‘DEAR ASIAN FRIENDS, WE WANT TO BUILD PEACE’: Rightwing nationalism, internationalism, and Honda Koei’s teaching about the Asia-Pacific War, 1965-1973

This chapter studies the relationship between war memory, education, and nationalism and examines the writing and teaching of Japanese historian and educator Honda Koei about the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A modern nation-state governs its people in part by creating and disseminating narratives and discourses of the nation. Honda’s students learnt about Japan’s past wrongdoings and were asked to write letters to ‘Asian junior high school friends.' They underwent a quiet struggle, but managed to articulate new forms of identities with an inclination toward building peace. In that process, they spoke as ‘we,' the Japanese-a reaffirmation of the imaginary, fixed national boundaries. Honda’s case shows some inherent complexity, contradiction, and uncertainty in the formation of national identity at grassroots levels in a society where nationalism and internationalism compete.