Chapter 4. Recreating Memory? The Drama Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai and Its Remakes

Behind the Voice that Brought Peace

“…7 Watashi wa kai ni naritai was originally a television drama by the private station KRT (today's TBS) and it has been remade four times since. For a comparison between the various versions of the narrative, see Kirsch 2019. This is the version of the chapter accepted for publication in Handbook of Japanese Cinema published Wiley-Blackwell Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/31394 versatility of the almost mythical Mitsubishi AM6 "Zero" fighter plane and the valor of its pilots, below the surface, the film interrogates military values. The protagonist insists on selfpreservation in the face of conditions adverse to his survival.…”

“…Suffering two nuclear attacks and being defeated arguably constitutes such cultural trauma and it is thus no surprise that all three events loom large in the Japanese collective memory. However, as "history" it is highly selective and, as I have argued elsewhere (Kirsch 2019), what is remembered and what is forgotten, becomes crucial and can change along with the concurrent politics of memory. One constant in Japan"s shifting memory politics is the "The Imperial Rescript on Surrender" (gyokuon hōsō, lit.…”