Available via license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Article ID 2632 | Jan 01, 2008
1
"Will you go to war? Or will you stop being Japanese?"
Nationalism and History in Kobayashi Yoshinori's Sensoron
Rumi Sakamoto
“Will you go to war? Or will you stop being
Japanese?” Nationalism and History in
Kobayashi Yoshinori’s Sensoron
Rumi SAKAMOTO
As a study of the influence and nature of
popular nationalism in Japan, this article
examines the relationship between nationalism
and history in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s best-
selling manga comic, Sensoron (On War, 1998).
Sensoron heralded the recent trend of
nationalistic manga targeted at younger
generations [1] and has been instrumental in
popularizing the ideas of new-generation
rightists and historical revisionists over the last
decade. Kobayashi explains his strategy as
“using the language of daily life in order to
discuss politics and ideas” [2], adding that he
created Sensoron as “something that
intellectuals cannot write - something that
young people find pleasure to read and get
completely absorbed in, and yet is not light but
deep”. [3] He also emphasizes that what he
writes is based on the “common sense of
common folks (shomin no joshiki)”. Such an
anti-elitist strategy, along with constant
caricaturizing of academics, journalists,
political activists and politicians as “uncool old
men (dasai oyaji)” as well as his well-
constructed and marketed charismatic
personality, has proved very successful. Indeed,
via the popular medium of manga, Kobayashi
has ostensibly “created a discourse that is more
influential than that of any other “theorist” in
the 1990s”. [4]
Sensoron
Kobayashi’s practice of using a popular cultural
product for disseminating nationalistic
perspectives about Japanese modern history is
important as it potentially links the “naïve” or
“pop” nationalism with more political forms of
nationalism. On the one hand, there is a
considerable distance between “pop” and
political nationalisms. Those who wave rising-
sun flags at the World Cup do not necessarily
support Japan’s recent political moves towards
the amendment of the peace constitution, the
PKO (Peacekeeping Operations), or former
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
2
Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni
Shirine. On the other hand, popular and
political nationalisms are not completely
isolated from each other. Popular nationalism
as a socio-cultural and symbolic phenomenon
may inform, support, or influence the decision-
making process of political elites and
contribute to the formulation of the more
overtly political environment. The nature of the
relationship between popular and more
political strains of nationalism, therefore, needs
to be carefully examined rather than simply
assumed. And Kobayashi’s manga, which
weaves a nationalistic interpretation of history
around controversial issues such as the Nanjing
Massacre, the “comfort women” and the
Yasukuni Shrine, is a useful site for examining
this interface.
Popular nationalism in contemporary
Japan
Recent works on nationalism in Japan point out
the ahistorical and apolitical nature of
contemporary popular nationalism. Kayama
Rika coined the term “petit nationalism”
referring to the “pop” and “innocent/naïve
(mujaki-na)” patriotism among Japanese youths
(“I love Japan!”) seen in such phenomena as the
enthusiastic national football-team supporters
and “Japanese-language boom”. [5] Iida Yumiko
has examined a new type of nationalism, in
which identification with the “pop and
imaginary national community” is achieved via
consumption of national icons, such as rising-
sun face-painting as pleasurable and fetishized
symbols that are void of memories of the past
and the war. [6] From a slightly different angle,
Kitada Akihiro has argued that post-1980s
nationalism is characterized by post-
postmodern “romantic cynicism”, the product
of a complicit relationship between an extreme
preoccupation with “form” without historical
consciousness on the one hand and desire for
connection and emotional attachment on the
other. [7]
These studies suggest that the new “pop”
nationalism in contemporary Japan has little to
do with people’s serious belief in nationalism as
an ideology or with their identification with the
state as a political and historical entity. Rather,
it involves a naïve, almost unthinking (in
Kitada’s case “cynical”) acceptance of the
proposition “I love Japan because I am
Japanese” and the desire to connect with others
here and now via some de-historicized, empty
symbols (“forms” for Kitada). [8] This popular
appetite for national pride and enjoyment in
contemporary Japan is often associated with
the loss of meaning and identity in advanced
capitalist/consumer societies and also the high
level of uncertainty that has characterized
Japan’s post-bubble economy. Consuming the
“nation” as a depoliticized icon alleviates the
pain of oppression in a highly “managed”
society, compensates for the uncertain sense of
self, and creates an imaginary connection with
the other atomized individuals in the urban,
often dehumanized, life-worlds of today’s
generations. Oguma and Ueno’s term
“nationalism as ‘healing’” [9] captures this
aspect well.
The lack of identification with the state
suggests that unlike the wartime ultra-
nationalism, in which the state subsumed
individual consciousness and mobilized people
towards the goals of the state under the
emperor, [10] today’s popular nationalism does
not necessarily lead to militaristic, expansionist
forms of nationalism. Although the possibility
and danger of naïve/pop nationalism being
mobilized by the state does exist, the majority
of Japanese today, as Asaba argues, would not
put the state before their own private lives and
security. Ordinary people’s desire for a sense of
national pride is sufficiently fulfilled by, for
example, the international success of Japanese
athletes and artists. [11] And unless the
security of individual life is (perceived to be)
threatened by an external enemy, [12] this kind
of “pop” and “petit” nationalism may remain
largely unconnected to more political forms of
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
3
nationalism.
Kobayashi Yoshinori
The popular expressions of nationalism
circulating in today’s Japan, however, are not
entirely free from political implications or the
memory of the past and the war. With the
bursting of Japan’s bubble economy in the early
1990s and the subsequent economic recession,
post-1980s Japan has seen the rise of a new-
generation of rightists embracing a brand of
historical revisionism that attempts to establish
national pride not on claims of Japan’s
culturally based economic success and
advantages – as had been the case during the
1970s and 1980s with the concept of
nihonjinron (the discourse of Japanese
uniqueness) – but by reinterpreting Japan’s
modern history, and this has found some
expressions within popular culture.
