More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, warring nations have not completely achieved true reconciliation. For decades, official state-sanctioned apologies have been considered a useful tool to help rebuild broken international bonds, but their effectiveness in fostering national reconciliation remains debatable. On the contrary, more and more studies seem confirming civil society’s role in facilitating people’s reflection upon the most rending aspects of their own past. With civil society involvement in the discussion of Second World War responsibilities still limited in Japan, this paper recalls the experiences of Germany and Italy and the difficulties they encountered in shaping a constructive discussion on war responsibilities and reconciliation to argue that the Obama-Abe exchange of official visits in Hiroshima and Pearl Harbour in 2016 represents a crucial step forward in relaunching the debate on the Japanese Second World War narrative. In particular, this article claims that the wording and the images used by Shinzo Abe and Barack Obama could become, if well framed by national media and the official debate, “agitators of memory” pushing civil society to further and more deeply engage in this crucial discussion for the future of Japan.

中文翻译：

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官方道歉的陷阱：民间社会促进和解的力量

二战结束70多年后，交战国并未完全实现真正的和解。几十年来，官方认可的道歉被认为是帮助重建破裂的国际纽带的有用工具，但它们在促进民族和解方面的有效性仍然存在争议。相反，越来越多的研究似乎证实了公民社会在促进人们反思自己过去最令人痛心的方面方面的作用。由于民间社会参与讨论二战责任在日本仍然有限，本文回顾了德国和意大利的经验以及他们在形成关于战争责任与和解的建设性讨论中遇到的困难，认为奥巴马和安倍于 2016 年在广岛和珍珠港进行正式访问是重新启动战争的关键一步。关于日本二战叙事的辩论。特别是，这篇文章声称，如果安倍晋三和巴拉克奥巴马使用的措辞和图像被国家媒体和官方辩论很好地框架化，可能会成为“记忆的煽动者”，推动民间社会进一步深入参与这一至关重要的活动。讨论日本的未来。