs of thosewho died in the Asia Pacific War (Figures 16 &17).

(16 & 17) Photographs of the war dead

Each photograph, as small as the palm of ahand, shows the name and age of the individualdead. Yet, despite this personal identification,the soldiers remain nameless. They are allimmersed in the vast canvas of collective death,a single body of the nation, stripped of all socialand cultural significance. Yet this abstraction ofindividual death into a collective national wholebrings up a compelling question regardingnation and ethnicity in Japan.

Tracing the genealogy of the discourse of theJapanese nation, Eiji Oguma has argued that themyth of Japan as a homogeneous and pure-b looded nat ion i s l a rge ly a pos twarconstruction.[35] With the collapse of theJapanese empire, for instance, the broadlyaccepted idea of the prewar period thatJapanese and Koreans shared a commonancestor was transformed into the belief thatJapanese and Koreans were fundamentallydifferent in their culture and ethnicity.[36] Inpostwar Japan, Koreans and Taiwanese living inJapan, including veterans of the Japanese army,would be deprived of Japanese citizenship.Despite the instability of the concept of Japan,oscillating between the homogeneous nationand the mixed nation, however, as Harumi Befuhas apt ly pointed out, what has beenmaintained beneath the discursive shift of thenation in modern Japan is the idea of ethnicnationalism.[37]

Yasukuni shrine nevertheless enshrined some50,000 ethnic Korean and Taiwanese soldierswho were mobilized to serve the Japaneseempire and died in combat during the AsiaPacific War. Some bereaved families, who wereinformed only recently of enshrinement,demanded that the shrine return the souls tothem. The shrine, however, rejected thedemand saying that all had died for theemperor and nation and would be honored fortheir sacrifice. Like the shrine, the museumerases any reference to the multiethnic nature

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of those who died in Japanese uniform duringthe war. In the museum, these ethnic others,who were Japanese but not quite Japanese, aresubsumed in a unitary Japanese identity thatelides their ethnic identities.

III. A Crisis of Ethnic Nationalism in the Eraof Globalization

The war memorial museums aim to convey anaura of sacrificial death that supposedlytranscends individual physical annihilation. Yetthe problem arises precisely in this practice ofmuseumization of death. The attempt topresent divine souls threatens the sacred auraas such. As Arjun Appadurai and Carol A.Breckenridge have argued, the museum isneeded especially when “the separation ofsacred objects (whether of art, history orreligion) from the objects of everyday life hasoccurred.”[38] In the case of the Yushukan, themuseumization of ritual suggests the decline ofthe shrine as a social practice and thus a needto remind people of its “sacred” meaning.Likewise, in the WMK, heroic death is presentedas prime material for the foundation of nationalidentity through objects in the form of exhibitiondisplays, and monuments, extending even tosouvenirs. The serialization of images can beseen as “a replica without aura” in Anderson’sterm.[39] In this sense the two museumsrepresent not the power but the loss of popularfaith in military nationalism. In 1993, evenbefore its opening, the WMK faced criticism ofthe lack of accountability of governmentspending for the museum and questioning thevery need to build a war museum with such abelligerent appearance in the center of thec i ty . [40] The museum in fact provedunpopular.[41] In particular, in the emergingnew polit ical relations with and publicperceptions of North Korea, has faced continuedpressure to accommodate the change. Perhapspartly as a response to such pressure, in 2002the museum added a new monument, The ClockTower of Peace, which portrays two young girlsholding two watches, one stopped at the

moment of separation of the two Koreas and theother moving toward future unification (Figure18).

(18) The Clock Tower of Peace

These new images of young girls and stoppedwatches remind us of the familiar icons of peaceculture as presented in the Hiroshima andNagasaki museums in Japan. Despite such agesture to modify its militaristic and masculineimage, the presence of the museum with amessage of anticommunism and militarypatriotism continues to elicit criticism. In 2003,a group of citizens launched a campaign for analternative peace museum, stating that “theWMK teaches our children how strongerweapons can kill more people… In this countrywith experiences of wars and state killings, wen e e d a p l a c e t o t e a c h p e a c e t o o u rchildren.”[42] Some people resist the officialrepresentation of the museum by consuming itin ways different from its intended meanings.One popular website, for example, issued a callfor “a new millennium techno party” to be heldin the museum restroom:

A fun, weird party in the restroom atWar Memorial Hall…The restroom ofWar Memorial Museum is the cleanestand largest in Seoul. This restroom willbe totally changed to a wonderfulparty place. Some snacks, BBQ,

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c o c k t a i l s a n d b e e r w i l l b eserved…also, some funny events suchas graffiti contest… and the performance by a five-man bandBarberbershopporno led by the self-sty led keeper of the women’stoilet.[43]

The restroom party fantasy illustrates how themuseum can lead a life in popular consumptionquite independent of the original officialcontext. The celebration of nonsense,decadence, and obscenity is exactly what themuseum tried to keep out of the public for theproduction of the “pure,” “healthy” and“normal” state of patriotic ethnic nationalism.

The Yushukan provoked similar reactions on thepart of some.[44] Especially for those whopainfully remember “stepping on dead bodies”and “there is nothing glorious about thewar,”[45] the museum is deeply disturbing. AJapanese visitor regretted that, “the exhibitsexpress neither condolences to victims of theU.S. air raids and atomic bombings nor remorsefor Japan as an aggressor in Asia. I felt as if Ihad been exposed to the specter of Japanesemilitarism. … The museum souvenir shop sellsT-shirts displaying the wartime slogan, “WeShall Win.”[46] In the project of securing thefuture embedded in the idea of nation withsingular history, ethnicity, and identity, themuseum continues to suppress the pastviolence, fear, and anguish experienced by both“Japanese Japanese” and other “non-JapaneseJapanese.”

In a way all the different visual and spatialdevices employed in the WMK and the Yushukanmerge into what can broadly be termed ethno-conservative nationalism, which invents anethnic-based tradition of military prowess. Theobsession with military prowess is related tohistorical amnesia that both Korea and Japanhave experienced. Both museums still find itdifficult to integrate the dark past into theirhistories. The dark past is, therefore, kept in the

family closet to avoid embarrassment. Or simplydenied. Each only tells a story that the nation-family wants to hear about its ancestors anddoes not tell other stories, such as those ofmilitary aggressions at home and abroad,civilian participations in wrongdoings andcollaboration with colonial rulers. “We” do nothave to talk about the embarrassing deeds in“our family.” Out of the selective forgetting andremembering of the past, a seamless familialhistory of the ethnic nation and the idea of apatriotic and ever glorious national communityhave emerged.

The WMK performs an enactment of manlinessin the discourse of ethnic nationalism, onewhich was suppressed under Japanesecolonialism. It can be seen as an enterprise forovercoming a cultural crisis with respect tohistorical memories of colonialism, war, and thecurrent phase of globalization. Hence, we see inthe WMK a communal quest for a rootedidentity expressed in the urge for ethnic unity, arole that can be most decisively played by theloud voice of military prowess. As in Japan,however, in a period which has witnessed agrowing population of non-ethnic Koreans, it is aserious question whether a “democratized” and“globalized” Korea will further ethnicize or de-ethnicize the idea of nation and nationalmembership. The issue of ethnicity and nationalmembership becomes more complicated andeven contradictory, as Katharine Moon aptlynotes: “What is the meaning and content of theKorean nation if foreigners purport to claimKorea as their ‘second homeland’? Does Korea’spursuit of democracy and globalization requirethat it alter its definition of nation?” [47]Furthermore, the changing relationship betweenwomen and the state also challenges thepatriarchal definition of the Korean ethnicnation.

The Yushukan similarly calls for the recovery ofJapanese military identity by affirming thewartime past at the center of national characterand identity. Toward the end of the twentieth

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century, Japan confronts a divide between thosewho share the memory of wartime and thosewho grew up or were been born after the war.As the older generation passes, someneonationalists feel the need to bequeath to theyounger generation “heroic” memories of thewar that have been forgotten. The Yushukan’smission to reestablish the linkage between thenational subject and the individual can also beunderstood as a reaction to globalization incontemporary Japan. One of the visible signs ofthis is the growing visibility of postcolonial Asiaalong with the influx of Asian pop cultures andmigrant populations from surrounding Asiancountries. Postcolonial Asia threatens to disruptthe putative wholeness of the citizenship projectthat neonationalists attempt to maintain. TheYushukan is the showcase for an ethnic-basedreactionary nationalism which retreats to themilitary tradition, a symbol of loyalty to andsacrifice for the nation, at the moment when theidea of the nation based on ethnic homogeneityis being undermined by domestic andinternational transformations.