The views emanating from this reassessment of
Japan’s past and its role as a source of national
pride and identity became widely available and
popularized by the late-1990s and can be
summarized as follows: i) it is natural and
healthy to love one’s country, and Japanese
people should be proud of Japan; ii) post-war
Japanese public discourse had been dominated
by the left, which has presented a “distorted”
and “masochistic” history to the public and
children in particular;
Kobayashi denounces the brain-washing of
children at peace museums
iii) Japan need not apologize (or has apologized
enough) over its war-time deeds; iv) China and
Korea’s anti-Japanese sentiments and actions
are unreasonable and irrational; and v) China
and Korea are using history as a diplomatic
card. Indeed, within the realm of popular
culture, “history” itself – and here “history”
largely means the history of the Asia-Pacific
War - has joined an already popular array of
dehistoricized signs and symbols that
encourage consumers to see themselves as
national subjects. [13]
So, what role do history and images of the past
play in Kobayashi’s construction of
contemporary popular nationalism? In the
following sections, I will examine Sensoron in
more detail and analyze the relationship
between nationalism and history he presents in
this text. Examining Kobayashi’s manga will
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
4
shed light on the “popular” dimensions of
contemporary Japanese nationalism and
historical revisionism and also the extent to
which the effective use of popular media has
contributed to its increasing presence over the
last decade. [14]
Examining popular discourse is important
because much of the so-called “debate” on
contentious issues of memory and history (such
as the Nanjing Massacre, the “comfort women”
and the Yasukuni Shrine) is disseminated
through popular media; there is a vast amount
of popular writing on these topics in books,
newspapers, general-interest magazines and
very importantly on the web. Many scholarly
works on these issues exist, but are yet to filter
through into the public discourse or
consciousness. Popular media material and its
influence on perceptions needs to be taken into
account in order to understand the current
controversy over history and memory not only
within Japan but also between Japan and
China/Korea.
History as a place where boys can be
heroes again
Kobayashi is a well-known manga artist, who is
associated with the nationalist-revisionist
movement that appeared in the 1990s. He is an
honorary director of the New History Textbook
Group, and has also been linked with Fujioka
Nobukatsu’s Liberal History Group. [15] As
well as authoring numerous manga and
publishing a number of books both on his own
and with some academics, Kobayashi edits
Washizumu (Me-ism), a glossy “intellectual
entertainment magazine that unites Japan”
(according to the blurb on the front cover of
the magazine), which he started in 2002. Since
Sensoron, his first work to tackle historical
issues in any detail, he has been consistently
and energetically disseminating his
perspectives on Japan’s modern history, the
meaning of the Asia-Pacific War, and the
importance of patriotism in contemorary Japan.
Washizumu (Me-ism)
Sensoron is a thick volume that appeared
alongside his long-running series Gomanizumu
sengen (proclamations of arrogance) [16]
where Kobayashi offered his personal, and
often provocative, opinions on various social
issues. [17] The proportion of written text is
very high, making this manga more like heavily
illustrated political essays. It presents the
Liberal History Group’s view that Japan fought
a war of justice, aiming to liberate Asia from
Western, “white” imperialism, and that today’s
Japanese, who denigrate the war heroes as war
criminals, are a product of US brainwashing
since the occupation. In each chapter,
Kobayashi appears as the protagonist,
presenting opinions on such issues as the
“comfort women”, the Tokyo War Crimes
Tribunal, A-bombs, and, of course, the Nanjing
Massacre.
The cover of Sensoron carries a provocative
question: “Will you go to war, or will you stop
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
5
being Japanese?” and tells readers, “You can
now understand Japan; Japan is going to
change!” Sensoron has become a truly social
phenomenon, selling more than 650,000 copies.
It provoked wide public responses, including a
number of serious (and often angry) criticisms
by well-established academics; [18] one book-
length critique by a left-wing academic even
provoked a lawsuit, making Kobayashi and his
manga even more newsworthy. [19] Sensoron
also attracted wide overseas attention, and
even rated mention in the new edition of
Sources of Japanese Tradition, an authoritative
collection of primary texts published from the
Columbia University Press. [20]
Patriotism for Kobayashi clearly is a given. He
maintains that he is merely “trying to wake up
patriotism that exists in ordinary people, rather
than trying to force upon them something that
does not exist”. [21] Historical images,
therefore, are invoked in his attempt to remind
ordinary people of their “unconscious
patriotism (mujikaku-na aikokushin)”. One way
in which Sensoron attempts this is by
illustrating the war-time heroism of “dying for
the nation” with the poignant and powerful
image of kamikaze soldiers, glorifying the idea
of their self-sacrifice for something larger;
something that is beyond mere individuals. This
“something larger” is defined variously
throughout the text as “loved ones”,
“homeland”, “birth-town”, “family”, “the
emperor”, “national future”, “history and
geography [of Japan]” and “the public”, but
“not ... the state system”. [22]
In other words, this intangible “something”
emanates from what Benedict Anderson called
“the beauty of gemeinschaft”, found in the
unchosen “natural tie” between the individual
and the nation as an imagined community.
Dying for something that one has no choice
over, as Anderson suggests, signifies a
“disinterested love and solidarity” and is an
ultimate act, pure sacrifice. [23] It also fits the
cultural codes of bushido, the aesthetics of
honourable death. It is precisely this kind of
profoundly self-sacrificing love and loyalty that
Sensoron plays up via the image of kamikaze
soldiers for the purpose of “waking up”
ordinary people’s patriotism.
Kamikaze pilot Hoshikawa Hachiro
In Sensoron Japanese soldiers are said to be
“heroes (eiyu)” but not in the sense of
specifically named individuals whose unique
character, courage, intelligence, and so on lead
the country to victory; rather, the essence of
kamikaze is found in the anonymity of its
heroes and their embodiment of Japanese
aesthetics of honourable death. They were
ordinary people who believed in the cause of
the “justice in war” and gave up their own lives
in order to protect their loved ones and
homeland. Their anonymity and ordinariness
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
6
can powerfully represent a whole nation
precisely because of the lack of individuality,
which allows them to represent any and all.
