A Look At "The Nationalist Assault on Japan's Local Peace Museums: The Conversion of Peace Osaka"

Sometimes I will run across an article that I think is very important and very helpful in understanding what is going on in Japan today and how it relates to the events in World War II. This is such an article. It deals with a museum that covers events during that war and how right-wing nationalists ended up forcing the museum to change some of its exhibits and to change the over-all approach of what message they were trying to get across to their visitors.

There seems to be a strong nationalist movement in Japan. Examples of this include the publication of so many works which deny, for example, that the rape of Nanking ever happened. Such works try to paint the Japanese soldiers as just trying to help out Asia instead of causing massive numbers of deaths. This can be seen in both written materials and in various videos on You Tube.

The article refers to the reopening of the museum in 2015 after it had made the changes that the right-wing movement wanted. Part of the museum dealt with WWII Japanese activities and part dealt with the bombing of Osaka by the U.S. The overall focus of the museum was changed from the first to the second topic.

Since it was a public institution the nationalists held various speeches there they put forth their own views and the museum had to allow them to do that. One of the bad effects of this type of thing, and of changing the museum's focus is that the museum has various school groups visit it and what the museum presents as an image will without doubt have at least some effect on the young people visiting it. During WWII the Japanese youth were indoctrinated with love of the Emperor and the idea that all other peoples were inferior the Japanese and this is now, at least in some ways, just a repeat of that type of propagandistic thinking.

The museum also changed from an adult approach to an approach that was more geared to children. This resulted in many photographs being removed from the exhibits. The museum also dropped exhibits on Japanese atrocities during the war. Videos were changed to show the Japanese advances into various countries as part of Japan's effort to help others and to protect them from Western imperialism. The war is shown as a self-defensive activity on the part of Japan rather than an aggressive, militarist approach against other nations.

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