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To what degree are historical animosities regarding another country relevant for foreign policy in the face of changes in the security environment? This paper seeks to answer this question in the context of Korea–Japan relations. While pundits have pointed to the Korean public's negative views of Japan—rooted in the colonial experience—as the explanation for the lack of cooperation between Japan and Korea in the security field, this paper argues changes in the level of common external threat can shift the public's priorities from perceived historical injustices toward the needs of security. Surveys from the period when the security environment was shifting markedly—the final years of the Cold War (1986–1990)—reveal that public opinion regarding Japan relative to other powers in the region began to deteriorate only after the security environment improved, pointing to a limit to the extent that "history" trumps security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines civil activities to protect and conserve the underground war-related sites in contemporary Japan. Conservation movements rooted in local communities and centred on the Japanese Network to Protect War-Related Sites are making efforts to transform the dark heritage of war-related sites into cultural property in an attempt to integrate diverse wartime experiences. In delving into the heritage-making practices, I introduce local movements in Okinawa and Okayama. Okinawa hosts the first underground war-related site to become a cultural property, the Haebaru Army Hospital Bunkers, while Okayama struggles to create another one by making the Kamejima Mountain Underground Plant a dark heritage site. I argue that these conservation movements are challenging the homogenising national war memory by attaching ethnically diversified vernacular memories to the underground sites. In doing so, these underground war-related sites have become public spaces where new forms of social engagement are negotiated and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]