Page 498 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1138 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

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presentation of intimate military artifacts from that area” .
So the exhibitions can easily neglect Japan’s history of aggressive warfare in Asia
and circumvent the problematic issues of Imperial Army’s legacy such as Japan’s war
responsibility and war crimes by representing the soldiers as kind and friendly guys
from the neighborhood.
During the late 1990s plans emerged in Asahikawa to move the entire exhibition of
the old Hokuchin-Memorial to a new built building outside the base. For this, the divi-
sion commander invited members of the local community to participate in the planning
stage of the new exhibition. Together with soldiers from the PR department, these sup-
porter group members planned and organized the new Hokuchin-Memorial’s exhibition
by contributing skills, time and enthusiasm.
For researching motives and intentions of those museum-makers for engaging in
the creation of an exhibition I found the analytical concept of “nostalgia” quite help-
ful. Similar to concepts such as “memory” or “politics of history” this concept helps to
understand actors and their political implications on commemorating certain historical
events. But whereas “memory” or “politics of history” apply to all kinds of stakehold-
ers and historical events, “nostalgia” is limited to a past perceived somewhat positively.
This usually would not be a single historical event but rather a period, the grandparent’s
childhood or the past of a community. Furthermore it can also be an imagined past, the
“good old days” or “when life was easier”. Nostalgia therefore also contains a certain
degree of dissatisfaction with the present and the status quo. Fred Davis defines Nostal-
gia as: “a positively connoted evocation of a lived past in the context of some negative
feeling toward present or impending circumstance, ‘Simple Nostalgia’ is that subjective
state which harbors the largely unexamined belief that things were better (more beauti-
ful, healthier, happier, more civilized, more exciting) then than now” .
3
Svetlana Boym widens this approach and locates the reason for individuals and
groups to yearn for the past in the negative effects of modernity, which “increased the
intensity of people’s longing for the slower rhythms of the past, for continuity, social
cohesion and tradition”. Restorative nostalgia (as Boym defines this specific kind of nos-
talgia) “signifies a return to the original stasis, […]. The past for the restorative nostalgic
4
is a value for the present; the past is not a duration but a perfect snapshot” .
So, when analyzing Hokuchin-Memorial, its formative phase and the museum-mak-
ers’ motives, the concept of nostalgia as defined above appears useful. It poses question
concerning the actor’s intention for creating the exhibition, for these could be their dis-
satisfaction with the current status quo, their image of a better past as well as measures
to realize or “return” to what they would assume a better form of community.
When I conducted interviews in Japan with members of the supporter group, they
stressed the historically unique character of Hokkaidô’s colonization and Asahikawa’s
founding by Imperial Army’s forerunners (the tondenhei) within the Japanese islands.

2 Frühstück Frühstück, Sabine (2007), Uneasy Warriors. Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese
Army, Berkeley/London: University of California Press, p. 156.
3 Davis, Fred (1979), Yearning for Yesterday, New York: Free Press, pp. 36-37.
4 Boym, Svetlana (2001), The Future of Nostalgia, New York: Basic Books, p. 16.