In Japan, the annual wartime commemoration is cynically and critically referred to as "August journalism," in which media outlets bombard the public with much of the same coverage year after year. 

August is the month of remembrance as newspapers and broadcasters churn out articles and documentaries on the twin atomic bombings and the end of the war.

Media researcher Ritsu Yonekura, who has analyzed a large number of these articles and TV programs, views this phenomenon as a mirror of Japanese society.

In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Yonekura pointed out that it is problematic for the media to place importance on specific dates.

For example, Japanese will always remember Aug. 6 and 9, when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targeted with atomic bombs, and Aug. 15, the day Japan surrendered.

However, scant attention is paid to other historical dates such as July 7 (the Marco Polo Bridge Incident), Sept. 18 (the Liutiaohu Incident) and Dec. 8 (the Pearl Harbor attack), Yonekura said. 

Yonekura asserted that the public's views on war and their perceptions of historical issues have been swayed by biased narratives provided by newspapers, TV programs and other media. He added that August journalism is a reflection of the Japanese self-image.

Yonekura discussed what role August journalism will play as the time approaches in post-war Japan where the last war survivors have passed away. 

Excerpts of the interview follow:

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Question: In addition to newspaper articles, I heard that you analyzed 1,654 war-related TV programs aired during the first half of August from the first through the 16th every year from when TV broadcasting started to 2020. What kind of "self-images" did you find?

Yonekura: First of all, the narrative of August journalism can be classified into three categories.

The first is the "narrative of suffering" intended to pass down wartime experiences as "victims" of the atomic bombings, air raids, evacuations, repatriations and other grueling ordeals, and the "sacrifices" soldiers had to make, represented by kamikaze attacks and suicidal battles.

The second is the "narrative of post-war Japan," which defines the war's end as the year that clearly divides the pre- and post-war periods to self-assess the steps of the country's post-war democracy.

The third is the "narrative of pacifism," in which the public regards itself as members of a nation that has pledged to renounce war as the only country to have ever suffered atomic bombings during wartime.

Particularly, the narrative of suffering accounted for an overwhelming majority (of themes found in TV programs).

In such a context, Japan's invasion, atrocities, colonial rule and other forms of "aggression" are completely receded into the background. Instead, its self-image as victims of militarism is brought to the fore.

This view on war and history was formed due to peculiarities of how post-war Japan was handled during the Cold War.

Japan could return to the international community without facing squarely its war responsibility and pursue its economic growth after the emperor was exonerated at the behest of the United States and Western powers waived their right to claim compensation.

The "national foundation myth," in which the country recovered and rebuilt itself from the ruins and ashes and gained peace and prosperity thanks to the precious sacrifices, has become, in a way, Japan's "collective memory" widely accepted by both the political right and left.

Q: Are you saying that August journalism was formed during the 1950s?

A: The San Francisco Peace Treaty took effect in 1952, and the ban on reports related to the atomic bombings, which had been controlled by the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces (GHQ) and limited by self-imposed restrictions, was lifted.

A characteristic is that while many reports portrayed grueling experiences of atomic bomb survivors, they hardly gave explanations on why the bombs were dropped or how the war started.

The amount of news coverage increased considerably in 1955, when the anti-nuclear movement gained momentum in the wake of the (nuclear exposure) incident involving the Daigo Fukuryu Maru fishing boat that occurred the previous year. The year 1955 also marked the 10th anniversary of the war's end.

However, the United States was never criticized by name in these reports, which portrayed the atomic bombings as unfortunate events that suddenly affected people like a natural disaster.

Strangely enough, the countries with which Japan was at war were even described in an abstract manner.

Some critics actively argued about Japan's war responsibility at the time, but the country's past aggression was hardly or never mentioned in general newspapers.

News coverage at the time, especially during 1955, became the mold of August journalism that still exists today.

Many countries stopped using the term "postwar" for the period following World War II by the end of the 1950s, and it became out of use after the end of Cold War at the latest.

It can be said that only Japanese media outlets continue to provide news coverage on war anniversaries because it is a manifestation of Japan's subordinate relationship to the United States, which has exempted the country from reviewing its responsibility in the war, and the fact that its relationship with China, South Korea and other Asian countries remain unchanged.

CHANCE TO BREAK ROUTINE

Q: Did the tendency to place importance on the narrative of suffering remain unchanged?

A: The focus was placed on Japan's aggression against Asian countries in the wake of protests against the Vietnam War and the normalization of diplomatic relations with South Korea and China during the 1960s and 1970s.

Younger generations with no firsthand knowledge of war accounted for almost half of the population in 1970, and it was already pointed out that wartime experiences were being forgotten and that it had become a "ritual" to feature a large amount of war-related news coverage in August.

