Abstract
We have witnessed, especiallyin the Euro-American context, an explosion of interest in memorysince the 1980s. This phenomenon is often attributed to postmodernism, a rise of interest in the Holocaust memories, and withering away of "experiential memories" held bythose who survived the Holocaust. At the same time, our fascination is also indicative of the wayin which memory has become an inseparable part of the efforts for achieving justice and redress internationally. Indeed, memory has become one of the central political arenas for decolonization efforts.
This "memory boom," especiallyin the academic context, owes much to Pierre Nora's innovative les lieuxde de mémoire project. While it has inspired manyin memorystudies across disciplines, Nora has been criticized for his imperialistic nostalgia. If we were to recuperate a critical potential in les lieuxde de mémoire project, we ought to rearticulate the way in which Nora used lieuxde not simplyas a physical but also as a symbolic site. Along the line of such efforts, let us propose "memoryscape" as a spatially inspired concept of memory.
Memoryscape, as a time-space metaphor, provides historical frameworks for individuals and social groups upon remembering the past. It is also an image of the past that individuals and social groups produce, maintain, and transform through their mnemonic practices. With this working definition, we can now analyze the Hiroshima memoryscape.
Taking the Peace Park as the nodal point in Hiroshima's memoryscape, "peace" emerges as the most visible image, while Japan's historical continuitywith its imperialist past is hardly visible. The memorial space of the Peace Park has been written with post-war Japan's nationalist grammar; yet, it is also a liminal space of modernity's project, where "homogeneous empty time" gets contaminated with the uncanny time-space.
