Collective memory in advocating peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study

Abstract

In his paper “Collective Memory in Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study,” Idham Badruzaman provides an example of how to build a peaceful Asian Community. The Foundation is establishing forms of bilateral cooperation at the educational level; mostly in universities and higher education institutions across the world. These programs are contributing to create crosscultural ties within the Asian Community and across the world, surpassing national interests and boundaries, fostering inter-culturalism, and promoting tolerance amid differences. By focusing on the Nanjing Incident, the paper provides an example of how the building of collective memory can help reconciliation, showing the efforts made by Japan and China to maintain a neighbor-relationship. The study collects information about the different actions undertaken to create a collective memory of the Nanjing Incident in order to turn this public recollection into reconciliation. There have been at least seven efforts made to make public recollection about the Nanjing Incident. They include the following activities: publishing a book about Nanjing, building the National Memorial Hall, Annual Commemoration, setting up a National Memorial Day, registering the inscription with UNESCO, establishing the Peace and Research Institute, and eventually registering the city of Nanjing to become A City of Peace. In addition, there are many other events and elements that are worthremembering as part of the collective memory for both the Chinese and the Japanese people. All of them are directed to the normalisation of neighbour relations, in the spirit of peace and reconciliation.