Sociological Study on War and Supernatural Phenomena: Documenting and Inheriting Mysterious Experiences on the Asia-Pacific War

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K20791
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 8:Sociology and related fields
• Research Institution: Hitotsubashi University (2023); Matsuyama University (2020-2022)
• Principal Investigator: NEMOTO Masaya 一橋大学, 大学院社会学研究科, 講師 (00707383)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-07-30 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 戦争体験の継承 / 心霊・超常現象 / 原爆 / 空襲

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Documents and articles were collected and analyzed as the primary method of this study due to the influence of COVID-19 though the study originally envisioned fieldwork and interviews.
The main results obtained from the document survey are as follows. First, there are some mysterious stories in the memoirs of Japanese survivors from the Asia-Pacific War. Second, paranormal phenomena of the Asia-Pacific War have been preserved as folk tales. Third, articles related to ghost and supernatural phenomena on the Asia-Pacific War have been found in occult magazines and books. From documents and articles collected in this study, there are mainly two types of ghost stories on the Asia-Pacific War: ghosts of familiar persons or unknown ones. And the latter are closely related to the history of a place where the ghost appeared.

Free Research Field

社会学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究の学術的・社会的意義は、これまで注目されることのなかったアジア・太平洋戦争にまつわる心霊・超常現象について光を当てたことにある。資料調査を通じて、そうした心霊・超常現象の体験談や語りが一定程度に存在し、残されてきたことが明らかになった。このことは、アジア・太平洋戦争が教育や歴史などとは異なる形でも伝承されてきたことを示唆している。「戦争体験の継承」が社会的課題となっている現在において、本研究の成果は一つの問題提起となりうると考える。