Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia [1 ed.] 0415835135, 9780415835138

Decades after the end of the World War II East Asia continues to struggle with lingering animosities and unresolved hist

1,435 132 3MB

English Pages 464 Year 2015

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD FILE

Polecaj historie

Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia [1 ed.]
 0415835135, 9780415835138

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
List of figures
List of tables
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Memory and reconciliation in East Asia
SECTION I Domestic trauma and prospects of reconciliation
PART 1 China and political supremacy
1 The changing circle of alliance and the national day parade in China
2 Cacophonous memories of the War: Revision of the official narrative on the War of Resistance against Japan in post-Mao China and its limitations
3 Memory and reconciliation in post-Mao China, 1976–1982
PART 2 Japan and unsettled ambiguity
4 Memory and others: Japan’s mnemonic turn in the 1990s
5 Reconciliation prospects and divided war memories in Japan: An analysis of major newspapers on the comfort women issue
6 (In)visible women: Gendering of popular war memories through the narrative of the battleship Yamato for six decades in postwar Japan
PART 3 Korea, victimhood and the Cold War wounds
7 Memory wars and prospects for reconciliation in South Korea
8 Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko: Korean memories of historical shame and the “Japanese mother of Korean War orphans”
9 Critical assessments of the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission
10 On forgiveness and reconciliation: Korean “collaborators” of Japanese colonialism
SECTION II Bilateral conflicts and lessons for reconciliation
PART 4 China-Japan relations
11 Troubled seas: Japan’s Pacific and East China Sea domains and claims
12 People’s diplomacy: The Japan-China Friendship Association and critical war memory in the 1950s
13 The role of compensation in Sino-Japanese reconciliation: Compensation as a means to restore justice
PART 5 Korea-China relations
14 Reconciliation and the Goguryeo/Gāogōulì disputes between China and South Korea
15 Manchuria: An imagined space for emancipation, conflict, and reconciliation
PART 6 Japan-Korea relations
16 Comfort women controversy and its implications for Japan-ROK reconciliation
17 Korea-Japan reconciliation and the Dokdo (Takeshima) issue
18 Transitional Justice, reconciliation, and political archivization: A comparative study of commemoration in South Korea and Japan of the Jeju April 3 Incident
19 The repatriation movement: Lingering legacies of DPRK-Japan collusion
PART 7 North-South Korea relations
20 Semantic approach for inter-Korea reconciliation: Reflection on conceptual division and political divergence
21 Reuniting families, reframing the Korean War: Inter-Korean reconciliation and vernacular memory
SECTION III East Asia’s challenges and prospects of reconciliation
22 The San Francisco Peace Treaty and the regional conflicts: The Cold War legacies
23 Japanese perceptions of territorial disputes and its implications for reconciliation
24 East Asia and cosmopolitan memory
25 Divided memories and historical reconciliation in East Asia
26 Historical memory issues in China’s relations with its neighbors
Index

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MEMORY AND RECONCILIATION IN EAST ASIA

Decades after the end of World War II, East Asia continues to struggle with lingering animosities and unresolved historical grievances in domestic, bilateral and regional memory landscapes. China, Japan and the Koreas share a history of inter- and intra-violence, self–other identity construction and diametrically opposed interpretations of the past. Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia offers a complete overview of the challenges of national memory and ideological rivalry for reconciliation in the East Asian region. Chapters provide authoritative analyses of contentious issues such as comfort women, the Nanjing massacre, history textbook controversies, shared heritage sites, colonial rule, territorial disputes and restitution. By interweaving memory, human rights and reconciliation, the contributors actively explore real prospects of redressing past wrongs and achieving peaceful coexistence at personal as well as governmental levels. Bringing together an international team of experts, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of East Asian studies, anthropology, gender studies, history, international relations, law, political science and sociology, and for those interested in memory and reconciliation issues. Mikyoung Kim is an Associate Professor at the Hiroshima City University – Hiroshima Peace Institute, Japan.

This page intentionally left blank

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MEMORY AND RECONCILIATION IN EAST ASIA

Edited by Mikyoung Kim

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 selection and editorial material, Mikyoung Kim; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Mikyoung Kim to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Routledge handbook of memory and reconciliation in East Asia / [edited by] Mikyoung Kim (Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute & Asia Center, Seoul National University). pages cm Includes bibliographical references. 1. East Asia—Politics and government—1945- 2. East Asia—Social conditions. 3. Collective memory—East Asia. 4. Reconciliation—Political aspects—East Asia. 5. Reconciliation—Social aspects—East Asia. 6. Human rights—East Asia. 7. World War, 1939–1945—Social aspects—East Asia. 8. World War, 1939–1945— Influence. I. Kim, Mikyoung, 1963- II. Title: Handbook of memory and reconciliation in East Asia. DS518.1.R73 2016 950.425—dc23 2015010096 ISBN: 978-0-415-83513-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-74032-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

In loving memory of my mother, Yang Kyung-ja (梁京子, 1931–2002) & my sister-in-law, Rhee Dong-ju (李東珠, 1953–2014)

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS

List of figures List of tables Contributors Acknowledgements

xi xii xiii xviii

Introduction: Memory and reconciliation in East Asia Mikyoung Kim

1

SECTION I

Domestic trauma and prospects of reconciliation

11

PART 1

China and political supremacy

13

1 The changing circle of alliance and the national day parade in China Tim F. Liao and Libin Zhang 2 Cacophonous memories of the War: Revision of the official narrative on the War of Resistance against Japan in post-Mao China and its limitations Rui Gao 3 Memory and reconciliation in post-Mao China, 1976–1982 Bin Xu

vii

15

26

47

Contents PART 2

Japan and unsettled ambiguity

61

4 Memory and others: Japan’s mnemonic turn in the 1990s Kazuya Fukuoka

63

5 Reconciliation prospects and divided war memories in Japan: An analysis of major newspapers on the comfort women issue Shunichi Takekawa

79

6 (In)visible women: Gendering of popular war memories through the narrative of the battleship Yamato for six decades in postwar Japan Kaori Yoshida

95

PART 3

Korea, victimhood and the Cold War wounds 7 Memory wars and prospects for reconciliation in South Korea Don Baker

109 111

8 Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko: Korean memories of historical shame and the “Japanese mother of Korean War orphans” Mikyoung Kim

128

9 Critical assessments of the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission Dong-Choon Kim

144

10 On forgiveness and reconciliation: Korean “collaborators” of Japanese colonialism Jeong-Chul Kim

159

SECTION II

Bilateral conflicts and lessons for reconciliation

173

PART 4

China-Japan relations

175

11 Troubled seas: Japan’s Pacific and East China Sea domains and claims Gavan McCormack

177

12 People’s diplomacy: The Japan-China Friendship Association and critical war memory in the 1950s Franziska Seraphim viii

196

Contents

13 The role of compensation in Sino-Japanese reconciliation: Compensation as a means to restore justice Ja-hyun Chun

212

PART 5

Korea-China relations

225

14 Reconciliation and the Goguryeo/Gāogōulì disputes between China and South Korea David Hundt and Baogang He

227

15 Manchuria: An imagined space for emancipation, conflict, and reconciliation Sunyoung Park

240

PART 6

Japan-Korea relations

259

16 Comfort women controversy and its implications for Japan-ROK reconciliation Yangmo Ku

261

17 Korea-Japan reconciliation and the Dokdo (Takeshima) issue Seokwoo Lee and Hee Eun Lee 18 Transitional Justice, reconciliation, and political archivization: A comparative study of commemoration in South Korea and Japan of the Jeju April 3 Incident Sungman Koh 19 The repatriation movement: Lingering legacies of DPRK-Japan collusion Tessa Morris-Suzuki

277

287

304

PART 7

North-South Korea relations

319

20 Semantic approach for inter-Korea reconciliation: Reflection on conceptual division and political divergence Myoung-kyu Park

321

21 Reuniting families, reframing the Korean War: Inter-Korean reconciliation and vernacular memory Nan Kim

336

ix

Contents SECTION III

East Asia’s challenges and prospects of reconciliation

355

22 The San Francisco Peace Treaty and the regional conflicts: The Cold War legacies Kimie Hara

357

23 Japanese perceptions of territorial disputes and its implications for reconciliation Mikyoung Kim

372

24 East Asia and cosmopolitan memory Hiro Saito

388

25 Divided memories and historical reconciliation in East Asia Gi-Wook Shin

402

26 Historical memory issues in China’s relations with its neighbors Xiaoming Zhang

416

Index

431

x

FIGURES

11.1 Western Pacific EEZs. Japan-Island Country and Tokyo – Island City 11.2 Japan’s claimed outer continental shelf territories 18.1.1–18.1.2: Withdrawn enshrinement tablets 18.2.1–18.2.3: Removed images from the Peace Memorial Hall 18.3.1–18.3.2: “The Disappeared” displayed and removed 18.4.1–18.4.2: Memorial service in Osaka Zainichi community 18.5.1–18.5.3: Shamanistic ritual in Osaka Zainichi community 18.6.1–18.6.2: Collective grieving at shamanistic ritual in Osaka Zainichi community

xi

178 182 294 295 296 297 298 299

TABLES

1.1 11.1 15.1 18.1 18.2 18.3 22.1 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 23.5 23.6 23.7 23.8 23.9 23.10 23.11 23.12 23.13 23.14 23.15 23.16 23.17 23.18

Lineup of portraits during Chinese national day parades of the masses, 1950–2009 Tokyo’s island territories Investigation of persecuted Koreans by Chinese The 4.3 Committee’s major programs ‘Victims’ and ‘non-victims’ Monuments and memorial spaces at the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park The San Francisco Peace Treaty and regional conflicts in East Asia Gender distribution (frequency, %) Age distribution (frequency, %) Level of educational attainment (frequency, %) Do you know of the Senkakus/Diaoyudao disputes? (frequency, %) Is the Senkaku/Diaoyudao Japanese territory? (frequency, %) Do You know the exact location of the Senkaku/Diaoyudao? (frequency, %) How do you evaluate Japanese government’s handling of the Chinese fishing boat’s collision into the Japan Coast Guard petrol boat? (frequency, %) Will China-Japan relations further deteriorate because of the Senkakus/ Diaoyudao disputes? (frequency, %) Do you think China is likely to attack Japan to resolve the Senkakus/ Diaoyudao disputes? (frequency, %) Do you know of the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes? (frequency, %) Is the Takeshima/Dokdo Japanese territory? (frequency, %) Do you know the exact location of the Dokdo/Takeshima? (frequency, %) How do you evaluate the three LDP members’ attempt to visit the disputed Dokdo/Takeshima islets? (frequency, %) Will the Japan-Korea relations further deteriorate because of the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes? (frequency, %) Do you think violent confrontation is likely to take place between Korea and Japan because of the Dokdo/Takeshima? (frequency, %) Is Japan an Asian country? (frequency, %) How do you predict Japan’s future? (frequency, %) Results of logit multivariate analyses (frequency, %) xii

18 179 246 290 291 292 358 377 377 377 378 378 378 379 379 380 381 381 381 381 382 382 383 383 384

CONTRIBUTORS

Don Baker is a Professor of Korean History in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He has published widely on Korean history, religion and traditional science, with a special focus on the life and thought of Tasan Chŏng Yagyong. His most recent book is Korean Spirituality (2008). He is currently involved in research on the relationship between religious communities and the state since the founding of the Chosŏn dynasty six centuries ago. Ja-hyun Chun is a Research Professor at Korea University, Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS). Chun’s research interests include international reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and collective memory and foreign policy. Her publications include “Have Japan and South Korea Reconciled?: Focusing on Three Stages of International Reconciliation,” ( Japanese Journal of Political Science); “Regression of Reconciliation between Japan and South Korea-Discordance of Japanese Government and Civil Society in Post-War Issues,” (International Journal ); “Beyond ‘Dissatisfaction’ and ‘Apology Fatigue’: Four Types of Japanese Apology,” Pacific Focus; and “When National Pride Meets Naval Power: Maritime Insecurity and Chinese Hegemony,” (International Politics). Kazuya Fukuoka is Associate Professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University, USA. His research interests include nation and nationalism, collective memory and IR of East Asia. His works appear in Asian Politics & Policy, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, and an edited volume, Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory, among others. He is currently working on Japan’s youth nationalism. He also writes and publishes in Japanese. Rui Gao is Assistant Professor in the School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. Her fields of interests include cultural sociology, social and cultural theories, cultural trauma and collective memory, gender and China studies. Her latest publications include a book chapter titled “Remembrance of Things Past: Cultural Trauma, the ‘Nanking Massacre,’ and Chinese Identity” (in the Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology), which she co-authored with Jeffrey Alexander. Kimie Hara is a Professor and the Renison Research Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, where she is also the Director of East Asian Studies at Renison University College. Her xiii

Contributors

recent works examine East Asia-Arctic relations; the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with Japan and its contemporary implications; regional cooperation and conflict resolution; and the shifting regional order in East Asia. Her books include Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific (2007, 2012), and Japanese Diplomacy through the Eyes of Japanese Scholars Overseas – Present, Past and Future (2009). Baogang He is the head of Public Policy and Global Affairs program at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and tenured Full Professor and Chair of International Studies program since 2005, at Deakin University, Australia. Professor He has become widely known for his work in Chinese democratization and politics, in particular the deliberative politics in China. His publications are found in top journals including British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Peace Research and Perspectives on Politics. David Hundt is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University, Australia. His research interests are the politics, security and political economy of the Asia-Pacific, and he has a particular interest in Korean studies. His articles have appeared in Australian Journal of International Affairs, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Political Science and Asian Perspective. His book, Korea’s Developmental Alliance: State, Capital and the Politics of Rapid Development, was published with Routledge in 2009. His main current research project analyzes the varieties of capitalism in East Asia. Dong-Choon Kim served the Korean government as a standing commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (TRCK) from December 2005 to December 2009. As a commissioner, he has directed the investigation of the Korean War massacres for the first time as a governmental body after the incidents. He has acted as an organizer of progressive academic movements since the 1980s and participated in several civil movements in South Korea. He has written several academic articles and books including: War and Society (2000, English title is The Unending Korean War), Engine of America-Market and War (2004), and This Is a War over Memory (2013). Jeong-Chul Kim is a Ph.D. in sociology at Northwestern University, USA. His areas of research interests are in political sociology, collective memory, and law and society. He recently published an article titled “Collaborators and National Memory: The Creation of the Encyclopedia of pro-Japanese Collaborators in Korea” in Memory Studies (co-authored with Gary Alan Fine). His current research includes a study of indigenous collaboration in Japanese-occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945. Mikyoung Kim is associate professor at the Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute in Japan. She has published many referred articles and book chapters on memory, human rights and peace in East Asia. Her book, Securitization of Human Rights: North Korean Refugees in East Asia, was published by Praeger in 2012. Kim co-edited Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010; with Barry Schwartz) which was later published in Japanese, and the journal of North Korean Review (2011–12). Kim served as guest editor of special edition of Memory Studies Journal on Korean memory (Sage, 2013, Vol. 6, No. 2) and the Review of Korean Studies on Japan’s Korean War: the Cold War, Identity and Lived Lives (Academy of Korean Studies, 2014, Vol. 17, No. 2). Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Nan Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, USA. Her research interests include memory and post-conflict reconciliation, representations of historical trauma, ethical dimensions of xiv

Contributors

kinship and the family, the Korean War in regional context, political and historical anthropology, and the cultural history of divided Korea. Her work has appeared in The Journal of Asian Studies and the Revista Arte Internacional. She is the author of Crossing the Divide: Memory, Reconciliation and the Reunions of Separated Families in Contemporary South Korea (2014). Sungman Koh is a Ph.D. student of sociology at Kyoto University, Japan. He has been comparing the islands of Jeju, Okinawa and Taiwan in East Asia in the Post-Conflict post-conflict Era. He has published articles on the Jeju 4.3 Incident and the Battle of Okinawa in Korean and Japanese. Yangmo Ku is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Studies Program at Norwich University, USA. His research focuses on the politics of memory and reconciliation in East Asia and Europe, economic reform in communist states, and US foreign policy. He has been a Korea Foundation Research Fellow; a Georg-Eckert Institute Research Fellow; and a visiting research fellow at Seoul National University as well as Temple University Japan Campus. His work has appeared in Asian Perspective, Yale Journal of International Affairs, and the Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society. Hee Eun Lee is Associate Dean and Professor of Law at Handong International Law School located in Pohang, Korea. Licensed to practice law in New York, he was an associate with a maritime law firm in New York City prior to taking on his academic post. He is the executive editor of the Asian Yearbook of International Law and a member of the Governing Board of the Foundation for the Development of International Law in Asia (DILA). His recent publications include Northeast Asian Perspectives on International Law (2013) and Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice (2011), both edited with Seokwoo Lee. Seokwoo Lee is Professor of International Law and Vice Dean for External Affairs at Inha University Law School in Korea, where he is also Director of Inha International Ocean Law Centre. His research focuses on Territorial and Boundary Disputes, Law of Title to Territory, Law of the Sea and International Human Rights Law. His most recent publications in English are: The Limits of Maritime Jurisdiction (edited with Clive Schofield and Moon-Sang Kwon, 2014) and “Republic of Korea v. Araye: Korean Supreme Court Decision on Universal Jurisdiction over Somali Pirates,” American Journal of International Law (2012) (with Young Kil Park). Tim F. Liao is Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. There, he served as Head of the Department of Sociology from 2004 to 2009 and Acting Director of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies from 2012 to 2013. His research interests include historical and comparative sociology, demography, methodology, visual studies with photography and collective memory. With a grant from the Spencer Foundation (2014–2015) and in collaboration with three Illinois anthropologists, he is also studying the internationalization of the American higher education in a project titled, “the American University Meets the Pacific Century.” Gavan McCormack is Emeritus Professor of Australian National University and a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal–Japan Focus. He is co-author, most recently, of Resistant Islands – Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States) (2012, with Satoko Oka Norimatsu), and Tenkanki no Nihon e – Pakkusu Amerikana ka Pakkusu Ajia ka (For the Japan in Transition – Pax Americana? Pax Asia?), NHK shuppan shinsho, no. 423, 2014, with John W. Dower). Much of his work is also published in Japanese, Korean and Chinese. xv

Contributors

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor of Japanese History and holds an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on aspects of modern Japanese and East Asian regional history: particularly cross-border movement between Japan and its Asian neighbors; issues of history, memory and reconciliation in Northeast Asia; grassroots social movements in Japan; and the modern history of ethnic minorities and frontier communities in Japan. Her most recent works include Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era (2010) and East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of War (Routledge, with Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu, 2013). Myoung-kyu Park is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, Korea. He served as the Director of the Social Development Research Institute (2002–2004), Chairman of the journal of History and Society Editorial Board (2002–2004), and President of the Korean Social History Association (2002–2004). He is working as the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Peace Building. His research fields include social history, sociology of nation and national identity, inter-Korean relations and sociology of religion. He wrote several books and articles, the most recent being Sociology of Boundary in Inter-Korean Relations (Seoul: Changbi, 2012; in Korean). Sunyoung Park is a researcher at Center of Asian Studies of Kyungpook National University in Taegu, Korea. She was formerly a Professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and a visiting scholar at Tokyo University and Ochanomizu University in Japan. She was also a research scholar at Yenching Institute of Harvard University in USA. Park has published many books on Manchuria and East Asia history. Hiro Saito is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the School of Social Sciences of Singapore Management University. As a culturally oriented political sociologist, he researches how expertise mediates interaction between state and civil society in the process of policy-making. Currently, he is investigating the role of scientists and other experts in Japan’s policy responses to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident. His articles have appeared in Sociological Theory, Cultural Sociology, Sociological Perspectives, Social Science Japan Journal and other social science journals. Franziska Seraphim is Associate Professor of History at Boston College, USA. She is the author of War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (2006) and more recently “Visual Cultures of Memory in Modern Japan: The Historical Uses of Japanese Art Collections” in Joan Tumblety (ed.), Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject, Routledge Guides to Using Historical Sources (2013). Her research has been funded by, among others, the Japan Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Scholars. Gi-Wook Shin is Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies; the Founding Director of the Korean Studies Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a Professor of Sociology, all at Stanford University, USA. Some of his recent books include Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014), New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); Troubled Transition: North Korea’s Politics, Economy and External Relations (2013). xvi

Contributors

Shunichi Takekawa is Associate Professor at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (Beppu-city, Oita Prefecture, Japan) where he teaches journalism and media studies and political science. His research interests include the Japanese press and nationalism, and popular culture and identity in Japan. His works appeared in Social Science Japan Journal, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, and Journal of Mass Communication Studies (a journal in Japanese), among others. He is currently researching on local newspapers and the reconstruction in Iwate Prefecture in post-311 milieu. Bin Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University, USA. His research interests include social theory, cultural sociology, political sociology, collective memory and disaster/environmental crises. His articles appeared in Theory and Society, Sociological Theory, Social Problems, Social Psychology Quarterly, The China Journal and China Quarterly. Kaori Yoshida is an Associate Professor at the College of Asia Pacific Studies at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan. Her current research interests include media and cultural studies, particularly focusing on ethnicity and gender representations through popular visual media in Asia and North America, gendering of war memory construction through visual media (mainly comics, live action films and animation) and popular memories constructed by war museums in different countries. Her publications include: “Becoming and Performing the Self and the Other: Fetishism, Fantasy and Sexuality of Cosplay in Japanese Girls’/Women’s Manga Comics” (2011) and “Acquisition of Cultural Competence through Visual Media: Perceptions of Masculinities in Japanese Society” (2012). Libin Zhang was born in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, China. Her academic background is in sociology, specializing in social inequality, population health and related methodology. Her academic interests lie with the support of underprivileged populations for their participation in education, and economic and social opportunities in the global village. Libin is a Research Associate at the Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI) which focuses on supporting employment and community inclusion of individuals with disabilities; she is also responsible for developing, managing and co-managing multiple vocational rehabilitation research projects. Xiaoming Zhang is a Professor of International Relations at School of International Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China. He has been working on Cold War history, China’s relations with its neighboring countries, US-East Asia relations and theory of international relations. He is the author of several books in Chinese: China’s Relations with Its Neighbors (2003), English School of International Relations: History, Theory, and View on China (2010) and An Introduction to the History of US-East Asia Relations (2011). He also published English articles in Review of International Studies, Asian Perspective and East Asia, among others.

xvii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume was supported by the generous funding from the Overseas Korean Studies Incubation Program (Project No.: AKS-2011-BBA-2107, December 2011–November 2014). Most of the editing work was carried out during Korea Foundation Fellowship and Overseas Scholar Fellowship at Asia Center of Seoul National University. Professors Wan Bom Lee, Young-hoon Jeong, Keong-il Kim and Won Kim at the Academy of Korean Studies showed camaraderie during my KF fellowship. Professors Heonik Kwon at the University of Cambridge and Myungkoo Kang at Seoul National University facilitated my affiliation with the SNU’s Asia Center. I owe them a deep gratitude. The cover jacket design was adopted from my father’s (Bhong-jin Kim, 1924– ) oil painting, Sunset on the dock (year unknown).

xviii

INTRODUCTION Memory and reconciliation in East Asia Mikyoung Kim

Domestic trauma, bilateral conflicts and regional reconciliation This handbook aims to connect memory problems and reconciliation prospects in three core East Asian countries of China, Japan and Korea. The region known for dynamic economy, cultural vivacity and growing military prowess is still wrangling with past issues on domestic turf as well as in diplomatic relations. Historical reconciliation poses a difficult challenge to this otherwise prospering part of the world. As the scope and contents of “memory problems” vary substantially in East Asia, the prognoses of historical reconciliation call for careful diagnoses. Given the intricate connectivity between “memory problems” and reconciliation, this volume is organized into three sections each addressing the topics of domestic trauma, bilateral conflicts and regional challenges. This arrangement is to show internal challenges that haunt each society, unresolved issues among them and common aspirations for peace and stability. While democratic governance pertains to the redressing of a traumatic past in the domestic realm, topics of bilateral confrontation reveal the wide scope of lingering resentment between China-Japan, Korea-China, Japan-Korea and North-South Korea dyads. The interwoven memory web of shared paths binds the region as one cohesive entity demanding a holistic approach to historical memory and reconciliation (MK Kim and Schwartz 2010). This volume thus benefits from the expertise in relevant, if not exhaustive, fields such as anthropology, cultural studies, history, international law, international relations, political science and sociology. This inclusivity reflects the pressing need to go beyond the artificial disciplinary boundaries that hinder a comprehensive understanding of memory issues in East Asia. Many tribulations in today’s world require collective wisdom, not myopic sheltering of narrowly defined self-interests.

Memory and reconciliation Memory is mutable vis-à-vis authoritative historiography. The way memory is lived and felt connects now and then. Memory keeps history alive. The remembered past becomes “living history.” It is about our meaning-giving and meaning-seeking activities, often described in terms of identity, pride, shame and responsibility. The workings of memory, such as remembering, forgetting, retrieval and deletion, are mediated by commemorative media and agents (see MK Kim 2013). The definitions of reconciliation vary. It generally means a settlement of unbalanced records, restoration of mutual trust (see Vila-Vicencio et al. 2000: 28), agreement to amicable truce, 1

Mikyoung Kim

rapprochement and reestablishment of friendship (Ross 2004). I see it as an ‘agreed-upon state of mutual satisfaction’ between disputing parties. I cannot claim any new insights in this wording, for we all intuitively know how a reconciled state feels like: reduced tension in experiential terms (see He 2011). Diminished hostility, however, does not necessarily mean an ideal mode of peaceful coexistence. These ideals are a template for aspiration, probably not achievable reality. The achievement of reconciliation requires negotiation and compromise between victim and perpetrator. A sense of justice and equanimity is crucial in the procedural implementation. While some put more emphasis on logistical methods and available tool kits such as rule of law (e.g., Crocker 1999: 60), others are concerned about motivations and end results (e.g., Sriram 2007). Many kinds of conciliatory outcomes exist, and this is a point where context dictates the divergent notions of reconciliation. East Asian experiences provide useful insights into these logistical divergences. Contents and historical backgrounds seem to determine the reconciling trajectory. Topics of historical reconciliation, therefore, call for a fine balance between normative universality and empirical particularity (see Jullien 2014). With these caveats, I contextualize, not summarize, the topics of historical reconciliation in East Asia in the following.

Reconciling domestic trauma China: Political supremacy A wide range of themes dealt with in this volume are no exceptions in demonstrating the parallel between universalism and particularism. Each society embeds authentic issues which often crisscross with adjacent societies for geographical proximity. Section I is about domestic trauma. For China’s experiences, all the chapters in Part 1 emphasize the ruling elites’ politicization of commemorative projects. Liao and Zhang contend that the national day parades are to demonstrate and affirm changing circles of political alliance. The power elites function as commemorative agents inculcating shifting relational dynamics. Conciliatory gestures are conveyed through the visual exhibition of strategically important figures, and the removal of those who became irrelevant for the contemporary situation. The strategic acts of inclusion/exclusion entail ritualistic symbolism for reconciliation which are executed in a calculating manner. One noteworthy observation here is the interactive and collective nature of inculcation and reception between the elites and the masses. This cannot be divorced from Chinese socialism, which interweaves traditional norms and rationalist paradigm. Gao moves on to investigate Beijing’s rhetorical shift from China’s victory to its victimhood. Parallel to Liao and Zhang, Gao asserts that the main initiators of revisionist memory-making are the power elites. Their primary concern is the augmentation of governing legitimacy, where the rhetoric of Japan’s victimization comes in as a handy tool to unite the people of increasing socio-economic inequality. Unlike previous Communist revolutionaries who tried to legitimate their agenda by destroying the legacies of feudalistic regimes, post-Mao elites actively utilize traditional norms to garner support from the nostalgic masses. Confucian ethics, for example, are being used to judge Japan’s violation of traditional mentor-mentee trust. Inter-state conflict serves domestic ruling interests by stirring up patriotic nationalism. The primary target of grievance shifts from the immediate to the external. Reconciliation therefore becomes a domestic project, although the topic of contention is diplomatic. Continuing on with China’s retrospective nostalgia, Xu looks at the whitewashing of Mao’s dark legacies and discriminatory reconciliation policies for the masses. The Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward inflicted a deep scar on the lived lives of ordinary people, and yet Mao was relieved from equitable accountability. More than 10 million Chinese people were purged 2

Introduction: Memory and reconciliation

during the Cultural Revolution alone. Trauma is internalized differently by those who cause it and by those who have to live through it. The culprits are protected by their successors to safeguard their own self-interests. Xu asserts that the elites should be held accountable, for their priorities lie with legitimization in lieu of meaningful socio-political reconciliation. Xu sees this as an outcome of China’s lack of democratic progress. “Transitional justice” is yet to arrive China. These chapters suggest a discernable pattern in Chinese historical reconciliation. The ruling elites play an activist role projecting commemorative rituals, manipulating public sentiments and undertaking “thin” measures of reconciliation. The analyses include a nuanced dimension by encompassing preexisting cultural tradition to the people’s noncritical reception of those strategic statecraft. This is a testament to the tenacity of cultural memory, which long predates the tumultuous ruptures and traumas in contemporary Chinese history (Assmann 2011).

Japan: Unsettled ambiguity Japanese experiences reveal different dynamics of historical reconciliation. Japan’s postwar identity is split between victimizer and victim. Japan’s counterparts determine the direction of the pendulum swing between being the perpetrator of Asian countries and the victim of US violence. Fukuoka’s chapter analyzes the mood shift to perpetrator identity in the 1990s. The Tokyo government extended unprecedented gestures of reconciliation to Korea and China. It made apologies to the Asian victims of Japan’s aggression. Here Fukuoka argues that the gestures were outbound, but the motivation was self-indulgent. With China rising and Korea democratizing, Japan could no longer dismiss its Asian neighbors’ grievances. The expression of remorse was to protect national interest, and it had little to do with sincerity. Apology can be a performative act. With realpolitik paradigm going strong, once “lost” Asia was rediscovered with Asia’s ascendance. Japan’s preoccupation with rank order has been explained in terms of “ethos of social relativism” and “empty center” theorems. This cognitive pattern implies gloomy prospects for reconciliation. An obsession with power cannot be easily replaced with trust. These two concepts occupy different places in the mind map: the former is to be commanded, and the latter is to be earned. This escapes the rising importance of morality and ethics in contemporary global affairs. The “comfort women” controversy is at the center of Asian memories of Japan’s war atrocity. The invaders systematically deployed the subjugated women to serve the soldiers at the battlefront. It exemplifies the unfortunate cross-section of militarism, patriarchy and ethnic chauvinism. Japanese imperial army’s systematic utilization of military brothels became public knowledge in Korea starting in the 1980s. The information quickly spread to the international community in the context of the feminist movement and rising human rights awareness. The formation of transnational alliances soon followed at the strong initiative of feminists, religious leaders and human rights activists. China is joining this movement by forming a coalition with Korea to confront Japan. Both governments are funding collaborative research projects. Beijing is preparing to register the relics of comfort stations as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Takekawa’s analysis of newspaper editorials demonstrates the divisive effect of “comfort women” controversies fueling domestic conflict over the war legacies. The criticisms against the leading progressive daily, the Asahi, are running rampant, and its previous articles with factual errors are accused of contributing to the 1993 Kono statement. The Japanese government extended official apologies to the “comfort women” in the statement. The conservatives are framing the Asahi’s error as the grounds to convince the public to retract and revise the Kono statement. Yoshida takes Japan’s historical memory to another domain: the gendered representation of warfare in popular media. Patriarchy, memory politics and nationalism are interlinked, and this results in the binary construction of masculinization/feminization of national identity. Patriarchal 3

Mikyoung Kim

gender norms provide an undertone of how men and women are typically portrayed in the popular war films of the sunken ship Yamato. The conservatives assert that the “comfort women” were willing participants of military brothel system and well-paid “prostitutes.” If this position can be juxtaposed with notable homosociality among the male protagonists in the Yamato films, we get to find a discernable cognitive pattern of “situational logic.” This logic pushes the powerless to a periphery where relational imbalance justifies the situationally defined practical function. And it has little to do with moral justice. This is often expressed in problematic statements made by some politicians, such as “killing does not constitute as murder during wartime.” In Yamato films, the rights of the weak can (or should) be sacrificed for the sake of common good: war victory. The overall implication is bleak for gendered mnemonic reconciliation. As long as patriarchy has a practical function, a gendered status quo is likely to persist. Japan’s historical memory reveals complicated and unsettled sentiments toward the difficult past. Unlike the Chinese experience of political supremacy, Japanese experiences reveal unresolved tension among ideational, strategic and gender dynamics. These are fed simultaneously by competing norms and situational necessities. A lack of moral principles makes historical reconciliation prospects much more unsettling and ambiguous.

Korea: Victimhood and the Cold War wounds Baker leads the debate to Korea, where an ideological divide heavily affects the way memories are internalized. He examines colonization (1910–45), the Korean War (1950–53), the Park Chung Hee regime (1961–71) and the Kwangju tragedy of May 1980. His selection of events is consistent with Schwartz and Kim (2002)’s sources of Koreans’ historical shame. Koreans feel ashamed of the events that remind them of their own weakness, abuse by the powerful parties, and internal division and violence. These reasons, of course, are not mutually exclusive, for they overlap considerably. Baker operationalizes the ideological divide by competing identities and regime types, and asserts that Korean memory is about an ideational boundary and politicization of historical past. By doing so, he connects collective memory, politics and identity, and shares a caution about the wishes for expeditious reconciliation. His caution comes from the long memory span contributing to the accumulation of Koreans’ self-perception. Historical reconciliation pertains largely to the lived lives of ordinary people. MK Kim shifts the focus from politics to the people. Her chapter reviews a biography of a Japanese woman whose lifespan overlapped with the vicissitudes of contemporary Korean history. Ms. Tauchi Chizuko, known as “Japanese mother of Korean War orphans,” lived in colonized Korea, married a local man, lost him during the Korean War and cared for the war orphans until her death. Perseverance and devotion is not unique to Tauchi. These qualities are rather common in many life stories. Then what keeps Tauchi’s memories alive? The precarious Japan-Korea relations embed her memories, for her biography symbolizes Japan’s repentance, a bridge between the two neighbors, cosmopolitan faith and universal motherhood. Korea needs Tauchi for consolation. DC Kim’s piece regards institution-building as a method for historical reconciliation. Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was the first of its kind ever installed in East Asia, with the probable exception of Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (1946–48). With Korean democracy taking a firm root, the progressive governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun began investigating state violence committed against the citizens. Democracy permitted self-reflexivity and opened the venue for soul-searching. State violence had been condoned against the backdrop of the Cold War rivalry with the Communist North. The dictatorial regimes of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee utilized the North Korean threats to hold a tight grip over the population. The prescription to control the people lost its efficacy when the nationwide democratization 4

Introduction: Memory and reconciliation

movement became a success in the late 1980s. The subsequent Roh Moo-hyun government established the Korean version of TRC in 2005 with reference to the South African and Latin American models. DC Kim, the former ROK Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner, evaluates that the ROK TRC yielded half of the goals it set out to achieve. The commission was not granted legal authority and could not solicit cooperation from other government branches. The succeeding Lee Myung-bak administration ended the TRC operation, and the human rights protection has become the agenda of secondary importance. ROK’s TRC experience remains illuminating for its historical significance. The bereaved family members and the victims express vindication by having an authority listening to their stories and showing empathy. ROK’s TRC experiences affirm that reconciliation is not only about legal and institutional affairs, but it also is about shared sympathy and commiseration. Contemporary Korean experience is often described as “compressed modernity.” Things were happening at a faster speed and with greater intensity compared to other countries. Its encounter with the West in the 19th century, colonization (1910–45), liberation (1945), the establishment of separate governments on the peninsula (1948), the Korean War (1950–53), impressive economic growth (1960s–70s), democratization (1980s) and the shift to a neoliberal system (1990s–present) testify to this unusual pressure. The society has been moving forward at a relentless pace, and what has been missing amid this go-getter atmosphere were the quiet moments to ponder over the meaning of things. The questions that should have been raised got swept under the carpet, and that has been translated into belated efforts to resolve the past issues. The 2009 publication of the Encyclopedia of Korean Collaborators of Japanese Colonialism is one of these cases. Liberated Korea did not have the moments of peace and quiet to judiciously deal with the collaboration issues. It instead was confronted with yet another unexpected chaos: the Cold War division of the peninsula. The collaborators were recruited into the capitalist nation-building campaign, and they thrived again serving the different master. The encyclopedia lists a total of 4,776 collaborators, and the lawsuits to confiscate their property soon followed. The rush onward with judgment acts should entail the questions of whether sufficient attention was paid to the vulnerable population under the colonial system, whether children should be held responsible for their ancestors’ sins, and whether the project was politically motivated, among others. Furthermore, we should ask a set of different questions on the effect of forgiveness and forgetting in the reconciliation process. As remembering can be a moral practice, forgetting can be a precursor of forgiving. This regards the probable negative function of memory, where forgiveness takes on a dogmatic moral reasoning. Victimization perpetrated by the powerful and unhealed Cold War scars defines the terrain of Korean memory. If Chinese memory is tinted politically and Japanese memory is in the state of ambiguity, Korean memory is preoccupied with moral judgment. And this calls for a careful procedure for reconciliation. With the perpetrators located far and above, conciliatory efforts should guarantee ontological equality between the involved parties and a sense of justice in its deliberation. This defines the particular characteristics of Korean historical reconciliation vis-avis those of Chinese and Japanese.

Bilateral conflicts and lessons for reconciliation Section II regards bilateral conflicts among the three East Asian countries. Bilateral conflicts involving China-Japan, Korea-China, Japan-Korea and North-South Korea demonstrate a combination of presentist obsession and lingering legacies. Various conciliatory efforts made by a wide range of actors reveal the importance of many other issues still pending among the regional countries. 5

Mikyoung Kim

China-Japan relations: Territory, people’s diplomacy and compensation McCormack’s critical chapter reviews Japan’s sea territory acquisition and provides thoughtful insights into the current Sino-Japan disputes over Senkaku-Diaoyudao. He demystifies Japan’s “intrinsic (koyu, italicize) territory” claims and contests its ahistorical stance. He sees a parallel between those who hold convoluted nationalist views and those who assert an “intrinsic territory” stance. The current disputes are unfortunate residuals of colonial invasion, which inevitably involved territorial conquest. McCormack’s analysis widens the scope of this seemingly legalistic contention by expanding it to a less structured state of world affairs when the majority of the disputing areas were accessible open seas. Whereas territorial demarcation is a relatively recent invention, the ownership claims are often stretched back to the preceding eras. Here we have a chasm between history/memory and contemporary legal stipulations. With the regional tension still running high over Japan’s lack of atonement, Seraphim brings a helpful perspective of people-centered reconciliation into East Asia’s memory problems. She finds a precedence in the early 1950s when the Chinese and Japanese citizens cooperated with each other to form a friendship association. These initiatives were taking place in the postwar socio-political milieu when the hidden facts on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American interim military government’s concealment of records, and the preparations for San Francisco Peace Treaty were surfacing in public sphere. Out of suspicion and distrust toward the official history, a group of Japanese citizens began to take the atonement initiatives in their own hands, and planned various collaborative projects. The stories of “peace loving people” in China and Japan enjoy validity as a frame for people-oriented reconciliation. China neither demanded Japan’s war damage compensation nor participated in the negotiations of San Francisco Peace Treaty. Beijing based the decision in “China as the victor” rhetoric: China prevailed and Japan was defeated. Faction wars also left little room for consensus in its foreign policy behavior. With China’s identity shifting from a victor to a victim in recent decades, the decision has become a source of grievance among the Chinese citizens. The prospects of Sino-Japan reconciliation seem largely dependent on the rectification of Beijing’s past decisions. Chun suggests a helpful template to weigh various appeasement options: they are procedural, material and ideational. These options pertain to restorative and restitutive justice. She argues that the litigation rights granted to individual citizens of China would be one of the crucial keys to improve Sino-Japan relations. Given the rapidly increasing number of petitions lodged with the central and local governments of China (e.g., Goldman 2007), Chun’s prognoses seem to enjoy persuasive validity.

Korea-China relations: Territory and boundary The intensity of historical hostility between Korea and China used to be mild when compared with those of Japan-Korea and Japan-China relations. Rising nationalism is changing this trend. Korean respondents of the 2000 opinion survey, for example, named Korea’s weak stance toward the powerful neighbors as a source of shame. And they cited the US and Japan as exemplary big powers. When another opinion survey was conducted in 2014 asking the same question, a majority of the Korean respondents included China along with the US and Japan as intimidating neighbors (Kim 2014a). The Sino-Korea contestations over the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in Korean and Gaogouli in Chinese (37BC – 668AD) surfaced in this milieu. Both countries began to claim the ownership of the kingdom, which spread over both current Chinese and Korean territories about 2,000 years ago. The competing UNESCO World Heritage Site bids by Beijing and Pyongyang further exacerbated the competitive ownership claims. Hundt and He 6

Introduction: Memory and reconciliation

show that the opinion leaders in China, South Korea and the UNESCO managed to defuse the tension by inducing negotiation and compromise. This analysis refutes the conventional behavior of power elites in the East Asian memory context. The relevant parties actively participated in the negotiation process, resulting in mutual concession and consensus. Manchuria is a space for Korean nostalgia, for its wilderness, romanticized hopes and migration history. It, on the other hand, is a symbolic location for China’s ancient glory, trading post and war trauma. The locale for Goguryeo/Gaogouli contention overlaid with the Manchu region, which was later occupied by the Japanese Army. Manchuria became a multicultural and multiethnic space with the influx of Europeans, Russians, Koreans and Japanese as China was pressured to open its door to the world. SY Park engages in a very interesting analysis of the 1931 Wanpaoshan incident involving Korean tenant farmers, Chinese residents and the Japanese police force. The local skirmish over an irrigation project between Koreans and Chinese was intervened in by the Japanese police force. It justified the use of violence for the need to protect the Koreans, the imperial subjects. This clash unfolded at the complex intersection of ethnicity, legality, nationality, local dynamics and national interests. It ignited a chain of events that eventually determined the trajectory of the Asia-Pacific War (1938–45). SY Park’s historical investigation reveals a multiparty interaction where a seemingly mundane conflict started a chain of important events. Many historical momentums, both violent and conciliatory, started with Mundane and localized events jump-started many historical momentums, both violent and conciliatory. Examples include the French Revolution, the American civil rights movement and the fall of Berlin Wall, among others.

Japan-Korea relations: Sexual violence, territory, rituals and displacement of people The topics of the difficult past in Korea-Japan relations include sexual violence of “comfort women,” the Dokdo-Takeshima territorial dispute, commemorative rituals for the deceased and the Tokyo government’s reparations project, among others. They reveal intense interactions that occurred between the two countries at proximity. Geography remains an important variable in international affairs because it impacts on the duration and frequency of contacts, accumulation of shared narratives, and the depth of exchanges. Often described as “nearby but distant neighbors,” Korea and Japan are “too close for comfort.” The Japanese Imperial Army’s use of the sexual slavery system is at the core of their bilateral contention. It has become more confrontational upon the installation of conservative Japan’s Abe Shinzo and Korea’s Park Geun-hye administrations. Both leaders have been on a collision course since their reigns started respectively in 2012 and 2013. The 1993 Kono statement officially acknowledged for the first time that women were forcibly recruited into sexual slavery to provide services for Japanese military personnel as “comfort women.” A panel investigation commissioned by the Abe government announced in June 2014 that the Kono statement was drafted under pressure from Seoul and was the by-product of diplomatic negotiations, not rigorous fact finding. Questioning the objectivity of the Kono statement challenges the previous apology to the “comfort women” and undermines reconciliation efforts in East Asia. The announcement resulted in an immediate rebuttal from Seoul and an angry denunciation from Beijing (Kim 2014b). SW Lee and HE Lee, international maritime law scholars, engage in a thoughtful analysis of territorial disputes on Dokdo/Takeshima between Korea and Japan. They review the respective positions taken by both countries and suggest helpful prognoses to resolve them. The list goes beyond the limited confines of legal remedies and incorporates diverse perspectives. It includes pragmatic solutions drawing on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 7

Mikyoung Kim

(UNCLOS), linking Dokdo/Takeshima to other disputes Japan is involved with, engagement with the US, and approaching it as a history problem. Every defense of past wrongdoing is rooted in cultural, economic and political contexts that promote official and private statements. This is particularly so when we consider the limited economic advantage that Japan can get from the surroundings of Dokdo/Takeshima. It is the very desire to redeem its past in the collective memory that makes the territorial issues so critical. For Japan, winning international recognition that the islands unquestionably belong to Japan is one of the key tasks in rectifying the misdeeds and injustices committed in the process of relinquishing its territories “which she [Japan] has taken by violence and greed,” as stated in the Cairo Declaration of December 1, 1943. By implication, Dokdo/Takeshima should not have been part of the territories that Japan would have to relinquish. The conjunction of the Cold War’s lingering threats and the memory of Japanese colonialism makes Dokdo/Takeshima, rather than some other geographical site, the source of the continuing dispute between the two countries. Because very little is materially at stake, the islets become “good to think with” symbols of national integrity and pride, and of humiliation and suffering both for Korea and Japan (Kim 2012). Appropriate methods to achieve reconciliation vary according to the content and history of violation. Jeju Island, located off the southern seacoast of the Korean peninsula, was one of the sites where the government-initiated “red hunt” took place. The seven-year violence started in March 1947 and did not end until September 1954. It resulted in 14,000 deaths and 32,800 injuries. Among the casualties, women were 21 percent, children under the age of 10 were 5.6 percent and the elderly were 6.2 percent. Since Korea’s liberation in 1945, the peninsula was in a state of chaos attributed largely to the emerging Cold War rivalry. The Communist population of the island opposed the establishment of a separate government in the South and launched an attack on the police in 1948. The violence escalated to island-wide conflict involving residents and communities. Jeju Island since then has been pejoratively labeled as the “Red Island” in capitalist South. The repressive atmosphere pushed the victims and survivors into silent suffering until a special law to recover the victims’ honor was enacted in 2000. The government has organized an annual commemoration ceremony since 2014. Here Koh problematizes “appropriateness” of conciliatory rituals and commemorative sites. The heavy-handed involvement of the Seoul government in these projects further isolates and divides the victims and bereaved families, he asserts. The exclusionary acts do not permit the gray zone of suspended moral judgment where the victims and perpetrators can peacefully coexist. Koh finds an alternative method of commemorative ritual in Osaka’s Zainichi community, where all the related parties come together as a group of sufferers. The year 2015 marks the 65th anniversary of the Korean War (1950–53) outbreak, and this momentum in history commands a thorough, yet unchartered, investigation of Japan’s involvement in the peninsula’s affairs since its defeat. Japan’s military operations in foreign territories are surfacing in public debates amid the current Abe administration’s maneuverings to reinterpret and eventually amend the Peace Constitution. The public are being belatedly alerted to the nation’s participation in the Korean War, which happened only five years after Tokyo’s unconditional surrender in 1945 and three years after the promulgation of the Peace Constitution in 1947. The sudden (re)discovery of the historical facts along with Yoshida Shigeru’s (in)famous analogy of the nearby bloody conflict, “gods-sent gift,” regard only limited aspects of Japan’s Korean War involvement. The war entailed a complicated reality that far surpassed the support role to the UN troops and manufacturing boom in the metal industry. It encompassed a wide spectrum of societal transformations ranging from the obscure, subtle and nuanced to the obvious, quantifiable and visible. It regards the gap between Japan’s pacifist rhetoric and the military “base society,” proxy warfare replicated within the Korean-Japanese ethnic community, and lived lives of individuals caught in transnational crossfire (Kim 2014c). Here Morris-Suzuki brings in a critical perspective of Korean 8

Introduction: Memory and reconciliation

residents’ (in)voluntary displacement from Japanese territory to North Korea during the 1950s and the 1980s. With the 1953 cease-fire still in effect, the Tokyo government colluded with the Pyongyang regime to ship off the remaining Korean population to the socialist “people’s paradise.” The new arrivals soon confronted the harsh reality of political purge, economic hardships and social discrimination. The region is still coping with its lingering aftermaths, where increasing number of Zainichi settlers and their decendants in the North are escaping the brutal regime. Their perilous journey often involves China and Southeast Asian countries as the point of transit and Japan as their resettlement location. What the Tokyo government did decades ago is haunting the region, with detrimental implications of reconciliation between North Korea and Japan.

North-South Korea relations: Semantic symbolism and families This volume aims to make some contributions to the East Asian historical reconciliation debate by including North-South Korea experiences. This undertaking has been difficult because of various logistical and empirical obstacles. The dearth of relevant data, continuing hostility and division, and politicization of reconciliation constitute these challenges. Two chapters in this part creatively adopt new perspectives to overcome the hurdles. The ideological rivals of the North and South have been on precarious paths since the peninsula was divided into two regimes in 1948. MK Park takes the debate to the much more subtle plane of words and their meanings. He contends that conflicts and reconciliation are not only about power and strategy, but are also about semantics and symbolism. He examines and compares the core concepts used in the competitive nation-building process such as min (people), kukmin (citizen), inmin (mass) and minjok (ethno) in Communist North and capitalist South. Park’s analysis offers important yet underinvestigated topic on linguistic construction of divergent identity. Rhetoric reflects reality, and reality mimics rhetoric. The careful selection of words can pave a road for reconciliation, where the opposite scenarios also stand tall. Park’s chapter expands the range of tool kits for reconciliation methods. Humanitarian concern creates conditions for appeasement. It allows the stakeholders to transcend political calculations and share empathetic feelings. It is about the acknowledgment of suffering inflicted on the ordinary people, who are often caught in the crossfire of violence and fatalistic absurdity. It ultimately is about the delivery of justice to those who should not be held accountable for tragic occurrences in the first place. The 2000 reunion of families separated by the Korean War was one of the rare momentums in inter-Korean reconciliation. The fratricidal violence, the “first hot war” of the Cold War architecture in East Asia, resulted in massive-scale destruction of property and casualties. Many were (in)voluntarily displaced to secure survival and safety. The political breakthrough reached by the leaders of the North and South, Kim Jung-il and Kim Dae-jung, was the precursor of the temporary reunion of separated families. It shifted the discursive focus of the peninsula from the ideological animosity sustained by the government to the painful experience endured by the people. N Kim enlivens the lived experiences of the separated families and brings the people back into the reconciliation discourse.

East Asia’s challenges and prospects of reconciliation Section III, the final section of this volume, enjoys thoughtful contributions on the challenges and prospects of East Asia’s historical reconciliation. One notable commonality among these chapters is the transcendental vision that goes beyond the confines of presentist preoccupation and East Asia as one mnemonic unit. Their views link the past, present and the future on a continuum, and encompass the roles played by other pertinent parties, such as the US and China’s neighbors. 9

Mikyoung Kim

East Asia’s historical reconciliation thus demands more active participation of other parties and aspirations of universal commonality. Hara’s chapter details the critical function of the US in the negotiation and formulation processes of 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. She asserts that the treaty was a historical precursor of on-going disputes in East Asia, and the US should be held accountable for the current troubles. MK Kim engages in an empirical analysis of territorial disputes over Dokdo/Takeshima and Senkaku/Diaoyudao. She conducted an opinion poll survey of Japanese territorial perceptions, and found little causal association between social, economic and psychological indices and territorial sovereignty claims. Saito widens the scope of our debate by bringing a cosmopolitan perspective. By grounding his argument in philosophical ontology and empirical evidence, he calls for the regional societies to go beyond the accumulated hostilities and self-serving nationalism. Shin extends Hara’s argument that the US should acknowledge itself as a stakeholder in East Asian historical reconciliation. This is to warn and advise the US, a global hegemon, that its detachment from East Asia’s memory problem is against its national interest. Finally, Zhang provides a helpful perspective of China’s historical relations with its neighbors, which stretch over thousands of years. He divides the hostile relations into different categories and concludes that each of them requires different reconciliation methods.

References Assmann, Jan. 2011. Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance and Political Imagination. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Crocker, David. 1999. “Reckoning with Past Wrongs: A Normative Framework,” Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 1: 43–64. He, Yinan. 2011. “Comparing Post-War (West) German-Polish and Sino-Japanese Reconciliation: A bridge too far?” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 64, No. 7: 1159–61. Goldman, Merle. 2007. Political Rights in Post-Mao China. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies. Jullien, Francois. 2014. On the Universal, the Uniform, the Common and Dialogue Between Cultures (translated by Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkowski). New York: Polity. Kim, Mikyoung. 2012. “A War of Memories: Dissecting Doko/Takeshima Dispute,” Global Asia, Vol. 7, No. 2 (September): 74–7. Kim, Mikyoung. 2013. “The Changing Faces of Heroines: Korean Women in Folklore,” Memory Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (April): 218–23. Kim, Mikyoung. 2014a. “The Korean Youths’ Perceptions of Korea-Japan Relations” [Hankuk Chungnyon’deul’eui Hanil Kwangae Inshik], The Daily Kookje, January 13 (http://www.kookje.co.kr/news2011/asp/newsbody. asp?code=1700&key=20140113.22026185708, accessed February 14, 2015). Kim, Mikyoung. 2014b. “Why Abe is out of touch on the comfort women controversies?” East Asia Forum, July 11 (http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/07/11/why-abe-is-out-of-touch-on-the-comfort-womencontroversies/). Kim, Mikyoung. 2014c. “Guest Editor’s Introduction: Japan’s Korean War,” Review of Korean Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (December): 7–14. Kim, Mikyoung and Barry Schwartz (eds.). 2010. Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ross, M. H. 2004. “Ritual and the Politics of Reconciliation,” in Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov (ed.), From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 197–224. Schwartz, Barry and Mikyoung Kim. 2002. “Judging the Past: A Comparative Study of People’s Historical Perceptions in the U.S. and Korea,” in Karen A. Cerulo (ed.), Culture in Mind: Toward A Sociology of Culture and Cognition. New York: Routledge, pp. 209–26. Sriram, Chandra. 2007. “Justice as peace? Liberal peacebuilding and strategies of transitional justice,” Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, Vol. 21, No. 4 (October 2007): 579–91. Villa-Vicencio, C. and W. J. Verwoerd (eds.). 2000. Looking Back, Reaching Forward: Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press & London: Zed Books.

10

SECTION I

Domestic trauma and prospects of reconciliation

This page intentionally left blank

PART 1

China and political supremacy

This page intentionally left blank

1 THE CHANGING CIRCLE OF ALLIANCE AND THE NATIONAL DAY PARADE IN CHINA Tim F. Liao and Libin Zhang

A national day parade is a memory project. A memory project manages the content of collective memory by demonstrating to those at present – both domestic and international audiences – how the past has evolved. Such a project can involve people who reconstruct events from the past, such as people’s memory of September 11 (Clark 2002) or a nation’s recollection of a past war (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991). In this chapter we study key national day parades from 1949 to 2009 to see how circle of alliance changes in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter PRC). The chapter focuses on domestic leadership alliance as shown through portraits paraded but also examines international alliances through portraits and slogans displayed at Chinese national day parades. In the pages to follow, we present the case of the national day parade of the PRC in the post1949 era. It is important to note that two customary processions can be planned on a typical national day: the military parade and the parade of the masses (also known as the mass pageant). It is the second procession to which we turn our analytical attention. While military parades may vary from one to the next, they do so only in terms of size, composition, and weaponry displayed. In contrast, the parade of the masses has more interesting variations in the political and symbolic content on year-by-year basis. By displaying portraits of various political leaders and sometimes slogans, such parades make a statement. As Rajah (1999) argued, a national day parade gives a deliberate and conscious construction of representations of the nation-state. By making a statement through the national day parade, collective memory about the past is forged and a circle of alliance – domestic and occasional international alliances as well – is put on display for the world to view. The showcasing of political alliance (or lack of it) can be considered in the larger framework of reconciliation and the concept of transitional justice. “Transitional justice” is defined as the process in which a society moves from war to peace or from repression/authoritarianism to democracy (Quinn 2009). In post-1949 China, there has never been a clear momentum either for reconciliation or for transitional justice as periods of repression and warlike atmosphere cycled on and off. In such a milieu, reconciliation is relative and strategic, and is reduced to part of a memory project. As war, peace, and conflict between societies can be remembered and forgotten (Gong 1996); so can conflict between domestic political factions. This process of remembering and forgetting is mediated through a memory project such as the national day parade. As such, remembering and forgetting can be a strategic consideration (Gong 2001). One may argue that China has always been in transition, searching for the best socialist model ever since the founding 15

Tim F. Liao and Libin Zhang

of the People’s Republic in 1949. Furthermore, internal reconciliation can be more difficult to achieve during transitional periods than during wartime with the existence of a common external enemy. This point will become clear when we see how the portraits of Mao’s past allies disappeared in national day parades in the empirical analysis later in the chapter. To help explain the display of changing alliance circles, we apply a theoretical framework developed in Liao, Zhang, and Zhang (2011). The framework builds on Cerulo’s (1993, 1995, 2008) cultural-cognitive notion of collective focus and the concept of “social relation” enriched by Weber’s (1978 [1921]) authority types (both concepts to be explained later in this chapter). This analysis of Chinese national parades from collective memory perspective is an extension of the study of Chinese national anthem as a manifestation of collective memory (Liao, Zhang, and Zhang 2010). While Liao, Zhang, and Zhang (2011) developed the theoretical model referred to above and showed its usefulness in understanding Chinese anthem lyrics production, we examine the varying political and symbolic content of the mass pageants by applying the same theoretical framework. In this chapter we argue that when collective focus is multiple and social relation rational, we see a broader circle of alliance (with a greater degree of reconciliation) in internal and external political domain. When collective focus is singular and social relation traditional, we observe a smaller circle of alliance (with less degree of reconciliation) internally or externally. We measured internal reconciliation by displayed portraits of political leaders from various periods and regimes in a national day parade. By the same token, we assumed a display limited to the current leadership can be a sign of lack of domestic reconciliation. A lack of external reconciliation can be understood with slogans supporting friendly countries in the same geopolitical camp and denouncement of enemies, while the presence of external reconciliation can be supported by the lack of slogans referring to any foreign enemies. In the next section, we present and describe the changing political and symbolic content of the parade of the masses over the six decades from 1949 to 2009, which is the entire period since such parades began. We then present the theoretical model for analyzing collective focus and social relation, and we apply the model to the national day parades of the masses in China before drawing some conclusions.

The Chinese national day parades of the masses, 1949–2009 In this section, we present the information on national day parades of the masses available on the internet in forms such as blogs, news reports as well as actual recordings of the parades.1 From 1949 to 2009, there were thirteen national day military parades and twenty-four national day parades of the masses. Unlike parades of the masses, military parades have been conducted less frequently. On a key anniversary such as the tenth (1959), the fiftieth (1999), and the sixtieth (2009) anniversary, as well as the initial years of the republic, both military and people’s parades were organized; in the other years, only parades of the masses were staged on the National Day of October 1. A military parade consists of participants from the army, the navy, and the air force as well as other military branches. The Beijing Municipality is in charge of organizing the parade of the masses, participated in by people of all walks of life, especially students.2 We collected data from three major sources: photos and reports released from official news media such as Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily; personal memoirs published at popular social media sites such as microblogging hosted by Sina Weibo (http://blog.sina.com.cn), as well as full-length video recordings of some parades posted on sites such as YouTube (www.youtube.com). We list below the content (portraits and slogans) of the parades in chronological order. In the 1950 national day celebration, the parade displayed portraits of the domestic leaders of Mao Zedong, Sun Yat-sen, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Zhu De, and those of Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, and other leaders of the socialist countries. 16

The changing circle of alliance

In the same 1950 national day parade, the following slogan banners were displayed: “Long live the People’s Republic of China!” and “Long live the great unity of the people of the world!” In addition, the parade participants shouted the slogans of “Long live Chairman Mao!”, “Long live Stalin!”, “Liberate Taiwan and Tibet!”, “Oppose the invasion of Taiwan and Korea by the U.S. imperialist!”, “People of all Asia, unite!”, and “People of the world, unite!” In the 1952 national day parade, marchers carried huge portraits of Chairman Mao and Sun Yat-sen, as well as the portraits of the other domestic leaders of Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, the portraits of the communist forerunners of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, and the portraits of communist leaders from other countries including Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Bolesław Bierut (Poland), Klement Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Wilhelm Pieck (G.D.R.), Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (Romania), Mátyás Rákosi (Hungary), Vulko Velev Chervenkov (Bulgaria), Enver Hoxha (Albania), Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal (Mogolia), Kyuichi Tokuda (Japan), Maurice Thorez (France), Palmiro Togliatti (Italy), William Foster (U.S.), Harry Pollitt (Britain), and Dolores Ibárruri (Spain). The domestic leaders’ portrait lineup stayed more or less the same in the early 1950s, with the addition of Chen Yun’s portrait in 1954’s and 1955’s parades (see Table 1.1). Among others, the following slogan was found in the 1952 national day parade: “Developing Sports, Enhancing People’s Health!” This shows the government’s desire to strengthen the quality of people’s health to shake off the image of “the sick man of East Asia,” a pejorative reference to the Chinese people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Scott 2008). Portraits of Soviet leaders also appeared regularly in the national day parade. For example, in the 1953 parade, the portraits appeared in the order of Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Saburov, and Pervukhin.3 The order reflected the ranked importance of the political figures. The portrait of Beria disappeared in the 1953 parade, though it had appeared in earlier years. A year later, the order of the portraits was changed to Bulganin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Molotov, Pervukhin, Saburov, and Khrushchev. The 1959 parade, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the young republic, included the usual lineup of portraits as in some of the early 1950s such as Chairman Mao, Sun Yat-sen, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Chen Yun, as well as those of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. The lineup of the Soviet leaders’ portraits was similar to that of the 1953 parade. In the 1959 parade, a similar lineup of the portraits of communist leaders from various countries was also reported.4 It is worth noting that none of these portraits, or those of any other Soviet leaders, were displayed once the Sino-Soviet relationship turned sour several years later in 1960, except those of Lenin and Stalin. Thus, the 1959 national day parade was the last time when portraits of the communist leaders from the entire socialist camp were on display. Slogans in the late 1950s and 1960s, like before, reflected both the domestic and international relations at the time. For example, “Long live the Chinese Communist Party!” “Long live Marxism-Leninism!” and “Long live Chairman Mao!” were ever-present every year. In the 1955 parade, the slogan “Support the first five-year plan!” was put on display. In the 1959 parade, slogans about the Great Leap Forward were shown, such as “Going all out to strive for the better and to build socialism more economically!”, “Long live the people’s commune!”, “Increase production and practice frugality broadly and deeply!”, and “Long live the Great Leap Forward!” In the 1960 parade, some of the preprepared slogans were not usable, due to the rapid change in the Sino-Soviet relations earlier that year. For example, “Hold high the revolutionary banner of the Moscow Declaration; march forward!” was one example that could no longer be used at the 1960 national day parade. Other slogans targeting the outside world were regulars, such as those opposing the U.S. imperialism. During the early period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1970), the content of the national day parades changed little. Often highlighted was the theme of Mao Zedong as the greatest 17

Tim F. Liao and Libin Zhang Table 1.1 Lineup of portraits during Chinese national day parades of the masses, 1950–2009 1949 NA 1950 Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Gao Gang, Chen Yun and Sun Yat-sen. Josef Stalin (USSR), Kim Il Sung (North Korea), Bolesaw Bierut (Poland), Klement Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Wilhelm Pieck (East Germany), Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (Romania), Mátyás Rákosi (Hungary), Volko Chervenkov (Bulgaria), Enver Hoxha (Albania), Hawllger Jobashan (Mongolia), Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), Tokuda Kyuichi (Japanese Communist Party), Maurice Thorez (French Communist Party), Palmiro Togliatti (Italian communist leader), William Zebulon Foster (U.S. communist leader), Harry Pollitt (UK), and Dolores Ibárruri (Spain) 1951 Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Sun Yat-sen, as well as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin 1952 Mao Zedong and Sun Yat-sen, as well as the portraits of the other domestic leaders of Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin; Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Bolesław Bierut (Poland), Klement Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Wilhelm Pieck (G.D.R.), Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (Romania), Mátyás Rákosi (Hungary), Vulko Velev Chervenkov (Bulgaria), Enver Hoxha (Albania), Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal (Mogolia), Kyuichi Tokuda (Japan), Maurice Thorez (France), Palmiro Togliatti (Italy), William Foster (U.S.), Harry Pollitt (Britain), and Dolores Ibárruri (Spain) 1953 Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Sun Yat-sen; Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and others Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Mikoyan, Saburov, and Pervukhin 1954 Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Chen Yun, and Sun Yat-sen, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and others Bulganin, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Mikoyan, Molotov, Pervukhin, Saburov, and Khrushchev 1959 Mao Zedong, and Sun Yat-sen, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Chen Yun Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and a lineup of Soviet leaders similar to the early 1950s 1969 Statues of Mao, huge photographs of Mao and Lin Biao seated together 1984 Portable statues of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhu De 1999 Portable statues of Mao, Zhou, Liu, and Zhu De; floats carrying portraits of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin 2009 Floats carry portraits of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao.

Marxist-Leninist. People of different walks of life proudly displayed their “Little Red Books” to show that they were Chinese proletarian revolutionaries with dauntless spirit to follow Chairman Mao.5 The 1971 national day parade and celebrations were canceled due to the Lin Biao incident.6 National day parades were not to continue until some years later. Of note is the 1969 national day parade, where Mao drafted and prepared a national day slogan himself, “People all over the world unite to oppose any imperialist, social-imperialist war of aggression, in particular opposition to the atomic bomb as a weapon of aggression! If such a war occurs, the people of the world should wage revolutionary war to eliminate war of aggression, and from

18

The changing circle of alliance

now on we must be prepared!” The slogan was targeted at the Soviet border aggression and the Chinese-Soviet border conflict that had taken place earlier that year. However, it is interesting to note that the slogan brought up the atomic bomb as a weapon of aggression even though the bomb had been last used 24 years before, in 1945. This was for Mao to link the two superpower enemies, the U.S. and the USSR: one had used the bomb before, while the other had the capacity to use it. Viewing the 1970 national day parade (which is one of the few videos of national day parades of China available on YouTube), we found, typical of the Cultural Revolution period, the focus of the display was entirely on Mao, with his statues, portraits, and red books on display throughout the parade. In the same parade, however, the second-in-command, Lin Biao, was shown in a portrait together with Mao, apparently taking a secondary position. The same kind of double portrait reportedly appeared in the 1969 parade as well. The portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin did not appear in the 1970 parade, even though they were present at Tiananmen Square as a permanent fixture. There were many slogans used in the 1970 national day parade, most of which were about domestic issues, such as “Long live the people’s commune!”, “Learn from Dazhai in agriculture!”,7 and most prominently, “Under the leadership of Chairman Mao and Vice-Chairman Lin, let us welcome the great victory of the socialist revolution and socialist construction!” There were a number of slogans dealing with international issues: “People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and their lackeys!”, “We must liberate Taiwan!”, “Staunchly support the courageous peoples of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia!”, and “Long live the great unity of the peoples of the world!” In the economic reform period (post-1978), only a few national day parades were staged. We focus here on the fiftieth and the sixtieth anniversaries of the republic, when such parades were organized. In the 1999 national day mass parade, in addition to the portable portraits of Mao, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhu De, three floats carrying the large portraits of the leaders of three generations of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin were paraded. The same format of using portrait floats was used in the 2009 parade, except that three generations of Chinese leadership was expanded to four generations by including one more float carrying the large portrait of Hu Jintao. The interesting contrast of the last mass parade with earlier ones is that portable portraits were no longer carried. On the four floats were inscribed slogans of each of the leaders’ signature ideologies: Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Representatives, and the Scientific Development Concept. The slogans in the 2009 national day mass parade formed an interesting contrast to many of the earlier parades because no international issues were dealt with and no international enemies were referred to. These slogans included the following: “Long live the People’s Republic of China!”, “Long live the Communist Party of China!”, “Long live the people!”, “Submit to the Rule of the Party!”, “Serve the people!”, “Be brave and worthy in war!”, “Be loyal to the Party!”, “Love the people!”, “Serve the country!”, “Devote to our mission!”, “Honor our glory!”, “Salute the people’s heroes!”, “Socialism is good!”, “Liberate thoughts!”, “Reform and opening-up!”, “Turn of the century!”, “Keep pace with the times!”, “Scientific development!”, “Harmonious society!”, “Long live the motherland!”, “Science and education strengthen the nation!”, “Unite as one to overcome difficulties!”, “Uphold world peace!”, “Long live the great unity of the people of the (Chinese) ethnic groups!”, “Prosperity!”, “Prosperous and strong, democratic, culturally developed and harmonious!”, “Be constantly prepared!”, and “Tomorrow will be better!” Of all these slogans, “Uphold world peace” is the only reference to beyond the borders of China that was made. New in the 1999 parade was the representation of each of the provinces, autonomous regions, and autonomous metropolises with a float. Also present in the parade were floats representing Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. The tradition was continued in the 2009 parade.

19

Tim F. Liao and Libin Zhang

Summary The descriptions above suggest that the national day mass parade fall into three periods. Not long after the establishment of the republic in 1949, the parades took the form of celebrating the unity of the socialist camp in the mid- to late 1950s internationally and a range of political leaders domestically. This lasted until the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961). The Cultural Revolution signified a unique period of inward looking. Even though international enemies were still extremely relevant, very few friends existed beyond the borders. The period was followed by the reform era, where the focus was on development and modernization. This was not necessarily inward-looking, but had the same effect. In the next section we will review the theoretical model and apply it to the national day parades, divided into the three major periods of Chinese history from 1949 to 2009.

Collective focus, social relations, and the Chinese national day parade A theoretical model Liao, Zhang, and Zhang (2011) presented a theoretical framework articulated by a two-by-two table. The table has two theoretical concepts of collective focus and social relation. The latter pertains, in particular, to the relations between the political elite and the masses, or the top and the bottom. The two-by-two table consists of two forms of collective focus, multiple and singular, and two kinds of top-bottom social relation, rational and traditional. The concept of collective focus is defined as “intranational focus,” or “the points of reference to which the collective body is directed – the range of issues considered by the citizen body as well as the depth of that concern” (Cerulo 1993, p. 92). The notion is based on Durkheim’s (1947 [1893]) concept of conscience collective or collective consciousness, namely the totality of beliefs, values, and sentiments common to the average citizens of a society. By using the term “intranational focus” interchangeably with “collective focus,” Cerulo (1995) emphasized the collective focus that reflects conscience collective of the population within a nation-state, providing a gauge of people’s macro-cognitive solidarity. Such intranational focus can run the gamut of intensity levels from a high level with a uniform, singular focus through a moderate level with differentiated, heterogeneous focus with specialized interests to a low level where the cognitive links between members of the collective break down, a situation Cerulo (1995) related to Durkheim’s anomie. There are three sources that determine a collective’s intranational focus: its cultural configuration in terms of homogenous versus heterogeneous ethnic, linguistic, and religious traditions; its political arrangements in various forms of government; and the occurrence of social events ranging from high-focus events that can mesmerize a collective’s attention to low-focus events that atomize group concerns (Cerulo 1995, pp. 93–96). Liao, Zhang, and Zhang (2011) adapted the concept of collective focus by using only its two typical levels – the high and the moderate – because the case of total anomie is an extremely rare occurrence. These two levels represent two typical types of intranational focus – termed singular collective focus and multiple collective focus, with the former referring to the situation where the collective has a uniform aim and single set of values and beliefs and the latter referring to the case where the collective has a variety of interests and objectives. Variations of these two types exist. For example, singular collective focus does not necessarily suggest that there exists only one focus for the entire population. The exception would be totalitarian entities like the former Soviet bloc governments, which tried to enforce a single set of purposes and goals onto the entire society. In practical terms, it simply means that there exists a dominant focus whereby all the other interests and foci became secondary 20

The changing circle of alliance

or insignificant. Similarly, variations among democracies exist in the degree of having multiple collective focus or how diverse political interests can be in a society. To understand how collective focus works, we need to understand its underlying social relations. Cerulo (2008, p. 356) defined social relations as “the types of connections and the patterns of interaction that structure the broader society.” More specifically, we regard the social relation between the top (i.e., leaders/the elite) and the bottom (i.e., followers/the masses), as the most crucial for understanding the choice of a national anthem. The top-bottom relations summarize an important social reality because social relations by and large determine how key decisions are made in a society. For example, the relations between the top and the bottom are nonexisting in autocracy because the communication is unidirectional without any meaningful social interactions. In a democracy, on the other hand, there is typically more than one channel for communications and interactions between the top and the bottom, and many, if not all, decisions are made through legal-contractual means participated in by the populace. The categorization of social relations relies on Weber’s (1978 [1921]) authority types for describing the social relation between leaders and followers or between the top and the bottom. While Weber allowed subtypes in his ideal types, such as traditional domination or authority in patriarchy, patrimonialism, and feudalism, the system of authority does not change or evolve. Weber recognized, as pointed out by Coser (1977), that mixtures of authority subtypes can be found in the legitimation of authority; for example, either traditional authority or rational-legal authority can be enhanced by charisma. It is also true that national leaders who came to power primarily through the assistance of traditional or rational-legal authority may use charisma to achieve a higher status. Thus, here we focus on two main types of social relations operating within a given authority structure: rational-legal social relations and traditional social relations. It is because pure charismatic authority alone cannot influence national governments and sovereignties. By cross-classifying the two types of social relation and the two types of collective focus, we obtain four types of social reality: multiple collective focus/rational-legal social relation; singular collective focus/rational-legal social relation; multiple collective focus/traditional social relation; singular collective focus/traditional social relation. For our study of national day parades of the masses, we employ two of the four types – multiple collective focus/rational-legal social relation and singular collective focus/traditional social relation. We hypothesize that when a society is represented by multiple collective focus and rational-legal social relation, such a society should be more open with a greater circle of alliance and easier to achieve reconciliations among political factions. A national day parade of the masses, therefore, may display a multitude of political leaders, either from the same or possibly different regimes. Political slogans may not necessarily be displayed. On the other hand, when the society is represented by singular collective focus and traditional social relation, such a society should be more closed with a strictly defined, narrow circle of alliance in a political hierarchy with little tolerance for reconciliation among political factions. In this context a national day mass procession may display only the paramount leader(s) and strong political slogans about friends and enemies in the world.

