DISCLAIMER

This is not a definitive historiography of Japan’s outlook on World War II. Instead, this is an overview of Japan’s changing attitudes toward its Imperial Past, particularly its views on Japan’s role during World War II.

To this day, Japan continuously debates its place in the war and the extent of its atrocities. It has taken many forms in the 77 years since Japan surrendered. The historiography of Japan in World War II is in many ways no different than any nation’s view. It changes with the social and economic zeitgeist of the period. The historiography of Japan in World War II is in many ways no different than any nation’s view. It changes with the social and economic zeitgeist of the period.

But with Japan, it has taken a new form almost opposite to the rest of the world. While the New Left movement has since branched out into other forms of histories like the race and gender movement or the ever-popular post-modernist approach (for good and for bad). Japan has shifted the other way, embracing not a new left but a new right.

Sources

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• Dixon, Boyd, Gilda, Laura, and Bulgrin, Lon. “The Archaeology of World War II Japanese Stragglers on the Island of Guam and the Bushido Code.” http://www.jstor.org/stable/42928795.
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