Abstract: The memory of war in Japan after the World War II has been widely concerned. It is of great significance to analyze the track of Japanese society's understanding of war from the perspective of defeated countries. Analyzing the discourse strategies of widely circulated paper media public opinion is an important way to gauge the social attitude and public opinion. Since World War II, the Yomiuri Shimbun's 8.15 editorial “War Memory” has focused on reflecting on the war, calling for peace, and paying attention to national livelihoods and nation-building in the early stages, while in the later stages it began to discuss responsibility for the war and gradually took a hard line in the international arena. In terms of discursive strategies, there is a tendency to blur the responsibility for the war, to emphasize peace and reflections on the war, and to reinforce its image as the war victim. On the whole, the Yomiuri Shimbun's 8.15 editorial construction of “war memory” focuses on Japan's domestic context synchronically and diachronically, and limits its pursuit of peace to the narrow logic of the war disaster suffered by its own people.

Key words: Japanese media, war memory, 8.15 editorial, discourse analysis