The Yokohama war cemetery, Japan: Imperial, national and local remembrance

The burial grounds of the dead of the First and Second World Wars have played a central role in the 'memory boom' of recent decades. These lieux de mémoire, to use Pierre Nora's now classic term, provide the stage on which politicians perform 'memorial diplomacy': that is, those 'carefully choreographed public ceremonies [held] on the anniversaries of historic occasions at selected sites of memory … typically on the margins of international summits or intergovernmental forums' (Graves 2014: 170). War cemeteries also provide the focal point of the countless 'pilgrimages' now undertaken by veterans, families and battlefield tourists. Here, individuals, engaged in memory making at the sub-national level, are able to position their own family history within 'wider, at times universal, narratives of war' (Winter 2006: 40).