Divided Memories and Reconciliation

There are two obstacles to understanding how historical memory about the wartime period has been formed in Northeast Asia. The first is the existence of persistent national myths about war memory—myths created within those nations and perceptions formed from the outside, and entrenched through the media and popular culture. The second obstacle is the lack of comparative context. The study of historical memory has, until recently, been focused almost entirely on Japan, without comparison to other principle actors in Asia such as China and Korea, or to the United States.