Applying the theoretical model to a study of national day parades In terms of China’s domestic leadership, the first half of the 1950s can certainly be described as a period of multiple collective focus combined with relative rational-legal social relation (cf. Liao, Zhang, and Zhang 2011). From the descriptive section above, we learned that national day parades in the early 1950s typically would include a lineup of multiple Chinese top leaders, including Mao, Zhou, and Liu, as well as Sun (Yat-sen). A poster from 1950 portrays Mao’s and 21

Tim F. Liao and Libin Zhang

Sun’s portraits carried side by side in the parade of the masses, which was much less trained and more spontaneous than parades in the later years. Some of the other top eight Chinese leaders would also have their portraits displayed in the parade.8 For example, Gao Gang’s portrait disappeared in later years after its appearance in 1950.9 In the early 1950s, the multiple representations of portraits also reflect the relative collaboration and tolerance of differences among the Chinese political leaders. When the Great Leap Forward started in 1958, it was under the guidance and command of Mao. The campaign was intended to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy to a communist society through speedy industrialization and collectivization. In this period, multiple collective focus was eroded and rational/legal social relation also faded when Mao’s voice was more or less the only one heard. This is rather ironic when considering the campaign followed in the wake of the “Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom” movement in 1956, when different voices were quelled and persecuted. Some political leaders’ portraits that had appeared in the early 1950s parades disappeared in the 1958 national day parade, foreshadowing what was going to happen in the following year, when military grand marshal Peng Dehuai was purged and Lin Biao was put in his place. Along the same lines, China’s international collective focus was also multiple and social relation, with the other socialist countries relatively rational until the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations in 1960. Throughout most of the 1950s, Soviet leaders along with communist leaders of both socialist and some capitalist countries were shown in portraits in the parades. This lineup of friendly leaders’ portraits was discontinued in 1960, and the previous year saw the final display of Stalin’s portrait paraded in Tiananmen Square. The recognition of multiple leaders in the socialist camp in this period is significant when contrasted with the later Cultural Revolution period. Unlike most of the 1950s, the first half of the Cultural Revolution period (1966–1976) can be described by a singular collective focus and traditional social relation both in domestic and international domains. In both the 1969 and the 1970 parades, for example, there were no portraits of international leaders from anywhere in the world. The political slogans can also tell stories about this singular collective focus of the time. Three slogans with any relevance beyond the Chinese borders were used: “People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and their lackeys!”, “We must liberate Taiwan!”, and “Staunchly support the courageous peoples of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia!” One theme emerged from all three slogans; that is, the imperialist U.S. was the biggest enemy and the Taiwanese as well as the South Vietnamese governments were all lackeys. There were even very few friends among the countries of the socialist camp. In fact, only North Korea in Asia and Albania in Europe were China’s real friends when most other socialist governments followed the lead of the Soviet Union. The 1969 parade included those opposing imperialism and socialist imperialism (i.e., the USSR) and supporting the revolutionary struggle of people world over.10 China’s domestic collective focus was no less singular during this time. Mao was the paramount leader, supported by a small group of allies including Madame Mao. The second-in-command, General Lin Biao, back-scratched and fawned on Mao while plotting a scheme to overthrow his master later on. Most other Chinese political leaders were persecuted or purged from their positions. The social relation of the time was extremely traditional, no different from that between an emperor and his subjects in ancient times. It is not surprising that, other than statues and portraits of Mao, the only other leader portrayed was Lin, together with Mao in the same portrait. From the content of the mass parades of the time, we can easily tell that there was no dialogue, no reconciliation or cooperation, just an oligarchy and despotism. Since China entered its economic reform in the late 1970s, there have been very few national day parades organized. Other than the 1984 parade that we do not have much data of, the two 22

The changing circle of alliance

prominent national day parades took place in 1999 and 2009 upon the fiftieth and the sixtieth anniversaries of the People’s Republic of China, respectively. Domestically, this was a period of relative multiple collective focus, relative because the authority recognized a line of legitimate leadership that had contributed to the well-being of the country and society without admitting as broad a range of voices as possible. Internationally, China embarked on a successful run of economic growth, securing its position as a major player on the world stage. Its social relation with the outside world was legal/rational to the extent the relation is governed by international practices. With this type of collective focus and social relation, it is not surprising to see only the domestic political leaders in the recognizable sequential order were portrayed in the two parades commemorating the fiftieth and the sixtieth anniversaries.11 We found very few slogans of a political nature used in the 2009 parade. References were primarily on “development,” “harmony,” and “prosperity,” in line with the goal of the economic reform and modernization. No international leaders of any political orientation were portrayed in the two parades, and no political slogans of any kind were on display other than those broadly referring to world peace. The observation is consistent with our expectation based on the theoretical model of collective focus and social relation.

Conclusions We have studied China’s national day parades, a form of political commemoration, in this chapter. Specifically, we examined the portraits and slogans displayed in the mass pageant portion of a parade, because they demonstrate the telltale signs of social orientation in terms of reconciliation, cooperation, and collaboration between and among political leaders of different factions and traditions. We focused on the three historical periods of recent Chinese history for the study – the period immediately following the founding of the republic (the 1950s), the Cultural Revolution period (especially 1966–1970), and the post-reform period (the 1990s and 2000s). We analyzed various media reports and videos of the parades to obtain a sense of the kind of portraits and slogans displayed in the parades. We employ a theoretical model based on the two factors of collective focus and social relation. Specifically, collective focus can be multiple or singular, and social relation can be legal/rational or traditional. Two important subtypes emerge when the two factors are cross-classified with each other – a type of society where its collective focus is multiple and social relation legal/rational, and another type of society where its collective focus is singular and social relation traditional. The second type describes the period of the Cultural Revolution, while the first type more or less describes the first half of the 1950s as well as the general period in the post-reform era. Applying this theoretical model, we found a close correspondence between these two theoretical types and how portraits and slogans were organized in national day parades during the six decades of recent Chinese history, when the society has been in constant transition. Singular collective focus combined with traditional social relation tends to be represented by very few but selective one or two paramount leaders’ portraits and specific political slogans. This is because singular collective focus and traditional social relation combined describe a hierarchical structure under a paramount leader. The social structure is top-down and asymmetrical, and tolerance and reconciliation are not necessary, let alone practiced. In contrast, multiple collective focus combined with legal/rational social relation tends to display a range of portraits and either a broad scope of or likely no political slogans. This is because under such social conditions the political structure, while still hierarchical, typically lacks an omnipotent paramount leader, and the social structure allows more of two-way communications. Thus, the ambience of reconciliation among 23

Tim F. Liao and Libin Zhang

political factions as well as over different regimes can be present. This last point was exemplified by the most recent national day parade at the sixtieth anniversary, where portraits of the leaders from the four consecutive regimes were displayed, demonstrating unity and continuity. In contrast, during the Cultural Revolution of the period of singular collective focus and traditional social relation, only the contemporary regime was relevant and only the paramount leader’s portrait, occasionally accompanied by the second-in-command’s, was on display ubiquitously. National day parades are a collective memory project. The use of portraits and slogans provides a means to achieve certain goals of a memory project that are consistent with the type of government in terms of collective focus and social relation that either facilitates or discourages political reconciliation. It, of course, is the work of commemorative entrepreneurs: the Chinese governing elite in this case. Such memory projects use remembering and forgetting as strategies as described by Gong (2001); they constitute a discourse of the past that uses the past yet can be disconnected from the past (Irwin-Zarecka 1994).

Notes An earlier version of the chapter was presented at the 2010 New School for Social Research Memory Conference: The Limits of Memory, New York, 4–6 March 2010. 1 For this particular research purpose, the internet provides a rich source of information. Since national day parades are considered glorious moments of Chinese history, video recordings, still photos, and news reports are easily found with a caveat of irregular availability. 2 The student participants often start training for the parade a month or two before the National Day. 3 They were the members of Soviet Presidium at that time. 4 The portrait of Luis Carlos Prestes of Brazil also appeared, according to another source. 5 During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s “Little Red Book,” which contains quotations from his writings, was read by all. Carrying a copy and displaying it was an indication of one’s revolutionary resolution to follow Mao’s teachings. 6 Lin Biao (December 5, 1907–September 13, 1971) was a major Chinese military leader and was instrumental in creating Mao’s cult of personality during the 1960s. As a result, he was rewarded and named as Mao’s successor from 1966 until his death in 1971. After a failed coup to oust Mao in 1971, Lin, together with his wife and son, fled in an airplane that crashed over Mongolia, not far from the Soviet border. The fatal September 1971 incident is known as the Lin Biao incident. 7 Dazhai is a farming community in eastern Shanxi province and was set up as a model commune by Mao to serve an example of agricultural production to learn from throughout the country. 8 Refer to http://chineseposters.net/themes/1-october.php for the visual image. 9 Gao Gang (1905–1954) was a Chinese Communist Party leader during the Chinese Civil War and in the early years of the People’s Republic, but fell a victim to the first major purge in those early years. He committed suicide in August 1954. 10 Refer to http://www.wyzxwk.com/Article/zatan/2013/12/311508.html for a visual image. 11 For President Hu Jingtao’s portrait float in the 2009 parade, refer to http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/ thOaAorDlh/China+60th+National+Day+Celebration/Sxy5EOENOT3.

References Cerulo, K. A. (1993). Symbols and the world system: National anthems and flags. Social Forum 8(2), 243–271. Cerulo, K. A. (1995). Identity designs: The sights and sounds of a nation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Cerulo, K. A. (2008). Social relations, core values, and the polyphony of the American experience. Sociological Forum 23, 351–362. Clark, M. M. (2002). The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: A first report. Journal of American History 89: 569–579. Coser, L. (1977). Masters of sociological thought: Ideas in historical and social context (2nd ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

24

The changing circle of alliance Durkheim, E. (1947 [1893]). The division of labor in society. New York: Free. Gong, G.W. (Ed.). (1996). Remembering and forgetting: The legacy of war and peace in East Asia. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies. Gong, G.W. (2001). The beginning of history: Remembering and forgetting as strategic issues. The Washington Quarterly 24(2), 45–57. Irwin-Zarecka, I. (1994). Frames of remembrance: The dynamics of collective memory. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Liao, Tim F., Zhang, Gehui, & Zhang, Libin. (2010). The changing fate of the national anthem of China. In Mikyoung Kim & Barry Schwartz (eds.), Northeast Asia’s difficult past: Essays in collective memory (pp. 147–165). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Liao, Tim F., Zhang, Gehui, & Zhang, Libin. (2011). Social foundations of national anthems: Theorizing for a better understanding of the changing fate of the national anthem of China. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 42, 106–127. Quinn, J. R. (Ed.). (2009). Reconciliation(s): Transitional justice in postconflict societies. Montreal, QC: McGillQueen’s University Press. Rajah, Ananda. (1999). Making and managing tradition in Singapore: The National Day Parade. In K. W. Kwok et al. (Eds.), Our place in time: Exploring heritage and memory in Singapore (pp. 101–109). Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society. Scott, David. (2008). China and the International System, 1840–1949: Power, presence, and perceptions in a century of humiliation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin, & Schwartz, Barry. (1991). The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a difficult past. American Journal of Sociology 97, 376–420. Weber, M. (1978 [1921]). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

25

2 CACOPHONOUS MEMORIES OF THE WAR Revision of the official narrative on the War of Resistance against Japan in post-Mao China and its limitations Rui Gao

The consensus among scholars of modern Chinese history is that “the single most devastating event” (Mitter and Moore 2011: 227) in this period is the Chinese War of Resistance against Japan (1931–1945) (hereafter the War). During this prolonged aggression that lasted for fourteen years, the entire nation was brought down to ruins under massive-scale destruction and violence, in which approximately half of the territory and population were subjected to the cruel oppression of the Japanese invading army. Thousands of towns and villages were decimated and reduced to ashes as a consequence. In addition, more than 15 million Chinese lost their lives, approximately 60 to 95 million became refugees, and other unknown millions were known to have been bereaved, injured, captured and coerced into forced labor or sexual slavery (Department of History of Peking University 1995; Military Science Academy 1995; Li 1995; Zhang 2001). The heinous nature of the war atrocities committed by the invading army (Chang 1997; Chen 2005; Gao et al. 2005; Li et al. 1995; Shi 2005; Wu 2005; Xie 2005; Yin & Young 1996) left indelible scars of trauma and anguish on the bodies and consciousness of millions of Chinese.1 Ironically, for decades after the end of the War, the suffering and agony of the people remained ultimately private, while official memories of the War were forcefully couched in a victorious and heroic discourse, itself thoroughly elided into a communist narrative focusing exclusively on class struggle. It was only in the last two decades that some signs of change began to appear in the public domain, and the War memories began to take a different shape from those of the previous period.2 What has happened to the War memories in contemporary Chinese society? How has the War been told and depicted in the official narrative since the beginning of People’s Republic of China six decades ago? Had there indeed been significant changes, what was changed, and how significant was the difference? These seemingly banal questions are not to be trifled with, for social scientists and historians have long demonstrated that collective memory, especially that of disastrous events such as wars, plays a crucial role in the construction of national collective identities and thereby not only composes a central part in the legitimization package adopted by state leaders but also exerts significant impact on the geopolitics and interstate relations of specific 26

Cacophonous memories

regions (Megill 1998; Volkan 1997; Zerubavel 1995). Tracing the path of official war memories in contemporary China, therefore, is of ultimate significance, not only because it can clearly reveal the series of legitimacy-building projects conducted by the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP) ever since it came to power in 1949, but more importantly, because it may offer one important piece of the jigsaw puzzle which, when completed, can point toward possible solutions to many difficult conundrums that continue to bedevil the geopolitics of East Asia and obstruct the global community from knowing a truer version of history regarding what really happened during the War in China. These puzzles include but are not limited to the following: Why is it that the enormous sufferings inflicted on China during WWII remain relatively obscure while the Holocaust and Hiroshima memories have become “universalized symbol of human sufferings and moral evil of the 21st century” (Alexander et al. 2004: 197)?; why is it that China’s experiences such as the Nanking Massacre remain relatively unknown and have yet to reach the ear and eye of the world (Alexander & Gao 2012[2007]; Chang 1997; Li 2000; Yin & Young 1996)?; why is it that Japan’s most powerful public figures and political leaders routinely and successfully deny the facts of war atrocities perpetrated by Japanese military which have been validated by a variety of evidence (He 2011; Lawson & Tanaka 2010; Reilly 2011)?; and why is it that China and Japan are still mired in a vicious cycle of mutual animosity, with their relations stagnating in a “shallow reconciliation” that oscillates unstably between unconvincing rapprochement and dangerous friction, while other antagonistic parties of WWII have forged ahead with reconciliation (He 2011)?3 By examining the official remembrance of the War in contemporary China, we may not be able to solve all the intriguing puzzles, but we will be moving one step further toward that ultimate goal and contributing to the eventual achievement of regional reconciliation and peace. Encouragingly, in the last two decades, scholars of modern Chinese history have made impressive progress in mapping out the official memory terrain of the War in China, and identified a curious memory “curve” that features a repressive stage in the Maoist era and a surge of official revision in the post-Mao period. This chapter reviews these endeavors, focusing on the so-called later “revision” of official narrative. It critiques and qualifies some of the conclusions drawn from these previous studies. Drawing on recent theoretical development in the field of collective memory scholarship, I demonstrate how the grand narrative about the War as prescribed and promulgated by the Chinese government in the post-Mao era retains many of the basic narrative structures, interpretative framework, and rhetorical and aesthetic features inherited from public discourses in Maoist China. Owing to the highly path-dependent nature of collective remembrance, the official revision of the War, regardless the instrumental purpose it is intended to serve, remains ultimately limited in both its scope and depth: its effects are yet to be examined. This chapter also harbors humble theoretical aspiration to irradiate the “black box” that has hitherto enveloped the mechanism via which previous memories function to shape and constrain the formation of later remembrance.

Literature review: War memory “curve” and official narrative revision in post-Mao China In the last two decades, China’s War history and memory have drawn wide attention from both inside and outside of Chinese society. This community of China/War experts, equipped with a theoretical and methodological edge generated by interdisciplinary vigor, has since made admirable progress in exploring a field that few have trodden before. A most recognizable theme has come to the fore quite consistently and repeatedly: the existence of a memory “curve,” where an earlier “silence” or “suppression” was replaced by “resurgence” of new remembrance in the later periods. Mitter and Moore (2011), for instance, claim that the rekindled intellectual interests and endeavors in recent years have pushed the history of the War in China from a “historiographical 27

Rui Gao

penumbra” where it was never discussed “in its own right” into the center of the historical agenda (227). This repositioning into the center is a telling evidence of how the War memory and history are back within the spectrum of public attention. Among the works on this memory “curve” motif, a few stand out as particularly relevant to this discussion as they focus upon the collective remembrance of the War in contemporary Chinese society. In his paper titled “China’s New Remembering of World War II,” for instance, Waldron (1996) uses the case of a famous Kuomintang (KMT) military general, Zhang Zizhong, who died in a particularly savage battle against the invading Japanese army in 1940. His analysis shows how memory of the devastating war was first suppressed and then restored in the People’s Republic. According to Waldron, both the processes of suppression and restoration are closely linked to concurrent political circumstances. But at the same time, they must also be understood more broadly as the demonstration of “the shift in stress, in attempts at regime legitimation, from previously dominant iconoclastic and utopian communist ideas toward nationalistic and patriotic themes” (947). In similar veins, Mitter (2003), in his article “Old Ghosts, New Memories: China’s Changing War History in the Era of Post-Mao Politics,” also observes the emerging trend of a new remembrance of the War in China. Drawing on newly published historiographical and popular works, and the construction of museums and memorials as his materials, Mitter contends that this new trend was “one of the most powerful, but in the West least-known reconfigurations of history” (Mitter 2003: 118). Mitter describes how the most traumatic of wars in the 20th century was overshadowed by the paramount political exigency of an internecine conflict, and the way in which the memory was dealt with rather “cursorily” in the public sphere until the 1970s (Ibid.). Like Waldron, Mitter accounts for the new memories of the past events within the contemporary political context of China. He argues that the reconfiguration of history is the result of four interactive socio-political conditions: the need to find a legitimating ideology in the face of the collapse of Marxism, the intention to reunify with Taiwan, “the quest to bind the Chinese together in the face of forces which are driving society apart” (2003: 121), and the desire to enter the international community. The result was, he argues, the coexistence of dichotomous images of China both as a victim and as a great power. Unlike Waldron and Mitter, Coble (2007) does not use any specific case studies in his article titled “China’s ‘New Remembering’ of the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance, 1937–1945.” He rather offers a detailed description of the new academic trend and achievements in the WWII research field during the reform era. Like Mitter, Coble also links the emergence of these works to the government’s increasing emphasis on patriotic nationalism and its attempts to reunify with Taiwan. Furthermore, he argues that the new trend of remembering is featured in two themes: the patriotic narrative that stresses the heroic resistance, and an emphasis on China’s victimization developed around a “number game in which the emphasis of historical writing is to maximize the sheer number of victims” (Coble 2011: 398) Writing about the War museum representation, Denton (2007) also identifies a juxtaposition of two conflicting narratives, though his findings add a temporal element to the phenomenon. He finds that while the “victor” narrative seems to have been the dominant discourse in Mao’s era, a contrasting theme of suffering and victimization has emerged as the motif of the new war remembrance. Similar to the aforementioned scholars, he connects the surfacing of this new theme to a shift to nationalism in which the government has used the device of “emotionality of atrocities” as part of its legitimation project. It was to supersede the declining and potentially subversive message of revolutionary class struggle (Lee and Yang 2007: 16). He further argues, resonating with Mitter, that remembering the war in the same mode that the West memorializes the Holocaust, and emphasizing it as an indispensable part of the international resistance against fascism, would facilitate China’s efforts to join the global community. 28

Cacophonous memories

In her seminal article “Remembering and Forgetting the War: Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950–2006,” He (2007) also deals with the shift in the war memory of China, but she does it from a unique perspective of political science that adds new insights into the topic. Arguing that historical memories are constantly subjected to the manipulation of ruling elites who weave narratives and stories into national myths for instrumental purposes, He aptly places the shift in the war memory within integrated explanatory framework encompassing both international conflict and domestic political exigency. According to He, while the Chinese ruling elites focused on “geostrategic interests” and produced a quasi-convergent narrative to avoid outright confrontation with Japan until the 1970s, “a strong sense of insecurity in domestic politics” (45) drove the CCP elite to exploit historiographical differences that reinforced international history disputes. Compared to aforementioned studies, He was more specific and articulate by identifying some of the fundamental “myths” constructed by the efficient CCP propaganda machines, myths such as the clear distinction between “the small handful of Japanese militarists” and ordinary Japanese people regrouped as the fellow victims of Jingoism. Despite their distinct approaches and subtly varied perspectives, under the general focus on the memory “curve,” these works share two concrete consensuses. They are confirmed or at least partially supported by a myriad of other studies either directly or indirectly (see Alexander & Gao 2012[2007]; Coble 2011; Cohen 2003; Diamant 2011; Gao 2011; Gries 2004; He 2011; Mitter & Moore 2011; Reilly 2011; Wang 2008; Weigelin-Schwiedrzik 2006; Yang 2001). The first consensus is that the official remembrance of the War in post-Mao China represents a radical departure from how the War had been narrated and remembered in the public sphere until the 1980s. Although different expressions such as “silence,” “suppressed memory,” or “cultural amnesia” are used, they agree that the CCP government in Maoist China preferred “to downplay atrocities suffered by the Chinese” (Coble 2011: 396) and instead promoted a heroic narrative of resistance. A revolutionary master narrative of class struggle, highlighting the courageous and sagacious leadership of the Party in contrast to the cowardice, corruption and incompetence of the archenemy KMT and its American imperialist master, once completely overshadowed the war narrative. This triumphant “China as victor” discourse, however, was slowly but powerfully replaced by an obsessive attention to the “victimization” of Chinese people at the hands of the Japanese invaders in the post-Mao era. The unspeakable cruelty inflicted by the Japanese military began to occupy the center of the current remembrance praxis, which in turn formed a key component of the nationalistic identity of today’s China. The strong nationalistic tint in the new remembrance leads to a second consensus shared by many studies on the War memories. When explaining the official “revision,” an instrumental “presentist” approach is the usual norm (Olick & Robbins 1998) that the past can be manipulated to serve the present for it “is a particularly useful resource for expressing interests” by certain groups (128). Whether it was the internal urgency to rebuild the legitimacy of the Party, or to manage new challenges of the post-Cold War structure, current political exigency has stood at the very center of the analytical framework that most scholars have used to contextualize the surfacing of the revised official narrative. A most significant component of this project was obviously the patriotic education campaign in the early 1990s (Coble 2011; Cohen 2003; Gries 2004; He 2011; Reilly 2011; Wang 2008; Weigelin-Schwiedrzik 2006; and Yang 2001). Most studies mention this top-down nationwide mobilization campaign, which targeted the Chinese youth as the key agent of the drastic shift in the war-related discourse. With a detailed and lucid documentation of the campaign, Wang (2008)’s article serves as a good summary of this shared understanding: as the Party skillfully used history education to arouse people’s consciousness of the “century of humiliation,” public attention was diverted from domestic concern to foreign enemies, and the reinvigorated memory of Chinese sufferings was cleverly deployed as an 29

Rui Gao

essential ideological toolkit that the Party conveniently found to counter the centrifugal forces driving the nation apart and to consolidate a new patriotic nationalistic identity. These consensuses are very insightful and help to form a solid foundation upon which I develop my argument, but they are not without limitations. One of them is that both the “presentist” explanatory framework and the shared overemphasis placed upon the radical shift in the official war memories effectively assume that the past is infinitely malleable and can be constantly reconstructed to serve the pragmatic purpose of the ruling elite. Such an instrumentalist position, however, has long been cast in doubts and criticized due to the remarkable “persistence” of the past and signs of the limits of its manipulability. Schudson (1992), for instance, famously argues “the past is in some respects, and under some conditions, highly resistant to efforts to make it over.” Schwartz (1991, 1996) documents how “certain pasts are constitutive elements of political cultures, and these endure as long as the political culture is not completely superseded” (Olick & Robbins 1998:129). Even when radically new pasts emerge, they often “superimpose themselves over older versions without eliminating them” (129). More importantly, whether through change or persistence, the mnemonic dynamics of the past are also a function of its own history and memories as texts, and therefore the way in which the “original” event had been remembered in the past plays a most crucial role in forming the new pasts (Olick & Levy 1997). If memories as texts, or established narratives about a past event, are intrinsically path-dependent, and resist and constrain later attempts at revision, then how exactly does the “new” remembrance of the War differ from the previous version? To what degree is the revision a departure from the old version, and in what specific aspects is it new? Under the surface of exuberant resurgence and change, is there any latent continuity between the simplistic and reductionist Maoist interpretation of the War and the current boisterous commemoration and memory? These questions remain unanswered in the previous studies. The constant manipulability assumption leads them to highlight the “novelty” of resurgence, while dismissing the previous versions as merely the default “suppression” stage, a taken-for-granted reference point for later change. At the same time, they fail to give sufficient attention to the structures of meaning innate in the contents of memory and thereby neglect to address the resiliency of older images of the past. In the following, I will offer a detailed textual analysis, or a “hermeneutic reconstruction,” of the official war narratives in post-Mao China. A cultural approach does not guarantee better answers to the aforementioned questions, but it would help to shed light on the crucial role played by culture embodied by previous narrative constructions of the War, in defining and shaping the later revisions. This aspect has largely been ignored hitherto by scholars writing on this topic. I argue that resilient cultural structures such as mnemonic relics constructed during Maoist China continue to exert substantial influence on today’s society, and significantly regulate and constrain the official revision in the succeeding era. I also explain in detail how the older images command the present memory through two different mechanisms. In doing so, I draw on commemoration articles, history textbooks, movies and museums, as these evidence constitute the canonical version of the historical narrative in contemporary societies (Hein & Selden 2000).

Official commemoration articles and two mechanisms of continuity To have a glimpse of the official war remembrance during the post-Mao era, the commemoration articles on special occasions such as memorial days or the War anniversaries are very useful (see chapter 1 in this volume). And no other commemoration articles can be more authoritative than the public speech manuscript and monographs drafted by no less than the President of the country. Thereby I turn to President Hu Jintao’s public speech during the 60th anniversary celebration of the war victory in 2005 (Hu 2005).4 Comparing it with Vice President Lin Piao’s 30

Cacophonous memories

most influential and widely circulated monograph on the occasion of the 20th anniversary in 19655 will effectively reveal the scope of revision and continuity. A comparative reading of the texts confirms two major points regarding revision. Hu’s commemoration article confirmed the findings made in previous studies. While Vice President Lin launched a vehement and prolonged diatribe against the KMT enemy who were not only completely denied of their resistance activities, but were emphatically singled out as the main archenemy of Chinese people and demonized with vitriolic words such as “treacherous,” “brutal,” “ruthless,” “cowardly,” and as having perpetrated unforgivable “massacre” and “slaughter,” in President Hu’s article that appeared 40 years later, the front battle fought by the KMT-led armed forces was finally acknowledged, and the KMT was no longer identified as the worst antagonist but recast rather positively as a resistance force, an alliance, albeit an incompetent and sometimes indecisive one, with the CCP. Second, along with this “redemption” of the KMT, Hu’s article recoded the Japanese imperial army as the “unequivocal” enemy, primarily demonstrated by a short reference to the Nanking Massacre, and the biological and chemical warfare inflicted on Chinese. This poses a sharp contrast to Lin’s version wherein not a single war crime committed by the Japanese forces was mentioned in the entire 68 pages, and this apparent and official camp of foes, in whose name the war was fought, was rigorously diminished to a distant and faceless image whose identity was cast in the grey zone of ambiguity bordering the sacred and the profane (Lin 1965).6 But the boundary of revision in President Hu’s speech, with one extra point of a newly placed significance on China’s membership in the allied force, was thus delimited. In comparison with the revision, it is the consistency and continuity between the two articles separated by four decades in time that strikes one as more salient. Indeed, Hu’s speech dedicated seven pages of the entire 26 page-long monograph to explicating how the current Chinese government would lead the Chinese people to achieve more prosperity and success. But still, one would have the illusion that Chairman Lin’s article was simply reprinted and republished again for a new round of circulation if the recent text was accompanied by a long and unabashed eulogy to Chairman Mao. Most of the essential narrative structures and features that characterized Lin’s article were retained in Hu’s new speech with little cosmetic makeover. Of all the 26 pages of Hu’s speech, for instance, echoing Lin’s endless bragging about the CCP, an entire four pages (pp. 4–8) were dedicated to the Party’s self-glorification of the heroic achievement where the only two major military victories that the CCP armed forced had ever won during its entire history of confrontation with the Japanese army, the “triumph in Pinxing Valley,” and the “Great Battles of One Hundred Battalions,” were lauded with self-intoxicating enthusiasm. Similarly, corresponding to Lin’s exultant celebration of the victory, another entire seven pages (pp. 9–16) of Hu’s speech were a gushy ode to the significance of the war victory for the Chinese people and the world. Most amazingly, 40 years after Vice President Lin pompously boasted about the unsurpassable might of the so-called “People’s warfare,” when the actual effectiveness of this warfare had been put into question,7 the various forms of the people’s war, exemplified by the “tunnel warfare” and the “landmine warfare,” were still acclaimed without any restraint as “a spectacular miracle in the human history,” and as a war of heroes who had trampled down upon the Japanese invaders, who, only for a while, seemed to be on the rampage (Hu 2005: 8). If in the places of continuity, President Hu was virtually reiterating the stories recounted by Vice President Lin, with all the previous narrative patterns, binary codes, rhetorical features and interpretative framework intact, even the places of revision remarkably manifest a reflection of consistency. In the case of the redefinition of the enemy, for example, although the target was shifted from the KMT and other class enemies to the Japanese imperialists in Hu’s speech, the Japanese were never a general category; rather, a clear line of distinction was consistently drawn 31

Rui Gao

between the “tiny bunch of Japanese Jingoists,” the perpetrators, and the “overwhelming majority of Japanese people,” the innocent victims. On maintaining a friendly relationship with Japan, for instance, President Hu stated this: The invasion war unleashed by the Japanese Jingoists in modern period not only brought tremendous catastrophe to the Chinese people, but also deeply victimized the Japanese people. Those who had schemed and waged the invasion war were only a tiny faction of Japanese Jingoists. After the war, people of all walks of life in Japan demonstrated their courage in facing up to the historical truth of the invasion war, and strongly condemned the war atrocities committed by the invaders in China. Many of the former Japanese soldiers who had participated in the war genuinely repented what they had done, and tried to promote Sino-Japanese friendship in solid actions and had done many useful work. Their conscience and courage should be highly appreciated. (Hu 2005: 23) Innate opposition attributed to the Japanese camp obviously echoed the predominant binary code that was at the center of “the communist trauma of class struggle,” a prevalent cultural structure that dictated the organization of social meanings in Mao’s China (Gao 2011). According to this powerful grand narrative, the fundamental conflict of society is inherently defined along the horizontal strata based on class struggle, where proletariats of the world must form a sacred universalist fraternity. The Japanese workers and peasants, therefore, even when recruited into the imperialist army, were insistently perceived “as innocent victims subjected to the poisoning and exploitation of the Jingoist ruling class.” Their victimhood in the class relationship was an assurance that they could be easily converted and retrieved back to the righteous proletariat camp for camaraderie (Gao 2011). Vice President Lin proudly claimed the following 40 years earlier: During the anti-Japanese war we . . . succeeded in converting not a few Japanese prisoners who had been badly poisoned by fascist ideology. After they were politically awakened, they organized themselves into anti-war organizations such as the League for the Liberation of the Japanese People, the Anti-War League of the Japanese in China and the League of Awakened Japanese, helped us to disintegrate the Japanese army and co-operated with us in opposing Japanese militarism. Comrade Sanzo Nosaka, the leader of the Japanese Communist Party, who was then in Yenan, gave us great help in this work. (Lin 1965: 30) It is quite clear that Hu’s “reconfiguration” in the identification of the “real” enemy was still influenced by the lingering powerful binary code reflecting on the universalistic class logic of the Maoist era. Even if the official intention was to incite a nationalist sentiment against Japan, the recent symbolic re-coding is subjected to unremitting persistence of past memories and cultural representations remaining effective until present. Concerning another point of variance in Hu’s speech, the articulation of war atrocities that many scholars claim to have paved the road for a later official turn toward victim discourse, the underlying consistency seems less straightforward. It is perhaps because narrative of war atrocities was completely absent from Lin’s monograph, just as they were drastically toned down and practically whitewashed from the entire public sphere in Mao’s China (Gao 2011: 129–133). Upon careful reading, however, one can still notice how the presentation of war atrocities was also contextualized within a familiar narrative framework that not only shaped

32

Cacophonous memories

the understanding of the War in previous decades, but continues to regulate the official remembrance today. The elements of this narrative construction are found in the high degree of consistency and similarity between the two texts as discussed above: both Vice President Lin’s exultant celebration and President Hu’s effusive acclamation demonstrate a progressive historical teleology that recounts the War with an “ascending narrative”; this framework not only emphasizes the ultimate significance of triumphant happy ending, but also features a romanticized glorification of the war experience. Hu vigorously reassured the reader of the speech with the following: After the war victory, the trials of Nazi German war criminals by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal and the Japanese war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East brought the due punishments to those who had unleashed invasion wars and who had their hands dipped in the blood of people of all countries, justice of the world had been served, human dignities preserved, and the common wishes of all the people of the world who love peace and justice fulfilled (Hu 2005: 14) As if concerned that knowledge of war atrocities would have been unbearable for people, Hu attempted to underscore the historical justice that had been thoroughly served at the end of the War. By fiercely constructing a perfect sense of closure of the War, which Hu claimed to have been secured by due punishment of war criminals, he reasserted the hyper upbeat and simplistically optimistic attitude characterizing the official grand narrative about the War in Mao’s China. In this grand narrative, the war was portrayed as a fiercely heroic, childishly romantic story that always ended happily with a festive victory (Gao 2011: 159–194). The victorious happy ending, according to this official story, possesses the magical healing power that can alone soothe the pain, cure the wounded and justify all the terrible loss incurred during the War. In similar veins, while President Hu documented war atrocities and asserted victimhood of Chinese in his speech, he was anxiously trying to turn the page from the gruesome war scenes to the bright vision of victory, and hastily called upon the people not to dwell on the painful past of anguish, but to move onward toward a better future predestined by China’s historical progress. Interestingly, while certain symbolic space was assigned to the narration of war sufferings because of, as scholars have argued, an official will to shift the discursive focus from the glittering victory to the dismal tragedy, Hu’s speech shows that this reclaimed symbolic space was still configured in the same triumphalist narrative framework that had been entrenched over the decades. In other words, the war sufferings and trauma were never narrated for their own sake, they were instead contained within the glorious and heroic narrative pattern. This shallow acknowledgment, whereby sufferings and trauma were perfunctorily recorded and then swiftly locked away on the high shelves of historical storehouse, does not permit the emergence of “trauma” claim, or the formation of collective identity as victimized group (Alexander et al. 2004). The War’s mnemonic value mattered only so much as not to overshadow the unshakable significance of the victory, and the trauma was mitigated so as not to discredit the glorious war resistance. Once again, previous memories embedded in cultural structures reveal their resiliency in affecting the presentist revisionism. The underlying consistency as demonstrated by President Hu’s commemoration article effectively reaffirms the persistence of previous memories and cultural influences over time: older images of the past serve as an essential element of collective representation, and thereby continue

33

Rui Gao

to impose formidably upon the current makeover efforts. Between the apparent variance and salient similarity, two distinctive mechanisms where “the past commands the present” can be identified. First, powerful cultural structures that prevailed in the public sphere and significantly shaped the memory construction of the War back in the Maoist era, as exemplified by the triumphalist narrative framework and the communist class binary, remain influential in the post-Mao era as the constitutive elements of a broad political culture that stays largely unchanged, and continue to exert substantial influence upon the current narrative about the War. Second, “chips and chunks” of previous war memories, “crystallized” idioms, catchphrases or simple repetition of narrative, represented in our case by the almost identical blustering on the people’s warfare in both Lin’s and Hu’s monograph, are reused as ready-made cultural “building blocks.” These “material” building blocks, infused with communist rhetoric, contain the original layers of semiotics, and their direct incorporation into the later official construction is bound to engender a robust continuity between two different time periods.

Mechanism of resilient cultural structures: Revision and history texts The functioning of both mechanisms in the official narrative construction of the War in contemporary China can be attested to by ample traces and evidence. Compared to the prevalence of the cultural “building blocks” in the present narrative, the less manifest but more resilient of the two mechanisms, the persistence of the underlying cultural structures, appears to function more saliently in the emerging “victim” discourse, the major component of the current official revision. In their article on the absence and resurgence of the Nanking Massacre memory in China, for instance, Alexander and Gao (2012) documented how People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of CCP, tried to dilute citizen anger when the Nanking Massacre became a hot issue in the 1980s. They found that “for every article accusing the Japanese government of irresponsible behavior, there must be a counteracting article demonstrating how the ordinary Japanese people have shown sincere repentance and are now the true friends of Chinese people” (Alexander and Gao 2012: 597–598; chapter 12 in this volume). Obviously, this case shows the resilient persistence of the communist class binary, one in which the canonical version has been replaced by its softer and subtler derivation as the “ruling elite vs. ordinary citizens.” In the same vein, curator Zhu Chengshan (2005), in his preface to the memorandum on the 20th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre museum opening, stated how “friendly” Japanese people stood with the Chinese people in fighting against the “tiny bunch of Jingoistic rightists” in Japan: Right-wing forces in Japan, represented by Ishihara, had attempted once again to deny the Massacre, using so-called academic evidence. . .however, we are united with progressive scholars and people of Japan like . . . made timely and effective counterargument to preserve historical truths . . . (Preface) Unmistakably presented in these words is another contemporary derivation of the communist binary: “the small handful of reactionary rightists vs. the overwhelming majority progressive people.” As a soft version of the “sacred” proletarian Bolshevik, the signifier “people” seems to have kept all the potent holiness endowed back from the dreamy days of internationalist idealism, and remains immune to any ideological pollution. Equally, the abstract yet carefully delimited category of “the tiny bunch of Jingoist rightists” inherited all of the symbolic profanity from the past signifier “class enemies” and became the arch-devil responsible for all that went wrong during the War and since. 34

Cacophonous memories

Similarly, in a compilation of records of the war atrocities published in 1995 (Li et al. 1995), the author of the preface, Yang Chengwu, a famous CCP military general, after confirming the truthfulness of the records, pointed out right away with an internationalist logic that this war had also brought countless tragedies to the Japanese people, leaving them bereaved of their beloved ones . . . the purpose of exposing the savage war crimes committed by the Japanese imperialism in China is to prompt people of both countries and the later generations to learn from history and not to repeat the sufferings of Chinese people or the Japanese people. (Preface, p. 2) Again, underlying this intentional juxtaposition of sufferings of both peoples is the typical “red” universalistic ideas where Japanese people were portrayed emphatically as fellow victims of the War, and the evil perpetrators of war crimes vigorously abstracted into a fuzzy concept of “Japanese imperialism,” thereby merely updating the simplistic demarcation of the world along one horizontal line (Gao 2011). Classic communist binary is not the only cultural structure that remains resilient in later historical period. The “ascending” narrative framework, with its hyperbolic teleological interpretation and the near narcissistic glorification of war experience, also retains its symbolic vitality and remains the predominant structure shaping the official war narrative revision. School history textbooks reveal the evidence for this. As a primary material for CCP’s patriotic education campaign, school history textbooks since the mid-1990s contain substantial historical revision of the War (Coble 2011; He 2011; Reilly 2011; Wang 2008). My own findings confirm that history textbooks for junior high school students published since 1994 represent a departure from previous editions,8 with two major points of revision almost identical with President Hu’s speech: the “semiotic hierarchy” between KMT and the Japanese invading army that used to be one of defining features of the Maoist narrative has been reversed by an unambiguous redefinition of the enemy camp; and the once strictly “sanitized” picture of the War where Chinese sufferings were thoroughly suppressed for the sake of the communist “class fraternity” was replaced with an explicit presentation of war atrocities inflicted by the Japanese military (Gao 2011). A careful reading, however, shows clearly again that the rosy Maoist undercurrent lies beneath these major revisionist contents. Its quiet but dynamic buoyancy can hardly be suppressed. In the 2002 edition of Chinese History for Junior High School, the concluding paragraph of the last chapter on the War, for instance, reads like this: The victory in the War of Resistance brought to a glorious end the consecutive failures that the Chinese people had endured in their one hundred years of anti-foreign invasion struggle, scoured away the humiliation suffered by the nation in its modern history, and was the turning point from decline to growth for the Chinese nation. The people of China made a huge contribution to the world’s anti-fascist war paying with huge sacrifice. (History Room of the People’s Education Press 2002: 65) One cannot miss in this paragraph the ultimate symbolic significance placed upon the final victory, the glorious end that vindicates all the preceding trials and tribulations. By defining the War as the important turning point of the nation’s destiny, the text not only echoes with Vice Chairman Lin’s (1965) monograph, where he extolled the War as the first anti-imperialist 35

Rui Gao

war to “end in complete victory” (1), but also augurs presciently President Hu’s speech, which attributes to the happy ending a powerful healing magic. What is at work is the unmistakable optimism and historical teleology, important strands of the underlying cultural structures that prevail over time. More revealing is the narrative’s recording of war atrocities and sufferings, which is usually adorned with what I call a “compulsory enfranchisement of heroic resistance will.” The 1994 edition of the Nine-Year Compulsory Education Three-Year Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History has one such example. When describing the 1941 massacre that occurred in the Pan Jiayu village of Hebei province, a part of the CCP-led base area, the text states that the mass killing happened because of the villagers’ resistance where they “would rather die than divulge information” to the Japanese forces about the whereabouts of the eighth route army” (84). As a consequence, 1,230 out of 1,537 villagers were mercilessly slaughtered. Clearly, as often the case in Maoist China, a heroic resistance will was imposed upon the villagers. The tragic incident might have been a wanton mass killing perpetrated by the invading army, but was (re)constructed as a meaningful confrontation where the Chinese people made the heroic choice of sacrificing their own lives for the just cause. Rendered manifest in this case is how the narrative reenactment of victimhood and depiction of war atrocities, especially on the part of the so-called revolutionary Chinese in the CCP-led base areas,9 is powerfully constrained by the hysterical glorification and romanticization typical of the grand triumphalist narrative. Evoking a “David vs. Goliath” type of binary, this persistent and robust cultural structure precludes the emergence of a “hapless and helpless” victimhood genre and constrains the symbolic weight attributed to war sufferings. This curious sense of reluctance or superficiality permeating the acknowledgment of victimization, as also detected in President Hu’s speech, has become the signature character of the current official revision. This again testifies to the recalcitrant influence of persistent cultural structures.

Mechanism of cultural relics: The tunnel war and the military museum In comparison with the more latent mechanisms whereby resilient and powerful underlying cultural structures continue to shape the current representation of the War, the mechanism of “building blocks” is much more ubiquitous, potent and prominent. The handy “off-the-rack” mnemonic relics carry with them not only the effective dictating force of those persistent cultural structures, but also the more visceral and tangible memory animated with specific narrative patterns, aesthetic qualities, discursive traits, and characteristics of rhetoric, all preserved vividly fresh and delivered from the past to the present as if contained within a time capsule immune to change. Due to tremendous historical inertia, they render the current remembrance of the War more a copy of the past memories than a revision, and these traces are found in many mnemonic practices of the public sphere today. A good example is the myth of the “tunnel warfare,” which was jubilantly celebrated in both Vice President Lin and President Hu’s commemoration articles separated by four decades. The fact that all editions of history textbooks throughout the PRC’s existence, including the later editions, carry the same self-glorifying introduction of the warfare, affirms once again the unparalleled symbolic potency and persistency of this legendary piece of cultural relic.10 To understand the tremendous influence of this singular mnemonic relic and its gigantic presence in current remembrance of the War, one must first turn to the historical path whereby the myth was originally forged. To a large extent, the myth of this factually dubious war tactic was originated by its namesake movie, The Tunnel Warfare, produced by the People’s Liberation Army August First Film 36

Cacophonous memories

Production Studio in 1965. Intended as a military pedagogical movie with the explicit goal of demonstrating the superiority of “people’s warfare,” the movie, though claimed to be based on real historical events,11 painted the experience and battle of the War with an exceedingly jubilant and narcissist touch. The plot, for example, seriously challenged the acceptable boundary of historical facts, and the reenactment of battle scene distantly surpassed even the omnipotent framework of ascending romance of the War constructed in Maoist China. No doubt all the entrenched rhetoric and aesthetic features salient over the years were present in the movie. They include the “zero” casualty rule on “our” side, the fairy-tale-like plot, the rosy ambience, the miraculous triumph and the polarized stereotypes of both the hysterically heroic Chinese protagonists and the absurdly dwarfed and caricaturized Japanese antagonists. Only in this movie, these elements were played up to an absurd, unprecedented scale that soared to the acme of human fantasy. As the result, the War as depicted came to resemble a toddler’s cartoon where cute little Jerry was poking fun with poor Tommy cat, a “mass carnival beneath the ground” (Li 2005: 348) that was suffused with a mesmerizing and surreal aura of cheerfulness and euphoria. The mythical status to which the movie eventually ascended to was the consequence of the working of history’s uncanny course. As the country was plunged into the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, all the new movie productions were forced to stop and the old ones were prohibited from public viewing. The Tunnel Warfare, with its inborn red political sacredness, became one of the only four movies allowed to be screened in the entire nation between 1966 and 1970 (Huangfu 2006; Li 2005; Ni 2004).12 The destitute shortage of options explains the distributions of 2,800 copies of the movie over the years, a record that has never been broken since then. And it also explains the reason why the film became one of the most watched movies in Chinese history, as the movie director, Ren Xudong, once recollected with pride: “whether in the cities or in the countryside, wherever I go these days, I find that there is not a single person over their 50 who had not watched the movie, and what is more, they all had watched more than once. I am very satisfied with this movie and there is nothing left for me to regret” (Li 2005: 350). Indeed, the movie is estimated to have been viewed 1.8 billion times in a country with a population of 1.3 billion. This means the average person watched it more than once.13 And for millions of Chinese, especially the generation whose coming of age was around the “monopoly” of the movie era, every single line in the script or a frame of the pictures from the movie was an indispensable part of their childhood memory. The Tunnel Warfare not only fulfilled their adolescent yearnings for adventure and exhilaration, but also brought them the strong vicarious pleasure of being the valiant warriors on a battlefield that they had never been. For these kids who were to become the ruling elites of the country in the 1990s, the movie did not merely narrate and represent the War, it was the war. The medium became the content, and it was difficult to tell the real war from the war film. A hyper-delusional propaganda that verges on wild fantasy and outright fabrication was thus inscribed at the center of collective memories of generations of Chinese and crystallized into a myth glowing with the halo of truthfulness and factuality. The mythical package of the tunnel warfare has since been broadly circulating throughout the society as a consecrated and crucial building block of the memory of the War that no one can afford to skip over. The legendary tale was constantly told and retold to the public, for instance, through printed media, as exemplified by the preceding examples of paragraphs in authoritative commemoration articles, history textbooks, and by the publication and republication of news reports, novels, books, pamphlets, and even children’s stories all focusing on the theme.14 It is also a literal showcase as a prominent and permanent section of the exhibition in two of the most well-known and popular museums themed on the War in today’s China: the exhibition hall of the War of Resistance in the Chinese People’s Revolutionary Military Museums, and the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. 37

Rui Gao

While these two museums are often perceived to be representing respectively orthodox Maoist remembrance and the later revision efforts, they both vividly recreate the stage setting of a battle scene of the tunnel war with a three-dimensional miniature model that is exactly as depicted in the movie. The biggest difference between the two exhibits perhaps is that the former features tiny and solid statuettes that remain static and quiet, the latter uses a high-tech live visual and audio simulation of the battle scene where the movements of miniature figures in the movie are reenacted via a digital projection accompanied by authentic sound effects. More revealing of this mythical building block is perhaps the frequency and scope with which the original movie is still being screened in today’s China. Canonized as one of the “one hundred selected films” (Wang 2008: 797), a central component of the patriotic education campaign launched by CCP authority, screening of the movie is not only recommended but implemented as an important part of the in-class or extracurricular activities required for tens of millions of school-aged children. In addition, together with other films produced in Maoist era, the movie also makes regular appearance every summer and winter on the movie channel of (CCTV) (China Central Television). It therefore plays a key role in the biannual reinvigoration of a propaganda campaign targeting those youth with more leisure time to sit before their TV sets during school holidays. To meet the new demands of the audience, especially young people, the movie was adapted into a brand new TV series in 2010. The TV version has a more tenable plot and sophisticated cast of characters, and claimed to have received fairly positive audience reviews, which seems to prove that the old wine still sells well in new bottles.15 While it is hard to quantify the scope of the impact and its various forms of adaptations, with compulsory education and TV channels becoming the major venues of publicizing, we can reasonably assume that this legendary piece of mnemonic relic still wields formidable power over the public remembrance of the War in today’s China. And its caricaturized heroes and childishly festive stories still induce strong fascination among many youth, just as it used to mesmerize and intoxicate their parents. The tunnel war is but one epitome typical of the innumerable cultural building blocks that are still saliently visible and widely circulated in the current official remembrance of the War. Another interesting example and a larger chunk of the cultural relic is the aforementioned thematic exhibition on the War presented in the Chinese People’s Revolutionary Military Museum, which was and still remains as one of the national level “demonstration bases” for patriotic education. The museum was first opened to the public on August 1, 1960, and the exhibition theme went through two major changes (Interview August 20, 2009).16 The first change happened in 1985, when the front battle conducted by the KMT regime was first acknowledged and incorporated into the exhibition; and the second change occurred from 1997 to 2004, when a general feeling was expressed that the exhibition was too obsolete and an overhaul had been carried out resulting in the current version. Yet, despite the curator’s proud assertion that all the renovation and revisions were meant to “show respect to historical truth” and to “give back history its true face,” the “truth” presented at the current exhibition are almost exactly the same as the “truth” one could get from Maoist China. Indeed, as one meanders in the huge and grandiose hall, one gets to wonder if the clock was turned back to the 1960s, the time when The Tunnel Warfare was being screened in every movie theater of the country; nothing appears to have changed. The entire exhibition remains an unabashed self-glorification to the Party; for the most part, as also the case in Vice President Lin’s commemoration article, the War is reduced to a remote background image where the Party’s achievements are relentlessly highlighted and acclaimed. An overwhelming majority of the exhibition units include the pictures that showcase the routine activities of the CCP leaders during the War period, and most of the objects for exhibition, besides weapons being either used against 38

Cacophonous memories

or acquired from the Japanese armies, are simple daily utensils owned by these leaders such as their washing basin, lamp or bowl. To this self-exaltation of the Party that renders no relevance to wartime experience, one must add the incurably romanticized “ascending” narrative framework. Besides those elevating portrayals of illustrious leaders, the rest of photos, without a single exception, picture jolly scenes of the CCP-led armed forces and revolutionary people: soldiers marching in neat lines, laughing gleefully with weapons just captured from the enemy proudly exhibited, watching stage performances, helping villagers building huts. Even the few pictures taken on the battleground do not show any sign of Chinese casualty; the soldiers were charging gallantly and ferociously, and no one was about to fall. With these cheerful and exciting images that are cleansed of the brutality of war and devoid of any sense of bereavement or sorrow, every and each of the resistance warriors is portrayed as purely heroic and happily invincible. And the victory comes to China just easily and naturally due to the bravery of the people and the sagacity of the Party. Unmistakably, what one witnesses in the exhibition is the Maoist construction of the War in its entirety with all the original taste and flavor remaining intact. The ubiquitous and familiar communist binary opposition that distinguishes the Japanese people from the militant imperialist is also saliently present in the exhibition. There is an entire independent panel dedicated to the activities by “Anti-War Alliance of Japanese in China,” where the pictures of former Japanese soldiers and communist party members were working or fighting with Eighth Route Army are displayed. Their activities are enthusiastically praised. The fact that the binary used here is not even a subtler version characterizing the current official narrative, but the very crude communist model that identifies Japanese class brothers as redeemed comrades, deeply reveals once again how the exhibition must have remained almost intact from the Maoist era even after renovations and structural overhauls. One has to admit though that revisions do exist in this otherwise “intact” cultural relic. One of the “enormous” revision feats achieved by the museum, as the curator so proudly claimed, was to include the KMT front battle activities. It was, however, exclusively limited to one window panel, even without the title on “front battle,” but subsumed as being a part of the exhibition theme on “the Protracted Period of the War.” Likewise, a unit titled “War Atrocities Perpetrated by Japanese Army” was obviously inserted in between two previously consecutive panels. Its contents awkwardly disrupt the flow of the exhibition. While designed as a window underpinning the construction of Chinese victimization, the effects of those murky pictures of war atrocity are counteracted by its symbolic isolation from the rest of the exhibition. At odds with the flow of the narrative and almost opposite to the romantic, heroic, glorious and victorious undertone of the entire exhibition, the “truthfulness” of this unit was cast into doubt and its “authenticity” severely compromised. Despite the curator’s pompous claims, the scope and depth of revision in the exhibition is so minute that it can simply be dismissed as a tiny asterisk or footnote added sneakily into the main text. Apart from the trivial cosmetic attachment, the exhibition retains most of the very essences of its earlier version and remains one of the largest and most prominent cultural relics of Maoist memory of the War in today’s China. Just as how The Tunnel Warfare still inspires the imagination and dreams of many young people, the popular summer destination located in the military museum exerts influence on the shape of the collective memory of the War among the younger generation. Apparently more manifest and straightforward, the “building block” mechanism exemplified by The Tunnel Warfare and the War exhibition in the military museum function more sophisticatedly than the resilient cultural structure. If a resilient interpretative framework consistently constrains and predominates both the narrators and the narrative, the former functions in more than 39

Rui Gao

one dimension. In one dimension, cultural relics are crucial and salient components of the older memories of the past and thereby exert substantial influence upon memories of later generations just like the resilient cultural structures. In another, because the building blocks tend to preserve themselves well in their original shape as if contained within a time capsule, they are more receptive to mnemonic inertia and are more immune to de- and reconstructive attempts. On the one hand, such a self-preserving nature renders cultural relics a more consequential element of resistance against revisionist efforts; on the other hand, it makes them more readily become instrumental to political actors. And this innate paradox makes it particularly difficult to detect and identify the role of cultural relics in the current official remembrance of the War. Indeed, the CCP regime is trying to promote patriotic nationalism and is consciously utilizing the War memories to achieve this goal by diverting public attention toward atrocities and victimhood. But when the elites make those cultural relics the centerpiece of the nationwide propaganda campaign, they are unwittingly reinforcing the older images of the War that is simplistic, romanticized, positive, heroic and triumphant. And these ironically lead them to virtually undo what they are trying to do.

Conclusion It has been widely argued that official remembrance of the War in post-Mao Chinese society features a revisionist history and an explicit shift away from “China as victor” to “China as victim” discourse, implemented by the CCP authority to promote patriotic nationalism among the public and thereby rebuild its legitimacy under a severe challenge to its rule. In this chapter, I conduct a detailed hermeneutic analysis of the official narrative about the War in today’s China, and contend that this public remembrance features more continuity and consistency with Maoist memories than the “newness” or “departure” that often has been claimed by previous studies. I confirm that notable points of revision did occur, but argue that they are superficial in depth and limited in scope for being constrained by resilient previous cultural structures that still dominate the public sphere of today. These resilient cultural structures, I argue, represent one crucial mechanism whereby the past prevails over the present. I then identify the other major mechanism by which older images of the past are forged into cultural relics which function as ready-made building blocks in the current construction of memory. While the two mechanisms may differ subtly in their functions, both are playing prominent and significant roles in configuring and shaping the grand narrative about the War in post-Mao Chinese society. Then how is the War being narrated and remembered in today’s China? To a certain extent, the exhibition in the military museum serves as an interesting metaphor. Revisions are underway and war atrocities are unambiguously displayed with the details of horrors. And yet these isolated “units” represent not the “norm” but the “exceptions,” a dispensable appendix attached to the main story about the War that has not changed much since it was first created in Maoist China. This is not a story about suffering or loss, but an inspiring tale about glory and triumph. Inundated by the spirit of hyperbolic optimism, childish romanticization and fierce heroism, depiction of war atrocities and victimhood remain oddly out of place, its presentation pathetically unconvincing and the covert motive behind it perniciously dubious. What happens to the general remembrance of the War, therefore, is not a simple replacement of victor’s discourse with victim narrative, or even the juxtaposition of both, but a cacophonous and inauthentic medley wherein the Maoist memories constrain and command the later constructions. “The past, if not forgotten, is a guide to the future.”17 Yet the past can only guide the future when it is recorded faithfully for later generations. Regrettably, more than half a century has passed since the War ended, yet the historical truth of the War remains as murky and distorted as it was six decades ago. The official remembrance of the War in China, despite the emergence of 40

Cacophonous memories

a victim discourse, is still predominated by a self-deceiving and self-serving narrative replete with bias, misrepresentations and even deliberate omission. Untruthful versions of history pose a challenge to achieving reconciliation with the fact that the War caused enormous human catastrophe to tens of millions of Chinese people. Consequential questions about the responsibility for the war also remain unanswered with individual Japanese soldiers generally portrayed as poisoned victims of their Jingoist government and exonerated of war crimes. The quest for responsibility is further diffused with the overused fuzzy excuse of “imperialism.” Serious moral and philosophical reflection on the ontological evilness of the demonic war atrocities rarely occurs, largely preempted by the reductionist Marxist historiography. The absence of an enduring true reconciliation between the former victim and perpetrator countries is just another casualty of such misrepresented history. Reconciliation may be a function of the degree of memory convergence between former foes (He 2011), but such convergence must first be based on the convergence between memory and historical facts. In other words, a durable reconciliation cannot come into being until both parties involved reconcile honestly with their own history. For the peoples of China and other East Asian countries who yearn for a long-lasting peace, the poignant question posed by Mitter and Moore at the end of their article lingers on: “whose feelings are protected by covering our eyes with tales of heroism and national unity – or, worse still, silence and ‘oblivion’?” (2011: 240) The answer will never be found until all the historical truths about the War are disclosed to the public.

Notes 1 It seems that a consensus had been reached, at least among those western scholars of the War of Resistance (Chang 1997, Lary 2010, Li 2000, Van de Ven 2003, Waldron 1996, Yin & Young 1996) that the Japanese troops had been executing a “national terrorization” policy in China aiming to terrorize the Chinese into a horrified paralysis so that they would give up resistance and become docile and obedient subjects to Japanese occupation and rule, which resulted in extreme brutality and atrocity perpetrated by large numbers of Japanese soldiers. The telling cases of large-scale atrocities include, but not limited to, the Nanking Massacre, the atrocious vivisection and various other “medical experiments” performed upon Chinese prisoners and civilians by the notorious special unit 731 of Kwangtung Army, the forced conscription of two million Chinese women as sex slaves, the horrible tortures and maltreatment that POWs and captured resistance fighters had been subjected to, the “burning all, killing all and destroying all” “mopping-up” campaigns and the viciously induced “no man’s land” along the latitude of the Great Wall that left all the villages in the area decimated. Recent findings made by Chinese historians also confirmed such consensus. For further reference and information in Chinese about horrendous war crimes perpetrated on the land of China by the Japanese invading army during WWII, please see Archives of CCP Central Committee et al. (2005), Chen (2005), Ding (2005), Gao et al. (2005), History Division of Military Science Academy (1991–1994), Li et al. (1995), the Ministry of Public Security Archives (2005), Shi (2005), Wu (2005), and Xie (2005). 2 A major shift in the public remembrance of the War emerged around the mid-1990s, marked by the official commemoration campaign centering on the 50th anniversary of the War victory in 1995. On the one hand, past traumas experienced by Chinese people during the War as represented by the Nanking Massacre have been vigorously re-remembered and newly inscribed onto the centerpiece of the official memory by means of school textbook writing and memorial building (Coble 2007; Denton 2007; Mitter 2003; Waldron 1996). On the other hand, especially in the last decade, the Chinese people have been entertaining themselves on an unprecedented scale with a myriad of cultural products as TV series that use the War as an easily dramatizing historical backdrop and put on stage thoroughly unbelievable reenactments of war stories that would prove narcissistic and delusional even by the standards of the most hyperbolic historical parody. China experts and scholars both inside and outside of the country seem to have read what happened as consistent signs that mark a resurgence of memory of the War and an orchestrated collective endeavor to promote a patriotic nationalism that attempts to build a homogeneous national “we,” bound tightly together by blood and sacrifice against a usually demonized “enemy other.” I contend that public remembrance of the War in both the official and the quasi-popular

41

Rui Gao

3

4

5

6

7

8

sphere (it is quasi owing to the overwhelming dominance and influence of official discourse in China over all social aspects including vernacular memory) are characterized with intrinsic tensions and contradictions, wherein a heroic “victor’s” discourse is intermingled with traumatic victimization, nationalistic sentiments are juxtaposed with universalist identification, and a relatively faithful depiction of history is usually overwhelmed by absurd historical comedies and farces; this is indeed one of the reasons I use “cacophonous” to describe the situation in the title of the chapter. To fully understand the chaotic nature of the public remembrance of the War in today’s China, therefore, it is of no avail to treat the memory as a monolithic whole; instead, one must probe deeply into the memory praxis of specific cultural spheres. It is with such belief that I focus exclusively on the official version of memory in this chapter and attempt to show that behind its apparently uniform façade, there is also innate conflict and inconsistency; this is another layer of implication that I assigned to the word “cacophonous” in the title. For seven decades after the end of WWII, a regrettable absence of a deep interstate reconciliation between former belligerent countries, particularly China and Japan, has been haunting the otherwise dynamically developing East Asian region. Some argue that reconciliation is a function of the degree of memory convergence between ex-foes (He 2011), whereas others prioritize the necessity for candid acknowledgement of responsibility and forthright historical narrative (Alexander et al. 2004; Chang 1997; Li 2000; Yin & Young 1996). This chapter is predicated on the assumption that while history and memory are always socially and culturally constructed, and thereby always susceptible to manipulation made by political groups for certain instrumental goals, a true reconciliation can never be accomplished until both parties involved make sincere collective efforts towards a historical understanding that strives hard to approach historical “truths.” The speech was given on September 3, 2005, and was then published as a monograph, as all the other important speeches made by CCP leaders, to be widely distributed and studied by CCP cadres of all levels and ordinary citizens in China. The original text is in Chinese and was translated by the author into English. Lin Piao (1907–1971) served as the Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Vice-Premier of the State Council and concurrently Minister of National Defense at the time when the article was drafted. The title of the article was Long Live the Victory of People’s War! In Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of Victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japan. It was first released in People’s Daily on September 3, 1965 and was then quickly compiled and published as a monograph and translated into several foreign languages. Because of the author and the venue where it was first published, the symbolic significance of the article was beyond doubt. It would be the authoritative version that not only sets the overall tone for commemoration activities but also shapes and tailors the interpretation and collective memories of the War among the public. For instance, except for one single adjective “barbarous” (Lin 1965: 8), used only once when the nature of the war was being discussed, not any characterizing profane code heavier than this was attributed to the Japanese forces. From time to time, the Japanese were depicted as harboring the potential to become the loyal alliance of the sacred camp of CCP and revolutionary Chinese as Lin later proudly praised how the Japanese communist party and converted Japanese POWs contributed greatly to Chinese people’s resistance efforts. Please see Ding (2005)’s document on what occurred in the tunnels in northern China during the largescale “mopping-up” campaigns and discussions about the tunnel war in internet forum: http://history. people.com.cn/GB/205396/13476377.html, last accessed on February 6, 2012. The facts and effects of all types of people’s warfare have been put to serious doubt recently, with access to archive information becoming more available to the public and the appearance of internet forums where people can exchange ideas and conduct discussions more freely. Various sources have offered convincing evidence that many atrocious war crimes were perpetrated and mass sufferings happened exactly within tunnels or locations where these types of wars had been fought. For my own dissertation research as well as this study, I read and analyzed the chapters that taught about the War in every edition of history textbooks for junior high school that have been published by the People’s Education Press, from 1949 to the most updated 2002 version. My findings basically confirmed claims made in previous studies that a remarkably high degree of consistency with Maoist editions is seen in history textbooks published throughout the 1980s till the mid-1990s, when the 1994 edition of Chinese history text presented some recognizable features that distinguished it from all the previous editions in both the Maoist and post-Mao eras. A selected list of editions of history textbooks that are referred to in this section of the chapter includes: Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, edited by Longgeng Li, People’s Education Press, 1982; Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, edited by Longgeng Li, People’s Education Press, 1986; Nine-Year Compulsory Education

42

Cacophonous memories

9

10

11 12

13 14

15

Three-Year Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, edited by History Room of the People’s Education Press, Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1994; Nine-Year Compulsory Education Three-Year Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, edited by History Room of the People’s Education Press, Beijing: People’s Education Press, 2002. In fact, a narrative line seems to have been drawn between atrocities inflicted upon so-called revolutionary Chinese in CCP-led base areas, and those suffered by ordinary Chinese civilians more generic as a category as represented by the Nanking Massacre, sexual slavery and biological and chemical warfare. Unlike the former, the latter tend to be related in a more explicit victimization discourse, perhaps owing to the virtual absence of any narrative construction on these incidents thus far. For example, in the 1994 edition of Chinese history, it was introduced to students on page 84 that: “In defense of the base areas, our people’s militia force created many unique ways of fighting, including the landmine warfare and the tunnel warfare. The mass people, whether they were men or women, old or young, all went onto the battlefield. The Japanese invaders were totally swallowed up by the vast sea of the people’s war.” Please see Nine-Year Compulsory Education Three-Year Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, edited by History Room of the People’s Education Press, Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1994. Military experts have questioned the validity of the tactic of people’s warfare and cast severe doubts over the factuality of the battle scene as depicted in the movie. For more information, please refer to endnote no. 8. With two of the others being The Landmine Warfare (1962) and The Conquering of the South and Battling in the North [nan zheng bei zhan] (1952), which, together with The Tunnel War, were widely known in China as the “Three War” [san zhan] movies. Please see the following page of the official blog of CCT military channel: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/ blog_4d4aa95d0100afzb.html, last accessed on February 6, 2012. No comprehensive set of data are available regarding how widely stories, reports or narrations about The Tunnel Warfare have been published and circulated in China in printed media for the past decades. But information collected from a variety of sources testifies to the fact that The Tunnel Warfare has been a key component in the textual discourse about the War in the public domain of the country. A most reliable source of information comes from the Chinese textbooks for elementary school students published by the People’s Education Press over the past three decades. A browse through all the major editions shows that except for the 1996 edition, all other editions include a text titled The Tunnel Warfare in Jizhong Area (Jizhong was a part of the Jinchaji base area led by CCP during the War) which exposits how revolutionary Chinese people conducted the tunnel warfare under the leadership of the CCP either in book nine or book ten (See, for instance, Full-Time Ten Year School Elementary Textbook Chinese. Book 9, edited by Chinese Edition Team for General Textbooks for Elementary and Middle School, Hubei: People’s Education Press, 1980; Six-Year Elementary School Textbook Chinese, Book 10, edited by Division of Elementary Chinese of the People’s Education Press, People’s Education Press, 1984; Nine-Year Compulsory Education Six-Year Elementary School Textbook Chinese, Book 10, edited by Division of Elementary Chinese of the People’s Education Press, Hebei: People’s Education Press, 2002). Because People’s Education Press is the most authoritative textbook publisher in China that still monopolizes the nationwide market, and because it also publishes the history textbook for junior high school that I have discussed in previous paragraphs and referred to in note number 12, one can reasonably assume that by the time they finish their compulsory education, most Chinese would have been exposed to the knowledge and self-glorifying accounts of the tunnel warfare at least twice, respectively in Chinese and History courses. In addition, a keyword search of “tunnel warfare” on the archive database of People’s Daily shows that the word has been mentioned in 451 articles or reports in the newspaper from 1946 to 2014 (database last accessed on February 14, 2014), with 248 of these appeared after the year 1980. This demonstrates that the tunnel warfare is as relevant and crucial to the public discourse today as it used to be in Maoist era. Furthermore, the National Library of China currently has 26 types of publications available to readers with “the Tunnel Warfare” as or included in the main title, among them a dozen picture-story books for children. Numerous reports were published on popular entertainment websites introducing how the TV series has triggered a new surge of revolutionary passion among audiences of various regions and different age groups. The famous Tencent Entertainment, for instance, enthusiastically claimed that although recently China’s TV seem to have fallen into the curious quandary wherein one series can never conquer audience in both the Northern and the Southern regions at the same time, the new adaption made a triumphant breakthrough: it was simultaneously screened on nine provincial and regional satellite channels and had won universal approval and appreciation from viewers nationwide (please see the following site: http://ent.qq.com/a/20110329/000153.htm, last accessed on February 14, 2014). The TV series was also found in the top-10 list for TV series rating in Beijing area published on a major website in February

43

Rui Gao 2011 (please see the following site: http://ent.ifeng.com/tv/guide/detail_2011_02/25/4850614_0. shtml, last accessed on February 14, 2014). 16 The interview was conducted on August 20, 2009, with one of the curators of the Military Museum of Chinese People’s Revolution. It lasted about an hour and took a semi-structured interview form where I asked open-ended questions on the history of the museum and the exhibition on the War of Resistance and on the principle of selecting exhibition items and designing and organizing thematic shows. I also asked him to make a comparison between the exhibition on the War between his museum and the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. This interview proved to be extremely illuminating, not only because of the information he offered about the revision efforts and the historical trajectory of the museum and its exhibition, but much more importantly, because his answers demonstrate the typical naturalistic and simplistic Maoist perspective on history still commonly shared by most CCP cadres, military officers, some historians and consequently the common people today. For instance, when asked, “Why weren’t there more pictures or objects that show the sufferings of the people during the war or the atrocities of the enemies, given the very limited amount shown in the exhibition?” He answered: Of course we had a huge collection on those! However, we have to be considerate for the emotions of the viewers, after all, the audience is our God. Since everyone knows about this part of the history and what happened during the war, there is no need to arouse people’s sense of indignation or anger. What we want to highlight and focus on is the kind of [invincible] spirit, the kind of soul, the [unconquerable] soul of the nation. We must convey through our exhibition to the viewers a positive and optimistic attitude that always looks forward and aspires to what is good. After all, patriotism, heroism and the value of honor is what we want to indoctrinate into the audience. Obviously, by pointing out that everyone knows about what happened in history, he showed a deep conviction that history is a self-evident and indisputable body of facts that is intrinsically immune to denial, change or construction and its truth is clear and unambiguous and is one and same with its representation. Not only was he confident that there is only one historical truth and therefore people who are exposed to such truth would naturally understand and believe in it, he also naively and falsely presumed that what the museum is presenting to people is exactly that one truth, a common misperception that most Chinese people have succumbed to. Unfortunately, in the hands of such Party historians and cultural workers rests the power to shape and build public remembrance of the War in today’s China. Another interesting point standing out in this answer is the vigilance of the curator towards the emotional arousal of his audience. This obviously is linked to the state authority’s sustained zeal toward the appeal of internationalism and alertness to the so-called parochial nationalism ever since Mao’s era. But on the other hand, it also arises from a concern for social stability. From the perspective of the authority, all collective emotions, including the indignation and anger that might be directed toward the Japanese military regime during the War, are intrinsically dangerous because they harbor the potential for uncontrollable collective action, which the authority worries about above anything else. This shows that the cultural construction of victim discourse and public remembrance of war atrocities in today’s China also treads a sensitive political and emotional terrain. 17 This ancient Chinese saying originally comes from a story in the Warring States period (please see Wang, S., Complete Translation of Stratagems of the Warring States (Zhan Guo Ce Quan Yi), Guizhou People’s Press, Guizhou, 1992, p. 34). Premier Zhou Enlai, the first premier of PRC, introduced the saying into the political discourse of post-War Sino-Japanese relations on the occasion of the release of the ZhouTanaka (referring to the previous Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei) communiqué in September 1972, which marked the normalization of relations between China and Japan.

