Title: Transnational Memories in Asian Cinemas

Acceptance of submissions for the Notebook section: November 1st to November 30th, 2025

Date of publication: July, 2026

Coordinators: Marcos Centeno, Amanda Weiss and Alberto Porta

Parallel to the increasing competition of China, South Korea and Japan for global economic and cultural influence, the region has been subject to the world’s most vivid debates on wartime atrocities in recent decades. The current geopolitical context has given shape to a revival of memories of wartime violence perpetrated in Asia during the so-called “dark valley” (1931-1945) (Holcolmbe 2017).  While wartime issues at stake happened many decades ago, it has not been until the end of the 20^th century that new “memory struggles” have emerged so intensely that they have shaped diplomatic relations in the region to the present day. For example, discussions about the Unit 731 development of biological weapons and lethal human experimentation on prisoners was not subject to public discussion until the 1980s (Keiichi 2005; Dickinson 2007). Likewise, the Nanking Massacre, as well as the “comfort women” issue under the Imperial Japanese Army, only became an international public concern since the 1990s after the publication of documents, diaries and other testimonies (Fogel 2007, Yoshida 2009; Seo 2008).

Asian cinemas are playing an important role in these “memory struggles”, giving shape to the ways that historical atrocities are being revisited through cultural products in the present (Jager and Mitter 2007; Schneider 2008). Thus, the goal of this issue is to examine the ways that fiction and nonfiction films like features and documentaries have later memorialised and appropriated the memory of atrocities perpetrated across Asia-Pacific in the 20^th century. In this sense, both documentary and feature films proposed here may create a sort of postmemory (Hirsch, 2008), wherein generations that did not directly experience traumatic events are nevertheless marked by these experiences so deeply that they constitute memories in their own right. In fact, the relation between war and film are key as postmemory communities must rely on images as a primary medium of transgenerational transmission.   

This volume particularly encourages analyses seeking to update current discussions by applying transnational perspectives that go beyond the national paradigm in Memory Studies, trying to challenge former mnemonic narratives articulated in national terms at some point tin their manuscripts. The transnational is not understood here in a narrow sense, but as a methodological tool that may be applied widely, from textual analysis (study of transnational influences in aesthetics and narrative terms) to production (e.g. coproductions revolving about the memory of a wartime event) to reception studies (e.g. international fandom, comparison of global reception by critics and audience, etc.).

Thus, this special issue welcomes manuscripts on Asian cinemas particularly focusing on, but not limited to:

• traditionally neglected voices by national narratives: women, children as well as ethnic and sexual minorities.
• wartime atrocities such as comfort women, Unit 731, Nanking Massacre, the atomic bombs, air-raids etc.
• the creation of transcultural and transnational identities through memory.
• problematising former categories of victims, perpetrators and heroes through any transnational component in the protagonists.
• narratives that challenge national hegemonic discourses.
• global reception of memory films.
• transnational coproductions dealing with memory and traumatic wartime events of the past.
• narratives that blur cultural boundaries.
• the relationship between films and difficult heritage and memorial sites.
• reconciliation narratives.

 

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