The fifty-fourth session of the Japanese Politics Online Seminar Series (JPOSS) took place on May 29, 2025. Daniel M. Smith (University of Pennsylvania) chaired the seminar and moderated the Q&A session.
Sangyong Son (NYU) presented a paper which examines how the effects of exposure to extreme wartime violence and argues its effects on attitudes against the use and acquisition of instruments of war. In his study, the author examines the case of victims exposed to atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Using judiciously and conscientiously sourced interview data from both Japanese and Korean survivors, along with a demographically comparable control group of interviewees, the author finds stronger and more enduring anti-militarist attitudes among victims directly exposed to nuclear attacks. In addition, the study further considers the robustness of the results by extending the analysis to victims of firebombing, another form of wartime violence. The additional test yields differing results, suggesting that extreme violence has distinct and possibly unique effects on attitudes toward militarism.
Christopher Blair (Princeton University) and Wilhelm Vosse (International Christian University) offered insightful comments to clarify the paper’s concepts and theories. They also suggested avenues to expand the study by exploring additional attitudinal outcomes and transmission of attitudes across generations. During the Q&A session, participants discussed alternative methodological framing, new sources of data on nuclear survivors, and further tests of the proposed theory.
The organizers would like to thank the presenters, discussants, and participants, as well as the staff at the Harvard Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, who provided administrative support. We look forward to seeing you at the next session of JPOSS: https://jposs.org/.