‘Book review: Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan‘, Armenian Weekly, 15 January 2020
The book is by Jennifer M. Dixon, who
seeks to solve the mystery of why and how some states come to terms with their dark pasts while others do not. She [offers] a comparative analysis of two cases: Turkey’s narrative of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 and Japan’s narrative of the Nanjing Massacre of 1937-1938, over a nearly 60-year period (1950-2008).
Her analysis … boils down to the following conclusion: international pressures increase the likelihood of change in official narratives about dark pasts, but domestic considerations determine the content of such change.
For related material, see our tagged list, Using and abusing history, and especially this post and this one.
