(22nd, February 2016)
The goal of the article is to show how victim consciousness can substantially transform society. The author illustrates the many struggles the Japanese nation has had to go through after the war. The post-war memories were full of trauma and guilt. Rather than deny those traumatic memories as well as war guilt, the author espouses the sense of embracing those events as a means of forgetting that trying moment.
Further, the author brings to the fore the different standpoints of the use of the bomb. While the American side justifies it as a means of lasting peace, the Japanese, on the other hand, saw it as cruel. The author presents this diametrically opposing view as a through the foundational narrative of post-war relations between Japan and the United States (Yoshikuni 139).
Embracing traumatic memories, according to the author, can lead to societal transformation. In the article, the Japanese society is undergoing a steady change after the war. People can stay in modern apartments and even use modern cooking appliances. Further relations with the USA normalized (Yoshikuni 143). Thus, for total transformation to occur, the body, Metropolis, and even the memory need to be transformed as well.
In conclusion, the author shows that for any society to grow, it must embrace the past as it seeks ways of transforming itself. In other words, being stuck in guilt cannot help. What society needs is recuperation.
Works Cited
Yoshikuni, Igarashi. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945- 1970. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print
