The politics of nostalgia: museum representations of Lafcadio Hearn in Japan

Abstract

This paper looks at Japanese museum representations of Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), a British author who is known as a lover of ‘traditional’ Japan, and examines how he is commemorated in ‘places of memory’ such as Matsue. In the Japanese context, any attempt to celebrate the memory of Hearn can be perceived as a nationalistic endeavour. Hearn Museums, however, have drawn a distinction between two types of nationalism, political and cultural, and museums representations confine Hearn to the latter. In postwar Japan, nationalism has been viewed as synonymous with militarism and chauvinism. Such being the case, despite Hearn’s political and pragmatic aspects, he is consistently depoliticized as a Romantic author and used as a vehicle for nostalgia (cultural nationalism). Political nationalism and nostalgia, however, emerge from the same source: the emotional needs of a rapidly modernizing nation. Through an examination of museum representations of Hearn, I attempt to shed light on the issue of nationalism and identity in postwar Japan.