2017 Volume 16 Pages 104-115
This paper explores the politics of “memories on war” in popular culture through analyzing the process of constructing Chiran as a Tokkō memorial site. Recently, more and more tourists visit Chiran, where the Japanese army’s Tokkō air base was built and many Tokkō airplanes took off at the end of war. Visitors are moved by the “pure sentiments” of the Tokkō pilots, seeing the mementos of those dead pilots in some museums and visiting other memorial sites of Tokkō in Chiran town.
However, Chiran was not famous for “Tokkō” in the early postwar years. Moreover, “Tokkō” was not the experience of the people in Chiran. The men who took off from Chiran and performed Tokkō attacks were not Chiran residents, but army pilots who had come from various air bases. Nevertheless, why and how did Chiran become to be well-known as the “Town of Tokkō”?
This paper surveys the process of the construction of Chiran as the “Town of Tokkō” in a view of historical sociology, and then, analyzes the politics of the “memories on war” in popular culture in postwar Japan.