This representation of ordinary people doing
extraordinary things in a fictionalized past has
both a nostalgic and utopian function as
Kobayashi counterposes the heroism and self-
sacrifice of the war-time soldiers with today’s
youths, who, according to him, only care about
themselves. The opening scene of Sensoron
comments on contemporary Japan’s “sickening
peace” [24] and its detrimental effect on
people’s morality. He says that today’s youths
are mere consumers; they are materialistic,
egotistic and selfish individuals, who do not
have a true sense of the self, let alone the
willingness to die for the nation. He contrasts
the image of today’s youths who “have been
living in a wealthy society without any
inconvenience, isolated from the community
and history that support their individuality”
[25] with the image of war-time Japanese
whose highly developed self-discipline and
sense of community enabled them to sacrifice
their personal feelings and even their lives for
the public good. War-time Japanese had
something to believe in; today’s Japanese are
apathetic relativists and nihilists. War-time
Japanese felt and accepted a strong connection
with their birth-place, family, history and
community; today’s Japanese ignore and even
reject such connections, floating around
without any solid sense of belonging. What is
expressed here, then, is an anxiety over the
growing effect of modernization, urbanization,
and globalization in Japan. With many
references to youth violence, cult religion, lack
of order and security in contemporary civil life
scattered through its text, Sensoron effectively
speaks to and exploits the generalized sense of
anxiety in contemporary Japanese society and
nostalgically constructs war-time Japan as the
good old days.
But while Sensoron utilizes history as a
nostalgic projection against which Kobayashi’s
disdain for today’s society are contrasted, it has
little to do with the reality of war-time Japan.
He overemphasizes the glory and honour,
paying little attention to the cruelty, misery,
and hardship of the war. Kobayashi never
questions the education and training aimed at
creating the “emperor’s subject” and the act of
self-sacrifice. Neither does he mention that
Japanese soldiers were aggressors and
colonizers in Asia. Providing an accurate
depiction of Japan’s war-time history, however,
is not the point here. What is important for
Kobayashi is the representation of history and
its effect, namely telling his readers that those
kamikaze soldiers had something that today’s
youths do not but should have, and that the
solutions for today’s chaotic and amoral
society, therefore, lie in the past. The image of
heroic death in the past is a fiction that serves
this purpose.
In addition to its function as a lost utopia,
history in Sensoron also serves as a
background for entertainment through the
exploration of human dramas and intense
emotion, which, of course, is the business of
popular culture such as manga. Sensoron
associates Japan’s war with neither atrocity nor
victimhood but rather with drama, romance
and excitement as indicated in the repeated use
of such words as “love”, “courage”, “thrilling
(tsukai),” “moving/touching (kando)”, and
“emotion/human feelings (jo)”. It is full of
masculinized heroism based on discipline,
honour and courage (“a man’s got to do what a
man’s got to do”; “can you die for the one you
love?”). [26] Operating within popular cultural
conventions, Sensoron explores a heightened
sense of connection with others, the painful
awareness of human mortality, and the
exhilaration of temporarily losing oneself in
something beyond life, time, and space vis-a-vis
the image of a kamikaze boy soldier visiting his
family for the last time or friendship between
two men who are destined to die together. As
entertainment and consumer products, history
manga (as well as historical novels and films)
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
7
have long been exploiting history as a
background for fictionalized tales, intended
primarily to entertain without any pretense to
historical accuracy.
Using history as the backdrop for idealized
narratives intended to entertain is, by and
large, neither new nor particularly problematic.
In Sensoron, however, Kobayashi employs both
his critique of today’s Japan and the popular
cultural function of entertaining by appealing
to emotion to construct national subjects in
contemporary Japan. His call for public
morality, intimate relationships, community,
independent thinking, romance and meanings,
in themselves, are hardly extraordinary. But as
soon as he chooses the idealized “national” past
(which he claims to be the “truth of history”) as
a means for critiquing today’s Japan, problems
arise. The aesthetics of willing sacrifice of
oneself, most symbolically in the forms of
gyokusai (honourable death) and kamikaze
attack, are defined as quintessentially
Japanese, Thus Kobayashi’s presentation of
human drama in an idealized historical setting
also primarily functions to interpellate the
readers into national subjects. Readers,
addressed directly by the protagonist
Kobayashi, are made to feel proud of being
Japanese and experience intense emotions via
their identification with the characters “as
Japanese”. Since the appeal to emotion, not
logic, is central to the success of nationalism,
popular culture’s familiarity with modes for
manipulating emotion is particularly useful for
advocating nationalism.
“Our granddads” discourse
Kobayashi nevertheless does not tell his
readers to die for the nation here and now.
Such a demand is not (and cannot be) part of
the structure of his nationalist discourse. He
sees today’s Japan as corrupted by selfish
individuals and rampant consumerism; as far as
Kobayashi is concerned, there is no longer a
Japan that is worth dying for. The heroism of
kamikaze soldiers, the beauty of protecting the
nation by sacrificing the self, the nation that is
worth giving up one’s life for, the aesthetics of
self-discipline, and the strong sense of the
“public” are all things that can exist only in the
past he reconstructs, a past that is glorious and
that one can be proud of.
Sensoron instead offers its readers the
possibility of a different kind of heroism from
that of their grandfathers, namely the heroism
of fighting against the dominant post-war
discourse on Japan’s war of aggression and of
“protecting” “our granddads” from contempt
and the stigma of war criminals. Kobayashi
argues that in the post-war hegemonic
discourse of pacifism, the former soldiers –
read “our granddads” – have been labelled as
“militarists” and shunned by society. Referring
to his own grandfather who was first “left
behind in New Guinea during the war by the
military elite, and then in the masochistic
nation, Japan, by the antiwar pacifists ... and
yet died without complaining once”, [27] he
sets up a dichotomy between “our granddads”
who “fought for the country ... to fulfil the
obligation as members of the nation and
responded to the expectation of the nation”
[28] and those in post-war government,
intelligentsia, and media, who marginalized and
cut off “our granddads” as something “dirty”
and “evil”.
