Christina (Mengying) Wang is a PhD candidate in History at UC Santa Cruz. Her research explores the way early-to-mid 20th century Japanese history is memorialized in museum spaces, with particular emphasis on how museum curation affects Korean-Japanese relations, and the potential for museums to contribute to decolonization. Wang served as a 2023-2024 THI Summer Dissertation Fellow. In March, we discussed Wang’s dissertation, the ways nationalism can obfuscate violent histories, the role of curation in decolonization, and the importance of testimonials as a way of accounting for history.
Hi Christina! Thanks for chatting with us about your ongoing research. To begin, could you give us a general synopsis of your dissertation?
As generations of survivors (comfort women, forced laborers, etc) are passing away, it is up to the coming generations to ensure that their experiences do not disappear from history.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my work with you all. My dissertation will examine how Japan’s early-to-mid 20th century history has been remembered and presented in museums. Specifically, I focus on how Japan’s colonization of Korea is presented in national, prefectural, and private museums around Japan. I ask: what is the significance of museums in postwar Japan and how have they changed as Japan’s post-generation struggles with remembering the Asia-Pacific War? What memories or feelings has the postgeneration (those without direct experience of the war) inherited from these museums? How do these inherited memories impact the ability for Korean history to be decolonized in Japanese society? What is the relationship between peace, activism, and the potential for decolonization? As generations of survivors (comfort women, forced laborers, etc) are passing away, it is up to the coming generations to ensure that their experiences do not disappear from history.
My research will contribute to a growing literature on the role museums can play in decolonization. Research on the decolonization of Korea is largely focused on the immediate aftermath of WWII when Koreans returned to Korea and Japanese to Japan. However, the tension between Korean-Japanese relations remains and there lacks an analysis on how the way history is told (or ignored) contributes to this tension. As museums offer an educational space for the public to contemplate history, it is important to analyze their role in presenting Korean-Japanese relations. How can museums prevent the next generation from forgetting the past and help them build future relations?
Your project explores how Japanese museums serve as spaces of public education that have the capacity both to participate in and/or challenge Japan’s imperialist legacy. You focus especially on one facet of Japan’s “difficult history,” namely “the turbulent political atmosphere that characterizes South Korean and Japanese sentiments toward the Japanese occupation of Korea, most often seen in the comfort women issue.” I’m wondering if you could share a bit more historical context for this turbulence, and explain how this turbulence has shown up in Japanese museums.
…the right-wing party (LDP) continues to not only refuse acknowledging that Koreans suffered during the colonial era, but actively denies and hides the military government’s aggression in East Asia during the early 20th century.
From 1910 to 1945, the Korean peninsula was under Japanese occupation. During this time, the Japanese government not only forced assimilation policies on the people of Korea, but “captured” many to become laborers in places like the coal mines or provide sexual companionship for soldiers during the war. I say captured here in quotations because many Koreans were tricked or sold off. After the war, over 2 million Koreans remained in Japan and as the US came to occupy Japan until 1952 and ran a military government in Korea until 1948, reparations between Japan and Korea remained unaddressed for a long time. This became even more difficult after the Korean War, as Koreans in Japan no longer had a homeland (neither Korea was officially recognized by Japan until 1965). Japan agreed to pay settlements to South Korea twice: once during the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea (300 million US dollars), and a second in 2005 (364 million US dollars).
While the issue might be “settled” in Japan (according to the government), the right-wing party (LDP) continues to not only refuse acknowledging that Koreans suffered during the colonial era, but actively denies and hides the military government’s aggression in East Asia during the early 20th century. The LDP argues that Japan’s youth should be taught about a country they can “be proud of.” This conservative sentiment has come to fruition a number of times in museums during my investigation. At the Yushukan – the museum attached to the infamous Yasukuni shrine – Japan’s massacre in Nanjing is only referred to as the “Nanjing Incident.” One visitor who left feedback at the Yushukan wrote strongly against the museum’s presentation of the Nanjing Massacure, while another responded to this visitor asking if they were being brainwashed by the Chinese government. In 2015 and 2019, the Women’s Active Museum of Peace and War (WAM) – a museum dedicated to showcasing testimonials of comfort women – received bomb threats. They were also raided by right-wing activists in 2008. The same occurred at Peace Osaka in 2015 when the museum was hosting an exhibit that displayed Japanese aggression towards China, forcing the museum to shut down and revise the exhibit completely. In an interview with a staff member of the History Museum of J-Koreans, he mentioned that the museum often gets letters from right-wingers denouncing the museum.
