Frontiers of Memory in the Asia-Pacific explores the making and consumption of conflict-related heritage throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Contributing to a growing literature on ‘difficult heritage’, this collection advances our understanding of how places of pain, shame, oppression, and trauma have been appropriated and refashioned as ‘heritage’ in a number of societies in contemporary East and Southeast Asia and Oceania. The authors analyse how the repackaging of difficult pasts as heritage can serve either to reinforce borders, transcend them, or even achieve both simultaneously, depending on the political agendas that inform the heritage-making process. They also examine the ways in which these processes respond to colonialism, decolonization, and nationalism. The volume shows how efforts to preserve various sites of ‘difficult heritage’ can involve the construction of new borders in the mind between what is commemorated and what is often deliberately obscured or forgotten. Taken together, the studies presented here suggest new directions for comparative research into difficult heritage across Asia and beyond, applying an interdisciplinary and critical perspective that spans history, heritage studies, memory studies, urban studies, architecture, and international relations. ‘Bringing together an excellent range of cases from diverse locations across the Asia Pacific, this book is an important contribution not only to this part of the world but to understandings of heritage struggles, especially in relation to colonial histories, more widely.’ —Sharon Macdonald, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin ‘This collection is an important contribution to our understanding of the place of Asia within global memory culture. Going beyond the “tunnel vision” of national memories, it provides us with a sophisticated examination of the ways the “difficult heritage” of colonialism, revolution, and war intersects with contemporary politics to produce an Asia-Pacific memory sphere.’ —Ran Zwigenberg, Pennsylvania State University

Frontiers of Memory in the Asia-Pacific explores the making and consumption of conflict-related heritage throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Contributing to a growing literature on 'difficult heritage', this collection advances our understanding of how places of pain, shame, oppression, and trauma have been appropriated and refashioned as 'heritage' in a number of societies in contemporary East and Southeast Asia and Oceania. The authors analyse how the repackaging of difficult pasts as heritage can serve either to reinforce borders, transcend them, or even achieve both simultaneously, depending on the political agendas that inform the heritage-making process. They also examine the ways in which these processes respond to colonialism, decolonization, and nationalism. The volume shows how efforts to preserve various sites of 'difficult heritage' can involve the construction of new borders in the mind between what is commemorated and what is often deliberately obscured or forgotten. Taken together, the studies presented here suggest new directions for comparative research into difficult heritage across Asia and beyond, applying an interdisciplinary and critical perspective that spans history, heritage studies, memory studies, urban studies, architecture, and international relations.

In The Unpredictability of the Past, an international group of historians examines how collective memories of the Asia-Pacific War continue to affect relations among China, Japan, and the United States. The contributors are primarily concerned with the history of international relations broadly conceived to encompass not only governments but also nongovernmental groups and organizations that influence the interactions of peoples across the Pacific. Taken together, the essays provide a rich, multifaceted analysis of how the dynamic interplay between past and present is manifest in policymaking, popular culture, public commemorations, and other arenas. The contributors interpret mass media sources, museum displays, monuments, film, and literature, as well as the archival sources traditionally used by historians. They explore how American ideas about Japanese history shaped U.S. occupation policy following Japan’s surrender in 1945, and how memories of the Asia-Pacific War influenced Washington and Tokyo policymakers’ reactions to the postwar rise of Soviet power. They investigate topics from the resurgence of Pearl Harbor images in the U.S. media in the decade before September 11, 2001, to the role of Chinese war museums both within China and in Chinese-Japanese relations, and from the controversy over the Smithsonian Institution’s Enola Gay exhibit to Japanese tourists’ reactions to the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. One contributor traces how a narrative commemorating African Americans’ military service during World War II eclipsed the history of their significant early-twentieth-century appreciation of Japan as an ally in the fight against white supremacy. Another looks at the growing recognition and acknowledgment in both the United States and Japan of the Chinese dimension of World War II. By focusing on how memories of the Asia-Pacific War have been contested, imposed, resisted, distorted, and revised, The Unpredictability of the Past demonstrates the crucial role that interpretations of the past play in the present. Contributors. Marc Gallicchio, Waldo Heinrichs, Haruo Iguchi, Xiaohua Ma, Frank Ninkovich, Emily S. Rosenberg, Takuya Sasaki, Yujin Yaguchi, Daqing Yang

Today, heritage is booming, and nowhere more so than in the Asia-Pacific, where it is disputed through local, national, and global contests over memories and historical narratives. This volume analyzes the resultant borders of memory at sites across the region.

After World War II, many regional conflicts emerged in the Asia-Pacific, such as the divided Korean peninsula, the Cross-Taiwan Strait, the ‘Northern Territories’, (Southern Kuriles) Takeshima (Dokdo), Senkaku (Diaoyu) and the Spratly (Nansha) islands problems. These and other disputes, such as the Okinawa problem in relation to the US military presence in the region, all share an important common foundation in the post-war disposition of Japan, particularly the 1951 Peace Treaty. Signed by forty-nine countries in San Francisco, this multilateral treaty significantly shaped the post-war international order in the region, and with its associated security arrangements, laid the foundation for the regional Cold War structure, the "San Francisco System." This book examines the history and contemporary implications of the "San Francisco System," with particular focus on its frontier problems. Drawing on extensive archival research and in-depth analysis, Kimie Hara uncovers key links between the regional problems in the Asia-Pacific and their underlying association with Japan, and explores the clues for their future resolution within the multilateral context in which they originated. Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific will appeal to students and scholars interested in international relations of the Asia-Pacific region, diplomatic history and Japanese diplomacy.