2015考研英语阅读日本史选择性记忆

　　Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering

Japanin the Modern World. By John Dower.

　　《淡忘之道，铭记之途：现代日本》，约翰道尔著。

　　As the ghosts of the Pacific war judder back to life inAsia, it seems appropriate to consider how nationstates remember, and misremember, the past. Japan s current tiffs with its neighbours,China and South Korea, are rooted in the march to war and its undigested aftermath, morethan 75 years ago. They are inflamed, however, by different narratives of history, and bynational media coverage that is often parochial and amnesiac.

　　近日，太平洋地区发生战争的阴霾再次笼罩着亚洲。现在来思考民族国家是如何铭记及误记历史的，似乎正是时候。日本最近和中韩两个邻国之间起了种种争执，这都源于75年多以前发动的那场战争和它所带来的尚未平复的创伤。然而，各国对历史的记述不同，国家媒体的报道也往往狭隘而有所回避。因此，这些争执被激化了。

　　Conflict and memory are the themes that animate this new collection of essays by JohnDower, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Embracing Defeat , which looked at Japanafter the second world war. Mr Dower is particularly interested in Japan s sanitisation of itsmilitary past, but also the way history in general is often a tool used by the powerful.

　　冲突和回忆这两种主题为约翰道尔这本新散文集赋予了生命。他另著有《拥抱战败》，该书研究了二战后的日本，获得了普利策奖。道尔对于日本粉饰其军国主义历史的行为特别感兴趣，但他也同样关注当权者通常是如何利用历史的。

　　Mr Dower discusses his surprise at hearing his own work cited after 9/11, when Americanofficials evoked the post-war occupation of Japan as a model for post-invasion Iraq.President George W. Bush should have seen that Japan provided no model for occupyingMesopotamia, Mr Dower wrote in a strikingly prescient 2002 New York Times op-ed,reproduced here. To rush to war without seriously imagining all its consequences, includingits aftermath, is not realism but a terrible hubris.

　　在9.11事件之后，美国官员援引了道尔的作品，要求以战后占领日本的模式在入侵伊拉克之后占领该国。道尔表示他听到这一消息以后有些错愕。他在2002 年《纽约时报》的社论专栏里极有先见之明地写道：乔治W布什总统应该认识到，日本不能为攻占美索不达米亚提供模式。不认真考虑战争的后果、包括可能带来的创伤就匆匆发动战争，这不是现实主义，而是一种可怕的傲慢狂妄。

　　He returns to the terrain of Embracing Defeat, marvelling at how the vicious racialhatreds of the Pacific war dissipated so quickly, as though turned off like a spigot. Thelesson for Mr Dower is not only that reluctant civilians must be mobilised by propaganda tofight and die, but also that new realities force new biases.

　　回到《拥抱战败》 的主题上，道尔惊叹于太平洋战争深刻的种族仇视竟然平息得如此之快，就像水龙头一样关掉了。道尔得到了一个教训：问题不仅仅在于不情愿的平民被政府宣传所鼓动才去拼死一战;还在于新的现实形成了新的偏见。

　　No side, he argues, launched a more sophisticated propaganda blitz than the Japanese,who saw their mongrel enemies as biologically inferior. But they were hardly alone.During the war Americans viewed their Asian rivals as monkeys or rats, but with the startof the occupation, Japan became an ally. The popular racism in the American media moreor less stopped, and stayed buried until the 1970s, when Japan emerged as an economicsuperpower. This resurrected Japanese stereotypes of predatory economic animals inWestern suits who were launching a new financial Pearl Harbor. The spigot of racial hatredhad been turned back on.

　　道尔指出，日本人最善于在短时间内对人民进行宣传鼓吹，他们认为那些杂种敌人天生就低他们一等。但这种现象并不只出现在日本人身上。战时，美国人把亚洲对手视为猴子、老鼠但侵占开始以后，日本就成了他们的盟友。后来，美国媒体中盛行的种族歧视或多或少有所收敛，归于沉寂。直到20世纪70年代，日本以经济超级大国的姿态登上世界舞台，于是西方又老调重弹，把日本视为穿着西装、掠夺成性的经济野兽，认为日本正准备发动一场新的金融珍珠港之战。种族仇视的水龙头再次拧开了。

　　When the fighting is finished, history is written, inevitably by those in power, observes MrDower. The standard American view of the struggle against Japan is that it was just andmoral. But this grants little space for the ghastly side of victory, which included the airbornedestruction of 66 cities and the incineration of more than half a million civilians. China andKorea s political elites have found it endlessly useful to bang the nationalist drum to unitepotentially fractious populations against their old enemy. Japanese conservatives havemade it easy for them, whitewashing the past and attempting to pass off Imperial Japan srampage across Asia as a holy war against Western colonialism.

　　道尔做出了这样的评论：当战争结束后，历史将不可避免地由当权者写下。美国人普遍认为对日战争是公正的、合乎道德的。但这份胜利仍然有着极为惨烈的一面其中日本66座城市遭到空袭破坏，50多万平民灰飞烟灭。中国和韩国的政治精英发现，想要把内心愤怒的民族联合起来对抗其共同的宿敌，敲响民族主义这面大鼓最为有效。日本的保守派粉饰历史，试图将日本帝国在全亚洲的暴行伪装成对西方殖民主义的圣战这给中韩两国的政治精英提供了有利机会。

　　Selective memory is often a harmful feature of children s education. Japanese high-schooltextbooks devote impressively little space to the war, reflecting official attempts todownplay the dark aspects of Japan s modern history, writes Mr Dower. For its part,China s government relies on its struggle against Japanese aggression for its historicallegitimacy, so memories of wartime atrocities are kept fresh in schools. This helps to explainthe strikingly different public reactions to the current island disputes. While the Chineseangrily take to the streets, the Japanese stay at home and watch it on TV.

　　选择性记忆往往不利于对下一代的教育。道尔写道，日本的中学教科书对战争描述极少，反映了官方试图淡化日本近代史的阴暗面。在中国这一方面，政府依靠抗日战争来突出其历史合理性，因此学校教育不断提及日本在战时的暴行。这可以解释为什么对于当下的岛屿纠纷两国的公众反应截然不同。中国人愤怒地走上街头抗议，而日本人却待在家里看电视，电视里正是中国人抗议的镜头。

　　For a solution, Mr Dower looks to the 20th-century views of E.H. Norman, a Japan expertand Marxist historian. Like Norman, he feels that most countries need a revolution frombelow against any system that represses freedom, sacrifices life, and retards the creation oftrue self-government. All citizens should be able to challenge the narratives held by elites.At a tense time of toxic nationalism in Asia, this book is a timely reminder of the uses andabuses of history.

　　为了寻求解决方案，道尔研究了日本专家、马克思主义史学家 E.H. 诺曼在20世纪提出的观点。和诺曼一样，道尔认为大多数国家需要一次自下而上的改革，推翻所有压抑自由、牺牲生命、阻碍真正实现自治的体制。所有公民都应当能够质疑社会精英所持的观点。民族主义正在毒害亚洲国家。在这紧张时刻，道尔的这本书及时地提醒了人们历史是如何被利用和滥用的。