210140 SE BAK11: War, Memory and Politics in East Asia (2025W)

Though it has been 80 years since the World War II ended, the conflicts and controversies over its memory have become one of the key aspects of domestic and international politics in East Asia. Focusing mainly on the Asia-Pacific region, the seminar will explore how the historical memory shapes the present political realities and identities in the Sinophone areas, Japan, and the Koreas. The course will study how memory can be weaponized by governments to progress their foreign policies or legitimize their power, but also how it can give rise to grassroots activism and transnational movements. The topics we will discuss will range from theoretical debates from the multidisciplinary field of politics of memory to specific memory themes that resonate through the region. Theoretically, we will look at the concept of history through the lens of a narrativist turn, and explore the “political” in the social practice of “remembering” and “forgetting”. Empirically, the course will explore specific “history problems” of East Asia, such as the so-called “comfort women”, China’s ambiguous “victim”/”victor” status, and Japan’s treatment of its perpetrator past. The objective of the seminar is to critically discuss historical memory as a political process infused with power contestations, and explore how it shaped the politics, collective identities, and transnational dynamics of the East Asian region.

The class will comprise of lectures, group discussions of mandatory texts and one guided classroom debate. In the organized debate, students will be divided into teams representing diverse actors, and explore the respective agendas and stakes involved in the political discussion over the memorialization and compensation of the so-called “comfort women” history.