Navigating Public History: In Contestation with Japan’s Historical Revisionism

Abstract

In this article, we examine the phenomenon of ‘historical revisionism’ (HR), a movement to construct a ‘bright’ historical narrative of Japan often by denying and minimizing its wrongdoings under Imperial rule, and discuss possible interventions with such narratives through public history. We trace the development of HR, its proponents’ identity as ‘truth-seekers’ and their sentiments, such as victimhood and anti-elitism. We argue that an effective intervention would also require widely building social trust in those professional historians opposing HR by presenting their complex procedure of critical historical research and knowledge so as to ‘immunize’ potential consumers of HR from historical distortions. In times of political contestation over history due to the democratic nature of interpreting history, we suggest shifting away from the common Japanese debate over whether to share academic historians’ ‘authority’ or risk relativism that enables HR, and moving towards a collaborative approach where diverse participants including academic historians share the commitment to interpretive rigor, thereby countering HR.