Subversive Tears? Tsujihara Minoru's Military Song "Carrying My Comrade's Ashes" and the Submerged Memories of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore

Abstract

Abstract:"Sen'yū no ikotsu o daite" (Carrying My Comrade's Ashes) (1942), a Japanese military song about the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, is a subversive text. Written and composed by Japanese soldiers, the song served during the Second World War as a propaganda text celebrating Japanese imperialism, and after the war as an anti-war text promoting post-war pacifism. Both during and after the war, however, the song triggered responses in audiences, often through the act of crying, to reveal the war memories that both imperialist and pacifist ideologies had submerged.