Prof. Mikyoung's lecture

Memory and Reconciliation:
Culturally Embedded Memories of Japan and Korea

Description:
The lecture aims to reassess the pacifist discourse by revisiting the core concepts of peace, pacifism, and pacifist Japan is a self-proclaimed "peace-loving" country. A majority of the Japanese people pride themselves in being citizens of "peaceful and industrialized country" that rose from "the ashes like a phoenix" (McVeigh 2004). As the primary source of Japan's national pride, Japanese pacifism needs to be situated within unresolved entanglement of the present glory and past shame. Post-war Japan emerged as a world economic power benefiting from an externally imposed pacifist ideology, whereas the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki served as the historical precursor of its anti-nuclear pacifism. Somewhere between these two evolutionary trajectories, Japan's soul-searching into the troubling past has fallen into mnemonic oblivion. The on-going "History Problems" in Northeast Asia testify to the haunting past which dampens the spirit of peace and reconciliation. Often being compared to Germany, the champion of repentance, Japan has been the subject of numerous inquiries about its ambivalence toward the past. Japan's multiple identities for having been the aggressor in the Asia-Pacific, the victim of indiscriminate U.S. bombing, and the pacifist advocate makes an interweaving of morality and memory an intriguing enterprise. Why would memory have anything to do with morality? Memory is mostly about contemporary interpretations of the bygone era, whereas morality often stands the test of time. Memory is bound by time, and morality transcends it. Should pacifism, a meta-ideology, remain as time- and context-defying moral principle, peace as a sub-concept is open to transmutations. The Hiroshima experience reminds us that the definition of peace is dictated by the changing contextual and temporal specifications. Can a group claim moral authority when its ambivalence towards the past sins is a target of unresolved grievance? Is the experience of victimhood sufficient enough to exonerate Japan from its previous offenses and grant it a leadership? Japan's Hiroshima is an ideal site to explore the complicated interweaving of contested morality and unsettled memory.

Objective:
My lecture explores the complicated workings of Japan's mnemonic praxis in its establishment of moral authority. The Hiroshima atomic bombing was a decisive momentum inaugurating Japan as the torch-bearer of pacifism. Given Japan's ideational multiplicity as the victim and the victimizer, its pacifist ideology needs further examinations in conceptual and empirical manifestations. This lecture situates the ambivalent amnesia and political compromises demonstrated during the renovation project of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum from 1985 until 1994. As for a nation yet to achieve meaningful reconciliation over the past with Asian neighbors, the political divide opens room for utilitarian, not moral, considerations in its pacifist discourse. This lecture analyzes that Japanese pacifism should be redefined as 'pacifist movement.' Pacifism is foundational ethics, whereas pacifist movement accommodates political contextualization.

Recommended Readings:
Buruma, Ian, 1995, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, New York: A Meridian Book.
Orr, James J., 2002, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Name:Mikyoung Kim

Present Post and Title: Associate Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University

Final Education: University of Georgia, Ph.D. in Sociology

Specialized Field: Collective Memory and Human Rights in East Asia

Recent Publications:
* "North Korea�fs Place in the U.S. Presidency," North Korean Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall), Durham, NC: McFarland & Company, 57-71, 2009
* "South Korean Construction of North Korean Identity: Victimization, Romanticization and Vilification," Korea Yearbook:Politics, Economy, Society, Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp.257-75, 2009
*"Waiting for Japan�fs Barack Obama," Global Asia, Vol. 4, No.2, pp. 72-76, 2009http://www.globalasia.org/Current_Issues/V4N2_2009/Mikyoung_Kim.html?w=mikyoung+kim.
*"Social Construction of Power, Identity and Geography: The Voices from Korea, India and Tibet," International Studies Review, forthcoming, 2009

Before assuming the current position in 2005, she taught at Portland State University as a Fulbright Visiting Professor. She previously served the U.S. State Department from 2000 to 2004 at the US Embassy in Seoul, Korea, specializing public diplomacy.

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