일본의 역사인식과 역사수정주의

Abstract

This article is intended to understand Japanese historical revisionism. With the end of the international Cold War in the 1990s, Japan made efforts to strengthen its identity, led by conservative politicians. In particular, they strengthened their identity through historical issues and made new historical awareness an important topic. Historical revisionism, initiated by conservative politicians and conservative intellectuals, began as a movement. Historical revisionism in Japan took many forms. In other words, it was led by conservative politicians, it was carried out in a business-friendly form through the media and magazines, and finally, it was carried out at the level of a national movement, so the degree of spread was very large. This historical revisionist movement was linked to historical denialism and attempted to distort the historical facts of prewar Japan. The characteristic of the historical revisionism carried out in Japan is that it was nationalism carried out within a neoliberal political economy. Right-wing politicians preferred nationalism, aiming for a ‘strong nation’ while uniting with each other. They hoped to create a strong nation through political reform and create a powerful top-down regime based on that. And he sought to carry out a conservative political movement that would strengthen the authority of the state in all relationships. These historical revisionist activities had a negative impact on history in Korea-Japan relations and relations with East Asian countries. In particular, they appeared to take a position of historical denialism surrounding the Great Kanto Earthquake massacre issue, comfort women issue, and forced conscription issue. In the future, we must continue to uncover historical records and uncover materials to recall memories of Japanese colonial rule. In addition, we must further systematize and ‘historicize’ what has been revealed in the data of previous studies to prevent attempts at historical revisionism from becoming mainstream.