Juxtaposing Korea and Japan, we seeinterconnected discourses of ethnic nationalism.Comparing war memorial museums in Japanand Korea, I have suggested that despite theirantagonistic discourses, they display similarstrategies of representation: staging a ritualdedicated to the war dead as an embodiment ofnational identity. The dispute over the museumssuggests a change in the social and politicallandscapes of Korea and Japan. However, thepublic in both countries, although critical ofmilitarism, still seems to take for granted thecore idea of ethnic nationalism, which oftendevelops into xenophobic sentiment toward“non-ethnic” Koreans or Japanese and migrantforeign workers. The unchallenged concept ofnation and citizenship based on an ethniccollectivism poses a critical obstacle to the taskof reconciling historical injustice betweennations as well as within them. Without criticalself-reflection regarding the exclusive andaggressive nature of ethnic nationalism, it will

be difficult to move ahead. In this essay, ratherthan placing the two war memorial museums inthe category of colonized versus colonizer orvictim versus victimizer, I have paid attention totheir similar ambition to exhibit the nationbounded by ethnic, not civic, sentiments. Theyurge citizens to be exclusively Koreans orJapanese and to unquestioningly identifythemselves with the ethnic national community.Such visions can best be countered byrecognition of the terrible price that Koreans,Japanese and Asian people have borne as aresult of colonialism and aggressive wars,including those waged in the name ofnationalistic purity and liberation of oppressedpeople.

* I am indebted to Mark Selden for criticalcomments on an earlier version of this article.

Hong Kal is assistant professor of Art History atYork University, Toronto.

This is a revised and expanded version of achapter that was published in RethinkingHistorical Injustice and Reconciliation inNortheast Asia, edited by Soon-Won Park, Gi-Wook Shin, and Daqing Yang. New York:Routledge, 2007. Posted on Japan Focus,September 6, 2008.

Notes

[1] In Korea, they include the IndependenceMuseum of Korea (1987), War Memorial ofKorea (1994), Sodaemun Prison Museum(1995), and Dongduchon Municipal Museumof Freedom, Defense, and Peace (2002). InJapan, most peace museums were built orrenovated in the 1990s, including the OsakaInternational Peace Center (1991), KyotoMuseum for World Peace (1992), HiroshimaPeace Memorial Museum (1994), NagasakiAtomic Bomb Museum (1996), Showakan in

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Tokyo (1999), Peace Memorial Center (HeiwaKinenkan) in Tokyo (1999), OkinawaPrefectural Peace Memorial Museum (2000),and Yushukan in Tokyo (2002). In China,major memorial museums including TheMemorial Hall of the People’s War ofResistance Against Japan, The Memorial toVictims of the Nanjing Massacre by JapaneseInvaders, The Crime Evidence Exhibition Hallof Japanese Imperial Army Unit 731, and TheSeptember 18 History Museum were built inthe 1980s and 1990s. See Yoshida, “Revisingthe Past, Complicating the Future: TheYushukan War Museum in Modern JapaneseHistory” and Denton, “Heroic Resistance andVictims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory ofJapanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums.”The proliferation of memorial museums inKorea and Japan can be situated in the rise ofthe discourse of memory which, according toAndreas Huyssen, “has become a culturalobsession of monumental proportions acrossglobe.” The discourse of memory wasenergized in the 1980s by the broadeningdebate about the Holocaust and acceleratedin post-communist Eastern Europe, post-Apartheid South Africa and various post-dictatorship countries. See Huyssen, “PresentPasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia.”

[2] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 205.

[3] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 205.

[4] My thinking about nationalism and the wardead in this chapter owes much to Anderson’s“Replica, Aura, and Late NationalistImaginings” and “The Goodness of Nations” inThe Spectre of Comparisons, 46–57, 360–368.

[5] See the War Memorial of Korea, WMKcatalogue (English edition), 5.

[6] My approach to the museum draws onCarol Duncan’s analysis of the museum as amodern ritual in which visitors are prompted

to enact and internalize the values writteninto the exhibitionary script. See Duncan,Civilizing Rituals.

[7] See Lie, Multiethinic Japan; Oguma, AGenealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images; andSato, “The Politics of Nationhood in Germanyand Japan.”

