Product Description

Perilous Memories makes a groundbreaking and critical intervention into debates about war memory in the Asia-Pacific region. Arguing that much is lost or erased when the Asia-Pacific War(s) are reduced to the 1941–1945 war between Japan and the United States, this collection challenges mainstream memories of the Second World War in favor of what were actually multiple, widespread conflicts. The contributors recuperate marginalized or silenced memories of wars throughout the region—not only in Japan and the United States but also in China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Okinawa, Taiwan, and Korea.
Firmly based on the insight that memory is always mediated and that the past is not a stable object, the volume demonstrates that we can intervene positively yet critically in the recovery and reinterpretation of events and experiences that have been pushed to the peripheries of the past. The contributors—an international list of anthropologists, cultural critics, historians, literary scholars, and activists—show how both dominant and subjugated memories have emerged out of entanglements with such forces as nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, and sexism. They consider both how the past is remembered and also what the consequences may be of privileging one set of memories over others. Specific objects of study range from photographs, animation, songs, and films to military occupations and attacks, minorities in wartime, “comfort women,” commemorative events, and postwar activism in pursuing redress and reparations.
Perilous Memories is a model for war memory intervention and will be of interest to historians and other scholars and activists engaged with collective memory, colonial studies, U.S. and Asian history, and cultural studies.

Contributors. Chen Yingzhen, Chungmoo Choi, Vicente M. Diaz, Arif Dirlik, T. Fujitani, Ishihara Masaie, Lamont Lindstrom, George Lipsitz, Marita Sturken, Toyonaga Keisaburo, Utsumi Aiko, Morio Watanabe, Geoffrey M. White, Diana Wong, Daqing Yang, Lisa Yoneyama

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4293856 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 472 pages

Review
"Anyone interested in the problem of memory and in the Asia-Pacific Wars will find much to like in Perilous Memories." -- Jeffery C. Livingston, The Journal of American History

"The authors and editors of Perilous Memories have provided us with views of events as we seldom see them. " -- Stephen M. Folena, American Studies International

"[C]ompelling. . . . [P]resent[s] heartrending stories with effective simplicity." -- Lin Poyer, The Contemporary Pacific

"[I]nformed, provocative and concerned." -- Ralph Cassell, Asahi-Shimbun/International Herald Tribune

"[S]tunning. . . . [It] challenges us to rethink what we already think we know about the Asian Pacific Wars of 1931-1941." -- Katherine Kinney, Journal of Asian American Studies

From the Back Cover
“This excellent interdisciplinary collection of essays gives diverse and heterogeneous voice to many ordinary people who suffered in the Asian wars that began in 1931—wars that, for many of these same people, never really ended. At every turn, Perilous Memories counterpoints the extraordinary elites who have dominated historical memory with the recuperated experience of their victims. This book is a major contribution to what the authors call ‘critical war remembering.’”—Bruce Cumings, author of Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century

About the Author
T. Fujitani is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego and author of Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan.

T. Fujitani is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego and author of Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan.

Customer Reviews

From the Margins to the Center
According to T. Fujitani, et al, in Perilous Memories, the Asia Pacific War(s) much is forgotten when the Asia-Pacific War(s) is read solely as an engagement between two super-powers: Japan and the US. This collection's theoretical intervention is the challenge it poses to conventional memories of World War II by breaking it up into multiple local sites and memories. This collection undermines the conventional binary and seeks to redress the problem of silenced multiplicity of scenarios and narratives. The contributors therefore "recuperate" Chinese, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Okinawa, Taiwanese, and Korea memories. Much like Tessa Morris-Suzuki in The Past within Us, this work is also solidly grounded on the premise that memory is always "mediated." Moreover, it is also similar to Linenthal and Engelhardt's History Wars in that the past is seen as unstable and contested. Perilous Memories demonstrates that intervention is productive and that is possible to recuperate events and experiences that marginalized to the peripheries of the past. According to Nozaki and Inokuchi, in History Wars, "... education is one of the most effective ways to promote a national narrative (official history) and to make and remake certain identities into the national identity" and are "an unstable and `de-centered' complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle." Perilous Memories come from a set of papers delivered by world-renowned anthropologists, cultural critics, historians, literary scholars, and activists -- who illustrate how both the hegemonic and marginalized memories have grown out of the interconnected phenomenon of nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, and sexism. Much like Morris-Suzuki this volume "reads" a vast archive of photographs, animation, songs, and films to military occupations and attacks, minorities in wartime, "comfort women," commemorative events, and postwar activism in pursuing redress and reparations. Perilous Memories is iconic and essential reading vis-à-vis war memory intervention and informs my work on many levels.