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Japanese paying a Visit to the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Malta: The Memory of the First World War Sato, Noriko This paper deals with the Japanese Naval Memorial which is located in the Commonwealth Naval Cemetery at Kalkara in Malta and analyzes why Japanese are motivated to pay a visit to such a site, which has the symbiotic relationship with memories of the First World War. This memorial is dedicated to the 68 war-dead, who belonged to His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s 2nd Detached Squadron and operated from Malta in 1917 and 1918 to play a role in protecting the Allied convoys in the Mediterranean. The cooperation of the Imperial Japanese Navy with the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean was set in motion by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, which promised mutual aid if the third party attacked either country. Although the Japanese naval cooperation to Great Britain was highly evaluated in those days, both the West and Japan have forgotten what the Japanese Navy had done in the Mediterranean. Contemporary Japanese’s visit at Kalkara seems to be the act which is beyond the remembering of a particular individual, such as one’s deceased family member. The legacies of the Japanese Squadron become memories, which contemporary Japanese can share to craft “us” as collective. Public memory emerges from fundamental issues about the entire existence of society. The problems, which exist in Japanese society, stimulate public remembrance of the Japanese operation in the Mediterranean as humanitarian one which contributed to maintaining international order. The shifting interests of the Japanese public’s usage of the past, which once forgot, suggest that such informal practices of retrieving the WWI memory are to provide Japanese with a view of the past, which reassures Japanese role concerning a transnational or global network of war memories. They commemorate how the Japanese Navy committed not to battles, but to humanitarian operations, in which they saved soldiers at sea despite the danger of torpedo attacks. Such memory provides the visitors at Kalkara with a clue of how contemporary Japanese should act in international society for other people’s rights.