References Alexander, C.J., Eyerman, R., Giesen, B., Smelser, N.J., and Sztompka, P. (2004) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, Berkeley: University of California Press. Alexander, C.J., and Gao, R. (2012) ‘Remembrance of Things Past: Cultural Trauma, the “Nanking Massacre” and Chinese Identity’, in J. Alexander, R. Jacobs and P. Smith (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology, pp. 583–609, New York: Oxford University Press. Archives of CCP Central Committee, the Second Historical Archives of China, and Hebei Academy of Social Sciences (ed) (2005) Files of the War Crimes Perpetrated by the Japanese Invading Forces in Northern China: Sexual Violence (ri ben qin lv hua bei zui xing dang an: xing bao li), Shijiazhuang: Hebei People’s Press.

44

Cacophonous memories Chang, I. (1997) The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, New York: Basic Books. Chen, J. (ed) (2005) The Hellish “No Man’s Land”: Records of the War Crimes Committed by Japanese Invading Forces in China (ren jian di yu wu ren qu: ri ben qin hua zui xing shi lu), Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press. Chinese Edition Team for General Textbooks for Elementary and Middle School (ed) (1980) Full-Time Ten Year School Elementary Textbook Chinese, Book 9, Hubei: People’s Education Press. Coble, P.M. (2007) ‘China’s “New Remembering” of the anti-Japanese War of Resistance, 1937–1945’, China Quarterly 190 (22): 394–410. Coble, P.M. (2011) ‘Writing about Atrocity: Wartime Accounts and their Contemporary Uses’, Modern Asian Studies 45 (2): 379–398. Cohen, P.A. (2003) China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past, London: Routledge. Denton, K. (2007) ‘Horror and Atrocity: Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums’, in C.K. Lee and G. Yang (eds) Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China, pp. 245–286, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Department of History of Peking University (comp) (1995) Memorial Elegy: In Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japan, Beijing: China Workers’ Press. Diamant, N.J. (2011) ‘Conspicuous Silence: Veterans and the Depoliticization of War Memory in China’, Modern Asian Studies 45 (2): 431–461. Ding, X. (2005) Here Comes the Devil: Document of May 1st Large-Scale ‘Mopping-up’ Campaigns in 1942 (1942 nian wu yi da sao dang ji shi), Beijing: Central Academy of CCP Press. Division of Elementary Chinese of the People’s Education Press (ed) (1984) Six-Year Elementary School Textbook Chinese, Book 10, Beijing: People’s Education Press. Division of Elementary Chinese of the People’s Education Press (ed) (2002) Nine-Year Compulsory Education Six-Year Elementary School Textbook Chinese, Book 10, Hebei: People’s Education Press. Gao, C., Feng, S., and Song, L. (eds) (2005) Oral History of the War of Resistance in Shanxi Province, vol. one (shan xi kang zhan kou shu shi, di yi bu), Taiyuan: Shanxi People’s Press. Gao, R. (2011) ‘Revolutionary Trauma and Representation of the War: The Case of China in Mao’s Era’, in R. Eyerman, J. Alexander and E. Breese (eds) Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering, pp. 53–78, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press. Gries, P.H. (2004) China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. He, Y. (2007) ‘Remembering and Forgetting the War: Elite Mythmaking, Mass Reaction, and Sino-Japanese Relations, 1950–2006’, History and Memory 19 (2): 43–74. He, Y. (2011) ‘Comparing Post-War (West) German-Polish and Sino-Japanese Reconciliation: A Bridge Too Far?’, Europe-Asia Studies 63 (7): 1157–1194. Hein, L.E., and Selden, M. (eds) (2000) Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, New York: M. E. Sharpe. History Division of Military Science Academy (comp) (1991–1994) History of China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Beijing: People’s Liberation Army Press. History Room of the People’s Education Press (ed) (1994) Nine-Year Compulsory Education Three-Year Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, Beijing: People’s Education Press. History Room of the People’s Education Press (ed) (2002) Nine-Year Compulsory Education Three-Year Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, Beijing: People’s Education Press. Huangfu, Y. (2006) History of Chinese War Films (zhong guo zhan zheng dian ying shi), Beijing: China Film Press. Lary, D. (2010) The Chinese People at War: Human Sufferings and Social Transformation, 1937–1945, New York: Cambridge University Press. Lawson, S., and Tannaka, S. (2010) ‘War Memories and Japan’s “Normalization” as an International Actor: A Critical Analysis’, European Journal of International Relations 17 (3): 405–428. Lee, C. K., and Yang, G. (2007) ‘Introduction: Memory, Power and Culture’, in C. K. Lee and G. Yang (eds) Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China, pp. 1–20, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Li, B., Xu J., and Shi, Y. (eds) (1995) A Comprehensive Record of the War Atrocities Perpetrated by the Japanese Invading Army in China (qin hua ri jun bao xing zong lu), Shijiazhuang: Hebei People’s Press. Li, L. (ed) (1982) Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, People’s Education Press. Li, L. (ed) (1986) Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History, Book 4, People’s Education Press. Li, P. (2000) ‘The Nanking Holocaust Tragedy, Trauma and Reconciliation’, Society 37 (2): 56–65. Li Y. (ed) (1995) Pictorial Catalogue of the War of Resistance Against Japan by the Republic of China, Taipei: Modern China Press.

45

Rui Gao Li, Z. (2005) ‘Novels, the War and History: About Individuals, Families and Nation-state in the War Novels’, Journal of Artistic and Literary Theory and Critics (wen yi li lun yu pi pan) 2005 (4): 13–20. Lin, P. (1965) Long Live the Victory of People’s War! In Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of Victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japan, Beijing, China: Foreign Language Press: first published in People’s Daily, 3 September 1965. Megill, A. (1998) ‘History, Memory, Identity’, History of the Human Sciences 11(3): 37–62. Military Science Academy (comp) (1995) A Spectacle of War and Heroic Feat of the Nation: Collection of Papers in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japan, Beijing: Military Science Press. The Ministry of Public Security Archives (comp) (2005) Testimony of History: The Confession Records of the Japanese War Criminals (shi zheng: ri ben zhan fan qin hua zui xing chan hui shi lu), Beijing: Chinese People’s Public Security University Press. Mitter, R. (2003) ‘Old Ghosts, New Memories: China’s Changing War History in the Era of Post-Mao Politics’, Journal of Contemporary History 38 (1): 117–131. Mitter, R., and Moore, A.W. (2011) ‘China in World War II, 1937–1945: Experience, Memory and Legacy’, Modern Asian Studies 45 (2): 225–240. Moore, A.W. (2011) ‘The Problem of Changing Language Communities: Veterans and Memory Writing in China, Taiwan, and Japan’, Modern Asian Studies 45 (2): 399–429. Ni, J. (2004) History of Chinese Films (zhong guo dian ying shi), Beijing: China Film Press. Olick, J.K., and Levy, D. (1997) ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics’, American Sociological Review 62 (6): 921–936. Olick, J.K., and Robbins, J. (1998) ‘Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’, Annual Review of Sociology 1998 (24): 105–40. Reilly, J. (2011) ‘Remember History, Not Hatred: Collective Remembrance of China’s War of Resistance to Japan’, Modern Asian Studies 45 (2): 463–490. Schudson, M. (1992) Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past. New York: Basic Books. Schwartz, B. (1991) ‘Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington’, American Sociological Review 56 (2): 221–236. ———. (1996) ‘Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II’, American Sociological Review 61 (5): 908–927. Shi, D. (2005) The Catalogue of Crimes Perpetrated by the Japanese Kwangtung Army in China (ri ben guang dong jun qin hua zui e shi), Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Van de Ven, H. J. (2003). War and Nationalism in China: 1925–1945, London: Routledge. Volkan, V.D. (1997) Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Waldron, A. (1996) ‘China’s New Remembering of World War II: The Case of Zhang Zizhong’, Modern Asian Studies 30 (4): 945–978. Wang, Z. (2008) ‘National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China’, International Studies Quarterly 52: 783–806. Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, S. (2006) ‘In Search of a Master Narrative for 20th-Century Chinese History’, China Quarterly 188: 1071–1091. Wu, G. (ed) (2005) Files on the Nanking Massacre Perpetrated by the Japanese Invading Army (qin hua ri jun Nanjing da tu sha ri zhi), Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Xie, Z. (ed) (2005) History of the War Crimes Perpetrated by the Japanese Invading Forces in Northern China (ri ben qin lv hua bei zui xing shi gao), Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Yang, D. (2001) ‘The Malleable and the Contested: The Nanjing Massacre in Postwar China and Japan’, in T. Fujitani, G. White and L. Yoneyama (eds) Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), pp. 50–86, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Yin, J., and Young, S. (1996) Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs, Chicago: Triumph Books. Zhang, X. (ed) (2001) History of China’s War of Resistance (1931–1945), Nanjing: Nanjing University Press. Zhu, C. (2005) The Road of Growth: Memorandum on the 20th Anniversary of the Building of the Memorial Museum for Chinese Victims in the Nanking Massacre Perpetrated by Japanese Invading Army (cheng zhang zhi lu—qin hua ri jun nan jing da tu sha tong bao ji nian guan 20 zhou nian guan zhi), Nanjing: Nanjing Press. Zerubavel, Y. (1995) Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

46

3 MEMORY AND RECONCILIATION IN POST-MAO CHINA, 1976–1982 Bin Xu

The history of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1976 was a history of one tragedy after another. Millions of people died and suffered from political persecution, forced migration, encampment, public humiliation, and policy failure. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Cultural Revolution ended and the economic reform began, China had to come to terms with the legacies of the Mao years. While the term “reconciliation” elsewhere is closely related to transitional justice (e.g., Quinn, 2009), the Communist regime neither collapsed nor democratized itself after Mao’s death in 1976. Instead, it renewed itself without changing its core political system or ruling ideology. Mao Zedong, the late charismatic leader, was not officially condemned but “reevaluated” as a great leader who made some serious “mistakes.” Many victims of state atrocities were rehabilitated to their previous positions and provided with compensations, but even more received neither acknowledgement nor compensations. Moreover, the state tried to address some historical issues but remained silent on others. In this chapter, I first briefly review major historical events in the Mao years (1949–1976) and then discuss reconciliation-related issues in the period from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, when China came to terms with Mao’s legacies. I particularly focus on three aspects of the reconciliation: 1) reevaluation of Mao and the important events during his reign; 2) rehabilitation of cadres and intellectuals; and 3) the role of literature and culture in reconciliation process. The last aspect – the role of literature and culture –receives only scant attention from the general reconciliation scholarship (Buikema, 2012). As I will demonstrate in detail, however, literature and culture were central to Chinese politics in that period. Specifically, my review is focused on reconciliation at three levels described below (Bashir and Kymlicka, 2008): 1.

2. 3.

Reconciliation as a set of tools or mechanisms: including reparations and compensation, apologies, trial commemorations and memorials, truth-telling initiatives, rehabilitation (pingfan), and amnesties. Reconciliation as goals or purposes: how the state and the society identify issues, frame purposes and meanings, and attribute responsibilities among others. Factors that influence reconciliation, including political structures and social contexts.

47

Bin Xu

My focus on reconciliation regards state atrocities and policy failures in domestic politics. Therefore, readers interested in international reconciliation are recommended to consult other chapters of this handbook (see chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, and 18).

Historical background In 1957, the Chinese government encouraged intellectuals to offer criticisms and suggestions to improve the government’s work. In Mao’s words, this campaign was to “let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thoughts contend.” Several months later, however, the top leaders believed that the intellectuals’ criticisms crossed the line and turned the campaign into political attacks on the government. Mao decided to suppress the uncontrollable wave of criticisms by labeling the intellectuals as “rightists” (youpai). The campaign soon went awry at the local level. Work units were required to label a certain proportion of the employees as “rightists” even if, in many cases, they were neither intellectuals nor critical of the government. About 300,000 intellectuals and other people were categorized as “rightists,” an identity that not only ruined their careers and family life but that was also grouped together with four other “black categories” – landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, and other bad elements – as the most stigmatized and despicable group in Mao’s China. Most of them were deprived of their jobs and Party memberships, and were sent to frontiers, villages, factories, and prisons to do manual labor, in addition to mandatory political reeducation. Their spouses and children also suffered from political persecution and discrimination. An even bigger disaster followed the anti-rightist movement and killed about 20 million: a nationwide famine that directly resulted from the Great Leap Forward campaign and lasted about three years, from 1959 to 1962. The limited space here does not allow a full discussion about the complex processes involved in the Great Leap Forward and the causes of the famine. Interested readers can consult a few social science and historical works on this tragedy (e.g., Yang, 1996; Yang et al., 2012; Zhou, 2012). But suffice it to say that it was not a catastrophe caused by “natural disasters,” as the official historical narrative euphemizes, but a result of combination of several political and social factors: the Chinese state’s dismal policy failure in promoting collectivization, officials’ concealment of the actual scope of damages, and fanatical mass campaigns to boost China’s industrialization. The sheer number of 20 million casualties indicated its scale but still did not represent human tragedies lived and suffered: starving peasants ate everything edible or inedible, from grass, tree barks, and soft dirt to human flesh. Only a few years after the Great Leap Forward famine, a deeper social and political crisis struck China – the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). The Cultural Revolution has been heavily researched, but what is relevant here are the Revolution’s detrimental impacts on the Chinese people from all walks of the society, including high-ranking officials, ordinary peasants, workers, and intellectuals. Even some of the top leaders and the Republic’s military heroes, such as Liu Shaoqi and He Long, together with their families, were publicly humiliated, persecuted, and killed by lower-ranking officials, the Red Guards, and angry crowds. Conflicts among the people spread across the country and led to mass killings in some areas (Su, 2011). The twists and turns of the Revolution also led to unpredictable fate of people as well as blurred boundaries between perpetrators and victims. Some people publicly humiliated and tortured others at one moment but received equally cruel persecution later on. Before and during the Cultural Revolution, about 17 millions of “educated youth” (zhiqing) – middle and high school graduates and students – were sent down to the countryside farms and labored there for many years. Almost a whole generation of urban youth were deprived of educational opportunity, had to be separated from their families, and were forced to endure the arduous manual labor (Bernstein, 1977; Liu, 2009). 48

Memory and reconciliation

All these came to an end in the late 1970s. Around Qingming Day in April, 1976, a traditional Chinese day of commemoration, a crowd of Beijing residents gathered in the Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of Premier Zhou Enlai, who died in January, and to express their frustration about the country’s status quo. The commemorative ritual turned into a protest, which was defined by the government as a “counterrevolutionary movement” and was suppressed quickly. This incident is the so-called Tiananmen movement of 1976. Four months later, a huge earthquake hit Tangshan, an industrial city in Northern China, and killed about 240,000. About a month after the earthquake, on September 9, Mao died. After another month, the Gang of Four was arrested. The Cultural Revolution ended. China was ruled, at least nominally, by Mao’s designated successor, Hua Guofeng.

Farewell to revolution: Historical reevaluation An immediate challenge to both Hua and the Communist Party was how to come to terms with Mao’s political legacies. The devastations of the Cultural Revolution were keenly felt by everyone, but did it mean that Mao, as the paramount leader, who started the Revolution, should be responsible for the damages? Who were the perpetrators and the victims? Should all the campaigns and disasters be redefined and reevaluated? How to heal the trauma from various groups of people such as the purged officials, the “educated youth,” “rightist intellectuals,” and the peasants affected by the Great Famine? These questions were central to the period from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Two contradictory lines of thoughts dominated the political and cultural scenes in this period. First, some people claimed that the new generation of leaders and the society as well must adhere to Mao’s doctrines and policies. This idea was represented in a formula proposed by Wang Dongxing and approved by Hua Guofeng: Whatever policy Chairman Mao decided upon, we shall resolutely defend. Whatever directives Chairman Mao issued, we shall steadfastly obey. The formula of “two whatevers” was a theoretical attempt to legitimize Hua’s official status as a true heir to Mao. In his final years, Mao designated Hua as his official successor, but it was a surprise pick because of Hua’s thin record and his unproven ability. Hua used all kinds of impression management techniques to legitimize his rise to power. He repeatedly quoted Mao’s words “with you in charge, I am at ease” (nibanshi wofangxin) to demonstrate Mao’s trust in him and put the phrase on bulletin boards all over the country. He also was referred by the state as the “wise leader” (yingming lingxiu) as only one step down from Mao, the “great leader” (weida lingxiu). He heavily quoted Mao’s words in his speeches, imitated Mao’s writing, calligraphy, and even hairstyle (Ching, 1979). Other people who adhered to the “two whatevers” shared with Hua the same weaknesses and anxiety: they did not have impressive record but had close relations with Mao. For example, Wang Dongxing, who brought up the “two whatevers,” was the head of Mao’s guard troops and was in charge of assisting Mao’s daily work and routines. Besides his critical role in smashing the Gang of Four, Wang had nothing to brag about. The whateverists, however, were apparently on the defensive when Deng Xiaoping and other purged old cadres regained their power after the Cultural Revolution and formed the second faction within the party. Those victims of the Cultural Revolution believed that problems and mistakes in Mao’s doctrines and the state’s policies were responsible for the tragedies and devastations in his ruling years and must be reevaluated. In 1977, Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated and 49

Bin Xu

reappointed to vice-premiership, membership of the Politburo, and membership of the Military Affairs Commission. On the 11th Party Congress in August, 1977, Hua Guofeng gave a speech on the detailed crimes of the Gang of Four. He also affirmed Deng’s rehabilitation, but did not mention the April 5 Tiananmen movement. Deng Xiaoping gave the closing speech, which did not directly challenge the “two whatevers” but implicitly demonstrated his differences from the whateverists. Using Mao’s own term “seeking truth from facts” (shishi qiushi), Deng stressed that truth can be sought from careful examination of facts, implying that leaders’ words and directives cannot be the sources of truth. The direct confrontation, however, did not happen until May 1978, when Guangming Daily published an editorial “Practice is the sole criterion of truth.” The editorial openly affirmed the point implied by Deng’s “seeking truth from facts” that only practice instead of other things – including leaders’ words – can be the criterion for truth. From today’s academic perspective, the editorial’s philosophical discussion was superficial. For example, it does not answer some key questions: Who defines “practice?” What is “truth?” The widely recognized pragmatic nature of the practice argument was not something new, either. Mao himself was a master of “guerilla pragmatism,” picking up and inventing theories to justify his actions. But the point of the editorial was to use practice as a focal point of reference to depart from whateverists’ heavy reliance on Mao’s words. The message was to indicate that even Mao’s doctrines should be tested in practice instead of blindly followed (Womack, 1979). The editorial was originally written by Hu Fuming, a philosophy professor at Nanjing University, but was heavily revised and rewritten by a few party theorists from the Central Party School. Behind these theorists was the support from Hu Yaobang, Deng’s protégé, one of the most liberal-minded officials within the Party. The theorists used some clever strategies to bypass Wang Dongxin’s censorship and managed to have the article reprinted in other party organs, including the People’s Daily (Renmin Ribao) (Schoenhals, 1991). The article immediately provoked one of the most important debates in contemporary Chinese history. As it turned out, the editorial strongly resonated with victims of the Cultural Revolution, including many purged officials and the younger generation, whose education was delayed by the chaos. The whateverists expressed their disagreement and condemnation with the editorial but found their voices getting weaker and weaker. Deng was not involved in the publication process but later was attracted to the debate and used it as a way to launch an offensive against Hua. Meanwhile, high-ranking Party officials wrote letters to the Central Committee to support Deng and demanded two related things: first, rehabilitation of the purged officials; and second, recognition of the April 5 Tiananmen movement as a “revolutionary movement.” Hua’s already weak base shrank rapidly. The debate was concluded in two conferences held in November and December, 1978. On the Central Committee Work Conference in November, some Party elders, such as Chen Yun, openly raised the two issues: rehabilitation and Tiananmen. Under the pressure from everyone except the few whateverists, Hua Guofeng made a self-criticism report and admitted the April 5 Tiananmen protests in 1976 were “revolutionary.” Soon after the Work Conference, the 3rd Plenum of the 11th Central Committee was held. The conference established Deng’s de facto leadership, placed rehabilitation on the official agenda, and started the economic reform. The conference’s resolution confirmed the Work Conference’s decision on the April 5 Tiananmen movement and rehabilitation. In addition, about Mao himself, the resolution stated that in order to accurately grasp Mao’s thoughts, the Party must learn from Mao’s great thoughts and, meanwhile, openly admit his “defects” and “mistakes.” At that point, the resolution did not specify the details of defects and mistakes but clearly paved the road for a systematic reevaluation of Mao. 50

Memory and reconciliation

The 3rd Plenum was the moment when China bid a farewell to the Mao years and the revolution. The resolution stated that the “large-scale, thunderstorm-like class struggle has already ended” and called for solving problems through democracy and laws. Also, the resolution clearly shifted the Party’s focus from ideology, revolution, and class struggles to economic development. In November 1980, the trial of the Gang of Four began. From a legal point of view, the trial was far from being impartial. The defendants were detained for four years without trial, a length that exceeded the maximum of three months in Chinese laws. Their crimes had been defined and publicly condemned long before the trial. Thus the outcome was predictable. The only unexpected event that happened during the trial was high-profile denial of Jiang Qing, Mao’s widow and one member of the Gang of Four, against the charges. She shouted in the court to claim that the Gang of Four simply followed Chairman Mao’s order and also challenged the legitimacy of the trial. To some extent her points were well-taken. The trial was less of a legal process than a reconciliation ritual. It was also a theatrical ritual to consolidate Deng’s political victory and to give victims of the Cultural Revolution a chance to vent their anger. Most of the prosecutors, judges, and on-site audience were the victims of the Gang of Four, apparently looking for revenge instead of procedural justice. The sentences were determined politically at the hands of the highest-ranking officials instead of the court (Baum, 1994). All these actions cleared the way for a final, official reevaluation of Mao himself. This reevaluation, however, was not an easy task. On the one hand, Deng and his associates rose to the top leadership by correcting Mao’s fatal mistakes and defeating Mao loyalists like Hua Guofeng. Deng had to acknowledge and theoretically analyze Mao’s problems in order to justify his leadership. Moreover, the new economic reforms and other reform policies dramatically differed from Mao’s class-based ideologies and needed theoretical clarification in light of the Party’s history. Was the reform a complete negation of Mao? If not, what was it? On the other hand, acknowledging Mao’s mistakes risked undermining people’s faith in the regime since, the regime and Mao had been two things in one for many years. A prevalent feeling after the Cultural Revolution was disillusionment with Mao, Communism, and even the regime. A reevaluation of Mao could expose and publicize his problems and further shake people’s faith, which would finally lead to distrust in the regime. This dilemma was already present in a historical case that Deng and other senior Party members were familiar with. In 1956, Nikita S. Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin’s successor, made a “secret speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to denounce Stalin for his various mistakes and crimes, from wrong political decisions to brutal persecution of Party members. The four-hour-long speech started a de-Stalinization movement within and outside of the Soviet Union, which partially contributed to revolts in Poland and Hungary. The Chinese Communist Party immediately condemned the report as a “revisionist” document, and since then Mao had been extremely cautious about the possibility of a hidden “China’s Khrushchev,” who would denounce him after his death. The title “China’s Khrushchev” later was given to Liu Shaoqi. The CCP under Deng’s leadership rehabilitated Liu after the Cultural Revolution, but Deng was among the witnesses of how much political chaos could be caused by a complete denunciation of a late leader. Deng’s reform resembled Khrushchev’s thaw to some extent, but the lesson Deng learned from the unrest in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1950s made his reevaluation agenda more conservative. The Party under Deng’s leadership decided to keep a delicate balance between reverence and criticism of Mao. 51

Bin Xu

In June 1981, the 6th Plenum of the 11th Central Committee convened and passed a resolution on “some historical issues in the Party history since the establishment of the People’s Republic.” The resolution first, with a self-congratulatory tone, confirmed the Party’s achievements in political and economic spheres since its establishment in 1921 and attributed the achievements to the Party’s center under Mao’s leadership. Nevertheless, the report also detailed Mao’s and also the Party’s serious mistakes, including: 1.

2. 3. 4.

The overextension of anti-rightist movement: The resolution stated that the anti-rightist movement was undoubtedly “correct and necessary” but too many innocent Party members and intellectuals were wrongly accused as “rightists.” Mao and the Party wrongfully launched the “Great Leap Forward” campaign and later political attacks on the critics of the campaign, such as Peng Dehuai. Mao encouraged and even fostered a personality cult of himself. Guided by his own theory of continuing revolution, Mao wrongfully started the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in a catastrophe to the Party and the country.

When addressing the post-Mao years, the resolution praised Hua Guofeng for “smashing the Gang of Four,” but also accused him of raising the “two whatevers,” suppressing the truth criterion debate, blocking the rehabilitation work, and trying to create another cult of personality. The resolution concluded the Party leadership’s reevaluation of Mao by stating both Mao’s contributions and mistakes. The resolution praised Mao as a “great Marxist,” a “great proletarian revolutionary, strategist, and theorist.” “Although he made serious mistakes during the ‘Cultural Revolution’,” the resolution stated, “his contributions to the Chinese revolution far exceed his mistakes. His achievements are primary, and his mistakes are secondary” (The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, 1981). An unofficial interpretation of this evaluation is “70 percent are contributions and 30 percent mistakes” (sanqi kai). Meanwhile, the resolution stressed that “Mao Zedong thoughts” were still the Party’s guiding principles. But the resolution selectively stressed a principle which was absent in previous Maoist discourses but frequently used by Deng to justify his reform agenda: “seeking truth from facts.” Thus, the Party under Deng’s leadership kept a nominal loyalty to Mao and promoted a “revisionist” version of Mao Zedong thoughts. In this sense, Deng was more artful than Khrushchev, whose “revisionist” denunciation of Stalin backlashed his own regime. The resolution was also consistent with Deng’s overall middle-ground, if not self-contradictory, political style. Deng’s reforms in political and economic spheres created a more relaxed social atmosphere and liberal production system from the old command economy style. Meanwhile, he also steadfastly defended his bottom line: the Party’s authority should not be challenged, and any reform should be led by the Party. This can explain why his actions and policies in the 1980s seemed to swing from liberalization at one point and repression at another. This also explains his brutal crackdown upon the 1989 Tiananmen movement and his later urge to restart the economic reform. Mao and his thoughts constituted an important part of his political adherence to the Party’s authority and ideology, and thus could not be completely abandoned. This dual feature of the CCP’s coming to terms with the past differed from most cases discussed in the reconciliation literature (see chapter 25 in this volume). First, none of the official reevaluation and reconciliation discourses in China involved discussion about “guilt.” Instead, Mao and the Party only made “mistakes.” The only perpetrators were the Gang of Four and Lin Biao, but those “counterrevolutionary cliques” were already expelled from the Party. Second, the Chinese Communist Party designed the dramatic policy changes in politics and economy 52

Memory and reconciliation

to rejuvenate itself instead of changing the regime’s fundamental features. The political reconciliation aimed to maintain the continuity of the regime, and to bid a farewell to the revolution.

Rehabilitation and silence One of the major mechanisms that the CCP came to terms with the troubled past was rehabilitation (pingfan), a set of procedures and practices to reverse wrong verdicts on government officials and Party members. The rehabilitation work started in December 1977, led by Hu Yaobang, then the Head of the Organization Department of the Party. From 1978 to 1981, about three million purged cadres and wrongfully alleged “rightists” were rehabilitated, and some of them were reinstalled to their original positions and resumed their salaries and houses. Those who already died were officially recognized by posthumously restoring their party membership as well as their reputation. One of the most prominent rehabilitation cases in the post-Mao years was rehabilitating Liu Shaoqi, the former Chairman of the State. Liu was the de facto Party leader during the first half of the 1960s, when Mao halfheartedly retired after the Great Leap Forward famine. Liu undertook a series of reform policies to rebuild the economy from the famine-ridden Great Leap Forward. After the Cultural Revolution began, Liu was purged under a variety of accusations. In 1969, Liu died of torture-related illness and lack of medical attention. After the truth criterion debate, some “big-character posters” appeared in the Wall of Democracy in Xidan, Beijing, calling for rehabilitating Liu Shaoqi, and his name silently appeared in a number of official media, as a commission was reinvestigating and reevaluating Liu’s case. Meanwhile, Liu’s wife, Wang Guangmei, was rehabilitated. In 1980, the 5th Plenum of the 11th Central Committee made a decision to “reverse all the verdicts on Liu Shaoqi” and officially rehabilitated Liu’s status as one of the greatest leaders of the People’s Republic. Liu’s books were republished, and memorial services were held posthumously. In Deng’s memorial speech, however, he delicately mentioned that Liu made a few mistakes because Liu’s faithfully undertook the Central Committee’s policies. He did not specify what mistakes Liu made. Similar mentioning of mistakes appeared in a draft on the Fifth Plenum, but they were removed from the official statement upon Wang Guangmei’s protest. Historian Dittmer linked this discursive politics to the Central Party’s reevaluation of Mao. Chairman Mao openly endorsed and even designed all the attacks against Liu, and, thus, an overly enthusiastic posthumous praise of Liu would highlight Mao’s mistakes and tarnish his image, a move the Central hesitated to make in this stage (Dittmer, 1981). Despite its importance for memory and reconciliation in China’s transition to a new society, rehabilitation received only scant scholarly attention (Dittmer, 1981; Lee, 1978). Even the few existing article-length studies recorded the processes without exploring its distinctive features visà-vis other cases of reconciliation. Primary sources of rehabilitation are in fact widely available in major libraries and archives in China, but the topic has drawn little interest from contemporary scholars. Here I provide some preliminary thoughts on rehabilitation for further in-depth analysis. Pingfan (rehabilitation) had unique features, which distinguished it from other reconciliation mechanisms in different contexts. First and foremost, pingfan is a socially and politically discriminatory corrective action, which applies only to the cadres and, to a lesser degree, intellectuals within establishments. In some sense, pingfan was a process to rearrange power structure among political elite. Most existing studies and public discourses neglected this aspect. Millions of peasants who died during the Great Leap Forward, urban and rural residents killed by state violence during the Cultural Revolution, and the “educated youth” who spent their best years in the countryside were not part of the pingfan 53

Bin Xu

agenda. In this sense, pingfan differed from most reconciliation or restitution efforts after the Cold War in that it did not aim to restore citizens’ rights as universal human rights. Second, through correcting past wrongs, the rehabilitation was to reestablish the legitimacy of the Party instead of delegitimizing it. The political persecution was caused by some “evil cliques,” and the rehabilitation was the Party’s corrective tool to reverse the perpetrators’ wrong verdicts and return to the normal track. No official apology was offered. Nor did the Party admit its “guilt”; instead, it was a “mistake.” Some rehabilitated cadres reportedly burst into tears when they were informed of their rehabilitation, expressing their gratitude for the corrective decision and vowing to remain loyal to the Party for the rest of their lives. Third, pingfan was a top-down corrective action and largely depended on political transitions at the Party central. Pingfan certainly involved bottom-up petitions by the purged officials’ families and the public. For example, before pingfan of Liu Shaoqi was put on the Party’s agenda, some big-character posters were put up in public places calling for pingfan. Families of purged officials never stopped their petitions. But in general, the rehabilitation decision was up to top leaders’ and the Central Organization Department’s decisions, and did not hinge on the bottom-up petitions. Pingfan did not start immediately after the collapse of the Gang of Four, because the “whateverists” obstructed the work in order to maintain their status quo. Even after Hu started the work, the “whateverists” still attempted to challenge his Organization Department at central and local levels on the pingfan issue. It was not until late 1978, when the reformists won the political battle, that the rehabilitation could be executed in a large-scale without significant obstacles. In sum, pingfan is a process of rehabilitation that rearranged the power structure and political alignment within the Party and the state. It was not intended to be and had never been extended to less powerful social groups such as rural residents and the “educated youth” who were most devastated by the state’s policy failure and political atrocities. Its discourses were also consistent with other aspects of reconciliation in the wake of the Cultural Revolution: the Party only made mistakes, and the evil Gang of Four should be responsible for major crimes and therefore guilty. It was far from the truth and reconciliation conception based on human rights and transitional justice discourse.

Voices of the victims: Literature, culture, and reconciliation Another distinctive feature of the post-Mao reconciliation was the central role of literary and cultural works. Novels and dramas became not only a major media for the victims to express grievances and to demand justice, but also a focal point of political contention at the higher level. Direct involvement of literature and culture in politics was not unprecedented in the history of the People’s Republic of China. From the 1950s to the 1970s, for instance, the Chinese state ran political campaigns to attack literary and cultural circles as “counterrevolutionary” or “poisonous weeds.” The examples include the campaigns against the movie Story of Wu Xun (Wu Xun zhuan), against Hu Shi’s interpretation of Dream of the Red Chamber, a Qing Dynasty classic, and against literary theories of Hu Feng, a higher-ranking cultural official. The most famous literary-political campaign was the attack on Hai Rui Dismissed from Office (Hai Rui baguan), a Peking opera about an honest official, Hai Rui, in the Ming Dynasty, who sincerely cared about people’s welfare but was dismissed from his office and sent into exile because of his blunt criticism of the emperor’s policies. The opera was performed in 1965 and immediately reminded audience of Peng Dehuai, a widely revered marshal who was purged by Mao himself during the 1959 Lushan conference for his sharp criticism of the Great Leap Forward. The resemblance of the opera to the purge of Peng attracted attention from the government, and the criticism of the opera and its author, Wu Han, finally triggered the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Although the Cultural Revolution was a 54

Memory and reconciliation

complex political campaign, it was also very much “cultural.” The imprints the Revolution left on the national memory were mostly its distinctive cultural activities and products: eight model plays, loyalty dances, propaganda posters, morning prayers and evening reports, Mao’s badges, and formulaic novels among others (Mittler, 2012; Leese, 2011). In general, the Chinese in the Mao years viewed literature and other cultural genres as a sphere not independent from, but a part of, politics. This perception remained strong after the Cultural Revolution and enabled literature and culture to be part of the politics of reconciliation. The most prominent was the “literature of the wounded” (shangheng wenxue), many short stories and novels that exposed harms and catastrophes caused by the Cultural Revolution. This wave of literature was named after Lu Xinhua’s The Wounded (shangheng), a short story published in Wenhui Daily in August 1978. But it actually started a year before Lu’s story. In 1977, Liu Xinwu published Class Counselor (banzhuren), a short story that tells of a class counselor, Zhang Junshi, whose students voluntarily submitted themselves to the Gang of Four’s cultural ban, and disdained every valuable cultural works produced before the Cultural Revolution. E. L. Voynich’s The Gadfly, in particular, was a novel recommended by the Youth League before the Cultural Revolution. As literary scholar Geremie Barme notes, the timing of Liu’s novel perfectly suited the political changes in 1977, when Hua Guofeng detailed the crimes committed by the Gang of Four during the 11th Party’s Congress (Barme, 1979). Hua intended to legitimize his leadership by depicting himself as a hero who smashed the evil clique. But his political intention also gave writers a license to explicitly expose the “wounds” left by the Gang of Four and Lin Biao, who were already officially labeled as evils. As Liu Xinwu’s story became a runaway success, other novels and stories mushroomed. This literary wave received a further encouragement when the political context in 1978 changed toward a more relaxed and liberal atmosphere, particularly during and after the truth criterion debate. Two exemplary cultural products appeared in 1978 and became cultural landmark that defined how people thought of the Cultural Revolution and converged with the political reconciliation. The first was the aforementioned Lu Xinhua’s short story, The Wounded. Lu was a first-year student at Fudan University in Shanghai. The story tells of Xiaohua, an “educated youth” whose mother was incriminated as a “traitor” during the Cultural Revolution. Out of her hatred and shame, Xiaohua “drew a line of demarcation” (huaqing jiexian) between herself and her mother – i.e., openly disavowed her mother. But her mother’s political problem became her scarlet letter that influenced her career and life. Xiaohua was not allowed to join the Communist Youth League, and her boyfriend Xiaoling’s career was also in jeopardy because of his relationship with a traitor’s daughter. In 1977, Xiaohua received a letter from her mother, who knew of the Gang of Four’s ill fate, and hoped Xiaohua could visit her in Shanghai. Xiaohua took the train back to Shanghai only to find her mother already passed away. The story ended with Xiaohua’s vow: she would never forget who was responsible for her mother’s wounds and “never forget Chairman Hua’s kindness and faithfully follow the Party’s Central Committee headed by him and dedicate my life to the cause of the Party” (Lu, 1979). From today’s perspective, The Wounded has very limited literary nuances. The characters are one-sided and remain unchanged even after traumatic experiences. The ending was not any different from political propaganda. Yet its historical significance outweighed its literary value. It was one of the first few literary works that exposed the Cultural Revolution’s damages to the most intimate relations. The author himself was one of the millions of “educated youth,” and the story spoke for those educated youth with “bad family background,” who lost opportunities of upward mobility because of their parents’ political problems. Xiaohua’s struggle was parallel to the experiences shared by those people who were forced to choose between familial affection and political dogma. The story also explicitly defined the perpetrator – the Gang of Four – and 55

Bin Xu

the victims – innocent revolutionaries like Xiaohua’s parents and the “educated youth.” The title, The Wounded (shangheng), gave millions of youth a catchphrase to describe their trauma. It was a story by a wounded youth for the wounded youth. Thus it was not surprising that the story became an instant sensation. Lu had not expected the story to be published, so he only pasted it on a wall bulletin run by his university department. But a few days later, he saw many students and teachers surrounding the bulletin board, reading the story, sometimes in tears, and copying it on their notebooks. This campus sensation soon attracted attention from Wenhui Daily, Shanghai’s official newspaper. After several revisions, mostly adding some political rhetoric and the awkward political ending to the original manuscript, Wenhui Daily published this story in August, and all of the newspaper copies were sold out almost immediately and had to reprint 1.5 million copies. In interpreting his popularity, Lu Xinhua says he was just a recorder of the millions of Chinese’s experience: “The Wounded indeed was written by all Chinese with their blood and tears. I was just lucky enough to be a recorder” (Southern Metropolis Daily, 2008). Because of Wenhui Daily’s revision, the story closely followed the Party’s propaganda: Xiaohua’s awakening was a result of the smash of the Gang of Four, and she vowed to “dedicate my life to the cause of the Party.” But for most readers, what the story distinguished itself from previous propaganda was not its “bright tail,” so to speak, i.e., an ending that is more promising and politically correct, but its exposure of the deepest trauma. After The Wounded, numerous novels and stories were published to describe tragedies and traumas left by various political campaigns. Another prominent example was Listen to the Silence (yuwu shenchu), a play written by a Shanghai amateur playwright, Zong Fuxian. The play tells a story of a 1976 Tiananmen movement participant’s experience and explicitly advocates reevaluation of the movement. The play was performed by the Shanghai Workers’ Cultural Center in September 1978 and soon acclaimed by Shanghai audience’s enthusiastic applauses, cheers, and tears. In October, Wenhui Daily published a featured report on the play. September in 1978 was a time when the whateverists began to lose their power and when many high-ranking officials advocated for reevaluation of the Tiananmen movement. Thus, it was not surprising that the Deng faction paid attention to this sensational play and used it as a cultural precursor for a political reevaluation. Hu Qiaomu and other top leaders then went to Shanghai to watch the play and invited the troupe to Beijing to perform. November 16, the day when Listen to the Silence was first performed in Beijing, was also the day when the Tiananmen movement was reevaluated as a “revolutionary movement” against the Gang of Four, which completely reversed the official verdict two years earlier. The play was performed four times in Beijing. All tickets were sold out, and still hundreds of Beijing audience waited outside of the theater, hoping to get a cancelled ticket. The play soon became a national phenomenon. About 2,700 theater troupes around the country also performed the play. Countless people watched it and enthusiastically expressed their grievances through their applauses and comments (Zong, 2008). Other contemporary cultural works had similar narrative patterns as The Wounded and Listen to the Silence. The perpetrators were those Gang of Four officials. The heroic victims were mostly the purged officials, persecuted intellectuals, and the educated youth. The cultural products clearly offered a formulaic pattern of truth-seeking and responsibility-attribution. In the immediate aftermaths of the Cultural Revolution, exposing the “wounds” of the victims suited the political agenda of both the whateverists and the Deng-reformists. But it would be too naive and unfair to attribute the enthusiasm for the literary genre to the government’s manipulation and the political struggles among factions. We could clearly see political interference in literature, particularly in the case of Listen to the Silence. But without a broad social consensus, exertion of political influence would be impossible. 56

Memory and reconciliation

Officials and intellectuals were being rehabilitated back into important positions of socialist nation-building and, thus, needed cultural affirmation of their values and sufferings. Moreover, some of the recently rehabilitated top cultural officials such as Zhou Yang were victims of the Gang of Four and encouraged writers to attack the Gang’s “sinister theory” in cultural policy. Also, in a very subtle way, writers and other cultural producers were encouraged to highlight the old cadres’ (laoganbu) role in their cultural products (Kane, 1981). As a result, many early works of the wounded highlighted the old cadres’ wisdom and loyalty. Another group of writers of the “wounded genre” were the educated youth, who were excluded from the rehabilitation due to their lack of previous positions. The only way for them to describe their wounds was to use pen and paper, and their thinking resonated with many people with similar wounds. Their enthusiastic readers – also the educated youth – just had returned to the cities from the countryside. Some lucky ones were able to go to college but still with regrets for the years wasted. The less fortunate could not find a job and sometimes had to share their parents’ tiny apartment with their grown-up siblings. When the numbers of these two groups – seventeen million educated youth and three million rehabilitated officials and intellectuals – are added up, plus their family members, the wounded literary had sympathetic audience in a massive scale – about 60 million, if we estimate it at the average family size of three people. They formed a united front under the identity of “victims of Gang of Four” and used cultural venues to express their grievances. In this milieu Lu Xinhua’s Cinderella success was not unique: some writers emerged out of nowhere, and their autobiographical stories and fictional novels sold millions of copies (Leung, 1994). The extreme popularity of the literature of the wounded was due to a convergence between the state’s political agenda and the widespread societal perceptions and emotions. Later development of the “wounded genre,” however, represented divergence between the state and the society’s agenda. More sophisticated and veteran writers began to join the educated youth and semi-amateur writers to expose wounds and reflect on bigger social and historical problems. This updated literature of the wounded was usually termed “reflection literature” (fansi wenxue), whose depth and literary values clearly exceeded the early ones. Enthusiasm for the early youthful literature gradually faded away. Their criticisms sometimes went beyond the state’s control and stirred occasional minor storms. One of the most famous controversies was about Bai Hua’s film script Bitter Love (kulian). The film script tells a story of an overseas Chinese intellectual returning to China after the establishment of People’s Republic. But he was brutally persecuted in various political campaigns and finally died after escaping from the authorities. The film script was vehemently criticized by the military authorities since Bai Hua was an army writer. After a series of political maneuvering, some military generals and party elders managed to get Deng Xiaoping involved to launch official criticism of the film script: it was a symptomatic byproduct of “bourgeois liberalization.” The campaign stopped short of another anti-rightist movement when Hu Yaobang downplayed the whole controversy in 1982 (Chan, 1988). The Bitter Love controversy indicated limitations of reconciliation in Chinese politics in the 1970s and the 1980s. The government’s intention was to limit the exposure and condemnation of the Gang of Four, the absolute evils whom people from various walks of the society hated, without touching on more fundamental political issues. Also, the government did not want the people to go beyond the official “70 percent [of achievements]–30 percent [of mistakes]” conclusion on Mao’s legacy to further their own reflections on the leader. More specifically, the narratives of “reflection literature” on the persecuted intellectuals went beyond the official pattern of “blaming the Gang for everything,” since some of the anti-rightist campaigns happened in the 1950s involved most of the high-ranking leaders who were still alive and powerful in the 1980s. Thus, the more sophisticated reflection literature unnerved the government because the 57

Bin Xu

writers began to ask questions about the system’s malfunction that gave a rise to the evils. The state and the society converged when the society’s reconciliation framing and the state’s political goals were directed to the same group of perpetrators, and they diverged when the quest for truth and responsibility emerged challenging the state’s legitimacy. Except for a few notable works, such as Xu Mao and His Daughters, the “wounded literary genre” did not address peasants’ suffering. No novel dared to touch upon the massive deaths from the Great Leap Forward famine. Even when peasants’ suffering was depicted in some of the educated youth novels, it was presented as a tragic outcome of the evil “Gang of Four,” which was later alleviated by “old cadres” and some heroic educated youth. In other words, the articulation of “wounds” was limited to the people with high-level of literacy (i.e., intellectuals, cadres, and the educated youth). Millions of illiterate peasants with scarce discursive resources remained in silence.

Conclusion The concept of reconciliation that emerged from various transitional justice cases in the 1990s is based on the idea that citizens and the state are of equal status. In order for a society to transit toward democracy, redressing of the past wrongs is a requirement for the national community to sustain itself as a mnemonic collective. The past atrocities committed by the state and other political organs must be corrected in order to respect the individual citizens’ universal rights. Thus, the state – usually the new regime in the post-dictatorship and post-apartheid periods – worked with the citizens and non-governmental organizations to set up Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) to achieve societal reconciliation (see chapter 9 in this volume). Yet, China in the late 1970s and 1980s had neither such idea nor the corresponding institution to heal the wounds. Instead China invented a rather unique method, rehabilitation, to undertake the reconciliation process, which demands further theoretical and empirical investigations. Here I provide a few preliminary thoughts to conclude this chapter and to suggest potential directions of further research. First, the role of the state in the reconciliation process. In contrast to the existing transitional justice cases, the post-Mao transition combined both rupture and continuity of tradition. The Chinese Communist Party’s rule was not denied, and the Party attributed the past atrocities to the Gang of Four, citing Mao’s “mistakes” instead of “guilt.” The purpose of this reconciliation narrative was to sustain the Party’s legitimacy and to simultaneously cope with the traumatic past. At some points, the state – or more precisely, one or both factions in the state – encouraged the society to expose the “wounds” inflicted by the evil “Gang of Four” in order to legitimize the Deng regime. At other points, as in Kulian’s case, the “reformists” ironically felt the writers went too far and suppressed their liberal bourgeois tendency. The reconciliation process was heavily influenced by “tightening-loosening” (shou-fang) swing in the Chinese politics during that historical period (Baum, 1994). Second, discriminatory reconciliation. Like many other processes in human societies, reconciliation process is unequal. Not every victim could get fair recognition, sincere apology, or just compensations. In the post-Mao reconciliation process, the “old cadres” clearly benefited the most from the rehabilitation: reputation restored, positions rehabilitated, and salaries compensated. The intellectuals were rehabilitated, but the Party refused to admit the Anti-Rightist Campaign as an entirely wrong policy. Instead, the Party only admitted the Campaign was overly “extended” to accuse innocent people. And about a hundred intellectuals were still not rehabilitated. There was no rehabilitation for the educated youth sent down to the countryside because they held no prior official position. The state implicitly admitted the mistakes of the youth migration 58

Memory and reconciliation

program, while offering no apology, official recognition, and compensation. But the educated youth were still able to use novels as an accepted medium to express their grievances. Some lucky ones entered college and later became China’s ruling elites, such as President Xi Jinping. The peasants, who suffered the most from various campaigns and state policy failures, were excluded from all kinds of the reconciliation practices, even though their casualties were the heaviest. Moreover, they were the voiceless people due to their lack of access to public discourses. So far no study on this discriminatory reconciliation in China has been conducted, and only a few recent ethnographic and oral studies gave voice to the voiceless peasants (Zhou, 2013; Thaxton, 2008). Further research can use more empirical data to identify the involved mechanisms of the discriminatory reconciliation processes. Third, the central role of literature and culture. This chapter has described the political implications of culture and literature in reconciliation process during the post-Mao period. A tentative explanation of this idiosyncrasy can be a lack of alternative ways to express grievances in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Certainly, the Democracy Wall in Beijing and similar public arenas served the function, but they were politically dangerous outlet. Needless to say, there were no market-oriented, unofficial media at that time, let alone the Internet. Literature and drama then were a safer and influential conduit for people to talk about the past trauma in fictionalized disguise. Other factors may have contributed to literature’s central role: for example, a booming literature market after a long period of ban of unofficial cultures during the Cultural Revolution. A broader topic for further research on China could be about “genres of reconciliation.” What are the major genres of reconciliation in particular historical context? And why? What are their relations to politics of reconciliation? These questions can pave the way for a promising line of future research on China and other comparative contexts.

References Barme, G. (1979). Chaotou wenxue – China’s new literature. The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 2, 137–148. Bashir, B., & Kymlicka, W. (2008). Introduction: Struggles for inclusion and reconciliation in modern democracies. In: Kymlicka, W., & Bashir, B. (eds.) The politics of reconciliation in multicultural societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baum, R. (1994). Burying Mao: Chinese politics in the age of Deng Xiaoping. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bernstein, T. P. (1977). Up to the mountains and down to the villages: The transfer of youth from urban to rural China. New Haven: Yale University Press. Buikema, R. (2012). Performing dialogical truth and transitional justice: The role of art in the becoming post-apartheid of South Africa. Memory Studies, 5, 282–292. Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (1981). A resolution about some historical issues since the establishment of the Republic. Chan, S. (1988). Two steps forward, one step back: Towards a ‘free’ literature. Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, Issue 19/20, 81–126. Ching, F. (1979). The current political scene in China. China Quarterly, 80, 691–715. Dittmer, L. (1981). Death and transfiguration: Liu Shaoqi’s rehabilitation and contemporary Chinese politics. Journal of Asian Studies, 40, 455–479. Kane, A. J. (1981). Literary politics in post-Mao China. Asian Survey, 21, 775–794. Lee, H. Y. (1978). The politics of cadre rehabilitation since the Cultural Revolution. Asian Survey, 18, 934–955. Leese, D. (2011). Mao cult: Rhetoric and ritual in China’s Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leung, L. (1994). Morning sun: Interviews with Chinese writers of the lost generation. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Liu, X. (2009). History of China’s educated youth: The big wave (1966–1980). Beijing: Contemporary China Publishing House.

59

Bin Xu Lu, X. (1979). The Wounded. In: Barmé, G., & Lee, B. (eds.) The Wounded: New stories of the Cultural Revolution, 77–78. Hong Kong: Joint Pub. Co. Mittler, B. (2012). A continuous revolution: making sense of Cultural Revolution culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Quinn, J. R. (ed.) (2009). Reconciliation(s) : Transitional justice in postconflict societies. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Schoenhals, M. (1991). The 1978 truth criterion controversy. China Quarterly, 126, 243–268. Southern Metropolis Daily. (2008). August 11, 1978, The Wounded published in Wenhui Daily; it was caused by many factors; I was only a recorder. Southern Metropolis Daily, June 8. Su, Y. (2011). Collective killings in rural China during the Cultural Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press. Thaxton, R. (2008). Catastrophe and contention in rural China: Mao’s Great Leap Forward famine and the origins of righteous resistance in Da Fo Village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Womack, B. (1979). Politics and epistemology in China since Mao. China Quarterly, 80, 768–792. Yang, D. L. (1996). Calamity and reform in China: State, rural society, and institutional change since the great leap famine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Yang, J., Friedman, E., Guo, J., & Mosher, S. (2012). Tombstone: The great Chinese famine, 1958–1962. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Zhou, X. (2012). The great famine in China, 1958–1962: A documentary history. New Haven: Yale University Press. Zhou, X. (2013). Forgotten voices of Mao’s great famine, 1958–1962: An oral history. New Haven: Yale University Press. Zong, F. (2008). Listen to the silence and me: 30 years. Beijing Daily, November 14.

60

PART 2

Japan and unsettled ambiguity

This page intentionally left blank

4 MEMORY AND OTHERS Japan’s mnemonic turn in the 1990s Kazuya Fukuoka

The 1990s witnessed a critical mnemonic turn in Japan. Refuting the widespread conventional wisdom of Japan as a non-apologizer on war issues, the awareness of past wrongs at the level of the general public showed a remarkable shift in the 1990s (e.g., Buruma 1994; Conrad 2003; Conrad 2010; Ishida 2000; Saito 2006; Tsutsui 2009; Takahashi 1999, 2002). More people admitted and accepted war guilt and were willing to take responsibility as a nation (Schwartz, Fukuoka, and Takita-Ishii 2005; Fukuoka and Schwartz 2010). Conventionally, the delayed register of Japan’s war memories in the 1990s has been discussed in the context of politics of memory (cf. Gills 1994). The field problematizes two main theoretical issues: (1) who has the power to produce and revise an authoritative history and how (hegemonic memory; cf. Halbwachs and Coser 1992; Hobsbawn 1983); and (2) the struggle among and the roles of commemorative entrepreneurs (memory pluralism; cf. Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991; Barthel 1996; Fine 2001). Memory studies focus on the workings of civic organizations and political activism (cf. Seraphim 2006) and domestic memory wars among Japan’s mnemonic elites/entrepreneurs (Hein and Selden 2000), including the roles of popular media (Galliccio 2007; Morris-Suzuki 2005). This analytical perspective also emphasizes the importance of political leadership of prime ministers in the mid1990s such as Hosokawa Morihiro and Murayama Tomiichi. The international memory wars between Japan and the former victim nations, especially China and South Korea, have drawn substantial attention as well (cf. Ducke 2002; Rose 1998, 1999; Lind 2008). At the global level, Japan’s wartime responsibility is contextualized within the emerging universal human rights regime in the 1980s, which was conducive to the subsequent worldwide memory boom (cf. Nora 2002; Trouillot 2000; Huyssen 2003). Drawing on the theoretical and empirical implications of the above accounts, this chapter focuses on a relatively unexplored change that started in Japan around the late 1980s regarding the very perception of East Asian others among the Japanese public.1 In this chapter, the Japanese post-War memory experience is presented as the case in which the public perception of past wrongs is conditioned to a significant degree by the very sense of external others and their relative significance. Japan’s national image as a former aggressor in East Asia did not emerge until the 1990s, when East Asian others, such as China and South Korea, became more salient economically and politically. By referring to major opinion surveys as the main source of data, this chapter will exemplify that the process of othering provides a social context for national remembering. Or, the very process of remembering renders the process to define “us” 63

Kazuya Fukuoka

intersubjectively (Misztal 2003; cf. Fine 2001, p. x). This external factor is important as a nation can be identified only through “interaction and mutual recognition” with other nations (Nodia 1994: 12; cf. Triandafyllidou 1998). Nationalism is an “ideology of the first person plural” (Billig 1995: 70) and “[t]he imagining of ‘our’ community involves imagining, either implicitly or explicitly, ‘them,’ from whom ‘we’ are distinct” (66). To put it differently, “[t]here can be no ‘us’ without a ‘them’” (Billig 1995: 76). Methodologically, this chapter problematizes collective memory of ordinary individuals (as opposed to elite memory) and constitutes an attempt to restore individual subjectivity back into the study of collective memory (Homans 1964; Schwartz and Schuman 2005). That is, “[n]ewspapers, television programming, and textbooks tell us what communication and academic elites believe about the past; they do not necessarily tell us what ordinary people believe, or how they feel about what they believe” (Schwartz, Fukuoka, and Takita-Ishii 2005: 267). Therefore, without knowing what individuals believe about the past, we cannot know how social context affects collective memory. The coverage of public opinion polls by the major national newspapers such as Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun and major news agencies such as NHK reveal the public opinions over the years on (1) the sense of East Asian others (especially China and South Korea) and (2) two types of collective memory of past wrongs, including historical understandings of the past and the sense of remorse. Although I do not claim that my data source is exhaustive, by focusing on national opinion polls by the popular dailies, what this chapter is looking at is the aggregate level of opinion that “approximates” underlying attitudes among the Japanese public (Midford 2011: 28–29). In what follows, I first revisit and examine (1) the sense of East Asian others and (2) war memories and commemorative practices in the post-War years. They are captured in terms of Japanese people’s sense of superiority over East Asian neighbors, widespread victim mentality, and collective amnesia. Then, the chapter traces the changes in the 1990s. The greater sensitivity to the East Asian voice became the public’s common frame of reference in the 1990s, which also served for mnemonic shifts in Japanese society.

Post-War Japan Sense of East Asian others in the post-War years: De-Asianization and Japan’s post-War economic miracle By the mid-1970s, Japan emerged as an economic superpower second only to the United States. With the heightening tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the Cold War structure, Japan’s national policy goals were exclusively on economic growth and Japan took advantage of this rivalry. In this context, the publication of Ezra Vogel’s (1979) Japan as Number One was truly symbolic, representing the pinnacle of Japan’s post-War economic success. Importantly, this success in the economic sphere also deflated the Japanese inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West. Several opinion surveys indicate that more Japanese people, already in the late 1960s, had grown beyond their inferiority complex toward Westerners (Research Committee on the Study of Japanese National Character in Sasaki and Suzuki 2000: 95, Table 4).2 Japan’s newly acquired prestige as an economic power also facilitated the notion of Japan that belongs to the West not only as an ally to the U.S., but also as a part of European civilization (cf. Beasley 1990; Conrad 2003; Yui 1995). Japan joined the G-7 club in 1975 as the only Asian (and non-European) country. In the national survey by NHK in 1987, almost half of the respondents (49%) maintained that Japan belonged to the West (as opposed to 27% who chose Asia).3 64

Memory and others

The notion of Japan as a part of the West further facilitated the perceptional vacuum toward East Asia. Within the Cold War environment, overall self-identification with the West was translated into keeping distance from East Asia. Although post-War West German Sonderweg (or, peculiar course of German modern history) was “long path towards West” (Heinrich August Winkler in Conrad 2003: 93), Japan’s path was the orientation toward de-Asianization. That is, “[t]he main difference was that [Sonderweg] allowed West Germany to become European, while Japan hardly perceived herself as Asian” (Conrad 2003: 94). With the strong emphasis on the Cold War international political framework, “Asia virtually disappeared not only in rhetorical but in real terms as well” (Gluck 1994: 5). Moreover, in Conrad (2003: 94): In Japan . . . in the absence of a movement towards political allegiance, Asia largely remained in a political and historiographical vacuum. . . . Under the umbrella of the security treaty with the USA, there was no space in Japanese discourse for the concerns of other Asian nations. Japan regarded itself as “western,” and was likewise treated as the “Prussia of the East.” In Noam Chomsky’s words: “Of course Europe now includes Japan, which we may regard as honorary European.” For most of the Japanese people who associated themselves more as members of Western cultures, it became more and more difficult to regard Japan to be one of the Asian countries (cf. Yui 1995). Although Japan “remains geographically an Asian country,” writes Johnson (1986: 426), it “has become, in fact, a global economic power.” Importantly, in the post-War years, Japan virtually “paid little or no attention to East Asia, intellectually or politically”; indeed, the period was characterized by a “collective Japanese amnesia about Asia” (Johnson 1986: 426). Also conspicuous during this period was the Japanese people’s “superiority complex” toward other Asian countries (Saito 1992: 16; cf. Tadokoro 1994: 10). China and South Korea were two of the most disliked nations in these years (cf. Nishihira 1982a, Nishihira 1982b; Reischauer 1988). In the survey in 1951, almost 95 percent of the respondents maintained that they disliked Korean people (94.94%) and seventy-seven percent disliked Chinese people (77.08%) (Izumi 1953: 431, Table 4; cf. Tei 1995).4 The negative images about the Chinese and Korean people are also overwhelming. It is observable that while peoples in European “developed” countries tend to get the positive images from the Japanese respondents, the stereotyped images of ugliness and filthiness of Chinese and Korea people are widespread (Izumi 1953: 434–35, Table 5; cf. Tei 1995).5 In the survey conducted by the Research Committee on the Study of Japanese National Character (Nation-Wide Survey) in 1958, 1963, and 1968, only nine percent of respondents picked China as a superior country in 1958 (6% in 1963 and 9% in 1968). And, only one percent named South Korea in 1958 (not available in 1963 and 1968). The significance of these figures becomes evident when compared with the perceptions about other countries. While the Japanese were picked with higher frequencies (57% in 1958, 52% in 1963, and 59% in 1968), the German scores were also high (52%, 45%, and 45%), along with the Americans (47%, 46%, and 43%). The British were also provided with relatively high scores of 31 percent, 27 percent, and 21 percent (Sasaki and Suzuki 2000: 112, Table 19).

War memories and commemorations in the post-War years: Victim mentality and collective amnesia The victim mentality of Japanese people was extensive in the post-War years. The great majority of Japanese people had for a very long time considered themselves as victims of militarism rather than the former victimizers in East Asia (Tachibana 1996: 168; See also Yoshida 1995; Mochida 65

Kazuya Fukuoka

1994; Yamaguchi 1994). This notion coincides with the logic of “leaders’ responsibility” that ordinary Japanese people had simply been “deceived” by the militarists (Yoshida 1995, 1997; Awaya 1994). Along with the U.S.’s initial occupation policies for Japan’s democratization and de-militarization, the culmination of this logic appeared in the form of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946–1948). The revelation of the “facts” of the Japanese military’s war crimes at the so-called “Tokyo Trial” further contributed to the internalization of the victim mentality (Yoshida 1995, 1997). Although the trial served the victor’s justice (Gluck 1993: 66; Gluck 1990), “the stark narrative of the war produced by the trial was accepted by most Japanese of the time” (Gluck 1993: 66). In other words, the clear-cut “break” from the post-War period was necessary “for the sake of creating an utterly different Japan” (Gluck 1990: 6). Furthermore as Shimazu (2003: 106) observes, the “[s]elf-victimization of the Japanese” was critical “as a means of coming to terms with the past” and, accordingly, Japan’s war memory was “selective and sanitized to emphasize the suffering, as opposed to the aggression.” The process of national forgetting is linked strongly to the Japanese people’s perception of Asia and East Asian people. Japan’s view on East Asia in the early post-War years started with the leftover pre-War sentiment of Japan’s superiority to Asia. This pervasive feeling among the Japanese people also led to a certain spin being put on the interpretation of the war defeat; that is, Japan was defeated by the U.S. or, more specifically, by Western material power and scientific development, yet not by Asian countries. Although the number is small (n = 385), the U.S. State Department survey of Japanese residents in Beijing, China, in 1946 (“Survey of Political Opinions of Japanese in Pei-P’ing”) provides important clue.6 Almost 90 percent of respondents believed that China did not defeat Japan by itself: 87 percent answered “no” to the statement that “Even without the help of America, China could still have won the war.” For those Japanese people who did not possess the understanding that Japan was defeated by China, it would be impossible to imagine that Japan was defeated by Korea. In this conjunction, asked if they agreed with the statement that “the Japanese people are superior to any other Far Eastern people,” 86 percent of the respondents answered “yes.” This figure is especially remarkable when compared to the response to the question regarding whether “the Japanese are superior to any other race in the world.” Almost half of the respondents deny the statement (49%), with 41 percent agreeing with it. Along this line, the survey also showed that Japanese people considered Japan as an emancipator in Asia. One of the widespread positions on Japan’s war in Southeast Asia has been that Japan fought the war to free Asia from the Imperialist West. It is also widely believed that Japan established the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940 for the same purpose. Before the 1990s, the dominant image of Japanese ordinary people as victims persisted along with the so-called inevitability thesis. In the Kyodo surveys in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, for example, not many admitted that they “did wrong” in the last war. Only seventeen (17.1) percent in 1967 and twenty-six (26.4) percent in 1972 responded so. More respondents chose to justify Japan’s war against China by referring to reasons such as (1) “it was unavoidable” or (2) “it was justifiable because of Japan’s self-defense imperative.” And they constituted a plurality position in 1967 (a total of 45.6%, with 35.9% for unavoidability and 9.7% for self-defense reasons) and formed a majority opinion in 1972 (a total of 55%, with 46.6% referring to unavoidability and 8.4% to self-defense reason).7 Beginning in the 1970s, as represented by the several nonfiction bestseller books on Japan’s war in Asia, new information about Japanese military’s brutality in China was revealed and proliferated among the public. Among them, the most notable is Morimura Seiichi’s nonfiction in 1981, The Devil’s Gluttony (Akuma no Hōshoku), which became an instant best-seller in 1982. About 1.88 million copies had been sold just in 1982, and a total of more than 5.5 million copies were sold in Japan.8 The book, revealing the atrocities committed by Biological Unit 731 in Northeastern 66

Memory and others

China, including human experimentation on Chinese, Korean, Russian, and other foreign civilians and POWs for research on biological warfare, offered a brutal portrait of the reality of the Japanese army and its actions during the war years (cf. Yoshida 1995: 166, 194; Ishida 2000: 194). In the survey conducted around the time of the first textbook controversy in 1982, fifty-one percent of Japanese respondents (51.4%) in NHK survey (October 1982) designated Japan’s pre-War military activities as “a history of aggression (shinryaku) against our Asian neighbors.” Also, more than eighty percent of the respondents (82.5%) maintained that “as Japanese citizens, we should wholeheartedly reflect on what we did to the Korean and Chinese people since the Meiji era, including severe discrimination/persecution and odious slaughters.” This shows that it was not necessarily the case that the Japanese people totally lacked the knowledge of what happened in Asia. Yet, in the 1980s, this emerging historical understanding of the past wrongs was not translated into the sense of regret as a nation. In the same 1982 survey, about forty-five percent (44.8%) agreed to the statement that “Japan’s military expansion against other countries was unavoidable because Japan was a poor country with few resources.” As Yoshida (1995: 6) points out, this is the logic of “war of aggression as a consequence.” Also importantly, in the same survey more than forty-five percent of the respondents (45.5%) agreed that “it should be appreciated [hyōka sarerubeki] that the Pacific War expedited/spurred the independence of Asian countries who suffered from Western imperialism.” From the viewpoint of Japanese people whose moral consciences were undergirded by victim mentality, it would not be so difficult to admit that the war was one of aggression since that was what the military did. As opinion polls show, most Japanese respondents held that ordinary Japanese people were exempt from war responsibility since they were deceived by the military leaders. Seen in the national survey taken in 1982, although this does not constitute the majority opinion, those who claimed that the ordinary people are not responsible constitute a plurality (36.3%). Combined with the notion of war as Japan’s self-defense (17.6%), those two cohorts constituted the majority (Yoshida 1995: 12, Table 2). From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, a victim mentality was embedded in the war memories of ordinary people (cf. Yoshida 1995: 197–200). In this line, the mid-1980s also witnessed the Japanese people’s lack of sensitivities to Asian concerns. In September 1985, Yomiuri Shimbun conducted a national survey regarding PM Nakasone Yasuhiro’s official Yasukuni visit. Interestingly, more than half of the respondents (52%) did “approve” government officials’ official visit to the shrine with 25 percent against the visit. The survey had a follow-up question, and what is notable is the public’s relative insensitivity to Asian anxieties. Among those who disapproved the visit (25% of the total), 29 percent picked the reason that the visit “may affect diplomatic relations with neighboring countries,” which constituted only about seven (7.25) percent of the total respondents surveyed. Also, 13 percent disapproved the visit because “Yasukuni Shrine honors, among others, the so-called Class-A war criminals,” which represents about three (3.25) percent of the total respondents.9

The change in the 1990s Sense of East Asian others in the 1990s: The end of Cold War and re-Asianization? From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the Japanese people experienced a series of historically significant events. The mid-1980s saw the severe trade friction between Japan and the U.S. and the resulting “Japan Bashing” (cf. Samuels 1990). Japan’s huge trade surplus against the U.S. was attributed to Japan’s free rider status during the Cold War era, its market protectionism, and its 67

Kazuya Fukuoka

idiosyncratic business practices and culture. PM Nakasone’s campaign to internationalize Japan directly followed this new challenge and prompted the public discussion on Japan’s appropriate role as the number two economy in the world. Also importantly, Emperor Hirohito died in 1989; he had been the symbolic figure of Japan and had survived through both pre- and post-War years (cf. Bix 2000). Public debates on the emperor’s political and moral responsibility in the last War had been virtually prohibited within the major media until his death. Emperor Hirohito’s death opened up a venue to critically reflect on Japan’s warfare in East Asia. The end of the Cold War took place in this context. Although the event was largely considered as a victory of the democratic West over the communist East, it is also true that the end of the Cold War brought a sense of uncertainty about Japan’s future. Coincidently, the early 1990s are also characterized by the beginning of Japan’s lengthy economic recession, which presumably added another dimension to the sense of uncertainty. In this new international environment, it seemed rather natural that Japanese society witnessed the so-called Asia Boom, or Japan’s homing to Asia in the late 1980s (Hein and Hammond 1995; Conrad 2003; Abe 2001). Simply put, Japan was “at a crossroads” (Funabashi 1995: 11) and Japanese people rediscovered Asia (Leitch, Kato, and Weinstein 1995: 78).10 Of course, Asia did not emerge suddenly with the ending of the Cold War. Japan’s economic presence in Asia since the early 1980s and the growing economic interactions with East Asian countries paved the foundation for Asia’s new emergence to the eyes of Japanese people around the late 1980s and the early 1990s. An examination of the public opinion surveys clearly indicates Japanese respondents’ growing expectations about Asia. For example, while 41 percent in the 1987 survey by Prime Minister’s Office chose Asia as the region Japan should explore economic cooperation with, the 1991 survey now had 53 percent who thought so (and 50% in 1992).11 Also, in a survey conducted in 1992, almost half of the respondents chose East Asia (46%) as the region that Japan should focus on its cultural exchange while Western Europe was chosen by 11 percent and the U.S. (North America) by 14 percent.12 A 1994 Asahi survey also revealed the Japanese people’s increasing sense of Asia’s importance (28%) compared to that of the West (Europe and the U.S.) at six percent (Funabashi 1995).13 It was in the late 1980s when South Korea and China became more important to the Japanese people. Economically, South Korea had already emerged as one of the Four Asian Tigers in the 1970s (along with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore). South Korea’s democratization process and successful hosting of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games also occurred in the late 1980s. The country also became a UN member in 1991. The perception of China’s significance also increased during this period. China’s modernization process was finally taking off and its growing economic competitiveness had been noted by the Japanese public.