Museum curation is a complex process, and your project requires identifying and sussing out the differences between curatorial intention and reception. I wonder if, in your research, you have come across an instance where the gap between the two (intention and reception) seems to you to be quite large? What do you think museums could do to respond to such gaps, particularly with the aim of decolonizing their exhibit spaces?
I went into the research expecting the intention and reception to be at odds, but I’ve found that most visitors are quite respectful to the curator’s intentions. In Canadian museums, there were a number of museums who were criticized for their representation of Indigenous groups and the settlement of Canada, but that’s because they were curated without the participation of any Indigenous communities. In the Canadian curriculum, we are also often exposed to the real voices of Indigenous communities calling for decolonization so we are better equipped to criticize public institutions at large. In Japan, Korean history is mostly curated by Koreans and visitors to these museums usually have no previous knowledge of the history to begin with. This is not a problem until we enter Japan’s “national” history museums – who have the goal of presenting the entire history of Japan, but either ignore or downplay Japan-Korean relations.
The biggest gap is perhaps at ultranationalist museums like the Yushukan I mentioned previously. In this case, it’s a matter of not representing historical truth and the biggest way to overcome this would be to acknowledge the suffering of Koreans and other Asian peoples at the hands of the Japanese military government – but that might be a larger political and epistemological issue than one that can be solved simply at the museum level.
As part of your research work as a THI Summer Dissertation Fellow, you visited The Tokyo National Museum, Yushukan, Museum of the History of J-Koreans, and Women’s Active Museum on Peace and War. I imagine this was a fascinating process. Your project contends with an abundance of perspectives – from museum founders to curators to public stakeholders to visitors. I’m curious, especially, about your own experiences as a researcher who has their own idiosyncratic responses when visiting museums and moving through exhibit spaces. I’m wondering if you could share a specific material/archival encounter that stands out from these visits? A moment of clarity, wonder, surprise, awe, or understanding you’d like to share with us?
Some of the most powerful displays I’ve come across at these museums are ones related to “everyday life” and are told with testimonials or through the narration of the life of an individual – it makes it kind of hard to criticize some of these museums, especially ones that focus on wartime suffering. For example, objects at the Museum of J-Koreans are mostly donated by Zainichi Koreans. One of the first objects displayed at the museum is a sewing machine donated by Chang Nak Seo. He recalls hearing the sound of the American-made sewing machine late at night when his mom, Kwon Chom I, would sew clothes in order to make ends meet. She immigrated to Japan from the Korean Peninsula in 1928 with her five children and this sewing machine became a symbol to Seo of the hardship his family had to endure.
Reading so many testimonials being displayed at museums, in archives, and through conversation with curators reminds me that history is experienced by the individual and lived out in specific contexts.
This kind of testimonial can be contrasted with Japanese soldiers’ who died during WWII. The Yushukan displays the final letters of some of these soldiers or letters to soldiers from their wives and families. One reads: “To Father and Mother, In the 27 years of my life you have worried about me in every season, warm and cold. I ask for your forgiveness for not having done anything for you as your child. Please praise me even if I should die in carrying out my mission.” Because Yasukuni Shrine (home of the Yushukan) is criticized for enshrining war criminals, it’s often forgotten that normal soldiers who died serving what they believed to be true are also enshrined there. The museum’s overall narrative is extremely problematic, but the soldiers’ testimonials were moving. Many claim that these soldiers would not be treated like war criminals if Japan won the war but I question what would become of Korea if Japan won the war? What would happen to Korea if Japan went to war again? Such conflicting feelings make me feel like the history I’m investigating now is especially difficult.
Ultimately, reading so many testimonials being displayed at museums, in archives, and through conversation with curators reminds me that history is experienced by the individual and lived out in specific contexts. In thinking of the relationship between memory and history, we must not forget the complexities that memory, testimonials, and personal narratives add to our understanding of history, especially as we were raised with top-down history or made to believe that “history is written by the winners.”
Finally, what’s your favorite place in Santa Cruz?
Marianne’s Ice Cream in Santa Cruz, California.
Unfortunately, due to corona, I’ve actually only spent about 18 months of my 5 years as a grad student being physically in Santa Cruz. One of the most memorable places from my first two quarters (between the strike and blackouts) was probably Marianne’s Ice Cream. My roommate and I would often find ourselves there after our Trade Joe’s grocery runs. During the wintertime, they’d have this wonderful persimmon flavored ice cream and once I figured out I could add toasted marshmallow fluff on top – it was a no-brainer.
Banner Image: Main gallery of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace.