Abstract
The Japanese proposal in 1978 that the anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima in August 1945 should be made the UN’s World Peace Day showed how international culture had come to be dominated by the idea of victimisation. This has led since 1945 to a spate of national apologies which have gone some way to make amends for the sufferings of the past. But complaints about the past can be used to stir up antagonisms between nations and between national minorities and governments. They also remind us of the central importance of history and memory that determine national policies and how difficult it is to interpret them and put them in context.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For the suggestion that the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary because Japan was ready to surrender see P. M. S. Blackett, Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy, Turnstile Press, London, 1948. For a critique of this viewpoint see Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Compelling Japan’s Surrender without the A-bomb, Soviet Entry or Invasion’, Journal of Strategic Studies, June 1995. For a defence of the nuclear attacks see Paul Fussell, Killing in Verse and Prose and Other Essays, Bellew, London, 1988, pp. 13–37. Fussell, later Professor of Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, would have served in one of the invading forces had these been ordered to attack. For a classic analysis of the ferocious nature of the war in the Pacific see John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, Faber and Faber, London, 1986.
- 2.
‘Americans, Japanese mutual respect 70 years after the end of World War 11’, Pew Research Center, 7 April 2015. I quote opinion polls extensively in what follows although I accept that their accuracy may vary. I could have inserted qualifications such as ‘apparently’ or ‘seemed to’ on every occasion but that would have simply burdened the text. Whatever the criticisms of such polls they are preferable to the anecdotal evidence on which a commentator would otherwise have to rely. Analyses of opinion nowadays, however insightful, which do not use such polls, seem curiously anachronistic.
- 3.
Walter A Skya, Japan’s Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism, Duke University Press, Durham, 2009.
- 4.
Fergal Keane, Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944, Harper, London, 2010, pp. 107–108, 318, 151–155; Srinath Raghavan, India’s War: The Making of Modern India 1939–1945, Penguin Books, London, 2016, pp. 410–434.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Towle, P. (2018). Introduction. In: History, Empathy and Conflict. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77959-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77959-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77958-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77959-1
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)