Due to their symbolic and iconographic meanings, expressions of ‘collective memory’ constitute the mental topography of a society and make a powerful contribution to its cultural, political and social identity. In Japan, the subject of ‘memory’ has prompted a huge response in recent years.

List of contributors; Note on transliteration; 1 The realms of memory: Japan and beyond; PART 1: Memory in politics and international relations; 2 For the nation or for the people? History and memory of the Nanjing Massacre in Japan; 3 Japan's 'Comfort Women' and historical memory: The neo-nationalist counter-attack; 4 Tokko Zaidan: A case study of institutional war memorialization; 5 Remembering the War Crimes Trial: The Tokyo Trial view of history; 6 Historical memory and Shiba Ryotaro: Remembering Russia, creating Japan; 7 Developing memories: Alumni newsletters in Japanese development assistance; PART 2: Institutions of memory: Memorials, museums, national heroes; 8 Remodelling public space: The fate of war monuments, 1945-48; 9 The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and its exhibition; 10 A usable past? Historical museums of the Self-Defence Forces and the construction of continuities; 11 The new image of childhood in Japan during the years 1945-49 and the construction of a Japanese collective memory; 12 Sato Eisaku, Yasuoka Masahiro and the re-establishment of 11 February as National Day: The political use of national memory in post-war Japan; 13 How did Saigo Takamori become a national hewro after his death? The political uses of Saigo's figure and the interpretation of seikanron; PART 3: Popular and intellectual representations of memory; 14 Literary memories of the Pacific War - fiction or non-fiction? Some criteria for further research on Japanese war literature; 15 The Nokorimono mode: Remembering the atomic bomb in The Diary of Moriwaki Yoko; 16 Becoming insects: Imamura Shohei and the entomology of modernity; 17 Memories of a liberal, liberalization of memory: Tsuda Sokichi and a few things he forgot to mention; PART 4: Realms of memory - centre and periphery; 18 New dimensions in Sino-Japanese relations and the memory of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894-95; 19 Development for preservation: Localizing collective memory in 1960s Kanazawa; 20 The remembrance of the 1871 Nakano Uprising in Takayama Village as a contemporary trauma in village life today; 21 History and the construction of collective memory: Positivist historiography in the age of the Imperial Rescript on Education; Index