South Korea South Korea was clearly perceived as economically competitive around the late 1980s and the 1990s. Those Japanese respondents who considered South Korea as an economic competitor to Japan increased from 37 percent in 198414 to 55 percent in 1988,15 and the trend continued in the 1990s (52% in 1995 and 55% in 1996).16 Korea’s democratization process in the late 1980s was also regarded as a success by the great majority (67%),17 and more than 70 percent (74%) maintained that the Seoul Olympic Games would enhance Korea’s international status.18 In 1992, one survey indicated South Korea as one of the Asian leaders in the 21st century (52.4%) along with Japan (88.7%) and China (65.9%).19 In a Yomiuri survey in 1996, Korea is now a “rival” (37%) as well as a “friend” (35%).20 Also, Korea is a future economic rival (41%), along with China (51%) and the U.S. (37%).21 68

Memory and others

Also, the sense of closeness toward South Korea (50.9%) exceeded the sense of distance (42.8%) in 1988 when the Seoul Olympic Games were held.22 Although they do not form majority opinions (yet constituting plurality), Japanese respondents’ much higher sense of “neighborly” feelings toward South Korea (41% in 1987 and 33% in 1993) and China (41%, 25%) compared to other countries including West Germany (2%, 3%) and the Soviet Union (1%, 3%) were suggested by NHK surveys in 1987 and 1993.23 There is a survey by Yomiuri (1995) that asked the respondents to compare their feeling toward South Korea with that of ten years ago, and 26 percent answered that they felt “more friendly” (as opposed to 4% who felt “less friendly”).24 In a similar survey, 36 percent of respondents stated that their feelings toward South Korea had improved in the past ten years (36.3%) (as opposed to 5.3 % who replied “worse”).25 Korea is not a perceived to be a threat in a 1992 Yomiuri survey.26 Korea’s overall image also improved. In an Asahi survey (June 1995), more people referred to Korean people as being “diligent” (17%) and having “strong cooperative spirit” (36%) than referred to negative images such as being “untrustworthy” (8%) or “selfish” (6%).27 The image of South Korea as a modernized/industrialized nation seems to have been fixed by the late 1980s.28 Seen in a Yomiuri survey in 1995, the near majority showed an overall good impression about South Korea (49.8%).29 As for the future expectations of South Korea, the 1993 NHK poll found a near majority who believed that Japan should have a good relationship with South Korea (47%).30

China By the mid-1990s, China became one of the most important countries to Japan’s economy (49%), along with the U.S. (66%) and South Korea (22%), and China would be the largest economic rival to Japan in the 21st century (51%), along with the U.S. (37%) and South Korea (41%) in 1996.31 Politically, China’s perceived international prestige has been noted already in 1992 as one of the future leaders in Asia (65.9%).32 In 1994, China is regarded as a world leader in the future; the number for China (38%) well exceeds Japan (24%) and Western Europe (12%).33 In terms of Asia (“the most influential in Asia in the future”), China’s perceived competitiveness (44%) even surpassed the U.S. (30%) and Japan (16%) in the 1994 Asahi survey.34 In the annual surveys by Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Japanese people’s sense of closeness toward China had been continuously high through the 1970s toward the 1980s (about 70% in the 1980s) after the two countries established the formal diplomatic relation in 1972. In 1988, more than seventy percent of the Japanese respondents feel friendly toward Chinese people.35 Although this figure was tainted by the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, the Japanese people’s sense of closeness toward China continued to form majority opinions toward the 1990s.36 In Mainichi surveys, too, the number of the people who liked China dropped from 57 percent in 1988 to 40 percent in 1992, and Chinese people from 56 percent in 1988 to 36 percent in 1992.37 However, the majority consensus on the overall good impression about China is once again observed later in a 1995 Yomiuri survey.38 Although the majority consensus in 1988 (51%) on the image of China as a trustworthy country dropped to 31 percent in 1992 due to the Tiananmen Square incident,39 the image of China as a country that worked for modernization and industrialization seems to have been fixed around the late 1980s and the early 1990s.40 Also seen, China is marked with the image of “rapid economic growth” by the near majority of the Japanese respondents (44%) in 1995.41 As discussed, China and South Korea were believed to be “neighborly” to the Japanese people in the late 1980s to the 1990s. In 1995, China was considered an ally by the great majority of the Japanese respondents (60%), and more than seventy percent (71%) believed that China would remain so for the coming twenty years.42 The 1996 Yomiuri survey revealed that the great majority 69

Kazuya Fukuoka

described China in positive terms (41% for “friend” and 27% for “rival”) as opposed to negative images (“enemy” at 5%).43 In terms of the Japanese people’s future expectation with China, already in a 1985 PMO survey chose China as a country Japan should have close ties with.44 In 1988, more than 90 percent maintained the opinion for closer future relations between Japan and China (92%).45 Importantly, public expectations for the future relationship between the two countries were not necessarily hampered by the incident in 1989. More than 60 percent of the respondents (65%) in the 1992 Mainichi poll expected the relationship between the two countries to improve over the next five years.46 This trend largely continued through the 1990s as seen in the surveys by NHK (1993),47 Asahi (1994),48 Yomiuri (1995),49 and Yomiuri (1998).50

War memories and commemorations in the 1990s In the 1990s, Japanese attitudes toward the so-called history problem changed dramatically (cf. Seraphim 2006; Ishida 2000). Departing from the post-War victim mentality that had been widespread and embedded throughout the post-War years (Gluck 1993; Yoshida 1995), the dominant beliefs in the 1990s marked the sense of regret and a new recognition and admittance of Japan as a former aggressor (cf. Seraphim 2006; Seaton 2007). More Japanese people came to internalize the country’s past wrongs as Japan’s national problem, which was unseen in the victim mentality that was still prevalent in the early 1980s (cf. Schwartz, Fukuoka, and Takita-Ishii 2005). Japanese people were now cognizant of Japan’s damaged image among its Asian neighbors in this period: Japan was a country that had not reflected enough upon its invasion of Asia (Gluck 1990). According to Tsutsui’s (2009) content analysis of major newspaper editorials and speeches by the prime ministers in the post-War years (1945–2004), despite the occasional conservative backlashes, it was clear that by the mid-1990s the underlying master narratives in Japanese society had become the admittance and acceptance of war guilt, which is characterized by what he calls remorse that “[takes] responsibility as a nation, accepting the collective guilt for the crimes” and universalism, which dovetails with “the rise of global norms on reparation for past injustices” (Tsutsui 2009: 1393; cf. Conrad 2010; Seaton 2007; Seraphim 2006). Unlike in the 1980s, where the dominant societal discourse was evasion, which is closely connected to the widespread victim mentality (Tsutsui 2009: 1411), the voices of Asian people were finally heard in the 1990s and they were “no longer marginalized” (Conrad 2003: 94). While the Japanese politicians still debated what constituted historical “fact” and “truth,” the Japanese public in the 1990s was already well aware of the importance of sincere apology. In terms of historical understanding on the issues of admittance of past wrongs, the 1990s saw the continued trend of a shared understanding about the nature of Japan’s war in Asia as a war of aggression. NHK surveys show the near majority consensus in 1987 (48%)51 and the majority consensus in 1994 (52%). In terms of the interpretation of the causes of the war, the inevitability thesis is now residual and diminishing. Compared to the survey results from the early 1980s, a significant decrease was detected in terms of the number of those who claimed that the war was “unavoidable” (down from 44.8% in 1982 to 32% in 1994) (Yoshida 1995: 216, Table 23). Now the overwhelming majority of the respondents agreed to offer a “heartfelt apology” to the Asian countries. When PM Hosokawa, at his inaugural speech on August 23, 1993, included for the first time as a prime minister key phrases referring to the Japanese military’s “aggression” and the “mistake” of the war, the Japanese public accepted it very favorably. In a Yomiuri survey in September 1993, asked if they agreed or disagreed with Hosokawa’s statement that “the Pacific War had been a war of invasion,” more than 50 percent of the Japanese respondents agreed with it (53%).52 Asahi Shimbun phrased the question a bit differently (September and November 1992): “Prime Minister Hosokawa (1993–94) acknowledged Japan’s ‘acts of aggression’ in the Pacific 70

Memory and others

War and expressed his ‘deep concern and apology.’ Do you think highly of his attitude or not?” In two Asahi surveys in 1993, more than 70 percent of respondents supported Hosokawa (72% in September and 76% in November).53 Similarly, there was also a majority support observable in PM Murayama’s (1994–96) official apology in 1995.54 About Japan’s “after-the-war-dealings” with Asian countries, in an Asahi survey in July 1994, 7) percent of the respondents thought that Japan had not compensated its Asian victims sufficiently.55 Fifty-five percent of the respondents in the September 1994 NHK survey thought that Japan “has not taken sufficient measures.”56 Similarly, when asked in December 1994, 62 percent of the Japanese respondents did not agree with the statement that “the Japanese government [had] sufficiently compensated the wartime damages they caused to other countries.”57 In a nutshell, in contrast to the governmental standpoint that war compensation had already been settled with each of the Asian countries, the public was to a great extent leaning toward individual compensation. This trend continued toward the last part of the 1990s.58

Discussion and conclusion This chapter started out with a hypothesis that if former victim nations become felt more salient to the people in the former aggressor nation, then it is more likely that the latter’s sensitivity to the negative memories will improve. Accordingly, the relatively low perception of the former victim nations as significant others would not induce public attention in the former aggressor nation in terms of their war memories. In the 1990s, along with Japan’s return to Asia (or, Japan’s reAsianization), Japanese people rediscovered that those neighboring countries in East Asia (especially China and South Korea) did not welcome Japan in the manner that the Japanese expected. Asian countries certainly admired and welcomed Japan’s economic strength and its economic contribution to the regional development, yet this admiration was not necessarily translated into trust in Japan as a friend. Japanese people now became cognizant of Japan’s negative images among the East Asian neighbors: Japan was a country that had not reflected enough upon its invasion of Asia. Japan had to redefine its proper position in East Asia. The Japanese case pertains to a semiotic process of keying in which collective memory is transformed into a cultural system (Goffman 1974). Keying “matches publicly accessible (i.e., symbolic) models of the past (written narratives, pictorial images, statues, motion pictures, music, and songs) to the experiences of the present” (Schwartz 1996: 911; cf. Misztal 2003: 96–98). In the case of Japan, a newly acquired sense of significance in others (China and South Korea) was keyed to Japanese military’s past wrongdoings in East Asia. Japan’s new national collective memory thus emerged in the 1990s by reinterpreting the past so as to suit it for the present situation. “The study of collective memory,” according to Schwartz and Kim (2002), represents “more than an effort to map variations in the working of the mind; it seeks to provide models of human beings using their minds – symbol-making, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking – to fix the experiences of their lives within the history of their nation” (222). Collective memory in this sense epitomizes “a template that organizes and animates behavior” as well as “a frame within which people locate and find meaning for their present experience” (Schwartz 2000: 18; emphasis in original). Furthermore, Schwartz (2000: 18; emphasis added) states: Collective memory reflects reality by interpreting the past in terms of images appropriate and relevant to the present; it shapes reality by providing people with a program in terms of which their present lines of conduct can be formulated and enacted; it frames reality through standards in terms of which the effectiveness and moral qualities of their conduct can be discerned. 71

Kazuya Fukuoka

Japan’s “coming home” to Asia was the process in which the Japanese people finally “[appreciated] the sensitivities of its neighbors’ concerns that it acknowledged its past” (Leitch, Kato, and Weinstein 1995: 104; cf. Conrad 2003; Conrad 2010). It was a necessary step for the Japanese to reconstruct their new identity as a former aggressor. Carol Gluck (1990: 14) wrote in 1990: “[a]s Asia and Japan increase in mutual importance to one another, the demand for something more than routine diplomatic apology – for those rhetorical rituals do not suffice – will continue to prod the Japanese to confront the Asian parts of the war.” International structural change is catalytic in that it defines the country’s position in the sphere of international politics, which in turn accounts for formulating and facilitating national images and perceptions of other countries. When international structural change occurs, so does a nation’s position relative to others, which leads in turn to a change in people’s understanding about others. The public interprets, processes, and incorporates international political affairs and environments, and forms (in)coherent perceptions and opinions on those matters. In the 1990s, the sense of external others provided the very context of cultural relevance in which war memories were perceived and interpreted. Despite the change at the societal level in the 1990s, Japan’s (or East Asia’s) struggle over the war memories has still continued. Although many supported this new direction, more than a few politicians, opinion leaders, and academics from the conservative camp disagreed with it and made counterarguments (cf. Lind 2008). Viewed from the outside, Japan seemed never to act as a collective totality. In Kato Norihiro’s famous phrase, this represented Japan’s self-contradicting national psyche characterized as Jekyll and Hyde (cf. Morris-Suzuki 1998: 22–23). In regard to a war apology, “Dr. Jekyll apologizes, but then Mr. Hyde comes forward and calls the Nanjing massacre a frame-up or otherwise contradicts Jekyll’s sentiments.” The pattern became more conspicuous, especially after the appearance of liberal prime ministers such as Hosokawa and Murayama, and has been continuously so. This self-contradiction was necessarily conducive to Japan’s “perpetual failure to apologize in a manner that inspire[d] confidence” (Koschmann 2000: 747–748). In this line, the late 1990s also witnessed the emergence of so-called neo-nationalist historiography that advocates the renewed pride in nation and Japanese history (cf. Nozaki 2005), which greatly changed the landscape of Japan’s memory. It was a defensive reaction to the change in the 1990s, i.e., the newly widespread public code in which official apologies became more acceptable and more self-reflection was encouraged. In their terminology, post-War Japanese history education became “masochistic [jigyakuteki]” and Japanese people lost the pride in nation. History issues have continuously been a great source of the domestic contention, which reflects the ideological tug-of-war between conservatives and liberals in post-War Japanese society. That being the case, several considerations deserve our attention from memory and reconciliation in East Asia perspective. First, this study’s case analysis might have underestimated the Japanese national psyche in general. While this chapter examines a relatively hopeful atmosphere of the 1990s, Japanese people are more pessimistic about the future relationship with China and South Korea in this new millennium. The recent territorial disputes over Takeshima/Dokdo (in the case of Japan and South Korea) and Senkaku/Diaoyu (Japan and China) have further complicated the already troubled international relations in East Asia. Also importantly, the comfort women issues have yet to witness any tangible signs for future resolution (cf. Kim 2014). PM Abe Shinzo’s recent official pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine seems to have added another layer. Second, many Japanese nowadays realize that the Chinese and Korean governments are more diplomatically skilled in the Asian politics of memory, employing the past as a bargaining chip, and many now feel “apology fatigue” with seemingly never-ending accusations from the two 72

Memory and others

countries (Tsutsui 2009: 1406). As the public perception toward China and Korea has been markedly deteriorating in the 2000s, more up-to-date study is necessary to examine the hypothesis. To be noted, there have been attempts of joint history research at the non-governmental level starting in the 2000s, including joint history writing projects among historians in Japan, China, and South Korea (cf. Sakaki 2012; Mitani 2008). There were also much-anticipated inter-governmental projects in the 2000s between Japan and China (2006–2010) and Japan and South Korea (2002–2010). While they are certainly notable (and hopeful) development, it is also true that they also revealed very profound differences embedded in their historical understandings over the contentious past among the three parties (cf. Pingel 2010, 2008; Wang 2009). Third, there should be further research on the very notion of historical responsibility in Japan. To what extent is responsibility a moral burden for ordinary Japanese people? To what extent is the expression of responsibility felt as a social obligation rather than the articulation of emotion? Recent research shows the underlying disparity between the expression of apology and the feeling of regret among the Japanese college students (Fukuoka and Schwartz 2010). While the Japanese express regret, they do so more than they actually feel. Their vocabulary of regret was more formulaic than emotive. Further research will provide a much-needed and more nuanced understanding about Japanese collective sense of historical responsibility. According to Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2000), collective apology of historical wrongs is inherently abortive as it never embodies those original actors who committed the wrongs and who suffered from them. As public remorse is only possible by contemporary proxy (Negash 2006), apologizers and apologizees who can never truly feel the pain of the past, hence fail to be relevant actors. Trouillot, however, misses one important point. That is, “what makes a ritual effective is not participants’ ability to experience the feelings of forebears but to experience the feelings of one another” (Fukuoka and Schwartz 2010: 87). In other words, what matters here is “the capacity to feel and express remorse and empathy for the victims’ pain” (Field 1997: 34). The 1990s in Japan provide a good case to help us think through the implications of the above discussions. While “a cosmopolitan morality” of collective apology does not yet exist, it is also true that former perpetrators now “feel compelled” to face their past wrongs and explore reconciliation with former victims (Daase 2010: 29). As Field (1997: 37) cogently claims, collective apologies are in the end meant to be future-oriented: “[a]pologies are made to the victims of past wrongdoing but for the shared present of victims and apologizers, and most of all, for the sake of a common future” (emphasis in original). In the 1990s, Japanese society had “an opportunity to reinvent the collective self ” and the Japanese nation reappeared as a “moral subject” (Daase 2010: 29). Japan’s new sensitivity to East Asia played an important environmental cue in this process. Questions remain, however. Was the change in the 1990s only transitory? Has Japan’s “sensitivity revolution” in the 1990s become deeply embedded in the society so as to make the shift irreversible (Fukuoka and Schwartz 2010: 87)? If so, how? If not, why not? In this conjunction, is the reconciliation possible in the near future? Can Asian nations possibly enjoy a “regional public sphere” (Suh 2010: 250) in which they “share a common framework of meaning and accept the legitimacy of the other side” (246)? In other words, can memories go beyond national borders? Can it be something universal?

Notes 1 Notable exceptions include Sebastian Conrad’s (2003; Conrad 2010) studies that similarly problematize the increased saliency in East Asian others from the late 1980s to the early 1990s (or, what he calls “the return of Asia”). There are also works on Japan’s Asian “homing” (Hein and Hammond 1995) and Asia orientalism (Abe 2001). Although theoretically implicative, they are not necessarily empirical. This chapter attempts to add more to the empirical depth of the existing literature.

73

Kazuya Fukuoka 2 In 1953, more people still admitted Japan’s inferiority to the West (28%) and only 20% of respondents thought in the opposite way. Already in 1963, however, more respondents (33%) held that “Japanese are superior to Westerners” than those who thought that “Japanese are inferior to Westerners” (14%). In 1968, almost half of the respondents claimed Japanese superiority (47%), as opposed to only 11% for the opposite view. 3 NHK (October 1987) in Index to International Public Opinion (IIPO), 1988–1989: 283–284. 4 The unit of reference for these questions is the ethnic group (rather than nation or country). Russians were also disliked (90.60%). Also important, 96 percent of the respondents named American people as an ethnic group they liked (96.53%). 5 The survey also asked how respondents would characterize the ethnic groups. Again, Korean people were considered to be “dishonest” (43.72%), “rude” (14.65%) and “wicked” (15.81%). Chinese people were also seen as “dishonest” (32.10%), “wicked” (13.07%), and “stingy” (8.81%). So, too, were Russians (28.61% for “dishonest” and 29.16% for “wicked”). 6 This report is part of O.S.S./State Department intelligence and research reports; pt. 2 – Postwar Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. For the microfilm project of the report, see Kesaris (1977). See also Yoshida (1995: 53, Table 7); Awaya (1981: 352–383). 7 Kyodo News (June 1967) in Yoron Chosa Nenkan (YCN), 1968: 419; Nihon Yoron Chosakai (April 1972) in YCN, 1973: 396; cf. Yoshida (1995: 125, Table 16). 8 See Seiichi Morimura Homepage (accessed on 3 February 2015) 9 Yomiuri Shimbun (September 1985) in IIPO, 1985–1986: 333–334. See Fukuoka (2013). 10 Along with this emerging Asia Boom, a new concept of re-Asianization was also developed and embraced by several prominent Japanese leaders in business and politics: “it was time for Japan to ‘re Asianize’ by making Asia its primary trading area, rather than the world in general or the United States in particular” (Hein and Hammond 1995: 3). See also Ogura (1993), Bauer (1994), Gluck (1994). 11 Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) (October 1987) in IIPO, 1988–1989: 169; PMO (October 1991) in IIPO, 1992–1993: 169; PMO (October 1992) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 225–226. 12 PMO (October 1992) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 225. 13 Although almost 60 percent of them answered that “importance should be attached to both,” what is noticeable is an emerging trend of Asian orientation among the public. 14 Asahi Shimbun (October 1984) in IIPO, 1984–1985: 633. 15 Asahi Shimbun (May/June 1988) in IIPO, 1987–1988: 601. 16 Asahi Shimbun (June 1995) in IIPO, 1995–1996: 615. Asahi Shimbun (November 1996) in IIPO, 1996–1997: 624. 17 Asahi Shimbun (July 1990) in IIPO, 1989–1990: 583. 18 Asahi Shimbun (May/June 1988) in IIPO, 1987–1988: 601. 19 Yomiuri Shimbun (August 1992) in YCN, 1993: 448. 20 Yomiuri Shimbun (June 1996) in IIPO, 1996–1997: 616. Here, only one answer was allowed. 21 Yomiuri Shimbun (June 1996) in IIPO, 1996–1997: 609–610. 22 PMO of Japan (accessed on 3 February 2015) 23 NHK (October 1987) in IIPO, 1988–1989: 193–194. NHK (March 1993) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 213. 24 Yomiuri Shimbun (May/June 1995) in IIPO, 1995–1996: 604. There are also 48 percent who answered “the same.” 25 Yomiuri Shimbun (January 1995) in YCN, 1995: 540–541. There are also more than 50 percent who answered “the same” (53.5%). 26 Yomiuri Shimbun (March 1994) in IIPO, 1994–1995: 624. Only 10 percent of the Japanese respondents named South Korea as the country that “might be the cause of instability in Asia in the 21st century” as opposed to North Korea (43%) and Kampuchea (43%). In the 1994 Yomiuri survey, South Korea was not even itemized as a potential menace for Japan. Yomiuri Shimbun (March 1994) in IIPO, 1994–1995: 624. 27 Asahi Shimbun (June 1995) in IIPO, 1995–1996: 615. 28 In a NHK survey in 1987, 41% of the respondents named South Korea as a country that is working to modernize (multiple answers allowed). NHK (October 1987) in IIPO, 1988–1989: 193–194. 29 Yomiuri Shimbun (January 1995) in YCN, 1995: 540. 30 NHK (March 1993) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 214. Similarly, 45 percent of the respondents in 1995 thought that the relations between Japan and South Korea will become better as opposed to 4 percent who expected the relationship to become worse. Yomiuri Shimbun (May/June 1995) in IIPO, 1995–1996: 607.

74

Memory and others 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Yomiuri Shimbun (June 1996) in IIPO, 1996–1997: 609–610. Yomiuri Shimbun (August 1992) in YCN, 1993: 448. Asahi Shimbun (March 1994) in IIPO, 1994–1995: 620. Asahi Shimbun (July 1994) in YCN, 1996: 484. The 1988 Yomiuri poll saw 13 percent for “strong feelings of friendliness” and 60 percent for “some feelings of friendliness.” Yomiuri Shimbun (August 1988) in IIPO, 1988–1989: 516. PMO of Japan (accessed on 3 February 2015) Mainichi Shimbun (November 1992) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 627–628. The majority in the 1995 Yomiuri survey showed an overall good impression about China (54.6%). Yomiuri Shimbun (January 1995) in YCN, 1995: 540. Mainichi Shimbun (November 1992) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 629. In a NHK survey in 1987, 41% of the respondents named China as a country that is working to modernize (multiple answers allowed). NHK (October 1987) in IIPO, 1988–1989: 193–194. The image of China with “rapid economic growth” was the most mentioned item (44%) in the 1995 Yomiuri survey along with “population problems” (36%) and “democratization” (31%) (multiple answers allowed). Yomiuri Shimbun (January 1995) in IIPO, 1995–1996: 598. Nihon Keizai Shimbun (March 1995) in Rousseau (2002: 28). Yomiuri Shimbun (June 1996) in IIPO, 1996–1997: 615. PMO (June 1985) in IIPO, 1985–1986: 278. Yomiuri Shimbun (August 1988) in IIPO, 1988–1989: 515–516. Mainichi Shimbun (November 1992) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 628. Sixty-five percent of the respondents believed that Japan should have a good relationship with China. NHK (March 1993) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 214. The great majority (58%) are interested in China. Asahi Shimbun (July 1994) in YCN, 1996: 483–484. In the 1995 Yomiuri survey, 62 percent expected the better relationship between the two countries in the 21st century. Yomiuri Shimbun (June 1996) in IIPO, 1996–1997: 616. Similarly, 54 percent believed that Japan needs to cultivate diplomatically [with China] in the future. Yomiuri Shimbun (November 1998) in IIPO, 1998–1999: 204. NHK (October 1987) in IIPO, 1988–1989: 271–272. Yomiuri Shimbun (September 1993) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 297. Asahi Shimbun (November 1993) in IIPO, 1993–1994: 297. More than 50 percent in the 1994 NHK survey (55%) agreed with his official apology as “appropriate.” NHK (September 1994) in IIPO, 1994–1995: 296. Asahi Shimbun (July 1994) in YCN, 1996: 484. NHK (September 1994) in IIPO, 1994–1995: 296. Mainichi Shimbun (December 1994) in IIPO, 1995–1996: 284. In the 1995 Asahi survey, 58 percent maintained that the Japanese government should agree to compensate the former comfort women. Asahi Shimbun (June 1995) in IIPO, 1995–1996: 617. In the 1997 Asahi poll, 58 percent of the respondents believed that Japan has not compensated China enough (Asahi Shimbun, September 22, 1997).

References Abe, K. (2001). Samayoeru Nashonarizumu [Wandering Nationalism], Tokyo: Sekai Shisōsha. Awaya, K. (1994). ‘Tokyou Saiban ni miru Sengoshori [Post-War Settlement in Tokyo Tribunal]’, in K. Awaya et al., Sensō Sekinin / Sengo Sekinin [War Responsibility / Post-War Responsibility], Tokyo: Asahi. Barthel, D. (1996). Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historic Identity, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Bauer, J. (1994). Japan Programs Occasional Papers No.5 – The Call for a New Asian Identity: An Examination of the Cultural Arguments and Their Implication, New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. Beasley, W. G. (1990). The Rise of Modern Japan, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism, London: Sage. Bix, H. P. (2000). Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, London: HarperCollins. Buruma, I. (1994). Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

75

Kazuya Fukuoka Conrad, S. (2003). ‘Entangled Memories. Versions of the Past in Germany and Japan 1945–2001’, Journal of Contemporary History 38, 1: 85–99. Conrad, S. (2010). ‘Remembering Asia: History and Memory in Post-Cold War Japan’, in A. Assmann and S. Conrad (eds.), Memory in a Global Age, London: Palgrave. Daase, C. (2010). ‘Addressing Painful Memories: Apologies as a New Practice in International Relations’, in A. Assmann and S. Conrad (eds.), Memory in a Global Age, London: Palgrave. Ducke, I. (2002). Status Power: Japanese Foreign Policy Making toward Korea, New York: Routledge. Field, N. (1997). ‘War and Apology: Japan, Asia, the Fiftieth, and After’, Positions 5, 1: 1–49. Fine, G. A. (2001). Difficult Reputations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fukuoka, K. (2013). ‘Memory, Nation, and National Commemoration of War Dead: A Study of Japanese Public Opinions on the Yasukuni Controversy’, Asian Politics & Policy 5, 1: 27–49. Fukuoka, K., and Schwartz, B. (2010). ‘Responsibility, Regret, and Nationalism in Japanese Memory’, in M. Kim and B. Schwartz (eds.), Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past, London: Palgrave. Funabashi, Y. (1995). Asia Pacific Fusion: Japan’s Role in APEC. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Gallicchio, M. (2007). Unpredictability of the Past: Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in U.S.-East Asian Relations, Durham: Duke University Press. Gills, J. R., (ed.) (1994). Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gluck, C. (1990). ‘The Idea of Showa’, Daedalus 119, 3: 1–26. Gluck, C. (1993). ‘The Past in the Present’, in A. Gordon (ed.), Postwar Japan as History, Berkley: University of California Press. Gluck, C. (1994). Japan Programs Occasional Papers No.5 – The Call for a New Asian Identity: An Examination of the Cultural Arguments and Their Implication, New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, London: Harper & Row. Halbwachs, M., and Coser, L. A. (1992). On Collective Memory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hein, L., and Hammond, E. (1995). ‘Homing in on Asia: Identity in Contemporary Japan’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 27, 3: 3–17. Hein, L., and Selden, M. (eds.) (2000). Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Hobsbawn, E. (1983). ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Homans, G. C. (1964). ‘Bringing Men Back In’, American Sociological Review 29, 5: 809–818. Huyssen, A. (2003). Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Stanford: Stanford University Press. IIPO (Index to International Public Opinion). (Various years). Westport, CT: Greenwood. Ishida, T. (2000). Kioku to Bokyaku no Seijigaku [Political Science of Memory and Amnesia], Tokyo: Akashishoten. Izumi, S. (1953). ‘Tokyo Shoshimin no Iminzoku ni taisuru Taido [Tokyo Citizens’ Attitude toward Different Ethnic Groups]’, in Nihon Jinbun Kagakukai (ed.), Shakaiteki Kincho no Kenkyu [Study on Social Tension], Tokyo: Yūhikaku. Johnson, C. (1986). ‘The Patterns of Japanese Relations with China, 1952–1982’, Pacific Affairs 59, 3: 402–428. Kesaris, P. (ed.) (1977). O.S.S./State Department Intelligence and Research Reports; Pt. 2 – Postwar Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia, Washington, DC: University Publications of America (microfilm). Kim, M. (2014). ‘Memorializing Comfort Women: Memory and Human Rights in Korea-Japan Relations’, Asian Politics & Policy 6, 1: 83–96. Koschmann, J. V. (2000). ‘National Subjectivity and the Uses of Atonement in the Age of Recession’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 99, 4: 741–761. Leitch, R. D. Jr., Kato, A., and Weinstein, M. E. (1995). Japan’s Role in the Post-Cold War World, Westport: Greenwood Press. Lind, J. (2008). Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Midford, P. (2011). Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Misztal, B. (2003). Theories of Social Remembering, Philadelphia: Open University Press. Mitani, H. (2008). ‘The History Textbook Issue in Japan and East Asia: Institutional Framework, Controversies, and International Efforts for Common Histories’, in T. Hasegawa and K. Togo (eds.), East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport, CT: Praeger.

76

Memory and others Mochida, Y. (1994). ‘Senso Sekinin/Sengo Sekinin: Mondai no Ryōiki [War Responsibility/Post-War Respnsibility: Issue Area]’, in K. Awaya et al., Sensō Sekinin/Sengo Sekinin [War Responsibility/Post-War Respnsibility], Tokyo: Asahi. Morris-Suzuki, T. (1998). ‘Unquiet Graves: Kato Norihiro and the Politics of Mourning’, Japanese Studies 18, 1: 21–30. Morris-Suzuki, T. (2005). The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History, New York: Verso. Nishihira, S. (1982a). ‘Nihonjin no Taibeikan, Amerikajin no Tainichikan [Japanese Views on the U.S. and American Views on Japan]’, Jiyū 24, 1: 32–52. Nishihira, S. (1982b). ‘Nihonjin no Chugokukan Hensen [Changing Trend of the Japanese People’s Views on China]’, Jiyū 24, 2: 44–58. Negash, G. (2006). Apologia Politica: States & Their Apologizes by Proxy, New York: Lexington. Nodia, G. (1994). ‘Nationalism and Democracy’, in L. Diamond and M. F. Plattner (eds.), Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and Democracy, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Nora, P. (2002). ‘Reasons for the Current Upsurge in Memory’, Eurozine (accessed on 5 December 2013) Nozaki, Y. (2005). ‘Japanese Politics and the History Textbook Controversy, 1945–2001’, in E. Vickers and A. Jones (eds.), History Education and National Identity in East Asia, London: Routledge. Ogura, K. (1993). ‘A Call for a New Concept of Asia’, Japan Echo 20, 3: 37–44. Pingel, F. (2008). ‘Can Truth Be Negotiated? History Textbook Revision as a Means to Reconciliation’, ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617: 181–198. Pingel, F. (2010). ‘Old and New Models of Textbook Revision and Their Impact on the East Asian History Debate’, Journal of Northeast Asian History 7, 2: 7–36. Reischauer, E. O. (1988). The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, Cambridge: Belknap. Rose, C. (1998). Interpreting History in Sino-Japanese Relations: A Case Study in Political Decision-Making, London: Routledge. Rose, C. (1999). ‘The Textbook Issue: Domestic Sources of Japan’s Foreign Policy’, Japan Forum 11, 2: 205–16. Rousseau, D. (2002). ‘American and Japanese perceptions of the Rise of China.’ Paper presented at the annual meeting of American Political Science Association, August 29th – September 1st, Boston, MA. Saito, H. (2006). ‘Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma’, Sociological Theory 24, 4: 353–376. Saito, S. (1992). ‘The Pitfalls of the New Asianism’, Japan Echo 19: 14–19. Sakaki, A. (2012). ‘Japanese-South Korean Textbook Talks: The Necessity of Political Leadership’, Pacific Affairs 85, 2: 263–285. Samuels, R. (1990). ‘Japan in 1989: Changing Times’, Asian Survey 30, 1: 42–51. Sasaki, M., and Suzuki, T. (2000). Social Attitudes in Japan: Trends and Cross-National Perspectives, Leiden: Brill. Schwartz, B. (1996). ‘Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II’, American Sociological Review 61, 5: 908–927. Schwartz, B. (2000). Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schwartz, B., Fukuoka, K., and Takita-Ishii, S. (2005). ‘Collective Memory: Why Culture Matters’, in M. D. Jacobs and Hanrahan, N. W. (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture, Oxford: Blackwell. Schwartz, B., and Kim, M. (2002). ‘Honor, Dignity, and Collective Memory: Judging the Past in Korea and the United States’, in Cerulo, K. (ed.), Culture in Mind: Toward a Sociology of Culture and Cognition, London: Routledge. Schwartz, B., and Schuman, H. (2005). ‘History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945–2001’, American Sociological Review 70, 2: 183–203. Seaton, P. A. (2007). Japan’s Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ in Historical Consciousness of World War II, London: Routledge. Seraphim, F. (2006). War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Shimazu, N. (2003). ‘Popular Representations of the Past: The Case of Postwar Japan’, Journal of Contemporary History 38, 1: 101–116. Suh, J. (2010). ‘Epilogue: Caught between Contentions and Dialogues: Historical Memories in Northeast Asia’, in M. Kim and B. Schwartz (eds.), Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past, London: Palgrave. Tachibana, S. (1996). ‘The Quest for a Peace Culture: The A-bomb Survivors’ Long Struggle and the New Movement for Redressing Foreign Victims of Japan’s War’, in M. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, New York: Cambridge University Press.

77

Kazuya Fukuoka Tadokoro, M. (1994). Japan Programs Occasional Papers No. 5 – The Call for a New Asian Identity: An Examination of the Cultural Arguments and Their Implication, New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. Takahashi, T. (1999). Sengo Sekininron [Theory on Post-War Responsibility], Tokyo: Kōdansha. Takahashi, T. (2002). ‘Kon’nichi no “Rekishininshiki” Ronsō wo meguru Jōkyo to Ronten [Contexts and Points over Current Debate on “History and/or Memory”]’, in T. Takahashi (ed.), Rekishininshiki Ronsō [History and/or Memory], Tokyo: Sakuhinsha. Tei, T. (1995). Kankoku no Imēji [The Image of Korea], Tokyo: Chūkōshinsho. Triandafyllidou, A. (1998). ‘National Identity and the Other’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, 4: 593–612. Trouillot, M. R. (2000). ‘Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era’, Interventions 2, 2: 171–186. Tsutsui, K. (2009). ‘The Trajectory of Perpetrators’ Trauma: Mnemonic Politics around the Asia-Pacific War in Japan’, Social Forces 87: 1389–1422. Vogel, E. (1979). Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wagner-Pacifici, R., and Schwartz, B. (1991). ‘The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past’, American Journal of Sociology 97, 2: 376–420. Wang, Z. (2009). ‘Old Wounds, New Narratives: Joint History Textbook Writing and Peacebuilding in East Asia’, History & Memory 21, 1: 101–126. Yamaguchi,Y. (1994). ‘Futatsu no Sengoshi [Two Modern Histories]’, in K. Awaya et al., Sensō Sekinin/Sengo Sekinin [War Responsibility/Post-War Responsibility], Tokyo: Asahi. YCN (Yoron Chōsa Nenkan) [Public Opinion Almanac]. (Various years). Tokyo: Office of Prime Minister of Japan. Yoshida, Y. (1995). Nihonjin no Sensōkan [Japanese Perception on Wars ], Tokyo: Iwanami. Yoshida, Y. (1997). Gendai Rekishigaku to Sensō Sekinin [Modern Historiography and War Responsibility], Tokyo: Aokishoten. Yui, D. (1995). Nichibei Sensōkan no Sōkoku [Different Views on War in Japan and the U.S.], Tokyo: Iwanami.

78

5 RECONCILIATION PROSPECTS AND DIVIDED WAR MEMORIES IN JAPAN An analysis of major newspapers on the comfort women issue Shunichi Takekawa

Contemporary politics and the Asia Pacific War memories are often intertwined in Japan. Politicization of war memories occurs not only between an aggressor Japan and aggrieved Asian nations, which Japan invaded and/or colonized, but also between right-leaning conservatives and left-leaning liberals in Japan. These ideological rivals have repeatedly confronted each other over war memory issues, such as the Yasukuni Shrine and the government-authorized textbook issues, and they have brought up competing views on Japan’s war responsibility, national pride, and relationships with relevant nations, and different interpretations of war history and commemorations. Conservatives attempt to restore the dignity of Imperial Japan, and believe that postwar Japan has already apologized and worked out compensations and other issues with most of the countries that Imperial Japan invaded and/or colonized.1 They also think that liberals in Japan lack loyalty to their own country and use foreign pressure for their own causes. On the other hand, liberals believe that Japan still has many things to do to build better relations with former aggrieved nations, and argue that conservatives in Japan attempt to roll Japan back to the past. Those conservatives and liberals are politicians, scholars, and writers, as well as concerned ordinary citizens. Major newspapers in Japan have been active participants in the politicization of war memory, too. They do not simply report disputes between ideological rivals, but rather frame war memories and address their own opinion. Also, they condemn each other on certain issues as their ideological views compete against each other. Only a small number of studies so far have examined major newspapers and war memory issues. This chapter argues that major newspapers are crucial participants of politicization of war memories by analyzing their editorials on comfort women or military sexual slave controversies.2 At least, liberal Asahi and conservative Yomiuri and Sankei were clearly competing against each other when the comfort women issue became an international topic between Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in the 1990s. An examination of their editorials at that time demonstrates how diametrically different they were in their framing of the issue. In addition, from September 2006 to September 2007, a well-known conservative politician, Abe Shinzō, joined this politicization of the comfort women controversies when the US House of 79

Shunichi Takekawa

Representatives attempted to pass a resolution to criticize Japan for having failed to extend sincere apologies to former comfort women. The liberal Asahi and the conservative Yomiuri and Sankei again clearly disputed over the role of Abe Shinzō and the US House Resolution. These rival papers framed the issue in contrast and created controversies; hence, they apparently differed the reconciliation methods of the issue.

Major newspapers and their ideological rivalry The major newspapers are “national papers” in Japan since they have their own regional news bureaus and sell copies almost all over Japan.3 The Yomiuri, Asahi, and Mainichi, in particular, are called the “big three” because they played a central role in the development of newspaper industry and have maintained the highest circulation rate throughout the postwar period. They circulated Imperial Japan’s propaganda during the Asia Pacific War, and managed to survive through the US-led Allied Powers’ Occupation. Then, they turned into supporters for democracy, postwar Japan’s ruling principle. The Sankei and Nihon Keizai became major newspapers after the Asia Pacific War, although their histories date back to the prewar period. The Sankei was reestablished as a conservative ally of big corporations in the 1950s (Takayama 1993). The Nihon Keizai emerged as a result of a merger between major financial and business newspapers under the supervision of the Imperial government during the Asia Pacific War (Sasaki 1999). The major newspapers, as business corporations, have maintained close relationships with respective major broadcasting companies in Tokyo and Osaka, as well as many other regional broadcasting corporations. They are the leading actors in Japan’s media industry. However, the major newspapers provoke different impressions among media watchers. Some argue that they are politically homogenous and part of the establishment (Wolferen 1990; Hall 1998; Freeman 2000). Others believe that they politically compete against each other (Akuto 1996; Hara et al. 2004; Nanri 2005; Seaton 2006; Takekawa 2007). From the late 1950s to the 1970s, the Asahi and Mainichi were the foci of attention from Japan-watchers, as they were regarded as anti-government leftists (Whittemore 1961; Kim 1981; Lee 1985). Other observers at that time thought that major newspapers did not demonstrate clear political positions (Yamamoto 1973). The views on the newspapers as described above have been presented in different time periods, and it is possible that the Japanese newspapers probably had different political opinions and perspectives depending upon changing political milieu. In recent years, the national newspapers presented views in a range from conservative to liberal. Nanri (2005), for instance, studied editorials of the three major papers on the 9/11 attacks and argued that the Yomiuri is a pro-US conservative rightist, the Asahi an anti-US liberal leftist, and the Mainichi a moderate between the two. Seaton (2006: 109) examines editorials and articles of the five national newspapers on the comfort women issue in 1991 and 1992, and asserts that “the papers can be ranked Asahi-Mainichi-Nippon [sic.] keizai-Yomiuri-Sankei in an order of progressive-nationalist spectrum of opinion.” Takekawa (2007) analyzes New Year’s Day editorials, published on January 1, of the Yomiuri and the Asahi from 1953 to 2005, and argues that the two major newspapers represent two different strands of nationalism: while the Yomiuri is a state-centered, conservative nationalist demanding the postwar constitutional amendment and Japan’s more active involvement in international conflicts, the Asahi is an anti-state, liberal nationalist arguing Japan to keep the pacifist constitution and to play non-military roles in world politics. In Japan, popular perception regards the Yomiuri, Sankei, and Nihon Keizai as conservatives, and the Asahi and Mainichi as liberals. Concerned conservatives especially condemn the Asahi, calling it anti-Japanese (han’nichi). Numerous books and magazine articles have been published 80

Reconciliation prospects

to criticize the Asahi.4 Right-wing extremists even assaulted Asahi’s reporters in May 1987. Meanwhile, liberals criticize the Yomiuri for its editorials and news articles supportive of the conservative side.5 The Asahi and Yomiuri are the largest newspapers in Japan in terms of daily circulation, and they are political and business rivals drawing more public attention than other papers.6 Since the mid-1990s, the Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, and Sankei became more actively engaged in editorial competition (Kasuya et al. 1994; Yomiuri Shimbun Ronsetsuiinkai 2001; Sankei Shimbun Ronsetsu Iinshitsu 2002; Wakamiya 2008). That is, they began to promote their images as opinion leaders, in addition to news reporting organizations, by stressing their competing editorial opinions. They began disputing over the postwar Constitution7 and other war-related issues. There were at least two factors behind the emergence of the opinionated press: the end of the Cold War (cf. chapter 22 in this volume) and the rise of new media journalism (Kasuya et al. 1994). The Gulf War, which showed new relations between former Cold War rivals, made Japanese conservatives aware of the need to change the war-renouncing Constitution. The popularity of TV journalism, which became more opinionated and entertaining than before, heightened a sense of threat among newspapers. The comfort women issue emerged in this context: it was a good material to position themselves in increasingly competitive news media market.

Major newspapers and comfort women issue Background of the controversies A Japanese word, ianfu (comfort woman), is the euphemism for women who provided sexual services to the officers and soldiers of the Imperial Japanese military at comfort stations (ianjo) during the Asia Pacific War. The military had comfort stations in order to prevent officers and soldiers from raping local women in the occupied areas, getting venereal diseases from prostitutes, and being susceptible to espionage.8 Comfort stations were owned and managed by private contractors or military units, while other acceptable alternatives were local brothels that had already existed (Yoshimi 1995). Some of the women were transferred from Japan’s colonies, mostly Korea and Taiwan, and others were recruited in the occupied areas such as China, the Philippines, and Indonesia, in addition to those from Japan.9 At that time, officers and soldiers regarded comfort women as prostitutes as they paid for their services. As a result, many of today’s conservatives believe that comfort women were mostly prostitutes, so Japan does not need to apologize to them. However, many who became comfort women were coercively or deceptively recruited, whereas those who had already worked as prostitutes moved to comfort stations in the occupied areas (Yoshimi 1995; Hata 1999). In the meantime, there were cases in which troops literally captured and forced local women to become “comfort women” in the occupied areas.10 In these respects, the comfort women controversy is multifaceted, leaving room for different interpretations and disputes by different parties, including Japanese conservatives and liberals. The total number of comfort women is also debatable. A conservative historian Hata (1999) estimates it to be 20,000, while a liberal historian Yoshimi (1995) projects it from 50,000 to 200,000, stressing they included teenagers. Until the comfort women became an international issue in the early 1990s, they had appeared quietly in Japanese publications. At least, two authors before this period deserve attention. The journalist Senda Kakō published a book titled Jūgun Ianfu: Koe naki Onna 8-man nin no Kokuhatsu (Military Comfort Women: Accusations of 80,000 Voiceless Women) in 1973.11 Senda noted about 80,000 women, mostly Koreans, were deceptively or coercively recruited into comfort stations; in many cases, the recruitment was carried out in the name of volunteer labor corps.12 Yoshida Seiji, a self-claimed former labor mobilization manager of the Shimonoseki branch of the 81

Shunichi Takekawa

Yamaguchi Prefecture Patriotic Labor Mobilization Association, published a book titled Watashi no Sensō Hanzai : Chōsenjin Kyōsei Renkō (My War Crimes: Coercive Recruitment of Koreans) in 1983, in which he confessed that he and his workmates of the organization coercively recruited hundreds of women in Jeju-do, a southern island of the Korean peninsula, for comfort stations in 1943.13 Their books were translated into Korean, having an impact on subsequent research and publications on comfort women in Japan and South Korea (Hata 1999). Conservatives criticized both Senda and Yoshida’s publications for alleged fabrications and errors. Yoshida’s confession lost authenticity not only for conservatives but also for liberals, giving conservatives opportunities to criticize those who stressed Japan’s responsibility for coercive recruitment of comfort women. In 1992, the conservative historian Hata (1999) discredited Yoshida’s story in his article based on his field research in Jeju island.14 Later the liberal historian Yoshimi (Yoshimi and Kawata 1997) also acknowledged that Yoshida’s testimonies did not convey authenticity. However, according to Hata (1999), the Asahi featured Yoshida’s confession more often than others until the issue stood out in the early 1990s. Yoshida’s confession even appeared at the United Nations Commission of Human Rights’ report of the special rapporteur, Radhika Coomaraswamy, who began to call comfort women military sex slaves in January 1996. As a result, conservatives later publicized Yoshida’s story and Asahi’s articles as examples of liberals’ fabrication of coercive recruitment for comfort stations and questioned the credibility of Coomaraswamy’s UNCHR report.

Rise of controversies and the Kōno statement in the early 1990s In the early 1990s, the comfort women became a diplomatic issue between Japan and South Korea. Prior to President of South Korea Roh Tae-woo’s visit to Japan in May 1990, Korean feminist groups demanded Japan’s apologies to former comfort women in South Korea (see chapter 16 in this volume). And then, the Japanese government responded that women were recruited not by the Imperial government or military but by private operators, suggesting postwar Japan was not responsible for it. However, in December 1991, three former comfort women from South Korea sued the Japanese government in Tokyo. In January 1992, things turned around by the Asahi’s exclusive report. On January 11, the Asahi uncovered that the Imperial Army regulated the management of comfort stations and the recruitment of women for stations in China, based on official military documents, which Yoshimi discovered. It was only five days before the Japanese prime minister’s visit to South Korea. On the next day, the Japanese government acknowledged the military’s involvement and promised to further investigation. Subsequently Prime Minister Miyazawa Ki’ichi of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) apologized to the Korean comfort women during his visit to South Korea. Hata (1999) points out the Asahi intended to have an impact on the visit by publishing the report just before the PM’s visit because he knew Yoshimi’s discovery was done much earlier. At that time, all five of the newspapers basically accepted the need for Japan’s apologies on the comfort women issue in their editorials. The Asahi on January 12, 1992, encouraged the government to investigate the issue and make further apologies and provide compensation. Likewise, the Yomiuri on January 15 recommended the government to make apologies. The Yomiuri, however, stressed that the compensation was unnecessary because the 1965 Normalization Treaty between Japan and Korea had already taken all the legal responsibility.15 The Mainichi on January 15 and the Nihon Keizai on January 16 were also positive about the government’s apologies and some kind of financial support for the former comfort women. The Sankei on January 19 simply noted that Japan could not dispute on the comfort women issue.16 Among the editorials above, only the Asahi emphasized that Korean women were deceptively or coercively recruited 82

Reconciliation prospects

against their will in the name of volunteer labor corps (teishintai in Japanese), which later became a point of dispute. In the statement issued on August 4, 1993, under the name of Kōno Yōhei, the chief cabinet secretary for Prime Minister Miyazawa (hereafter, the Kōno statement), the government acknowledged that “comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military authorities” and noted that the “Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women,” expressing “its sincere apologies and remorse to” those who became comfort women.17 It stressed, “The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military” and confirmed that “in many cases they were recruited against their will through coaxing coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments.” The Kōno statement embraced multifaceted aspects of the comfort women. It admitted that the Japanese military requested comfort stations, and was, in some forms, involved in the establishment and management of comfort stations, including the transfer of women. However, it also pointed out that mostly civilian contractors deceived women into becoming comfort women. It went on to acknowledge that administrators or troops directly participated in the recruitment in some cases, but it did not say that the government or military systematically coerced women into working at comfort stations. It especially showed consideration for the South Korean government by noting that Korean women’s “recruitment, transfer, control, etc., were conducted generally against their will, through the means of coaxing, coercion, etc.,” but it did not mention the volunteer labor corps at all. The omission meant that the statement could be interpreted differently. Accordingly, the Yomiuri in its August 5 editorial noted that the government admitted the coerciveness of the management and recruitment of comfort women “in a broad sense,” and stressed that even if it was “in a broad sense,” the government had to make apologies to the former comfort women. Another conservative, the Sankei’s editorial on the same day criticized the statement for admitting coercive aspect of recruitment methods targeting the Korean women by the government or military. Meanwhile, the Asahi’s editorial on the same day remained silent about the coercive recruitment methods or the volunteer labor corps. Previously the Asahi in its editorial of July 8, 1992, criticized the government for not having found evidence for the coercive recruitment by the military or government. In this regard, the Asahi was perhaps disappointed by the statement. The Mainichi and Nihon Keizai simply accepted and supported the statement.

Asian women’s fund: Seeking reconciliation By the mid-1990s, the Japanese government began to seek reconciliation with the former comfort women. In July 1995, upon the appeal by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Murayama Tomi’ichi, the head of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), the Asian Women’s Fund was established to provide former comfort women with atonement payment and medical and welfare support.18 The Fund as an organization was more like an NGO, but was supported by the government. This non-government organization was a compromise of those who wanted Japan to take legal responsibility and those who did not. That is, the Fund was a result of a bizarre coalition government between the LDP and the JSP, the rivals of postwar politics, from June 1994 to November 1996 (Ōnuma 2007).19 While JSP leaders wanted to provide victims of Imperial Japan’s aggressions with substantial support, LDP leaders did not or were very reluctant. The LDP government previously argued that Japan already assumed legal responsibility through treaties, and grants and loans for the damages that Imperial Japan inflicted on when postwar Japan normalized its 83

Shunichi Takekawa

diplomatic relations with those invaded and/or colonized nations. Compensating for the former comfort women’s loss, therefore, would conflict with the official government’s stance. In addition, they were afraid that if the Japanese government compensated for this issue, numerous other victims of Imperial Japan’s aggressions would rise up demanding compensation. As a result, members of the coalition cabinet agreed that Japan would take moral responsibility by setting up the Fund, which was going to be created with donations from Japanese citizens. At the same time, the government would subsidize for the Fund management and provide the financial support for medical treatments and welfare. As a result, the Fund provided atonement payment and some form of medical and welfare support to the former comfort women in five countries of the Netherlands, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.20 Among them, Indonesia and the Netherlands preferred to receive financial support from the Fund in lump sum. In Indonesia, with the financial support from the Fund, health and welfare programs were launched for the former comfort women; however, the Netherlands established an organization to certify 79 victims, and provided each of them with payment for medical and welfare assistance. Meanwhile, 285 comfort women in South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines individually received atonement payments and financial support for health care and other expenses. In those countries, individual former comfort woman received the atonement payment of 2,000,000 yen, and medical and welfare support, from 1,200,000 to 3,000,000 yen. They also received a letter of apology from the prime minister. The Fund continued to operate until 2007, and that means letters were sent in the name of four different prime ministers from Hashimoto Ryūtaro to Koizumi Junichiro. The prime minister’s letters were also sent to 79 comfort women in the Netherlands. That is, in addition to the apologies conveyed in the Kōno statement, the Japanese government expressed its remorse and apologies in the name of the four respective prime ministers. However, many former comfort women in South Korea and Taiwan did not take the atonement payment from the Fund. They, along with activist groups, demanded official apologies and compensation directly from the Japanese government. That is, they wanted the Japanese government to take legal responsibility instead of moral responsibility. According to Ōnuma (2007), over 200 and 36 former comfort women were recognized in South Korea and in Taiwan respectively. An executive board member of the Fund critically noted that the activist groups and the media in South Korea exerted pressure on the former comfort women not to take the atonement payment from the Fund, and they later criticized the women who took the payment (Ōnuma 2007). As a result, a total of 60 and 13 former comfort women in South Korea and in Taiwan took the Fund’s payment.21 Like before, the major newspapers presented different opinions on the Fund; however, this issue did not clearly divide the major newspapers based on the ideological spectrum. The most supportive newspaper was the Yomiuri. For example, Yomiuri’s editorials on July 7, 1992, September 1, 1994, and March 8, 1995, supported the idea of creating a fund. The editorial of September 1, 1994, for instance, stressed that the issue “concerned every Japanese citizen.” The Mainichi also supported the idea in its editorials on June 6 and August 16, 1996, while expressing reservations for the Fund’s potential failure. The Asahi passively supported the Fund in its editorials, while stressing the direct government compensation as an ideal solution. For example, Asahi’s editorials on January 19, 1997, and October 11, 1998, stated that the Fund was a practical solution, but stressed that it should have come directly from the government’s budget. The Sankei was the most critical of the Fund. The Sankei in its editorials on June 6 and July 19 and 21, 1996, questioned the Fund and its activities for the comfort women were not coercively recruited by the government or military in their view. Yet the newspaper did not argue to stall the Fund. All the major newspapers saw some potential in 84

Reconciliation prospects

reaching historical reconciliation through the Asian Women’s Fund. Ironically, however, those outside of Japan chose to reject it.

History textbook controversy and comfort women Kyōsei renkō (coercive recruitment) and kyōseisei (coerciveness) eventually became a point of contention among the newspapers. They presented different definitions of coercive recruitment of women for comfort stations. In a very narrow sense, it should be the coercive recruitment systematically and directly conducted by the Imperial government, including the colonial government and the military, in the name of volunteer labor corps in the Korean Peninsula. This is the case for the Asahi around the time of Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea in 1992. In a relatively broad sense, it was the coercive recruitment in Japan’s colonies by administrators, police officers, and military personnel and in the occupied areas by military units or its personnel without official order or authorization from the top echelon of the military. The Kōno statement was issued in these contexts. In a broader sense, it was the deceptive recruitment tactics mainly used in Korea by civilian contractors such as comfort station owners and traffickers. This was true for the Kōno statement, too, and for the Asahi after redefining the coercive recruitment or coerciveness. These different understandings collided with each other when the comfort women issue became a textbook issue in 1997. With history textbook controversies unfolding, the Sankei and Yomiuri launched their criticisms against the Asahi (see chapter 4 in this volume). In Japan, textbooks for elementary and junior and senior high schools are required to pass the authorization screening process set up by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEXT).22 From time to time this screening process and history education have generated controversies between conservatives and liberals in Japan, and even between Japan and its neighboring countries. Because of the Kōno statement, another controversy started in 1996: all seven of the junior high school history textbooks under screening became a target of dispute in 1997, as they would include the comfort women issue. Conservatives demanded that the textbooks not include the issue or not stress the coercive aspect of the recruitment process because the coercion part lacked proof. Furthermore they argued that teaching the comfort women issue was inappropriate for the teenagers. Three of the major newspapers also joined this controversy. The Sankei in its editorial on January 8, 1997, named the Asahi and questioned its stance regarding the comfort women issue and the textbooks. This editorial argued that the Asahi’s editorial on January 1 erroneously noted that certain groups attempted to erase the comfort women issue from Japan’s history. According to the Sankei, they did not deny the existence of comfort women, but they wanted textbooks not to include or stress the coercive aspect, as they believed the coercive recruitment lacked sufficient supporting evidence. In addition, the Sankei exclusively reported the interview of the deputy chief cabinet secretary for the Miyazawa cabinet, Ishihara Nobuo, on March 9, 1997, in order to emphasize the insufficiency of existing evidence to support the coercive aspect. Ishihara in the interview said that the Kōno statement confirmed the coercive recruitment methods solely based on the testimonies of former comfort women in South Korea. The Sankei in its editorial on March 11 argued that no official document supported the testimonies and stressed that incoherent and unreliable stories told by former comfort women already had appeared in publications. Previously, conservative scholars and writers formed the Association for Unbiased View of History in 1995 and the Japan Society for History Textbook Reform in 1996. They were two of most outspoken critics of the inclusion of the comfort women issue into textbooks (see chapter 25 in this volume). The Sankei itself opposed this in its editorial on December 2, 1996. The Sankei indeed collaborated with the two groups, and its editorial in January was apparently to defend their position.23 However, 85

Shunichi Takekawa

it should be noted that the Sankei’s criticism based on the Ishihara interview applies only to the systematically coercive recruitment carried out by the government or military in the Korean peninsula. In a month, the Asahi attempted to defend the coming history textbooks against conservatives’ criticisms, by redefining the coerciveness. On March 31, the Asahi published articles in a feature page arguing that the comfort women is an important issue to understand the past militarism and colonialism, while redefining the coercive recruitment.24 The Asahi stressed that military units forced local women to serve as comfort women in the occupied areas such as China and today’s Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. And that constituted coercive recruitment. Furthermore, the newspaper pointed out that the coercive element in recruitment process should include the deception aspect, for some of the women were recruited against their will. The Asahi also noted that comfort women did not have freedom to leave their comfort stations, which was another aspect of coerciveness. In sum, the recruitment and management of comfort stations were coercively carried out in a broad sense. Meanwhile, the newspaper pointed out that many women in Korea were recruited on deceptive grounds as many were told of getting a decent job with handsome salary. The Asahi acknowledged that the deceitful recruitment was a main tactic in Korea and Taiwan, while acknowledging that no official document was found to prove the systematic involvement by the military. On the same page, the Asahi, however, did not mention the coercive recruitment in the name of volunteer labor corps at all. The Asahi also acknowledged that Yoshida’s argument about the women hunting in Jeju-do was unreliable. In a sense, the Asahi corrected their previous editorials and articles that had stressed the coercive recruitment methods for the case of volunteer labor corps for their past feature articles quoted Yoshida’s story as described above.25 Asahi’s dubious corrections and Sankei’s Ishihara interview provided the Yomiuri with the ammunition to attack the Asahi. On April 13, 1997, Yomiuri’s editorial criticized biased views on war history, pointing out that one of such cases was the news coverage of the coercive recruitment of comfort women in the name of volunteer labor corps. The Yomiuri went further to call the report “fabricated history.” This editorial did not specifically mention the Asahi, but it obviously was targeting Asahi’s report. From 1998 to 2005, at least seven Yomiuri editorials condemned the Asahi report. An editorial board member of the Yomiuri also alluded that the Asahi report created strong anti-Japanese sentiment among South Koreans and damaged the Japan-South Korea relations.26 The Yomiuri moved on to criticize the South Korean government and activist groups for propagating the volunteer labor corps as means for the coercive recruitment and demanded that the Japanese government request that the Seoul government correct it in its editorial on August 4, 1998. Perhaps the Yomiuri, as a state-centered nationalist, wanted to restore the Imperial government’s dignity to some degree by stressing that the government’s volunteer labor corps was not used to deceive or coerce women into comfort stations. The Yomiuri even demanded the amendment of the 1993 Kōno statement in its editorial on August 11, 1998, arguing that the statement could be perceived as an admission of the coercive recruitment for volunteer labor corps as well. Unlike the Asahi, the Yomiuri in 1997 was not interested in the issue of disingenuous recruitment of women in Korea or kidnapping of women in the occupied areas. Previously, the Sankei began to argue that the comfort women were state-regulated prostitutes in its July 21, 1996, editorial. Similar to the Yomiuri, the Sankei did not pay attention to the deceptive recruitment of Korean women and their coercive utilization by military units in occupied areas. It narrowly focused on whether Korean women were indeed coercively recruited through volunteer labor corps by the Imperial government or the military. In sum, the gap between the conservatives, the Yomiuri and the Sankei, which narrowly focused on whether or not Korean women were 86

Reconciliation prospects

forcefully recruited through volunteer labor corps, and the liberal Asahi, which began to pay attention to victims of the comfort stations outside Korea, began to emerge. This chapter does not aim to investigate whether Korean women were coercively and directly recruited by the military or by the Japanese government in the name of volunteer labor corps. It should be noted, however, that even liberal historians in Japan such as Yoshimi do not believe that women in Korea and Taiwan were coerced into the sex slavery through volunteer labor corps (Yoshimi, et al. 1997). As noted above, the Asahi no longer argued that the volunteer labor corps was used to make Koreans comfort women. In this respect, conservatives and liberals in Japan are on the same page, though they did not agree on the perspectives on the same issue. However, in South Korea, it is widely believed the volunteer labor corps, chǒngsindae in Korean and teishintai in Japanese, was used to mobilize Korean women into sex slavery. Korean scholars and activists formed the Chǒngsindae Research Association, which was later renamed the Korean Research Institute for Chǒngsindae in 1990. Others established the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. “Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery” is interpreted as chǒngsindae in Korean and teishintai in Japanese. By using “drafted” in English, the organization means to say that women were forced into sexual slavery systematically and directly by the Japanese government. Soh (2008: 57) notes, “The choice of names reflects a generalized Korean perception that identifies the comfort women with chǒngsindae,” but Soh questions Koreans’ perception of chǒngsindae as a venue to recruit women for comfort stations based on her research of over one hundred former comfort women.

Comfort women controversies from 2006 to 2007 The comfort women controversies entered a new stage in 2006 and 2007 as the United States became another actor of the controversies. In addition, Prime Minister Abe Shinzō began to play an important role in the internationalization of the issue. On July 30, 2007, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution in which Representatives demanded that “the Government of Japan should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery.” Prior to the passage of the resolution, Prime Minister Abe Shinzō attempted to refute the coercive aspect of the recruitment by the Imperial Military when he visited the United States to meet the US President George W. Bush. Major newspapers were divided again over Abe’s attempt as well as the US House Resolution. The conservatives condemned the Kōno statement for having led to the resolution, while remaining concerned about possible damages to the Japan-US relations. On the other side, the liberals regarded the resolution as a sincere voice from international society regarding Japan’s stance on the comfort women issue. From the year 2006, the comfort women issue already drew considerable attention in Japan because Abe Shinzō, who had actively involved in war-related controversies as a leader of the LDP, became Japan’s prime minister. In comfort women controversies, Abe Shinzō was a noticeable player even before he became Japan’s prime minister. He, with other LDP members, founded Nihon no zento to rekishi kyōiku o kangaeru wakate gi’in no kai (association of junior Diet members to discuss the future of Japan and history education) in 1997.27 They believed that the Imperial Japanese government or military did not coercively recruit women for comfort stations, and argued that the inclusion of this war-related sexual issue into junior high school textbooks would make young people anti-Japanese or unpatriotic to the nation. They also asserted that the Kōno statement was inappropriate because it was not firmly based on historical facts and rigorous research (cf. Nihon no zento to rekishi kyōiku o kangaeru wakate giin no kai 1997). In addition, in 2005, the Asahi accused Abe of requesting the Japanese national public broadcasting system, 87

Shunichi Takekawa

NHK, to change the content of its TV documentary covering the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery.28 In 2006, Abe won the LDP presidential election on September 20, and was accordingly chosen as Japan’s prime minister on September 26. This section introduces editorials of the major newspapers from September 2006 to September 2007, mainly focusing on editorials of the conservative Yomiuri and Sankei, and the liberal Asahi and Mainichi. Overall, four of the five major newspapers were basically divided over the comfort women-related issues for the two years along with their ideological division – conservative Yomiuri and Sankei vs. liberal Asahi and Mainichi. Throughout the two years, Abe did not engage in the comfort women issues as conservatives expected. At the beginning of his term, in early October, Abe might have disappointed conservatives by announcing that his cabinet would uphold the Kōno statement. Shortly after that, Abe visited Beijing and Seoul to hold meetings with the respective leaders. Previously, his predecessor, Koizumi Junichiro, disrupted Japan’s relations with China and Korea by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in August 2006. Abe’s announcement and visit seemed to be a precursor to the improvement of Japan’s relationships with these neighbors. Around the same time, the resolution was becoming an agenda for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives. Abe stressed that the military did not abduct women for comfort stations in March 2007 before he visited US President George W. Bush. In other words, he argued that there was no coercion involved in the recruitment in a narrow sense. This created domestic and international repercussions. In an attempt to terminate the resolution, Abe addressed his apologies to the former comfort women when he saw President Bush in the United States in April. However, the House Committee passed the resolution in June, and the House subsequently passed it in August. These are the backgrounds of the editorial disputes among the major newspapers. The Asahi and Mainichi welcomed Abe’s inheritance of the Kōno statement in their editorials on October 5 and 14 respectively. Yet, the conservative Yomiuri and Sankei’s editorials disregarded it, perhaps because they were dissatisfied with the move. However, when Abe’s deputy chief cabinet secretary, Shimomura Hirofumi, argued for a future possibility to revise the Kōno statement, the Sankei and Yomiuri in their editorials on October 30 and 31 respectively supported Shimomura. Both conservatives coincidentally demanded the further scholarly investigation of the comfort women issue and hoped to see the revision of the statement. In addition, the Yomiuri pointed out the “fabricated report” by a national newspaper led to the statement by stressing that the report wrongfully noted the volunteer labor corps was used to hunt the women. In the meantime, the Sankei argued that some media outlets shifted their attention from “the coerciveness in a narrow sense” to “the coerciveness in a broad sense.” Both conservatives did not name the Asahi but apparently meant to criticize the Asahi in unison. The Yomiuri and Sankei encouraged the Japanese government to refute the draft resolution by the US House Committee prior to its passage. Yomiuri’s editorial on October 16 noted scholars already agreed on no coercion of the women for comfort stations; however, it stressed that the government’s lack of firm refutation fuel the repeated criticisms against Japan. The Yomiuri also complained about how the US House Committee blamed only Japan despite the fact that Nazi Germany enslaved women for sexual services. The Yomiuri condemned the Kōno statement for causing such criticisms against Japan. The Sankei in its editorial on February 21, 2007, also demanded that the government rebut the resolution and redo research on former comfort women in order to revise the Kōno statement. In early March 2007, the New York Times and the Washington Post took up Abe’s narrow definition of coercive recruitment, suggesting that he would ditch the Kōno Statement.29 This quickly invited an international reaction. For instance, the foreign minister of South Korea criticized PM Abe based on the American Press reports.30 Abe also repeated his argument on no 88

Reconciliation prospects

coercive recruitment in a narrow sense at the Diet. Subsequently conservative and liberal newspapers responded to it. On March 7, the Yomiuri’s editorial argued that “the core of the issue was whether the government or military coercively recruited or not,” while criticizing the draft resolution of the US House Committee. The Sankei’s editorial on the same day also argued that regardless of the passage of the resolution, it would wrongfully disgrace the Imperial military. Both again demanded the revision of the Kōno Statement in these editorials. In contrast, the March 6 Asahi editorial criticized that Abe paid too much attention to redefine the coercive recruitment and it made his remarks difficult to be understood by the international community. The editorial argued, “In the process of recruitment, transfer, and management of military comfort women as a whole, there was some condition that indicated coerciveness.” This was a repetition of Asahi’s redefinition of the coerciveness as noted above. In addition, the Asahi seemingly responded to the conservative newspapers’ editorial opinions in its editorial on March 10. In this editorial, the Asahi noted that media outlets that demanded the revision of the Kōno Statement made a bad domestic and international publicity. Their rivalry reemerged in a subtle way. In the meantime, the Mainichi on March 8 demanded that the government keep the Kōno Statement while acknowledging the statement was a result of a political settlement between Japan and South Korea, and left the facts on the comfort women ambiguous. It should be noted that liberal Asahi and the Mainichi’s views on the statement were different from each other. The Asahi more straightforwardly embraced the statement, whereas the Mainichi took it as a result of the political compromise, lacking firm evidences of historical facts. In this respect, the Mainichi roughly coincided with the two conservative papers. The Yomiuri and the Sankei in their March 7 editorials noted that PM Miyazawa and Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno made a political decision to issue the statement without official documents or firm evidences upon the firm request of the South Korean government. In June, the House Committee passed Resolution 121, and subsequently, in late July, the House passed it. The liberal newspapers encouraged Abe and his cabinet to take the US House Resolution seriously as the concerned voice of the international community. On the other hand, the conservative newspapers were disappointed with the resolution, arguing it was based on the misunderstanding of historical facts. They were especially concerned about the Japan-US relations since they have been ardent supporters for the Japan-US alliance, unlike the liberals. The Asahi in its editorial on June 28 stated that those who demanded the revision of the Kōno statement led the world to believe that Japan attempted to justify its wartime behaviors. The Mainichi’s editorial on August 1 pointed out that Abe’s narrow definition of coerciveness and his apologies to the comfort women all together were likely to perplex the Americans. However, both camps were discontented with the US resolution because it failed to affirm Japan’s efforts to actualize the Kōno statement and the Asian Women’s Fund. On the other hand, the Yomiuri’s editorials on June 28 blamed the Kōno statement for having resulted in the resolution. Furthermore its editorial on August 1 expressed concerns for the negative impact of the resolution on the future Japan-US relations. The two editorials stressed that there was no hard evidence implicating the Imperial government or military forcing the women into sexual slavery, while acknowledging that some women were forced to become comfort women against their will by deceptive private contractors or their parents. Similarly the Sankei editorials of June 28 and August 1 argued that private contractors recruited comfort women. The conservatives again focused on the role of the Imperial government and the military in the recruitment of the women. Both Yomiuri and Sankei also mentioned that anti-Japanese organizations by the Chinese or Koreans in the US played a role in the passage of the resolution by the US House of Representatives. In addition, the Nihon Keizai argued the resolution would damage the bilateral relations in its editorial on August 1. 89

Shunichi Takekawa

Concluding remarks This chapter finds that conservative Yomiuri and Sankei and liberal Asahi failed to share balanced perspectives in their reports on the comfort women issue as a multifaceted phenomenon. Asahi’s exclusive report on the issue on January 11, 1992, was the origin of disputes between these conservative and liberal newspapers. Thus Hata (1999: 12) calls Asahi’s report “campaign journalism.” It contained false information and intended to create a political issue out of it. Right-leaning conservative scholars and writers also propagated stories that the Asahi fabricated news stories of comfort women along with deceptive Yoshida’s accounts.31 The Yomiuri and Sankei attacked the Asahi in 1997, while failing to pay attention to the comfort women outside South Korea and the deceptive recruitment of Korean women. Being attacked by the conservatives, the Asahi proposed a new definition of coerciveness. This liberal newspaper attempted to cover comfort women outside of the Korean Peninsula, while disregarding their mistakes about the volunteer labor corps as a venue for coercive recruitment of Korean women. Asahi’s dubious correction of its exclusive report also fueled the dispute between the conservative and liberal newspapers. Later, Yomiuri’s editorial board chair Asakura (2002: v) stated that the Asahi conducted “an anti-Japanese campaign” (han’nichi kyanpēn) for having fabricated a story of the volunteer labor corps for “comfort women hunting” (ianfu gari). Then, the Asahi made a protest against the Yomiuri and published an article in its own paper.32 Apparently the Asahi was upset about its major rival’s name calling. For conservatives, the Asahi is the cause of the comfort women issue between Japan and South Korea (Yamagiwa 2014). Not only in print media outlets, such as right-leaning conservative monthly magazines like Seiron and WILL, but over the Internet as well, anti-Japanese Asahi discourses on the comfort women issue are in wide circulation. Professional writers and commentators as well as ordinary citizens are reproducing the Asahi discourse. Which side of Japanese ideological camps is responsible for these seemingly endless controversies? For the conservatives, it is the Asahi that propagated the erroneous information on the Imperial government’s enforcement of Koreans into sexual slavery. For the liberals, it is the Yomiuri and Sankei that disregard a bigger picture of the comfort women issue: postwar Japan’s ambiguity on war guilt and responsibility. However, both sides of newspapers should be responsible for the lengthy trajectory of this fruitless dispute. The Asahi has never clearly apologized for its false reportage, and the Yomiuri and Sankei have failed to treat the issue as a multifaceted phenomenon.33 A Japanese saying goes, “both parties should be punished for engaging in a feud,” and this newspaper dispute is no exception to this common wisdom. We should also make a note of the disputants’ opposite motivations. For the Asahi, it is important for Japan to face its wartime aggressions and extend sincere apologies. For the Yomiuri and Sankei, on the other hand, it is important to reject unfounded accusations against Imperial Japan and restore its dignity. The prospects for reconciliation between them seem almost impossible. The media feud reflects on contentious interpretations of Imperial Japan’s past and postwar Japan’s ambivalence towards its multiplicity. The comfort women controversies served as a proxy memory war between two opposite camps of the political spectrum with irreconcilable historical views. The recent development of the comfort women issue seems to radicalize the conservatives in Japan. Further aggravating the feud, the Korean-American community is propagating the comfort women issue in the United States. This movement is adding another dimension to existing acerbity: globalization of the issue and involvement of the US. One of their projects was to build a monument in Palisades Park in New Jersey. The monument was engraved with the following message: “In memory of the more than 200,000 women and girls who were abducted by the armed forces of the government of imperial Japan 1930’s–1945, known as ‘comfort women.’” This includes the information that the Japanese conservatives cannot accept – “more 90

Reconciliation prospects

than 200,000” women and girls were “abducted” by the Japanese military. The total number of comfort women remains in question, and there is no evidence that the Japanese military systematically “abducted” the women. The Yomiuri’s editorial on February 22, 2014, argues that the Kōno statement causes such a problem in the United States. Under the second Abe Cabinet (2012–present), the conservatives are campaigning to change the statement, with unforeseeable outcome. Should there be any possibility for reconciliation between the liberal and conservative newspapers in Japan, a beginning of the process would be for all parties to get together to discuss what constitutes coercive recruitment and how to creatively reach a consensus regarding the comfort women issue between them. The decades-long status of affairs in which each side keeps on unilaterally asserting their respective opinions in their respective editorials does not serve the purpose. The comfort women’s recruitment involved a variety of methods and venues. It was often carried out through deception and coercion by private contractors who lured women with lies of a decent job with handsome salary. Comfort women included prostitutes, though they also might have been deceived or forced into the business by traffickers or their parents. Comfort women were from a variety of countries and from all walks of life. Scholars such as Yoshimi and Hata already agreed on these points. Outside of Japan, Soh (2008) sophisticatedly presents such multifaceted aspects of Korean former comfort women, although she does not let Imperial Japan be free from its wartime responsibility. It should not be forgotten that a large number of comfort women suffered at the battlefronts because of the demand of the Imperial Japan’s military. The South Korean government, in addition, is no longer insistent on the volunteer labor corps as the venue to recruit the Korean comfort women. “e-Museum for the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery,” the website run by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, for instance, is showing more nuanced accounts of the recruitment process in English and Japanese by including deception and coercion by private contractors.34 Perhaps the moment for productive discussions over the issue is approaching. It is necessary for chief editors of the major newspapers to study together, to try to see a bigger picture and the complexity of the issue, and to cultivate creativity to terminate their rivalry for a moment. Instructive precedence exists when the top leaders of the Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri convened and discussed the need for the opinion leaders’ press in the mid-1990s (cf. Kasuya et al. 1994). All the major newspapers are sympathetic, regardless of their political differences, for those women who ended up in comfort stations in the battlefronts. Many parties no longer insist the volunteer labor corps were used to recruit Korean women. Reconciliation is hard to achieve without concerned parties’ collective will. It should be noted this is not to let Japan be free from any responsibility for its wartime atrocities, but to seek mnemonic reconciliation between opinion leaders for the universalization of women’s human rights protection. This domestic reconciliation will pave the road for improved Japan-South Korea relations, which will ultimately transcend national boundaries aspiring for universalized cosmopolitan memory.

