CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE MEMORY PRACTICES OF WORLD WAR II IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This study questions how Japanese remembering and forgetting of WWII in Singapore became possible. As a decolonial project, I analyse Japanese representations of Singapore in three different aspects: pre-war Japanese texts on the South Seas; wartime Japanese media propaganda; and post-war Japanese tourism in Singapore. The cases reveal a situation in which Japan has forgotten its imperialist past as ”over”. What is needed to restore relationships between “Japanese” and Singapore are two interrelated things; 1) the “flow” of time in a restorative approach (Komatsubara 2022); and 2) not seeking a final solution. Sites of memory can foster one’s “negative capability” (Ogawa 2021) to endure being in a state of limbo, with one's values shaken by encounters with others, who have different memories of the same thing. By penetrating the state of limbo at sites of memory in time, it is possible to trace the trajectory of one's thoughts and failures.