書評：漫長的戰敗

書評人：Dustin Wright
刊登於：H-War（2015年11月）
委託人：Margaret Sankey（美國空軍大學）

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秋子‧橋本（Akiko Hashimoto）所著的《長久的戰敗：日本的文化創傷、記憶與認同》（The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan）是一部傑出的著作，出版時正值日本政府在違背多數民意的情況下，重新詮釋和平憲法，使自衛隊得以參與海外攻擊性軍事行動的時刻。那一個夏天，數以千計的日本年輕人走上街頭，抗議這些修憲舉動與安倍晉三政府的政策。戰爭記憶深深影響了這場再軍事化辯論的各個面向。橋本，匹茲堡大學的社會學家，透過這本書讓讀者更能理解：一個在戰爭記憶上充滿「衝突與多聲性公共論述」的國家，如何仍能在軍事緊張的地緣環境中維持名義上的和平主義立場（第14頁）。

橋本運用廣泛的社會學與歷史學方法，清晰而不晦澀地呈現戰後持續數十年的思想與政治爭論，特別聚焦於1990年代至2010年代之間的轉折。她指出：「我們如今生活在一種新興的『記憶文化』中——對國家過去的回憶，已成為當代生活的重要一環」（第5頁）。這種記憶文化透過多重媒介表現：教科書、博物館、漫畫、儀式、電影等，全都出現在她的研究中。

本書對於想了解國家與社會如何面對「文化創傷」的讀者而言，具有重大價值。橋本借用了社會學者Jeffrey Alexander的概念——文化創傷指的是「當一個集體成員覺得自身遭逢了可怕事件，並在群體意識上留下不可磨滅的印記」（第4頁）。像全面戰爭這樣的災難性事件，即便和平重建後仍揮之不去，使受創社會渴望療癒。理解這個「戰敗之後的克服過程」正是《長久的戰敗》的核心。

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第一章：記憶的理論背景

導論章提供了學界關於「歷史記憶」的重要脈絡。橋本指出：「記憶敘事並非真理的再現，而是揭示敘事者在自我認同協商中所表現的依附與焦慮的溝通載體」（第21頁）。

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第二章：戰爭見證與個人修補

橋本的主要資料來自日本各大報刊與出版社蒐集的戰爭見證，包括右派的《讀賣新聞》、左派的《朝日新聞》與保守雜誌《文藝春秋》等。日本出版的戰爭見證量龐大，橋本為英語世界整理這些素材，是對日本戰爭記憶研究的重大貢獻。她指出許多見證者進行了所謂的「傳記修補」（biographical repair）——「一種詮釋性的重構，掩蓋難以啟齒的內容，也略過難以傾聽的痛苦」（第27頁）。
因此，許多日本子女不會追問父輩戰爭經歷，因為一旦得知父親曾殺害平民，一切都無法回到從前。

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第三章：英雄、受害者與加害者

戰爭中個體的身分常難以單一界定：至1945年夏，許多人既是加害者，也是受害者或英雄。1990年代，日本社會進入歷史反思的新階段，橋本選擇從這個時期展開研究。同時，日本在亞洲的戰爭與殖民受害者（特別是「慰安婦」）開始公開發聲，要求賠償。這些「加害者敘事」引發了國族主義者的「國家形象修復運動」（第66頁）。

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第四章：教科書與戰爭責任

外界常認為日本教科書避談侵略責任，橋本的研究則顯示情況更為複雜。她分析多本最具影響力的日本歷史與公民教科書，發現雖然敘事重點不一，但普遍的道德結論是：「日本國家在歷史關鍵時刻魯莽行事，並以災難性規模辜負了人民」（第93頁）。
戰爭作為國家權利幾乎總被否定。
然而，日本學生的愛國指數極低——僅15～33%的人願為國而戰，在全球74國中排名第71；僅11～13%的高中生以國旗與國歌為榮，而美國為54～55%，中國為48～50%（第114～115頁）。這也解釋了為何許多日本青年走上街頭反對安倍政府再軍事化政策，這部分正反映了日本教育中的「和平教育」傳統。

不過橋本提醒，這種教育也模糊了日本的戰爭罪責。將苦難歸咎於政府或軍工體系，往往使普通民眾免於反省責任。她寫道：「敘事中伴隨的和平誓言，常讓加害者的角色——殖民者、軍事侵略者、戰犯或『普通士兵』——陷於模糊，無法分辨那究竟是『我們』還是『他們』」（第72頁）。

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第五章：戰敗國的道德重建

在最後一章中，橋本將日本的戰後和解與德國相比，探討「戰敗國的道德復原」。她指出三種主要的歷史敘事類型——英雄、加害者、受害者——對應三條「歷史問題」（history problem）的解決路徑：

1. 民族主義途徑：透過強化國家與民族士氣克服過去；

2. 和平主義途徑：拒絕賦予國家戰爭權，以此作為贖罪；

3. 和解主義途徑：以「世界公民」視野，追求與鄰國的良好關係。

她的結論讓人看到，日本社會並未忽視這場關於「歷史責任」的辯論。

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書評總結

橋本為理解日本戰爭記憶建立了新的分析基礎。未來學者可延伸她的方法，探討更具地域特性的案例——例如沖繩，當地記憶深受美軍基地抗爭影響，使「戰後」成為仍未真正到來的概念。此外，日本擁有全球近三分之一的和平博物館，橋本對部分館舍的田野研究也顯示：中央政府與大型機構並未壟斷戰爭記憶，這是後續研究可深化之處。

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註釋
[1] 橋本曾將本書第四章擴寫為獨立論文，特別關注日本教育與流行漫畫中的兒童戰爭記憶。參見：「Something Dreadful Happened in the Past: War Stories for Children in Japanese Popular Culture」，《亞太期刊》（The Asia-Pacific Journal），第13卷第30期（2015年7月27日），網址：http://www.japanfocus.org/-Akiko-Hashimoto/4349/article.html。

Reviewed by Dustin Wright

Published on H-War (November, 2015)

Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)

Akiko Hashimoto's excellent book, The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan, comes at a moment when the Japanese government is, against the wishes of a majority of the population, reinterpreting the country's paci-fist constitution to allow the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to join military coalitions for offensive mil-itary expeditions. This summer, thousands of young people throughout the country have rallied to protest against these revisions as well as against the overall administration of the current prime minister, Shinzō Abe. Memories of the war inform all sides of the debate surrounding the push to remilitarize Japan. Thanks to Hashimoto, a longtime sociologist at the University of Pitts-burgh, readers will come away from her book with a greater understanding of how a nation with such "a conflictive and polyphonic public discourse" on the memory of the war has been able to maintain a nominally pacifist stance de-spite existing in a geopolitical hotbed of military tension (p. 14).

By drawing from a wide body of sociological and historical methodologies, Hashimoto offers us a clear and jargon-free assessment of the intellec-tual and political battles that continue long after the war ended, particularly in the years spanning the 1990s through the 2010s. "Today," writes Hashimoto, "we live in an emerging 'culture of memory' where remembering the national past has become vitally relevant for living in the present" (p. 5). The culture of memory can be pro-duced through multiple mediums, including text-books, museums, manga, ceremonies, and films, all of which make appearances in Hashimoto's work.

The book will be of great value to those who are interested in understanding how societies and states grapple with "cultural traumas," a concept Hashimoto borrowed from Jeffrey Alexander, who defined such traumas as those that occur "when members of a collective feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness" (p. 4). Cataclysmic events and moments like total war linger in the air long after peace is achieved, leaving behind a traumatized population that yearns to overcome the anguish. Understanding this process of overcoming the war is a major fo-cus of The Long Defeat.

The introductory chapter provides a useful background into historical memory as it has been understood in academia. Hashimoto argues that "memory narratives do not render definitive truths," but are rather "vehicles of communica-tion that reveal the attachments and anxieties of the narrators in negotiating their self-identity" (p. 21). For chapter 2, much of the author's data come from war testimonials collected and published by Japan's prominent publishers, including the largest newspapers, the center-right Yomiuri Shimbun and the center-left Asahi Shimbum, as well as monthlies like the conservative Bungei Shungũ. Given that there is such an immense pub-lic record of war testimonials published in Japan, we are indebted to Hashimoto for her labor sift-ing through these collections. That she brings these sources to an Anglophone audience is a sig-nificant contribution to the field of Japanese war memories. In the 1990s, scholars translated the war experiences of everyday Japanese, though these projects were less concerned with under-standing the process of war memory and more concerned with preservation. These important collections included Frank Gibney and Beth Cary's Senso: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War (1995) and Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook's Japan at War: An Oral History (1992), both of which were produced out of a moment when many were recognizing that the war generation was getting older and disappearing, a fact driven home by Emperor Hirohito's death in 1989. Na-tional dailies like the Asahi solicited letters from their readers to share their war experiences or the stories they heard from family (the transla-tions of which became Senso). Some of these let-ters, and the testimonies that Hashimoto has translated, often suggest that many people pur-sued some level of "biographical repair," which

she defines as a "hermeneutical reconstruction that glosses over what is difficult to talk about, and passes over what is difficult to listen to" (p. 27). This helps to explain why many children might not have pressed their fathers to tell stories about the war, or why so many people never talked of their own war experiences. It was not amnesia, but rather a desire to not know, because you understand that once you learn that your fa-ther killed civilians, everything that follows will be irrevocably changed.

Chapter 3 tells us how many in Japan have grappled with and perceived the heroes, victims, and perpetrators of the war. It can be a difficult task to assign any one label to a person who lived through the war; by the summer of 1945, many people could have been considered all three. It is the pause for historical reflection in the 1990s that opens up a new moment for the nation to reflect on these various war narratives, which is why Hashimoto chose to begin her study with this time period. It was also during this decade that surviv-ing victims of Japan's war and colonization of Asia -most notably, but not limited to, the military's "comfort women" began to voice their experi-ences and demands for restitution. The explosion of these "perpetrator narratives" subsequently in-formed the nationalistic "attempts to rehabilitate national image" that followed (p. 66).

But what do Japanese really know about the war, and importantly, what do they understand about Japan's aggression? Many outside of Japan often have the impression that Japanese school textbooks wholly neglect to address Japan's ag-gression and violence in the war, or that much of the public resides in complete ignorance of Japan's modern history before 1945. In chapter 4, Hashimoto complicates this standard trope by putting several of Japan's most widely read histo-ry and civic textbooks under the microscope. What we see are varying degrees of attention giv-en to the war, including Japan's own responsibili-ty. Textbooks tend to differ on whether or not the war was one of choice or necessity. Regardless of that distinction, Hashimoto concludes that "the ul-timate moral message taken away in both cases is that the Japanese state acted recklessly at a cru-cial time in history and failed its people monu-mentally" (p. 93). War as a right of the state is al-most always condemned. Despite giving the read-er such an understanding of the powerfully unpa-triotic educational milieu many children experi-ence in Japan, one cannot help but be shocked by some of the figures Hashimoto delivers: only 15-33 percent (depending on the survey) of Japa-nese say they are willing to fight for their country, which ranks 71st among seventy-four nations in level of professed patriotism. Moreover, only 11-13 percent of Japanese high school students take pride in their national anthem and national flag, compared to 54-55 percent in the United States and 48-50 percent in China (pp. 114-115). It is easy to see why so many thousands of Japanese youth have spent this summer protesting in the streets against the Abe government's moves to-ward remilitarization, partly a reflection of the "peace education" that is common in Japanese schools.[1]

Hashimoto is quick, however, to remind us of the other effects of such education, which often blurs Japan's own war guilt. The attempt to blame suffering on the government and military indus-try often absolves the average Japanese citizen of guilt (to say nothing of the US military, which launched horrific air raids and atomic attacks that targeted Japanese civilians). The author writes, "The ritualized pledge for peace that usually ac-companies the narratives often leaves ambiguous the roles of the perpetrators as colonizers, mili-tary aggressors, war criminals, and 'ordinary' sol-diers, no clarifying whether they are meant to be 'us' or 'them'" (p. 72).

In the final chapter, Hashimoto briefly com-pares war reconciliation in Japan with that of Germany (another place in which the author has done considerable research for other projects)

and outlines "the moral recovery of defeated na-tions." The three narratives that ride with us throughout the book-heroes, perpetrators, and victims-inform the similarly three different "pathways" that Hashimoto identifies as means through which people have attempted to solve the "history problem," the term Hashimoto uses throughout to describe the ongoing geopolitical tensions regarding Japan's war responsibility. To begin, there is the nationalist approach for over-coming the past by strengthening the nation (and national morale). For those adhering to the paci-fist approach, denying the state the right to wage war is a large measure of atonement. Finally, the reconciliationist approach takes more "cosmopoli-tan" forms and seeks to promote better relations with Japan's neighbors. Concluding the book with an outline and examples of these approaches leaves the reader with a sense of satisfaction that, at the very least, the "history problem" is by no means being ignored in Japan.

Hashimoto has built the groundwork for new ways to understand war memory in Japan. Other scholars might take up the baton and employ her methodologies in more deeply place-specific stud-ies. How, for example, does "the social act of re-membering" and identifying victims, perpetra-tors, and heroes happen in places like Okinawa, where memory is deeply informed by another layer of contemporary struggles against American military bases (in other words, places where the concept of a postwar era arguably remains theo-retical)? Finally, nearly a third of the world's peace museums are in Japan and Hashimoto's in-clusion of fieldwork at a handful of such spaces lends testimony to the fact that the central gov ernment and large institutions do not have a mo-nopoly on war memories, a fact that future stud-ies can certainly expand upon.

Note

[1]. Hashimoto published an expanded ver-sion of this chapter, with particular attention to children's war memories as portrayed in educational and popular manga. See ""Something Dreadful Happened in the Past': War Stories for Children in Japanese Popular Culture," The Asia-Pacific Journal 13, no. 30 (July 27, 2015), http://www.japanfocus.org/-Akiko-Hashimoto/4349/arti-cle.html.