Edited by David C. Stahl and Mark B. Williams

Brill’s Japanese Studies Library: 34
http://brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=30628

Readership: All those interested in Japanese Studies, particularly those with an interest in the traumas, memories, artistic responses to and legacies of the Asia Pacific War.

This study of a series of artistic representations of the Asia Pacific War experience in a variety of Japanese media is premised on Walter Davis’ assertion that traumatic events and experiences must be 'constituted' before they can be assimilated, integrated and understood. Arguing that the contribution of the arts to the constitution, integration and comprehension of traumatic historical events has yet to be sufficiently acknowledged or articulated, the contributors to this volume examine how various Japanese authors and other artists have drawn upon their imaginative powers to create affect-charged forms and images of the extreme violence, psychological damage and ideological contradiction surrounding the War. In so doing, they seek to further the process whereby reading and viewing audiences are encouraged to virtually engage, internalize, 'know' and respond to trauma in concrete, ethical terms.

Table of Contents: David C. Stahl & Mark B. Williams
"Introduction"; Alan Tansman "Catastrophe, Memory, and Narrative: Teaching Japanese and Jewish Responses to Twentieth-Century Atrocity"; Jay Rubin "Murakami Haruki and the War Inside"; Dennis Washburn "To Make Gods and Demons Weep: Witnessing the Sublime in 'Death in Midsummer' and 'Patriotism'"; Mark B. Williams "Writing the Traumatized Self: Tenkō in the Literature of Shiina Rinzō"; Angela Yiu "Okuizumi Hikaru and the Mystery of War Memory"; David C. Stahl "Victimization and 'Response-ability': Remembering, Representing, and Working Through Trauma in Grave of the Fireflies"; Davinder L. Bhowmik "Fractious Memories in Medoruma Shun’s Tales of War"; Mark Silver "Framing the Ruins: The Documentary Photographs of Yamahata Yōsuke (Nagasaki, August 10, 1945)"; Karen Thornber "Responsibility and Japanese Literature of the Atomic Bomb"; Christine E. Wiley "Of Brutality and Betrayal: Youthful Fiction and the Legacy of the Asia Pacific War"; William Ashbaugh "Contesting Traumatic War Narratives: Space Battleship Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam".