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Public Statuary and Nationalism in Modern and Contemporary Japan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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In recent years we have seen a worldwide increase in debates surrounding memorials that celebrate historical personalities. In the United States, statues of generals who commanded the troops of the Confederacy in the Civil War (1861-65) have been demolished or strongly criticized as inappropriate. In Oxford, students have demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) because of the role he played in British imperialism and his advocacy of racist ideology, which is today widely considered offensive. In 2015, the University of Cape Town removed a statue of Rhodes, which had been erected in 1934 near the entrance to the campus. In Namibia, the statue of a German colonial soldier was demolished in 2009 and later re-erected at a less prominent position, only narrowly escaping complete destruction. In some cases, the controversies around these monuments have led to violent clashes between those who consider them remnants of a former age, out of sympathy with the twenty-first century zeitgeist, and those who either favor their preservation as part of the country's “culture and heritage” or who continue to espouse the ideologies the statues represent.
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Notes
1 See Joachim Zeller, “Das Reiterdenkmal in Windhoek (Namibia) - Die Geschichte eines deutschen Kolonialdenkmals.”
2 For a summary of the historiographical debates around the Meiji Restoration, see Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman, “Introduction,” in Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman (eds), Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History, Routledge, 2018.
3 For more on the statues of Mōri and Kusunoki, see Sven Saaler, “Men in Metal: Representations of the Nation in Public Space in Meiji Japan, 1868-1912,” Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 19, 2009, pp. 27-43.
4 Regarding the development of modern Kanazawa, see Louise Young, Beyond the Metropolis. University of California Press, 2013; Louise Young, “Urban life and the city idea in the twentieth century,” in Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman (eds), Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History, Routledge, 2018.
5 Research on the modern statuary of Europe usually focuses on one country. For France, see Hargrove, June (1990), The Statues of Paris: An Open-Air Pantheon. New York and Paris: Vendome Press; for Germany, see Alings, Richard (1996): Monument und Nation: Das Bild von Nationalstaat im Medium Denkmal. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Highly informative regarding statues in the German kingdom of Wurttemberg is Alan Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Wurttemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. For a general overview of modern statuary in Europe, see Michalski, Sergiusz (1998), Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage 1870-1997. Clerkenwell: Reaktion Books. The statues of the United States and, in particular, those of the Confederacy, are addressed in Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1913, Oxford University Press, 1988.
6 Bronze is an alloy consisting of copper and other metals, usually tin or zinc.
7 See here.
8 See here.
9 The last major public statue built was the monument dedicated to Nara-era court noble Wake no Kiyomaro near the Imperial Palace, which was inaugurated in 1940. Between 1940 and 1945, less than ten public statues were built.
10 Inoue was one of the founders of the right-wing organization Ketsumeidan (Blood Pledge Corps). Its motto was “One Man, One Assassination,” and the group is usually held responsible for the assassination of former finance minister Inoue Junnosuke on 9 February 1932, of Director-General of the Mitsui conglomerate, Baron Dan Takuma, on 5 March 1932 (Blood Pledge Corps Incident), and of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyhoshi on 15 May 1932 (15 May Incident). See here.
11 Famous examples are the statues of foreign professors on the campus of The University of Tokyo or the statue of Commodore Matthew C Perry in Shimoda, where he landed in 1854 to sign a treaty with which Japan was to open relations with the United States.
12 Harada Iori, Meiji ishin to iu ayamachi. Nihon o horoboshita Yoshida Shōin to Chōshū terorisuto. Mainichi Wanzu, 2015.
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