Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of language and translation in interpreting historical narratives at heritage sites of conflict in Japan’s major tourist cities. It shall highlight the significance of translation policy in providing access for international stakeholders to narratives of past conflict.

Paper long abstract:

Is there a transnational demand amongst stakeholders of historical conflict to access difficult heritage sites? If so, how far does translation policy at such sites accommodate these stakeholders, whether national citizens or international visitors?

In answering those questions, I shall focus in this presentation on international war memorials in Kyoto, one of Japan’s most popular tourist destinations. Successive Japanese governments have invested heavily in remaking the international image of post-war Japan through the soft power of cultural heritage. This has resulted in over 172 million tourists visiting from overseas in the past decade alone (JTB Tourism Research & Consulting Co. 2022). This has led to the creation of an historical authorized heritage discourse for these visitors which focusses on pre-industrial and post-war Japan (Smith 2006; Fukuma 2019), as well as a high standard of multilingual signage and tourist guidance in internationally popular cities. However, upon closer inspection, the bilingual tourist might notice discrepancies between Japanese-language narratives and those in English at sites related to contentious historical conflict (Moxham 2022). I argue that Asia-Pacific War heritage sites have varying degrees of linguistic access for overseas visitors who may identify as a stakeholder in that history.

These difficult heritage sites might be uncomfortable for national heritage management bodies, but post-conflict development scholars argue that stakeholder access to sites commemorating past conflict is essential for creating discourse between stakeholder groups and allowing them to process traumatic collective memory (MacDonald 2015; Giblin 2014). Furthermore, translational justice theory applied to this transnational context makes it clear that the presence of a stakeholder’s native language creates a sense of recognition and respect much needed in the sorely contested theatre of war memory in East Asia (De Schutter 2017).

I shall present findings on a study comparing Google Maps reviews of Kyoto Ryōzen Gokoku Shrine and Mimizuka, assessing the extent to which translation practice affects public access to international war discourse. This study will focus on English and Japanese-speaking tourists and other visitors, comparing their interpretation with the narrative offered in their chosen language and other translations.