Page 497 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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ActA
Nostalgic Approach to War Memories – Hokuchin-Memorial
in Asahikawa (Japan)

André HERTRICH

n my presentation I would like to talk about a part of my research, which deals with
I Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) and politics of memory in their self-represen-
tation in military history exhibitions. The example I chose is Hokuchin-Memorial, the
base museum of the 2nd Division Ground Self-Defense Force in Asahikawa (on the
1
northernmost island of Hokkaidô). The central theme of the exhibition is the rise and
fall of the Imperial Army’s 7th Division. This museum is outstanding among base muse-
ums in two ways: Hokuchin-Memorial is the only Ground-SDF exhibition with the main
focus on the prewar years, the Imperial Army and the wars Japanese soldiers fought in
during the 20th century open to public. Almost all of the more than 130 museums oper-
ated by the JSDF also cover the Imperial Army or Imperial Navy and the wartime but
are on-base and therefore not easily accessible for a general public.
Furthermore, in almost no other base museum were civilians, women, household, ur-
ban development and leisure activities subject of such extensive representation. And it is
this part of the exhibition which I would like to present to you today. But before turning
to the local history section in the museum, I would like to give you a brief impression on
what the museum looks like. As you would expect in a military history exhibition you
find uniforms, weapons, medals and remains of battlefields on display. You can encoun-
ter the daily life of soldiers and meet outstanding military heroes – such as Katô Tateo,
a famous fighter pilot who was shot down in 1943 or IJA General Nogi Maresuke, com-
mander of the Siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).
In a military museum you rather would not expect to find objects on display such as
a tea kettle on a stove, different products of the local sake breweries, radios and a record
players, as well as wooden shoes worn by women. As I told you, in this presentation I
will concentrate on the local history section, in which all these items are presented.
Hokuchin Memorial displays an unusual high amount of civilian items in order to
present the good relations between the local Imperial Army unit and the local commu-
nity. But, putting emphasis on the history of a single unit as well as its surrounding is
a typical strategy in other base museums when representing the history of the Asian-
Pacific War; and by doing so circumventing the contested wartime past.
As Sabine Frühstück points out that Ground-SDF’s base museums in general use
“strategic localization of Japan’s military history, which limits the histories of the Impe-
rial Army and of the Self-Defense Forces to the specific locales of each base through the

1 Hokuchin can be translated as Pacification of the North but also as Domination of the North and used to be
kind of a slogan of the 7th Div. Imperial Army, now also used by the 2nd Div. Ground-SDF.