Abstract
Benedict Anderson reminds us that modernity has been characterized by the emergence of nation-states that can mobilize the passion of young men to “die for the country” on a mass scale. Once mobilized, nationalist passion allows a soldier to believe “he is dying for something greater than himself, for something that will outlast his individual, perishable life in place of a greater, eternal vitality.” But after demobilization, this patriotic fervor withers, no longer fed or needed for everyday combat. In peacetime, the fervor that enabled death and destruction for national purpose no longer even has any social or moral legitimacy.
After modern wars that called up millions of conscripts, the tension between repudiating or lamenting the violent destructions of war and seeking something meaningful in the same violent destructions has been unresolvable. This tension is especially acute in defeated nations where, as Wolfgang Schivelbusch asserts, the desire to search for positive meaning in the national failure is a common and powerful need. The impulse to generate positive meaning from defeat often gives over to narratives such as the myth of the Lost Cause among the American Confederacy after the Civil War, and the myth of the Fallen Soldier in Germany after World War I.
The difficulty of overcoming devastating defeat lies at the root of Japan’s struggle to define its political culture and identity seven decades after the end of World War II. As I show in my book The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory and Identity in Japan (2015), how Japan reckons with this national trauma is crucial to understanding its contentious politics today. From disputes over revising the peace constitution to expanding military capabilities and increasing Japan’s global military role, different visions for Japan’s political future have clashed for many decades; they continue to clash in different arenas as we see today in the government’s swing to the right, and its declared intention to revise the peace constitution after dominating the 2016 upper house election. Characteristically, this contentious politics stirs up fierce passion on all sides precisely because “something much greater than ourselves” is at stake. In this context, Japan faces three broad choices for national policy and moral purpose in moving forward: nationalism, pacifism, and reconciliation.
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