The Discursive Reconstruction of Historical Responsibility: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Shinzō Abe’s Pearl Harbor Speech

This study examines the speech delivered by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe at Pearl Harbor on December 27, 2016, through the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Drawing on Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse model (1992, 2003), the speech is analyzed at the textual, discursive practice, and social practice levels. The analysis integrates collective memory theory (Halbwachs, 1992; Assmann, 1995), Olick’s (2007) framework of historical responsibility, and the literature on political apology discourse (Tavuchis, 1991; Nobles, 2008). The findings reveal three core discursive strategies: (1) the intensification of victimhood discourse through sensory description and individualization; (2) the abstraction of historical responsibility through universal suffering and peace narratives that blur the perpetrator–victim distinction; and (3) the erasure of historical asymmetries through moral symmetry and reconciliation discourse. The study further examines the intertextual link with Obama’s Hiroshima visit, the speech’s multi-layered addressee structure, and the analytical significance of a bibliographically traceable yet contextually reframed attribution to Ambrose Bierce. The findings demonstrate that political leaders’ discourses on historical trauma not only serve reconciliatory purposes but also perform ideological functions in the management of collective memory and the reproduction of political legitimacy.