Kobayashi’s enemies in this symbolic war are
thus largely domestic ones, namely, Japanese
politicians, academics, bureaucrats, journalists,
and the “lefties” who he says have been
brainwashed by the US since the occupation in
the immediate postwar period. Set against a
domestic backdrop of strong anti-war
sentiments and widespread condemnation of
Japan’s Pacific war, Sensoron’s message seems
to be that by fighting a discursive/symbolic war
over the meaning of the past in order to protect
“our granddads”, “we” can be heroes again,
here and now. Readers are invited to join the
brave Kobayashi, who declares: “I will protect
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
8
our granddads, even if it means that others
may call me a bad guy.” [29]
Kobayashi’s agenda is to tell and revive in
contemporary Japan what he calls the
“granddads’ story” - a story of a “just war” that
protected Japan and liberated the “coloured
race” from the “white race” - against the
dominant narrative of the “mistaken war” in
which Japan is an aggressor. While the rhetoric
of just war had existed throughout the post-war
period within the marginalized rightist
discourse, Kobayashi, by heavily relying on the
imagery of “our granddads” as voiceless
victims (of the government, media, academics –
in short, the elite), shifts such a rhetoric from
freakish and anachronistic ultranationalism to a
common sense stand by a silent majority
wrongly suppressed in the hegemonic
discourse of postwar Japan. The discursive
structure of “recovering the voice and story of
the victims” was a familiar one to the Japanese
people in the 1990s because of the redress
movements for the “comfort women” and other
victims of Japanese war-time actions.
Kobayashi uses the same logic in representing
the Japanese soldiers as the silenced victims
whose story now needs to be told in the public
domain.
In Kobayashi’s telling of the “granddads’
story”, individual and national stories are
merged with each other. Rejecting the view
that Japanese soldiers went to war either
forced against their will or brainwashed,
Kobayashi insists that each soldier chose to
believe, as a conscious agent, the subjective
truth of a just war as well as the aesthetics of
self-sacrificing, insisting also that this provided
some meaning in their lives. [30] He neglects
the well-documented practice of ideological
education and training as well as the culture of
absolute obedience within the Japanese
military. Still, in so far as this remains an issue
of the subjective belief of some individuals, one
can readily agree with him that it is possible
that believing in the cause of the war lessened
the sense of wasted life and suffering for some
individuals. In his text, however, the above
point regarding individual belief, slips into
another argument that those who died for the
nation have “protected the pride of Japan”, [31]
that they died for the “future of the country, for
us”, [32] and that “they believed it, and we can
believe it now too”. [33] In this discursive
move, a statement concerning individual and
subjective belief in the past slips into one
concerning a collective narrative today based
on an objective truth. Past glory becomes a
basis for today’s proud identity. [34] The
symbol of “our granddad” in Sensoron, thus,
sutures the gap between the heroic past and
the corrupt present, presenting an unbroken
narrative of the nation, as well as offering
today’s Japanese a chance to be heroic again by
choosing to honour “our granddads” by fighting
against the dominant narrative of postwar
Japan regarding its past aggression.
History as a site of the “information war”:
Kobayashi on the Nanjing Massacre as a
“fabrication”
The theme of symbolic war over history
dominates Kobayashi’s treatment of the
Nanjing Massacre. The 1937 Nanjing
Massacre, in which Japanese soldiers killed,
raped, and assaulted large numbers of Chinese
soldiers and civilians (estimates vary, but at
least tens of thousands), has been well-
documented by historians, although important
differences remain over the temporal and
geographic scope of the massacre and the
numbers killed. However, the Nanjing
Massacre is a highly controversial political
issue that continues to affect China-Japan
relations. In both countries, the incident carries
huge symbolic and emotional importance and
has been avidly taken up in the context of
contemporary national identity formation and
reformation.
In Japan, around the time of the publication of
Sensoron, the Nanjing Massacre left the
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
9
confined debate among historians and entered
the public discourse and imagination. As the
sudden increase in the number of Japanese
publications questioning the Nanjing Massacre
attests, [35] it has become one of the key issues
in the politics of memory and representation in
the revisionist re-interpretation of Japan’s
history. In China, on the other hand, the
Nanjing Massacre is emerging as a foundation
stone of the Chinese national identity built
upon the notion of victimhood and collective
suffering. [36] It is also offering a new point of
identification for the Chinese of the diaspora.
Joshua Fogel has observed that “many Chinese
in the Diaspora with considerably less
knowledge of their own traditions and history
than their forebears have seized on the Nanjing
Massacre as their own”. [37]
Although the relevance of the Nanjing
Massacre (and indeed many other issues of
history and collective memory that Japan now
faces) extends far beyond Japanese national
history, Kobayashi attempts to confine it within
a strictly domestic narrative primarily designed
to protect national pride. Claiming that there is
an “information war (joho-sen)” going on
between Japan and China, he makes a vow to
clear Japan’s name by disclosing the error of
“the stupendous idea that Nanjing was a
Holocaust - a misunderstanding that is
spreading through the world”. [38] The
exaggerated statement that the Nanjing
Massacre-Holocaust equation is “spreading
through the world” constructs Japan as a victim
of international misunderstanding and attack,
fitting well with his overall strategy of fostering
nationalism by using enemy-figures that
undermine Japanese national pride. For
Kobayashi, the commonly held view that the
Nanjing Massacre demonstrates the Japanese
Imperial Army’s cruelty is a prime example of
how internal enemies are collaborating with
Japan’s external enemies to undermine
Japanese pride and self respect.
In addition to identifying the various domestic
enemies (e.g., elite, media, bureaucrats,
communists, citizens groups, the “lefties”) and
the US as the origin of Japan’s “masochistic
history”, Sensoron introduces another enemy
figure: China. In Sensoron, the Chinese at the
time of the Nanjing Massacre appear as
uncivilized (“hodgepodge military which cannot
be understood within the concept of the
modern military ... the common sense of
modern war does not apply ... [Chinese troops]
ignore all the rules”). [39] Cannibalism and
other supposedly characteristically Chinese
forms of cruelty are also invoked with details
and illustrations. These representations
operate within the codes of civilization versus
barbarism that have circulated in Japan since
the nineteenth century.
