Mobilizing Affect for Collective War Memory: Kamikaze images in Yūshūkan

Abstract

Taking a cue from recent works that assert the importance of affect in politics and critical theory, this paper examines affective strategies employed at Yūshūkan, a war museum attached to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Although its revisionist historiography has been generally discredited by historians, over the last decade Yūshūkan has established itself as a key public site for neo-nationalist war memory in Japan. This paper argues that to understand Yūshūkan's appeal we need to address the affective economy it produces around the stories and images of the fallen soldiers. In particular, I analyse the image of kamikaze as a ‘sticky object of emotion’ and ‘somatic marker’ that is both emotionally charged and culturally mobilized. I examine several factors that contribute to its affective capacity: the culturally specific trope of the tragic hero and the aesthetics of self-sacrifice; an emphasis on their ‘ordinariness’ as fathers and sons; and the naturalized, almost moral expectation of the current generations' indebtedness and gratitude to the war dead. A close reading of the museum exhibits, catalogue, website and visitor books suggests that Yūshūkan's rhetorical force relies on the kamikaze icon's ability to arouse visceral and intense emotions. Produced at the intersection of affect and discourse, history and memory, kamikaze is a heavily loaded sign central to Yūshūkan's affective and sub-discursive mode of communication. By illustrating how Yūshūkan mobilizes subjects into its patriotic history and identity via emotional authenticity, I hope to add an alternative approach to the current scholarship that predominantly focuses on the discursive content of Yūshūkan's historiography or religious-spiritual function of mourning. More generally it is also hoped that this study will contribute to thinking through the role of affect in collective war memory by offering a culturally and historically specific case study.