Japanese and American War Atrocities, Historical Memory and Reconciliation in the Long Twentieth Century

Date
Wed April 22nd 2009, 12:00pm
Event Sponsor
Center for East Asian Studies
Location
Philippines Conference Room, Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
Japanese and American War Atrocities, Historical Memory and Reconciliation in the Long Twentieth Century
Speaker: Mark Selden, Senior Fellow, East Asia Program, Cornell Univeristy JAPAN STUDIES COLLOQUIUM SERIES, Spring 2009 Organized by Hwa-Ji Shin, Visiting Assistant Professor, FSI Stanford University hwajis [at] stanford.edu (hwajis[at]stanford[dot]edu) Limited lunch will be provided. Free and open to the public. The controversies that continue to swirl around the Nanjing Massacre, the military comfort women, Unit 731 and other Japanese atrocities rooted in colonialism and the Asia Pacific War are critical not only to understanding the dynamics of war, peace, and terror in the long twentieth century. They are also vital for understanding war memory and denial, with implications for peace and regional accommodation in the Asia Pacific region and the US-Japan relationship. Less discussed but equally important are questions of US atrocities, from World War II to the present. This talk suggests a comparative and universal framework for understanding legal and moreal dimensions of war atrocities and the ways in which they are remembered, forgotten, compensated and memorialized and suggests a framework for recognition, recompense and reconciliation. Mark Selden is a coordinator of Japan Focus, an electronic journal and archive on Japan and the Asia-Pacific at http://japanfocus.org. A Senior Fellow, East Asia Program, Cornell University, his research centers on modern and contemporary China and Japan and Asia, war and peace, the political economy of development, social movements, revolutionary change, regional formation, agrarian studies, and historical memory. He is the editor of book series at Rowman and Littlefield, Routledge, and M.E. Sharpe publishers.
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