Kobayashi’s description of the Chinese is
reminiscent, for example, of the Meiji
enlightenment intellectual Fukuzawa Yukichi’s
1883 comment that if China waged a war and
Japan lost, the Chinese, not knowing a “war of
civilization”, would “loot private and official
properties, rape women and children, steal
gold and money, kill the old and infants, and
set fire to the houses.” [40] Fukuzawa also tells
an anecdote of a Chinese man who killed a
French woman and stole her jewellery with her
severed ears and fingers still attached. [41]
Indeed, this long-standing theme of China’s
barbarism, which emerged as Japan adopted
the discourse of civilization and progress along
with the Western racialist-Orientalist image of
the primitive and wild “Other”, is precisely
what Kobayashi is anchoring his historical
narrative upon. [42]
If the Chinese at the time of the Nanjing
Massacre are represented as uncivilized and
cruel, today’s China and Chinese are
represented in terms of “non-democratic
government” and “childish/immature
nationalism”. [43] In fact this is an increasingly
common rhetorical response within Japanese
political circles to the rising tension between
Japan and China. For example, Yamauchi
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
10
Masayuki, a member of the prime minister’s
advisory group on foreign affairs, has argued
that the “intensity of [Chinese] nationalism and
patriotism go way beyond anything seen in
Japan”. He has contrasted the “excessive” and
possibly “damaging” nationalism arising out of
the Chinese Communist Party’s official
interpretation of national history with Japan’s,
where historians are free to develop their own
views without having to function politically in
deference to national unity. [44] Similarly, an
article written by the Minister of Public Affairs
for the Japanese Embassy in Washington in the
International Herald Tribune (January 2006)
juxtaposes Japan’s “mature democracy”, which
does not need nationalism to supply legitimacy
of rule, with “non-democratic states with no
freedom of expression” where “rulers tend to
resort to [“dangerous”] nationalism in order to
strengthen their authority”. [45] Needless to
say, the contrast between Japan’s “mature
democracy” and “healthy nationalism” versus
China’s “lack of democracy” and “childish
nationalism” is a version of the old contrast
between civilized/modern Japan versus
uncivilized/backward China.
Although Sensoron contains clearly negative
images of China and the Chinese, overall it is
not an outright anti-China book. The first and
foremost enemy of the nation in this text is the
West and America along with Japanese
intellectuals and leftist media as their domestic
sympathizers. Reflecting the position that Japan
fought for Asia as the representative of the
“coloured race”, Kobayashi’s perspective
towards China is often more patronizing than
hostile. In problematizing the Nanjing
Massacre, his main targets are firstly America,
as he argues that the Nanjing Massacre was
fabricated during the US-led Tokyo Tribunal
where victor’s justice prevailed, and secondly
“the world” that believes Japanese atrocities
were on a par with the Holocaust. [46] The
main function of his discussion of the Nanjing
Massacre is to create a sense of threat and
conspiracy in order to construct Japan (a
maligned nation of “ordinary people and their
“grand-dads”) as a victim of misunderstanding
and injustice that are the products of a
conspiracy between the external enemy,
America, and internal enemies, the intellectuals
and media.
In terms of the Nanjing Massacre itself, his
main points are as follows: i) since Nanjing’s
population was only 200,000, it is impossible
that 300,000 Chinese were killed (300,000
being the “official” Chinese figure); ii) no
journalist in Nanjing witnessed the Massacre;
iii) only 49 murders were reported by the
International Safety Zone Committee in
Nanjing; iv) KMT guerrillas inside the
International Safety Zone carried out robbery
and rapes while disguising themselves as
Japanese soldiers; and v) most photographs of
the Nanjing Massacre are fake. Largely
speaking, he presents a simplistic and extreme
view by putting together selectively chosen
materials from works of conservative historians
and journalists, and adds his alarmist warning
that Japan is a victim of international
conspiracy and brainwashing.
This is not to say, however, that what
Kobayashi presents is not based on “facts” or
“research”. Far from it, Sensoron frequently
uses quotations and references as well as
detailed analysis of what he calls “primary
sources”, which add an air of credibility to his
manga. The chapter which questions the
validity of some Nanjing photographs is a case
in point; the photograph circulated by peace
activists and left-wing publishers in Japan with
the caption, “an execution with a Japanese
sword” cannot, according to Kobayashi, be
from Nanjing because of the summer clothing
the soldier and the victim are wearing - the
Nanjing Massacre took place in winter. On
another photograph titled “dead bodies
discarded in Yangtze River”, he points out that
the military uniform of the soldier is different
from those actually worn by the Japanese
soldiers, and demonstrates the differences with
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
11
detailed illustrations.
However, inconsistencies and errors among a
few photographs do not challenge the status of
the atrocity as an historical event of large
significance; on the contrary, Kobayashi’s
assertion that the Nanjing Massacre is nothing
but “fabrication” is obviously fraudulent. But
via the function of metonymy, this kind of
warped history building develops an alternative
narrative for the Nanjing Massacre as an
historical incident. In general, as with the
above examples, there are some truths in what
he says, especially if we focus on details such
as the exact number of the victims or the
accuracy of the caption of specific photographs.
But he uses his materials selectively, ignores
what contradicts his point, blows data out of
proportion and rips it out of context, and
generally jumps to unwarranted conclusions.
Using manga as a mixed media of visual and
written texts, Kobayashi effectively blurs the
boundaries between fact and fiction, history
and ideology, past and present. As the
protagonist, Kobayashi freely goes back and
forth between the past and the present, reality
and fiction, sometimes appearing even as one
of the soldiers. Photographs appear alongside
his illustrations, the latter challenging the
former. Quotations from other sources are also
accompanied with his illustrations of, for
example, deformed and evil-looking Chinese,
Japanese boy-soldiers with shining eyes, and an
intelligent and serious looking Kobayashi
warning the reader not to accept the
“distorted” history that has been “forced” on
the Japanese (with bold Gothic letters for
emphasis). [47]
Uninformed readers can easily be persuaded of
Kobayashi’s authority as they, page after page,
see Kobayashi the protagonist reading
published works on the Nanjing Massacre,
commenting on them, refuting their points with
his “evidence” and urging them to: “Learn the
facts that have been hidden from the Japanese!
