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Renewing and Reframing Hiroshima

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Jeff Kingston
Jeff Kingston*
Affiliation:
Temple University Japan
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I first visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in 1981 on my initial trip to Japan. The displays at the museum have been renovated twice since, for the 1995 fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bomb, and most recently in April 2019. This article examines the three presentations about the bombing exhibited there in light of the shifting historiography.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 15 , August 2019, e5
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2019

References

Notes

1 The museum opened in 1955. In the first major renovation for the fiftieth anniversary in 1995, the bombing was contextualized in terms of Japan's post-1895 imperial trajectory and the fifteen-year war 1931-45. In the second major renovation, the new exhibits opened in April 2019 after two years of work based on planning that began in 2010. Teams of experts participated in advisory committees under the supervision of museum curators overseeing the new exhibits.

2 I want to thank Mark Selden and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions.

3 John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific. NY: Pantheon, 1987; Eri Hotta, Pan Asianism and Japan's War 1931-45. NY: Palgrave McMillan, 2007; Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

4 Ienaga Saburo, Japan's Past, Japan's Future: One Historian's Odyssey. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

5 From March-March 2018-2019 there were about 430,00 visitors from overseas and 1.51 million Japanese visitors. “Foreign hibakusha speaking out as museum dedicates section to them”, Mainichi, June 18, 2019.

6 Jeff Kingston, “The Politics of Yasukuni Shrine and War Memory”, in Saaler and Szpilman, eds, The Handbook of Modern Japanese History. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018.

7 Jeff Kingston, “Filling the post-Heisei void” East Asia Forum. 4/27/2019

8 Jeff Kingston, Japan, Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019, pp.181-82.

9 Kyodo, “Aging overseas hibakusha still seek equal treatment” Japan Times, Oct. 30, 2013.

10 “Foreign hibakusha speaking out as museum dedicates section to them” Mainichi, June 18, 2019.

11 Mark Selden, “American Firebombing and Atomic Bombing of Japan in History and Memory”, Asia Pacific Journal, Dec 1, 2016. Vol. 14, Issue 23, number 4.