Notes 1 An exception is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), with which Japan has never signed a treaty of peace or treaty to normalize diplomatic relations. 2 The “comfort women,” or ianfu, has been a controversial term. Some argue it should be “military sexual slaves”; however, this chapter mostly chooses comfort women as Japanese newspapers usually use ianfu in their reports. For more details, see Soh (2008). 3 In Japan, commercial newspapers are geographically categorized into four groups: national, regional, prefectural, and community newspapers. 4 For example, see Izawa and Kobayashi (1999) and Komori, Izawa, and Inagaki (2002). 5 For criticisms about the Yomiuri, see Uozumi (2000) and Maezawa (2000).

91

Shunichi Takekawa 6 The Yomiuri publishes 13 million copies per day in both its morning and evening editions, and the Asahi 10 million copies per day (Nihon Shimbun Kyōkai, 2012). 7 The Japanese constitution was promulgated under the pressure from the US-led Allied Powers under Japan’s surrender, and such historical background is often construed as Japan’s symbolic deprivation of sovereign identity. 8 “On the Issue of Wartime ‘Comfort Women’” by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (http://www. mofa.go.jp/policy/postwar/issue9308.html, accessed on March 30, 2014). 9 A large number of Japanese women worked as comfort women, while their number remains debatable. While Yoshimi (1995) avoids presenting any conclusion, Hata (1999) notes that a majority of comfort women was Japanese. 10 For example, military units forced Dutch women in their colonies, today’s Indonesia, to become comfort women. The officers were punished through the war crimes trial after the war. 11 It was published by Futabasha (Tokyo). 12 Imperial Japan organized volunteer labor corps, more precisely female volunteer labor corps or jyoshi teishintai in Japanese, to mobilize young female civilians in Japan and its colonies for its war efforts such as production of military supplies in the last stretch of the Asia Pacific War. 13 It was published by San’ichi Shobō (Tokyo). 14 The island of Jeju can be romanized as Cheju as well (e.g., see chapter 9 in this volume). 15 Through the Normalization Treaty and additional agreements, Japan provided South Korea with grants and loans, which also meant to compensate Korean individuals who suffered from Japan’s colonial rule. 16 The Sankei in its editorial on August 14, 1992, accepted that the Imperial military was involved in the establishment and management of comfort stations, but it stressed that not all Korean comfort women were coercively recruited. 17 The Kōno statement in English is available at the webpage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html, accessed on March 30, 2014). 18 It was called atonement (tsugunai in Japanese), not compensation (baishō in Japanese). 19 In August 1993, the LDP lost power for the first time since 1955. Non-LDP parties, including the JSP, built a coalition government then. When the JSP left the coalition, the LDP asked the JSP, its longtime rival since 1955, to form a coalition with them. The LDP let the JSP leader, Murayama, become the prime minister. 20 The People’s Republic of China did not accept the Fund. For the details of the Fund’s activities, see Ōnuma (2007) and the Fund’s website, Digital Museum: Comfort Women Issue and the Asian Women’s Fund (http://www.awf.or.jp/index.html, accessed on March 30, 2014). 21 Kishi, T., et al. (2014), ‘Kankokujin Uketori 29%’ [29% of Korean Former Comfort Women Took the Atonement Payment], Mainichi Shimbun February 27 Morning edition, 1. 22 It was the Ministry of Education until 2001. 23 In 1996, the Sankei published a long series of articles, ‘Kyōkasho ga Oshienai Rekisi’ [History that Textbooks Do Not Teach], written by the members of Association for Unbiased View of History. In 2001, the Sankei’s sister company published the history textbook written by the members of Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform. 24 ‘Jūgun Ianfu, Kesenai Jijitsu’ [Undeniable Facts about the Military Comfort Women] (1997), Asahi Shimbun March 31, Morning edition, 17. 25 In 2002, the Asahi virtually admitted that they confused the comfort women and the volunteer labor corps as South Koreans did. The Asahi also emphasized that they began to differentiate them since 1993. See ‘Chuō Kōronsha no Shinsho de Asahi Shimbunsha ga Jijitsu Gonin to Kōgi’ [Asahi Shimbun Corporation Protested the Book Published by Chuō Kōronsha for Including Factual Errors] (2002), Asahi Shimbun December 25, Morning edition, 26. 26 Asakura, T. (1998), ‘Moto Jyūgun Ianfu Mondai no Gokai’ [Misunderstanding about the Former Military Comfort Women], Yomiuri Shimbun May 8, Morning Edition 23. 27 The national assembly in Japan is called “Diet” in English. 28 Honda M. and Takada M. (2005), ‘Nakagawa, Abe-shi ‘Naiyō Katayori’ Shiteki, NHK ‘Ianfu’ Bangumi Kaihen’ [Nakagawa and Abe Point out the Bias of NHK’s TV Show of the Comfort Women], Asahi Shimbun January 12 Morning edition, 1. It was a people’s tribunal that accused Japanese wartime leaders for the military sex slavery, although Abe refuted the Asahi’s report. 29 Ōnishi, N. (2007), ‘Abe Rejects Japan’s Files on War Sex’, New York Times March 2 (http://www. nytimes.com/2007/03/02/world/asia/02japan.html?_r=0, accessed on March 30, 2014); Tabuchi, H. (2007), ‘Prime Minister Denies Women Were Forced into WWII Brothels’, Washington Post March 3

92

Reconciliation prospects

30 31 32

33

34

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030101498.html, accessed on March 30, 2014). ‘Son Minsun, Kankoku Gaishō ga Fukaikan’ [Song Min-soon, Foreign Minister of South Korea Shows Discomfort] (2007), Asahi Shimbun March 3, Morning edition, 1. For example, see Izawa and Kobayashi (1999) and Komori, Izawa and Inagaki (2002). ‘Chuō Kōronsha no Shinsho de Asahi Shimbunsha ga Jijitsu Gonin to Kōgi’ [Asahi Shimbun Corporation Protested the Book Published by Chuō Kōronsha for Including Factual Errors] (2002), Asahi Shimbun December 25 Morning edition, 26. On August 5, 2014, the Asahi concededly acknowledged that they confused the comfort women and the volunteer labor corps and that Yoshida Seiji’s confession was fabrication in its featured pages. Though, the Asahi emphasized the righteousness of the coerciveness in a broad sense to understand the issue as they did in March 1997. This rekindled conservatives’ fierce criticism against the Asahi. The website is found at http://www.hermuseum.go.kr/eng/.

References Akuto, H. (1996), ‘Media in Electoral Campaigning in Japan and the United States’, in S. J. Pharr and E. S. Krauss (eds.), Media and Politics in Japan (pp. 313–337), Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Asakura, T. (2002), ‘Hajimeni’ [introduction], in Yomiuri Ronsetsu Iinkai (ed.), Yomiuri vs. Asahi: Shasetsu Taiketsu, Kitachōsen Mondai [Yomiuri vs. Asahi: Editorial Battle On The North Korea Issue] (pp. i–vi), Tokyo: Chuō Kōronsha. Freeman, L. A. (2000), Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan’s Mass Media, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hall, I. P. (1998), Cartels of the Mind: Japan’s Intellectual Closed Shop, New York: W.W. Norton. Hara, T., K. Katsura, A. Uozumi, and H. Kitamura (2004), ‘Shimbun Jānarizumu no Kiki’ (A Crisis of Newspaper Journalism). Tsukuru, April, 16–31. Hata, I. (1999), Ianfu to Senjō no Sei [Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Field], Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Izawa, M, and Y. Kobayashi (1999), Asahi Shimbun no Seigi: Nihon o Madowashita Media No Sekinin [The Justice of Asahi Shimbun: Responsibility of the Medium that Confused Postwar Japan], Tokyo: Shōgakukan. Kasuya, K., T. Nakae, T. Koike, and T. Watanabe (1994),‘Sandai Shimbun Shachō Gekiron: Dai Yon-Kenryoku Ni Mirai Wa Aruka’ [Heated Discussion of The Three Major Dailies’ Presidents: Is There Any Future for the Fourth Estate of Power?], Bungei Shunjū 72, 6: 94–111. Kim, Y. C. (1981), Japanese Journalists and their World, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Komori, Y., M. Izawa, and T. Inagaki (2002), Asahi Shimbun no Daikenkyū [Extensive Studies Of Asahi Shimbun], Tokyo: Fusōsha. Lee, J. B. (1985), The Political Character of the Japanese Press, Seoul: Seoul National University Press. Maezawa, T. (2000), ‘Watanabe Tsuneo-shi ni okeru Janarizumu no Kenkyū’ [A Study of Journalism by Mr. Watanabe Tsuneo], Sekai, January, 160–175. Nanri, K. (2005), ‘The Conundrum of Japanese Editorials: Polarized, Diversified and Homogeneous’, Japanese Studies 25, 2:169–185. Nihon no Zento to Rekishi Kyoiku o Kangaeru Wakate Giin no Kai (1997), Rekishi Kyokasho eno Gimon [Questions on History Textbooks], Tokyo: Tendensha. Nihon Shimbun Kyōkai (2012), Nihon Shimbun Nenkan 2013 [Japan Newspaper Annual 2013], Tokyo: Nihon Shimbun Kyōkai. Ōnuma,Y. (2007), ‘Ianfu’ Mondai towa Nanndattanoka [What Was the Comfort Women Issue?], Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Shinsha. Sasaki, T. (1999), Media to Kenryoku [Media and Power], Tokyo: Chūō Koronsha. Sankei Shimbun Ronsetsu Iinshitsu (ed.) (2002), Shasetsu no Daikenkyū: Shimbun wa Kon’na ni Chigau [Extensive Studies of Editorials: How Different Newspapers Are from Each Other], Tokyo: Sankei Shimbun News Service. Seaton, P. A. (2006),‘Reporting the “Comfort Women” Issue, 1991–1992: Japan’s Contested War Memories in the National Press’, Japanese Studies 26, 1:99–112. Soh, C. S. (2008), The Comfort Women; Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Takayama, N. (1993), Dokyumento Sankei Shimbun Shishi [A Document: A History of Sankei Shimbun], Tokyo: Aoki Shoten.

93

Shunichi Takekawa Takekawa, S. (2007), ‘Forging Nationalism from Pacifism and Internationalism: A Study of Asahi and Yomiuri’s New Year’s Day Editorial, 1953–2005’, Social Science Japan Journal 10, 1:59–80. Uozumi, A. (2000), Watanabe Tsuneo: Media to Kenryoku [Watanabe Tsuneo: Media and Power], Tokyo: Kōdansha. Wakamiya, Y. (2008), Tatakau Shastsu [Editorials to Fight], Tokyo: Kōdansha. Whittemore, E. (1961), The Press in Japan Today: A Case Study, Studies in International Affairs no. 1, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Wolferen, K. (1990), The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation, New York: Vintage Books. Yamagiwa, S. (2014), Subete wa Asahi Shimbun kara Hajimatta ‘Ianfu Mondai’ [All Things about the Comfort Women Were Started by the Asahi Shimbun], Tokyo: WAC. Yamamoto, T. (1973), Shimbun to Minshū: Nihongata Shimbun no Keisei [Newspapers and the Mass: The Development of Japanese Newspapers], Tokyo: Kinokuniya Shoten. Yomiuri Shimbun Ronsetsuiinkai (ed.) (2001), Yomiuri vs Asahi: Shasetsu Taiketsu 50-nen [Yomiuri vs Asahi: 50-year-old editorial battle], Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Shinsha. Yoshimi, Y. (1995), Jugun Ianfu [Military Comfort Women], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Yoshimi, Y., F. Kawata, K. Abe, and T. Otani (1997), Jūgun Ianfu o Meguru 30 no Uso to Shinjitsu [30 Truths and Lies about the So-Called Comfort Women], Tokyo: Ōtsuki Shoten.

94

6 (IN)VISIBLE WOMEN Gendering of popular war memories through the narrative of the battleship Yamato for six decades in postwar Japan Kaori Yoshida

Father: It’s the Yamato. Son: Yamato? Father: Yes. Look carefully. That’s the battleship Yamato. It’s the ship of Japanese men. (Animated film Space Battleship Yamato, 1977)

Background: Gender and war memory construction The mechanism of gendering war-narrative construction in postwar Japan is complex, both because of the nation’s struggle with its status as a pacifist nation and its feminized position vis-à-vis the United States (Mizuno 2007; Igarashi 2000; Dower 1999), and due to incidents ranging from the Korean War to recent territorial conflicts, which have provoked calls for re-militarization. Collective war memory is founded upon narrative-making, by configuring resources to unify the diversity of memories. The memory, therefore, becomes a politicized entity. War-narrative-making in postwar Japan has been heavily influenced by systemic gender-coding based on hegemonic gender perspective(s) through which women have been exempted from responsibility and have played the victim role. In 2013 Japan ranked 105th in the world in gender equality,1 and despite increasing discussion of women’s war responsibility, war memories remain firmly gendered for the benefit of both women and the patriarchal nation. Historical events such as wars are often remembered through fictional representations like films and TV dramas – a powerful form of storytelling (Hughes-Warrington 2006; Landy 2001; Rosenstone 2001). War films, particularly in the fiction and fantasy genres, reiterate narratives from particular perspectives, mostly reflecting national desires (Mizuno 2007). Popular films are thus a vehicle for the construction of collective war memories, and analyzing them can help us to understand national desires and the political economy in postwar Japan. This chapter attempts to unpack gendered mnemonic configurations in postwar Japanese war films, attending particularly to the intricate interplay between war, gender, and national identity, to explicate the domestic reconciliation prospects between genders over war memories. It examines four fictional Japanese war films centered on the Yamato, the biggest and toughest Japanese Imperial Navy battleship of WWII: The Battleship Yamato (Senkan Yamato 1953); the animated 95

Kaori Yoshida

film Space Battleship Yamato (Uchū senkan Yamato 1977); The Men’s Yamato (Otokotachi no Yamato 2005); and a live-action remake of Space Battleship Yamato (2010). The popularity of the Yamato is attested among other things by the successive releases of such films over the past sixty years.

The discourse of war: Gendering of war and war narratives This section introduces the characteristics and psycho-political concepts of gender representation that devalue women and femininity in war discourse. As Mizuno Hiromi (2007) stresses, war fiction often signifies gendered national desires.2 Such narratives, which tend to emphasize masculinity, have the power to normalize asymmetrical gender relations in everyday life, based on the “signifying system of masculine-feminine differentiations” (Peterson 2010, 18). Betty Reardon emphasizes in Sexism and the War System (1985) that war is attributable to patriarchal systems. That is not to say that war necessarily augments patriarchy, but rather that the stabilization of patriarchy is a reason for war. She argues that war is regarded as a legitimate exercise of military violence for the sake of social order maintenance and national defense; in this context placing the female “other” – the internal enemy – under male control is essential. Waging war is linked to the masculine, and thus calls for devaluing women and femininity. This is reflected in war films, in which female figures are literally eliminated from the screen or are assigned gender-specific roles – mother, wife, caregiver, and victim – to (re)inscribe a line between the spheres of masculine/battlefield/center and feminine/home/periphery. Regarding female subordination in war discourse, Jean Elshtain argues that women, “militant mother and pacifist protestor alike, join forces as the collective ‘other’” to the male warrior (1987, 3). Identifying the typical roles of men and women in war narratives, Elshtain describes the former as “just warriors,” who fight bravely and selflessly for the righteous cause of defending the nation, and the latter as “beautiful souls”: caring, nurturing, innocent, naïve women in need of protection (1987, xiv). In other words, male and female roles in war are not just differentiated, they are also differently valued. The female “other” is stylized “in ways that demand masculinized identities and action” as comparative reference point (Peterson 2010, 28). Recurring manifestations of the roles of mother and wife in war media reinforce the neglect or segregation of females in war discourse (Sjoberg 2010; Napier 2005a; Wakakuwa 2004, 2005; Misonou 2009). At the same time, in the contemporary media-saturated world, “boys find that male heroes they view in popular media are among the most accessible, frequently encountered, and publicly approved models for manly socialization” (Donald and MacDonald 2011, 1). The image of manliness in these media has also been militarized by linking it to “honor, power, comradeship, courage, patriotism, and belligerence” (Wakakuwa 2005, 89). Of course, with their “colorful uniforms,” their “strong and attractive men,” and their “noble and patriotic” women waiting for soldiers to return home, war films appeal to female audiences as well (Suid 2002, 7). Their strict gender division thus corroborates or even accelerates the legitimization of gender hierarchy. Another strategy for “othering” women is the use of the female to embody pain and misery. In Japanese war films, women suffering from the atomic bombings represent the position of the nation as victim. The violation of the female body by air raids or rape is associated with the demasculinization of a nation and its men who are incapable of protecting it or their women (Wakakuwa 2005, 175). Indeed, what men are fighting over is women: they become a cause of war. There is nothing “natural” in associating men with war and women with peace. In fact, “men are not the only propagators of such [belligerent] masculinities”: women can perform them, too (Sedgwick 1995, 13).3 The number of female soldiers in countries like the U.S., South Africa, Russia, and Hungary has been increasing since the 1980s (Goldstein 2001, 96). Nonetheless, war and militaries are conceived as extremely masculine domains (Frühstück 2007, 118; Wakakuwa 96

(In)visible women

2005, 25). Accordingly, war narratives become a “hypergendered” site (Sjoberg 2010), wherein men must prove their masculinity through their willingness to kill, die for the motherland, and abide by rigid gender roles, power and control (ibid., 216), while women play a passive role. Gendered roles in war narratives are intentionally crafted as part of the “gendered working of power” (Enloe 1993, 246), which caters to patriarchal intent. In addition, as Thomas Kühne (1997) argues, the gender dichotomy is an ideological framework, and the less willingly people abide by it,4 the more controlling the dichotomy becomes to maintain the social order.5

Paradox: Marginal yet necessary role of women in war narratives (Hyper)gendered representations literally or symbolically marginalize women. Yet female figures are paradoxically necessary in war narratives. Besides embodying “beautiful souls,” women play a crucial role in solidifying male bonding – the mechanism of homosociality (Sedgwick 1985) – to manifest an ultimate form of patriarchy and misogynistic impulse. According to Wakakuwa, following Sedgwick’s (1985) discussion of male homosociality, a patriarchal society calls for “compulsory heterosexism,” which assumes that opposite-sex couples are already integrated into a scheme of male-male bonding (Wakakuwa 2005, 93–94). In other words, a patriarchal system based on the inheritance by a son of a paternal lineage entails women who produce (male) babies and compulsory heterosexuality that makes it happen, subsequently leading to homophobia. Based on this mechanism, heterosexual relations in war narratives are needed to strengthen the exclusive male domain, wherein women necessarily play supporting roles: giving birth to future soldiers, teaching them male responsibilities, sending their sons and husbands to battlefield, and nursing their wounds. To emphasize the primacy of the male-male bond in war films, Wakakuwa (2005) compares the impact of heterosexual relationships and male comradeship in the film Troy (2004): Compared to the camaraderie between men who risk their lives and their honor, (the film’s audience) can only disdain the lustful heterosexual relationship between Paris and Helena, [and see her as] a wicked woman who invited strife and caused calamity. ( 2005, 92. Author’s translation) Similarly, Lawrence H. Suid introduces the ambiguous feelings of (male) audiences of war films regarding their relationships with women, noting that marriage interferes with the “important job of fighting to protect the nation” (2002, 7). Referring to male war film heroes like John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Suid argues that male viewers identify with the hero not only to “feel heroic,” but also to “vicariously free themselves from family [responsibility]” (2002, 7). That is, war films are more than just vehicles for “experiencing the proximity of death, the romance, and the adventure of war” (ibid., 7): men experience liberation from the domestic confines by watching war films. Men’s ambiguous feelings toward heterosexual relationships can be also generated on an unconscious level. As Reardon (1985) suggests, the system of sexism that places women in an inferior position derives from men’s repulsion by or fear of women. This becomes evident in war and military settings which function as a catharsis for men. Suid (2002) explicates this linkage in psychosexual terms: [W]omen’s greater capacity for sex can threaten a man’s security and ego. Military life and war offer a legitimate alternative to this threat. A soldier can do his duty to his family by being away from them, protecting them from outside danger. He then has 97

Kaori Yoshida

the best of both worlds – a women when he wants her, masculine friendships and the sexual release of combat. (7)6 This observation exposes the dilemma of patriarchal systems: while the (heterosexual) family is necessary for a man to show his phallic power and to raise his successor, it is also a feminine sphere typically administered by a woman – a unit that seeks out domestic interests rather than a masculine (public) cause. Patriarchal desire, rooted in male bonding, feeds and is fed by manifestations of (hyper)gendered images of women in war films. Thus, when masculinity is in crisis, a (patriarchal) nation strives to manifest itself as potent and controlling – typical qualities of masculinity. Given that “women have been more active in the ‘new’ wars of the 21st century”7 (Sjoberg and Via 2010, 5), men’s fear is more accelerated and therefore works as an even stronger motive for institutionalizing war as a site exclusively for the ideal man. Female characters are after all necessary in war fictions so as to perpetuate the value of male homosociality, and this may be at least partly why Hollywood war films position women as love interests with “a little sex appeal” (Donald and MacDonald 2011, 4).

The Yamato as a significant icon for postwar Japanese national identity The battleship Yamato has become a legend since the release of Requiem for Battleship Yamato (1952)8 (Asahi Newspaper, September 7, 2013) This citation suggests the magnetism of the Yamato not just as patriotic ideology during WWII, but as a symbol of a strong Japan perpetuated through postwar fiction. Postwar Japanese popular war fiction reveals troubled gender representations. Some deal with the loss of masculinity; others project the re-masculinized nation. War films in particular implicitly or explicitly exploit gender, naturalizing Japan’s relationships with its former colonies and with the U.S. in “sexually charged terms” (Igarashi 2000, 14). Few feature female protagonists: women are typically depicted as victims of the A-bombs and air raids, which is intended to signify Japan’s position in these events. Meanwhile, the battleship Yamato has been consistently represented as a male-centered arena where male-male bonding gets intensified. All of the four versions of the Yamato narrative discussed below evoke the nation’s continuous pursuit of masculine desires vis-à-vis the “castrated” postwar Japanese national identity. In different ways these films are premised on the specific image of the battleship Yamato: a masculine symbol of the “unsinkable” nation. At the same time, they expose the dilemma of Japan’s masculinity, which constantly negotiates with feminine aspects of the national identity. As discussed in the previous section, manifestations of masculinity tend to intensify when masculinity is threatened. Japan since the early postwar period has been feminized for two reasons: its pacifist constitution, and being under the protection of the United States after its defeat in WWII. As Igarashi (2000) claims, “the emperor’s feminized body, which metonymically represented Japan’s nationhood” (13), is at the core of the sexualized relationship of Japan with the U.S. However, there is another aspect as well. In the process of Japan’s “embracing defeat” (Dower 1999), Japanese identity has certainly been feminized, yet it is also the fact that the United States chose “not [to] merely to ignore” the emperor’s war responsibility “but to deny it” (28). Dower problematizes this aspect: If the man in whose name imperial Japan had conducted foreign and military policy for twenty years was not held accountable for the initiation or conduct of the war, why 98

(In)visible women

should anyone expect ordinary people to dwell on such matters, or to think seriously about their own personal responsibility? (1999, 28) The U.S. leaving the emperor unpunished has not only let Japan embrace a symbol of Japanese masculinity – the “father” of Japan at least symbolically – and has contributed to rebuilding the nation after the war, but has also helped Japan obliterate its aggression.9 It is therefore extremely intriguing to investigate how and why postwar Japanese war films have constantly and effectively projected masculine and feminine desires mixed together. Philip Seaton identifies three main types of heroes who embody moral messages in Japanese war films: 1) military heroes who selflessly sacrifice their lives for a (losing) patriotic cause, 2) the “good Japanese” who questions the morality of the military to present a self-critical “aggressive war” message, and 3) “victim-heroes” who helplessly suffer to convey an antiwar message (2007, 152–153). As many scholars have pointed out, numerous postwar Japanese films have emphasized the “victim’s history” (Napier 2005a), reflecting Japan’s hegemonic view of itself as a victim. Along with these victimization films, the war film genre in postwar Japan is dominated by themes of the “nobility of failure” (Morris 1975), featuring heroes who sacrifice their own lives for a losing cause “to avoid the indignity of capture, [to] vindicate [their] honour” (xxi), and to show their devotion to the nation. According to Morris (1975, xxii), it is not productivity or actual achievement that validates the noble hero in Japanese tradition. The seemingly oxymoronic ethos of the nobility of failure rests on empathy with the act (dying for the nation) rather than the cause (fighting for the nation to win). Films revolving around the battleship Yamato belong to this category. In addition, it is worth noting that mediated images of the Yamato represent “a culturally specific vision of defeat and despair” (Napier 2005b, n.pag.), suggesting that different versions of the Yamato narrative contain ideological subtexts that reflect the years in which they were produced. For instance, Mizuno (2007) identifies a shift in manifestations of Japan’s masculine desire from the pre- to the post-Cold War periods by examining narratives and characters in three versions of the Yamato narrative: Space Battleship Yamato (the 1974 animated television program and the 1977 animated film Uchū senkan Yamato) and the animated film Silent Service (Chinmoku no kantai 1995). Building on Mizuno’s arguments, the following sections examine different narratives of the Yamato from the earliest to the most recent to demonstrate the manipulative and effective operation of war-narrative-making in specific contexts.

Resurrection of Japanese masculinity: The Battleship Yamato (1953) In the early post-Occupation period Japanese masculinity was in crisis, and thus restoring it was crucial. This first narrative of the Yamato in cinematic form was The Battleship Yamato (1953), adapted from Yoshida Mitsuru’s 1952 book Requiem for the Battleship Yamato [Senkan Yamato no saigo].10 The film is about the Yamato’s suicide mission to Okinawa in March 1945 to defend the homeland threatened by U.S. bombers. A U.S. submarine quickly finds the Yamato, and the U.S. Air Force attacks it with massive air strikes, while the majority of the more than three thousand soldiers aboard fight to the death. Rather than the army, which tends to bring back dark memories of WWII, the navy and the battleship Yamato in particular are used in war films to resurrect the heroic and triumphant image of Japan. This is so because “in the air and at sea, killing [is] impersonal,” and therefore “seamen and pilots have little of the atrocity-soaked image of Japanese soldiers” (Seaton 2007, 152). The naval setting, particularly in the case of Japanese films, is the key element that foregrounds the heroism of the hero(s) while masking the cruel actions of military: hushing up the Imperial Japanese Army’s brutalities. 99

Kaori Yoshida

While The Battleship Yamato does convey an antiwar message, the high point of the film lies in the masculine presence of the Yamato itself as a spectacle (Yamasato 2011, 231) and the heroic acts of the sailors aboard the ship in the face of certain defeat. A series of close-ups highlight the Yamato’s cannons, missiles, and command bridge, symbolizing muscular power. Film critic Shigeno Tatsuhiko argues that the popularity of the film is reflected by the fact that during “the scene where the Yamato is leaving for a mission with ‘The Warship March’ playing [in the background], the audience applauded with excitement” (Shigeno 1953, 104).11 This aural element, coupled with the visual impact of the ship, would evoke a sense of exaltation toward the presence of the Yamato, undercutting the fact that the ship was too large and too heavy to be functional. Through its male characters the film questions the masculine ideology of dying for a (losing) cause. For instance, lieutenant Yoshimura is certainly not a hero of the “nobility of failure”; he is a survivor who, thrown overboard as the ship sinks, desperately clings to life until the end of the film. Analyzing mainstream kamikaze films of the 1950s and 1960s, Isolde Standish identifies the depiction of “the heroes’ inner psychological struggle” as one of the key elements of postwar Japanese war films (2000, 79). In The Battleship Yamato, the sailors’ inner struggle with and skepticism about patriotic self-sacrifice are demonstrated in Nishida’s responses to an accusation by his comrade Kikuchi: Kikuchi: Aren’t you glad to die for the nation? Nishida: What does it mean to die in vain? I don’t want to die without knowing what I’m dying for. Kikuchi: Don’t you feel happy to die as a suicide pilot for the nation? Nishida: I’d die for something more than that. Nishida’s remarks cast doubt on the value of dying for a losing cause: he would clearly choose to live rather than dying for unconvincing cause. The film does not provide a satisfying resolution, except perhaps in the fact that Yoshimura survives. These depictions reflect the political condition of postwar Japan in the 1950s, where formerly popular nationalistic and macho ideologies like dying for the defeated nation were completely overturned. Standish (2000) also describes postwar kamikaze films as displaying “the centrality of a code of the brotherhood,” which operates as a means of patriotic control and “a site of pleasure” where men are allowed “to express an intensity of emotion” (79). According to Standish, the pilots’ motivation for fighting to death in many films is a sense of brotherhood, not defense of the nation or the emperor, and this is revealed in the dialogues and camera angles. However, unlike the films Standish analyzes, in The Battleship Yamato there are no explicit scenes or dialogue showing physical closeness or intimacy between men, or shots that demonstrate the intensity of male bonding. Indeed the final scene, in which it appears Yoshimura is too focused on his desperate fight to survive to even recall his comrades who have died in the battle, underscores the idea that male homosociality – the ultimate form of patriarchy – is not worth dying for. Men are individuals as well. The Battleship Yamato also questions ideal masculinity in the way the male characters relate to women, who are hyperfeminized. Sailor Mori’s ex-girlfriend and Nishida’s young sister are innocent and naïve embodiments of “beautiful souls.” Completely divorced from the male militaristic sphere, these women rarely appear on screen and are never part of the real action, instead waiting innocently for their men. They are seen only in photographs or flashback scenes, referred to as things to talk about; in one scene a group of sailors compare the two women’s photos to decide who is more attractive. At the same time, these characters, who are neither mothers nor wives who will serve as vessels to carry on the paternal lineage, symbolize the frailty of Japanese masculinity associated 100

(In)visible women

with the defeat and despair of Japanese identity. Strikingly, the main male characters also exhibit few signs of stamina or physical prowess. One scene in the film points to this aspect. Lieutenant Yoshimura and another sailor, Takada, confess their virginity to each other. Neither has a girlfriend or a wife who will bear his child or pass his honor to the next generation. Likewise, military surgeon Yamada, who has just married an eighteen-year-old woman, tells Yoshimura that he has never had sex with his wife. The male characters thus have no women via whom to affirm their phallic power. This harkens back to the patriarchal paradox introduced in the previous section: the simultaneous need for and rejection of women, reflecting the status of postwar Japanese masculinity itself. Standish (2000) describes the contradiction in ideal masculinity as a conflict between “the need to reject the feminine” signified through the negation of female characters on the one hand, and the need to “reaffirm male phallic power” expressed “through the sexual act and procreation,” which requires “contact with a female” (109). According to Standish, this contradiction can be overcome in war films by creating “a distinction between women as ‘pure’ (i.e., mothers and younger sisters as future mothers) and women who are simply used for the satisfaction of male desire” (ibid., 109). The value of masculinity is affirmed by exhibiting the phallus, in addition to protecting women and the nation. For instance, in The Battleship Yamato Mori’s strong affection for the girlfriend he has left to join the Yamato indicates his failure to distinguish between romantic love and sexual desire, which is required to achieve ideal masculinity. The Battleship Yamato fails to symbolize phallic power, and the contradiction of the ideal masculinity is not overcome through the film. Overall, gender manifestations in the film, while hinting at Japan’s national desire for re-awakening masculinity in the context of the inauguration of the National Police Reserve in 1952, reveal in effect the fragility and struggle lingering in this project immediately following the U.S. Occupation.

(In)visible woman wanted: Animated Space Battleship Yamato (1977) A story of (boy’s) epic voyage could not be pulled off without female partner(s) with whom he has at least a platonic relationship in the scenario. (Matsumoto Reiji, “From the Yamato to Space Battleship Yamato,” 1998.)12 The animated film Space Battleship Yamato (1977) is a heroic story, or what William Ashbaugh regards as an example of “triumphant memories” (2010, 328). As the Earth has been made uninhabitable due to radiation attacks by the evil empire Gamilas, the Earth Defense Force, flying the space battleship Yamato, embarks on a trip to planet Iscandar to retrieve a device that can save the world. Gamilas tries to block the spaceship, obliging its crew to fight back. In the end, unlike the real battleship in WWII, the spaceship Yamato and its brave crew succeed in the rescue mission, bringing a radiation cleaning device to the Earth. Highlighting the heroism of its Japanese male characters, the film effectively bypasses the depiction of both defeated masculinity and Japan’s wartime position as an aggressor. The original image of the battleship Yamato, “initially configured as one of loss and destruction,” is transformed into “a trope of renewal and hope” in the animated film (Napier 2005b, n.pag.), as the Yamato here signifies love for the universe rather than nationalistic militarism. The Yamato in this film is an explicit homage to its namesake: in one early scene the spaceship is built from parts of the battleship. Also, the takeoff of the spaceship parallels the original ship’s embarkation to Okinawa in 1945, followed by the dialogue between a boy and his father cited in the beginning of this chapter, which calls to mind the commanding presence of the Yamato. From a gender perspective, as Mizuno (2007) argues, Space Battleship Yamato is a Cold War fantasy 101

Kaori Yoshida

of Japan rescuing the Earth, along with the ambivalent desire for masculinity in feminized postwar Japan. The narrative of the film not only legitimizes military force and nationalism in the mid-Cold War era (Ashbaugh 2010; Penny 2007), but also reasserts the virility of Japanese masculinity as capable of saving the world, while negotiating the feminine side of the national identity in postwar Japan. The materialization of a male fantasy of reasserting masculinity and phallic power is symbolically demonstrated by the huge and incredibly powerful weapon called Hadōhō (Wave Motion Gun), which is mounted on the Yamato. This gun works by connecting a Wave Motion Engine to a firing gate located on the ship’s bow. The way that the gun vigorously emits an enormous white stream of light and the fact that a certain duration of rest is required before it can be re-fired underscore the phallic power of the ship and the heroes who operate it. In turn, this undefeatable Yamato invokes not only the renewal and hope emerging in postwar Japan but also the powerful and masculine image of the nation. It is perhaps no coincidence that in 1975, the film’s production year, Japan joined the Group of Five and was gaining global recognition as one of the most powerful nations in both economic and symbolic terms. What distinguishes this film from The Battleship Yamato is the role of women in the plot. One of the female characters is Queen Starsha of the planet Iscandar, who sends a message to Earth about the radiation cleaning device. This triggers the Yamato’s mission and continuous battles: it must be men who take action to save the Earth. More importantly, the space battleship Yamato carries only one female crew member: Yuki, a typical example of the kurenai no senshi (crimson warrior) frequently seen in Japanese animation (Saito 2001). Saito Minako explains that the crimson warrior is beautiful, in her late teens or early twenties, is often the only female figure in a masculine world, and is a welcome object of the male gaze (2001, 48).13 She functions as an angel: serving tea, working as a correspondence clerk or nurse, and needing to be rescued by males. In the animation Space Battleship Yamato Yuki is indeed both nurse and correspondence clerk, and represents what Elshtain calls a “beautiful soul.” Instead of getting directly involved in combat, Yuki acts as a cheerleader for the male soldiers: she motivates them to fight, as she needs protection.14 Her presence illuminates the role of the male characters, especially the protagonist Kodai Susumu, as “just warriors” (Elshtain 1987) who fight bravely and selflessly for the righteous cause of defending the Earth. As the citation in the beginning of this section indicates, Yuki plays a crucial role. It is worth noting that, after destroying the Gamilas, the compassionate and loving Kodai momentarily regrets killing the enemy, but he soon convinces himself of the inevitability of the fight to save the Earth. This sequence affirms the superiority of the masculine objective of war, while upholding the claim to peace and love. It suggests the necessity of articulating a narrative of “legitimate war” in the midst of the Cold War.

Women as the reason for men’s continuous war: The Men’s Yamato (2005) Assuming that film texts can project national desires, recent versions of popular Yamato narratives must at least partly embody recent aspirations for the Japanese national identity. As the title implies, The Men’s Yamato is heavily phallocentric, nostalgically and ideologically harkening back to ideal masculinity and femininity. Set in 2005, the story begins as Makiko, daughter of petty officer Uchida, who served on the Yamato during WWII, asks Kamio, a survivor of the Yamato’s last battle, to take her to the site where the ship sank so that she can honor her father’s spirit. As Kamio heads to the site with Makiko and his teenage apprentice Atsushi, the narrative shifts between the present and Kamio’s recollections of his time on the Yamato during the war. The majority of these scenes take place on the Yamato, in the exclusively male sphere embodied 102

(In)visible women

through the rigidly hierarchal system among soldiers, intense male bonding, and the suicidal battle against the U.S. forces. Makiko and Atsushi admire the heroism of Kamio and the other soldiers, which implies that the saga of the Yamato and the masculine image of Japan will be handed down to the next generations. The scenes in Kamio’s memory – concerning the world inside the Yamato – are filled with intense male homosociality, wherein ideal virile masculinity is fully exhibited without contradiction. The sailors on the battleship detach themselves both from women and from anything feminine within themselves. For instance, the day before the Yamato’s departure, young sailor Tokita breaks away from his mother, Tsune, symbolizing his achievement of ideal manhood. While Kamio leaves his girlfriend, Taeko, behind to join the men’s world of the Yamato, petty officer Uchida breaks up with his girlfriend after they have sex, which symbolically reaffirms his phallic power. The depiction of Uchida, masking potential conflicts in establishing masculinity, effectively represents Japan’s aspiration for ideal manhood founded upon male bonding. Stereotypical female characters on the home front include mothers, girlfriends, wives, and victims of the war, articulating a gendered war narrative. Although the female characters themselves do not move the plot forward, they are indispensable for the reestablishment of Japanese masculinity in the narrative. In comparison both with The Battleship Yamato, where women have almost no presence, and Space Battleship Yamato, which highlights the main female character as a “crimson warrior,” women in The Men’s Yamato have a much stronger presence on the screen. Nevertheless, they are assigned markedly gendered roles, epitomizing “beautiful souls” in various ways: the mother who sends her son to the war, the victim of an A-bomb herself. In particular, Makiko becomes both a conduit of the men’s glory and potentially a female figure who will lead future men to continuous warfare. Wakakuwa (2007) supports this view, asserting that Makiko’s tears are not a mere expression of grief for her dead father but function as a trigger for war. Moreover, Elshtain (1987) argues that women are collectively recognized as “beautiful souls,” not simply because they are essentially pacifist, but because they provide a legitimate reason for men to fight. She states, “Beautiful souls have . . . exhorted men to the task, sustained their efforts, honored their deeds, mourned their loss (Elshtain 1987, 149). The manifestation of male bonding is prominent and intense in this film. The bond between the two petty officers, Uchida and Moriwaki, embodies powerful camaraderie and male homosociality, as seen in their friendly competitions and the fact that they spare each other’s feelings until the last moment on the Yamato. During the brutal air attacks from the U.S. forces, male bonding is amplified: Kamio, Uchida, and Moriwaki, support each other and keep firing missiles while the U.S. bombs severely damage the ship and kill or injure its crew. When the ship is sinking, over Kamio’s protestations that he wishes to remain with them until the end, Uchida and Moriwaki throw him overboard in order to save his life. This underscores the idea that men fight not only for “beautiful souls” but also for their “brothers.” To execute one of the major female responsibilities, Makiko passes down the glory of her dead father and his comrades on the Yamato as well as their strong brotherhood, elevating the value of the masculine and prompting the following generation of men to willingly go to war.

Hero as male privilege – no G.I. Jane: Live-action Space Battleship Yamato (2010) In December 2010 the Yamato narrative took yet another form, in the face of increasing domestic and international pressure of reinforcing Japanese militaristic force due to incidents world over, such as the September 11 attacks, Iraq War, and resurging territorial conflicts between Japan and China, South Korea, and Russia. Space Battleship Yamato was turned into a live-action film starring 103

Kaori Yoshida

Kimura Takuya, one of Japan’s most popular male idols, and Kuroki Meisa, a popular fashion model with a cool, sexy public image. While it shares many characteristics of gender representations with The Men’s Yamato, such as intense brotherhood, phallic power, and the female role of passing down men’s heroism, there are gendering mechanisms distinct to this live-action version of Space Battleship Yamato. One of the striking differences is the depiction of the female characters. Kuroki is known for playing powerful and independent women, and her performance of Yuki in Space Battleship Yamato is no exception. As discussed above, Yuki in the animation is a typical “crimson warrior”; in contrast the live-action Yuki, as the ace pilot of the Black Tiger Squadron, is cool and composed. Unlike her animated counterpart, she is an active agent in combat, sharply distinguished from the typical feminine image of the “beautiful soul” seen in the three film versions discussed above. Although only a small number of female crew members are personalized on the screen, many more women are onboard in the live-action version. This reflects a strong awareness of gender equality in contemporary Japan, and also points to the fact that the Japanese Self Defense Forces have increased the number of women serving in the Peace Keeping Operations dispatched to East Timor and Iraq. Yuki in the live-action version is reminiscent of Lieutenant O’Neill in the Hollywood film G.I. Jane (1997), who survives a punishing naval training program that has a sixty percent dropout rate for men, and strips herself of femininity by shaving her head and beefing up her physique. However, it would be naïve to view Kuroki’s Yuki as a reflection of female empowerment solely based on the fact that she is one of the main fighters. Like O’Neill, Yuki is certainly a capable warrior; yet she has no intention to “become” a man.15 For one thing, although Yuki engages in combat, she causes problems by making mistakes during an enemy attack and ends up being rescued by Kodai: she is reduced to needing male protection in spite of her warrior persona. In addition, she provokes Kodai’s sexual desire much more explicitly than in the animated version. Yuki appears as an object (or obstacle) that freezes “the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (Mulvey 1975, 10). For instance, the scene of Kodai having sex with Yuki, only hinted by their falling to the floor in slow motion, literally slows the Yamato’s/Kodai’s mission of traveling to planet Iscandar and saving the world. Meanwhile, masculine power is demonstrated more assertively in the live-action version. Toward the end of the film, the Yamato is disabled by an enemy missile which clogs up the firing gate and disables the Wave Motion Gun. This leaves Kodai no choice but to execute a suicide attack alone in the battleship. This differs from the animated version in which the Yamato succeeds in removing the enemy missile, shooting the Wave Motion Gun, and returning to Earth with most of the crew intact. In the context of the film production, where the pacifist stance has been increasingly rebuked as a source of frustration by those who insist on the anti-masochistic historical view or the expansion of military power,16 the inability of the Yamato – the epitome of the nation – to use its most powerful weapon signifies the predicament of Japanese masculinity restrained by its feminine aspect: the pacifist constitution (see chapter 4 in this volume). It is important to contextualize this scene by looking at recent controversies over the revision of Japanese constitution, particularly Articles 9 and 24, which have been a controversial subject of debate since 2004.17 The articles read, in part: Article 9: 1) [T]he Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. Article 24: 2) With regard to choice of spouse . . . and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes. 104

(In)visible women

Revision advocates emphasize the need to strengthen national defense and to restore “the public” – the nation founded on the family – which was allegedly demolished by the proliferation of individualism and female liberation in postwar Japan. They argue that Article 9 withholds from Japan access to military roles, while Article 24 has stripped men of “masculinity” and women of “femininity.” In their view, women’s pursuit of their own interests and neglect of their families have caused the declining birthrate and society’s moral deterioration.18 The urge to revise these articles implies a desire to restore the outlook of prewar or wartime Japan – men fighting for the nation and women supporting them at home. The revision of both articles in the name of national defense would accentuate (hyper)gendering, by prioritizing masculinity over femininity and systematically deferring gender equality. The manifestation of masculine desire is intensified in the climactic scene by the exclusivity of brotherhood, in which the now suicide bomber Kodai crashes into the enemy while Yuki, who he has saved, can only go back to Earth. As Kodai takes off he visualizes all the male comrades who have fought alongside him and died for this mission. The scene symbolizes his detachment from the feminine (and heterosexuality) and his rejoining the ultimate homosocial world of the Yamato, invoking the vigor of brotherhood.19 It simultaneously ensures that, after all, Yuki and the other female crew are not given a chance to become noble spirits of the war dead like the (male) soldiers who died during WWII and are enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine. It is also important to emphasize, regarding his suicide attack, that Kodai does not represent the “nobility of failure,” but instead the nobility of success. That is, Kodai’s death does not indicate the collapse of the cause, but is merely a “temporary setback” to achieving the cause of a hopeful future for Earth (Japan), which will be “redeemed by his followers” (Morris 1975, xxi). These factors seem to project an even stronger national desire to fortify the masculine aspect of Japanese identity. Similar to The Men’s Yamato, men’s actions in this film are justified and glorified through Kodai’s death; his nobility (of success) will be passed down by Yuki to the next generation (of males). In fact, the denouement shows Yuki playing with her son, who we assume continues Kodai’s heroic bloodline. The film’s ending underscores the idea that the value of female labor in war does not end female subjugation in society.20 Indeed, Yuki settles into life as a mother, suggesting the impermanency of female involvement in war and heroism.

Conclusion: The Yamato myth, gendering war narratives and gendered war memories As Buruma (2009) states, “Japan is still haunted by historical issues that should have been settled decades ago” (xii), due to politics over war memories, including different perspectives of gender which is intertwined with the diplomatic stance of the nation. Postwar Japanese war films have often obscured the image of Japan as aggressor while maintaining masculinity. Japan has constantly been feminized by its pacifist constitution and its being under the protection of the U.S., which has consequently accelerated the predicament of Japanese masculinity. Analyses of The Men’s Yamato and live-action Space Battleship Yamato, against the recent trend of depreciating gender dichotomy, expose the intensity of masculine desire in recent Japan: hypergendered war memories constructed through restoring masculine war narratives. This chapter has explored nuanced manifestations of war memories and societal reconciliation in postwar Japan, shedding light on the need for mnemonic reconciliation between the sexes. It demonstrates the interplay between discourses of war, gender, and national memory. In gender relations, “privileging who and what is masculinized is inextricable from devaluing who and what is feminized” (Peterson 2010, 18). In particular, the examination of gender manifestations in Yamato films exposes the mechanisms of war narratives in which women constantly act to 105

Kaori Yoshida

prioritize the masculine desire to subordinate the female “other.” Whether visible or not, women are indispensable in war narratives to promote masculine values, which in turn shapes gendered war memories. The discussions above indicate the rather pessimistic prospects; it is hard to argue that women can be viewed as the agents of war memory-making. Instead, these films reveal the impending resurgence of old ideas – the wartime values of hypergendered roles and ultimately an inclination to war in order to reinstate powerful masculinity. The films primarily maintain the view of the nation as masculine, by highlighting male heroism and discounting the female “other.” By demonstrating the gendering mechanism of popular war narratives, this study challenges the concept of collectivity of unison war memories in postwar Japan. The recent kamikaze-Zero fighter film boom from the 2000s onward, including Fireflies (Hotaru 2001), The Men’s Yamato (Otokotachi no Yamato 2005), For Those We Love (Ore wa kimi no tamenikoso shininiiku 2007), TOKKO (2007), The Eternal Zero (Eien no zero 2014), is quite phenomenal. Meanwhile, currently ongoing political discussions in Japan include the potential rightward tilt hinted at by the history education issue, the constitutional amendment, and the rights to collective defense, all of which are triggered by the alleged need to protect the nation (and its women) from external threats, whether global terrorism, territorial conflicts, or international criticism of Japan’s historical perceptions. Considering war films as the key element of war memory-making which projects national desires, this film boom may imply Japan’s desire to retrieve wartime masculinity to justify defense and military self-vigilance.

Notes 1 The information is taken from Global Gender Gap Report. Japan’s ranking fell four places from 101st in 2012 to 105th in 2013. 2 Many scholars have pointed out gendered narratives of different wars: Jean Elshtain (1987) discusses WWI (1914–1918), and Cynthia Enloe (1993) the Cold War (1948–1989), for example. 3 Similarly, Susan R. Grayzel (1999) views women “as being central and active participants in societies mobilized for the first modern, total war” (7). 4 For example, the acceptance of strong women or “metrosexual” men. 5 It must be stressed, however, that the elevation of masculinity does not privilege all men, as ideal manliness is achieved by eliminating the feminine in the hegemonic gender discourse: homosexual and other non-conforming men are excluded from the privilege. 6 Similarly, Samuel Stouffer (1976) states that “the only situation [that] allows [men] to express [the] aspect of their manhood is war” (179). 7 “New wars” refer to wars about identity politics, battles with extreme violence, and decentralized wars (Mary Kaldor 2006). 8 Initially it was supposed to be published in 1946, but the entire section was cut by the GHQ censorship. It was finally released by Sōgensha in 1952. 9 Japan’s aggressive acts may include brutalities in Asia as well as the Pearl Harbor attack. 10 Yoshida’s Senkan Yamato no saigo is a war chronicle, which strictly sticks to historical facts concerning the Yamato’s last journey to Okinawa. 11 In postwar Japan the “The Warship March” is often associated with (neo)nationalism. Somewhat strangely, it is also played frequently in pachinko pinball parlors to boost players’ psychological excitement. The piece is also used in The Men’s Yamato, which has a similar plot to The Battleship Yamato. Many scholars point out the importance of examining both the visual and aural content of films, including how the images on the screen play off one another and interact with soundtrack (See O’Connor 1988, 1204). 12 This is cited from the public lecture by Matsumoto Reiji, the original animator of Space Battleship Yamato, in Kure City, Hiroshima, on April 7, 1998. 13 In the TV series, there are several scenes in which Yuki is sexually harassed by male figures. 14 In one scene Yuki remains in a state of apparent death, until Kodai brings her back to life. 15 Whether G.I. Jane is the ideal representation of strong women in terms of gender equality is another matter because, after all, O’Neill wins in a game which is structured by male logic (Sato 1998).

106

(In)visible women 16 This view has become influential particularly since the launch of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform in 1996 (see chapters 6 and 25 in this volume). 17 The constitutional amendment project team of the Liberal Democratic Party, the ruling party at that time, presented a draft of revision and their suggestions for amendments in June 2004. 18 See Hiroshi Nakatomi (2005:19–20). Article 24 has not been changed yet; however, its title has been changed from “Individual dignity and gender equality in family life” to “Basic principles of marriage and family.” 19 The Space Battleship Yamato series is composed of four animated films. At the end of Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato [Saraba uchūsenkan Yamato, 1978], Kodai dives on the ship into a death star to save the Earth, along with his dead girlfriend Yuki. This differs from the live-action version. 20 See Elshtain (1987), Goldstein (2001) and Maureen Honey (1984), among others.

References Ashbaugh, William. 2010. “Contesting Traumatic War Narratives: Space Battleship Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam.” In Imag(in)ing the War in Japan: Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar Literature and Film, eds. David Stahl and Mark Williams. Leiden: Brill. Buruma, Ian. 2009. The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany & Japan. London: Atlantic Books. Donald, Ralph, and MacDonald, Karen. 2011. Reel Men at War: Masculinity and the American War Film. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Dower, John. 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton. Elshtain, Jean B. 1987. Women and War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Enloe, Cynthia. 1993. The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frühstück, Sabine. 2007. Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goldstein, Joshua S. 2001. War and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grayzel, Susan R. 1999. Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Honey, Maureen. 1984. Creating Rosie the Riveter. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Hughes-Warrington, Marnie. 2006. History Goes to the Movies: Studying History on Film. London: Routledge. Igarashi,Yoshikuni. 2000. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kaldor, Mary. 2006. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. London: Polity Press. Kühne, Thomas. 1997. “Introduction.” In Men’s History: Civil Society and the Myth of ‘Manliness’ (Otoko no rekishi: shimin shakai to ‘otokorashisa’ no shinwa), trans. Haruhiko Hoshino, ed. Thomas Kühne. Tokyo: Kashiwa shobō. Landy, Marcia. 2001. “Introduction.” In The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, ed. Marcia Landy. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press. Makimura, Ken’ichiro. 2013. “Film Traveler: Men’s Yamato (Eiga no tabibito: Otokotachi no Yamato).” Asahi Newspaper, September 7, e1–e2. Misonou, Ryoko. 2009. “Women Serving in War: War and Gender through ‘The Tower of Lilies’ (Jyūgunsuru jyoseitachi: ‘Himeyuri no tō’ ni miru sensō to jendā).” In Film and War: Shooting and Watching Desires (Eiga to sensō: toru yokubō/miru yokubō), ed. Masaru Okumura. Tokyo: Moriwasha. Mizuno, Hiromi. 2007. “When Pacifist Japan Fights: Historicizing Desires in Anime.” In Mechademia, 2, 104–123. Morris, Ivan. 1975. The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan. London: Secker and Warburg. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Screen, 16, 3, 6–18. Nakatomi, Hiroshi. 2005. Constitution Article 24 + 9: Why Is Gender Equality Targeted for Revision (Kenpo 24 jō + 9 jō: naze danjo byōdō ga nerawarerunoka). Tokyo: Kamogawa shuppan. Napier, Susan. 2005a. Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation (updated ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2005b. “World War II as Trauma, Memory and Fantasy in Japanese Animation.” In Japan Focus. http://www.japanfocus.org/-Susan_J_-Napier/1972 (accessed on January 5, 2014). O’Connor, John E. 1988. “History in Images/Images in History: Reflections on the Importance of Film and Television Study for an Understanding of the Past.” In The American Historical Review, 93, 5. 1200–1209.

107

Kaori Yoshida Penny, Matthew. 2007. “‘War Fantasy’ and Reality – ‘War as Entertainment’ and Counter-Narratives in Japanese Popular Culture.” In Japanese Studies, 27, 1, 35–52. Peterson, V. Spike. 2010. “Gendered Identities, Ideologies, and Practices in the Context of War and Militarism.” In Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspective, eds. Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via. Santa Barbara: Praeger. Reardon, Betty A. 1985. Sexism and War System. New York: Teachers College Press. Rosenstone, Robert A. 2001. “The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age.” In The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, ed. Marcia Landy. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press. Saito, Minako. 2001. Only Girl in the Group Theory (Kōittenron). Tokyo: Chikuma shobō. Sato, Fumika. 1998. “The Analysis of the Discourse on American Female Warriors through G.I. Jane (America no josei heishi wo meguru gensetsu no bunseki: ‘G.I.Jane’ kara mietekuru mono).” In Annual Report of Women’s Studies Society, 19, 1–14. Seaton, Philip A. 2007. Japan’s Contested War Memories: The “Memory Rifts” in Historical Consciousness of World War II. London: Routledge. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1995. “Gosh, Boy George, you must be awfully secure in your masculinity.” In Constructing Masculinity, ed. Maurice Berger, Britain Wallis, and Simon Watson. New York: Routledge. ———. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press. Shigeno, Tatsuhiko. 1953. “Japan Film Critique, The Battleship Yamato (Nihon eiga hihyō, senkan Yamato).” In Kinema jumpo. Tokyo: Kinema jumpo sha. Sjoberg, Laura. 2010. “Gendering the Empire’s Soldiers: Gender Ideologies, the U.S. Military, and the ‘War on Terror’.” In Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspective, eds. Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via. Santa Barbara: Praeger. Sjoberg, Laura, and Via, Sandra. 2010. In Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspective, eds. Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via. Santa Barbara: Praeger. Standish, Isolde. 2000. Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: Towards a Political Reading of the “Tragic Hero.” London: Routledge. Stouffer, Samuel A. 1976. “Masculinity and the Role of the Combat Soldier.” In The Forty-Nine Per Cent Majority: The Male Sex Role, eds. Deborah S. David and Robert Brannon. New York: Random House. Suid, Lawrence H. 2002. Guts & Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Wakakuwa, Midori. 2004. Female Images Created by War (Sensō ga tsukuru jyoseizō). Tokyo: Chikuma shobō. ———. 2005. War and Gender (Sensō to gender). Tokyo: Ōtsuki shoten. ———. 2007. “Interpretation of Postwar Film from a Gender Perspective: The Case of the Men’s Yamato (Gender no shiten de yomitoku sengo eiga: ‘Otokotachi no yamato’ wo chushin ni).” In Annual Report of Wako University, Department of Transcultural Studies, East-West-South-North (To-zai-nan-boku), 6–17. Yamasato, Yuichi. 2011. “The Battleship Yamato and the Elation of Love to Special Effects Technology (Senkan Yamato’ to tokusatsu ai).” In Pacifism and Militarism through Popular Culture: Media, Gender, or Tourism (Hansen to kōsen no popular culture: media, gender, tourism), ed. Masashi Takai. Kyoto: Jinbun shoin. Yoshida, Mitsuru. 1952. Requiem for the Battleship Yamato (Senkan Yamato no saigo). Osaka: Sōgen sha.

Film Works Cited Farewell, Space Battleship Yamato (Saraba uchūsenkan Yamato). 1978. Dirs. Reiji Matsumoto and Toshio Masuda. Fireflies (Hotaru). 2001. Dir. Yasuo Furuhata. G. I. Jane. 1997. Dir. Ridley Scott. Sands of Iwo Jima (Iwo jima no suna). 1949. Dir. Allan Dwan. Silent Service (Chinmoku no kantai). 1995. Dir. Ryosuke Takahashi. Space Battleship Yamato (Uchū senkan Yamato) (animated film). 1977. Dir. Toshio Masuda. Space Battleship Yamato (Uchū senkan Yamato) (live action film). 2010. Dir. Takashi Yamazaki. The Battleship Yamato (Senkan Yamato). 1953. Dir. Yutaka Abe. The Eternal Zero (Eien no zero). 2014. Dir. Takashi Yamazaki. The Men’s Yamato (Otokotachi no Yamato). 2005. Dir. Jyunya Sato. TOKKO. 2007. Dir. Lisa Morimoto. Troy. 2004. Dir. Wolfgang Petersen.

108

PART 3

Korea, victimhood and the Cold War wounds

This page intentionally left blank

7 MEMORY WARS AND PROSPECTS FOR RECONCILIATION IN SOUTH KOREA Don Baker

In December 2012, Park Geun-hye was elected president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Her election was noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First of all, she became the first woman ever to serve as the president of Korea. Second, she is the first child of a previous president of the ROK to rise to the same high office. Those two departures from tradition are related. It is highly unlikely that the voters of South Korea would have chosen Park to be their next president if she had not been cloaked in the aura of her father’s economic record. Park Chung Hee took the ROK from poverty to prosperity over the eighteen years he was in charge, and the majority of voters clearly hoped his daughter could be equally effective in managing the economy. However, the vote was not unanimous. She was elected by a respectable but slim majority, 51.6% of the vote to 48% for her opponent. A significant minority of the ROK population does not share the positive image of Park Chung Hee held by the majority. That became clear a few months after Park Geun-hye took her oath of office in February 2013. In July 2013, Hong Ik-p’yo, at the time the parliamentary spokesperson for the main opposition party, described her as the child of someone who never should have been born. This expression of intense antipathy for Park Chung Hee threw Korean politics in another one of its frequent uproars, suspending the work of the National Assembly for a couple of days. Park Chung Hee died in 1979. Yet decades later he remains a divisive figure in Korean politics, with Koreans unable to agree on whether he should be revered for his contributions to Korea’s economic development or reviled for his authoritarian politics. Other issues from decades past also continue to provoke intense debates, revealing that Koreans have widely divergent memories of traumatic events in recent history. Japanese absorbed what had been the independent kingdom of Korea into its empire in 1910, over a century ago. Korea regained its independence starting in 1945. Yet how to remember those few decades of colonial rule, well over half a century after they ended, is still contested. The publication in 2009 of a Biographical Dictionary of Collaborators (ch’inil inmyŏng sajŏn) has kept alive the issue of nationalism, or the lack thereof, among the Korean people when they were under Japanese rule (Ch’inil Inmyŏng Sajŏn P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe 2009; see also chapter 10 in this volume). The Korean War, though fighting ended in 1953, is also the subject of competing memories, with no broad agreement among South Koreans over whether it was a civil war, with South Korea itself split between leftists and rightists, or an act of naked aggression by outsiders from north of the 38th parallel that splits the Korean peninsula in half (see chapter 21 in this volume). And the Kwangju uprising of May 1980, though it has 111

Don Baker

been officially designated a “Democratization Movement,” was once again the center of heated debated in 2013, when two cable TV networks revived assertions of a North Korean role in that uprising against a military coup.

Collective memories and competing identities South Korea is a relatively young nation, as modern nations go, though Korea itself has a very long history as an independent country. For over five centuries, from 1392 to 1910, Korea was an independent kingdom known as Chosŏn. For four and a half centuries before that, from 935 to 1392, it was the kingdom of Koryŏ (which gave us the name Korea). However, the Korea we see today is very different from the Korea that existed before the twentieth century. First of all, Korea, which was one country for a thousand years, is now split in two, with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north and the Republic of Korea in the south. Moreover, over the last half century, South Korea has undergone a dramatic transformation, moving from poverty and dictatorship to prosperity and democracy, and, in the process, from predominantly rural to overwhelmingly urban. This transformation has been so rapid, occurring over less than half a century, that a clear identity for South Korea has yet to emerge. The vast majority of South Koreans agree that the ROK has inherited the legitimacy of the governments on the peninsula that preceded the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910. South Koreans also agree that South Korea is very different from North Korea, not only because it is the only legitimate successor to Korea’s kingdoms but in many other significant aspects as well. However, they disagree over how to rank those differences. Is South Korea different from North Korea primarily because it is prosperous and an economic power in the global economy, while North Korea is poor and isolated from global markets. Or is South Korea different from North Korea primarily because it is democratic with a vigorously contested elections, a free press, and an elected president and parliament, while North Korea is a dictatorship ruled by the third generation of the Kim dynasty with no political debate allowed? Of course, all South Koreans recognize that their country is more democratic and more prosperous than its neighbor to the north, but they disagree over which difference to emphasize.1 Those differences in emphasis are revealed in the history battles that continue to rage in South Korea. Should those who worked with the Japanese during the decades of colonial rule be dismissed as a small minority with no impact on how Korea developed after 1945 or should the influence of former collaborators in independent Korea be noted and criticized? (Kim and Fine 2013; Chung 2002) Should the Korean War be seen as a civil war between Koreans divided by different visions of what Korea should look like, or should it be seen as aggression against the capitalist economy Korea was trying to create? (Cumings 1981 and 1990; Stueck 2002) Should Park Chung Hee be revered for starting Korea on the path to prosperity or should he be criticized for delaying democratization? Should the Kwangju tragedy of 1980 be seen as an important step in Korea’s progress toward democratization and therefore should the people of Kwangju be honored as heroes or should it be seen as a minor incident that have little impact on Korea’s rise to respectability in global markets today? How to remember these events from the past is at the core of South Korean politics today. The right, led in the second decade of the twentieth century by the daughter of Park Chung Hee, wants to focus on continuing economic development, which they see as the defining feature of South Korea and the major difference between South Korea and North Korea. They believe that to do so, old debates about collaborators, the Korean War, the legacy of Park Chung Hee, or the significance of Kwangju must be pushed aside as largely irrelevant. The left, on the other hand, insists that South Korea’s identity is rooted not in its factories and corporations but in its people and their power to choose their own government. Fearing that democracy is not yet firmly established in South Korea, they insist that until the issue of collaborators, the nature of the Korean 112

Memory wars and reconciliation

War, the impact of Park Chung Hee on political culture, and the Kwangju tragedy are given the attention they deserve, as well as what the left considers their correct interpretations, the possibility that Korea may suffer another turn away from democracy as it did in 1961 (the year Park seized control of the government through a military coup) and 1980 (the year of another military coup, one that provoked the Kwangju uprising) is still a matter of concern. The history wars in South Korea today are the product of attempts to promote different collective memories to support competing definitions of South Korea. Moreover, behind those competing concepts of South Korean national identity lie opposing political agendas. On the right, the assumption that Korea must be united in order to be strong enough to overcome the continuing threat from North Korea leads them to downplay or even suppress any narratives that highlight differences within the South Korean population, whether those differences are between anti-Japanese activists and collaborators, between leftists and rightists in the years leading up to the Korean War, between Park Chung Hee supporters and pro-democracy activists in the 1970s, or between the people of Kwangju and the majority of the people in the rest of the country in 1980. The left, on the other hand, believes that papering over real differences in the past creates a false democracy in which many important voices are silenced. For the left, that is a serious mistake since the broader the range of actors included in Korea’s history and in Korea’s current politics, the broader will be the base of Korean democracy. That broader base will make Korea itself a much stronger nation, one that will therefore be better positioned to deal with North Korea. North Korea is always in the background when South Koreans debate how to define South Korea. They debate over how best to contrast South Korea with North Korea and over what sort of country South Korea should be in order to deal successfully with North Korea in the years and maybe even decades to come. Moreover, both sides believe that their particular vision of South Korea’s past serves an essential integrative function, binding South Koreans together as citizens of one nation, while the opposing side’s views play a disintegrative role, turning South Koreans against South Koreans and hindering the formation of a unified national community. Those on the right assume that the differences that existed in the past must be downplayed in the interest of creating unity today, though they nevertheless wish to exclude people on the left they view as holding opinions contrary to South Korea’s national interest. Those on the left, on the other hand, assume that true unity is possible only when those with a leftist orientation are included in the national community. Such different approaches to defining South Korea, and different visions of what national unity requires, make it difficult to end the battles over history and achieve national reconciliation.

Governments and collective memories Successive governments in the Republic of Korea, both authoritarian and democratic, have tried to promote memories of the most traumatic events of modern Korean history that are compatible with their particular ideological orientations. For each of those episodes, the colonial period, the Korean War, the Park Chung Hee era, and the Kwangju uprising, there is a clear left-right divide over how to interpret their impact on Korea, and how to evaluate and remember the actions of Koreans caught up in those events. Authoritarian governments, such as those of Syngman Rhee (1948–1960), Park Chung Hee (1961–1979), and Chun Doo-hwan (2000–2008), tried to suppress memories which conflict with the memories they preferred. For example, in order to enhance their nationalistic image, they tried to eliminate any suggestions that they or their officials may have cooperated with the Japanese during the colonial period. They also suppressed any public discussions of human rights abuses by their governments and its supporters. To do that, Rhee, Park, and Chun relied on censorship, controlling what could be said about the past in what was published and what was shown 113

Don Baker

on the movie screen. Right-of-center democratic governments, such as that of Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) are subtler. Lee’s government attempted to control, discredit, and then limit funding for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that had been established in 2005 to shed light on collaboration during the colonial era and human rights abuses after 1945 (D. C. Kim 2013; Kim and Selden 2010) That commission was shut down at the end of 2010. Democratic governments, such as those led by Kim Dae Jung (1998–2003) and Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008), have been subtler. Just as authoritarian governments have done, they promoted the centuries-old Korean tradition of moralistic historiography that distinguishes good people who contribute to society from those who do it harm. The movement at the beginning of the twentieth century to “sweep away the vestiges of the past” by publicizing the “truth” about the past is one example of this.2 One way to do this was through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This movement was intended to restore honor to pro-democracy activists who were believed to have been denied proper recognition of the positive role they played in history, or to have been unjustly imprisoned, tortured, or even executed by past governments.3 This “cleansing of the past” movement was also designed to ensure that those who acted against what Korea’s progressives perceived as Korea’s national interest be identified and appropriately scorned. It was led by members of who are called the “386” generation, so-called because they had been born in the 1960s, gone to university in the 1980s, and, in the 1990s when this term was coined, were in their 30s. In other words, they were those whose formative experience was not the colonial period or the Korean War but the struggle for democracy. When they gained political power during the Kim Dae Jung and Roo Moo-hyun administrations, they used that power to reverse what had been the official verdict on the democratization movement. Korean battles over how to narrate the recent past are particularly intense because of the importance Koreans have traditionally placed on history. Korea has a long tradition of writing histories. The oldest extant history of Korea, the Samguk sagi [Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms], was compiled almost 900 years ago and was itself based on earlier histories no longer extant. History was one of the tools Koreans drew for centuries on to establish a separate and distinct cultural and national identity in East Asia. History remains useful in defining the Korean identity today. In the case of South Korea, recent history, and how it is understood, interpreted, and remembered, is essential to the construction of a national identity for South Korea. However, reaching a consensus on that history, forming a national collective memory, has proven to be a difficult task. Human beings, both as individuals and as social groups, are defined by their memories of what they have done and been. However, crafting an identity from such memories is not as simple a process as it may at first appear. Both collective memories and individuals’ memories are constructed by weaving different strands into one fabric to form a coherent but manufactured whole. The key word here is “manufactured.” It is not an automatic process. It is impossible for every single thing we have ever done or been to be given equal weight. Instead, we, both individuals and societies, have to decide which memories are essential to our identity and which are not. In other words, constructing memories requires choosing, either consciously or unconsciously, which strands, which particular memories, to include in that fabric and which to leave out. Since both individual and collective memories are manufactured, something has to be left out and therefore those memories are incomplete. However, they feel natural rather than manufactured and complete rather than incomplete because the identity those memories create is precisely the identity of the person or group that manufactured them. To deny that our memories are real would be to deny our self-identity, since it is our memories that define us (M. K. Kim 2013a). It is this equation of our memories with our identity that makes history wars so heated. Different individuals, and different social groups, use different strands and therefore construct separate identities. To challenge any of those threads integral to a particular individual or collective 114

Memory wars and reconciliation

memory by putting forward different memories as somehow more valid threatens to unravel the entire fabric of which that individual or collective was created. To try to extract as invalid particular memories from the collective memory in which they are embedded threatens the very existence of the person or group defined by that collective memory. Trying to add more threads to that fabric similarly threatens to change and undermine the entity it defines. As a result of this identification of memory and identity, history wars often become personal battles, in which each side feels it is fighting for its very right to exist. There are many battles over the past in which South Koreans, and usually North Koreans as well, stand together on one side and Japan or China stand on the other. Those battles, seen in Lee Myung-bak’s 2012 visit to the island of Dokdo (which Japan insists belongs to Japan and should be called Takeshima), in the erection in 2011 of a bronze status of a “comfort woman” across the street from the Japanese embassy in downtown Seoul, and in the establishment of the Northeast Asia History Foundation by the government of South Korea in 2006 to counter Chinese claims to ownership of the ancient Manchurian kingdoms of Koguryŏ and Parhae, are just as heated today as the internal battles among South Koreans that wage alongside them. In 2008 my university, the University of British Columbia, hosted a seminar on Koguryŏ for scholars from China, North Korea, and South Korea. It was fascinating to watch the North and South Koreans putting aside their many differences to unite in vigorously objecting to the Chinese claim that Koguryŏ was not a Korean state but instead was a subordinate state of the Chinese empire. Koguryŏ is an essential part of the Korean memory of the history that defines Korea. Koreans from both the north and south therefore felt that China, by claiming that Koguryŏ was Chinese, was threatening the very identity of Koreans as Koreans. Despite those rare moments of agreements, there are continuing heated history wars between North and South Korea. In 2013 North Korea celebrated the 60th anniversary of what it calls its victory against the American invaders in the Korean War. South Koreans instead remember a North Korean invasion of the south that ended in defeat for the North. North Korea claims that Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader of the DPRK, almost singlehandedly defeated the Japanese and forced them to end their occupation of the Korean peninsula in 1945. South Koreans credit American military might, particularly the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the defeat of the Japanese empire that resulted in Korea regaining its independence. Reconciling those contradictory visions of recent Korean history will much more difficult than reconciling the divergent views of South Koreans alone. In this chapter, however, I will put aside discussion of Korean disputes with their neighbors as well as disputes between North and South Korea to concentrate on disputes among South Koreans. Within nations, and in this chapter I treat South Korea as a separate and distinct nation, groups use different historical narratives to create, nurture, and sustain different collective memories in order to both promote in-group solidarity and create rhetorical tools to wield as weapons in political struggles. Let us now look at the four traumatic events in modern Korean history that have been the basis for such differences in collective memories: the period of Japanese colonial rule, the Korean War, Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian rule, and the Kwangju Uprising of May 1980.