We cannot talk about history while averting our
eyes from the facts!” [48] Kobayashi creates a
sense that there is some sort of conspiracy
against Japan going on, and that he, the hero-
protagonist, is unveiling the “truth” before the
reader’s eyes, exposing the lies of mainstream
academia and journalism. What the reader
cannot see, however, is Kobayashi’s selective
use of the “facts”. For example, when
Kobayashi presents a 1937 Japanese
newspaper cutting with a photograph of a
peaceful Nanjing city - thanks to the Japanese
troops - he does not mention the severe
censorship that Japanese media was placed
under at the time. Elsewhere Kobayashi says
that he is teaching his readers the “media
literacy” [49] needed for the “information war
over the Nanjing Incident”. [50] Ironically, it is
publications like Sensoron, with its seductive
blend of carefully selected facts and emotional
appeal, which provide the strongest case for
media literacy.
Conclusion
Sensoron exemplifies the recent trend of
nationalism articulated within the realm of the
“popular”, promoted via consumer culture and
“enjoyed” by the masses. It stands in contrast
to nationalist ideals and perceptions
propagated traditionally by the intellectual and
political elite. However, there also are some
important differences between Kobayashi’s
manga and the “pop” nationalism discussed
earlier. “Pop” nationalism is about ordinary
people’s modes of relating to the nation-state
and it is often mediated by the dynamics of
mass/popular culture. It relies heavily on
images and icons that are cut-off from their
historical meanings. It is not always clearly
articulated or even overtly nationalistic in
terms of the content – hence the
characterization of it as being “unthinking” and
“non-intelligent”. Kobayashi’s manga, in
contrast, while clearly a popular and
commercialized product targeted at “ordinary”
people, carries far more explicit and detailed
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
12
political messages of nationalism, using many
references to Japan’s wartime history. If the
icons and symbols of pop nationalism -
immediately appealing, fashionable and
pleasurable - are dissociated from history and
politics and do not call for intelligent, ethical,
and critical judgement, [51] Kobayashi’s text
combines the immediate appeal of the visual
images with complex textual messages, openly
combining the pop and the political. In other
words, it is popular and accessible in its style
and medium, but not totally naïve or
“unintelligent” in its content. It requires some
thought on the readers’ part and challenges
readers (Kobayashi tells his readers to doubt
everything and everyone – even Kobayashi
himself), and may possibly appeal to a different
segment of the population from those who are
attracted to “pop” nationalism. [52]
Sensoron is an entertainment product, and at
one level its use of history is utopian, fictional
and popular cultural. But it also contains strong
historical truth-claims and constructs a
nationalist discourse in today’s Japan around
historical images of brave soldiers and the
rhetoric of “our granddads”. By incorporating
detailed explanations and interpretations of
historical events such as the Nanjing Massacre,
it exerts much tighter control over the readers’
interpretations of its content compared with
“pop” nationalism’s use of the national icons
and symbols such as the rising-sun flag,
national football team, samurai ethics or the
Royal Family. Furthermore, while these icons
do not identify any particular group or country
as the national enemy, images of the enemy are
clearly, unequivocally and eloquently
articulated in Sensoron. Maruyama Masao has
argued that the production of a national enemy
or at least national threat is the precondition
for the shift from apolitical national
consciousness to more exclusivist and
aggressive forms of nationalism. [53] If this is
true, then Kobayashi’s portrayals of various
enemy figures clearly has the potential to
mobilize people beyond the pleasurable
consumption of national icons, whose primary
function is to create a sense of connection in an
otherwise alienating and meaningless world,
into the realm of a far more politicized form of
nationalism.
Sensoron clearly shows that history is
important in popular expressions of nationalism
in contemporary Japan. Popular culture has
now become a site for contesting historical
truth, and this manga functions as a ground for
a political battle over memory and history,
promoting nationalism. For the Post-Cold War
revisionists’ hegemonic project aimed at
creating a new consensus over the
interpretation of history and cultivating
national pride among Japanese, the realm of
culture that is accessible and familiar to
ordinary people, as opposed to the purely
political or intellectual realm, has become
increasingly important. As a reserve for the
collective imaginary, too, popular culture is an
important site for the politics of emotion, which
Japan’s new nationalism is largely about.
Using popular culture as a vehicle for politics,
however, comes at a price. As a form of
entertainment, it has a different impetus and
logic from academic work on history or political
negotiations. The fiction/reality boundary is
collapsed, and the tendency towards over-
simplification, sensationalism, polemic, and
controversy dominates. Instead of complex and
nuanced history that captures the multi-
dimensional reality, history is reduced to the
matter of taking a clear-cut either/or position.
Historical events such as the Nanjing Massacre
is morphed into a caricaturized “debate” that
fascinates many but does not create a new,
shared meaning.
History is a collective narrative that needs to
be told and retold without ignoring the views
and sensitivities of “the other”; it must be a
process underpinned by commitment to a
common future. The modern history of Japan
inevitably concerns and contains “others”, for
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
13
Japanese imperialism has inescapably
connected the history of the Japanese people
with histories of people in Asia. In the era of
globalization and digital communication, no
“national” history is insulated from the input of
and scrutiny by these “others”. It is not
possible to tell a purely “national” narrative, for
example, about the Nanjing Massacre. And yet
Sensoron attempts exactly that, insistently
excluding what it stipulates as the nation’s
Others from its short-circuit of the author and
readers as both proud Japanese. In fact the
whole thing depends on the construction and
exclusion of various Others - not just China,
other Asian nations and the Japanese left, but
also former Japanese soldiers who denounce
Japan’s war-time atrocities, or bereaved
families who demand that the souls of their
loved ones be taken out of the Yasukuni Shrine.
