Archiving and testimonials are crucial in the pursuit of reconciliation of past mistakes. Without evidence of the past, people are unable to reflect and to reproduce new understandings of history and current events.While browsing the BBC News website, I came across this article, What Japanese history lessons leave out by Mariko Oi. She talks about how the Japanese are confused and “fail to understand” current geopoltical tensions with their neighbouring countries because they are not taught comprehensive 20th century history through their educational system. I found this article very interesting as I thought it exemplified how testimony is transmitted and accepted by a society is very largely dependent on as what Gillian Whitlock, author of Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit addresses as “the cultural and political milieu” (78), and how that can influence how people understand current events.

As mentioned in the article, Japanese students are oblivious to the history of World War II and Imperial Japan’s participation in atrocities towards their neighbouring countries, particularly with China and the Nanking Massacre and comfort women, because they are not taught the material through their history education system. They are confused to the why China becomes so upset about political incidences that involve Japan, and to be quite frank, I was too. Never through the Japanese media (I watch quite a lot of Japanese television) had the historical tensions between China been revealed. What is always focused on is Japan’s endurance through the war and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Whitlock illustrates this variation in testimony as follows:

“for testimonial narrative to achieve prominence and affective force, there must [be] a supportive environment that enables particular narratives to be told and heard” and that “the management of testimony is almost always strategic and in the national interest” (78).

This perhaps this illustrates the situation in Japan and the historical controversies. As according to Oi, former history teacher Tamaki Matsuoka “accuses the government of a deliberate silence about atrocities”.  Looking at the government’s tendency to be denial of scope of atrocities that took place, this shows how testimonies are not circulated when they don’t support national interests. As the Nanjing Massacre and comfort women were negative aspects of Japanese history, they have not been included in the Japanese societal memory. Due to this, victims in China are unable to gain recognition and achieve proper reconciliation of the wrong doings of Japan and are not given a supportive platform in which their testimonies are valued and effective. Marginalization of voices occur because the past has not been accurately represented in Japanese societal memory, and thus new knowledge and understandings of present conflicts are unable to be produced. This highlighting the importance of how the past is represented, to understand the present and properly address the tensions and conflicts.