I’ve been to a few history museums in Japan. All of them interesting, but really lacking information about what Japan actually did in the time around ww2.
I know that in Japan they don’t like to show the history when it comes to Japan looking bad, but are there any good museums that actually talk about what happened in the second ww?
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[Yushukan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%ABsh%C5%ABkan) is probably without a doubt the primary museum on WWII, but unfortunately, also infamously biased (revisionist).
There’s the [Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace](https://wam-peace.org/en/) in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
The privately run Center for the Tokyo Raids and War Damage is quite frank about the war and its effects on Tokyo, and is worth the trip. It was established by a private committee when the government declined to do so.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is also frank about the war (the museum in Nagasaki less so, unfortunately).
I felt The Okinawa Peace Museum did a good job with describing the horrific treatment of the Okinawans during the war by the Japanese. It was sobering, for sure.
Kure Maritime Museum is fairly good regarding military history, but if you are looking for a museum with an unbiased portrayal of horrors of Pacific Theatre of World War 2 (and actually Sino-Chinese War that preceded that) there is no such facility.
As mentioned by /u/Mater4President – Okinawa Peace Museum will probably give you the least biased view since it gives you a view of community abused by Japanese during WW2.
Other sites like Okunoshima, even if filled with exhibits that demonstrate insidiousness of WW2 (like experiments on live subjects) whitewash with tourist-friendly face. Okunoshima is known today as bunny island, not as a a place, where chemical warfare experiments took place.
I wish there was a museum dealt with history with history of Japan as DHM in Germany, or with WW2 as museum in Gdańsk, but it is extremely likely that such museum will arise, at least for a generation until all survivors on both sides die out.
Unbiased museum would have to acknowledge that terrible war crimes were committed by both sides, that most major Japanese cities excluding Kyoto and Kanazawa are built on mass graves of victims of fire bombings that were not really given a proper burial, that Allies tactics that also constitute war crimes under modern warfare rules contributed significantly to their victory.
Almost all of the WW2 museums in Japan are focussed on the effects of the war In Japan. Thus Japan’s actions outside the borders are glossed over or only mentioned in passing.
Check out the book “Embracing Defeat” for a deep dive on Japanese reckoning with the war.
If you’re looking for eg the Japanese torture, experimentation, and abuse of Chinese people then I *believe* they generally deny many of those allegations still today. Definitely won’t find in a museum.
Yes, in China. They describe exactly what happened and what it was like under Japanese control. It isn’t pretty and isn’t something you hear in western countries. There are several WW2 museums in China/
I saw in someone’s trip report once that the Oka Masaharu Memorial is a small museum in Nagasaki that is more honest about the war crimes committed by Japan in WW2. It is a bit interesting to see on google maps the reviews from Japanese people claiming that it is all just anti japan propaganda