History in Sensoron is closed-off from any
possibility of participation by them as co-
authors of a collective narrative. In the
domestic context of postwar Japan’s intellectual
discourse, Kobayashi’s manga does have a
critical function challenging the mainstream
interpretation of history and opening up a
dialogue over important issues such as the
continuity between Japan before and after
1945; however, this potential is unrealized
because of its exclusive focus on the nation and
the closed nature of his language. His
challenge may make sense domestically and
internally; externally, however, it is closed off
and simply unacceptable. At the end of the day,
what is provided is a narrowly national story
woven around the image of the heroic struggle
against the external enemy in the past as well
as in the present. History thus becomes a mere
sign: plenty of images and accounts of the last
war circulate in the public domain, but history,
in all its abundance, is here reduced to an
empty signifier for the nostalgic desire for the
unity of the nation.
This is a revised version of Rumi Sakamoto’s
chapter, 'Will you go to War? Or will you stop
being Japanese?': Nationalism and History in
Kobayashi Yoshinori's ‘Sensoron', in Michael
Heazle and Nick Knight (eds), China-Japan
Relations in the Twenty-first Century: Creating
a Future Past?, Cheltenham, UK and
Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2007.
Posted at Japan Focus on January 14, 2008.
Rumi Sakamoto is Lecturer in Asian Studies at
Auckland University and a Japan Focus
associate. She is the coeditor with Matt Allen of
Popular Culture and Globalisation in Japan.
Notes
[1] Kobayashi Yoshinori (1998), Sensoron (on
war), Tokyo: Gentosha. Other examples include
Akiyama Joji (2005), Chugoku nyumon
(introduction to China), Tokyo: Asuka Shinsha;
Yamano Sharin (2005), Ken-kanryu (hating
Korean wave), Tokyo: Shinyusha.
[2] Kobayashi Yoshinori, Takeda Seiji and
Hashizume Daizaburo (1997), Seigi, senso,
kokkaron (on justice, war and state), Tokyo:
Komichi Shobo, p. 25.
[3] Kobayashi Yoshinori (2002), Shin-
gomanizumu Sengen (new proclamation of
arrogance) Vol. 5, Tokyo: Shogakkan Bunko, p.
54.
[4] Kitada Akihiro (2005), Warau nihon no
‘nashonarizumu’ (laughing ‘nationalism’ of
Japan), Tokyo: NHK Books, p. 211.
[5] Kayama Rika (2002), Puchi-nashonarizumu
Shokogun (petit nationalism syndrome), Tokyo:
Chuko Shinsho Rakure.
[6] Iida Yumiko (2004), ‘Kashi-ka sareta
kokumin-kokka to kairaku no ideorogî:
johoshihonshugi-ka ni okeru nihon no
nashonarizumu (visualized nation-state and
ideology of pleasure: Japanese nationalism
under information capitalism)’ in Ito Mamoru
(ed.) Bunka no jissen, bunka no kenkyu
(practicing culture, studying culture), Tokyo:
Serika Shobo, 2004.
[7] Kitada (2005), Warau nihon no
‘nashonarizumu’ (laughing ‘nationalism’ of
Japan).
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
14
[8] In this respect it is suggestive that Ueno
Yoko’s ethnography of a grass-roots
conservative movement - which officially
focused on history textbooks - has also shown
that its participants were more interested in
sharing a communicative space with other
members via the use of certain key words than
in the nation-state as their object of
identification or nationalism as a political
movement. See Oguma Eiji and Ueno Yoko
(2003), ‘Iyashi’ no nashonarizumu (nationalism
as healing), Tokyo: Keio-gijuku daigaku
shuppankai.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Maruyama Masao (1964), Gendai-seiji no
shiso to kodo (thought and behaviour in
modern Japanese politics), Tokyo: Miraisha.
[11] Asaba Michiaki (2004), Nashonarizumu
(nationalism), Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho.
[12] Kang Sangjung (2001), ‘Togi: kugatsu
juichinichi ikou no nashonarizumu (discussion:
nationalism after 9/11)’, Gendaishiso 29 (16), p.
40; Kayama Rika and Fukuda Kazuya (2003),
Aikoku-mondo (A debate on patriotism), Tokyo:
Chuko Shinsho Rakure, pp. 9-10.
[13] In addition to nationalistic comic books
such as Akiyama’s Chugoku nyumon
(introduction to China)and Yamano’s
Kenkanryu (hating Korean wave), a number of
films such as Puraido: unmei no toki (pride:
fateful moment, 1998), Otoko tachi no Yamato
(men’s battleship Yamato, 2005), Kyoki no
sakura (madness in bloom, 2002) also indicate
the use of history in recent popular culture.
[14] This is not to say that Japanese popular
culture only or even mainly transmits
nationalist messages. For example, Matthew
Penney has argued that the prevalent antiwar
images in postwar Japanese popular culture
have contributed to the considerable support of
Japan’s Peace Constitution today. See Penney,
Matthew (2005), “The ‘most crucial education’:
Saotome Katsumoto, Globalization and
Japanese anti-war thought”, in Allen, Matthew
and Rumi Sakamoto (eds) (2006) Popular
Culture, Globalization, and Japan, London:
Routledge. The use of popular culture for
carrying right-wing and nationalist messages is
a new phenomenon.
[15] The new history textbook group is a
collection of conservative academics and
others. They have produced a history textbook
that glorifies Japan’s past, and attempted to
have it adopted in schools. Although the
adoption rate was negligible, their activities
sparked a lot of debate in Japan regarding to
the interpretation of history and revisionist
tendency within society.
[16] Originally serialized in Weekly Spa, from
1992 to 1995 but moved to Sapio in 1995.
[17] Prior to Kobayashi’s “turn to history” he
had addressed such issues as the HIV lawsuit
over the infections via contaminated blood and
Japan’s new cult religion, Aum Shinrikyo. In
both, he was actively involved, supporting the
victims, fighting with the cult, and even at one
point becoming a target of the assassination
plot.
