ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the different ways in which the Battle of Okinawa in World War II is presented in and beyond formal education, using narratives and photos in Japan’s state-authorized history textbooks and at a local museum. Specifically, this study examines 15 upper secondary school textbooks issued by six publishing companies from across the political spectrum and analyzes the narratives and photos used in these textbooks to depict and explain the Battle of Okinawa, together with the digital archives and official guidebook of the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum (OPPMM). The arguments and findings are three-fold. First, despite the line-by-line scrutiny of textbook contents by the state, individual textbooks show different narratives of the battle, and the monolithic view regarding the “Japanese textbook” is not sustained. Second, there are general differences of the battle’s presentations between the school textbooks as a group and the OPPMM. Third, a crucial gap between them in presenting the Battle of Okinawa and World War II is in the perception of the “enemy”. This gap needs to be understood, as the museum’s presentation implies, with a prolonged relationship of contestation between Okinawa and “mainland Japan”, dating back to the late 19th century.

摘要

本文利用日本国家授权的历史教科书和当地博物馆中的叙述和照片，研究了在正规教育内外呈现二战冲绳战役的不同方式。具体而言，本研究考察了来自不同政治派别的六家出版公司发行的 15 种高中教科书，并分析了这些教科书中用于描述和解释冲绳战役的叙述和照片，以及冲绳的数字档案和官方指南县和平纪念博物馆（OPPPM）。论据和发现是三方面的。首先，尽管国家对教科书内容进行了逐条审查，但个别教科书对战斗的叙述不同，“日本教科书”的单一观点不成立。第二，学校教科书作为一个群体与 OPPMM 之间的战斗呈现总体上存在差异。第三，他们在呈现冲绳战役和二战时的一个关键差距在于对“敌人”的认知。正如博物馆的展示所暗示的那样，这种差距需要理解，因为冲绳和“日本本土”之间的长期争论可以追溯到 19 世纪后期。