Who Is to Blame? : A new book about the war crimes of the 20th Century examines both the hazards and urgency of honesty : THE WAGES OF GUILT: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, <i> By Ian Buruma (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $25; 330 pp.)</i>

The shameful memory market, where Ian Buruma’s remarkable book takes us, has many stalls. Perhaps there has been in the whole of history no more murderous an age, no period more productive of pain--of death, dislocation and despair--than our own century. Our civilization has found new ways to go mad, contrived fresh methods of mass destruction, gone to wars as if wars were parties, and created several calamities to signal that it has outdone nature’s most glamorous disasters.

Consequently, like the plume of the Bomb, guilt’s contamination grows. Commencing at ground zero, the guilty are, first, those who did it ; second, those who ordered it done; third, those who made possible its doing; fourth, those who proposed it ; fifth, those who justified it ; sixth, those who applauded it ; seventh, those who profited from it ; eighth, those whose job it was to obscure and deny it ; ninth, those who knew about it but did nothing; tenth, those who did not know of it but ought to have known; and if it is the dropping of the Bomb, or if it is the rape of Nanking, or if it is the loss of World War I or II, or the Holocaust it self, then perhaps it may be that even the children of the guilty are guilty, that groups are guilty, that races, nations, languages should bear the blame (the victims are guiltiest of all), or if you wish to go that far, that man himself--man’s cruel character and evil nature--is at fault.

With so much that is painful to remember, our period is one in which forgetting is fundamental; yet, paradoxically, we occupy a time when most news travels in a flash, and bad news in a blink. To cover our ears and comfort our conscience, we have learned to make noise, for in the din our attention can wander.

In this examination of the very different ways in which Germany and Japan have dealt with the legacy of World War II, Buruma makes clear and distinct the voices that make up this babble. By moving back and forth between the tender memory centers in these countries--Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Nanking--and by concentrating on the courtroom with its judgments and defenses, the schoolroom with its textbooks and official explanations, and the museum with its “educational” displays, he allows us to distinguish one excuse from another, to catch an accusation here, a confession there--through the usual stages of denial, explanation and counterclaim, sordid and shameful recollection, recognition and acceptance. But he also permits us to review, like a regiment, long ranks of resentment, to listen to blame played as if by a brass band, to observe how the Left’s wings flap from side to side to keep the Right’s from flight, while the Right’s wings fold to bring the whole bird down. Like a technician, he separates the sounds so we can hear the huckstering of horrors, too, as countless anxious interests try to clear the air, clean the slate, escape or confront that demon--truth--while making a profit, gaining an advantage for their policies, justifying the punishments they are about to inflict on their enemies, maintaining their moral superiority and fond self-regard.

To follow the fate of the memories of atrocity and defeat in Germany and Japan, Buruma monitors the media, does his local history homework, attends the theater, reads novelists, visits sites, memorials and museums, and conducts numerous interviews with as many participants and whistle-blowers and apologists as will speak to him. He draws them out wonderfully, often with painfully paradoxical results, as was the case with Azuma Shiro, an 81-year-old veteran of the Japanese Imperial Army who had come forward to embarrass the regime with an account of the behavior of Japanese soldiers during the Invasion of China. Women were raped as a matter of course, and then killed lest they bear witness rather than bastards; rape, after all, was against military regulations. Since Azuma was suffering from a venereal disease at the time, he abstained, a restraint whose point might pass many of us by in view of the murders which concealed the crime. One has to wonder, as well, if the women might have been spared their lives had the army had no such rule against rape, but rather had advised its soldiers to have fun, fornicate and bring shame to the families of their enemies, as the Serbs seem to have intended.

And who is more guilty: the bureaucrat who signed the order, or the camp guard who herded the allegedly infested to the showers? Is it praiseworthy to have distanced yourself from your acts by letting George do it when what George does is to assault a helpless naked woman in the mud she will be murdered in? Is it more villainous to have fashioned a fine blade, or to have used it to decapitate an enemy? To have pondered the most efficient way to burn stacks of bodies, or to have stacked and burned them according to the most efficient way? To have bottled nerve gas or invented it? To have flown the Enola Gray or chalked some braggish insult on the side of the Bomb?

Questions . . . questions . . . how they continue. Are the books I read before I marched patriotically off to battle to be blamed? Are authoritarian parents part of it? Love of church or country? Is romantic music responsible? Obscurantist philosophy? A feudal history? And there is always the runaway consequences of unbridled power. Guilty all, maybe, Cain included, though not guilty equally or in the same way.

Anyway, the war is over, the camps are closed, the soldiers have come home, from the homes they’ve burned, to happy hearths and loving wives. Normality needs to be restored. Pride needs to be regained. Why dwell on the disagreeable? Let us go forward into a financially fine future.

“The Wages of Guilt” is dotted with vivid accounts of the hatred and harassment endured by both Germans and Japanese who have persisted in the pursuit of unpleasant truths.

