BOOK REVIEW 234 234 Reviewed by Andrew ELLIOTT* Japanese Perceptions of Papua New Guinea: War, Travel and the Reimagining of History By Ryōta Nishino Bloomsbury, 2022 264 pages. In the struggles over the real and symbolic legacies of Japanese imperialism and the Asia-Pacific War that have taken place in Japan and across the wider region over recent decades, events and issues connected with continental expansionism in Korea and China predominate—understandably perhaps, considering the time frames of colonial rule, geographical proximities, and the increasing significance of economic and political relations in the post-postwar. 1 In comparison, in Japan at least, public discussions about campaigns in the South Pacific, and academic analyses focusing on their memorization, are much less prevalent. For this reason, Ryōta Nishino’s stimulating exploration of Japanese representations of the New Guinea campaign (1942–1945) and Papua New Guinea (PNG) from the postwar to the present day is a welcome addition to the scholarship on war memory, useful not only to students and researchers of Japan and the Asia Pacific, but anyone interested in the intersections of history with tourism, travel and life writing, and the mass media. The book analyzes a diverse range of texts and genres in three main parts: war memoirs by soldiers and army doctors, documentaries and films, and travelogues. Some of these texts are relatively well known, as with Hara Kazuo’s nonfiction film Yukiyukite Shingun (1987) and Mizuki Shigeru’s war-related manga, but many of the other, more obscure works have rarely been picked up for academic analysis before. As Nishino explains, all the chosen texts had public release at some point and, to that degree, they both reflect shifting and conflicting perceptions of the New Guinea campaign and wartime when produced and published and have played their own role in how this history has been told, retold, imagined, reimagined, constructed, and reconstructed (p. 2). For this analysis, Nishino draws on Astrid Erll’s idea of “travelling memory” (p. 11)—as much as movement through physical space or travel as narrative, it is this concept that explains the inclusion of “travel” in the book’s subtitle—to describe how memories of the war traverse time, space, media, and genres. * Andrew Elliott is a Professor in the Department of International Studies, Doshisha Women’s College. His present research focuses on hospitality and inbound tourism in the prewar Japanese empire. 1 For an academic study of these debates and movements, see Kim 2016. Japan Review 39 (2024)