Elissa Mailänder's research trip to Japan

Elissa Mailänder's  research visit to Japan as part of the exchange programme between Waseda University and Sciences Po was a unique opportunity to view photographic albums of Japanese soldiers from the Second World War for her collaborative project TROPHY PHOTOGRAPHS. Performative Transgressions of Ordinary Soldiers in World War II, but also to meet colleagues, exhibition curators and travel across the country to visit peace museums while making some amazing encounters.

In Hiroshima, it was not so much the Peace Memorial Museum, dedicated to the nuclear bomb and to bringing to light images designed to touch the public, as the mnemonic topography of the city that made an impression on Elissa Mailänder. One of the most curious museums visited during this mission was undoubtedly the Soldiers' and Ordinary People's War Museum, founded in 1979 by Tomio Taketomi, a former soldier in the Imperial Army. Set in the middle of the countryside, an hour's train journey from Fukuoka, this ‘cobbled-together’ museum, which looks more like a cabinet of curiosities, is nonetheless driven by a sincere educational desire to pass on the violence (including the crimes) and suffering of war. The aim is to make visitors - schoolchildren in particular - understand the destructive effects of war on victims, executioners and accomplices, on a microhistorical scale. 

The brand-new permanent exhibition at the Kyoto Museum of World Peace, opened in 1992 at Ritsumeikan University, is another very convincing museological example. Completely overhauled and inaugurated in September 2024, the new museum exhibition uses dynamic media tools to place the Sino-Japanese wars in a context of colonisation, occupation, exploitation and violence against neighbouring countries. 

Cover image caption: Hiroshima Genbaku Dome, Peace Memorial