Japan's Castles
Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace

Provides an innovative examination of heritage politics in Japan, showing how castles have been used to re-invent and recapture the past.

Oleg Benesch (Author), Ran Zwigenberg (Author)

9781108741651, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 March 2020

376 pages, 42 b/w illus.
15 x 23 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'With Japan's Castles, Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg have provided a uniquely valuable addition to English language scholarship on their subject, one that has much to offer to anyone with an interest in Japan studies and cultural heritage. This volume, within the context of the authors' wider work on the subject, will remain the definitive work on the heritage politics of castles in modern Japan. The authors ably explore how castles have been used to present the country's feudal past and put to practical use in both the militarised imperial state and the demilitarised postwar period, thus presenting Japan's castles as a mirror for its changing self-conception as a modern nation state … This work is certainly a necessary addition to any library on modern Japan, and I recommend it unreservedly.' Jon Morris, Social Science Japan Journal

An innovative examination of heritage politics in Japan, showing how castles have been used to re-invent and recapture competing versions of the pre-imperial past and project possibilities for Japan's future. Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg argue that Japan's modern transformations can be traced through its castles. They examine how castle preservation and reconstruction campaigns served as symbolic ways to assert particular views of the past and were crucial in the making of an idealized premodern history. Castles have been used to craft identities, to create and erase memories, and to symbolically join tradition and modernity. Until 1945, they served as physical and symbolic links between the modern military and the nation's premodern martial heritage. After 1945, castles were cleansed of military elements and transformed into public cultural spaces that celebrated both modernity and the pre-imperial past. What were once signs of military power have become symbols of Japan's idealized peaceful past.

Introduction
Part I. From Feudalism to Empire: 1. Castles and the transition to the imperial state
2. The discovery of castles, 1877–1912
3. Castles, civil society, and the paradoxes of 'Taisho militarism'
4. Castles in war and peace: celebrating modernity, empire, and war
Part II. From Feudalism to the Edge of Space: 5. Castles in war and peace II: Kokura, Kanazawa, and the rehabilitation of the nation
6. 'Fukk?': Hiroshima Castle rises from the ashes
7. Escape from the center: castles and the search for local identity
8. Japan's new castle builders: recapturing tradition and culture
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Military history [HBW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History: earliest times to present day [HBL], Asian history [HBJF], Peace studies & conflict resolution [GTJ], Literature: history & criticism [DS], History of architecture [AMX], Castles & fortifications [AMKL]