Confessions of Japanese War Criminals in Chinese Captivity

Researcher: Dr. Petra Buchholz

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit

Abstract

This project centers on the self-narratives of Japanese military personnel who made confessions of their war crimes during their internment as prisoners of war in the People's Republic of China between 1950 and 1956, and who did not retract these statements after their return to Japan. Japanese public opinion understood these confessions as radical changes of view on the part of the soldiers and widely regarded them as the result of brainwashing, an imputation of inauthentic thought that placed the returnees in a particularly uncertain communicative situation. The genre of confession constitutes a privileged writing motive, and, thanks to its explicit identification of good and evil, right and wrong, or guilt and possible redress, permits important insights into the concept of person underlying the act of confession. Starting from a contextualization of the confession in East Asian cultures, the analysis of these self-narratives will determine whether they genuinely document a conscious decision, what factors contributed to the imputed radical changes of view, and what kind of group relations were most influential both for the initial making of the confession and for the upholding of the political conversion after the return to Japan. The analysis will also pose the question whether the development of a feeling of guilt for crimes that had not been viewed as crimes previously, can be seen as a change in the concept of person. In addition, we will consider what contribution the documents offer in the process of dealing with the war experience in postwar Japan. A first publication on this subject will be made at the end of the first phase of the project. A digital edition of a representative selection of self-narratives in translation will follow in the second phase of the project.

Dr. Petra Buchholz