Korea’s colonial experience, 1910–1945 The first traumatic event Korea as a nation endured in the twentieth century was the 35 years of Japanese colonial rule that followed the loss of independence in 1910. The hegemonic collective memory of the first half of the twentieth century, promoted by both governments and scholars, has been that very few Koreans collaborated with the Japanese during the decades they were under direct Japanese rule. Most Koreans today assume that Japanese rule did not benefit Korea 115

Don Baker

in any way and therefore only a small number of Koreans would have willingly cooperated with the Japanese exploitation of Korea and Koreans. History textbooks used in Korean classrooms focus on the resistance by Koreans to Japanese oppression. That resistance was real, but it is only part of the story. Many Koreans tolerated Japanese rule, and quite a few helped the Japanese maintain control over Korea. The story of Korean behavior from 1910 to 1945 is an ambiguous one, as anyone would realize if he or she had read and reflected on T’aep’yŏng ch’ŏnha [Peace Under Heaven], a comic novel first published in Korea in 1938 by Ch’ae Manshik (Ch’ae 1993). Though Peace Under Heaven is clearly fiction, it would not have been so popular in its day if its depiction of a Korean who profited from Japanese rule had not rung true. However, the assumption that Japanese rule was an unmitigated evil, and no self-respecting Korean would have worked with the Japanese, has led to the further assumption that those who did collaborate must have both few in number and as evil as their Japanese overlords. Over the last couple of decades, there has been an upsurge of interest in identifying those “evil” collaborators (De Ceuster 2001; Chung 2002). This growing interest led in 2009 to the publication of a Biographical Dictionary of Collaborators with information on over 4,300 people identified as collaborators. Among them is Park Chung Hee, whose service as a Japanese imperial army officer under the name of Takagi Masao provides grounds for including him on that list. The information provided in that book has proved so popular that it has even been made available as an iPhone app. On another front, in 2005 Kang Man-gil was named by Roh Moo-hyun the first chairman of a national commission to find out the truth about “pro-Japanese anti-Korean elements in Korean society.” Like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, however, that commission was also shut down in 2010 by Lee Myung-bak (Kim and Fine 2013).4 That some Koreans “collaborated” with the Japanese is undeniable, especially since the assumption in Korea today is that anyone who cooperated with the Japanese in any significant way, and profited by doing so, rather than resisting was a collaborator. However, the dominant collective memory forgets how many collaborated in that broad understanding of the term. Given the broad brush with which Koreans paint the image of collaboration, there must have been many more than the 4,300 individuals who are listed in the collaborators’ biographical dictionary. Hildi Kang’s collection of first-person accounts of life during the colonial period presents a much more nuanced range of reactions to Japanese rule in the words of Korean who lived through that period and found that, in order to survive, they had to cooperate with their Japanese overlords (Kang 2001). Unfortunately, few have been willing to pay much attention to her challenge to the hegemonic discourse. Moreover, when an American scholar pointed out that a well-respected businessman and politician, Kim Sŏngsu (1891–1951), had worked closely with the Japanese before 1945, that scholar was harshly criticized for daring to suggest that a pillar of the post-1945 nationalist establishment may have been a “collaborator,” though that American scholar never used that particular pejorative term (Eckert 1991). Among the attacks on Eckert’s attempt to question how widespread anti-Japanese resistance was a book that launched a direct challenge to Eckert’s depiction of Kim Sŏngsu with its title: A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History of Kim Sŏngsu, 1891–1955 (C. S. Kim 1998). There appears to be a strong collective will to block out memories of anything that would suggest that the majority of Koreans living in colonial Korea were not obsessed with resisting Japanese oppression. Much of the surge in interest in identifying a few conspicuous collaborators was motivated by the politics that prevailed during the Roh Moo-hyun administration. One way to attack the popularity of Park Geun-hye, the president from 2013 but the leader of the main opposition party during much the previous decade, during Roh’s time in office, was to repeatedly point out that 116

Memory wars and reconciliation

her father, the assassinated conservative authoritarian president Park Chung Hee (1917–1979), was a collaborator.5 Nevertheless, outside of a few bold academics, few are asking whether the 4,000 Koreans listed in the dictionary of collaborators represent the full extent of collaboration with the Japanese during those 35 years of colonial rule, or whether collaboration may have been much more common than that. Anyone who suggests that resistance to Japanese rule was not almost universal risks being accused of insulting the Korean people. Moreover, recognizing how much of the Korean population cooperated with the Japanese would render the frequently expressed desire to cleanse Korea of all traces of such collaboration much more difficult, if not impossible. Therefore debate within South Korea on the issue of collaboration tends to revolve around whether a limited number of specific individuals should be labeled collaborators or not, not over how widespread cooperation with the Japanese was. The right has tried to define collaboration very narrowly to protect the reputations of many of its early leaders, who first gained experience in government, business, and the military under Japanese rule, while the left has tried to broaden that definition to discredit those very same leaders.

The Korean War, 1950–1953 The debate over the Korean War is much wider ranging. Not surprisingly, that debate has brought the left-right split in Korean memories into even sharper focus. After all, not only was the Korean War one of the first major military conflicts in the Cold War pitting the forces of Communism against those of Capitalism, it also was a result of decades of arguments within the Korean nationalist community over how to resist the Japanese and what Korea should look like after the Japanese went home.6 Korea already had a sharp left-right divide before 1945, with Communists favoring armed resistance in one camp and, in the other camp, non-Communists, ranging from those who also favored violence to those who emphasized diplomacy and education as the most effective method for Korea to regain its independence. However, that political dispute did not break out into fratricidal violence until independence was handed to Korea by the outside forces that had defeated Japan. That foreign intervention meant that Korea ended up after 1945 split into a north under the control of the Soviet Union and their Korean Communist allies, and a south under the control of the United States and its anti-Communist allies. The reinforcing by foreign forces of already existing internal political disagreements heightened tension between the two sides, eventually leading to full-scale war in 1950. Scholars both in and outside of Korea argue today over whether the Korean War should be portrayed as primarily a civil war, rooted in disputes among the Koreans themselves, or as primarily growing out of the competition between the US and the USSR for hegemony in East Asia.7 However, the official and therefore dominant narrative in South Korea has been that North Korea launched a sudden unprovoked attack on June 25, 1950, and that South Koreans were almost unanimously opposed to Communism.8 The existence of a significant leftist movement in the southern part of the peninsula before 1950 was at first downplayed or denied altogether (Yoon 1992). That began to change in the 1990s, thanks to the availability in Korean bookstores of a Korean translation of Bruce Cuming’s masterful study, The Origins of the Korean War (Cumings 1981 and 1990).9 The blind spot in South Korea memories of the late 1940s and early 1950s shrunk even more in the twenty-first century under the presidency of Roh Moo-hyun, whose father-in-law had been jailed for his alleged leftist guerrilla activities (Lee 2003, 68). The first signs of change appeared, however, in 1994 when the movie Taebaek sanmaek [The Taebaek Mountain Range], by the renowned director Im Kwon-taek, hit Korean movie screens (Kim 2004). That movie, which showed bad guys and good guys in both the communist and anti-communist camps, made it clear that both sides were South Koreans, and attracted a lot 117

Don Baker

of criticism from those who do not want to be reminded that South Korea was not entirely anti-Communist in the late 1940s, and that not all the atrocities before and during the war were committed by communists.10 In 2005 Cho Chŏng-nae, the author of the novel on which that movie was based, was finally cleared of legal charges the movie provoked, namely, that his novel had violated South Korea’s National Security Law (Hankyoreh 2005). Even today, any politician or professor in South Korea who dares to point out that Kim Il Sung’s invasion of the south in 1950 was intended to reunify a divided country (which seems a fairly obvious conclusion) can expect to be condemned as a leftist subversive and possibly even face legal action.11 However, some dare to do so anyway, and debates over the Korean War are beginning to break out on Korean campus and in the media. There was even a popular movie released in 2004, Taegŭggi (known in English as The Brotherhood of War), that dared to show the ambivalence many young men felt about joining the South Korean army during that war, though that ambivalence was rooted less in leftist resistance to the ROK government than in reluctance to join in a war that literally pitted brothers against brothers. A similar blurring of the moral fault lines can be seen, surprisingly, in the War Memorial that opened next door to the US 8th Army Headquarters in Seoul in the 1990s. Though that museum doesn’t question the narrative of the Korean War that makes North Korea the aggressor, it downplays the brutality both sides displayed during that conflict and instead focuses on the hope of a future reconciliation so that there will be no inter-Korean war in the future (Jager and Kim 2007). Those who still insist on drawing a sharp line between good, nationalist South Koreans and bad, aggressive North Korean communists are often people who lived through that war and insist that the more nuanced approach to interpreting the Korean War runs contrary to their personal memories. They “remember” the war in black and white and resist any attempt to paint it shades of gray. However, it is clear that much of their memory has been shaped by the anti-Communist atmosphere of post-war South Korea and the strict government control (which only began to ease in the 1990s) over how that war could be portrayed by writers and filmmakers (Lee 2007, 70–108). Only recently have South Korean scholars and the press been able to discuss openly the atrocities committed by South Korean and US troops during the Korean War and the years that immediately preceded it. In 2000 Kim Dong-choon published a powerful study of the impact of the Korean War on the South Korean population, focusing on the killing of innocent civilians by both Communist and non-Communist forces (D. C. Kim 2000). A few years later the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began publishing the results of its own investigations into atrocities committed by US and ROK forces (Suh 2013). This exposure of misconduct by non-Communist forces provoked a strong negative reaction from many Koreans on the right. They complained that such charges were misleading because, first of all, there were very few leftists in South Korea so there were very few targets for such brutal treatment12 and, secondly, if there really were any leftists in South Korea at that time, they were traitors and deserved the treatment they received. They also insisted that those who made those allegations did so to weaken the resolve of the South Korea people to resist any future Communist aggression. Rather than bringing reconciliation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission instead fueled the mistrust between the two sides.

The Park regime, 1961–1979 It took South Korea about a decade to recover from the devastation of the Korean War. The economy began to grow rapidly in the 1960s under the guidance of a former general who had seized control of the government in a military coup in 1961. That general was Park Chung Hee, the father of the current South Korean leader, Park Geun-hye. He went on to rule South Korea 118

Memory wars and reconciliation

for 18 years from 1961 to 1979. Under his regime, Korea went from being a poverty-stricken nation to a nation of middle power status. That had been Park’s goal. He wanted South Korea to defeat the north in the race to see which would be the first to develop a fully industrialized economy recognized as a major player in the world market. However, he didn’t expect that, as the economy developed under his direction, space would be created for civil society, making it more challenging for the government to impose an official interpretation on recent history. Korea’s newly empowered civil society challenged the collective memory Park and his immediate successors tried to impose upon. No one has forgotten the rapid economic development under Park’s rule. Over his 18 years in power, per capita annual gross national product (GNP) rose from $82 in 1961 to $1,662 in 1979 (Song 1990, 80). However, even when Park had Korea under his iron thumb13 there were small groups of activists, drawn primarily from labor activists, university students, and Christians, protesting the price workers, farmers, and dissident intellectuals had to pay for Park’s single-minded focus on Korea’s economic growth. Workers were denied the right to form labor unions and, as a result, were unable to fight for livable wages and decent working conditions. Farmers suffered from an economy that depended on cheap food to feed a growing urban labor force. And students and intellectuals faced arrest, torture, and jail if they spoke out against Park’s authoritarian rule, especially after 1972 (Robinson 2007, 127–139; Sohn 2007, 125–222). After Park was assassinated in 1979, those who had challenged his policies when he was alive contested the memory of what it had been like to live under his rule. Park is accurately given credit for putting the Korean economy on the path to prosperity. However, he was also a dictator who had innocent people executed for opposing his policies (Suh 2001). Koreans today disagree over whether his economic accomplishments should overshadow his human rights records, or whether we need to highlight his authoritarian policies as a warning to future generations to never let a South Korean government go in that direction again. As was seen in the 2012 presidential election results, most Koreans who lived through that time remember him primarily for the economic growth he promoted. However, those who fought against his dictatorship, and suffered for doing so, remember his brutal dictatorship. In the immediate aftermath of the Park assassination in 1979, they were forced to remain silent by another dictatorial regime that followed his. Even then, however, there were attempts to promote counter-memories. It was not until almost 30 years after Park was shot by Kim Jae-kyu, the head of his own Central Intelligence Agency, that Park’s legacy could be debated openly. In fact, the presence of Park Geun-hye in the presidential office in 2013 made many Koreans feels it is urgent to come to some kind of definitive judgment of her father, to declare once and for all whether Park Chung Hee’s rule was good or bad for Korea in the long run.14 One question now being asked is: Was his dictatorship necessary? The answer to that question usually varies according to the political orientation of the person answering the question. Those who “remember” the protesters of that time as dangerous leftists continue to argue than Park’s iron fist was what made it possible for the Korean economy to grow as fast as it did. On the other hand, those who were tortured under Park, or had friends or family members who suffered, tend to let the memories of that personal pain outweigh any consideration of rapid economic growth. Even Park’s harshest critics don’t deny that the economy grew substantially under his iron fist. Memories of the poverty of Korea in the 1950s and the 1960s are still too fresh in the minds of the older generation to be forgotten. However, to say that economic growth occurred does not obviate the critical questions: Was the economic development that occurred under dictatorship good for the country, or should the benefits of that growth been distributed more equally? And would the economy have grown as fast or even faster under a more democratic government? The struggle over how to remember and evaluate the Park regime is waged in bookstores, movie theaters, history textbooks, and even the halls of the national assembly, as shown in the 119

Don Baker

2013 outburst by parliamentarian Hong Ik-p’yo that Park Chung Hee should never have been born. Hong had been a member of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, under which the cases of jailed and even executed on political charges under Park were re-examined to determine if they were really guilty as charged. In many instances, the conclusion was that they were innocent victims of wrongful accusations (Hong 2002, Cho 2002).15 Another sign that Park can now be openly portrayed in a negative light is a 2005 movie about his 1979 assassination. That movie, called in English The President’s Last Bang (Kŭddae kŭsaramdŭl in Korean), shows Park as more obsessed with power and sex than with developing the economy. Because such negative portrayals of Park would have been illegal in earlier decades, public memories of the Park years tended to be positive. Now that contrasting memories can compete openly, that is changing. Nevertheless, positive memories still dominate, as was shown in his daughter’s victory in 2012 presidential election. In 2012 the Park Chung Hee Presidential Library and Museum opened in northwest Seoul.16 That memorial hall is clearly designed to reinforce Park’s positive image. One of the first thing visitors will see are four statements made by foreign scholars, and two of whom (Carter Eckert and Ezra Vogel) are Harvard University professors, praising Park’s economic accomplishments. On the wall facing those statements is a chronology of Park’s life, starting in 1961. Nothing is stated about his life before his ascend to power. Moreover, the various exhibits focus on his economic accomplishments, including his New Village Movement that raised the living standards of farmers substantially, the dramatic increase in exports under his presidency, and on his personality as a loving husband and father, including a photo of him holding the family pet Chihuahua. His suppression of democracy is kept in silence. Outside that hall, a different depiction of Park Chung Hee is found. In 2012 Lee Chong-sik published a detailed study of Park’s life before 1961, including his years in the Japanese military and his involvement with leftist groups in the immediate post-liberation period (C. S. Lee 2012). And across town from the Park Chung Hee memorial hall, since 2002 the Democracy Foundation has been producing written materials and videos exalting the activists who fought against the South Korean dictators, including Park Chung Hee. In mid-2013 the lead story on the Democracy Foundation webpage was about the 1972 kidnapping of opposition politician (and later president) Kim Dae Jung by Park’s government.17 Other incidents of human rights’ violations during the Park years are also documented in that foundation’s publications. At the present time, there is no hegemonic collective memory of Park Chung Hee. He is a figure of contested historical memories: a resolute, hard-working, revolutionary leader; a nationalist hero with a passion for independence and self-reliance; and a man who lived a thrift, modest, and incorruptible life as well as an anti-national, pro-Japanese traitor; an immoral opportunist, and a brutal dictator and destroyer of democracy (Moon 2009). It may take another generation or two, after those who lived under his rule have passed away, before South Koreans will be able to agree on whether Park was good or bad for Korea.

The Kwangju tragedy May 18–27, 198018 The last of the four contested traumatic events discussed in this chapter is the most recent. The southwestern city of Kwangju (sometimes spelled Gwangju) was attacked on May 18, 1980, by South Korean armed forces in order to suppress peaceful demonstrations by supporters of Kim Dae Jung, then opposition leader. The day before a small group of generals, led by Chun Doohwan, had carried out a coup d’état in order to prevent free elections which may have brought Kim Dae Jung to power. Kwangju was the capital of Kim’s home province and a stronghold of his supporters. When his supporters continued to demonstrate despite those first assaults in 120

Memory wars and reconciliation

the morning of May 18, the military responded with even more deadly brutality. The citizens of Kwangju united against those attacks and pushed the troops out of the city on May 21, only to be overwhelmed early in the morning of May 27 when the military returned with greater numbers and deadlier weaponry.19 In the immediate aftermath of the May 18–27 attacks on Kwangju, the official account was that Kwangju had been taken over by a small number of rioters, and the government had no choice but to use force to restore order. That was never the way the people in Kwangju at that time remembered it, but it was the only way that incident could be publicly described for much of the 1980s and therefore the only way most Koreans outside Kwangju remembered it (Lewis 2002). Some people still accept the official narrative. For example, John A. Wickham, who was the commander of US Forces in Korea in the spring of 1980, wrote in his memoirs of his time in Korea that Kwangju had been taken over by rioters (Wickham 1999). The American ambassador to Korea at the time, William H. Gleysteen, was a little kinder to the people of Kwangju, but he still described the situation there as “chaos” that had to be suppressed by military force (Gleysteen 1999). In their characterizations of the situation in Kwangju, both men are relying on what they were told by Korean government and military officials at that time as well as what those officials told them in conversations later. Upon the start of Korea’s democratization in 1987, the government-imposed memory, which had never really taken hold in Kwangju itself, began to be challenged publicly elsewhere in Korea. As Korea began moving away from authoritarian rule, it became possible to discuss what happened in Kwangju and even to debate how to define it. Koreans began to discuss several key issues. Should they focus on the 1,000 to 2,000 who were killed (few scholars limit the number of dead to the official figure of around 200) and call it the Kwangju Massacre?20 Should they focus their memories on streets filled with tens of thousands of citizens peacefully demanding an end to the military rule and call it the “Kwangju democratization movement”?21 Or should they do as many activists do and focus on the few who formed a citizens’ militia that seized weapons in order to fight against the government troops who had invaded their city and killed their fellow Kwangjuites? If they choose that third approach to remembering the Kwangju uprising, then their preferred term becomes “The Kwangju People’s Righteous Uprising.” That last label is preferred both by many of those who were active participants in the resistance in Kwangju itself and by those who were not in Kwangju in 1980 but want to convert Kwangju into a symbol of popular resistance to oppression and injustice.22 What we call the Kwangju tragedy reflects what we want that incident to symbolize as much as what we actually remember. If we are from Kwangju and want to think of our city as a mecca of democracy (as the Kwangju city government now calls it), then our memories will focus on peaceful protests and we will try to forget the bloody battles between the troops and the citizen’s militia in the streets of Kwangju. If we are progressive activists and want to feel a connection with a revolutionary movement, then we will think more about the citizen’s militia and less about the average inhabitant of the city at that time. My most powerful memories are of people weeping over their dead. “Kwangju massacre” is the term that best reflects those memories. For many other Koreans, however, the Kwangju tragedy was nothing more than one of many steps in Korea’s climb toward democracy. They may call it a democratization movement or they may even call it simply the Kwangju incident, but, either way, they don’t think it deserves the amount of attention the people of Kwangju devote to it. Nor are they willing to concede that the tens of thousands supported the resistance in Kwangju, many more than the few radicals the original government report blamed. In Kwangju today, over 30 years after that tragic event, a May 18 “democracy festival” takes place annually (Lewis 2002, 99–104). However, many of those who were in Kwangju in 1980 121

Don Baker

refuse to participate in that festival because a costumed mascot (the “spirit of democracy”) dancing down the streets on which blood once flowed does not fit well with their memories. Others, however, want to celebrate in order to reinforce happier memories, memories of how the people of Kwangju came together to resist authoritarian rule. The mnemonic chasm within the community still lingers on. The memory of the Kwangju tragedy, like that of the Park regime, has not yet crystallized, not even in the city of Kwangju itself or among those who actually have personal members of those tragic days. There are Kwangjuites who felt in 1980, and still feel today, that the resistance to the brutal attacks on May 18 aggravated the soldiers, and is the reason the Special Forces troops became more brutal in the days that followed. Others argued then, and still argue today, that the citizens of Kwangju had to take up arms against those soldiers so that the rest of Korea would know that the people of Kwangju were willing to fight for democracy (D. S. Kim 1999). How the Kwangju tragedy should be remembered is therefore still being contested. Festivals promoting happier memories compete with books and other commemorative products with titles like “The May 18th movement remains unfinished” produced by progressives who continue to promote memories of Kwangju as a source of revolutionary inspiration (Baker 2003). The popularity of the 2007 movie May 18 [Hwaryŏhan hyuga, in Korean], with its realistic scenes of street violence, reinforced the image of the people of Kwangju rising up in righteous self-defense against a brutal military coup. So did the 2013 music video It’s my fault [sŭlpŭn yaksok, in Korean] by the K-Pop group Speed, which depicts high school students resisting the brutality of the Special Forces. On the other hand, there are still some who see that violence in Kwangju as such an aberration in modern Korean history that it could only have been caused by North Korean instigators. In May, 2013, two cable channels, each run by a major national newspaper, broadcast interviews with North Korean defectors who claimed that 600 North Korean soldiers had infiltrated Kwangju and instigated the uprising against the South Korean government ( Joongang Daily 2013). That unsubstantiated charge was quickly retracted by those networks but the fact that they aired such a report at all, 33 years after the Kwangju tragedy, shows that Koreans have still not been able to reconcile conflicting memories of what happened in May, 1980. Moreover, even more measured depictions of the Kwangju uprising often describe the citizens of Kwangju, angered by the arrest of their hometown hero, Kim Dae Jung, on May 17, grabbing weapons first, with soldiers responding with force to that threat. Such a narrative, though it depicts the people of Kwangju fighting political injustice instead of being manipulated by North Korean agents, nevertheless reinforces a negative image of Kwangjuites as more pugnacious, and more radical, than Koreans in other parts of the country (Jager 2013, 418). Those who were there at the time report, however, that the soldiers attacked unarmed demonstrators with clubs, bayonets, and flamethrowers starting on the morning of May 18, and the people of Kwangju did not start shooting back until May 21, when they acquired rifles looted from reserve army arsenals (J. E. Lee 1999; Chung and Rhyu 2003; Ahn 2002).

Conclusion Can these conflicting interpretations of behavior under colonial rule, of the Korean War, of Park Chung’s presidency, and of the Kwangju massacre ever be reconciled? As a historian who teaches classes on modern Korean history to university students, many of whose parents and grandparents have relayed to them their own memories of the events discussed in my lectures, I have had to help my students grapple with the relationship between collective memory and history, and between collective memory and group identity. That grappling is made more difficult when there is no consensus on how to depict and analyze an event we are discussing in class, and when there is 122

Memory wars and reconciliation

clear evidence that at least one of the competing collective memories of that event has been imposed by a government or a political group trying to promote its own self-interest or ideology. Moreover, students of Korean background often resist according any validity to an interpretation of a traumatic historical event that undermines their own understanding of what it means to be a Korean. Historical memory instills both pride and shame when it shapes collective identities, and they naturally prefer the memories that make them feel proud. However, my students should learn how to evaluate competing memories objectively. To do that, they need to understand how those memories are produced (M. K. Kim 2013b; Pool 2008). At times in modern Korean history it has been the government, wielding its command over textbooks and over the content of film and literature, which has shaped the dominant collective memory. At other times, the fierce emotion of nationalism, the desire to remember ourselves and our ancestors in the best possible light, or the relevance of a particular memory to an ongoing political struggle, has determined how we “remember” what happened. Historians, and other students of history, need to be aware of how history textbooks, film and TV dramas, museums and memorial halls, and even government “fact-finding” committees are wielded as weapons in the battles fought over how specific traumatic events in recent history are to be remembered. Once we pay more attention to how collective memories are constructed and promoted, we will become more aware of how all such memories are one-sided and incomplete. Even though we will still assume that our particular interpretation of a past event is more accurate than others, recognizing that our interpretation is not perfect and complete will make it easier for us to recognize that there may be some truth to counter-memories as well. Such recognition that we can learn from those who disagree with us is the first step toward reconciling the different sides of these history wars. Is such reconciliation possible? As a historian, I believe it is in the long term, over decades rather than mere years. Once those who have personal experience with the contentious historical events discussed in this chapter, or have parents or grandparents who have passed on their passionate views about those events to the next generations, have passed from the scene, reconciliation will definitely be possible. When a past linked to recent personal experience fades into a distant past that is not part of the personal experience of anyone alive to discuss it, it is easier to view it objectively, and to accept changes in how we have view that past. But that will take a few more years, probably even decades. Can reconciliation come any sooner than that? Maybe, but it will still be a slow process unless the parties with contentious interpretations make conscientious efforts to compromise and to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other’s point of view. Reconciliation will take a long time because Koreans are disagreeing about more than just how to evaluate specific moments in South Korea’s recent history. They are at variance over how to define Korea, and what direction Korea should take as it moves into the future. Their arguments are generated by political and philosophical differences. On one side, the rightist camp, are those who not only prefer to define South Korea primarily in terms of its capitalism and economic success but also prefer to view the population of South Korea as united by common values and goals and therefore reject any historical interpretations that posits significant differences among the population. However, they exclude from that united national community Koreans who have, in the view of the right, been influenced by non-Korean views of the North Korean Communists or non-Koreans. On the other side, the left, are those who prefer to define South Korea primarily as a democratic country, which to them means recognizing that there are real differences among South Koreans both in political philosophy and in expectations for how the benefits of economic growth should be distributed. However, while insisting that significant differences in both opinion and interests must be acknowledged, the left also calls for marginalizing those with significantly different views from their own, primarily those the left interprets as 123

Don Baker

representing the privileged minority of the rich and powerful and therefore a threat to democratization. With each side denying full legitimacy to the views of the other side, the compromises necessary for reconciliation will be difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, some progress to transcend the South-South divide has already been made. Younger scholars have begun to produce more nuanced interpretations of the lives of some of those deemed collaborators during the colonial period, but the general public continues to view the actions of Koreans during that time in black-and-white terms. Moreover, the attempt to view the colonial period in terms of shades of gray has been offset by the growing interest in exposing those who themselves, or whose ancestors, worked with the colonial authorities rather than resisting them. In addition, Korea tried a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address atrocities during the Korean War and human rights abuses afterwards, but that ended up angering the right and emboldening the left, hardening and widening the gap between them (Kim and Selden 2010; D. C. Kim 2013). Finally, though the Kwangju incident is now officially a “democratization movement,” there are still great discrepancies in how the people who were in Kwangju in 1980 remember those days and interpret their significance and how most of the rest of the Korean population thinks about the actions of the Kwangjujites at that time. The candles illuminating the path to reconciliation may be dim, but they are still burning. As these four traumatic events fade into a more distant past, taking with them the emotions they now arouse, future generations of Koreans, scholars and non-scholars alike, may be able to find more common ground in their interpretations of these formative events in South Korea’s twentiethcentury history. In the decades ahead, they may also find a way to bridge the chasm that now divides South Korean and North Korean views of recent history, and perhaps even reconcile the different visions China, Japan, and Korea have of the history of East Asia. Such reconciliation is essential, since the only alternative to peaceful coexistence is continuing conflict, and that is not an acceptable alternative.

Notes 1 All surveys of the modern history of the Korean peninsula published in South Korea describe North Korea as behind South Korea both politically and economically. However, there are significant differences in what those textbooks emphasize. For example, one popular textbook, Uri Yŏksa (Han 2002), focuses on the failure of the North Korean economy compared to economic success of the South. Another textbook, Understanding Korean History (Baek et al. 2011), pays more attention to the contrast between democratization in the south and continued totalitarian rule in the north. 2 For example, see the special issue of Korea Journal, 42:3 (Ahn Byung-ook et al. 2002), on “The Issue of Settling the Past in Modern Korean History,” and the special issue of the Review of Korean Studies, 6: 1 (June, 2003), on “Redressing the Past Injustices: The Complex and Contested Dynamics of the Movement” (Academy of Korean Studies 2003). Both journals were published by organizations with ties to the Roh Moo-hyun government. 3 In one such example of exoneration, in 2007 a court in Seoul, after reviewing the evidence, ruled that eight men who had been executed in 1975 on charges of subversive activities as leaders of a “People’s Revolutionary Party” were innocent of all the charges against them. The court ordered the government to provide compensation to their survivors. OhmyNews 2007 4 Lee then went farther and issued a public declaration pardoning collaborators. (Morris-Suzuki 2013, 165) 5 Ironically, among the descendants of collaborators exposed in this drive were parliamentarians from the ruling party that launched this attack, including its parliamentary leader. (Brooke 2004) 6 For a succinct summary of the various types of Korean nationalism in the first half of the twentieth century, see Robinson (2007). For arguments for different types of nationalism in the words of Korean nationalists themselves, see Ch’oe et al. (2000). 7 For a glimpse of the two contrasting approaches to explaining the Korea War, see Stueck (2004) and Holliday and Cumings (1988).

124

Memory wars and reconciliation 8 Two English-language examples of this approach are Paik (1992) and Kim (1973). 9 For a challenge to Cuming’s view that the origins of the Korea War can be found in the left-right split that existed in Korea before 1950, see Stueck (2002). Stueck’s book reflects the dominant memory of the Korean War by those on the right in South Korea itself, while Cuming’s book has been favored by those on the left for recovering memories of indigenous South Korean leftism. 10 For more on the difficulties Koreans have remembering the Korean War as it actually was, with atrocities committed by both sides, see D. C. Kim (2002). 11 See, for example, the case of the sociology Professor Kang Jeong-koo from Seoul’s Buddhist Dongguk University. (Cho 2005) Professor Kang would have been safe from legal action if he had said that Kim Il Sung intended to conquer South Korea rather than saying that Kim wanted to reunify South and North Korea. In Korea, reunification is viewed as a laudable goal. Therefore in South Korea it is not supposed to be ascribed to Communists. 12 This dismissal of the possibility of indigenous leftist forces in the southern part of the peninsula ignores such major uprisings as the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1946 (Cumings 1981, 351–82) and the civil war on Cheju Island (Merrill 1989; Kim S.N. 2000; Kwon 2013). 13 In 1972, after winning three presidential elections, Park annulled the constitution under which those elections had been held and made himself president for life. He also outlawed any criticism of the way he exercised his unbridled power. 14 At the beginning of the twenty-first century a number of studies of Park’s double legacy appeared. For a concise summary of the debates over how to remember Park, see Moon (2009). Three book-length studies are particularly relevant: B. C. Lee (2003); Kim and Sorensen (2011); and Kim and Vogel (2011). 15 For a detailed report on suspicious deaths under both the Park regime and the Chun Doo-hwan regime that followed, see Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths, ed. (2004). 16 Information on that memorial hall can be at http://parkchunghee.co.kr. The controversy over that hall is discussed in Korea Times found 2012. 17 http://old.kdemo.or.kr/eng/, accessed June 15, 2015. Among the English-language publications of the Democracy Foundation are Lee and Thorpe 2010. 18 I use the neutral term “tragedy” even though what transpired in Kwangju from May 18 through May 27, 1980, is usually called a “massacre,” “democratization movement,” or “people’s righteous uprising” and was originally labeled by the South Korean government a riot or just an “incident.” 19 For more on what happened in Kwangju in May 1980, see Scott-Stokes and Lee Jae Eui (2000). 20 The official website of the May 18 Memorial Foundation (http://eng.518.org) gives a number of less than 200 confirmed deaths. Accessed August 13, 2013. However, a study published by the Korea Democracy Foundation, a government-funded institution, pointed out that “The exact number of civilian victims during the Kwangju Uprising is still unknown.” (Chung and Rhyu 2003, 385) In May, 1980, I talked with an American reporter who told me that he had personally counted over 400 corpses. 21 In 1993, when former pro-democracy politicians Kim Young-sam assumed the presidency, he applied the label “the Kwangju Democratization Movement” to the resistance by the citizens of Kwangju against Chun Doo-Hwan’s coup. That has become the official designation. 22 Two books promoting the “righteous uprising” interpretation of the Kwangju incident are Choi (1999) and Chung and Rhyu (2003).

References Ahn Byung-ook et al. (2002) “Special Issue: The Issue of Settling the Past in Modern Korean History,” Korea Journal, 42:3 (Autumn). Ahn, J. C. (2002) “The Significance of Settling the Past of the December 12 Coup and the May 18 Gwangju Uprising,” Korea Journal, 42:3 (Autumn), 112–38. Baek, O., Cho, J., Cho, D., Ham, D., Jung, B., Lee, Y., and Sohn, J. (2011) Understanding Korean History (Seoul: Ewha University Press). Baker, D. (2003) “Victims and Heroes: Competing Visions of May 18,” Shin Gi-wook and Kyung Moon Hwang, eds. Kwangju: The May 18 Uprising in Korea’s Past and Present (New York: Rowman & Littlefield), 87–107. Brooke, J. (2004) “Trying to Stone Collaborators, Seoul Party Hits Glass House,” New York Times, September 8. http://www.nytimes.com, accessed August 13, 2013. Ch’ae, Man-shik. (1993) Peace Under Heaven, trans. Chun Kyung-ja (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe).

125

Don Baker Ch’oe, Y. H., Lee, P., and de Bary, W., ed. (2000) Sources of Korean Tradition, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press). Ch’inil Inmyŏng Sajŏn P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe, ed. (2009). Ch’inil inmyŏng sajŏn [Biographical Dictionary of Collaborators] (Seoul: Minjok munje yŏn’guso). Cho, C. U. (2005) “Kang Case Rekindles Debate on National Security Law,” Korea Herald, October 17. http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu, accessed August 13, 2013. Cho, H. Y. (2002) “Sacrifices Caused by State Violence under Military Authoritarianism and the Dynamics of Settling the Past during the Democratic Transition,” Korea Journal, 42:3, 163–93. Choi, J. W. (1999) The Gwangju Uprising: The Pivotal Democratic Movement that Changed the History of Modern Korea, trans. Yu Y. N. (Paramus, NJ: Homa & Sekey). Chung, S. Y., Rhyu, S. M., et al. (2003) Memories of May 1980: A Documentary History of the Kwangju Uprising in Korea, trans Park H. J. (Seoul: Korea Democracy Foundation). Chung, Y. T. (2002) “Refracted Modernity and the Issue of Pro-Japanese collaborators in Korea,” Korea Journal, 42:3, 18–59. Cumings, B. (1981) The Origins of the Korean War, Vol. 1: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). ———. (1990) The Origins of the Korean War,Vol. 2: The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). De Ceuster, K. (2001) “The Nation Exorcised: The Historiography of Collaboration in South Korea,” Korean Studies, 25:2, 207–42. Eckert, C. (1991) Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press). Gleysteen, W. H. (1999) Massive Entanglement, Marginal Influence: Carter and Korea in Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press). Han, Y. (2002) Uri Yŏksa [Our History] (Seoul: Kyŏngsewŏn). Translated into English as A Review of Korean History by Hahm Chaibong (Seoul: Kyongsaewon, 2010). Hankyoreh English (2005) “11 Years of Torture for Novel Taebaek Sanmaek,” Hankyoreh English, March 30. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/22271.html, accessed August 13, 2013. Holliday, J., and Cumings, B. (1988) Korea: The Unknown War (New York: Pantheon). Hong, S. (2002) “Finding the Truth on the Suspicious Deaths under South Korea’s Military Dictatorship,” Korea Journal, 42:3, 139–62. Jager, S. M. (2013) Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (New York: W.W. Norton). Jager, S. M., and Kim J. Y. (2007) “The Korean War after the Cold War: Commemorating the Armistice Agreement in South Korea,” S. M. Jager and R. Mitter, eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the PostCold War in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 233–65. Joonang Daily (2013) “TV Shows Tarnish Gwangju History,” Joonang Daily, May 21, http:// koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2971886, accessed April 25, 2014. Kang, H. (2001) Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Kim, B. K., and Vogel, E., ed. (2011) The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Kim, C. K. (1973) The Korean War, 1950–53 (Seoul: Kwangmyong). Kim, C. S. (1998) A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History of Kim Sŏngsu, 1891–1955 (Albany: State University of New York Press). Kim, D. C. (2000) The Unending Korean War: A Social History, trans. Sung-ok Kim (Larkspur, CA: Tamal Vista). ———. (2002) “Beneath the Tip of the Iceberg: Problems in Historical Clarification of the Korean War,” Korea Journal, 42:3, 60–86. ———. (2013) “The Long Road toward Truth and Reconciliation: Unwavering Attempts to Achieve Justice in South Korea,” J. J. Suh, ed., Truth and Reconciliation in South Korea: Between the Present and Future of the Korean Wars (New York: Routledge), 19–38. Kim, D. C., and Selden, M. (2010) “South Korea’s Embattled Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Asia-Pacific Journal, 9–4–10, March 1. http://www.japanfocus.org/-Kim-Dong_choon/3313/article. html, accessed June 15, 2015. Kim, D. S. (1999) “Meaning Construction of the Kwangju Pro-democracy Movement and Futuristic Frame,” Korea Journal, 39:2, 205–37. Kim, H. A., and Sorensen, Clark W., ed. (2011) Reassessing the Park Chung Hee Era, 1961–1979 (Seattle: University of Washington).

126

Memory wars and reconciliation Kim J. C. and Fine, G. A. (2013) “Collaborators and National Memory: The Creation of the Encyclopedia of Pro-Japanese Collaborators in Korea,” Memory Studies, 6:2, 130–45. Kim, K. H. (2004) The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Kim, M. K. (2013a) “On Korean Memory,” Memory Studies, 6:2, 125–29. Kim, M. K. (2013b) “The Changing Faces of Heroines: Korean Women in Folklore,” Memory Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (April): 218–23. Kim, S. N. (2000) “Mourning Korean modernity in the memory of the Cheju April Third Incident,” InterAsian Cultural Studies, 1:3, 461–76. Kim, T. C. (Kim D. C.) (2000) Chŏnjaeng kwa sahoe: Uri-ege Han’guk chŏnjaengŭn muŏt iŏnna [War and Society: What Does the Korean War Mean to Us Today?] (Seoul: Tol Pegae). Translated into English and published as Kim, Dong-Choon (2009) The Unending Korean War: A Social History, trans. Sung-ok Kim (Larkspur, CA: Tamal Vista). Korea Times (2012) “Park Chung Hee Memorial Hall Opens Amid Dispute,” Korea Times, February 21. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/07/113_105397.html, accessed August 13, 2013. Kwon, H. (2013) “Legacies of the Korean War: Transforming Ancestor Rituals in South Korea,” Memory Studies, 6:2, 161–73. Lee, B. C., ed. (2003) Developmental Dictatorship and the Park Chung-hee Era: The Shaping of Modernity in the Republic of Korea (Paramus, NJ: Homa & Sekey). Lee, C. S. (2012) Park Chung-hee: From Poverty to Power (Palos Verdes, CA: KHU Press). Lee, H. Y. (2003) “South Korea in 2002: Multiple Political Dramas,” Asian Survey, 43:1, 64–77. Lee, J. E. (1999) Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age, trans. Kap Su Seol and Nick Mamatas (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series). Lee, M. S., and Thorpe, N. (2010) The History of the Democratization Movement in Korea (Seoul: Democracy Foundation). Lee, N. (2007) The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Lewis, L. (2002) Laying Claim to the Memory of May (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). Merrill, John (1989) Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses). Moon, S. S. (2009) “Cultural Politics of Remembering Park Chung Hee,” Asia-Pacific Journal, 19–5–09 (May 9), http://japanfocus.org/-Seungsook-Moon/3140, accessed August 11, 2013. Morris-Suzuki, T. (2013) “Heroes, Collaborators and Survivors: Korean Kamikaze Pilots and the Ghosts of War in Japan and Korea,” T. Morris-Suzuki, M. Low, L. Petrov, and T. Tsu, eds., East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence (New York: Routledge), 164–89. OhmyNews. (2007) “Mujoe, mujoe, mujoe: idŭl-ŭi ŏgulhan hŭisaengŭn ŏjjihana” [Innocent, Innocent, Innocent: How Could They Have Lost Their Lives on Such False Charges?], OhmyNews.com, January 23. http://5505.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0000387870, accessed August 8, 2013. Paik, S. Y. (1992) From Pusan to Panmunjon (New York: Macmillan). Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths, ed. (2004) A Hard Journey to Justice (Seoul: Samin). Review of Korean Studies (2003) “Redressing the Past Injustices: The Complex and Contested Dynamics of the Movement,” Review of Korean Studies, 6:1 (June). Robinson, M. (2007) Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). Scott-Stokes, Henry and Lee Jai Eui, ed. (2000) The Kwangju Uprising: Eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea’s Tiananmen (Armonk, NY: East Gate). Sohn J. I. (2007) Contemporary History of South Korea – 60 years, trans. Seo J. (Seoul: Korea Democracy Foundation). Song, B. N. (1990) The Rise of the Korean Economy (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press). Stueck, W. (2002) Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). ———. (2004) The Korean War in World History (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press). Suh, J. J., ed. (2013) Truth and Reconciliation in South Korea: Between the Present and Future of the Korean Wars (New York: Routledge). Suh, S. (2001) Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag, trans. Jean Inglis (New York: Rowman & Littlefield). Wickham, J. A. (1999) Korea on the Brink: From the “12/12 incident” to the Kwangju Uprising, 1979–80 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press).

127

8 TRACING MEMORIES OF TAUCHI CHIZUKO Korean memories of historical shame and the “Japanese mother of Korean War orphans” Mikyoung Kim

Introduction: At the intersection of political and personal A person’s lived life is situated in a social milieu where the personal and the political intersect with each other (Wright Mills 1959). The two domains interweave and interconnect the demarcations between social history and individual memory. This dynamic exchange validates personal narratives as a crucial component of collective memory. Personal narratives serve and sustain the storied community (see Davis 2011). This chapter on the living memory of Ms. Tauchi Chizuko, the “Japanese mother of Korean War orphans,” contextualizes her life and postmortem commemoration in the tumultuous Korea-Japan relations. Japan’s colonial annexation of Korea (1910–45) and the Korean War (1950–53) are the two definitive sources of historical shame in Korean memory. Schwartz and Kim (2002: 213) report that the majority of 57 percent and 25 percent of their opinion poll survey participants named colonial subjugation and the fratricidal war as most shame-provoking past events.1 In a very similar subsequent questionnaire survey conducted in 2013, Kim (2014) finds striking continuity over the 10-year span. About 65 percent and 28 percent of the total respondents named Korea’s loss of sovereignty to Japan and the inter-Korea war as the two major shame-provoking historical pasts.2 The living memories of Ms. Tauchi Chizuko (hereafter, Tauchi) are located at the intersection of these two significant events in Korean historical perception. They, of course, differ in terms of the origin, trajectory and the outcome. And yet the differences carry little significance in our tracing of Tauchi’s memories, for she lived through them as an accidental but active participant. Inspiring figures are not rare, and most of them do not survive the erosive powers of time. Tauchi “did” what she “had to do” without giving much meaning to daily survival as mundane imperatives. Yet still her life stories connote “something” meaningful and worthy of remembrance in Korean memory. This chapter purports to find and analyze that “something.” What about her life that makes it worthy of remembering? Do the Koreans and the Japanese have similar commemorations of her life? If not, why and how do they differ? In the cliché of selective remembering and forgetting, what keeps Tauchi’s memory alive? How did her memory change over time and in what context? Is what we remember about Tauchi really about her life? Or is it more about our contemporaneous milieu? 128

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko

Tauchi Chizuko, her life as has been told Tauchi (1912–68) was a taciturn woman. She did not talk much, and did not leave much by way of written records. We know of her through newspaper chapters, biographies, TV shows, radio programs and a film. These are inevitably all post-hoc: she exists as a (re)constructed persona in our (re)constructed memory. Who was this Japanese woman known to have raised 3,000 Korean orphans? The year 2012 marked Tauchi’s centennial. She was born on October 31, 1912, and died on her birthday in 1968. Japan’s national television station, NHK, aired a special variety show, World Wave, in 2012 which combined the ongoing territorial disputes with Tauchi’s life story. The intended message was clear: the two countries share an inspiring episode from the past and should get on with a friendly spirit. She (re)emerged as a symbol of bilateral reconciliation in the times of contentious politics. Below is a compiled and abridged summation of her life narrated by the important others. The source materials are: Moriyama Satoshi’s Song of a Pearl [Jinju’eui Norae] (translated by Yoon Ki, 2012), The Foolish Mother [Omoni’nun Babo’ya] (Yoon Ki and Yoon Fumie, 2012), Kimchi and Umeboshi [Kimchi’wa Umeboshi] (Yoon Ki, 2001), and Arumdaun Yusan [Beautiful Heritage] (Chung Hoon, 2003). The contents of these narratives overlap to a degree, and yet the perspectives differ substantially per positionality. Moriyama’s book provides rich details of her life, while Chung’s biography portrays the life of a devout Christian. The other two books by her son and daughter-in-law, Yoon Ki and Yoon Munji, are primarily about his own childhood, and the second and third generations of social welfare services in Korea and Japan.

Relative histories as collective memory Historical recollections narrated by relatives (or significant others) mediate between individual memories and social history. This is particularly so for diasporic communities for their transnational experiences are out of sync with national history (Davis 2012). Tauchi was no exception to this, for Japan’s colonial rule entailed systematic and massive relocation of Japanese population to the Korean peninsula (Uchida 2011). Tauchi was born in the Wakamatsu City of Kochi Prefecture in 1912. Tauchi and her mother, Haru, moved to the Korean peninsula in 1918 when she was seven years of age.3 The move was to join her father, a colonial government official, in the port city of Mokpo in the Southwestern part of the peninsula. All her schooling took place in the Mokpo City, where Tauchi benefitted from the privileged colonial education reserved for Japanese citizens. Tauchi’s encounter with Takao Matsutaro, a high school teacher, was a crucial momentum, for he instilled cosmopolitan Christian ethics during her formative years. She was alerted to the harsh colonial realities with religious compassion. The teacher’s words clearly dealt with Japan’s colonial brutality, Korea’s victimhood and the need for Japan to repent for the invasion. Tauchi, born, raised and educated in the Christian faith, developed a perspective very different from the dominant ruling ideology of “naisen ittai [Korea and Japan as one].”4 Christianity never prospered in Japan after its violent suppression in the 16th century. The Christian believers always have been the minority, at less than 1 percent of the total population. Tauchi’s Christian worldviews instilled at home and the school was indeed a rarity, and this explains her unusual life choices, including marrying a Korean man of extremely humble origin. In the spring of 1929 upon her graduation from high school, Tauchi began her work as a music teacher at the Jungmyung Girls’ High School. After three years of teaching, she developed an ovarian cystic tumor, and underwent a surgery that required a prolonged period of hospitalization. She spent many hours reading the Bible for consolation during the difficult moments. 129

Mikyoung Kim

Upon recovery Takao suggested Tauchi volunteer at the orphanage located at the city’s periphery. She began teaching the Korean orphans music and the Japanese language. The facility, Gongsaengwon, was run by Yoon Chi Ho, an evangelist, known as the “leader of beggars.” Chi Ho and Tauchi got married in 1938. He was 29 and she was 26 years of age. Chi Ho already had a daughter and a wife from the previous arranged marriage, a customary practice of the time. While their inter-ethnic and cross-social strata marriage produced hostility and contempt from the local Japanese community (Uchida 2011),5 it became the talk of the town, drawing indigenous Koreans’ curiosity. The couple produced four children together. Japan’s defeat in 1945 brought about the harsh reversal of reality for the Japanese living in Korea. In the post-liberation chaos, the couple became the target of anti-Japanese campaigns. The Korean neighbors came to their defense when they were accused of pro-Japanese collaboration at the people’s court. This, however, could not stop the persistent harassments and threats launched against Tauchi, and she decided to return to her mother’s house in the Kochi Prefecture in 1946. Their three children went with her.6 After living in Japan for two years, they returned to her husband in the Gongsaengwon in 1948. This return to the orphanage was another defining momentum in Tauchi’s life. She started a new life in liberated Korea. She never again uttered a word of the Japanese language, and began wearing chima-chogori (traditional Korean costume) in daily life. She also changed her name from Tauchi Chizuko to Yoon Hak Ja. Her motherhood also changed. She put her own children in the orphans’ compartments and began treating them equally with the rest of the children at the orphanage. Only two years after her return to the peninsula, there awaited another challenge to the family. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 cemented Tauchi’s lasting role as the “Mother of Korean War Orphans.” And it came with a personal tragedy. When the city of Mokpo was under the control of North Korean Army, the Tauchi couple was put on summary trial as pro-Japanese anti-revolutionaries. Her Japanese nationality was the primary ground for the accusation. Tauchi appealed to the North Korean military that she alone should be blamed for any wrongdoings and her husband should be spared. The villagers again came to their defense, and they were spared of their lives. Their safety did not last long in the unpredictable warfare. The couple, this time, was accused of being communist-sympathizers when the South Korean Army recovered the city in two months after the Communists’ summary trial. Her husband, Chi Ho, was arrested by the South Korean Army and sent to the prison in 1950. Upon the release he went to the adjacent city of Kwangju in order to find food and other basic necessities for the orphans. The number of orphans was increasing day by day as the war was getting more violent. The Korean War was becoming an international warfare involving China and the US by then. Chi Ho never returned to the Gongsaengwon from the trip. The last eyewitness saw him leaving the inn late at night in the company of three or four young men. Nobody knows what happened to Chi Ho after that night. Only speculations remain. One scenario is that North Korean soldiers engaging in guerrilla attacks kidnapped and killed him. Another scenario says that he was shot by the South Korean army, for they regarded him as Communist collaborator. Tauchi’s husband went missing without leaving a trace. Tauchi now had no other choice but to take care of the orphans on her own. During the three-year war period (1950–53), she provided shelter and other basic necessities to the thousands of Korean War orphans. Her life was changed from an assisting spouse to the “Japanese mother of Korean War orphans.” This was an unexpected, unplanned transition and Tauchi took it in a stride. Management of the Gongsaengwon changed hands during the war period. Her foreigner status prevented Tauchi from legally assuming the directorship, and she asked Chi Ho’s ministerial 130

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko

colleague to act as the orphanage’s director on her behalf. As the Korean War brought about many unprotected children, a substantial amount of foreign aid began to funnel into the society primarily through the US government and Christian missions. The relief programs delivered more of basic goods to the orphanage, with some of it in cash payment per head count. The increasing amount and types of aid programs poisoned the trusting relations between Tauchi and the ministerial colleague. The latter tried to take over the orphanage by deceiving the children into the facility he hastily assembled without Tauchi’s consent. The introduction of relief programs fueled different kind of greed amid the fratricidal bloodshed. With the challenges and betrayals unfolding, Tauchi’s work began to receive attention. Recognitions and merits were awarded by the local and central governments of Korea. The Japanese government joined Korea by awarding her of merits in 1952 and in 1969. Tauchi passed away on October 31, 1968, on her 56th birthday.

Four defining momentums in memorializing Tauchi Memory is never constant. It often grows, flourishes, dwindles and dies out. A memory, however, does not have a prescribed life cycle or even an orderable life stages. Some pasts hold out longer than others, while others reach us without prior warnings. Living memories of Tauchi had four stages: her death and funeral in 1968; the film and its controversies in 1997 and 1998; Yoon Midori and Prime Minister Obuchi’s plum trees in 2008; and her centennial in 2012.7 The mnemonics were riding the tides of temporal milieu crafted primarily by commemorative agents. Periodic resurfacing of Tauchi’s memory can be explained by the workings of commemorative media and agencies (Kim 2013). A media analysis of TV shows, radio programs, and newspaper and magazine reports shows how they have been creating, embellishing and sustaining Tauchi’s symbolic images in popular memory. Her son, in particular, is at the center of meaning-seeking and meaning-giving activities to his mother’s life narratives. The media and the agencies have been feeding each other in their reenactment of Tauchi’s symbolism, thus keeping it alive.

The funeral (1968) Tauchi collapsed on October 19, 1967, and could not recover from it. The diagnosis was lung cancer. After spending one year in sick bed, she passed away at 56 years of age. The city of Mokpo organized its very first “Citizens’ Funeral” for Tauchi. About 20,000 citizen mourners and 200 Gongsaengwon graduates attended to pay tribute to the deceased. The local newspaper reported that “Sadness-stricken City of Mokpo holding its first citizens’ funeral . . . the entire city wept. The mourners along with the orphans cried together (Moriyama 2012: 291).”8 The funeral also drew national media attention, which described the solemn and somber funeral atmosphere with the headline, “In the company of 30,000 mourners . . .” (The Daily Chosun 1968: 7). Such public mourning was not a happenstance: she was admired and respected by those nearby and afar. The neighbors came to her defense amid the post-liberation chaos and the Korean War persecutions. The citizens of Mokpo knew of the Japanese woman pushing the food cart to feed the Korean War orphans. The South Korean Minister of Health and Welfare commanded her for the selfless social service in 1952, a remarkable timing with the Korean War ferociously unfolding (Pierpaoli 2013a). The national government of South Korea acknowledged her work again in 1963 with an Order of Cultural Merits followed by the Moko City’s First Citizens’ Award in 1965. The funeral was a public commemoration of spectacular affect to the humble life of Japanese Mother of Korean War orphans. 131

Mikyoung Kim

The Apocalypse of Love, a film (1997–98) Tauchi’s memory lapsed into oblivion until the release of a biographical film, The Apocalypse of Love, in 1995.9 Her son, Yoon Ki (Japanese name: Tauchi Motoi), became the director of an elderly care facility in the Osaka Prefecture, Furusato’no Ie [A Hometown House], and managed to raise 200 million yen to produce the film. The film drew about one million Japanese viewers and entered seven film festivals. The public was receptive to the dramatic and touching life stories of Tauchi. Japan in the pre-bubble-bursting era was looking for inspirations that went beyond rampant materialism, and The Apocalypse of Love reached the audience with the messages of unconditional love, self-sacrifice and perseverance. Unlike in Japan, the film was at the center of controversy in Korea not because of its content, but because of its ideational ambiguity. The Korean government at that time was imposing import restrictions on Japanese cultural products for their “hedonistic” character. The funding, production staff and leading actress were Japanese, while the director, leading actor and children playing the orphans were Koreans. The collaborative film transcended national boundaries, contributing to acute identity politics. The major dailies of Korea began carrying opinion pieces advocating a change in the government’s restriction policy. Munhwa Ilbo (1998), for instance, stated that “The Apocalypse of Love directed by Kim Soo Yong is a Korean film by any person’s standard.” Han Unsa, a renowned script writer, wrote in his Daily Chosun (1998: 26) article that “A famous film critic seated next me during the film screening said, ‘how could there be any problem in showing this film to the Korean viewers? How does this movie differ from any other Korean productions? I see no problem whatsoever in showing it to the Korean viewers.’” Another daily, The Daily Dong-A (1998: 17), went further to claim it Korean by reporting that “He [Yoon Motoi, the film producer] said in a very clear Korean pronunciation that ‘I am having a hard time understanding the reason why this film is banned in Korea.’ ” The changing bilateral environment was conducive to the appeals. In October 1998 the Korean President Kim Dae Jung (1924–2009 [r. Feb. 1998–Feb. 2003]) and the Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo (1937–2000 [r. July 1998–April 2000]) agreed to Seoul’s relaxation towards the imports of Japanese cultural products. And The Apocalypse of Love was selected as the first Japanese film to be shown in Korea. Korea’s first lady, Lee Hee Ho, attended the historical screening in May 1998. Kim Soo Yong, the film director, articulated its symbolic message by stating, The Korea-Japan relations are intriguing because of the confrontational reality hidden beneath the peaceful surface. This film contains the wishes of Korean and Japanese film makers who have been trying to find ways to promote better understanding between the two countries. Our work domain is different from that of politicians. We wanted to improve the bilateral relations by making a film on Ms. Tauchi Chizuko. ( The Daily Maeil Kyungjae 1997: 21) The devoted commemorative agencies, such as Tauchi’s son and his supporters, engaged in careful reading of the changing times, and revived the fading memories of Tauchi after 30 years of public forgetting.10

The granddaughter, Yoon Midori, and Obuchi’s plum trees (2008) The second and third generations of the Tauchi family make a tight and very extensive network of social service workers. When marrying Tauchi, her husband, Chi Ho, agreed to enter her 132

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko

Japanese family registry as the adopted son. This was a common Japanese custom to continue the family lineage when only a girl child was born into the family. All the four children of Tauchi and Chi Ho as a consequence are Japanese nationals. Tauchi’s children and their spouses, and 12 out of 20 grandchildren, are continuing the family tradition in social welfare work.11 Yoon Rok (Japanese name: Yoon Midori), the only child of Yoon Motoi and Fumie, came to the Mokpo City in 1998 to assume the sixth directorship of Gongsaengwon. The 26-year-old single woman became an instant media sensation. Tauchi, her grandmother and Midori arrived at the orphanage about the same age, in their mid-twenties. Midori was a perfect bilingual who earned an advanced degree in social welfare in the US.12 Midori was like a reenactment of Tauchi Chizuko 70 years ago. The Japanese media also paid attention to Midori, and NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting company, allocated a segment of the program series, Times of the Families in the 20th Century [20seki Kazoku’no Seigetsu], to the Tauchi family. Midori’s daily life at the Gongseangwon was its focus. The Tauchi family’s segment was subtitled “Our 3,700 Children: Three Generations of the Tauchi Family, Walking Together with the Korean Orphans [Tauchi 3 Dai, Kankoku Kouji’to Itshouni Aruku]” (NHK BS1 1999). The program showed Midori’s life as the unmarried Japanese mother of Korean orphans, her homesickness, daily challenges and the family history. This program led the Gongsaengwon to then Japanese Prime Minister, Obuchi Keizo. Obuchi, known for his pro-Korea stance, made occasional calls to Yoon Midori at the Gongseangwon. His calls were about typhoon damages, encouragement to Midori and donation of plum trees to the orphanage. The Daily Hankook quoted Obuchi’s remarks during one of his phone conversations with Midori: “the Japanese politicians cannot publicly express their guilt toward Korea. I am deeply moved by your important work” (The Daily Hankook 2008b). The wife of Mr. Obuchi continues his goodwill for the orphanage. Mrs. Obuchi joined the 22-member Japanese delegation attending the Gongseangwon’s 80th anniversary in 2008 (The Daily Hankook 2008a), and visited the facility again in October of 2012 (The Joongang Sunday 2012).

The centennial and World Orphans Day campaign (2012) The commemorative agencies grabbed another momentum to commemorate Tauchi in 2012. The year marked the centennial of her birth in 1912 on October 31, and about 700 people, including 100 visitors from the Kochi Prefecture, attended the ceremony.13 One of her granddaughters, Chung Ae Ra, the current director of Gongsaengwon, observes the declining interest in Tauchi’s legacies as generations change (Interview April 12, 2013). The centennial was another momentum to keep her memories alive, and Yoon Motoi thereby began a transnational campaign to promote Tauchi’s legacies as the UN World Orphans Day (The Kochi Shimbun 2012). This campaign shifted Tauchi’s symbolic frame from the “Japanese Mother of Korean Orphans” to an advocate of universal human welfare. Yoon Midori writes in the Centennial Report that Tauchi aspired for the “orphan-less society” (Tauchi 2013: 2). And yet there is no record of Tauchi articulating such aspirations in her lifetime. The media, a willing purveyor, participated in the re-making of Tauchi’s memories. The local television program, KBC’s Today’s Live Show [Saeng’bangsong Today], for instance, aired a segment on the World Orphans Day campaign without any mention of Korea-Japan relations in 2012. The focus was instead exclusively on social welfare, volunteerism and the centennial events. This chapter on the changing memories of Tauchi Chizuko aims to investigate the factors contributing to the shifts in popular memory. The disappearance of Yoon Chi Ho, the original founder of Gongsaengwon, in 1951, demarcated the two principal periods of the orphanage: the founding era (1929–51) and the hardships era (1951–68) (Mokpo MBC Documentary 1999). 133

Mikyoung Kim

This periodization coincides with Tauchi’s changing roles from the quiet wife-aid to the devoted relief worker-manager during and after the Korean War. This section analyzed the four stages in Tauchi’s memory: the funeral, the film release of Apocalypse of Love, Yoon Midori’s directorship and the centennial campaign. In the commemorative sequels over four decades, the clever strategies employed by the commemorative entrepreneurs deserve a careful attention. The son and other family members attentively read and played into the changing socio-political milieu to keep Tauchi’s memories alive. And yet this alone does not provide satisfying explanations in tracing Tauchi’s living memories. The question we have to ask at this point is why the “Mother of Korean War Orphans” has become the “Japanese Mother of Korean Orphans.” This puzzle is about the Korean memory (to a degree Japanese memory as well), which is still deeply ingrained in the colonial experience and the lingering residuals in precarious bilateral relations. And it stands as a contrast to the Korean War memories still contextualized with the Cold War rivalry, and the North-South and the South-South divides in the peninsula affairs. To answer the puzzle, the following section analyzes Tauchi’s mnemonic symbolisms.

Tauchi as symbol The meaning-seeking activities of the past are primarily to serve the present needs. For an interpretation to resonate with the contemporary audience, the receptive social, political and cultural mood is a priori. The mood and needs are not fixed into immobility as some of them can be precariously temporal, while others are on the continuum of time-defying traditions. The meanings assigned to Tauchi’s life are no exception to this simultaneous coexistence of presentist and traditionalist mnemonics. I will introduce four primary symbolisms of her life in the following.

Japan’s repentance Tauchi is a Japanese, a “different Japanese,” to be more exact, from other Japanese, to the Korean minds. Unlike the exploitative and ruthless colonialists, she was selfless, humble and repenting. The Peace Broadcasting Company of South Korea, for example, aired a special program to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan in 2010. In a week-long series aired from August 3 until August 11, the radio company allocated 20 minutes of the daily news variety show, PBC News and the World [PBC Nyusu’wa Saesang] (2010), to the “Different Japanese among the Japanese [Ilbon Sokeui Tto Darun Ilbon’in].” For its August 11 show, they reported on Tauchi’s work for the Korean orphans.14 The PBC stated their mission of the program as follows: “This project is to unearth the conscious Japanese people who have been buried in the dark past, and to shed a new light on their contributions [to Korea and bilateral relations].”15 Tauchi was unlike her contemporaries, and her difference is often described by the vocabulary of “repentance.” Moriyama, the biographer, describes the dialogue between Mr. Takao, Tauchi’s high school teacher, and her immediately after the Kwangju Student Uprising in 1929. Tauchi visited her teacher, Mr. Takao, and told him of her deep disapproval of Japan’s colonial policies as Christian. He responded “The foolish [Japanese] people! Chosun has 5,000 years of history and the rule by force will only produce forceful resistance.”. . . [He continued saying that] “Chizuko, I resigned from the church Reverend position to come to Chosun. I have been thinking about God’s will in this situation, and am feeling responsible as Christian. Let us pray for our homeland.” Tauchi along with Takeo prayed in tears. (Moriyama, 2012: 46)16 134

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko

In the film, The Apocalypse of Love, there is a scene where Tauchi apologizes to the angry Korean mobs who came to the orphanage to lynch her husband, Chi Ho, out of their suspicion that Chi Ho was a pro-Japanese collaborator. Confronting them, Tauchi cries out loud in accented Korean: “I repent for the Japanese sins. Please forgive me and spare my husband.” Chi Ho, the husband, became the target of anti-Japanese backlash in post-liberation chaos, and Tauchi was trying to save his life from the violent attacks. Moriyama connects Tauchi’s sense of guilt to her marriage decision to Chi Ho in Song of the Pearl (2012: 109): “Oh, I can see it now. I may be of no use to him, but will accept his proposal. I want to repent for Japan’s sins.” Marrying Chi Ho meant many hardships for Tauchi: his devotion to the orphans relief work; contempt and discrimination in the Japanese expatriate community; and no prospects for material and physical comfort. In the film, Tauchi talks to her husband about Japan’s abuse of Koreans: “Those Japanese people think so little of Koreans that God will never forgive them.” Tauchi as the repenting symbol appears in many other venues. In the CGN documentary The Mother of 3,000 Children, Ms. Yoon Hak Ja [Sanzen’nin’no Hana, Yoon Hak Ja san], a narration goes: “The work [helping the orphans] was her act of repentance toward Koreans (09:33).” In an interview with the current director of Gongsaengwon on April 11, 2013, she says, “My grandmother believed that helping Chosun’s orphans was a way for Japan to repent” (also see The Daily Chosun 2012). Tauchi’s repentance symbolism soothes the Korean wounds. This is particularly so when considering Japan’s general amnesia and historical contentions about the past. When Japan perceives itself either as the victim of the US atomic bombings or the benefactor of Korea’s modernization, there is little room for repentance discourse. Tauchi fills this vacuum. The next section is about the (re)construction of Tauchi as bridge between Korea and Japan.

Tauchi as bridge A Japanese person (July 25, 2013) advised me “not to expect many Japanese to know of Ms. Tauchi.” This is regardless of the Tokyo government’s commendations of her in 1967 and 1969. Memory fades, and that is a natural procession to forgetting. In this regard Tauchi has primarily been a Korean phenomenon. Her life stories dissipated quickly amid Japan’s post-war economic boom. The Apocalypse of Love (1995) drew one million Japanese viewers, but the film’s mark lasts as the first Japanese cinema imported for the Korean market. Attention to Yoon Midori was larger in Korea than in Japan, as compared frequencies of media reports in the two countries suggest. The 2012 centennial was different from the three previous commemorative moments. Tauchi’s hometown of the Kochi City and pro-Korea leaders in the Japanese society began to show increasing interests in Tauchi’s symbolism as a vehicle to mend the fences. This reflects the rising importance of Korea’s status vis-à-vis Japan. The former colony has become strong enough for the colonizer to come to terms with, and it could utilize Tauchi’s symbolism to strengthen the ties.17 NHK aired a travel program featuring Kang Sang Jung, a prominent KoreanJapanese academic, in March 29, 2013. In a program titled “Kang Sang Jung Travels on Korea’s Route #1 [Kang Sang Jung’ga Yuku Kankoku Route 1’no Tabi]” (NHK BS1 Special 2013), Kang comments, “I must visit one place in this city [of Mokpo]. This is the place where one Japanese woman tried hard to protect the orphans. And this was the place where the origin of Japan-Korea civilian exchanges began.” Describing Gongseangwon as the “origin” is, of course, a rhetorical expression, for other precedents exist, such as the Chosun Diplomatic Procession to Japan (1607–1867) and the arrivals of Korean settlers in the Japanese archipelago (5–6 centuries 135

Mikyoung Kim

AD). The “origin” expression nevertheless succeeds in accentuating the dark past between the two countries, and Tauchi’s importance in strengthening the ties. Tauchi’s memory is reconstructed primarily as bridge, a very presentist paradigm, in Japan. In facing rapidly aging population, the Kochi Prefecture organized a “Let’s Learn from Ms. Tauchi Chizuko: From Her Loving Hometown” campaign in 2002. The nutshell emphasis was on the improvement of elderly care services (The Kochi Prefecture Staff Project Proposal, 2002). Ten years later in 2012, the Kochi City dedicated her statue for the centennial commemoration on November 10 (The Kochi Shimbun 2012b). In addition the city’s Centennial Event Implementation Committee produced and distributed her biographical DVD to 114 local schools. The municipal community began quoting “Gongsaeng [Living Together]” from the orphanage’s name to call for improved Korea-Japan relations (The Kochi Shimbun 2012b).18 The cities of Kochi and Mokpo signed a Friendship Agreement in the memory of Tauchi (The Kochi Shimbun 2012a). Japan’s East Asia Studies Group’s 2012 edited volume, Those Who Served as the Bridge between Japan and Korea (Tokyo: Akaishishoten), included Tauchi as one of the leading figures for their cause.19 The Korean PBC radio program aired on August 11, 2010, remarked that “regardless of the state of affairs between the two nations, her life proves that friendships can be made at people’s level” (PBC News and the World 2010). The two Tauchi’s symbolisms, repentant sinner and bridge, are open to negotiations for their presentist paradigm. Tauchi’s mnemonic symbolism is also about two additional categories: cosmopolitan Christian and mother.