But the narrative of suffering remained the basic theme (of news coverage at the time), except for some exceptions such as "The Forgotten Soldiers," a documentary aired by Nippon Television Network Corp. in 1963, and "Chugoku no Tabi" (Trips in China), a newspaper column that began serialization in The Asahi Shimbun in 1971 and later sparked controversy.

However, the "narrative of aggression" temporarily became active during the 1980s and 1990s.

Particularly in 1995, which marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, many articles and programs were produced to review Japan's war responsibility and its perceptions regarding historical issues.

However, this trend didn't emerge spontaneously from within the media.

Rather it came in response to a series of social movements--"external pressure," so to speak--such as controversies over history textbooks, lawsuits brought against Japan by former "comfort women" and the government's official apology that followed, demands for compensation from atomic bomb survivors and forced laborers in Asian countries, and the Murayama Statement, issued by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, in which he expressed his feelings of deep remorse and stated his heartfelt apology for Japan's colonial rule.

The narrative of suffering remained the mainstream, but it was a time of opportunity to make a transition and open the closed August journalism.

Q: Are you saying the public's interest in Japan's aggression didn't last until this century?

A: The 1990s, meanwhile, was also a period of backlash when critics were at odds with each other over their political and ideological stances surrounding historical perceptions, igniting a fierce response from the right against Japan's remorse for its aggression.

Conservative opinion magazines took a proactive stance to say that Japan had liberated Asia from the colonial rule of the Western powers, while neoconservatism and historical revisionism represented by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform also rose in popularity.

This trend gained further momentum in and after the 2000s and news coverage about war and peace rapidly returned to the narrative of suffering, possibly because media outlets were intimidated by a series of protests and criticism against their articles and programs.

There were 230 TV programs produced in line with August journalism in the 2000s and 237 in the 2010s, showing a significant decrease from 294 in the 1990s.

Under his second term, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe steered clear of mentioning Japan's aggression and remorse in his address at a government memorial service for the war dead on Aug. 15 for eight years in a row, and it was this period when the media's coverage of narrative of aggression receded into the background.

While 45 war-related programs aired in the first half of August 2015, when it marked the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, none of them was themed on Japan's aggression.

In particular, Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) has not produced any documentaries dealing with comfort women in a straightforward manner since its 2001 program that focused on wartime sexual violence and later caused controversy over whether the public broadcaster altered its contents due to political pressure.

Q: I heard that you found August journalism problematic because of your experience as a director at NHK.

A: I was working at the Hiroshima station for a total of four years before and after the 50th anniversary of the war's end.

It was also around that time when the United States conducted a subcritical experiment, and I made several programs related to atomic bombs, including a special documentary examining why opinions of atomic bomb survivors wouldn't appeal to the world, but when I look back, I was caught up in the typical "narrative of Hiroshima."

Takashi Hiraoka, who served two terms as Hiroshima mayor since 1991, mentioned Japan's responsibility for aggression for the first time in one of his Peace Declarations on Aug. 6.

The former journalist thought that the "weakness" placed solely on the victimization experiences and atomic bomb survivors' feelings, as well as the poor quality of journalism, were what prevented "Hiroshima's philosophy" from appealing to the world.

He believed that it wouldn't be elevated to an antinuclear ideal on a universal scale unless we placed the atomic bombings in the wide context of Japan's war and overcame the "A-bombed nationalism" built upon our awareness as members of the only nation to have experienced atomic warfare, instead of making Hiroshima a sacred site for peace.

Members of the media, including myself, couldn't take his profound question seriously and make it our own.

Since the late 1990s, when there was an increasingly strong tendency for backlash, Hiroshima mayors completely stopped mentioning Japan's aggression in their Peace Declaration.

TURNING AWAY FROM MANNERISM

Q: As those born after the war make up more than 85 percent of the population, it has been a major challenge to pass down wartime memories. Also, we are beginning to hear an expression that sounds disquieting, which is "a new prewar period."

A: It is unavoidable for wartime memories to fade away when war survivors are passing away.

Still, when we look outside the country, Japan's view on war and its perceptions regarding historical issues continue to be questioned, as symbolized by a deep rift between Japan and the United States over their views on the atomic bombings and by the comfort women issue.

The only way to transform the introverted nature of August journalism into an interactive one is to keep making efforts to diversify our perspectives and make the "narratives" multi-layered.

To achieve that goal, I think it is necessary to diversify members of the media, including increasing the number of reporters and directors with foreign roots.

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Born in 1968 in Ehime Prefecture, Yonekura is a professor at Nihon University's College of Law.

Specializing in video journalism and media history, he is also a member of the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization (BPO)'s Committee for the Investigation of Broadcasting Ethics.