The Construction of Tokkō Memorial Sites in Chiran and the Politics of "Risk-Free" Memories

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  • 特攻戦跡の成立と「無難さ」の政治学 : 知覧をめぐる記憶の戦後史
  • The Construction of Tokko Memorial Sites in Chiran and the Politics of "Risk-Free" Memories

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Abstract

This paper takes a historical sociological approach to exploring the construction of war-related tourism sites in Chiran, a town famous as the “home” of the tokkō (or kamikaze) pilots. Today, despite poor access to the town, many tourists visit its tokkō-focused Peace Museum and Tokkō temple (Tokkō Heiwa Kannon-dō). In the early postwar period, however, Chiran did not present itself as a tokkō town. While locals have come to embrace an identity tied to the tokkō, those who died in the tokkō operations carried out from Chiran were not local residents, but rather pilots from throughout Japan. When did Chiran emerge as a home of tokkō, and in what social context? Through exploring these questions, this paper analyzes the historical processes involved in the construction of war memorial sites in postwar Japan.

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