The victim as hero : ideologies of peace and national identity in postwar Japan /

With the controversy between Japan and its Asian neighbors over history textbooks, comfort women, POW slave labor, and the Yasukuni Shrine showing no end, this is a very timely book on the development of an ideology in postwar Japan of the Japanese as victims of WW II rather than victimizers. Orr (Bucknell) addresses two issues: how Japanese pacifism came to rely on an image of self as victim to the neglect of consciousness of self as victimizer; and how various groups across the political spectrum in Japan used this war victimhood to their own advantage. The study not only offers a penetrating analysis of school textbooks, but also examines postwar literature and films for their portrayal of the Japanese people's war experiences. A key element in the process of portraying Japanese as victims was Japan's claim, based on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to exclusive leadership in the ban-the-bomb movement--a "powerful unifying national myth." The author concludes that Japan's ideology of "victim consciousness" has produced mixed results: civic activism on the one hand, but the avoidance of war responsibility on the other. Highly recommended for all undergraduate and graduate readers. M. D. Ericson University of Maryland University College