Cosmopolitan Christian Tauchi was a devout Christian.20 Christianity was never a popular religion in Japan, and the Kochi Prefecture, Tauchi’s birthplace, was particularly isolated from the three areas under WesternChristian influence: Sapporo, Yokohama and Kumamoto (Ahn 2010: 301). The fact that the Tauchi family came to Korea with the religious faith and her religious exposure at the local school was a rare occurrence.21 This is specially so given Japanese Christianity’s evolution into a war-supporting regime where female followers played an active role for the fascist military government’s war mobilization efforts.22 One of the teachings in Christian faith is about egalitarian cosmopolitanism.23 This worldview led Haru, Tauchi’s mother, to approve her daughter’s marriage to a colonial man. Moriyama (2012: 110) writes of Haru’s words to Tauchi that “A marriage is not between nations. It is about the promise between a man and a woman. In God’s land the Japanese and the Koreans are no different. We are all brothers and sisters. Trust and love will help you endure any hardships.” The cosmopolitan faith paved the road for the rare inter-ethnic marriage. This matrimony drew chauvinistic attacks from both Korean and Japanese groups. Chi Ho’s evangelism and orphanage operation led to his arrests 48 times. His faith was suspected to be subversive challenging the Shinto Emperor worship (Ahn 2010: 302–3). And his orphanage was accused of being a shameful proof of the colonial government’s governance failure (Moriyama 2012: 67). Tauchi’s circumstances became ever more precarious upon Korea’s liberation. She “relied on the Bible for guidance everyday” (CGN 18:48), for “what she did was beyond human and it was possible only with her faith,” (CGN 13:13) and “her strength was God’s blessing” (CGN 18:08). The Korean Christians are listing the Gongsaengwon as a pilgrimage site.24 Similar to Japan, Korea also has the history of brutal persecutions against Christianity. Unlike in Japan, the number of Korean followers grew exponentially since its introduction, currently at about 30 percent of the total population (Ahn 2010: 297–319; Kane and Park 2009: 369). 136

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko

The commemorative entrepreneurs keep on portraying Tauchi as a cosmopolitan Christian in popular representation. Tauchi’s biography written by Moriyama, an evangelical reverend, has a foreward written by Miura Ayako, the author of bestselling book The Freezing Point [Hyouten] and another devote Christian.25 Her son and daughter-in-law published their autobiography, The Foolish Mother [Omoni’nun Baboya] (1985), as a religious testimonial. Tauchi’s daughter-in-law, Humie, has written two autobiographical essay collections, I Was Still an Orphan [Watashi’mo Mata Kouji’datta] (1983) with Tokyo’s Christian Newspaper Press, and One Lost Sheep [Hitsujiga Ippiki], with strong religious messages (1993, Sakai: Sending the Apocalypse of Love to the World Committee). The CGN documentary succinctly summaries Tauchi’s identity as cosmopolitan believer: “love transcends ethnicity and national boundaries. In this day and age, it does not matter whether you are Korean or Japanese . . . the spirit of love compels us to help a needy human being” (23:56). These commemoration projects continue Tauchi’s relief work, to keep her alive in popular memory, and to share cosmopolitan values within the Christian community.26 In showing the cross-section between symbolism and historical moment, Tauchi’s faith was repeatedly emphasized during the centennial ceremony.27

Mother A Korean person (April 11, 2013) said, “it is so strange that people keep on calling her ‘mother’ until today. This has nothing to do with biological relations. Just like the Gongsaengwon orphans, the Mokpo citizens remember her as the ‘mother.’” When Chi Ho proposed marriage to Tauchi, he asked her to become the “mother of the orphans” (Moriyama 2012: 100). Yoon Ki stated in his centennial address in 2012 that the Gongsaengwon children did not see Tauchi as Japanese: she was their mother. With the ending of World War II, things had turned around. My father, Yoon Chi Ho, was berated for being friendly towards Japanese, and my mother, Chizuko Tauchi, was bullied as the Japanese wife of a Korean man. The orphans stood against the bullies with sticks in their hands and tears in their eyes, and shouted “Don’t you dare touch my father or my mother.”28 The Mother’s Monument decorates the orphanage garden, and the inscription is reads: “The distance between the land and the ocean has disappeared. In our hearts, only mother’s love remains.”29 In the NHK documentary, Yoon Ki said: “in her death bed, my mother told me that she neither had the ability nor the will to lead the Gongsaengwon. The job just fell on her, and she had no choice but to run the orphanage herself. She had to stay put at the orphanage waiting for my father to return. Then I promised her ‘when father returns, I will run first to tell you.’ She seemed so happy hearing that” (NHK BS1 1999). Tauchi was no feminist in the contemporary sense. She was “just an ordinary woman who happened to have many challenging experiences” (Mokpo MBC Documentary 1999). She had to become strong under the circumstances, not by choice.30 Tauchi’s life trajectory was very different from her contemporary feminists such as Ichikawa Husae (Molony 2011), Yoshitake Teruko, Kishino Junko and Kanamori Toshie (Loftus 2013). It also differed from the predominant Christian ethos supportive of patriarchal gender norms. Tauchi’s work differed greatly from that of middle class housewife (Lee 2010). Unlike self-conscious, politically-oriented contemporary women of elite background, Tauchi was a shy and inarticulate woman who never saw her life 137

Mikyoung Kim

in any possible form of political statement: her daily preoccupation was to feed the children and watching them grow. Tauchi was a mother.

Discussion and conclusion Life embeds continuity and ruptures. Tauchi lived through a tumultuous era where personal life intersected intimately with social history. Transition from the colonial era to the Korean War was as abrupt as the sudden arrival of liberation on the Korean peninsula (Law 2015). How fair is it to recollect Tauchi as the “Japanese Mother of Korean Orphans?” While the former part regards her ethnic identity and emotive affection, the latter part is about her work spanning across the Japanese colonial era, post-liberation chaos, the Korean War and post-Korean War period. And her biggest achievement was made during the Korean War period. To be more truthful to her contributions, an alternative epithet, probably a more proper one, should be the “Mother of Korean War Orphans.” Why does her ethnicity enjoy preeminence, whereas the memories of the Korean War are pushed to the margins of popular memory? Violence preys on the weak. Hwang Soon-won’s “The Game Beaters” (1981 [1948]) describes the cold killing games the grown-ups play against the street kids, orphans. The vulnerable who are standing in the face of structural violence need protection, and the levels of humanitarian engagements are an effective indicator of social consciousness. Ms. Tauchi Chizuko’s services to protect the Korean War orphans are a powerful example of humanity. Then why is she recollected and commemorated primarily as the “Japanese woman” who raised the Korean orphans? As we have seen, her most notable social services were rendered during the Korean War after her husband went missing. She managed the orphanage and kept it open from 1951 until her death in 1968 (Oh 2005).31 Tauchi was a woman of few words: she was a person of “deeds, not words” (Kim 1997). With no evidence on her own thoughts about her life experiences, Tauchi’s life is a blank page. When asked about her nickname, Yoon Ki responded to me: “That started with the media. The name came from the Korean news media. If you prefer calling her by the ‘Japanese Mother of Korean War Orphans,’ all by means, please do so. It is your choice” (Interview July 1, 2013). Yoon’s statement reveals his sophisticated understanding of memory politics: interpretive mnemonic frame is up to the eyes of beholder, and it can be divorced from the facts. Then what does this memory politics show about the Korean and Japanese societies on Japan’s Korean War?32 In the Apocalypse of Love, Chi Ho cries out loud in despair: “This world has gone mad. It is worse now than the colonial times . . . we were united and had dreams then. How come are we fighting against each other now? I know nothing about communism or capitalism. I just want freedom . . . why do we hate and try to kill each other?” His turmoil for having been accused of being a pro-Japanese collaborator, anti-communist revolutionary and pro-communist sympathizer was not an isolated incident. It resonates with the contemporary history of Korea. The colonial subjugation and the Korean War are two different sources of shame for the Korean mind. The former is about Korea’s victimhood at the hands of the powerful, and the latter is about Korea’s internal division resulting in the tragic fratricide.33 The former tells us who to denounce, the external other of Japan, and the latter holds our own selves accountable. If Korea’s weakness were to be blamed for the colonial subjugation, the Korean War is about our dark impulses against each other. The nature and weight of pain differ in both cases. In this milieu Tauchi’s Japanese ethnicity carries more weight than the content of her wartime contributions. Koreans need Tauchi as the Japanese, not for our war. Tauchi means more for Korea than for Japan. Dealing with unrepentant and unapologetic perpetrator, Korea needs a symbol that is repentant, connective, compensating and transcendental. 138

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko

Tauchi’s selfless sacrifice has a powerful redeeming affect. This explains why Tauchi being Japanese carries more significance for her wartime services. The Korean War is not over yet, with the 1953 armistice still in effect. This unresolved conflict and its contentious legacies are much more complicated to sort out than those of colonial subjugation.34 The Korean society has yet to engage in serious soul searching about the war. The South had an enemy to fight, but who exactly was the enemy? The North Korean leaders? The North Korean people mobilized for the war front? The Chinese Communist Party? The Chinese foot soldiers? Were the border-crossers of the 38th parallel betrayers or loyalists? Who should be responsible for the peninsula’s division after the armistice agreement? The US and the former USSR? The Koreans themselves? Tauchi’s memory is situated at the cross-section of colonialism and the Korean War, where the politics of memory grants a bigger and more organized meaning to colonial experience than to the fratricidal war. Tauchi’s Japanese ethnicity and the nature of her aid work during the Korean War creates a poignant contrast to her unrepentant homeland. Korean intrigue with her memories reflects lingering resentment, yearnings to forgive and reconcile with the difficult past. Tauchi is a symbolic proxy which Koreans can rely on when feeling belittled by the indifferent and arrogant perpetrator. This chapter argues that the changing memories of Tauchi are a reflection of a shifting socio-political milieu both in and between Korea and Japan. Continuing discomfort over colonial victimization relegates Tauchi’s contributions to helping the Korean War orphans to the margins of memory politics.

Notes This research was carried out with the support of Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute’s project grant on “Contentious Politics and Mnemonic Agencies” (April 2009–March 2010). An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “Tracing Memories of Tauchi Chizuko: Korean Memories of Historical Shame and the ‘Japanese Mother of Korean War Orphans,’ ” Review of Korean Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (December): 97–124. 1 Out of the total sample population of 432, the majority of respondents at 57 percent (N=246) named the colonization as the shame provoking event followed by the IMF financial crisis at 50 percent (N=213), the Korean War at 25 percent (N=109), the wrongdoings of the ROK former presidents at 25 percent (N=106), clumsy construction projects at 21 percent (N=91) and the arrogant behaviors of big powers at 17 percent (N=72). As for the historical events that invoke sense of pride, the respondents named Korea’s economic growth, the 1919 independence movement, the hosting of 1988 Olympic Games and 2002 World Cup Games, and the invention of Hangeul. The participants were asked to name three historical events in each respective category (Schwartz and Kim 2002: 213). 2 Out of the total sample population of 582, 65 percent (N=377) named Japan’s colonialism, inter-Korean division including the Korean War was named at 28 percent (N=161), international power imbalance was named at 17 percent (N=99), and political corruption was named at 17 percent (N=98). The participants were asked to name three historical events (Kim 2014). 3 The suppression of the Japanese Christian mission in the aftermath of the March 1, 1919, Independence Movement did not seem to have dispelled Tauchi’s Christian faith in Korea (Takayoshi 1979). 4 The literal meaning of naisen ittai is the sameness of Japan and Korea. In reality, however, it was translated into Japan’s integration (or homogenization) of Korea on its terms. 5 Promotion of inter-ethnic marriage was the Japanese government’s policy. It was called “Inside-Chosun wedding [naisen ke’kon].” There was annual average of 50 inter-ethnic marriages during the colonial era (expert interview, April 29, 2013). 6 A fourth child was born after her return to Mokpo in 1948. 7 I compiled and tallied newspaper and journal reports on Tauchi and her family members during the first field trip to the Gongseangwon from April 10, 2013, until April 12, 2013. Although not exhaustive, I found 58 and 46 reports in Korean and Japanese languages respectively on The Apocalypse of Love

139

Mikyoung Kim

8

9

10

11

12

13

14 15 16 17

(1995–98); 28 and 16 reports on Yoon Midori (1998–2001); and 17 and 20 on Tauchi’s centennial (2012). The expression of “the entire city wept” has a special resonance with the city of Mokpo. In the early 1940s during the colonial era, a song, “Tears of Mokpo [Mokpo’eui Nunmul],” became very popular in Korea. The first two lines of second stanza are, “His trace is still lingering below the Nojuk Peak of 300-year-long sorrow, what a heart-breaking symbol [Sam’bak’nyun Wonhan’pumun Nojuk’bong Mitte/Im’jachui Wanyonhada Mokpo’eui Nunmul].” This song still plays at the Mokpo Train Station. The Japanese government posthumously awarded Tauchi a decoration of merits in 1969. The author could not find any Korean news media coverage of this event, and that could mean two things: first, the Korean memories of her services were quickly fading away after her death in 1967; second, the Japanese government’s recognition did not draw attention from Korea, probably because of her Japanese nationality. Yoon Motoi (Korean name: Yoon Ki) has been the most active and vocal agency of his mother’s memories. During the 30 years of silence and forgetting, he and his wife, Yoon Fumie, published an autobiography, The Fool-like Mother [Omoni’nun Babo’ya] (2012), recollecting his childhood memories and narrating challenges faced as Tauchi’s successor in social work. Little is known about Chi Ho’s other families. His first wife and a daughter rarely appear in either written accounts or oral interviews. Their whereabouts could not be located. The third wife to whom he briefly married while Tauchi was gone to the Kochi prefecture from 1947 until 1948, and the daughter appear in The Apocalypse of Love. Chi Ho had thought that Tauchi and the children were not coming back from Japan, and married for the third time. Three of them and the children lived together after Tauchi’s return, but the third Korean wife decided to leave the orphanage after watching Tauchi’s devotion to the orphans. Tauchi went to the third wife in Seoul looking for Chi Ho after he went missing in Kwangju in 1951. She was selected as one of the most 100 beautiful faces by the Kyunghyang Shinmun in 2005 (http://news. khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=200504281539491&code=900310, accessed August 1, 2013). The estimation of attendees was much larger than the actual figure by about 20 times (see Daedong Munhwa 2012: 116). The Centennial Report (2013: 19) states that the media coverage of the pre-centennial events were 18 and 9 in Korea and Japan respectively, and the post-event reports were 11 and 21. The show program included segments on Huse Dasuji, Yamazaki Gesaya, Ganeko Humiko, Asakawa Dakumi, Yanagi Muneyoshi and Ishikawa Takuboku. On the backside of DVD cover for distribution. During an interview with Yoon Motoi in Kyoto on July 1, 2013, he confirmed that the contents and descriptions in Moriyama’s biography were as factual as they can be. Her son, Yoon Ki, stated on the 42nd anniversary of her death in 2010 that Victims feel pain for a long time while perpetrators can move on quickly, sometimes avoiding responsibility. Ms. Tauchi Chizuko served as a bridge between South Korean and Japan. The government of South Korea presented Chizuko Tauchi with the Order of Culture under her Japanese name on 15th August, 1963, the first award to a Japanese woman. This was before the diplomatic normalization between the two nations. In reconciliation, perpetrators must admit their guilt by apologizing and the victims must forgive. By doing this, they mutually accept the relationship with an open mind and this, I believe, is how we can live together. (http://www.city.sakai.lg.jp/english/visitors/topics/sakaipeace/introduction/ the2ndconvention/award/awardceremony/tauchi.html, accessed March 15, 2013).

18 This is an ironical development. During and immediately after the Korean War, Tauchi managed to protect the name of the orphanage, her husband’s invention, when faced with the attempts to change it for its communist evocation. The word “gong [together, 共]” is also used in “gongsan’jyui [communism, 共産主義].” Tauchi wanted to keep the name “Gongsaengwon [A Place for Living Together]” to keep her husband’s dedication to the facility. See The Kochi Shimbun (2012c) and The Kochi Shimbun (2012d). 19 The bridging figures include Yi San-pyong, Amemori Hushu, Ahn Jung- geun, Yoo Jong-yYeol and Yoon Dong-jJu. 20 Around the March 1st Independence Movement in 1919, the Japan Congregational Church had a membership of about 21,000, the Japan Christian Church about 24,000 and the Japan Methodist Church about 21,000 in Japan (Takayoshi 1979: 581). 21 Tauchi’s cosmopolitan Christian faith was a rarity for her gender as well. Yim (2009) reports that only 30 percent of Japan’s Christians are women, and this is an anomaly compared to other societies. Yim

140

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko

22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31

32

33

34

cites three reasons for the reversed gender proportion: women under the patriarchy had limited exposure to the alternative religion; its peculiar youth orientation making the Japanese Christianity a religion to grow out of; and high representation of the Samurai class (see Yim 2009; Nakamura 1997). There were two camps in Japan’s Christian population during the war. The pro-war camp tried to receive social acceptance by reinterpreting the Bible that Japan’s war was to serve God, while the antiwar camp tried to keep their distance from the war believing in universal faith and peace. See Acts 10:34–35; Acts 17:26; Malachi 2:10; Romans 10:12 in the Bible. There are 61 (un)officially recognized pilgrim sites in South Korea (http://cafe.naver.com/rkcia/103, accessed August 5, 2013). Chung’s 2003 biography of Yoon Chi Ho, Beautiful Heritage [Arumdaun Yusan] (Seoul: HWB) has the following subtitle: A Story of Welfare Martyr, Yoon Chi Ho [Bokji Sungyosa Yoon Chi Ho]. Miura also wrote the script of the CGN Documentary, The Mother of 3,000 Children, Ms. Yoon Hak Ja [Sanzen’nin’no Hana, Yoon Hak Ja san]. On the front cover of the DVD, the Apocalypse of Love, the running headline is “The history calls her neither Korean nor Japanese.” For example, see The Kookmin Ilbo (2012). http://www.city.sakai.lg.jp/english/visitors/topics/sakaipeace/introduction/the2ndconvention/ award/awardceremony/tauchi.html, accessed March 15, 2013. This monument was dedicated to Tauchi’s memory on May 8 (Korean Mother’s Day), 1970 by the Daily Kyunghyang. In a very rare instance written words of Tauchi, she reportedly wrote after Chi Ho had gone missing: “I still cannot believe that he died. I still have the children to look after. Is it a good idea to shut the orphanage?” (NHK BS1 1999). According to Oh (2005), more than 4,000 orphaned Korean children were adopted by Americans between 1955 and 1961. The children were both mixed-race GI babies and non-mixed-race Korean children who were abandoned, lost or otherwise left without adults to care for them. For a parallel investigation of American cultural politics, see Yeh, Chiou-Ling, 2012. “‘A Saga of Democracy’: Toy Len Goon, American Mother of the Year, and the Cultural Cold War,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (August), 432–461. Both South and North suffered from staggering damages from the war. North Korean military casualty records show 294,151 dead and 229,249 wounded. Approximately 406,000 North Korean civilians also died. The total casualties at 10 million meant about 8 percent of the population was physically harmed during the war. South Korea also suffered 300,000 casualties, with 70,000 killed in action (see Pierpaoli 2013a, Pierpaoli 2013b). This comparative statement is not to deny the controversies over collaboration among others.

References Ahn, Jeung Hwan. 2010. “The Japanese Religious Identity and Christian Stagnation: With a Focus on Miura Ayako and Endo Shyusaku [Inbon Kidok’kyo Jungchaesung’aeseo Bon Ilbon’in’eui Jongkyo’kwan: Miura Ayako’wa Endo Shusaku’eui Jakpum Bunsuk’eul Joongshim’euiro],” Korean Journal of Japan Studies [Ilbonhak Yongu], Vol. 29, 297–319. CGN Documentary, “The Mother of 3,000 Children, Ms. Yoon Hak Ja [Sanzen’nin’no Hana, Yoon Hak Ja san]” (http://www.cgntv.net//#tv/15121/1149/2341/vlist.cgn, accessed March 16, 2013). Chung, Hoon. 2003. Beautiful Heritage: A Story of Welfare Martyr, Yoon Chi Ho [Arumdaun Yusan: Bokji Sungyosa Yoon Chi Ho]. Seoul: HWB. Daedong Munhwa. 2012. September/October, Kwangju: Daedong Cultural Foundation. The Daily Chosun. 1968. “The Passage of Ms. Yoon Hak-ja, the City of Mokpo Cried [Yoon Hak-ja Yosa Seogeo, Mokpo’si’ga Wolda],” November 3, 7. The Daily Chosun. 1997. “Film Director Kim Soo-yong Received the Japanese Film Critics Award [Kim Soo-yong Kamdok Ilbon Yonghwa Bipyongka Daesang],” November 28 (http://news.chosun.com/svc/ content_view/content_view.html?contid=1997112870367, accessed March 16, 2013). The Daily Chosun. 1998. “The Japanese Film, Apocalypse of Love, the First to Receive Import Permission [Il Younghwa, Sarang’eui Musirok, Chut Suip Heoga],” October 28, 26. The Daily Chosun. 2012. “‘I Wish to Wash off Japan’s Sins,’ Daughter of Japanese Colonial Official Raised 3,000 Korean Orphans [Ilbon’i Jeokjirun Joe Sitketta’ Hankuk Koah 3000myung Dolbon Chongdokbu Kwanri Ttal],” November 10 (http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/10/ 31/2012103100096.html, accessed December 2, 2014).

141

Mikyoung Kim The Daily Dong-A. 1998. “The First Korea-Japan Collaboration Film, ‘The Apocalypse of Love,’ Granted the First Permission for Domestic Showing [Han’il Gongdong Jaejak Younghwa ‘Sarang’eui Muksirok’ Chut Guknae Suip Heoga],” October 28, 17. The Daily Hankook. 1997. Editorial, October 6, 30. The Daily Hankook. 2008a. “Mokpo Gongsaengwon, Building Bridge between Korea and Japan through Love for the Orphans: To Celebrate the 80th Anniversary, Delegation of 22 People Including the Wife of Former Japanese Prime Minister Will Visit the Facility [Mokpo Gongsaengwon, Goah Sarang’euiro Hanil Gagyo: Solryp 80 junyun, Jeon Chongri Buin’deung Il’insa 22 myong Onul Bang;kwan],” October 8, 17. The Daily Hankook. 2008b. “The Promise Kept by the Former Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Obuchi, through Plum Trees [Maehwa’ro Jikyo’nen Obuchi Chongri’eui Yaksok],” September 29, 17. The Daily Maeil Kyungjae. 1997. “The Mother of Orphans, Yoon Hak-ja Ildaegi [Biography of the Mother of Orphans, Ms. Yoon Hak-ja],” November 6, 21. Davis, Rocio G. 2011. Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memories. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Han, Unsa. 1997. “Open the Door for Korea-Japan Cultural Exchanges [Han’il Gyoryu’eui Mun’eul Yorora],” Munhwa Ilbo, October 10, 7. Hwang, Soon-won. 1981 [1948]. “The Game Beaters [Morikkun],” in The Dog of Crossover Village [Mongnomi Mauel’ui Kae], 33–59. Seoul: Munhak’kwa Jisungsa. The Joongang Sunday. 2012. “Plum Trees at the Mokpo Gongseangwon, My Husband Made a Good Present: The Wife of Former Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi, Mrs. Chizuko will Visit Korea in October [Mokpo Gongsaengwon Maehwa Namu, Nampyon’i Cham Joeun Sunmul’eul Namgyota, 10wol’ae Banghan, Obuchi Jun Ilbon Chongri Buin Jijuko Yosa],” July 29 (http://sunday.joins.com/chapter/ view.asp?aid=26947, accessed August 2, 2013). Kallander, George L. 2013. “Imperialism, Nationalism and the Cold War: Roots of the Korean War,” World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO. Web. Accessed July 26, 2013. Kane, Danielle, and Jungmee Park. 2009. “The Puzzle of Korean Christianity: Geopolitical Networks and Religious Conversion in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 115, No. 2, 365–404. Kim, Mikyoung. 2013. “The Changing Faces of Heroines: Korean Women in Folklore,” Memory Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (April), 218–233. Kim, Mikyoung. 2014. “The Korean Youths’ Perceptions of Korea-Japan Relations [Hankuk Chungnyon’deul’eui Hanil Kwangae Inshik],” Daily The Kookje, January 12 (http://www.kookje.co.kr/ news2011/asp/newsbody.asp?code=1700&key=20140113. 22026185708, accessed January 12, 2014). Kim, Soo Yong. 1997. Director’s interview, The Apocalypse of Love, DVD, movie trailer. The Kochi Prefecture Staff Project Proposal [Heisei 16nendou Kochiken Shokuin Teian Jigyou]. 2002. “Let’s Learn from Tauchi Chizuko Campaign Implementation Committee [Tauchi Chizuko’san’kara Manabi Hatshinsuru Jigyou’ Jikoui’inkai’hen].” Kochi Prefecture: Let’s Learn from Tauchi Chizuko Campaign Implementation Committee. The Kochi Shimbun. 2010. “To Designate World Orphans Day, Ms. Tauchi Chizuko’s Centennial [Sekai Kouji’no Hee Seitei’wo Tauchi Chizukosan Seitan 100nen],” November 1, 7. The Kochi Shimbun. 2012a. “To Deepen the Relations through Ms. Tauchi [Tauchi’san’no Enhukameyou Kochi’shi’to Mokupo’shi Yukoukyoutei],” November 9 (http://www.kochinews.co.jp/?nwSrl=2953 65&nwIW=1&nwVt=knd, accessed March 16, 2013). The Kochi Shimbun. 2012b. “To Spread the Love of Mokpo’s Mother, A Replica Plaque Dedicated in the Kochi City’s Birthplace [Mokupo’no Haha’no Ai Hirogeyou, Kochi’si’no Seitanchi’ni rerihu],” November 10, 7. The Kochi Shimbun. 2012c. “A Small World [Koshakai],” December 24 (http://www.kochinews.co. jp/?nwSrl=297031&nwIW=1&nwVt=knd, accessed March 16, 2013). The Kochi Shimbun. 2012d. “100 Centennial of Mokpo’s Mother, Grassroots Movement to Strengthen Japan-Korea relations [Mokupo’no Haha 100nen: Nikan’no kusa’no gizuna’wo tsuyoku],” December 29, 7. The Kookmin Ilbo. 2012. “‘The Mother of Korean Orphans’ Mrs. Yoon Hak Ja, Emerging as the World Icon of ‘Love and Peace’ [Hankuk Goah’eui Omoni Yoon Hak Ja yosa, ‘Sarang’gaw Pyonghaw’eui Saegae’jok Icon’uro Tto’orunda],” May 15 (http://news.kukinews.com/chapter/view.asp?page=1&gCode=km i&arcid=0006071741&cp=nv, accessed March 17, 2013). Law, Yuk-fun. 2015. “East Asia: Cold War.” World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABCCLIO, 2015. June 26 (http://worldatwar.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1729740?terms=korea+war+ cold+war, accessed July 26, 2015).

142

Tracing memories of Tauchi Chizuko Lee, Eun-kyung. 2010. “Modern Japanese Female Christians and Life: Focused on the Writings of Hani Motoko (1873–1957) [Keundae Ilbon Yosung Kidok’kyo’in’gwa Saenghwal: Hani Tomoko (1873– 1957)’eui Unseol’rul Joongsim’euiro],” Ilbonhak Yongu, Vol. 30, 133–61. Loftus, Ronald P. 2013. Changing Lives: The “Postwar” in Japanese Women’s Autobiographies and Memoirs. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies. Mokpo MBC Documentary. 1999. Time and People [Sidae’wa Inmul], “The Apocalypse of Love: Yoon Hak Ja [Sarang’eui Muksirok, Yoon Hak Ja],” aired on May 24. Molony, Barbara. 2011. “‘Mothers of Humanity’ to ‘Assisting the Emperor’: Gendered Belonging in the Wartime Rhetoric of Japanese Feminist Ichikawa Fusae,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 80, No. 1 (February), 1–27. Moriyama, Satoshi. 2012. Song of a Pearl [Jinju’eui Norae]. Seoul: Hongsungsa. Nakamura, Kyoko. 1997. “The Religious Consciousness and Activities of Contemporary Japanese Women,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1–2 (Spring), 87–120. NHK BS1. 1999. “Times of the Families in the 20th Century [20seki Kazoku’no Seigetsu],” aired August 10. NHK BS1 Special. 2013. “Kang Sang Jung Travels on Korea’s Route #1 [Kang Sang Jung’ga Yuku Kankoku Route 1’no Tabi],” aired March 29. Oh, Arissa. 2005. “A New Kind of Missionary Work: Christians, Christian Americanists, and the Adoption of Korean GI Babies, 1955–1961,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3/4 (Fall–Winter), 161–88. PBC News and the World [PBC Nyusu’wa Saesang]. 2010. “The Mother of Korean Orphans: Yoon Hak-ja (aka, Tauchi Chizuko) [Hankook Koa’eui Omoni: Yoon Hak-ja (Tauchi Chizuko) Pyon],” 7th segment, August 11. Pierpaoli Jr., Paul G. 2013a. “Korean War: North Korea (Opponent Overview),” World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABC-CLIO (http://worldatwar.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1098823?terms= korean+war%3a+north+korea, accessed July 26, 2013). Pierpaoli Jr., Paul G. 2013b. “Cold War (Overview),” World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society. ABCCLIO (http://worldatwar.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/10?sid=771127 accessed July 26, 2013). Schwartz, Barry, and Mikyoung Kim. 2002. “Judging the Past: A Comparative Study of People’s Historical Perceptions in the U.S. and Korea.” In Culture in Mind: Toward a Sociology of Culture and Cognition, edited by Karen A. Cerulo, 209–26. New York: Routledge. Takayoshi, Matsuo. 1979. “The Japanese Protestants in Korea, Part Two: The 1st March Movement and the Japanese Protestants,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4, 581–615. Tauchi, Midori. 2013. The Centennial Report. Sakai City: Furusatonoie. Uchida, Jun. 2011. “A Sentimental Journey: Mapping the Interior Frontier of Japanese Settlers in Colonial Korea,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 70, No. 3 (August): 706–29. Wright Mills, C. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Yeh, Chiou-Ling. 2012. “‘A Saga of Democracy’: Toy Len Goon, American Mother of the Year, and the Cultural Cold War,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (August), 432–61. Yim, Young Eon. 2009. “Historical Study on the Japanese Christian Culture [Ilbon Gidok’kyo Munwha’wa Jungsin’saegae’eui Sajok Kochal],” Journal of Northeast Asia Research, Vol. 24, No. 2, 53–94. Yoon, Ki. 2001. Kimchi and Umeboshi [Kimchi’wa Umeboshi]. Seoul: Yeji. Yoon, Ki, and Yoon Fumie. 2012. The Foolish Mother [Omoni’nun Babo’ya]. Seoul: Hongsung’sa.

143

9 CRITICAL ASSESSMENTS OF THE SOUTH KOREAN TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION Dong-Choon Kim

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea (hereinafter “TRCK”) was established in 2005 on the Framework Act on Clearing up Past Incidents for Truth and Reconciliation (hereinafter “Framework Act”) passed by the South Korean National Assembly as an governmental body to investigate state violence occurred in Korea from 1910 until 1987, including massacres, suspicious deaths, injury or disappearance, politically fabricated trials, and the killings of unarmed civilians and political prisoners before and during the Korean War.1 The TRCK was a product of South Korea’s decades-long democratization movement and the liberal government it produced (Kim, Dong-Choon 2010).2 The setting up of several governmental organizations including TRCK to address the issues of the past wrongdoing in Korea can be understood as the start of a serious examination of dark episodes during the dictatorship and the Cold War. The atrocities of state violence and civilian victimization have been an “open secret” among Koreans for several decades. Since 1987’s democratization movement, the media and academics have publicized several atrocities committed by the South Korean authorities during the Korean War. Korea’s civil society and democratic movement allowed the TRCK, through its investigations into the South Korean government’s past wrongdoings, to shed an illuminating light on the dark chapters of colonialism, the Korean War, and the ultra-rightist consensus that held sway for half a century in East Asia. Since the Associated Press’s 1999 report on the No Gun Ri incident, other cases of victimization by U.S bombing and strafing in the early days of the Korean War also came to be known. All East Asian countries have suffered in the shadows of the Cold War conflict, but few have confronted their dark past as squarely as Korea. Korea, thanks to the TRCK and the efforts of other past-dealing commissions, was the first country in East Asia to confront its dark past during the Cold War in such a comprehensive manner. The TRCK remains the first case among East Asian countries of a government attempting to face its own past wrongdoings committed in the name of national security. The U.S., which has been proud of its role as the architect of modern East Asian states by intervening in wars from World War II to the Korean War to the Vietnam War, has refused to admit its own misdeeds against the Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese during those wars. East Asia’s big two, Japan and China, have never officially acknowledged their dark past either by investigation or by compensation (see chapter 3 in this volume). With the termination of the TRCK and other past-incident related organizations around 2010, their works and achievements became a chapter of history that need to be assessed and 144

Assessments of the South Korean TRC

evaluated. Even though most petitioners, especially the families of victims who died of human rights violations and massacres, feel relieved that the TRCK has finally paid attention to their grievances, the TRCK’s investigation and the court’s decision of compensation, grounded on the TRCK’s decision, to the victims or their families have gone a long way toward promoting reconciliation between the state and its victims.

The road toward the TRCK after democratization From the 1970s, Korea’s democratization movements significantly shook up the Cold Warconditioned political system. Korean activists saw that the Soviet-U.S.-induced national division of the Korean peninsula had legitimized not only South Korea’s dictatorships and human rights abuses but had also blocked any possibility of liquidating the remnants of Japanese colonialism (see chapter 10 in this volume). That was why the old agenda of cleansing the legacy of Japanese colonialism soared on the political platform after 1987’s democratization, and it also brought back the issues of national reunification and of “full recovery of national sovereignty.” But the Kwangju massacre (1980) issue stood on the top of the political agenda. During the seven years of Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship (1980–1987), the Kwangju massacre remained a central agenda for the democratization movements in Korea even as they called for the prosecution of those responsible for covering up the full truth of the state’s past wrongdoings. In South Korea, especially for student activists in the 1980s, the task of democratization remained inseparable from unearthing the hidden truth concerning the Kwangju massacre (see chapter 7 in this volume). Responding to this widespread sentiment from the public, the National Assembly held its hearings on the Kwangju incident in 1988, marking a major turning point in Korea’s long journey to uncover and rectify past injustices. The search for the truth of the Kwangju massacre, including the identification of the commander responsible for ordering the shooting, was also a crucial step in consolidating democracy because the top military leaders during the massacre, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, were in the end forced to surrender to the people’s demand for democratization.3 A sequence of Kwangju settlements since 1988 in Korea has often been regarded by the international community as a model in dealing with the dark past because it, after all, indicted and prosecuted the two former presidents for the killings of approximately 200 people during the incident.4 The conviction of military leaders in particular served a powerful warning to other authoritarian regimes (Han 2005: 998–1045). The remarkable seventeen years of struggle for justice became an important reference for Asian neighbors who waited to witness similar measures to be taken in their own countries. After addressing the issues of Kwangju, the possibility of another military coup seemed unlikely. However, Korean civil rights groups and critics found flaws in the settlement process, although they saw merits in the fact that the government compensated the families of the victims and built a new national cemetery memorializing the victims (Kim 200x).5 The Kwangju settlement process began to embolden some of the victim families of the human rights violations and the Korean War to speak up again. Under the Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan regimes from 1961 to 1987, more than a thousand people had been falsely accused of being North Korean spies, tortured, and/or jailed for violating the National Security Law and the Emergency Law. Many had disappeared or were killed under suspicious circumstances. Although most of the victim families remained silent and were reluctant to speak about their sufferings, a small group of scholars, lawyers, and journalists brought the hidden stories of the Korean War to the public domain. In 1998, for the first time in Korea’s history, a democratic political leader, Kim Dae-jung, took his office as an elected president. The liberal-dominated National Assembly 145

Dong-Choon Kim

immediately set out to rectify the past wrongdoings and passed in 1999 the law to establish the Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths of the Republic of Korea (PTCSD). The establishment of the commission was an important step toward truth and reconciliation as it explicitly sought truth rather than justice (PTCSD 2004). Even before the establishment of PTCSD, the bereaved families of the Korean War massacres like the Geochang Incident6 and the Jeju April 3 Incident initiated the first step to settle the unresolved past wrongs by revealing their stories and asking for rectification. Afterward, hundreds of victims of U.S.-related killings also participated in similar collective campaign. In 1999, The Associated Press’s No Gun Ri Report and the release of information on similar incidents attracted great public attention to the mass killings by U.S. forces during the Korean War (Hanley 2008). The growing public attention and outcry led to the enactment of the laws aimed to deal with the respective incidents by the late 1990s: the Special Committee for Recovering the Dignity of the Geochang Incident (1996) and the Jeju April 3 Commission (2000), among others.7 The relative success of the Kwangju settlement, especially the institutionalization of settlement and the official government’s recognition of the massacre, encouraged the bereaved families of other state violence to demand the opening of dialogue between North and South Korea, leading to the subsequent weakening of the anti-North Korea sentiment. The political democratization, thus, furnished an opportunity for the several strata of past issues to be raised one by one: the pro-Japanese collaborators, the Korean War massacres, and the suspicious deaths of the 1980s (see chapters 7 and 10 in this volume). Following the precedents of several past political momentums, that favorable political opportunity prompted the bereaved families to demand a comprehensive past settlement. Kim Dae-jung was followed by another democratic leader, Roh Moo-hyun, in the 2003 presidential election. In the general election of 2004, the liberal Uri Party gained a majority seats in the National Assembly for the first time since 1961. This changed the political environment of the National Assembly in 2004 and marked a second critical turn in Korea’s long journey to truth and reconciliation. On August 15, 2004, the commemoration day of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonialism, President Roh spoke of the necessity for a “comprehensive past settlement”, which encouraged activists and bereaved family members to campaign for legislation. Civil rights activists and the Roh Moo-hyun government were concerned that if the numerous past incidents were to be individually settled, many separate laws pertaining to different incidents would have to be legislated and the each victim’s families could demand a better settlement for their own victimization than another cases, which could trigger a never-ending process of legislation for settlements. They therefore concluded that a better alternative was to resolve them by enacting a package bill and establish a single comprehensive entity for rectifying past wrongdoings. The proclamation reflecting such conclusion was included in the law regarding the issue of pro-Japanese collaborators that was passed and amended in 2004.8 Equally important was that both the government and civil groups supported the proclamation included in the law, which provided the basis for drafting “the Framework Act” to deal with the past atrocities committed by the state power. The legislation of the Framework Act, which became effective shortly after being passed at the National Assembly in May of 2005, signified the culmination of the long struggle for justice that Korea’s democratization movement and civil society have strenuously waged.

The organization and works of TRCK Established under the Framework Act, the TRCK was made up of fifteen commissioners (eight recommended by the National Assembly, four appointed by the President, and three nominated by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court), of whom four were standing commissioners (two 146

Assessments of the South Korean TRC

recommended by the National Assembly and two nominated by the President). The TRCK’s initial term was four years with a possibility of two year extension. Petitions on the following matters were to be investigated: 1 2 3 4

5

6

Anti-Japanese movements during Japanese rule and in the years following Korea’s liberation; Efforts by overseas Koreans to uphold Korea’s sovereignty and enhance Korea’s national prestige from the period of Japanese occupation until the enforcement date of this Act; Massacres committed from August 15, 1945, until the Korean War; Incidents of death, injury, or disappearance, and other major acts of human rights violations, including politically fabricated trials and illegal or seriously unjust exercise of state power, such as the violation of the constitutional order committed from August 15, 1945, until the end of authoritarian regimes; Terrorist acts, human rights violations, violence, massacres, and suspicious deaths by parties that denied the legitimacy or were hostile toward the Republic of Korea from August 15, 1945 until the end of the authoritarian regimes; Incidents that are historically important and incidents that the Commission deems necessary.9

In the Framework Act, the TRCK was authorized to investigate petitions for four years, with a possible two-year extension, if necessary.10 The majority of the petitions that the TRCK received involved acts committed by South Korean authorities. While most human rights abuses and massacres after 1948 were committed by South Korean authorities, some were presumably carried out by American soldiers and Korean soldiers and police under the United States’ authorization. The TRCK had a staff of about 240, including eighty-four seconded from the central and local governments. Its budget in 2008 was approximately 19.7 billion Korean won (or approx. USD 14 million), roughly a half of which went to personnel and another half to operating expenses.11 Their main role was to direct the investigations and preside over all affairs of the Commission, while one of them, the chairperson, managed the Commission’s Executive Office. Although the TRCK could have requested a two-year extension in its mandate, the TRCK decided to end its mission in December 2010, after its initial term expired. Only a six-month renewal was requested by the Commission, and it was authorized by the conservative government of Lee Myong-bak. The notable feature of the Framework Act was that it did not pursue any punitive measures in the course of the settlement process. Instead, it emphasizes truth confirmation, restoration of the victims’ honor, and reconciliation between victims and perpetrators. This choice was heavily influenced by the passage of time and the political climate under the long-persisting Cold War era.12 Within the last fifty years, most senior officials possibly bearing responsibility for the state’s misconduct had already passed away. Hence, instead of imposing any judicial measures on those mass killings against civilians during the Korean War, truth-confirming, memory preservation, and healing of the grievances of the bereaved families were considered a first crucial step in pursuing justice. The characteristics of the incidents, the demands from the bereaved families, the passage of time, and the political difficulties in handling such controversial issues made it clear that a “truth and reconciliation model,” instead of a “justice model”, would suit the Korean context in its dealing with the past. Unlike the trials or other types of truth commissions in the countries that suffered from a large scale of human rights abuses under dictatorships, the TRCK was established long after the occurrence of state violence. So it seemed inappropriate and impossible to punish the perpetrators by trials. Under the Framework Act, the TRCK was mandated to investigate the past incidents not only on its own authority, but also based on petitions received from the victims themselves, their families and other concerned persons that had specific facts regarding a petition to be investigated. 147

Dong-Choon Kim

One year after the acceptance of such petitions, about ten thousand incidents were finally filed for investigation, out of which 80 percent were related to Korean War massacres.13 In investigating these incidents, the Commission’s staff investigators would review pre-acquired written documentation and then look for related documents that were believed to be preserved in police, military, or National Intelligence Service (NIS, formerly Korean Central Intelligence Agency, KCIA) files. Based on the survivors’ statements and the documents that were obtained, the investigators would reconstruct full stories of the incidents through which the usual governmental announcements, “a suspect was found dead accidently”, could be falsified or new facts could be built. The draft of the investigators’ report was then submitted to the Commission for a decision. Acceptance of a petition-related investigative report required a majority vote of the fifteen commissioners in favor of it.14 Majority decision-making was privileged over a deliberative process that could promote consensus. And yet there was often a lack of efforts to seek reconciliation among the TRCK commissioners. Since the commissioners were appointed by the three separate branches of the government and had different orientations, either progressive or conservative, reaching consensus did not proceed as smoothly as one might have wished. Once an investigation was complete and a decision taken, the TRCK immediately notified its decision to concerned persons, including the petitioners, respondents, or their descendants, as well as reference witnesses, allowing them the opportunity to raise a written objection. These individual decisions and recommendations were then submitted in a biannual report to the President and National Assembly, with the goal of publicizing the gathered information and creating public consensus. These reports could then provide the basis for further governmental follow-up measures, including possible reconciliatory or restorative measures (e.g., admitting past wrongdoing), restoring the honor of the victims, or taking other steps to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents. The TRCK was authorized under the Framework Act to offer specific recommendations to the government to reinstate the honor of victims and to mediate reconciliation between confessed perpetrators and their victims, to revise policies in order to prevent the reoccurrence of similar atrocities, and to establish truth-finding research institutes. While one of the TRCK’s main missions was to establish the factual truth about a complaint filed by a victim, its investigative authority was curtailed. It had the power to summon reference witnesses, but if they refused, it could take only a few legal recourse to punish them or to use the possibility of punishment to induce their cooperation.15 More importantly, the TRCK had no legal power to obtain necessary documents from state institutions if they were believed to include sensitive information. In other words, any relevant institution that receives the commission’s request could reject it on the ground of a nebulously defined national security.16 Therefore, its work, indeed its existence itself, was facilitated by the political circumstances of the society at large. Even during the two years in which it functioned under the liberal Roh administration (2006–2007), the TRCK was viewed as an “nagging” organization by entities like the NIS, Bureau of Police, and the Ministry of Defense that were the main targets of most complaints brought to the commission. It is the political will of the President and the strong support from civil society that can enforce cooperation from these institutions. Consequently, its purpose and mandate in the articles of the law were limited by a political circumstance that had been dominated by the anticommunist elites and governmental bodies.17 Moreover, while the TRCK can, on the basis of its conclusion by the Commission, recommend reconciliatory or restorative measures, its recommendation was not binding. It had no authority to punish the perpetrators even when it identified them and their wrongdoings. Nor was it empowered enough to offer immunity to the alleged perpetrators in exchange for their confessions. Under the limited mandate, the TRCK, after concluding its investigation, could propose recommendations to rectify damages, restore honor, and promote reconciliation between 148

Assessments of the South Korean TRC

victim and offender. But the recommendations could also be refused by the related state institutions who might assume responsibility on past wrongs like grave human rights abuses and massacres. With respect to “reconciliation”, the TRCK can be assessed to have accomplished little because neither a perpetrator nor the responsible state institutions have ever apologized for the past misdeeds. The TRCK was not successful in establishing restorative and preventive measures than in finding facts because it was not empowered to take any measures beyond making an unbinding recommendation against individuals or institutions that failed to fully comply with its recommendation or refuse to do so. In this respect, TRCK’s mandate and purpose were different from those of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (hereafter TRC).18 Although “reconciliation” was the second part of the TRCK’s name, the Framework Act did not specify how and with whom the TRCK was to promote the reconciliation. This led the TRCK to focus on establishing truth as a way to promote reconciliation, following the TRC model of achieving reconciliation through truth finding. But the Framework Act granted the TRCK only a constrained authority to seek the narrow sense of forensic truth, and the TRCK’s investigative tools thereby were severely constrained in pursuing dialogic truth or restorative truth that could have had positive effects on reconciliation.19 Its inability to promote reconciliation was further institutionalized by the Framework Act that stopped short of empowering the TRCK to penalize or pardon perpetrators for their past wrongdoings or for cooperation with the TRCK, forestalling another possible avenue of reconciliation.20 The TRCK was created with these limitations because the Framework Act itself was a brainchild of political compromise between conservative and liberal parties in the National Assembly in May 2005. Because the conservative Grand National Party (GNP) fiercely opposed the introduced bill, the liberal Uri Party had to agree to create the TRCK with a restricted mandate in order to secure enough votes to pass it.

The TRCK’s achievements and the remaining tasks The TRCK has confirmed many state crimes based on the newly found truths and the petitioners welcome the fact that their pent-up grievances received governmental attention. Some of the TRCK’s findings, based on newly found testimonies and discovered documents such as the United States’ bombing of South Korean civilians, demand a careful review of the Cold War system of control that still continues in Korea. The findings had the potential to break the American-sponsored politics of denial that has been maintained for the last sixty years. Based on these findings, the TRCK made a number of nonbinding recommendations to the South Korean government. These were expected to contribute greatly to national solidarity and democracy by restoring the honor of the victims and their families, by preventing similar future recurrences, and by fostering reconciliation between the offenders and victims as stipulated in the Framework Act. The TRCK’s recommendations, made with respect to each petition it decided, included “official state apologies, correction of the Family Registry, reexamination of the case, holding of memorial services, correction of historical records, archiving of historical files, legislation for relief of damages, restoration of damages, peace and human rights education, indemnity of damages, and treatment of post-trauma disorder” (TRCK 2010: 189). Finally, the TRCK made 8,961 separate recommendations based on each incident’s truth-finding and above-mentioned comprehensive recommendations before finishing its mission in December 2010.21 To ensure that the TRCK’s recommendations were properly executed, a Recommendations Follow-Up Board was established in 2007 under the Office of the Prime Minister.22 In 2008 this 149

Dong-Choon Kim

institution was incorporated into the Ministry of Public Administration and Security following a cabinet reorganization. The Recommendations Follow-Up Board was mandated to help implement the recommendations the TRCK issued under article 34 of the Framework Act. That provision required the State to make efforts to repair injuries and restore the honor of victims, to take appropriate measures for legal/political reconciliation, and to take necessary measures to reconcile and unify the nation. Finally, the TRCK’s findings and decisions could be used to break the politics of denial that had been maintained for the last sixty years in South Korea. Moreover, the work of TRCK would help straighten the distorted history of South Korea. The truth that the TRCK had sought includes not only the information on past politics of Korea and its crossed historical paths with neighboring big powers, Japan and the United States in particular, but also implications for Korea’s reunification and peace-building in East Asia. By the implementation of following recommendations, the TRCK has made some concrete and tangible achievements with some of the remaining tasks.

Recovering the dignity of the victims Most of the Korean War-related victims’ suffering came from the discriminatory treatment they or their families experienced as “second-class citizens” after being branded as “traitors” or “anti-state criminals”. In some cases their property was confiscated or their educational opportunities were blocked, while in other cases they were ostracized as “Reds”. For thirty to forty years after the Korean War, these survivors and their family members suffered from strict discrimination in the “guilt-by-association” system. The official investigation and decision by the TRCK was approximately equivalent to the recognition that the victims were killed by authorities without proper legal grounds. Those who were victimized by false espionage charges or grave human rights violations also recovered their human dignity by the TRCK’s fact-findings and conclusions, which established that the charges were fabricated as espionage by illegal torture or detention. While the TRCK’s reports provided official confirmation of illegal killings or grave impingements of human rights, other steps were needed to fulfill the objectives of recovering the victims’ full dignity: governmental acknowledgment, apology, new and just decisions by courts, rewriting history textbooks, and the like. Among these, some measures have been implemented. When a case was resolved, the TRCK organized an official memorial service involving the bereaved, which was held by the local administrative bodies.23 Memorial ceremonies funded by the local government were tantamount to the government’s official recognition of the unjustifiable deaths. In addition to these efforts, the chairperson and standing commissioners consoled the bereaved families by participating in joint regional memorial and prayer services held in several regions. The most important results in terms of recovering the dignity of the victims have been the changing views of past tragedies in many local communities, which made the victims’ families enjoying “full-citizenship in the communities”. This was partly a result of the fact that local media covered the TRCK’s new findings of the government’s past wrongdoings and the victims’ accumulated grievances extensively.

Official state apology President Roh Mu-hyun publically apologized for the government’s illegal exercise of state power before the Korean War.24 On January 24, 2008, President Roh expressed the government’s position regarding the settlement of historical issues and offered a comprehensive official apology 150

Assessments of the South Korean TRC

regarding the illegal exercise of state power by past regimes in accordance with the TRCK’s recommendation.25 This apology constituted a signal of responding to the work of TRCK, which was created with his political will at the special proclamation in August 15, 2004. However, other concerned government officials did not follow the President’s lead: the head of the national intelligence service the National Police Chief and Secretary of Defense never issued any official apologies concerning the wrongdoings committed by the predecessors of those institutions. Their inaction meant that those state organizations neither fully accepted the TRCK’s decision nor even acknowledged its new findings of state atrocities.

Reexamination in court The TRCK made a number of recommendations to the government concerning the review of trials in which rulings were made based on the Emergency Measures instituted under the Park Chung Hee’s Yushin system (1972–1979).26 In addition, it recommended separate legislative measures to resolve past human rights infringements committed by the Yushin Regime. Finally, in reviewing a newly tried case, Korea’s Supreme Court determined in 2010 that the Emergency Measures were unconstitutional, a ruling that symbolizes a key act of restitution for those victimized under the Emergency Measures.27 The Korean courts have reexamined and, mostly, reversed the original decisions in several controversial petitions on human rights abuses that the TRCK had verified. The courts have generally accepted the TRCK’s investigation as trustworthy, while prosecutors were reluctant to acknowledge them. In about twenty cases, after retrials, the courts have delivered findings declaring the victims’ innocence, and awarding compensation to the petitioners.28 For example, in January 2008, the Commission referred the case of Jo Yong-su, newspaper editor of the daily Minjok Ilbo, who was summarily executed in 1961 on the charges of treason, to the courts asking for a retrial. Consequently, forty-seven years after his trial and execution, Jo was found innocent in the court of law.29 Thus far, the Korean courts have consistently accepted the results of the TRCK’s findings as truthful and have reversed numerous past decisions. South Korea’s Supreme Court also acquitted a left-leaning party leader who was charged with subversion and espionage, and this was after his execution during the Syngman Rhee regime fifty-three years ago.30 Many newly verified incidents by the TRCK went through the reexamining process in the courts, and the decisions on some of those incidents have been reversed and the victims were compensated.

Restorative measures and compensation for victims On August 21, 2009, the TRCK made an official recommendation that the government should enact a special law for compensating the victims, including the payment of medical bills when mass victimization was verified.31 However, the National Assembly and Lee Myung-bak government ignored this recommendation. Korean War-related victims received welcome news from the South Korean Supreme Court. It reversed the lower court’s decision on the Ulsan’s National Guidance League [Bodo yeonmang] case, stipulating that the government must not apply the statute of limitations to the victims or their family’s petitions for compensation.32 This decision might affect other pending trials in higher courts. But these separate trials also raise doubts about the reparatory measures and whether they should be resolved through individual lawsuits filed by victims. A large, comprehensive administrative process might be much more efficient and effective to resolve the complaints. 151

Dong-Choon Kim

Exhumations and national memorial sites for burial For a period of six months starting from December 2006, the TRCK investigated an estimated 154 burial grounds scattered across the nation, and immediately began exhumations at thirtynine locations. During its time, the TRCK could only exhume about 20 percent of the sites, focusing on the biggest burial sites. To sustain the exhumation of the remaining sites, the legal ground must be prepared.33 The TRCK also recommended that the National Assembly and the government enact a special law mandating exhumation of all remaining burial grounds and establishing permanent burial sites,34 but no response from the authorities concerning this recommendation has been received to the victims’ families. Korea also needs to plan the enshrinement of victims’ remains and future exhumation work by issuing applicable regulations or laws and by securing the necessary financial and procurement measures.35 While above mentioned recommendations the TRCK issued have partly been implemented, the following recommendations have not been executed yet.

Reconciliation for communities With respect to “reconciliation”, it has been evaluated that the TRCK accomplished little because neither a single perpetrator nor any responsible state institutions have ever apologized for their past misdeeds. The TRCK was less successful in those objectives than in finding the facts primarily because it was not empowered to take any measures beyond making nonbinding recommendations against individuals or institutions that refuse or fail to fully comply with its recommendations. For Korean society to achieve true reconciliation, those institutions most responsible for human rights violations, specifically the NIS, Ministry of Defense, and the National Police, must officially and openly acknowledge their misdeeds and ask for forgiveness from the victims and their families.

Publicize the documents and final report of the TRCK Although the TRCK’s official report and documents are important to recover the dignity of the victims and their families, it is also an imperative to reveal this history to Korean citizens in order to begin the healing process at societal level. The conservative media have almost completely ignored the newly found documents and testimonies that the TRCK uncovered and released, choosing instead to reinforce the official versions of history that have been in circulation for several decades. Thus, the newly discovered historical truths have had little chance to be publicized in readable form. The Lee Myung-bak government undertook the reversal route by blaming some of the history textbooks being so liberal or left-leaning that they had to be revised. Consequently, Korea’s Ministry of Education issued new authorization standards of the textbooks, in which a description of the Kwangju 5.18 democracy movement was omitted.36

Settlement of U.S.-related incidents A large number of U.S.-related incidents remain unresolved. In 2001, before the establishment of TRCK, the Pentagon acknowledged that American soldiers shot and killed unarmed civilians near the South Korean hamlet of No Gun Ri in 1950.37 However, the official report attributed the deaths to “combat-related confusion” and fear on the part of the soldiers rather than holding them accountable for firing upon refugees. This was the U.S. government’s reason to reject the No Gun Ri survivors’ demand for an apology and compensation based on the report prepared by 152

Assessments of the South Korean TRC

the joint investigation with its Korean counterpart, the ROK Ministry of Defense, which decided that the No Gun Ri Killings were neither “deliberate” nor carried out under orders.38 Some TRCK’s findings, based on newly found testimonies and documents about secret operations conducted by the intelligence organizations or the United States bombing of South Korean civilians, demand a careful review or even rewriting of the Cold War history that has dominated the contemporary Korea. The TRCK recommended that the South Korean government negotiate their settlement with the United States.39 The American government must conduct additional investigations and provide redress concerning the crimes located by the TRCK’s investigations. The TRCK’s recommendations included an official state apology and the holding of a memorial service, as well as adopting compensatory measures for the victims through negotiations with the U.S. government.40 However, the TRCK did not receive any response both from the South Korean and the U.S. governments. The primary responsibility to press the issue lies with the Korean government, but it appears that Korea’s Ministry of Defense might have never conveyed the recommendation to the U.S. government. Without an official request from the Korean government, it seems quite natural that the U.S. government might feel no need to respond to the United States-related TRCK’s findings and recommendations. To achieve truth and reconciliation, however, the U.S. government must respond to an official request, and the South Korean and U.S. governments should establish a joint investigation team to fully resolve this problem.41

Preventative measures and education Some have said that no measures short of punishment are effective in preventing the possible recurrence of state violence, but the process of enacting the Framework Act generally assumed that any move to enact a special law to prosecute individuals for these atrocities was likely to set off strong protests from the conservatives in Korea. Any such law would also require the removal of the statute of limitations on human rights violation cases, which majority of Korean lawmakers do not wish to abolish. The majority of petitions submitted to the Commission involved illegal acts conducted by the state. It is therefore critical to undertake appropriate judicial reforms to prevent the reoccurrence of similar incidents in the future. At the same time, educational measures, including revision of history textbooks, must be taken to raise the continued awareness of the Commission’s work so as to foster an accurate understanding of the past.

Permanent foundation for research, education, and memory As suggested in the Framework Act, a permanent memorial and research foundation should be established for the continuous memorialization and resolution of past incidents, especially through research and education.42 Nonetheless, no progress has been made with regard to establishing memorials and monuments, establishing and managing the memorial archives, and completing the overall plan to found a research center to house the archives and preserve the historical legacies introduced through the TRCK’s findings.

Establishing a healing center for suffering victims The TRCK was not able to investigate how many of the victims or their families are still suffering from physical or psychological ailments caused by state violence. TRCK conducted a research about the problems by collecting data on 514 people who petitioned to the TRCK. 153

Dong-Choon Kim

It has been reported that 38.9 percent of the massacre-related victims and 48.8 percent of the human rights violation related victims were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.43 Therefore, a government administered treatment center should be established for those victims. Despite the creation of these new institutions, implementation of the TRCK’s recommendations has been slow and highly uneven. Relatively easy measures, such the correction of the Family Registry, have largely been accepted and implemented, but politically sensitive or financially burdensome recommendations remain unaddressed, and they include revision of historical records, legislation for relief of damages, compensation of damages, and peace and human rights education. In accordance with the changed political circumstances by Lee Myung-bak and subsequent Park Geun-hye government, and the lack of will of these two conservative governments, certain crucial recommendations, including apology of the responsible governmental bureaus, relief of damages, and revision of historical records among others have never been discussed in the government for possible implementation. This inaction came from the TRCK’s weak mandate to enforce the implementation of recommendations.

Conclusion The TRCK ended its mission in December 2010 before seeing its recommendations fully implemented. Most petitioners, especially the bereaved family members, feel relieved that the TRCK has finally paid attention to their grievances for the first time after the incidents. But the TRCK’s investigation, decisions, and the judicial acknowledgement, not to mention the rewarding of compensation to the victims or their families, still have a long way to go toward promoting reconciliation between the state and its victims. The TRCK’s nonbinding recommendations faced dismissal of the concerned government organizations and have not been properly implemented. Faced with unfavourable political environment after 2008, the TRCK could only carry out its minimal function of investigating all the received petition cases. Within this context, many Koreans have raised daunting questions as to whether the TRCK contributed to preventing the recurrence of human rights abuses or achieving judicial justice. Many also doubt the effectiveness of any organization that has no mandate to punish perpetrators. The effectiveness of the TRCK must thus continue to be studied carefully as the implementation process proceeds. At the same time, the conservative government’s nullification of the TRCK’s past-dealing project made it apparent that government-sponsored justice can face serious distortions. Indeed, there is a worrisome possibility that a state-led justice initiative can re-legitimate state apparatuses and their authority. The ultimate goal of any “Truth Commissions” should be the empowerment of civil society to move the justice project forward. This can be done by revising the laws, ideologies, and institutions of the Cold War era that have induced and legitimized human rights violations in the past. It will also require the establishment of permanent foundation that can carry forward the TRCK’s positive legacies. This would allow the TRCK’s work maintain independence from continuous change of political climate. The TRCK was a meaningful beginning of a long struggle for justice, not its end. At the same time, the South Korean government should authorize compensation and other restorative measures for the victims, such as official apologies by the heads of key government bureaucracies and other forms of assistance for the victims’ sufferings. Incidents of abuse committed by U.S. forces which remain insufficiently investigated by the TRCK should also be addressed. Finally, the government must establish mechanisms for broad dissemination and preservation of information on human rights abuses in Korea. 154

Assessments of the South Korean TRC

With all its limitations, the TRCK’s investigation, decisions, and recommendations might function as an important and valuable tool to break open the politics of denial that have been maintained in South Korea for the past sixty years. At the same time, its work can straighten the distorted history of South Korea and rewrite the East Asian Cold War history. The TRCK’s work thus not only clarifies important aspects of Korea’s past and its interconnections with neighboring big powers, but also has implications for Korea’s future reunification and for the maintenance of peaceful relations in East Asia.

Notes 1 The Framework Act on Clearing up Past Incidents for Truth and Reconciliation, Act. No. 7542, May 31, 2005. English translation is available at http://www.jinsil.go.kr/English/Information (accessed February 5, 2015). 2 See Kim Dong-Choon (2010). 3 Although the Kwangju incident had been the most important agenda among democratization movements before 1987, the transformation of political circumstances after the 1987 presidential election and the 1988 general election moved the arena of social movements to politics. The political legitimacy of the sixth republic of Roh Tae-woo depended on handling the Kwangju issue and many new politicians who had formerly been active in democracy movements also believed that their first mission was to address the Kwangju problem. 4 Chun was found guilty of treason and homicide, and received a life sentence as well as a fine of USD 276 million. Roh and seventeen others were also convicted of lesser charges by the Supreme Court in 1997. The trials marked a symbolic break from the previous authoritarian era. 5 It was because the commanding officers responsible for ordering the massacre were never identified, and the truth of the Kwangju massacre was not fully disclosed even after the Parliamentary hearings and the trials of the presidents. And the prosecution of the two former presidents served to temporarily appease the civil society and the victims’ families. Chun, Roh, and seventeen other convicted individuals were pardoned and released only after a year of imprisonment. 6 The Geochang Incident was one of the numerous mass killings committed by the South Korean military during the Korean War. In the course of communist suppression policy, the 11th Division of the South Korean military killed approximately 700 civilians in Geochang for serving guerrilla forces February 6–7, 1951. See several documents and articles in Han (2003). 7 The Jeju April 3 Incident was a series of events in which thousands of islanders were killed in the course of violent clashes between the guerillas and government forces. The Jeju branch of the South Korean Labor Party organized uprisings against the American-sponsored Rhee Syngman groups. They began protesting against the general election that would acknowledge the separate governments in 1948. Confronted with the government suppression, the guerrillas were forced to hide in the Halla Mountain. During the suppression operations, nearly thirty thousand civilians were known to have been killed by the National Police, the Northwest Youth, and the National Guard. This incident resulting in numerous civilian deaths occurred during the U.S. military government’s occupation. See the National Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident (2013). 8 The full name of the law was “the Special Law on the Inspection of Collaborators for Japanese Imperialism.” The Commission’s activities are summarized and reported in The Investigation Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property (2010). 9 TRCK’s mid-term activities and achievements were epitomized in a report written in English. See the content of the Framework Act, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2009) (hereinafter TRCK 2009). 10 Ibid. 11 See ibid., p. 25. 12 The statute of limitations is an obstacle that must be abolished for the adoption of prosecution measure. In the case of the Kwangju Special Act, Article 2 states, “the statute of limitations shall be suspended from the very period when there existed a substantial obstacle which prevented the state from instituting prosecution.” See Han (2005:1020). 13 Specifically, 7,922 out of the 10,860 petitions submitted to the TRCK involved incidents related to the Korean War massacres (TRCK 2009, p. 33). 14 According to the Framework Act, the Commission shall reject a petition if it does not fall within the subject matter of the Commission’s investigatory authority, if its contents are deemed evidently false or

155

Dong-Choon Kim

15

16

17

18

19

20

ill-founded, or if it contains identical facts to a previously dismissed petition. See the Framework Act, TRCK 2009, pp. 179–199. According to the Article 24, No. 2 of the Framework Act, the TRCK can “request a reference witness to be present or to make his/her statement”. If the reference witness refuses to appear for the hearing, the TRCK can issue and order enforcing them to appear to the TRCK for investigation. In case of a rejection of an order, a person subject to the warrant of accompaniment shall be fined up to the maximum amount of USD 10,000. But this may be only a symbolic clause to enforce a reference witness to appear. While the Framework Act stipulates that “any concerned party shall respond without delay to a request for materials or data subject to investigation and shall not reject such a request without reasonable grounds”, it contains a large loophole in its exception clause. The act allows that an exception may be permitted if the appropriate minister or a head of any related institution belonging to the President of the Republic of Korea and the National Assembly submits an explanation within five days after the Commission’s request for materials stating that information in the requested materials is classified and its announcement would endanger national security (TRCK 2009: 188). The most controversial issue in passing the bill was the authority to investigate the perpetrators. The conservative GNP opposed the extension of authority in investigating the perpetrators. The Framework Act was passed after reaching a compromise in the National Assembly which resulted in the TRCK being allowed to issue an order for the submission of the related documents to the concerned party. However, if such an order of submission is refused, the TRCK has no means to enforce it. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like body assembled after the abolition of apartheid. Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and some were selected for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution. See Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1998). The Framework Act recognizes only factual or forensic truth, whereas the South African TRC recognizes “four notions of truth” including personal or narrative truth, social or “dialogue” truth, and healing and restorative truth, in addition to factual truth. The Framework Act stipulated that for a perpetrator actively cooperating with the Commission by confessing his/her crime during the investigation, and his/her admitted contents comply with the facts of the investigation, the TRCK may recommend to the relative institution that immunity be granted or punishment be minimized during the criminal investigation or trial procedure. (Article 38 of the Framework Act; see TRCK 2009, p. 194)

This article would be meaningless as far as TRCK has no authority to punish the obstinate perpetrators. 21 The TRCK published the “Comprehensive Report” before its closing. See TRCK (2010), Comprehensive Report, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, Seoul: TRCK (Hereinafter “TRCK Comprehensive Report”): 201–204. The original Korean text can be read at http://www.jinsil.go.kr/Information_Notice/report/read. asp?num=41&pageno=1&stype=&sval=&data_years=2012&data_month=, accessed February 5, 2015. (TRCK [2010], Comprehensive Report [Jonghap Bogoseo1], Seoul: TRCK [Hereinafter “TRCK 2010”]). 22 “Regulations on the Establishment and Operation of the Recommendations Follow-Up Board”, enacted by Presidential Decree No. 195 (August 27, 2007). 23 See my interview with Mark Selden, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Kim-Dong_choon/3313/article. html, accessed June 16, 2015. 24 President Roh Mu-hyun officially already apologized for the abuses perpetrated by the previous government and expressed his condolences to the Jeju April 3 victims. The Korean government’s official recognition of the existence of the Jeju April 3 Incident civilian victims was a crucial step on the road of historical reconciliation of the Korean War massacres. 25 He stated, “I also offer words of apology to all victims, including their families, who were abused by state power. We should take this as a lesson so as to prevent this kind of incident from happening again.” For a summary of the apology, see TRCK 2009, op. cit. p. 108. 26 The Yushin system, the final era of the Park Chung Hee’s Presidency, was notorious for oppressing dissidents and committing grave human rights violations such as torture, espionage-fabrication and disappearance of main political opponents. The Emergency Measures functioned as almighty laws in oppressing the dissidents.

156

Assessments of the South Korean TRC 27 TRCK made an announcement confirming that Park Chung Hee administration’s “Emergency Measures” in the 1970s constituted a grave infringement of citizens’ basic rights guaranteed by Constitution. Hankyoreh, September 2, 2009. 28 By July of 2010, TRCK recommended forty-two cases to the court for reexamination (McCormack and Dong-Choon 2009; http://japanfocus.org/articles/print_articles/3056, accessed February 5, 2015). See the list of recommended retrial cases and its status, TRCK Comprehensive Report, pp. 189–194. 29 TRCK 2009, p. 100. 30 TRCK 2009, p. 98. 31 See Kim Rahn, ‘Compensation Claim Period Limitless for Inhumane State Crimes,’ The Korea Times (September 8, 2011), (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/common/printpreview.asp?categoryCode= 117&newsIdx=94525, accessed February 5, 2015); TRCK 2010, p. 211. 32 “The Bereaved Families of the Ulsan Bodo League ‘Welcomed’ the Decision of the Supreme Court,” Yeonhap News, August 30, 2012. 33 See the selected estimated burial sites and 39 priority exhumation sites, TRCK Comprehensive Report, pp. 151–164. 34 TRCK 2010, p. 212. 35 TRCK 2010, p. 212. 36 Hankyoreh, November 19, 2011, “Depolicizing History Textbooks”. 37 The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2001, “Clinton Deeply Regrets”. 38 American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz has said that the No Gun Ri Report omitted the declassified Ambassador Muccio’s letter, which included a policy decision at the high-level U.S.-South Korean government meeting on the permission to fire on the refugees (Conway-Lanz 2005). In its 2001 report, the U.S. investigation team said it had learned of the other civilian killings by the U.S. forces, but indicated that they would not be investigated (Office of the Inspector General 2001). 39 TRCK 2010, p. 216. 40 Ibid. 41 The outcry of U.S.-related victims can be seen at “Former residents of Island seek reparations for Incheon assault”, Stars and Stripes, April 23, 2011 (http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/korea/ former-residents-of-island-seek-reparations-for-incheon-assault-1.141782, accessed June 17, 2015). 42 Article 40 in the Framework Act. 43 TRCK 2010, pp. 130–131.

References Conway-Lanz, Sahr (2005), “Beyond No Gun Ri: Refugees and the United States Military in the Korean War”, Diplomatic History, Vol. 29, Issue 1, pp 49–81. Han, In Sup (2005), “Kwangju and Beyond: Coping with Past State Atrocities in South Korea”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 27. Issue 3, pp. 998–1045. Han, In Sup, ed. (2003), Materials on Geochang Incident [Geochang Sagun Jaryojip]. Seoul: Seoul National University, Law Research Institute. Hanley, Charles J. (2008), “No Gun Ri: The Journalism and the Investigation”, paper presented at the Second No Gun Ri International Peace Conference, Seoul, sponsored by the No Gun Ri Institute for Peace Studies. 12 November. The Investigation Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property (2010), Investigation on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property: Activities of the Four Years, July 2006–July 2010. Seoul: The Investigation Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property. Kim, Dong-Choon (2010), “The Long Road toward Truth and Reconciliation”, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 42, Issue 4, pp. 525–552. Kim, Dong-Choon, and Mark Selden (2011), “South Korea’s Embattled Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, Japan Focus (http://japanfocus.org/-Kim-Dong_choon/3313, accessed February 5, 2015). McCormack, Gavan, and Kim Dong-Choon (2009), “Grappling with Cold War History: Korea’s Embattled Truth and Reconciliation Commission”, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, (http://japanfocus.org/-KimDong_choon/3056, accessed February 5, 2015). The National Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju April 3 Incident (2013), The Jeju April 3 Incident, Investigation Report. Seoul: Jeju April 3 Peace Foundation (http://www.jeju43peace. or.kr/report_eng.pdf, accessed February 5, 2015).

157

Dong-Choon Kim Office of the Inspector General (2001), No Gun Ri Review. Washington, DC: Department of the Army. PTCSD (2004), A Hard Journey to Justice: Five Term Report by the Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths of the Republic of Korea. Seoul: PTCSD. Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1998), Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Vol. 1. Cape Town: Juta & Co. Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (TRCK) (2009), A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Activities of the Past Three Year. Seoul: TRCK. Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (TRCK) (2010), Comprehensive Report, Vol. 1, Pt. 1. Seoul: TRCK) [TRCK Comprehensive Report]. Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea (TRCK) (2010), Comprehensive Report [Jonghap Bogoseo1], Seoul: TRCK (http://www.jinsil.go.kr/Information_Notice/report/read.asp?num=41&pageno= 1&stype=&sval=&data_years=2012&data_month, accessed February 5, 2015) [TRCK 2010].

