Book review: Contested Memories in Chinese and Japanese Foreign Policy
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Author | Karl Gustafsson |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836717716724 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836717716724
Cooperation and Conflict
2017, Vol. 52(4) 571 –572
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836717716724
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Book review
MATTEO DIAN, Contested Memories in Chinese and Japanese Foreign Policy. Cambridge, MA:
Chandos Publishing, 2017.
Matteo Dian’s book Contested Memories in Chinese and Japanese Foreign Policy pre-
sents an interesting theoretical approach to the study of collective memory and foreign
policy in which different traditions that embrace divergent beliefs about the past engage
in domestic contestation with the aim of defining the country’s collective memory narra-
tive. Such narratives, argues Dian, influence foreign policy. One of the book’s main
strengths is that it clearly demonstrates how the ways in which the past is remembered
has had important consequences for how state leaders have understood the roles of their
countries within the world order.
In post-war Japan, the collective memory of Japanese people as victims during the
war was interpreted by many Japanese as a reason for embracing pacifism. Dian argues
that Japanese leaders mobilised such sentiments to motivate Japan’s limited military role
during the Cold War. Despite fierce contestation, post-war governments managed to
navigate between the two main traditions – the conservative and progressive ones –
incorporating elements from both as they defined Japan’s role in the world and legiti-
mised foreign policy.
However, the death of the Showa emperor and the end of the Cold War in 1989, the
book argues, created a dilemma; the new situation made the dominant post-war narrative
untenable. In the space that opened, progressives began to debate the Showa emperor’s
war responsibility and emphasised the need to include Japanese victimisation of neigh-
bouring countries in collective memory. The narrative that they promoted pointed to the
importance of reconciliation and improved relations with Asian nations. Conservatives
who wished to make Japan a ‘normal’ country with war potential instead of holding on
to what they considered outdated pacifist ideals, by contrast, sought to narrate the past in
a ‘normal’ and less self-critical way that stressed the wartime generation’s
heroic sacrifice. During the 1990s, the progressive agenda was quite successful, but was
gradually overtaken by the conservatives who have promoted their beliefs about the past
and weakened previously existing constraints on defence policy. These changes notwith-
standing, Japanese collective memory remains contested.
In the Chinese case, Dian identifies what he calls the national salvation and Confucian
traditions. During the Mao era, the national salvation tradition was drawn on as the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stressed class struggle and magnified its role as a heroic
revolutionary which saved the nation from imperialists and capitalists. Against the back-
ground of such a way of remembering the past, the CCP also presented itself as a contem-
porary revolutionary leader that should aid oppressed peoples in an anti-imperialist
716724CAC0010.1177/0010836717716724Cooperation and ConflictBook review
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