Takahashi Tetsuya’s “The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine,” is among the most important statements to emerge from the debate over Yasukuni Shrine, historical memory and war nationalism. The article is here.
Japan Focus is pleased to present chapter seven of Naoko Shimazu, ed., Nationalisms in Japan. Philip Seaton is the translator.
Takahashi Tetsuya is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. A philosopher and the author of the best-selling Yasukuni Mondai (The Yasukuni Problem). His current research interests center on problems of deconstruction, history and memory, and the Showa era.
Philip Seaton is Associate Professor, Institute of Language and Culture Studies, Hokkaido University. He is currently researching war-related commemorative programmes on Japanese television and undertaking an oral history project focusing on how members of the postwar generations have reacted to knowledge of relatives’ war experiences.
We thank Takahashi, Shimazu, Seaton and Routledge for their cooperation in publishing this article.
Find a podcast of Takahashi Tetsuya’s lecture of March 6, 2007 on Postwar Japan on the Brink: Militarism, Colonialism, Yasukuni Shrine. This was the inaugural lecture of The Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture Series in Japanese Studies at the University of Chicago.
