<記憶>のポリティクス - 教科書『中等国語』と教材「少年の日の思い出」 -
The politics of memory: Textbook “Chuto-kokugo (Japanese for Secondary School)”and one of its chapters “Shounen-no-hi-no-omoide(Jugendgedenken)”
This paper analyses textbook and teaching material of post-war Japan taking inspiration from the need to examine how education for children provided platform to reconstruct a “Memory” in post-war period. The main focus is laid on Japanese language textbook “Chuto-kokugo” (Ministry of Education, 1947) and one of its chapters “Shounen-no-hi-no-omoide” (Jugendgedenken, Hermann Hesse, translated by Kenji Takahashi). The “Chuto-kokugo” was the first government-designated textbook after the war, prepared in line with policy of GHQ and the Ministry of Education, which required revision of textbook. In other words, “Chuto-kokugo” was an apparatus developed together by GHQ and Ministry of Education, to disseminate crucial national policy of education reform. Needless to say, objective behind this preparation of textbook was linked to intention of reconstructing “National Memory”. In this sense, it can be said that “Chuto-kokugo” was expected to create a new “National Memory” for the children of postwar Japan, and “Shounen-no-hi-no-omoide” was purposefully included to meet that expectation. “Shounen-no-hi-no-omoide” is a story where protagonist thinks of his mistakes of youth as traumatic and starts telling those traumatic experiences when he became adult. It should be noted that there is a hidden deceptive mechanism, which uses experience of moral reflection for transforming long sealed and never expressed “Traumatic Memory” of “Guilt” and “Self Denial” into positive “Memory of Self-Affirmation”. As a result, this paper reveals that the textbook “Chuto-kokugo” and its chapter “Shounen-no-hi-no-omoide”carried the function making children of the time believe that “Memory” of crime particularly “Memory” of war and “Memory” of colonial rule can be altered by reciting words of “Human Culture and World Peace”.