Japanese Perceptions of Papua New Guinea: War, Travel and the Reimagining of History

Hardcover

Japanese Perceptions of Papua New Guinea exposes the interactions between two ostensibly opposing worlds: war and travel. While soldiers deployed to Eastern New Guinea during the Second World War recalled first-hand their experience of war, post-war tourists visited battle-sites, met locals, and drew their own conclusions about the Pacific island from the Japanese media. This book, in bringing travel and war closer together through a comparative analysis of veterans' memoirs and the records of postwar travelers, explores how individuals consume, create, and recreate war histories. As a result, Ryota Nishino reveals the extent to which the memory of defeat - for both soldiers and civilians alike - influenced the Japanese perceptions of Papua New Guinea and shaped future relations between the countries.

Translating a diverse range of Japanese primary and archival sources, this book provides the first English-language analysis of the social and political impact of Japanese interpretations of the PNG campaign and its aftermath. As such, Japanese Perceptions of Papua New Guinea: War, Travel and the Reimagining of History is an important text for anyone seeking a sophisticated understanding of war, nationalism, and memory culture in Japan and the Pacific Islands.

Author: Ryota Nishino
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 10/06/2022
Pages: 264
Weight: 1.21lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9781350139008

About the Author
Nishino, Ryota: - Ryota Nishino is Senior Lecturer in History at University of the South Pacific, Fiji and Research Affiliate at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of Changing Histories: Japanese and South African Textbooks in Comparison, 1945-1995 (2011).McVeigh, Stephen: - Stephen McVeigh is Lecturer in War & Society and Academic Director of the BA and MA War & Society programmes at Swansea University, UK.