It has always been one of the most striking aspects of Japan’s culture. I remember teaching lessons in which Japanese suffered horribly from the atomic bombings, but there was rarely even a mention of the war. It was like, one day, everything was peaceful, and the next, boom, somebody decided to drop the big one on them.

The dropping of the atomic bomb on two successive civilian populations was wrong for many reasons. But what seems to be lost is that Fat Man and Little Boy were not dropped capriciously. The bombings followed a very long chain of events that go back further than even Pearl Harbor.

So, while I haven’t read “Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms”, I have read many books/stories in the genre. They almost always, to one extent or another, bring to mind comedian, Robert Klein’s routine on former UN Director, Kurt Waldheim’s inability to remember just how much he might have collaborated with the Nazis in Austria during WWII. At one point during an extended skewering of Waldheim, he asked in a thick accent, “There was a war?”

It would be wrong to say that this comment encapsulates the collective memories of all Japanese. But it does encapsulate the outward appearance that “official” Japan wants to project.

I won’t get into the many factors that cause this, but they are, in part, tied into Japan’s traditionally inward-looking culture and their ancient beliefs in ancestor worship. (Yes, other countries do the same thing.)

I think one problem with the selective memories of the atomic bombings displayed in various forms of their media is that, for those who have no actual memory of the times, the War becomes trivial. It allows pseudo historians to claim the Nanking Massacre never occurred or that Japan was merely trying to free Asia for the occupying grip of Europeans. Time loves a hero, after all.

Klein, during that same routine, segued into his feelings of the old TV show, “Hogan’s Heroes”. Specifically, he thought that equating Nazis with the clownish buffoons like Col. Klink was dangerous to our collective memory of what the Nazis actually were.

I remember this because he reminded me of my dad, who refused to watch that show because, well, his mother was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and let’s just say he was sensitive to those issues. (This did not stop him from laughing at Mel Brook’s when he made fun of Hitler in several of his movies, but I think the difference for him was that Hogan’s Heroes took place in a concentration camp.) At the time, my sister and I just sort of looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders, but after listening to Klein, I began to understand dad’s point of view.

The problem for Japan is, there is no outward criticism of the Japanese armed forces before and during the war. Germans can have an argument about “The Reader” but there is no similar argument taking place in Japan.

Instead we simply get endless versions of “The Harp of Burma,” and “Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes.” Both of which, I’ll add, are moving stories, but they are not indicative of the whole, they are practically the whole of what is taught. If your review is indeed indicative of Kouno’s manga, than it is another in a long line of similar stories with few counterparts to balance the scales.

I don’t know if that fact lessons its merits as entertainment, however. Again, I am at a disadvantage to write about it, but, even if it is flawed by a lack of proper perspective, there may still be some merit to its content.

I can, however, talk about “Barefoot Gen”. Though it sounds similar in some ways, it did not let the war play as an afterthought and the author, Nakazawa Keiji, certainly let his feelings toward, the Japanese military, Japanese propaganda and, a bit more subtly, the Emperor be known. His feelings about the bombing of Hiroshima have a bit more heft to them in my opinion than many of the other works I’ve read.

That is my quick opinion. Make of it what you will. Oh, and as to one of the comments I did manage to read, the Tokyo fire bombings killed more people and did just as much structural damage as the atomics did. They, however, cause people to suffer from radiation-related problems for years afterward.

@hc, I haven’t seen Yasukuni yet, though I followed the controversy around its screening with great interest. The director’s a Chinese citizen living in Japan, and it got funding from a Japanese gov’t agency. Then the right-wing groups went on a tear against it. A number of them are covers for yakuza, the main reason the movie theaters pulled out. (Look to Jake Adelstein’s memoir Tokyo Vice for a definitive look at the yakuza, I’ll have a review on my blog in a day or two)

@Suat, while looking for the name of a hibakusha writer I recommend (Hayashi Kyoko, “Ritual of Death”), I kept finding Christians in the literature. The big one’s Nagai Takashi, a Catholic who wrote “The Bells of Nagasaki,” that being home to 1/6 of Japan’s Christians. No larger point, just a curio. And while not hibakusha, Endo Shusaku’s “The Sea and Poison” rather unflinchingly looks at the vivisection of American soldiers in Fukuoka by the J-military… published in ’58, Catholic writer, grew up in Manchuria & Kobe.

@eric Ishiguro wrote the a story that became a Guy Maddin musical with beer legs. Still can’t get my head around that.

I would choose the latter problem give the choice though. A bit of leeway is obtained by making the protagonist in the book a Christian (something unusual even in Japan today). This makes many of his viewpoints different from those of his comrades (in relation to the Emperor for example).

As for “Footnotes in Gaza”, the “problem” for reviewers is that a large part of the book addresses a largely forgotten aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – one which is hardly more than a “footnote” in most of the basic texts on that war. It’s quite possible that Sacco is one of the more knowledgeable Westerners on this small but important section of the struggle. The other half of the book is more amenable to analysis since it deals with the present day conflict and its complexities. A historian like Katherine would probably be better able to address the methods by which Sacco collects his oral histories and presents his story. He’s not acting solely as a journalist in this latest comic.

I’ve never seen the Li Ying documentary but it sounds like it might be worth catching.

Did anyone here see Yasukuni documentary by Ying Li? It captures, if nothing else, the level of passion that the War still carries in Japan, let alone the rest of Asia.

Jog: Thanks for the book suggestion, handily enough my library has a copy, I’ll read it on my train ride home.

I just saw The Hurt Locker this week and it does ignore the broader implications of the Iraqi invasion/occupation. It’s a markedly non-political contrast from something like the HBO miniseries Generation Kill (which I thought was overall much better, moving, intriguing).