Germany and Japan have taken different ways of dealing with the past of the traumatic events of World War II and their own role. Even after 75 years, the battles for remembrance are not over in both countries. Questions about responsibility, about the educational consequences of history and about possibilities for reconciliation with former enemies are constantly being asked anew and require new answers. The contributions in the book address these questions from a Japanese and German perspective on the basis of empirical and historical research, combining historical, educational, and philosophical approaches and opening up new perspectives for academic research as well as for practical educational work by comparing the cultures of remembrance.

Founded in 2000, the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” is one of the largest transitional justice initiatives in history: in cooperation with its international partner organizations, it has to date paid over 4 billion euros to nearly 1.7 million survivors of forced labour during the Nazi Era. This volume provides an unparalleled look at the Foundation’s creation, operations, and prospects after nearly two decades of existence, with valuable insights not just for historians but for a range of scholars, professionals, and others involved in human rights and reconciliation efforts.

What does reconciliation mean and entail? Is collective reconciliation for entire societies or nations possible? This book aims to present it as a highly achievable albeit difficult and complex goal requiring political and collective commitment, resources, and – most importantly – the will to change. Reconciliation is the synthesis and an overarching process consisting of a trinity of recognition, responsibility, and reparation. Through comparative case studies where these different aspects have been implemented in a variety of degrees and combinations, the book illustrates how these constituent parts relate to each other and how they can enhance and complement one another. It also investigates whether there are scenarios where the omission of a certain part can in fact have a positive impact on the reconciliatory process in the short and long terms, the extent to which the order in which different measures are implemented matters, and how national cases differ from international ones. This volume is aimed at postgraduates, researchers, and academics of peace and conflict studies, as well as history, social sciences, political sciences, and legal studies.

Remembrance and reconciliation envision intentional pathways out of conflict and toward peace. Remembrance retraces the junctures in the past that determined what a nation has become. Probing accountability for past actions establishes accountability for what continues to happen. Revisiting what a nation has done brings the perspectives of the peoples of those nations into view.

Why do some governments and societies attach great significance to a particular anniversary year whereas others seem less inclined to do so? What motivates the orchestration of elaborate commemorative activities in some countries? What are they supposed to accomplish, for both domestic and international audience? In what ways do commemorations in Asia Pacific fit into the global memory culture of war commemoration? In what ways are these commemorations intertwined with current international politics? This book presents the first large-scale analysis of how countries in the Asia Pacific and beyond commemorated the seventieth anniversaries of the end of World War II. Consisting of in-depth case studies of China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, United States, Russia, and Germany, this unique collective effort demonstrates how memories of the past as reflected in public commemorations and contemporary politics—both internal and international—profoundly affect each other.

How did civil society function as a locus for reconciliation initiatives since the beginning of the 20th century? The essays in this volume challenge the conventional understanding of reconciliation as a benign state-driven process. They explore how a range of civil society actors - from Turkish intellectuals apologizing for the Armenian Genocide to religious organizations working towards the improvement of Franco-German relations - have confronted and coped with the past. These studies offer a critical perspective on local and transnational reconciliation acts by questioning the extent to which speech became an alternative to silence, remembrance to forgetting, engagement to oblivion.

This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.