[8] Befu has emphasized that nihonjinronconstitutes a broadly based ideological stancefor Japan’s nat iona l i sm. See Befu ,“Nationalism and Nihonjinron,” p.107.

[9] Indeed, the shrine still has a strongassociation with the state, as evidenced bythe controversial visits to the shrine by primeministers and cabinet members. Therenovat ion o f the Yūshūkan wasextensively funded by the Japan BereavedFamilies Association, a private organizationthat is closely connected to the conservativeLiberal Democratic Party.

[10] Jonjaeng kinyomgwan konlipsa, 55-73.

[11] Jonjaeng kinyomgwan konlipsa, 436–37.

[12] War Memorial of Korea, 5.

[13] Shin, “Nation, History and Politics: SouthKorea.”

[14] In 1989, the war museum constructioncommittee issued an open competition forarchitecture design. Of the twenty designssubmitted, Lee Song Jonjaeng kinyomgwankonlipsa, 181–89.

[15] The temporal sequence is a lsoemphasized by outdoor monuments whichdepict the military tradition from the firstcentury to the present.

[16] For a reflection on national cemeteries,see Anderson, “Replica, Aura, Late NationalistImaginings,” 46-57; and Laqueur, “Memory

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and Naming in the Great War.” 150-167.

[17] The National Memorial Cemeteryenshrines those who sacrificed themselves forthe defense and development of the nation.Established in 1956 as a military cemetery forthe war dead from the Korean War, in 1965 itwas elevated to the national cemetery andincluded patriots who fought for the liberationof the country and men of merit whosacrificed their lives for the country. It is alsoa ceremonial site for national anniversariesand is regularly visited by politicians todemonstrate their allegiance to the nation.Since the late 1990s, however, the status ofthe cemetery as the only national sanctuaryhas been challenged by the establishment ofnew national cemeteries. For example, the4.19 cemetery which buried those killed in theprotests against government corruption anddictatorship in April 1960, and the 5.18cemetery which buried those killed in theKwangju civilian uprising in May 1980, wererebuilt as official national cemeteriesrespectively in 1997 and in 2002.

[18] With no winner in the war, the groundwas open for claims represent the ideal“Korea.” The museum seeks to confirm thepolitical legitimacy of South Korea as the onlylegitimate son who has preserved theunbroken heritage of the Korean ethnic nationagainst successive foreign invasions. Evenafter the summit meeting between theleaders of the two Koreas in 2000, themuseum’s narrative of the Korean War waslittle revised, as can be seen in the specialexhibition, entitled “Ah! 6.25: For FreedomThat Time, for Unification This Time,” held inthe same year.

[ 19 ] See exh ib i t i on pane l s i n t heExpeditionary Forces Room and also WarMemorial of Korea, 28.

[20] War Memorial of Korea, 42.

[21] The original project before The Statue ofBrothers was The Peace Tower, a monumentinit iated to be a symbol of “free anddemocratic world” along with the WMK in1988. The Peace Tower was designed as anabstract vertical tower 330 meters high (lateradjusted to 120 meters). However, thisproject was cancelled in 1991 and convertedto The Statue of Brothers. Both were designedby the same architect, Ch’oe Yong Jip.

[22] Jager, Narratives of Nation Building inKorea, Chapter 7, 118.

[23] Jager, Narratives of Nation Building inKorea, Chapter 7, 129.

[24] See Cumings, The South KoreanMassacre at Taejon: New Evidence on USResponsibility and Cover Up,” Kwon, “TheKorean War Mass Graves,” and Charles J.Hanley and Martha Mendoza, “The Massacreat No Gun Ri: Army Letter Reveals U.S.intent.”

[25] The major Peace Museums, notably thoseat Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seek to teachpeace through documenting the nucleardestruction of the city and conveying a senseof the impact of the bombs on its citizens andthe built environment. Until recently, therewas no representation of Japanese colonialismor Japanese invasion of Asian countries, oreven, of the United States as the nation whichdropped the atomic bombs. Japanese citizens,portrayed as atomic victims, are projected asa metaphor for all human suffering in war,particularly nuclear war. Thus the museumsbarely mentioned the perpetrators of theviolence that produced the Asia-Pacific War,with exhibits limited to the human andmaterial consequences of the atomicbombings. The suppression of the role of U.S.in the dropping of atomic bombs entails aforgetting of the equally violent history ofJapan’s militarism in Asia Pacific.

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[26] Mark Selden has emphasized that theproblem of Japanese nationalism needs to belocated within the broader frameworks ofcompeting nationalisms in Asia such as inChina and Korea; the divisions among thepeople regarding memories of colonialism andwar; and the Japan-US relationship. SeeSelden, “Nationalism, Historical Memory andContemporary Conflicts in the Asia Pacific.”

[27] Shintoism, often referred to as Japan’sindigenous religion, centered on a reverencefor deities (kami) that animistically inhabitnature. It was elevated to the state religionwhen the new Meiji government placed Shintoat the center of the nation’s religious andsocial life. The Yasukuni Shrine embodied theidea that the emperor is at the center of thereligious and social life of Japanese people.With Japan’s surrender in 1945, the shrinewas separated from the state. The closebonds between Yasukuni and the emperor aredelineated in Takahashi, “The national politicsof the Yasukuni Shrine” and Takenaka,“Enshrinement politics: War dead and warcriminals at Yasukuni Shrine.” More criticalarticles on the politics of Yasukuni Shrine canbe found in Japan Focus.

[28] For a discussion of the ritual space in theYasukuni shrine, see Breen, “The Dead andthe Living in the Land of Peace: A Sociology ofthe Yasukuni Shrine.”

[29] Some people commemorate the war ata l t e r n a t i v e s i t e s , s u c h a s i n t h eChidorigafuchi, a national nonreligiouscemetery built in 1959 to accommodate theremains of 350,000 unknown soldiers. InDecember 2002 a government advisory panelproposed a plan to construct a new non-religious national war memorial that wouldinclude non-Japanese war dead. This proposalsparked controversy, however, and was neverimplemented.

[30] See Hein and Selden, “Lessons of War,Global Power and Social Change” andMcCormack, “The Japanese Movement to‘Correct’ History” in Hein and Selden [eds].Censoring History.

[31] See the Yushukan exhibition brochure.

[32] From the exhibition panel in the sectionentitled “Spirit of the Samurai.”

[33] From the exhibition panel entitled “TheKorean Problem” in the section entitled “Fromthe Russo-Japanese War to the ManchurianIncident.”

[34] From the exhibition panel.

[35] Oguma, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images.

[36] See Sato, “The Politics of Nationhood inGermany and Japan,” chapter 7.

[37] See Befu, “Nationalism and Nihonjinron.”

[38] Appadurai and Breckenridge, “Museumsare Good to Think,” 39.

[39] Anderson, “Replica, Aura, and LateNationalist Imaginings,” in Spectre ofComparisons.

[40] Donga Ilbo (8 June 1993).

[41] A newspaper column deplores that “Theyoung people visit the museum led byteachers or only to enjoy cultural events orfestivals held in the outdoor plaza. For thosein their thirties and the forties, the war is nolonger a subject they want to talk about.”Donga Ilbo (26 June 2001).

[42] Hankyoreh (24 September 2003). Theystarted from a campaign to publicizeatrocities committed by Korean solders toVietnamese civilians. For the on-line peace

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museum, click here.

[43] http://www.technoguy.pe.kr

[44] Not unlike the WMK, the Yushukan hasbeen unpopular since it opened in July 2002.Until May 2003, approximately 226,000individuals had visited the museum, a smallnumber compared with the atomic bombpeace museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,each of which has received more than onemillion visitors every year for more than twodecades. The daily newspaper Sankeireported in 2002 that no schools are currentlymaking field trips to the museum, nor doesany school incorporate the museum’spedagogical apparatus into its curricula. SeeYoshida, “Revising the Past, Complicating theFuture: The Yushukan War Museum in ModernJapanese History.”

[45] Asakura, “WWII Survivors Fear Return toWarpath.”

[46] Kiroku, “Build Alternative to Yasukuni.”

[47] Moon, “Strangers in the Midst ofGlobalization: Migrant Workers and KoreanNationalism.”

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“Museums are Good to Think: Heritageon view in India.” In Ivan Karp,Christine Muller Kreamer and StevenD. Lavine [eds] . Museums andCommunities: The Politics of Publicculture. Washington & London:Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Asakura, Takuya.

“WWII Survivors Fear Return toWarpath,” The Japan Times (16 August2002).

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