Paper short abstract:

Global memory trends are highly influenced by the Holocaust. Also the museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki bare similarities with aesthetic trends deriving from Holocaust memorialization. My presentation asks: are these mere aesthetic borrowings or specific Japanese responses to global trends?

Paper long abstract:

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only two cities being bombed by nuclear weapons which resulted in a unique form of memorialization of both events. A focal point of this memorialization are the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. The museums not only document the damages, and the continuous suffering of the victims inflicted by heat, blast and radiation but also emphasize the need to prevent the future use of atomic bombs and call for world peace. This universal appeal has established both museums as a part of the global memory culture. Within this global memory culture, the memory of the Holocaust is highly influential, since the Holocaust came to serve as a symbol of the radical evil, used to stigmatize atrocities globally and invite empathy for the victims.

In the field of memorialization this "universalization of the Holocaust" (Alexander 2002) has led to the globalization of aesthetic standards in museum designs of memorial museums worldwide, deriving from Holocaust memorials such as Yad Vashem or the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as role models. This "Holocaust template" (Radoninić 2019) has influenced many exhibitions outlays, those dealing with Nazi atrocities and those devoted to other instances of political violence and genocide, including the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial in Bosnia or the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. Also the recently (2019) reopened exhibition at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum bares similarities with aesthetic trends in museum design coming from the Holocaust musealization e.g., a dark, confined and immersive setting and the individual representation of the victims.

In my presentation I will examine the memorialization of the atomic bombing and ask whether the similarities in narration and aesthetics with the "Holocaust template" are mere aesthetic borrowings or whether these are the Japanese responses to a global trend in memorialization and musealization of wide-scale atrocities.