Out With Human Rights, In With Government-Authored History: The
Comfort Women and the Hashimoto Prescription for a ‘New Japan’
Hopes and Dreams They exist all over Japan, like tiny sparks of
light, flickering and fragile, but somehow surviving against the
odds: the peace museums, the reconciliation groups, the local
history movements that work to address problems of historical
responsibility neglected or denied by national politicians. As
Kazuyo Yamane notes, according to a UN survey, Japan has the
highest number of peace museums of any country in the world
(Yamane 2009, xii). But the heritage created at the grassroots
by ordinary Japanese people is constantly under threat from the
hostility of nationalist politicians and sections of the media:
and never more so than today (see Chan 2008; Morris-Suzuki, Low,
Petrov and Tsu 2012). Among the sparks of light is Osaka’s Human
Rights Museum, also known as Liberty Osaka. Founded in 1985,
Liberty Osaka is Japan’s only human rights museum. It features
displays on the