| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Christoph Cornelien, Lutz Klinkhammer, and Wolfgang Schwentker. Erinnerungskulturen: Deutschland, Italien und Japan seit 1945. (Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus.) Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch. 2003. Pp. 368. €E12.90.
This collection of essays clearly compares and contrasts the different ways that fascism has been remembered and represented in Germany, Italy, and Japan from 1945 to the present. While acknowledging the similarities of their fascist dictatorships, military aggression, racism, and cults of personality, the contributors primarily focus on the uniqueness of the individual countries.	1
What makes the book particularly interesting for readers is its interdisciplinary nature. Drawing its theoretical basis from collective memory literature (Jan Assmann, Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora) and its connection to national identity (Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm), the book builds on the vast material in German, English, Italian, French, and Japanese on Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) and tries to find overlapping areas among history, mass media, memorials, and commemorative holidays.	2
The central question linking the comparative study is how state institutions, political elites, and ordinary citizens in Germany, Italy, and Japan have examined their fascist pasts. The concept of "memory cultures" (Erinnerungskulturen) links the three countries together. For the German theorist, Assmann, one cannot speak simply about collective memory; rather memory is divided into two categories, communicative and cultural. Communicative memory entails direct contact with people who have lived through a particular time, while cultural memory is indirect and transmitted through cultural artifacts such as school books, films, photos, and museum exhibitions. Assmann's distinction is important because it highlights the different ways that different generations remember the past. Since World War II occurred at the dawn of the media age, Assmann's distinction is highly relevant for this comparative study.	3
The concept of memory cultures builds on Assmann's distinction between communicative and cultural memory by capturing the tensions, contradictions, and complexities of a fascist past. "Memory cultures" is less psychologically laden than Vergangenheitsbewältigung and foregrounds the powerful role of the mass media in shaping memories of World War II. The concept of memory cultures foregrounds difficulties between the changing categories of victim and perpetrator—particularly with respect to the civilian populations in Germany, Italy, and Japan. It focuses less on issues of resistance and collaboration and more on the selectivity of memory and generational change.	4
The book is divided into six chapters, each containing three to four essays from various historians related to that chapter. The first chapter addresses "the reckoning of the victors." Such reckoning (Abrechnung) includes the immediate postwar question of military loss, capitulation, and transitional justice. The Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals are compared with purging processes in Italy. The second chapter "the demystification of the ruling leaders" looks at the mythology and public fascination with Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Emperor Hirohito. Of particular interest is Hans Mommsen's article on Hitler, which discusses different public images of Hitler in West Germany.	. . .

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