Presentation Information
[SY-59-04]Cultural work in the healing of cultural trauma from the Second World War
*Eugen Koh (University of Melbourne(Australia))
Keywords:
trauma,culture,war
The generation of Japanese that experienced the direct impact of the Second World War, suffered a massive collective trauma, that decades later, becomes embedded in their shared consciousness, which is their culture. If we use trauma in its original Greek meaning - injury or wound, we might say the culture has been injured or wounded. Working from psychodynamic perspectives, which emphasises people's experiences, I define trauma as experiences that cannot be processed. I have, over the past decade, proposed the concept of cultural trauma - defined as 'as the distortion or destruction to a culture resulting from widely shared experiences that cannot or have not been processed.
These changes to culture affect the behaviour of individuals and large groups, including social institutions and processes, and government policies and operations. The impact of cultural trauma on a society continue for generations if it remains unexamined and unaddressed.
These presentations examine the impact of Japan’s traumatic experience of the war on its culture - a process that I have called cultural work. Chizuko Tezuka’s exploration of the use of a form of Japanese poetry called tanka to deeply “self-introspect” on the war demonstrate how such cultural devises might be utilised to explore experiences that are difficult to describe as a narrative. The critical examination of Japanese media’s bias of war narratives by Ritsu Yonekura is courageous, and desperately needed, because the shame and humiliation from the war has created a conspiracy of silence around what really happened. Kai Ogimoto explored the pain of Japan’s experience even more deeply through a psychoanalytic consideration of an ancient Japanese mythology. These are important contributions to the healing of Japan’s cultural trauma from the War.
I hope the countries that Japan invaded will undertake similar cultural work to address their cultural trauma
These changes to culture affect the behaviour of individuals and large groups, including social institutions and processes, and government policies and operations. The impact of cultural trauma on a society continue for generations if it remains unexamined and unaddressed.
These presentations examine the impact of Japan’s traumatic experience of the war on its culture - a process that I have called cultural work. Chizuko Tezuka’s exploration of the use of a form of Japanese poetry called tanka to deeply “self-introspect” on the war demonstrate how such cultural devises might be utilised to explore experiences that are difficult to describe as a narrative. The critical examination of Japanese media’s bias of war narratives by Ritsu Yonekura is courageous, and desperately needed, because the shame and humiliation from the war has created a conspiracy of silence around what really happened. Kai Ogimoto explored the pain of Japan’s experience even more deeply through a psychoanalytic consideration of an ancient Japanese mythology. These are important contributions to the healing of Japan’s cultural trauma from the War.
I hope the countries that Japan invaded will undertake similar cultural work to address their cultural trauma