The Trap of an Official Apology: the Power of Civil Society in Promoting Reconciliation
Résumé
More than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, warring nations have not completely achieved true reconciliation. For decades, official state-sanctioned apologies have been considered a useful tool to help rebuild broken international bonds, but their effectiveness in fostering national reconciliation remains debatable. On the contrary, more and more studies seem confirming civil society’s role in facilitating people’s reflection upon the most rending aspects of their own past. With civil society involvement in the discussion of Second World War responsibilities still limited in Japan, this paper recalls the experiences of Germany and Italy and the difficulties they encountered in shaping a constructive discussion on war responsibilities and reconciliation to argue that the Obama-Abe exchange of official visits in Hiroshima and Pearl Harbour in 2016 represents a crucial step forward in relaunching the debate on the Japanese Second World War narrative. In particular, this article claims that the wording and the images used by Shinzo Abe and Barack Obama could become, if well framed by national media and the official debate, “agitators of memory” pushing civil society to further and more deeply engage in this crucial discussion for the future of Japan.