Inheriting perpetrator trauma: intergenerational memory of the Sino-Japan War

The legacy of a perpetrator past has always occupied a troubling place in Japan’s national culture. As in many post-conflict societies, remembering dark history has been shrouded in uneasy trepidation, reticence, and remorse. Almost eight decades after World War II ended, the task of remembering Japan’s perpetrator past has now passed to the postwar generations who have become the carrier groups of perpetrator trauma. This paper explores the cultural trauma of war inherited by the children of veterans who fought in the Sino-Japan War, whose lives were indelibly marked by their fathers’ legacy of violence and guilt. I examine three recent memoirs by the second generation that probe their fathers’ broken lives. The memory work of these writers—Murakami Haruki, Henmi Yō, and Itō Hideko—show that haunting legacies of war can be transmitted across generations even when they are shrouded in silence. This study points a new direction in cultural trauma research that foregrounds intergenerational memory in the cultural trauma process.