Short Abstract

In this presentation, I will discuss Holocaust remembrance in Japan based on my fieldwork at the two Holocaust-related museums in Japan and how it could be associated with the commitment to peace.

Long Abstract

In Japan, the Holocaust is hardly integrated in national commemorative culture. Perhaps many Japanese people have still heard of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany in a few sentences in school classes or have encountered it in popular media representations, such as films, TV programmes and comic biographies of Anne Frank or Sugihara Chiune. In this presentation, I will explore how Holocaust memory looks like at two private Holocaust-related museums in Japan: the Holocaust Education Center in Fukuyama city in Hiroshima prefecture, and the Auschwitz Peace Museum Japan in Shirakawa city in Fukushima prefecture.

At one level, in those two museums, the Holocaust is understood as part of 'fu no isan' or difficult heritage which has universal significance for entire humanity, like the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 'Fu no isan' of this kind is often associated with the cruelty and suffering caused by war, disaster or injustice. The information about the cruelty and suffering might be horrifying and difficult to digest, but one needs to face it and know it in order to realize the importance of peace and human life and not to repeat the cruelty and suffering.

At another level, drawing on Laurajane Smith’s argument that heritage is a performative practice (Smith, 2021: 25-31), I suggest that the acts of making, running and visiting those Holocaust-related museums are in a way the performative practice of committing oneself to world peace. The involvement in 'fu no isan' by making, running or visiting the Holocaust-related museums gives a sense of doing at least something against war or injustice, instead of becoming indifferent bystanders.

Smith, Laurajane. Emotional Heritage:Visitor Engagement at Museums and Heritage Sites. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2021.