Post-war trauma in Jpan: media, arts and gender

This special issue of Intersections, Arts and Media Responses to the Traumatic Effects of War on Japan, presents a selection of essays developed from papers delivered at the Interrogating Trauma: Arts & Media Responses to Collective Suffering international conference held at Murdoch and Curtin universities in December 2008. As co-convenors (with Miyume Tanji) we consciously sought to provide a space and opportunity for scholars working in the Asia-Pacific context to express recent findings on media, arts and trauma, particularly the lasting impact on the Pacific region during and after World War II. The essays collected here explore two catastrophic events, and their legacies, towards the end of the Pacific warthe Battle of Okinawa and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each of the essays presented in this collection stands as a testament to the prevailing attitudes towards, and the legacy of, wartime trauma within a national, regional and global context. The authors recount and acknowledge the effects of human suffering, particularly its gendered orientation and cross-generational impact. These essays are a stark reminder of the power and resilience of traumatic memory and experience alongside their modes of transmission in mediated forms such as oral history, dance, drawing, literature, the mass media, architecture, commemorative landscapes and monumental form. Adapted from the source document.