Seaton Japan War Memory Analysis

Seaton's Japan War Memory

Introduction

The stories of World War II remain more alive and widely argued about in Japan than any other of the nations that was a major combatant in the war. Seaton focused on the time between 1972 and 2005 when Japan held the 60th anniversary commemorations. He outlined that Western media generally addressed this issue in an “orthodox” manner as they criticize Japan and the Japanese for “addressing the past inadequately.” He claims that “ignorance,” “denial,” and “amnesia” were widely referenced. But the views of the Japanese people were mainly based on family and personal experiences other than what was said by the media, politicians, or textbooks (Seaton 2). The orthodoxy is viewed as not being an investigation

These aspects of war history can be categorized into three main types. The first type are the main battlegrounds for the ideological poles (such as Nanking or the “comfort women,” acknowledged or emphatically denied as severe war crimes by progressives and nationalists respectively). Secondly, there are stories that are treated largely across the field (the sufferings of soldiers, the A-bombs, and Siberian internment). Lastly, the third types are stories favored by a specific ideological camp (for instance, kamikaze stories have little to offer a progressive view of history but are rich in themes of sacrifice and patriotism for conservatives, while Unit 731’s human experiments confirm the depravity of militarism for progressives but are avoided by nationalists because they do nothing for affirmative versions of the war).

To begin with, Japanese textbooks are alleged to be one of the key ideological battlegrounds in Japanese war debates and have laid massive amounts of media responsiveness and scholarly research. These writings (and specifically coverage in the international media) have tended to focus their attention on textbook

The levels of war interest and topics treated in opinion magazines illustrate which aspects of war history are featured most prominently within each ideology. Progressives’ publications tend to focus on Japanese atrocities and war responsibility issues while Japanese victimhood is related back to Japanese war responsibility. On the other hand, publications by Conservatives and Nationalists direct their effort more toward heroic actions by the Japanese military and treat Japanese suffering more as the result of Allied crimes