Darkling Ventures: Conserving and Recasting War Heritage in Japan

Abstract

This article investigates aspects of heritage and atrocity by bringing the Japanese case into focus. The dissonant nature of such dark cultural heritage has gained greater attention since the late 1990s in Japan and around the world, though scholarship has been largely limited to the European context. While locating the Japanese making of dark heritage in the context of the decomposition of the Cold War in Asia, I will first examine the process by which specific sites of past violence are transformed into war heritage in Japan. Second, I will explore how changing values and attitudes toward war-related sites causes changes in strategic planning for heritage management. These two themes will be demonstrated through an examination of civic activities to conserve the remains of underground warehouses built during the Second World War in Nagano and Osaka.