[18] They were not just scholars of media or
popular culture, but those from a more
traditional disciplines such as historians,
philosophers, and sociologists.
[19] Uesugi Satoshi won in court and went on
to write another book on this legal battle over
the copyright issue regarding the use of
Kobayashi’s manga in his book.
[20] de Bary, WM T., C. Gluck, and A. E.
Tiedemann (2005), Sources of Japanese
Tradition: 1600 to 2000, Vol. 2., second edin,
New York and London: Columbia University
Press.
[21] Kobayashi Yoshinori (2000), Ko to koron
(on the individuals and the public), Tokyo:
Gentosha, p. 276.
[22] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 287.
[23] Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined
Communities, London: Verso, pp. 141-4.
[24] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 9.
[25] Ibid., p. 354.
[26] Ibid., p. 281.
[27] Ibid., p. 208.
[28] Ibid., p. 203.
[29] Ibid., p. 64.
[30] Ibid., pp. 292-6.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
15
[31] Ibid., pp. 363-4.
[32] Ibid., p. 96.
[33] Ibid., p. 312.
[34] Similarly, individual heroism in the past
slides into the image of Japan as the brave
Asian nation that fought against “white
imperialism”, despite the fact that individual
heroism cannot establish Japan’s role as the
“liberator of Asia” as an objective historical
reality.
[35] For example, Fuji Nobuo (1995), “Nankin
daigayakusatsu” wa ko shite tsukurareta (this
is how the “Nanjing Massacre” was created),
Tokyo: Tentensha; Higashinakano Osamichi
(1998), “Nankin gyakusatsu” no tettei kensho
(a thorough examination of the “Nanjing
Massacre”), Tokyo: Tendensha; Matsumura
Toshio (1998), “Nankin gyakusatsu” e no
daigimon (A big question on the “Nanjing
Massacre”), Tokyo: Tentensha; Suzuki Akira
(1999), Shin “Nankin daigyakusatsu” no
maboroshi (the new illusion of the “Nanjing
Massacre”), Tokyo: Asuka Shinsha; Fujioka
Nobukastu and Higashinakano Osamichi
(1999), “Za reipu obu Nankin” no kenkyu
(study of “the Rape of Nanking”), Tokyo:
Shodensha; Takemoto Tadao and Ohara Yasuo
(2000), Saishin “Nankin daigyakusatsu” (the
alleged “Nanjing Massacre”), Tokyo: Meiseisha.
[36] Buruma, Ian (2001), ‘The Nanking
Massacre as a historical symbol’, in Li, Fei Fei,
R. Sabella and D. Liu (eds) Nanking 1937,
London and New York: M. E. Sharpe.
[37] Fogel, Joshua (ed.) (2002), The Nanjing
Massacre in history and historiography, p. 3.
[38] Kobayashi (2000), Ko to koron, p. 233.
[39] Kobayashi, Sensoron, pp. 120-35.
[40] Fukuzawa, Yukichi [1883] (1981), ‘Toyo no
koryaku hatashite ikansen (how to capture the
East)’, Fukuzawa Yukichi Senshu (selected
works of Fukuzawa Yukichi) Vol. 7, Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, p. 147.
[41] Ibid.
[42] The image of China in Japan sharply
changed in the nineteenth century from that of
civilization and the Middle Kingdom to that of a
backward and uncivilized people.
[43] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 123.
[44] Yamauchi, Masayuki (2005), ‘Restraint in
the uses of history: recent developments in
Japan-China relations’, Gaiko Forum, Fall, pp.
11-23.
[45] Kitano, Mitsuru (2005), ‘The myth of rising
Japanese nationalism’, International Herald
Tribune (12 Jan 2006), , accessed on 10 April
2006.
[46] Despite the use of the sensational word
“fabrication”, Sensoron does not actually deny
the fact of violence itself; rather it minimizes
the scale of the atrocity and justifies the action
of the Japanese troops. This is also the case
with most of the so-called “illusion-school”
writers who write on the Nanjing Massacre.
[47] Uesugi Satoshi (1997), Datsu-gomanizumu
sengen (leaving the proclamations of
arrogance), Tokyo: Toho Shuppan, pp. 11-12.
According to Uesugi, Kobayashi’s visual style is
similar to war propaganda used by Japanese
military, while Tessa Morris-Suzuki has pointed
out the similarity between Kobayashi’s manga
and the former Soviet Union’s poster arts,
which also used techniques of juxtaposing of
past and present images, collage and
photomontage, the contrast between realistic
and nice-looking ‘we’ versus exaggerated and
deformed ‘them’. See Morris-Suzuki, Tessa
(2004), Kako wa shinanai (the past within us),
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp. 230-5.
[48] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 127.
[49] Kobayashi Yoshinori, Fukuda Kazuya,
Saeki Keishi, and Nishibe Susumu (1999),
Kokka to senso (state and war), Tokyo: Asuka
Shinsha, p. 42.
[50] Ibid., p.48.
[51] Iida Yumiko, ‘Kashi-ka sareta kokumin-
kokka to kairaku no ideorogî: johoshihonshugi-
ka ni okeru nihon no nashonarizumu (visible
nation-state and ideology of pleasure: Japanese
nationalism under information capitalism)’, p.
172.
[52] Kayama and Fukuda have observed that
the readers/supporters of Kobayashi’s works
tend to be students who take social issues
seriously. They speculate that those who in the
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.
APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0
16
past would have been attracted into student
movements or volunteer work with some
affiliation with the left, are now drawn to
Kobayashi due to the diminished attraction of
the traditional left in Japan. See Kayama Rika
and Fukuda Kazuya (2003), Aikoku-mondo (A
debate on patriotism). This portrait of the
readers also fits with Kobayashi’s stated target
group as thinking young people who take
history and society seriously.
[53] Maruyama Masao (1964), Gendai-seiji no
shoso to kodo (thought and behaviour in
modern Japanese politics), p. 274.
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 07 May 2025 at 09:39:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use.