Since Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine, the global order, which had remained relatively stable during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, has been destabilized by intensifying great power conflicts. Today, there is an incessant phenomenon of nation-states politically manipulating past war memories to justify contemporary conflicts. Analyzing the escalation of these “memory wars” requires recognizing that the war memories shaped during and after the Cold War serve as a critical factor. Concurrently, driven by globalization, “collective memories” that were previously confined within specific regions or national borders are now intersecting and influencing one another globally. This highlights a prominent trend toward what Jie-Hyun LIM (2022) conceptualizes as the "global memory formation." A case in point is how the memory of the Holocaust has become a universal model for victimhood nationalism, deterritorializing and rewriting the interpretations of historical memories in other regions, thereby engendering a complex "entanglement" of memories.
Against this backdrop, this collaborative research examines how war memories in European peripheries centering on Germany (Ochi) and in Asia (Ishii) interact with one another within this global memory formation and construct contemporary mnemonic spaces. Moving beyond a mere comparative analysis of memories across individual nations and regions, this project transcends the traditional frameworks of area studies to examine diachronically and synchronically how these memories resonate, clash, or align across national borders. Ultimately, this study aims to explore the potential for a new "mnemonic solidarity" in an era of great power confrontation and seek implications for conflict avoidance.
