Memory, testimony, and activism: the politics of commemorating the massacre of Koreans after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake

Abstract This article examines the role of survivor and witness testimonies in revealing the truth about the massacre of Koreans that occurred after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and the significance of anti-denialist activism. Few sources in the English-language scholarship have discussed the massacre of Koreans, and none have examined the history of activism surrounding its commemoration in Japan. This article focuses on the Association for the Exhumation of the Remains and the Commemoration of Korean Victims Massacred after the Great Kantō Earthquake (Hōsenka), formed in 1982. Although Hōsenka was unable to find remains of Korean victims, the 1982 excavation nonetheless enabled local residents to give testimony. Through cooperation between Japanese residents and Zainichi Koreans, Hōsenka succeeded in collecting several testimonies from witnesses and survivors in the 1980s. Hōsenka’s investigation was a breakthrough in research history, as it uncovered the actual involvement of the military and the police in the massacre. In the 1990s and 2000s, Hōsenka worked to erect a monument but failed to obtain cooperation from Japan’s national and local governments. In 2009, the group built and installed the monument on private property. The monument explicitly assigns responsibility for the massacre to the Japanese army, police, and vigilante groups. In response to the rise of right-wing denialism since 2009, Hōsenka has published books and lobbied the local authorities. In 2023, a group of young activists assumed Hōsenka’s mantle. The testimonies collected by Hōsenka allow the younger generation to comprehend the magnitude of the massacre. In postcolonial circumstances, the dichotomy of perpetrator and victim fades, as succeeding generations of both parties rediscover and reinterpret the memory. This article illustrates how the history of atrocities committed by imperial Japan may be temporarily forgotten or denied, yet persists as local memory, continually rediscovered through the efforts of activists.