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Book Review
Asia
Lisa Yoneyama. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. (Twentieth Century Japan: The Emergence of a World Power, number 10.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1999. Pp. xiii, 298.
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Lisa Yoneyama's book is a wide-ranging investigation of the state of memory in Hiroshima. Her point of departure is that memory is never unaffected by surrounding influences and that these influences have been strong and many-faceted in Hiroshima. In addition, attempts to influence the content of memories of the world's first atomic bombing are considerable today. |
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Yoneyama's thesis is that memory of Hiroshima rests on forgotten elements of Japan's militaristic past. Also, the influences on present memories are not exclusively referable to forgetfulness or life experiences of the aging hibakusha, atom bomb survivors, but are consciously shaped by diverse actors for their own purposes. Thus, she makes her study interdisciplinary, stressing that memory, history, and knowledge are intertwined. Her theoretical basis rests on Walter Benjamin's version of Marxist historiography, one important point of which is reclaiming missed elements in history for a critical view at the present. |
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Yoneyama uses a wide range of materials, including extensive interviews with, among others, hibakusha, peace activists, and city planners. Her book is built around three main sections: Cartographies of Memory, Storytellers, and Memory and Positionality. Within these sections, she takes up the following subjects: part oneTaming the Memoryscape, Memory in Ruins; part twoOn Testimonial Practices, Mnemonic Detours; and part threeEthnic and Colonial Memories: The Korean and Postwar Peace and the Feminization of Memory. |
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