But Buruma does not exonerate even these truth seekers, for he understands how condemning people can turn into a great sport. Hoist on a newly won piety, we can hide our own bad acts behind the crimes of others. The responsibility for our presently unpleasant state lies elsewhere than ourselves: A ruler we once thought divine is to blame; a general of unimpeachable character and skills proved cowardly and stupid; a weapon of unheard-of horror did us in; and we were, of course, lied to by everybody, by our judges and priests and teachers and leaders and gods. The East Germans pulled this off perfectly for a while, calling themselves Communists and continuing to live like Nazis.

Well, it must not happen again. We shall rub every nose in it . It must never be forgotten. Remember the Maine, the Alamo, Pearl Harbor. War crimes trials are of great educational value, because they bring the truth to light and let it be known. They do? Or are they forums of propaganda--vindictive, self-serving and self-righteous? Who is to try whom, anyway? Do any deserve to escape whipping? Put Dresden with Hiroshima and add Nagasaki to the pot, and you get deeds about as dastardly as deeds get. Perhaps we can trade our imp of Satan for your Instrument of the Devil, even-steven? Who’s to blame if all of us are?

The first generation (who were involved in it and dirtied by it) desires to forget. Destroy the camps, clean up the countryside, rebuild the cities, fail to mention this or that when telling its story, if its story has to be told at all. The second generation, however, wants to remember. The children do not wish to be soiled by the sins of their--for the most part--fathers. Perhaps a camp can become a museum; perhaps a ruined church can serve as its own memorial stone; perhaps classes in former crimes can be held, movies shown, days of devotion set aside. During one of those moments of memory, however, consider why Hegel invented the dialectic. After “forget!” after “remember!” comes “revise!”

A new lawn would look nice around the crematorium. Not everyone was evil, either: How about the heroic resistance? There have been holocausts before. Remember what the Romans did to Carthage? We need to recruit better Buchenwald girl guides. After all, Buchenwald is an East German shrine where many a Communist martyr died. It is also a camp the Soviets kept open until 1950 in order to punish a fresh set of enemies. We deny, for the time being, that the Imperial Japanese Army forced Korean women into prostitution. We also deny the existence of Chinese slave labor in Japan, and if there were such camps they were necessary, and if the Chinese were badly treated, it was because they tried to run away. These “truths,” which the Left has so heedlessly embraced, disgrace the memory of our glorious soldiers and sailors, especially the Kamikaze pilots, whose sacrifices should never be vilified, even if they were in vain, and even if there is no special realm where they now recline in comfort. You think we were bad, what about you guys?

Our guide Buruma is not without his opinions, but what makes him exemplary in this regard is his ability to see the strengths as well as the weaknesses in varying points of view. Nor does he wag his finger and say “shame” all the time. He is mapping our maneuvers, noting the secret reasons for our public principles, understanding the hazards of honesty as well as its urgency. To escape the blame, the pain, the pursuit of Furies, the mind will make excuses, contrive a rescuing metaphysic, rewrite history as though it were a play being tested out of town, and place on its face a melancholy look, or one of ignorant innocence, whatever will seem to work. Perhaps it will do to appear serenely indifferent, or to assume a studious and calm concern as though examining sickly plants. Failing that, murder more or go mad.

You accuse me of leaving the toilet seat up? Well, you never turn off a light. You Yanks want to bring up a few rapes by aggrieved and frightened Japanese soldiers when your country cindered an entire city with one bomb.

If most of us are eager to evade blame, why are a few so willing to accept it? Mea culpa is not the name of a red convertible. But suppose I wish to call myself a German because I think in that way I can bring Bach and Goethe, Durer and Brahms, nearer to my soul. Does Himmler move in too, with all his friends? One tongue tastes sour and sweet with equal ease: The language of Heine and Hitler was the same, if not their style of speech. If I wish to claim the glories of my culture and argue that they live on to some degree in me, how much of the other, the it , must I admit I also am? The desire on the part of many liberal young Germans to face the truth of their history, to resolve that it, in any form or version, shall not happen again (fine as these sentiments do indeed seem), nevertheless suggests that tribalism still holds them in thrall, and that nationalism still pulls at their sleeve.

Similarly, if one treats the Holocaust as a part of the course of history, then it loses its almost holy status; it will have causes and explanations, and these can bear the blame and become its justification. On the other hand, if the Holocaust is regarded as unique, inexplicable, then nothing prepared its coming; no one can assure us it will not occur again; it is like a counter-miracle; and who can be blamed for being caught up in such an unnatural catastrophe and swept away?

Ian Buruma’s book is a catalogue of such quandaries. Offering no solutions, making no predictions, it simply gives us a picture of the moral climate. While Buruma’s focus is war crimes in Japan and Germany, moral climates travel the globe. There are brief periods of arrogant heyday followed by oppressive humidity, disillusion, shame and gloom. He concludes on a cautiously hopeful note, which I wish I could qualmlessly enjoy.

I firmly believe that an ideal life would be one lived without illusions, but disillusionment also grows old. We tire of being wise and of constantly creeping to conclusions. We weary of being sane and seeing life as a long slow slide of sorrow. So former lies are likely to be welcome once again, in their fashionable and glossy get-ups. Goat glands couldn’t make us feel better than injections of fresh falsehood. Give us a moment to throw a little ritual dust in our eyes; then we’ll sally forth to live a little, mouth slogans, raise Cain, sin some and get in trouble.