[KineJapan] Open Letter on WWII and History

[Sarah Frederick]

The letter was distributed via emails from the primary authors. This involved a couple of careful stages that I really appreciated: letting us check our names and affiliations in both English and Japanese, and giving us a chance to see the final Japanese version before giving permission to put our names to it. A final update was made after PM Abe's visit to the US integrating his speeches, and yet the whole things was completed and delivered soon after the visit -- impressive. This manual method definitely left out a lot of people would would have wanted to sign this, and I know I would have been disappointed if I had been among those in that category.  And the number of signatories could no doubt have been much higher (a right-wing website has already commented on this low number!) if garnered through some other method. However, the level of media attention to this letter makes me think that this type of care was truly warranted and probably strategically effective. Asahi pr
 inted all of the signatures along with the full letter in English and Japanese - something that would not have been possible with a larger number. The media outlets all noted both the prominence and range of the figures who signed, and there was left no question that each person signed with full knowledge of the content. It is different from a petition.

In any case, one can not take an absence of a certain name to mean refusal to sign by that person. He or she probably didn't even know about it. 

If you want to distribute the English or Japanese text in full, the Asahi formatting is perhaps more convenient than the PDFs on the H-Asia. 
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201505070028

Sarah Frederick
Associate Professor of Japanese
Associate Chair
Dept. Modern Languages 
   and Comparative Literature
Boston University
www.bu.edu/mlcl
sfred at bu.edu

Associate Director
BU Center for the Study of Asia
http:www.bu.edu/asian

On May 6, 2015, at 12:59 AM, Eija Niskanen wrote:

> Interesting. I don't see the name of the professor of Univ. of Helsinki Japanese Studies there....did anyone refuse to sign?
> 
> Eija
> 
> 2015-05-06 4:42 GMT+03:00 Markus Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu>:
> Here is an open letter, in both Japanese and English, expressing concerns over the struggles over WWII memory and history writing. Because moving image media is very much at the heart of this problem, I thought KineJapan readers would be interested. 
> 
> Markus
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Markus Nornes
> Department of Screen Arts and Cultures
> Professor of Asian Cinema, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
> Professor, School of Art & Design
> 
> Department of Screen Arts and Cultures
> 6348 North Quad
> 105 S. State Street
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
> 
> 
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