158

10 ON FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION Korean “collaborators” of Japanese colonialism Jeong-Chul Kim

Individuals among the occupied population have different experiences and perspectives on foreign domination; when the occupation is over, battles continue to arise over the legal and historical responsibility of those who have once supported external occupiers. Upon foreign invasion, a certain segment of subjugated populations puts itself forward to offer necessary services for the occupying forces (Doyle 1986; Robinson 1972). Despite its certain positive functions, foreign occupation is often not a pleasant experience as it is a “wound” for occupied nations. Thus, when foreign domination ends, those who have aided the foreign ruler become the target of retribution for their “betrayal,” and stand as negative symbols of a nation’s difficult past. The past collaboration with the occupying forces produces a divisive effect to a society that has lived through foreign control. Making collaborators answerable to their own past constitutes a significant part of liberated nations’ efforts to reach forgiveness and reconciliation during post-occupation periods. An extensive identification and purge of collaborators was a common practice for European countries after WWII (Deák et al. 2000; Elster 2006; Frommer 2005). Memories of the Nazi atrocities and corresponding feelings for revenge toward Nazi collaborators frequently drove the survivors to punish those who had made them suffer. Furthermore, due to the participation in persecution and mass killings of the Jews and other ethnic groups, certain collaborators (and perpetrators) had to hold legal responsibilities for their “heinous crimes” committed against other human beings. In particular, European countries during the post-WWII era did not hastily let go of collaborators, leaving their wrongs unaddressed. Sometimes, society’s aspirations to eliminate collaborators went “too far”; the scale of punishment became out of proportion to the actual deeds of the collaborators, bypassing due legal processes. European countries were able to mete out “satisfactory” outcomes by punishing collaborators; at the same time, there emerged some reflective discourses that lamented “excessive” punishment of collaborators. Post-war governments in Europe considered the removal of collaborators would be greatly beneficial to rebuilding a liberated world. In this atmosphere, some collaborators came forward to admit their past wrongs and sought forgiveness from their compatriots, pleading extenuating circumstances that had triggered their collaboration. A series of efforts to purge collaborators neither resolved all the problems that foreign occupation created, nor exonerated the collaborators. However, through the process of punishing collaborators, European societies had an opportunity to learn from trial and error in purging their 159

Jeong-Chul Kim

“treacherous” community members, and amend some social rifts that have occurred because of collaboration. Dealing with collaboration in thorough and appropriate manners is a crucial step in achieving reconciliation with the burdensome past of liberated societies. Similarly, Koreans began to search for ways to admit and examine the nation’s difficult past, thus reaching overall societal reconciliation in the 2000s.1 The dynamics of reconciliation process is a recent phenomenon in Korea; academic research, particularly on the politics of remembering collaborators, is very limited. For this reason, I structure this review by highlighting three major movements to bring up the collaboration issue, and corresponding responses to these movements. I focus on the positions of those who want to keep the collaboration issues alive in Korean’s collective memory and those who try to guard it against the uncomfortable past, as well as on epistemological and methodological questions regarding the ways in which the controversial historical figures are investigated and remembered.2 I begin by identifying those who supported Japanese colonial rule, what roles they performed for the occupying power, and how they were perceived by fellow Koreans.

Korean collaborators under Japanese colonial rule Collaborators in Korean are Chinilpa, which can be translated into “pro-Japanese factions.” The term Chinilpa denoted Korean government officials who had maintained close political relationships with Japan during the Chosŏn Dynasty of Korea (1392–1910). Throughout the course of Japanese occupation, the term was widely used to denounce someone who worked for or with the Japanese occupying forces and went against the interests of fellow Koreans. It became almost synonymous with “traitors,” “betrayers,” and “puppets.” During the 35 years of colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, collaborators came from almost all sectors in occupied Korea. Above all, collaboration arose from the upper strata of Korean society. Yangban (i.e., the literati ruling class of the Chosŏn Dynasty of Korea), landowners, and community leaders politically and economically mobilized their compatriots to carry out Japan’s native policies and ruling schemes. With education and training opportunities to qualify for Koreans to participate in Japan’s colonial system, the middle class Koreans supported Japan’s ruling projects as well. Koreans in the lower classes were relatively less visible in their collaborative acts compared to those in the upper and middle classes; however, they monitored their villages and did chores for Japanese authorities, working as local guides and informants. Collaboration often transpires due to a combination of external incentives and individual motives (Hechter et al. 2011; Kalyvas 2006), and these also explain the rise of collaboration in Korea (Chung 2002; Kim 2014). Japan induced indigenous support for its various goals of occupation such as military expansion, economic growth, and cultural assimilation. To this end, Japan not only provided rewards such as prizes, honor, and money, but also threatened Koreans with imprisonment, unemployment, and violence. Many Koreans needed jobs and food, or feared severe punishment from the occupying forces. Moreover, based on the existing hierarchical social structure of Korea, certain Koreans thought that Japanese control could bring them unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility in their society (Kim 2003). Koreans who established close ties with Japan rendered a wide variety of services for the foreign ruler by working in colonial administrative, economic, and coercive apparatuses, as well as in pro-Japanese Korean political organizations. Korean high-ranking and petty administrative officials, counselors, and judges fulfilled Japan’s ruling policies. Japan relied on businesspersons and landowners for its extensive resource mobilization extracted out of Korea. Military policemen, police officers, and soldiers located, arrested, and tortured their fellow Koreans who fought against Japan. Japan’s continuous wars were greatly supported by Korean professors, teachers, 160

On forgiveness and reconciliation

aristocrats, religious leaders, writers, musicians, and painters who actively participated in its propaganda campaigns. The roles and attitudes of those collaborative factions broadly received negative reactions from other Koreans (Chung 2002; Kim 2014). Korea and Japan had had a long history of unfriendly relations; Japan ruled Korea in harsh manners, frequently inflicting violence and humiliation on Koreans. Other Koreans thought the collaborators were voluntarily or forcibly inflicting cruelty and harm on their compatriots on behalf of their “enemy” nation. The Korean public perceived collaborators doing nothing but prolonging the unwelcomed external domination, and therefore going against national justice. Thus, when possible, the Korean freedom fighters assassinated notorious collaborators, and the nationalistic media publicly produced insulting images of collaborative factions (e.g., dogs of Japan, greedy demons, and national traitors). The following explains Koreans’ attempts to punish collaborators with the end of Japan’s colonial occupation.

The failed purge of collaborators after liberation After liberation from Japan, Koreans were eager to purge their “traitorous” compatriots and at the same time, redeem their sovereign status. This aspiration, however, was opposed by the liberating powers (Cho 2003; Chung 2002; De Ceuster 2001; Han, S.W.D. 2008; Kang 2003; Kim 2010a, 2010b; Suh 2010). With the Cold War structure emerging in East Asia, the divided Korean peninsula was placed under the tutelage of the U.S. in the South, and the USSR in the North. It was urgent for the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) to mitigate the political unrest and the growing threat of Communism in the South. Thus, USAMGIK supported a pro-American politician, Syngman Rhee, to establish a government in the South alone. Importantly, USAMGIK delayed the approval of the punishment of collaborators proposed by the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly (Namjosŏn Kwado Ippŏp Ŭiwŏn).3 The U.S. interim government needed the expertise and skills of collaborators necessary to maintain security and normalize state functions in the liberated society. A series of political measures taken by the liberating forces complicated reconciliation process with the colonial past. Under the protection of USAMGIK, former Korean administrative elites, police officers and military elites were recuperated to power. In response to nationalistic calls to expose their controversial past deeds, those collaborators denounced and suppressed Korean nationalists and communists who had fought against Japan. Furthermore, collaborators actively utilized coercive methods that they had mastered in Japan’s colonial apparatuses such as legal institutions and police surveillance that the Japanese had set up. The collaborators hunted down former Korean independence fighters, who became obstacles to redeeming their national influence in liberated Korea. Despite collaborators’ maneuvers to thwart the desire to punish those who opposed them, Koreans continued their efforts to bring those collaborators to justice. When the USAMGIK rule was over, young reformist politicians were elected to the National Assembly of Korea. These representatives moved to prosecute collaborators and passed the Act for Punishing Anti-National Activities (Panminjok haengwi ch’ŏbŏlpŏp). Based on the law, the National Assembly was able to establish the Special Investigation Committee for Anti-National Activities (Panminjok haengwi t’ŭkpyŏl chosa wiwŏnhoe) to pursue collaborators. The special committee launched its investigation on collaboration with Japan and arrested those who had harmed their own people on behalf of Japan. However, the special committee faced strong resistance from collaborative factions and their supporters who had already formed the advantageous power relations at the advent of the U.S. involvement in the native politics (Kang 2003). Above all, the police officers and administrative 161

Jeong-Chul Kim

officials who had served Japan persistently obstructed the committee activities, and used violence and terror against the investigators. President Rhee also discouraged the committee operation. President Rhee himself was a former leader of Korea’s independence movements, and yet, he appointed the collaborators to the important positions in his government (1948–1960). Nation-building under his strong reign was a more urgent task for Rhee than resolving the past issue. His preoccupation lied with confronting communist challenges than getting rid of the collaborators. Exercising the upper hand in liberated Korea, collaborative factions successfully silenced the demand for justice against those who were holding a partial responsibility for the nation’s “bitter” experience under the colonial rule. In addition to the opposition from the coalition between collaborators and the Rhee government, the special committee had its own limitations in fulfilling its intended goals of purging collaborators. For example, some committee members themselves had collaborative experiences and the state actors bribed and threatened other investigators to drop the charges against some of the collaborators. The committee prosecuted a total of 293 people, and yet the Rhee government set most of them free, and dissolved the committee after less than a year of activity. The special committee’s purging of collaborators ended in unsatisfactory manner to most Koreans. Under the Rhee administration and subsequent military regimes, the collaboration issue almost disappeared in social and political memories. After the Korean War (1950–1953), South Korea (hereafter, Korea) concentrated on economic growth, as well as social and political harmony in the society. To this end, state-produced myths and memories of national heroes were extensively circulated in the public (De Ceuster 2001). “Master narratives” about national heroes enabled collaborators to divert the nation’s attention from their questionable past to a more urgent agenda of national reconstruction. The military regimes that followed the Rhee government condemned Japan’s colonization of Korea. However, the curiosity and desire to know who had been involved in the colonial rule were largely disregarded. Those associated with Japanese rule succeeded in turning themselves into nationalistic civil servants. Under the banner of anticommunist ideology, collaborators and their supporters were able to effectively suppress the voices that demanded the purge of collaborative factions while undermining their political rivals. However, public interests and concerns about collaborators did not entirely fade away. Here I turn to various ways in which Koreans undertook serious projects to remember the colonial past and to reach domestic reconciliation.

Bringing back collaborators Korea underwent a major political transition from a military dictatorship to a democracy in the 1990s (Kim 2010b). The Kim Dae-jung government (1997–2002) – commonly evaluated as the first democratic government in Korea – began to open socio-political space in which social groups could not only talk about repressed issues, but also raise their voices and make political demands. Importantly, under the Kim government, the Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths was established to investigate political oppression committed by previous authoritarian regimes (Cho 2003; Cho 2007). This commission was intended not so much to unearth the past wrongs of the former regimes and punish those responsible for the violation of human rights as to acknowledge historical injustices and relieve the grievances of victims of state violence. The momentum to reconcile the nation with its past was accelerated under the succeeding Roh Moo-hyun government (2002–2007). The Roh government began active discussions of controversial historical issues such as pro-Japanese collaborators and Korean victims of Japan’s war conscription (Kim 2010b). The civic organizations in addition applied new pressures to 162

On forgiveness and reconciliation

seek truth about collaboration.4 Here I review various attempts to reach reconciliation with the colonial past at both state and civic levels: (1) the construction of a list of collaborators, (2) the confiscation of collaborators’ property, and (3) the publication of a biographical encyclopedia of collaborators.

Seeking truth about collaborators Reconciliation with the colonial legacies begins by establishing historical truth about the difficult experience of the nation. A unidirectional political process that deliberately deletes a certain parts of the national memory may hinder meaningful community relationships and active political participation of the public. A society can open up new collective identity among community members by integrating collaboration into an important part of national history. The Roh Moo-hyun government completed a list of pro-Japanese collaborators in 2009 from the investigation of “anti-national activities” committed during colonial occupation. Based on the Special Act to Investigate the Truth of Anti-National Activities under Japanese Imperialism (Ilche kangjŏmha Panminjok haengwi Chinsang kyumyŏng e kwanhan T’ŭkpyŏlpŏp) passed at the National Assembly of Korea in 2004, the Roh government established a special apparatus to examine the issue of collaboration in 2005: The Committee to Investigate the Truth of Pro-Japanese Anti-National Activities (Ch’inil panminjok haengwi chinsang kyumyŏng wiwŏnhoe). This presidential commission spent four and half years collecting and documenting various collaborative activities, and produced a database. In particular, the commission published two public reports called the Source Books on Pro-Japanese Anti-National Activities (Ch’inil panminjok haengwi kwan’gye saryojip) and the Reports on the Investigation of the Truth of Pro-Japanese Anti-National Activities (Ch’inil panminjok haengwi chinsang kyumyŏng pogosŏ). The government reports define collaborators as those who engaged in “anti-national behaviors” including the following: inflicting harm on Korean independence fighters; signing treaties to surrender Korean sovereignty to Japan; holding official positions of responsibility in Japan’s various colonial institutions; mobilizing fellow Koreans into Japan’s “invasion” wars; and/or making donations to Japan (see Linton 2010). Those listed in the reports are mostly Korean elites in various sectors of society such as politics, administration, military and the police, aristocracy, education, religion, art, and literature, among others. The Roh government planned to reconcile with the nation’s difficult past through the report publications. Others, however, viewed them as evidence of political manipulation. Korean politics is divided into progressive and conservative camps. While the Roh government was progressive, conservatives were associated with the descendants of collaborative factions and military regimes to a considerable degree. In this divisive milieu, the pursuit of historical truth by the Roh government was partly seen as a political strategy intended to strike a blow against the government’s political opponents, especially the members of Grand National Party (GNP, currently the Saenuri Party). Moreover, Roh government’s investigation was possibly intended to weaken the position of GNP’s Park Geun-hye, one of the strongest presidential candidates then (see Choo 2005). Park’s father was the second President of Korea, Park Chung Hee, who had served the Japanese Army as an Imperial Army officer. Given this fact, Roh’s project could have undermined Park’s political and moral standing in the public domain.5 Rather than merely blackmailing those connected to the colonial past, the public reports could operate as a tool to envision more general political reforms that would alter the fixated power arrangement in the society (see Cho 2003; Chung 2002). Even though collaborative factions made a certain contributions to the development of the country after liberation, they were involved in human right abuse and violence against Koreans who spoke out against authoritarian 163

Jeong-Chul Kim

regimes (Kim 2010a, 2010b). The list makes publicly named individuals responsible for their association with Japan, and reminds other Koreans that they do not live in a society with no consequences. This list at the same time reclassifies historical figures once viewed as patriotic and heroic as anti-national or even criminal. Thus, the publication of the reports could allow the Roh government to damage collaborators and their supporters who had thrived under military regimes, shifting power from the collaborators to those who judged them. By reversing the existing political order and power relations, the collaborators’ list could ultimately stimulate “pan-Korean nationalism” (Jager 2005). The Kim Dae-jung government initiated an earnest communication with the North in an attempt to reduce military tension in the Korean peninsula. The Roh government continued this policy and maintained a harmonious relationship between the two Koreas. By seeking the truth of colonial experience, the Roh administration could replace a half-century-old anticommunist framework with that of anticolonialism. Japan replaced North Korea as the primary enemy of the South. The list served to mend the ideological divide between the left and right in the South, and further revived the one nation spirit between the two Koreas. Potentially negative consequences of the government reports remained a concern (Choo 2005; Han, S.-J. 2008). The reports could have triggered unnecessary pains among Koreans. Collaborators’ descendants would suffer from humiliation for the deeds that they were not personally involved with. Most of those who were culpable for colonial atrocities were gone, and their descendants should have been exempted from negative consequences of their ancestors’ deeds. Furthermore, the families and descendants of those who were suppressed by military regimes would now use the reports as a tool to delegitimize the authoritarian regimes’ accomplishments primarily in economic domain. The military rule oppressed leftist activities for causing “social unrest,” and the list of collaborators created space for the “anti-state” activities to glorify the victims and the descents of military suppression. On the other hand, the Roh administration’s persistent attempts of domestic reconciliation could jeopardize Korea’s foreign relations, especially with Japan and the U.S. The list could inflame the public animosity against government officials associated with the colonial past and military regimes. If such negative feelings became widespread, Koreans’ anti-Japanese and anti-American sentiments would escalate. A certain state actors with good relationships with these countries were at the risk of possibly losing their government positions as a result of the public’s anger arising from the reports. This would have caused serious problems in continuing Korea’s economic and security cooperation with Japan and the U.S. Given the great priority of national security, domestic reconciliation could be compromised. Aside from the potential pitfalls, the collaborators’ list has limitations in terms of selectivity and definition (Caprio 2006; see also Brook 2005). Indeed, the existence of the list simply renders all people in the report into “anti-national” offenders. The presidential commission spent a large amount of time and resources investigating collaboration during colonial rule. Extensive newspaper articles and official documents included in the reports show the clear evidence of each individual’s association with the Japanese occupying power, and the committee’s rigorous method and process to prove collaboration. Yet, the list ignores violent coercion, each individual’s different sense of state and nation, and the extraordinary political circumstances in which collaboration took place. Given these factors, those in the reports might not be labeled homogenously as “traitors.” All in all, the list of collaborators complied by the Roh government aims at creating a new political community in which its members could establish open and trusting relationships by putting the history of collaboration on the public record. Yet, some concerns remain as regards to the questionable intentions behind the list’s publication and the potential costs, in tangible and intangible terms, that Koreans might have to pay for. On the other hand, the government reports 164

On forgiveness and reconciliation

could simply have been to determine the guilt or innocence of the controversial historical figures and to symbolically punish or exonerate them.

Resuming justice on collaborators Reconciliation involves not only seeking the truth, but also meting out the appropriate measure of justice. A society adopts legal procedures to rectify historical injustices that have transpired due to social challenges. Furthermore, the society corrects “unfair” disparities arising from different responses to foreign occupation, thus promoting reconciliation within community. The verdicts on collaboration were delivered, and they were accompanied by the confiscation of collaborators’ wealth accumulated from their service to Japan during the colonial rule (Han, S.W.D. 2008; Linton 2010). Under the Special Law to Redeem Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property, the Roh government established the Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property in 2005. This commission searched for land and other properties under the names of alleged collaborators and their descendants, and began to seize the assets. The confiscated assets are supposed to support Korean independence fighters and their families as a reward for their roles under Japanese occupation. In the 1990s, the descendants of some prominent collaborators began to successfully reclaim their ancestors’ land from the state (Han, S.W.D. 2008). For example, the descendants of Yi Wan-yong – a notorious collaborator, who had signed the treaties to forego Korea’s sovereignty – filed lawsuits against the government to regain Yi’s property. The court ruled in favor of Yi’s descendants and the descendants gained the proceeds from the land sales. Then, they emigrated out of Korea with the money. Yi’s case spurred similar lawsuits in which the descendants of other collaborators sought to regain their parents’ and grandparents’ property. The opinion pieces in newspapers questioned whether it was acceptable for those descendants to recover their ancestors’ property suggesting that this legal process should be stopped. The main objective of confiscation was to put forward national justice and offset the financial gap between the “traitors” and the “heroes” (Han, S.W.D. 2008; Jager 2005). Under Japanese rule, collaborators were able to accrue wealth at the expense of fellow Koreans’ suffering, and maintained and passed down social influence and power under authoritarian regimes. By contrast, the lives of Korean independence fighters and their families were very difficult. They exhausted their assets in long-years of resistance against the Japanese occupation, fleeing from Japanese surveillance and persecution across the Korean border to Manchuria in China, or to Russia. After liberation, the descendants of the fighters could honor their ancestors’ contributions to Korea’s independence. However, most of them became socially desolate and financially impoverished. The disparities between the descendants of collaborators and independence fighters increased over subsequent generations. Korean society needed to contemplate on these injustices, and found ways to compensate those who sacrificed for the country and their descendants. The commission spent four years placing the property of collaborators into the state coffer, succeeding in confiscating an approximate total of 13 million square meters formerly owned by 168 collaborators (Linton 2010; Sim et al. 2010). For example, the commission noticed that the high-profile collaborators such as Yi Wan-yong and Song Byeong-jun once owned a large amount of land from their service to Japan (approximately 15.7 million square meters and 8.5 million square meters, respectively). However, they had been mostly disposed of during and after the occupation. Thus, the government partially redeemed their property (e.g., 10,928 square meters from Yi at the estimated value of $70,000, and 2,911 square meters from Song at $4,700).6 As the commission ended its four-year operation, the litigation team at the Justice Department of Korea continued the commission’s unfinished work. In the case of descendant’s disposal 165

Jeong-Chul Kim

of their ancestors’ land, the litigation team demanded the return of the “unjust” profits generated from transactions. The team is currently carrying out legal procedures to seize collaborators’ property and responding to legal actions taken by collaborators’ descendants. Indeed, some of the descendants resisted the commission’s decisions to seize their ancestors’ forestland and farmland. Some descendants filed administrative litigations to challenge the legal definition of collaboration and the government seizure of their inheritance. In most cases, the court ruled against the plaintiffs that the commission had the right to confiscate the property based on the evidence that the collaborators had accumulated their wealth by aiding Japan and harming fellow Koreans. The court also paid considerable attention to the descendants’ requests. For example, the grandson of Yi Hae-sŭng filed a lawsuit to stop the confiscation of his grandfather’s land at the estimated value of $20 million (In 2010). According to Yi’s grandson, the Japanese colonial government bestowed a noble title to Yi Hae-sŭng because it intended to take advantage of Yi’s influential position as a royal family member of the Chosŏn Dynasty. The grandson argued that his grandfather merely received the property from Japan corresponding to his title, suggesting that his property did not come from an “anti-national” behavior. The court of the first instance ruled in favor of Yi’s grandson, the plaintiff; however, the grandson lost the case in the second trial. Moreover, other descendants filed constitutional litigations (see also Han, S.W.D. 2008: 670–4 for various legal issues and debate on the Special Law). For example, 64 descendants of collaborators took joint legal actions, claiming that the Special Law not only retroactively deprived individuals of property rights (i.e., retroactive punishment), but also held the descendants responsible for their ancestors’ way of gaining wealth (i.e., guilt-by-association). The descendants argued that these two proceedings of the Special Law violated the constitution of Korea. However, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled against the plaintiffs for the following reasons (Na 2011). (1) The Special Law does constitute retroactive punishment, but this rule has exceptions on the ground that the property obtained by the collaborators could have been seized upon Korea’s independence from Japan; (2) It violates a sense of justice to allow someone to possess the wealth obtained from collaboration. Furthermore, the government only confiscates the property related to collaboration, not to the free-willed economic activities of descendants. It, therefore, does not violate the restrictive application of the guilt-by-association reasoning; and (3) Anyone can challenge the commission’s decision through due legal procedures. Some experts and civic organizations expressed their wishes for the commission to continue the investigation by arguing the commission’s unsatisfactory achievements (Sim et al. 2010). During 35 years of occupation, collaborative factions hoarded a large amount of assets and augmented them after liberation. Given the scale and scope of their wealth, four years’ investigation was insufficient for the commission to thoroughly investigate and seize collaborators’ property. In fact, the commission additionally identified suspicious land that might belong to collaborators and their families, but registered under someone else’s names. Upon the termination of the commission’s operation, the confiscation process became slow because of the understaffed litigation team and low budget. Koreans know of collaborators’ property, and were disappointed by the limited outcomes of the commission and subsequent government measures (Sim et al. 2010). Perhaps the project of pursuing justice on collaboration may not be sufficient to compensate independence fighters and their families. It also may not prevent future collaboration such as espionage to serve foreign countries. Considering the time that passed after liberation, the quest for legal justice on collaborators’ wealth may be “too much.” Yet, Koreans decided to redress “unfair” disparities between the betrayers and the freedom fighters believing that reconciliation begins with remedying the origins of divisive conflict. 166

On forgiveness and reconciliation

Creating collective memories of collaborators Reconciliation involves the collective memories of collaboration and the reconstruction of historical narratives about a nation’s difficult past. Hegemonic social groups often produce dominant discourse in an attempt to boost national pride and to reinforce their moral ground in relation to the public. However, other groups at the periphery might have different interpretations of national history. Creating counter-hegemonic narratives vis-à-vis taken-for-granted national history comprises a crucial step toward reconciliation amongst the members of a society. A civic organization called the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities collected mnemonic artifacts on Korean collaborators under Japan and is offering a rival version of the colonial past (Kim et al. 2013). To this end, the institute published three volumes of a biographical encyclopedia of pro-Japanese collaborators (Ch’inil inmyŏng sajŏn) in 2009. The institute listed a total of 4,389 people who had played active and crucial roles in carrying out Japan’s ruling policies. Similar to the government reports, the encyclopedia defines collaboration as a behavior that harmed fellow compatriots in order to benefit Japan. The encyclopedia provides detailed information on the demographics, education, careers, and publications of those individuals. The publication of the encyclopedia was possible through the institute’s long-term efforts to reveal the truths about Koreans’ experiences under Japanese rule. Since its establishment, the institute has been printing a series of books intended to uncover collaborative activities: Chronicles of Pro-Japanese Collaborators (Sillok Ch’inilp’a, 1991), three volumes of 99 Pro-Japanese Collaborators (Ch’inilp’a 99 in 1–3, 1993), and Unresolved History (Ch’ŏngsan haji Mothan Yŏksa 1–3, 1994), the Encyclopedia of Cooperative Organizations for Imperial Japan (Ilche hyŏmnyŏk tanch’e sajŏn, 2004), Who’s Who During the Japanese Occupation Period (Ilche kangjŏmgi Inmyŏngnok, 2005), Theorem of Pro-Japanese Literature (Ch’inilmunhangnon, 2002), and What Are Pro-Japanese Collaborators? (Ch’inilp’a ran Muŏt in’ga, 1997), to name a few. The institute’s publications on collaborators were in line with increasing scholarly attention to the topic, which became a (in)direct cornerstone for the encyclopedia project. Scholars of Korean studies had been exploring the various aspects of collaboration (Chung 2002; De Ceuster 2001), and they not only participated in signature collection campaign to support, but also volunteered to serve as committee members of the encyclopedia publication. The participation of the experts allowed the encyclopedia project to investigate the issue with academic rigor assisted by new evidence. To complete the encyclopedia publication, the institute alerted the public to the project (Kim et al. 2013). The institute used internet media and successfully raised funds to cover the publication expenses. Some of the Korean public also financially supported the project through donations and membership fees. The encyclopedia resonated well with the public’s wishes to know more about largely forgotten history on collaboration. The Korean public was willing to incorporate collaboration into the nation’s history, and made a moral demand to the ruling elites to come forward and admit their past wrongs, if any. The encyclopedia builds up historical memories of the nation, informing the public of the hidden careers of influential figures. For example, the encyclopedia makes the unknown career of highly respected second President Park Chung Hee, a high-ranking officer of the Japanese Army associated with the suppression of Korean freedom fighters, a public knowledge (Han, S.-J. 2008). As another example, Kim Hwal-lan, the founder of Ewha Womans University, had encouraged Korean students to volunteer for Japan’s wars through her lectures and essays (see Kwon 2006 for the dynamics of collective memory on Kim Hawl-lan). The encyclopedia informs the public of those who are known as national heroes or heroines were indeed involved in the persecution of their fellow nationals during the colonial rule. 167

Jeong-Chul Kim

While revealing the unknown past of historical figures, the encyclopedia creates negative symbols that remind the public of their community obligations. As described above, existing historical narratives were imbued with the threat of the Communist North and top-down orders by authoritarian regimes. However, the encyclopedia singles out behaviors undermining national interests and communal unity in the face of externally imposed challenges. As a moral text, the encyclopedia teaches the public that it is imperative for community members not to change sides from their homeland to external occupiers. That being said, the encyclopedic judgment on national “villains” draws on the institute’s rigid, perhaps overly moralistic, assessments of historical figures. It is undeniable that some Koreans arrested and tortured fellow Koreans who fought against the Japanese army, and others exploited their compatriots and mobilized resources for Japan’s war efforts. Nonetheless, collaborators may not be simply judged by others living in a different socio-political milieu (see Caprio 2006). Furthermore, some of the collaborators listed in the encyclopedia did play constructive roles for their country during the colonial era, navigating certain obstacles that the Japanese occupiers imposed on them. Unlike what the producers of the encyclopedia might have assumed, collaborators may not be entirely characterized as malicious and morally defunct individuals. Criticisms came from mostly conservative Koreans who questioned the motives and qualifications of those who carried out the encyclopedia publication (Kim et al. 2013). Utilizing the Cold War framework, right-wing groups characterized the encyclopedia project as a proNorth manipulation. According to them, the primary intention of the institute was to cause social division in support of the North. These groups, for instance, alleged that the encyclopedia intentionally lists a relatively small number of communist collaborators indicating the institute’s pro-North propensity. In an attempt to damage the institute’s public reputation, the right-wing groups continued to allege that the project’s family members had close connections with the North. One of the right-wing groups attempted to publish a biographical encyclopedia of pro-North anti-state persons to counter the institute’s encyclopedia project. The project members were subject to occasional violence and a wide distribution of the encyclopedia was disrupted. Korea’s reconciliation with the colonial past manifests itself through ongoing creation and revision of historical narratives. The issues of collaboration resurfaced in collective memory due to the serious efforts of a civic organization that revisited the colonial past and judged collaborative behaviors. The encyclopedia publication invoked as much censure as encouragement. The encyclopedia opened “a can of worms,” causing a great divide among Koreans. Yet, the publication of the encyclopedia was an initial step toward acknowledging the dark past of historical figures and exploring diverse problems in contemporary Korean history.

Conclusion: Toward reconciliation Remembering the colonial past started in South Korea after many social and political complications. Immediately after liberation, the attempts to achieve the retributive justice against pro-Japanese collaborators were avoided altogether mainly due to the increasing military confrontation between the North and South. Collaborative factions continued to thrive under the Syngman Rhee government and the successive military regimes. The colonial residuals – especially the collaborator issue – were swept under the carpet in favor of anticommunist nation-building drive in the South. The Roh Moo-hyun government, however, created a momentum to revisit the unresolved colonial legacies. State actors and civic organizations, in particular, undertook historical inquires that went beyond the simplistic reactions to collaboration by compiling a list of collaborators, seizing their property and creating collective memories about collaboration. The 168

On forgiveness and reconciliation

investigations into diverse aspects of collaboration may represent the equally diverse values held by the members of Korean society. Reconciliation with the colonial past is a political process comprising various and often conflicting interests. As discussed above, the identification of collaborators encountered strong objections from the people with different relationships with and viewpoints on those historical figures. Some disagreed with the judgment of those who compiled the list, and took legal actions to challenge them. Others alleged the pro-North characteristics of investigation team. The Roh government’s overly nationalistic stance and the research institute raised concerns for potentially high socio-political cost by escalating internal conflicts deepening ideological chasm. Nonetheless, the ensuing battles over collaboration and consequential social divide were not necessarily a failure of reconciliation, but an unavoidable part of the healing process. The rise of opposition to revisit the colonial past suggests that Korean society is not so much drawn into social unrest and chasm. Instead, it is largely in the process of resolving social distrust and conflict. Indeed, some Koreans voluntarily came forward to admit their own or ancestors’ past deeds associated with Japanese colonial rule and made apologies (Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities 2008). Readdressing the collaboration issue can be evaluated in terms of costs and benefits on the society. As discussed before, Koreans’ persistent historical inquiries on collaboration could have meant sacrificing “more important” issues such as economic development and national security (Han, S.-J. 2008). Indeed, Koreans have an option of postponing or stopping their efforts to set the record straight, and be satisfied with hegemonic narratives on the past events. What if Koreans let go of collaboration issues? Can ignorance and secrecy be equated with peaceful and harmonious community relationships? Does foregoing of the opportunities for the community to discuss the dark past contribute to increasing social trust and stability? Does silence about collaborators make it easier for Koreans to better handle the recurring historical issues with Japan such as comfort women (see chapters 5 and 16 in this volume), Dokdo-Takeshma disputes (see chapters 17 and 23 in this volume), and Japanese politicians’ paying tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine? Can forgetting allow Koreans to eventually cure the suffering inflicted by the Japanese colonialists and to build a more inclusive, open community? Addressing these questions will help Koreans to promote reconciliation within the nation. What recent struggles over the collaboration issue suggest is that it is necessary for Koreans to bear the burdens of the past without foregoing the public awareness of national history. Koreans need to move toward remembering the past in a way that opens up the possibility for truthful and open community relationships, rather than being consumed by bitter emotional spillovers from their difficult past. That being said, the investigation of collaboration cannot be a dogmatic moral crusade. Instead, it should be a cautious and thoughtful appreciation of the historical experiences of the nation under foreign control. The more negative the sanctions and accusations become, the stronger the confrontations from the dissenters will become. This relationship is far from being reconciliatory and it will create a vicious circle in which nothing will be resolved. The truth projects will turn into nothing but mindless political games. Embracing the voices of disagreements and criticism seems to be essential to reach reconciliation. In the end reconciliation is to create consensus among disputing parties. This chapter calls for democratization of mnemonic praxis.

Notes 1 The relatively recent timing of dealing with collaboration issues in Korea requires a careful interpretation. European societies achieved reconciliation with “treacherous” community members in a timely fashion. The same issue still remains unsettled in Korea. This does not mean that Koreans are unable to build a mature and civilized society, stubbornly haunted by retaliatory impulses. The historical and

169

Jeong-Chul Kim

2 3 4

5 6

political contexts in which each society sets the terms and conditions of reconciliation are different from one another (see chapter 20 in this volume). European cases mainly illustrate that liberated nations should be able to deal with collaborators in one way or another. The boundary between politics and academia has been highly permeable; for the review of academic research on collaborators conducted by the scholars of Korean studies, see De Ceuster (2001). For Korean organizations and institutions, I provide both Korean and English names unless there are official English translations. Scholarly efforts to identify collaborators started much earlier than the Roh government’s project. Also, certain progressive politicians during the Roh administration organized a group among themselves to identify pro-Japanese collaborators and to oppose Japan’s military expansionist policy. This group announced a list of 708 pro-Japanese collaborators in 2002. Park Guen-hye was elected to become the eighteenth President of Republic of Korea in 2013. Moreover, the commission readjusted the land registered under Japanese landownership at approximate 3.2 million square meters. Officially assessed land price was worth $45 million.

References Brook, T. (2005) Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Caprio, M. (2006) ‘Loyal patriot? traitorous collaborator?: The Yun Ch’iho diaries and the question of national loyalty’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 7(3). (accessed 28 June 2013). Cho, H.-y. (2003) ‘Political sociology of kwagŏch’ŏngsan in South Korea’, Review of Korean Studies, 6(1): 11–49. Cho, K. (2007) ‘Transitional justice in Korea: Legally coping with past wrongs after democratization’, Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 16(3): 579–611. Choo, J. (2005) ‘Politics, price of Seoul’s collaboration probe’, Asia Times, 31 March. (accessed 18 July 2013). Chung, Y.-t. (2002) ‘Refracted modernity and the issue of pro-Japanese collaborators in Korea’, Korea Journal, 42(3): 18–59. Deák, I., Gross, J.T., and Judt, T. (eds.) (2000) The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. De Ceuster, K. (2001) ‘The nation exorcised: the historiography of collaboration in South Korea’, Korean Studies, 25(2): 207–242. Doyle, M.W. (1986) Empires. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Elster, J. (ed.) (2006) Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frommer, B. (2005) National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Han, S.-J. (2008) ‘On the question of collaboration in South Korea’, Japan Focus. (accessed 28 June 2013). Han, S.W.D. (2008) ‘Transitional justice: When justice strikes back-case studies of delayed justice in Argentina and South Korea’, Houston Journal of International Law, 30(3): 653–702. Hechter, M., and Vidal-Aparicio, O. (2011) ‘Dynamics of military occupation’, in C.J. Coyne and R.L. Mathers (eds.), The Handbook on the Political Economy of War. Cheltenham, Glos, UK: Edward Elgar, pp. 432–452. Im, S.-j. (2010) ‘Pŏbwŏn, Yi Hae-sŭng ch’inil haengwi haetchiman chaesan ŭn hwansu mothae [The court ruled against the confiscation of Yi Hae-sŭng’s property while acknowledging his pro-Japanese behaviors]’, Yunhap News Agency, 26 December. (accessed 18 July 2013). Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities (2008) Ch’inil ŭl Pansŏng hago Ch’aegim jiryŏ han Saramdŭl [Those who took responsibility for and reflected on collaboration]. (accessed 18 July 2013). Jager, S.M. (2005) ‘Korean collaborators: South Korea’s truth committees and the forging of a new pan-Korean nationalism’, Japan Focus. (accessed 28 June 2013).

170

On forgiveness and reconciliation Kalyvas, S.N. (2006) The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kang, J.-g. (2003) ‘The failure of ch’inilch’ŏngsan and obstruction of nation’s future’, Review of Korean Studies, 6(1): 51–84. Kim, D.-C. (2010a) ‘Korea’s movement to settle the issue of past and peace in East Asia’, Korea Journal, 50(4): 152–185. Kim, D.-C. (2010b) ‘The long road toward truth and reconciliation’, Critical Asian Studies, 42(4): 525–552. Kim, J.-C. (2014) ‘Caricaturing “traitors”: Communal reactions to indigenous collaboration in Japaneseoccupied Korea’, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 42(3): 203-223, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. ijlcj.2014.01.007. Kim, J.-C., and Fine, G.A. (2013) ‘Collaborators and national memory: The creation of the encyclopedia of pro-Japanese collaborators in Korea’, Memory Studies, 6(2): 130–145. Kim, J.-S. (2003) The Korean Paekjong Movement under Japanese Rule: The Quest for Equality and Human Rights. New York: Routledge. Kwon, I. (2006) ‘Feminists navigating the shoals of nationalism and collaboration: The post-colonial Korean debate over how to remember Kim Hwallan’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 27(1): 39–66. Linton, S. (2010) ‘Post conflict justice in Asia’, in M.C. Bassiouni (ed.), The Pursuit of International Criminal Justice: A World Study on Conflicts, Victimisation and Post-Conflict Justice. Brussels: Intersentia Nv, pp. 515–753. (accessed 28 June 2013). Na, H.-j. (2011) ‘Hŏnjae, ch’inil chaesan kukka kwisok haphŏn [Confiscating pro-Japanese collaborators’ property, constitutional]’, Yunhap News Agency, 31 March. (accessed 18 July 2013). Robinson, R. (1972) ‘The non-European foundations of European imperialism: Sketch for a theory of collaboration’, in R. Owen and R.B. Sutcliffe (eds) Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, London: Longman, pp. 117–142. Sim, K.-s., Han, S-y., and Yi, S-w. (2010) ‘Kkŭt naji anŭn ch’inil chaesan hwansu [Unfinished redemption of pro-Japanese collaborators’ property]’, Yunhap News Agency, 12 August. (accessed 18 July 2013). Suh, J.-J. (2010) ‘Truth and reconciliation in South Korea’, Critical Asian Studies, 42(4): 503–524.

171

This page intentionally left blank

SECTION II

Bilateral conflicts and lessons for reconciliation

This page intentionally left blank

PART 4

China-Japan relations

This page intentionally left blank

11 TROUBLED SEAS Japan’s Pacific and East China Sea domains and claims Gavan McCormack

Introduction: Dividing up the oceans and the Pacific “Modern” history has been the history of states and empires, and the lands they controlled and exploited, with the sea (save for a narrow coastal strip) the site of battles for its control but never the property of any state. That is no longer the case. Under the 1982 (UNCLOS) United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Third Convention, much of the “high” seas was divided up and allocated to nation states in the form of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) over which states enjoyed special rights akin to resources ownership to a distance of 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) beyond their 22 kilometre (12 mile) territorial waters, and even further, to a limit of 350 nautical miles (650 kilometres) in the event of the outer reaches of the continental shelf being shown to extend so far. It was a decision that drastically shrank the global “high seas” and privileged countries that had the good fortune to possess substantial sea frontage or far-flung islands, including especially former imperial powers, notably France and the United Kingdom, which emerged with their advantages confirmed and reinforced by their possession of far-flung islands left behind by the waves of decolonization. The 1982 agreement took almost a decade in the making (1973–1982), took another decade before coming into force, in 1994, was ratified by Japan in 1996, and by 2011 had been adopted by 162 countries. It aimed to set international standards and principles for protection of the marine wildlife and environment and provide a forum for resolution of disputes over boundaries and resource ownership. It gave coastal nations jurisdiction over approximately 38 million square nautical miles of ocean, which are “estimated to contain about 87 per cent of all of the known and estimated hydrocarbon reserves as well as almost all offshore mineral resources” and almost 99 per cent of the world’s fisheries (Hollis et al 2010). Island territories till then of little significance save as navigational points or colonial outposts came to assume large significance. The United States, though participating in the various conferences since 1982 and claiming the largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,351,000 square kilometers in three oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, is one of the few that has not ratified the agreement, evidently in keeping with the reluctance to compromise US exceptionalism by submitting to the authority of any international law.1 The great beneficiaries have been the US, UK, and France, together with Australia, New Zealand and Russia, followed closely by Japan (Nolan 2013:77–95). China, convulsed at the time by imperialist assaults and domestic confusion, played no part in the 19th and 20th century 177

Gavan McCormack

processes of dividing up the Pacific land territories and plays none now in dividing up its ocean (Nolan 2013: passim). China’s coastline, at 14,500 kilometres, slightly less than half Japan’s 29,020 kilometres (CIA 2008), carries relatively small ocean entitlement and, for major sections, abuts the EEZ’s of neighbour states including Japan and South Korea and enjoys direct Pacific frontage only via Taiwan. Japan controls a five times greater swathe of ocean, ranking at number six (in terms of area of EEZ), or by recent estimates that consider the actual volume of water, i.e., ocean depth, number 4 (Yamada 2011). Ironically, while public attention focuses on the grab China is supposedly making for ocean territory and resources in the East China Sea and South China Sea, the far greater claims made by the club of advanced countries including Japan under the 1982 UNCLOS disposition for the most part escape attention. The following map (Figure 11.1) shows the pattern of maritime appropriation across the Western Pacific and well illustrates the importance of the EEZs, the shrinkage of “open sea,”

Figure 11.1 Western Pacific EEZs. Japan-Island Country and Tokyo – Island City

178

Troubled seas

and (from a Chinese viewpoint) the growing threat of potential blockage of access to the Pacific as hostile or potentially hostile forces spread their EEZ wings over so much of it. Commonly denounced for its claims to islands, reefs and shoals in the South China Sea, set in global terms China is a minor player in its claims on world oceans. On the other hand, Japan’s maritime territorial claims, i.e., beyond its main islands and their surrounds, centre on two zones, one in the Pacific and Philippine Sea that for administrative purposes constitutes part of the Metropolis of Tokyo, and the other in the East China Sea zone surrounding the islands known in Japan as Senkaku, and in China and Taiwan as Diaoyudao and Diaoyutai respectively (hereafter: Diaoyu). Tokyo is unquestionably one of the world’s largest metropolises, Japan’s national capital and home to more than 30 million people. It is also an island city whose domain extends over great swathes of the Pacific. Its jurisdiction extends to a maximum of almost 2,000 kilometres into the Pacific, including first seven volcanic islands known as the Izu Islands that sprinkle the ocean beyond the Izu peninsula, the Ogasawara island group beyond that and approximately 1,000 kilometres from Tokyo, and two small but hugely important rocky outcrops: Okinotorishima, 1,740 kilometres southwest from Tokyo and Minami Torishima, 1,848 kilometres from Tokyo. The former is Japan’s most southerly and the latter its most easterly territory. In April 2012, Governor Ishihara Shintaro proposed extending that domain by approximately 1,900 kilometres to the southwest to include the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (transferring them from nominally private ownership to his Metropolis), but that initiative was soon pre-empted as three of those islands were “bought” and “nationalized” by Japan’s Noda government in September 2012 (on which, see Table 11.1). Apart from the Izu islands, whose links with pre-modern Japan were strong, Japan’s claim to the others is relatively recent. Ogasawara village, which is administratively part of Tokyo City, extends far across the seas. The islands (sometimes also known as the Bonin Islands) were first formally claimed by Japan and a Japanese flag was raised over them in 1862. Ogasawara “village” includes its core component, the Ogasawara archipelago, together with the Volcano Island group and several tiny outcrops. The Ogasawara Archipelago itself comprises three sub-groups known as Chichijima (Father), Hahajima (Mother), and Mukojima (Bridegroom) Archipelagos and

Table 11.1 Tokyo’s island territories Administrative Unit

Incorporation in Japan

Ogasawara Village Ogasawara Archipelago (Chichijima, Hahajima, Mukojima) Kazan (Volcano) Archipelago (Ioto, Kita and Minami Ioto) Minami Torishima (Marcus Island) Okinotorishima (Parece Vela)

1862

Area

Population

73 kms2

2,400a

22.3 kms2 1898

1.2 kms2

Noneb Nonec

1931

10 m2

None

a. 2,000 on Chichijima and about 400 on Hahajima b. No civil population but a Maritime Self-Defence Force base and site of US carrierbased fighter flight training c. No civil population but site of weather station and ancillary facilities

179

Gavan McCormack

currently accessible only by the weekly steamer service from Tokyo to Chichijima that takes about 26 hours. The communities on Chichijima and Hahajima number around 2,400 people (Guo and McCormack 2005). One hundred forty-eight kilometres to the southwest of these extended family island group lies the Kazan (Volcano) Island archipelago, comprising also three small islands, the central one, Ioto (formerly Iwojima, site of fierce fighting in 1945) being 1,200 kilometres from Tokyo, just 21 square kilometres in area, and home only to a small SelfDefence Force base, while to its north and south, across a 137 kilometres stretch of ocean, lie North and South (Kita and Minami) Ioto, neither of them populated and with a combined area of approximately seven square kilometres (Wikipedia 2012b).2 The Kazan Island group also includes a small barren active caldera, Nishinoshima, with elevation of 38 metres and area about 22 hectares but growing since 1973 because of the ongoing eruption. To the southeast of this volcano group, just six hundred kilometers distant, lie the American territories of the Mariana Islands. Within the Ogasawara Village administrative unit are included also two tiny territories whose value was suddenly and enormously enhanced by the UN decision: Minami Torishima and Okinotorishima. Minami Torishima, 1,848 kilometres southeast of Tokyo, also sometimes known as Marcus Island, is an outcrop with a surface area of 1.2 square kilometres. Annexed by Japan in 1898, today it hosts only a weather station and small airport, with no civilian population. Okinotorishima consists just of two outcrops of coral reef in the Philippine Sea with a total area of about 10 square meters, shrinking at high tide so that one is about the size of a double bed and the other a small room, at an elevation of around 7.4 centimetres above the sea surface. The Japanese claim to it, based on the terra nullius (literally “no man’s land”) principle, i.e., as being unclaimed by any other state, was first advanced in 1931. Once the implications of the UN decision were understood, from 1987 Tokyo City began investing heavily in the building of “steel breakwaters and concrete walls” designed to shore the reef up and prevent it disappearing (Yoshikawa 2007). After investigations commissioned in 2004 and 2005 by the Nippon (formerly Sasakawa) Foundation, Ishihara’s Tokyo adopted plans for the construction of a lighthouse and building of port infrastructure, a power generation plant, housing, etc. (Yoshikawa 2007). A very considerable sum, estimated at $600 million, has been laid out on concrete and titanium to date as part of Tokyo’s mission to retain Okinotorshima and a surrounding EEZ (Wikipedia 2012c). These far-flung archipelagos and reefs known collectively as “Ogasawara” were occupied by the United States in 1945 and returned to Japan in 1968. In the interim, they were used, inter alia, for stockpiling nuclear weapons. In 2011 UNESCO recognized the ecological significance of the Ogasawara islands by designating them a World Heritage Site. While Ogasawara Village and its various outlying island territories constitute, administratively, part of Tokyo Metropolis, as the EEZ map above illustrates there is also one additional island group, not part of Tokyo, which carries significant EEZ entitlement and deserves mention here. The Daito (Daitoshima) group, about 350 kilometres east of Okinawa’s main island, comprises the three islands of North Daito, South Daito and Daito (12.7, 30.5, and 1.1 square kilometres respectively, with populations of 700, 1,400 and 0). Administratively, they form part of Okinawa prefecture and though tiny, with their surrounding EEZ they too account for a large area of ocean. Daito Island itself is unoccupied because it has been a US Navy firing range since 1956 and it may be assumed that little life survives on it.

Islands? Rocks? The question, under UNCLOS, is whether all such territories qualify, strictly speaking, as islands, which carry the EEZ entitlement. An “island,” according to Article 121 of the Convention, is a “naturally framed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide.” 180

Troubled seas

The law spells out that “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no economic zone or continental shelf.” Under such provisions, there seems no reason to doubt the claims on behalf of the Ogasawara and Kazan archipelagos, or the Daito islands. Some doubt might be raised as to Minami Torishima on the point of whether it could really “sustain human habitation or economic life,” but so far as Okinotorishima is concerned, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the claims by Japan, and the Tokyo Metropolis, stretch the law to breaking-point. Okinotorishima has never sustained any kind of economic life and is only kept above sea level by dint of considerable effort and expense. Yet both the Government of Japan and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government insist otherwise and base large ocean claims upon that proposition (Tokyo Metropolis 2012). A Foreign Ministry spokesperson in 2005 explained: The island [Okinotorishima], under the Tokyo Municipal Government, has been known as an island under Japanese jurisdiction since 1931, long before the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea came into existence. Having ratified the Convention in 1996, Japan registered its domestic laws concerning its territorial waters, in which Okinotorishima is included as an island, to the Secretary-General of the UN in 1997 . . . Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines that ‘an island is a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide.’ This is exactly what Okinotorishima is. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2005) The disproportion between the scale of the “island” and the breadth of sea entitlement attached to it is extreme. The basic area of sea on a radius of 370 kilometres (200 nautical miles) around any fixed point recognized as an “island” is 428,675 square kilometres. If that was then extended to the theoretical maximum under the continental shelf extension rule to 350 nautical miles or 650 kilometres, the EEZ entitlement would become a staggering 1,337,322 square kilometres, three and a half times the land area of Japan (378,000 square kilometres). The circular sectors on the map of Western Pacific EEZs above illustrate the extent of ocean EEZ claims based on tiny outcrops. With seabed riches only beginning to be understood, and in the event that its interpretation of the law is upheld, the 1982 UNCLOS treaty constitutes a huge bonanza for Japan. The question of interpretation of the UN law is of course crucial. In respect of competing claims by China, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia to tiny islands in the South China Sea, it appears that parties other than China have explicitly ruled out territorial or continental shelf claims, adopting the view that the capacity to sustain habitation and economic activity is a strict requirement for recognition as “island” for UNCLOS purposes (International Crisis Group 2012: 29). Should that view prevail, at least some of Japan’s Pacific claims would fail (as would some of China’s in the South China Sea).

Japan’s ambit claim of 2008 In November 2008, Japan made a submission to the UN Committee on the Continental Shelf, seeking to further increase its territory by the addition of seven “blocks” of ocean, making up a total of 740,000 square kilometres. That is to say it sought to extend its 200 nautical mile (370 kilometres) boundary to 350 nautical miles (650 kilometres). The claims were presumptive in the sense that they took for granted the entitlement to the basic 370 kilometre zone. By far the largest block was that known as the Southern Kyushu-Palau Ridge, anchored on the Okinotorishima reef (approximately 257,000 square kilometres). Neither China nor South Korea 181

Gavan McCormack

contest Japan’s claims over the rocks as such, but both insist that a rock is a rock, not an island, and therefore cannot carry any entitlement to an EEZ (Koh 2012). Both submitted Notes Verbales to the Committee making this point (UNCLOS 2012a). Implicit in their objection is the position that rocks carry no entitlement to any EEZ, not just to the claimed extension. Three and a half years later, in April 2012, the UN’s Committee on the Limits of the Continental Shelf issued its interim decision. The Japanese media reported a victory for Japan’s diplomacy and the granting of the reef-based claim (Yomiuri Shimbun 2012b). The Asahi Shimbun gloated, saying “This is a good opportunity for China and South Korea to recognize the facts” (Asahi Shimbun 2012). The following map (Figure 11.2), which is the one used by the government of Japan to present its claims to the UN Commission in 2008, shows the claims and the outcome in 2012

Figure 11.2 Japan’s claimed outer continental shelf territories. Source: UN Committee Determinations, April 2012

182

Troubled seas

from the UNCLOS determination. Significant parts of the Japanese overall claim were indeed accepted, in relation to more than half (and in one case 90 per cent) of two of its seven claims, in Zones 2, 5, 6 and 7, for a total area of about 290,000 square kilometres (39 per cent of what it had claimed). However, in zones 1, 3 and 4, including the Southern Kyushu-Palau Ridge (KPR) (Okinotorishima), Motegi Plateau (MGS) and Minami Torishima (MTS), the claims were either set aside without determination or else rejected. In the words of the Commission’s chair, addressing the (KPR) Okinotorishima claim. The proposal did not receive a two-thirds majority: out of 16 members, five were in favour, 8 were against and 3 abstained. The Commission’s considered that it would not be in a position to take action on the parts of the recommendations relating to the Southern Kyushu-Palau Ridge region until such time as the matters referred to in the communications referred to above [i.e., the Chinese and South Korean Notes Verbales] have been resolved. (UNCLOS 2012b) That is to say, until and unless the Committee decides otherwise, it would not discuss the proposal further. Despite the triumphalist tone of Japanese coverage of the outcome of its submission on a matter to which it attached great importance it was defeated in a vote of 15:8:3. Though parts of Japan’s claim may well not proceed, or may be struck down by some form of international arbitration (however unlikely), the developments of the UNCLOS regime to date have favoured it in terms of legitimizing its control, even virtual ownership, of large stretches of ocean. In other words, irrespective of its claims on problematic “island” territories or extended continental shelf zones, its gains over undisputed maritime territory are still substantial. The economic importance of the sea area that surrounds Japan’s various island domains is only slowly coming to be appreciated. One recent estimate valued Japan’s potential seabed resources at a staggering $3.6 trillion (Latimer 2012). Just months after the UNCLOS determination, a team of University of Tokyo researchers announced, following a long voyage of Pacific resource exploration, that they had found rare earth deposits, “estimated to be more than 220 times Japan’s annual consumption of about 30,000 tons” (or ten times greater than China’s reserves) near Minami Torishima. Most, though not all, it reported, were within Japan’s claimed EEZ, even though one site lies 500 kilometres to its north and in this zone UNCLOS actually rejected Japan’s extended shelf claim in 2012 (Yomiuri Shimbun 2012a; Kato 2012: 535–9). In addition to the rare earths, methane hydrates and precious and industrial metals in significant quantities have been identified in Japan’s various ocean domains (Yomiuri Shimbun 2013; Ryukyu shimpo 2013b; Wedge 2013). Rapid advances are now being made in the technology of search and extraction, even in deep waters. The combination of Japan’s “ownership” of large tracts of ocean with its subservience to US strategic and military design signifies serious potential Chinese disadvantage and risk. Japan’s Okinotorishima lies between China’s first and second island chains. As Tokyo Governor Ishihara puts it, “Okinotorishima stands between Guam – America’s strategic base – the Taiwan strait, China, and areas near Japan where there may be conflict in the future” (Hsiung 2007: 144). Whatever the eventual determination of the extended continental shelf claim based on Okinotorishima, Tokyo plans to construct there by 2016 an artificial island with harbour infrastructure including heliport and radar facilities, while promoting the exploitation of the resources of the surrounding seas (Wikipedia 2012a). As for Minami Torishima, it lies beyond even the second of those putative Chinese lines. 183

Gavan McCormack

Japan appears determined to insist on its national interest, however narrowly construed and even to the point of readiness to manipulate international law (Article 121), and shows little sign of readiness to make concessions for the sake of a long-term, peaceful and cooperative Pacific order. From a Chinese viewpoint, the Japan to which it must make policy response is one that has gained greatly under UNCLOS, while steadily reinforcing the walls of China containment in the Northwest Pacific in conjunction with the United States, encouraging and expanding the US military presence in Okinawa, planning to extend its own (Japanese) military presence into the Yaeyama Islands in the East China Sea, and adopting the principle of “inter-operability” by which Japanese and US forces constitute a single military unit, united in intelligence, surveillance, command and potentially in operation. It notes Japan’s embrace of the US “Air-Sea Battle” concept (2010) and its “Pacific Tilt” doctrine (2011). Under the former, the US affirmed its commitment to coordinated military actions across air, land, sea, space and cyberspace to maintain global hegemony and crush any challenge to it, and under the latter it articulated a shift of global focus from the Middle East and Africa to East Asia. Japan also follows the US in referring to a Chinese strategy of “A2/AD” (Anti-Access/Area Denial). China, they say, has drawn First and Second Island Defence Lines,3 and is concentrating on developing the capacity in the event of hostilities to deny hostile access within the seas bound by the first line, drawn from the Korean peninsula, through Jeju island, the Okinawan islands, Taiwan and the Philippines (the Yellow, East and East China Seas, China’s “near seas”), while building also significant capacity within the seas bounded by the second line, through Ogasawara, the Marianas, Palau to Indonesia, and eventually (by 2050 or thereabouts) extending naval operational capacity to the “far seas,” i.e., becoming by then something like the US, at least in the Northwest Pacific (Wishik 2012). Japan’s own military build-up is an integral part of the larger frame in which the US is to concentrate 60 per cent of its navy – six aircraft carriers plus “a majority of our cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines” in the Pacific, i.e., primarily with China in its sights, by 2020 (Panetta 2012). US defence planners, to Japanese acclaim, insist they are responding to the threat posed by the Chinese build-up, although China has yet to launch a single aircraft carrier4 and its military expenditure is dwarfed by that of the US. China spends approximately 2 per cent of its GDP on military as against approximately 4.7 per cent of a much larger GDP in the US (Economist 2012b). The combined US and Japan military might is also complemented by significant naval expansion on the part of the other US allies, Taiwan and South Korea.

Okinawa as great wall Within this general frame, the Okinawan islands resemble to China nothing so much as a giant maritime Great Wall intervening between its coast and the Pacific Ocean, potentially blocking naval access to the wider world. Parts of the island chain, including notably the Miyako and Yaeyama (Yonaguni, Iriomote and Ishigaki) island groups, front, if not straddle, the First Chinese line, while the Miyako strait (between Okinawa Island and Miyako Island) offers a crucial access path for Chinese naval forces to and from the Pacific, through waters which Japan concedes are international (or “open seas”) but within Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Okinawans note grimly that the implications of the two doctrines – dispersal of US forces to locations at or beyond the “second line” (Guam, Tinian, the Philippines, Hawaii and northern Australia) where vulnerability to Chinese missile or naval attack might be minimized – are that the front-line role assigned them carries a high degree of vulnerability. 184

Troubled seas

The East China Sea All these circumstances add greatly to the importance to China of its claim to Senkaku//Diaoyu, whose islands lie well within 200 nautical miles of its coast and on the edge of its continental shelf, constituting a potential door of direct access to the Pacific Ocean (McCormack and Norimatsu 2012: 209–222). The Senkaku/Diaoyu group comprises five islands, more correctly islets, known under their Japanese and Chinese names as Uotsuri/Diaoyudao, Kita Kojima/Bei Xiaodao, Minami Kojima/ Nan Xiaodao, Kuba/Huangwei and Taisho/Chiwei, plus a few smaller outcrops. The largest of them (Uotsuri/Diaoyu; literally “Fish-catch” in Japanese, “Catch-fish” in Chinese) is 4.3 square kilometres and the total area of all five just 6.3 square kilometres. They are spread over a wide expanse of sea – the largest of them, Taisho/Chiwei, being over 100 kilometres distant from the main, three-island, cluster – and are located in relatively shallow waters at the edge of the Chinese continental shelf, 330 kilometres east of the China mainland coast, 170 kilometres northeast of Taiwan, and 170 kilometres north of Yonaguni (or Ishigaki) islands in the Okinawa group, separated from the Okinawan island chain by a deep (maximum 2,940 metres) (Guo 2010: 23) underwater trench known as the “Okinawa Trough,” or in China as the “Sino-Ryukyu Trough.” In the modern Japan-China relationship, the disposition of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has been closely tied to that of the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa), though the two are geologically distinct. When Japan’s modern state in 1879 unilaterally abolished the Ryukyu kingdom and severed its long links to the Beijing-centred “tribute system,” China protested. With US President Grant mediating to try to resolve the differences, Japan sought a comprehensive revision of the Japan-China Treaty that opened relations between the two countries in 1871. It wanted the same unequal treaty rights (“most favoured nation” status) in mainland China as were enjoyed by the established imperialist powers. In return it offered to split the Ryukyus: ceding the southwestern islands of Miyako and the Yaeyama’s to China. China countered with a proposal for a three way split: the northern islands, including Amami, to Meiji Japan, the main island of Okinawa to become independent under a restored Ryukyu/Okinawa king, and the southwest islands ceded to China (Hane 2012: 116–118). Both proposals agreed that the Miyako and Yaeyama island groups, that is to say the Okinawan islands closest to the Senkaku/Diaoyu group, should be China’s. A treaty in line with the Chinese proposal, drawn up early in 1881, was not actually adopted only because of high level opposition within the Chinese government (Uemura 2012). Then pre-eminent leader Li Hungjang is said to have objected that “Ryukyu is neither Chinese nor Japanese territory, but a sovereign state” (Utsumi 2013). Following the lapse of these negotiations, colonialism, war and Cold War intervened and “normal” state relations were not established for 91 years. When after 132 years China protested that there had never been an agreement between the two countries on Okinawa (i.e., on the East China Sea as a whole), whose status was therefore “unresolved,” it was stating a simple historical fact (Renmin rihbao 2013). Sixteen years after the 1879 “Ryukyu punishment” (Ryukyu shobun), the Japanese cabinet in January 1895 unilaterally annexed Uotsuri/Diaoyudao and Kuba/Huangwei islands, claiming to have discovered them and found them to be terra nullius. The act of annexation was, however, kept secret and only published half a century later. Two other islands were added by the Japanese government when four were leased in 1896 to the pioneering Japanese entrepreneur, Koga Tatsushiro. A fifth island, Taisho/Chiwei, was never part of the leased island territory domain, but was simply claimed by the Government of Japan in 1921. In 1926 the Japanese government converted the leasehold rights over the four islands to a freehold grant to the Koga family (Lee and Ming 2012: 7). Koga and his family remained on the islands till around 1940, initially 185

Gavan McCormack

collecting albatross feathers and tortoise shells, later managing a bonito processing business, only withdrawing as the collapse of militarist Japan loomed but continuing to 2012 to collect “rent” from the Government of Japan for his islands. The US role in relation to the islands began in 1945, when it seized military control of Okinawa and the surrounding islands and seas. That control was confirmed at San Francisco in 1951, and in 1953 the US defined the bounds of “the Ryukyu islands” to include Senkaku/ Diaoyu (USCAR 1953; Renmin rihbao 2013). However, little attention was paid to the islands until 1968, when they were identified by the UN’s ECAFE as possibly “the last remaining, richest, as yet unexploited depository of oil and natural gas,” in the region (Hsiung 2007: 135). With that, all surrounding states suddenly developed a keen interest. When it came time for negotiations over Okinawan reversion to Japan (1969–1972), the US drew a line between different sectors of its occupied zone, transferring to Japan sovereignty over Ryukyu but only administrative control over Senkaku. By thus splitting Senkaku from Ryukyu, it implicitly recognized that the islands might be subject to competing claims. According to Hara Kimie, the US understood that the islands would function as a “wedge of containment” of China and that a “territorial dispute between Japan and China, especially over islands near Okinawa, would render the US military presence in Okinawa more acceptable to Japan” (Hara 2004: 23; 2006; also see chapter 23 in this volume). According to Toyoshita Narahiko, the US took a deliberately “vague” (aimai) attitude over territorial boundaries (Toyoshita 2012a: 52), sowing the seeds or sparks (hidane) of territorial conflict between China and Japan, and thereby ensuring Japan’s long-term dependence on the US and justifying the US base presence (Toyoshita 2012b). Yabuki Susumu, for his part, stresses the grand historical context. On the eve of his visit to Beijing, anxious to placate both Taipei and Beijing, Nixon himself decided to distinguish between Senkaku and Okinawa in the reversion process (Yabuki 2013a: 28–36). For all these scholars, the Senkaku/Diaoyu problem of the early 21st century is the consequence of a US policy decision four decades ago.

The shelf Modern Japan and China paid attention to Senkaku/Diaoyu on two subsequent occasions, in 1972 and 1978. At the third of four meetings between Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei, on September 27 in 1972, Tanaka raised the question of Senkaku/ Diaoyu, to which Zhou replied that the matter should be shelved as opening it would complicate and delay the normalization process (Tanaka-Zhou Summit 2012; Toyoshita 2012a: 48–50). Six years later, in Japan to negotiate a Peace and Friendship Treaty, Deng Xiaoping reiterated this “shelving” formula, preferring to leave it to “the next generation” to find sufficient wisdom to resolve it (Lee and Ming 2012, Tabata 2012: 104–113). Thereafter, for roughly 30 years a modus vivendi held: though occasional landings (by Chinese activists from a Hong Kong base and by Japanese rightists) took place, the two governments tacitly cooperated to prevent them, while Japan abstained from any steps to station personnel on the islands or develop their surrounding seas (Lee and Ming 2012: 11). Today, however, the Japanese Foreign Ministry denies that there was any such agreement (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013b). While it seems clear there was no formal diplomatic document to such effect, however, the exchanges above were not trivial. What seems likely is that both sides made their respective positions but chose to avoid formal negotiations for fear of upsetting the normalization process (Tabata 2012: 107–8). The 87-year old Nonaka Hiromu, grey eminence of the LDP and sometime Chief Cabinet Secretary, recalled in 2013 that Tanaka had indeed told him in 1972 of the “shelving” agreement (Hayashi 2013). Japanese scholar Yabuki Susumu now accuses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of “inexcusable and outrageous” 186

Troubled seas

behaviour in having altered the Minutes of the Tanaka-Zhou meeting of 1972 and “burned and destroyed” those of the Sonoda-Deng meeting of 1978 lest either evidence prejudice the official case of undisputed Japanese sovereignty (Yabuki 2013a, 2013b: 3, 2013b: 165). It is an extraordinary charge, but plausible in light of the apparent deliberate trashing of a vast cache of Foreign Ministry materials on the eve of Freedom of Information rules being introduced in 2001 (McCormack and Norimatsu 2012: 57–58). Though the tacit understanding then contained dispute for nearly 40 years, that changed in 2010. The Democratic Party of Japan’s government arrested the Chinese captain of a fishing ship in waters off Senkaku, insisting that there was “no room for doubt” that the islands were an integral part of Japanese territory, that there was no territorial dispute or diplomatic issue, and that the Chinese vessel was simply in breach of Japanese law. Faced with a fierce, angry Chinese response, however, it soon backed down and released the captain without pressing charges (McCormack and Norimatsu 2012: 211–214), but its resolve hardened (see chapter 23 in this volume). Japan concentrated its diplomatic effort not on resolving a bilateral dispute over borders but on widening it to a security matter involving the United States. Its highest priority attached to securing assurances from the US government that the islands were subject to Article 5 of the US-Japan Security Treaty, the clause that authorizes the US to protect Japan in the case of an armed attack “in territories under the administration of Japan.” Herein lay the central contradiction that had underlain US policy ever since it returned Okinawa to Japan in 1972: while acknowledging the “administration of Japan over the Senkaku Islands,” it took no position on the question of sovereignty (Yabuki 2013a: 28–30). To Henry Kissinger, at the time, such a stance was “nonsense” (Lee and Ming 2012: 2). Only later did the full implication of the “nonsense” become clear: that the US was treaty-bound to defend islands on whose ownership it had no view. That stance has been repeated periodically, at Japan’s urgent insistence, in recent years, including by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in October 2010 (McCormack and Norimatsu 2012: 212). Under strong Japanese prompting, it was entered into US legislation in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2013 and approved by the Senate on November 29 in 2012 (Chanlett-Avery, Manyin, Cooper and Rinehart 2013: 16).

Koyu (intrinsic) territory Despite the fact that the islands were quite unknown to Japan till the late 19th century, the consensus in Japan today is that they are incontrovertibly, or koyu, Japanese territory. The word koyu (Chinese: guyou) has no precise English translation and the concept is unknown in international law and foreign to discourse on national territory in much, if not most, of the world (Toyoshita 2012a, 2012c: 41–49). It seems to have been invented in Japan around 1970, initially as part of the effort to reinforce linguistically Japan’s claim to what had been known as the Southern Kurile Islands (which from this time it is called Northern Territories) (Wada 2012). It then spread across the East Asian culture zone, so that Japanese, Chinese and Korean territorial claims came to be covered with a cloak of absolutism. In April 2012, Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro announced to a conservative American audience in Washington, D.C. that his city was negotiating to buy the three privately owned islets of Uotsuri, Kita Kojima and Minami Kojima, in order, he insisted, to remove any possible challenge to their sovereignty by China or Taiwan (Ishihara 2012a). Although virtually all public reference to his plan suggested it addressed the islands as a whole, in fact it ignored the already publicly owned Taisho/Chiwei and made no bid for the other privately owned island of Kuba/Huangwei, “outlying” islands known, even to the Japanese Coast Guard, under their Chinese names, Huangwei and Chiwei. Both have remained under uncontested US control – as a 187

Gavan McCormack

bombing range – for well over half a century with neither national nor metropolitan government in Japan ever complaining or seeking their return. Responding on behalf of the government in 2010 to a Diet question as to why no effort had been made to recover the islands, a spokesman said that the US side “had not indicated its intention to return them” (Toyoshita 2012c: 42). In other words, Japan would not dream of seeking their return unless the US first indicated that it would be permissible to do so. Japan’s outrage over its koyu islands thus relates to three, not five, of them and, whatever koyu means, it is not inconsistent with occupation by another country, even if that other country should choose to bomb it to smithereens, so long as that “other country” is the United States. However outspoken and bold they may be in addressing China, and however adamant in insisting on Japan’s “intrinsic” ownership rights, courage deserts Japan’s leaders when facing the United States. Ishihara’s statements to the effect that China (or “Shina,” the insulting, wartime appellation he chose to employ) was “halfway to a declaration of war” (Hongo 2012) and a “robber” that was “seeking hegemony in the Pacific, with the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue merely the first step of its ambition” (Ishihara, 2012b), helped crystallize a national consensus around certain propositions: that there was “no room for doubt” and no dispute as to Japan’s ownership of the islands, that China was threatening Japan’s sovereign territory, and that its challenge called for reaffirmation of the importance of the security alliance with the United States. All Japanese media reference to the islands came to be accompanied by one or other variant of the phrase “an integral part of Japan from the standpoint of both history and international law” or “historically and legally . . . an integral part of Japan territories” (Mainichi Shimbun 2012; Japan Times 2012) During the summer of 2012 that followed the Ishihara provocation, rightist and ultranationalist groups and their publications enthusiastically adopted the Senkaku cause (Nogawa 2012: 16–17). In July, Ishihara’s Tokyo Metropolitan Government published an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal (July 27) asking for US support for its island purchasing plan, and pointedly noting that the islands were “of indispensable geostrategic importance to US force projection” (Kyodo 2012b). His metropolitan government also began distributing a poster featuring a photograph of the three islets and the message calling for the “courage” to say that “Japan’s islands are Japan’s territory” (Aoki 2012). That summer, a succession of rival flotillas, sailing under different flags, landed or attempted to land. On July 7, the 75th anniversary of Japan’s launch of all-out war on China, and just one day after Chinese president Hu Jintao had warned Noda that any attempted nationalisation would be “illegal and without effect,” Prime Minister Noda adopted the Ishihara cause and declared that the national government would buy and “nationalize” the (three) islands. Later that same month he indicated his readiness to deploy the Self-Defence Forces to defend them, and in September he formally purchased (for 20.5 billion yen, or approx. $26 million) and “nationalized” them, declaring to the UN General Assembly that they were “intrinsic Japanese territory,” over which there was no dispute and could be no negotiation (Lee and Ming 2012: 43–45). Two islands of the group (Kuba/Huangwei and Taisho/Chiwei) went mysteriously unmentioned, both by Ishihara and by Noda. Hong Kong and cities and towns across China were shaken by protest demonstrations – cars were overturned, Japanese restaurant windows smashed, Japanese goods trashed, and exchanges of tour groups, students and businesses suspended. Later that year, Abe Shinzo campaigned for lower house election under the overall slogan of “taking back the country,” pledging not to yield one millimetre of Japan’s “intrinsic” territory of Senkaku,5 a matter on which there was no dispute, no room for discussion or negotiation. He wrote: “What is called for in the Senkaku vicinity is not negotiation but physical force incapable of being misunderstood” (Abe 2013: 130). When former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio challenged the government (while on a visit to 188

Troubled seas

Beijing), saying: “But if you look at history, there is a dispute . . . If you keep saying, ‘There is no territorial dispute,’ you will never get an answer” (Kyodo 2012a). Abe’s Defense Minister, Onodera Itsunori, branded him a traitor (kokuzoku) (AFP-Jiji 2013). The intransigent language of Japanese governments in 2013 was reminiscent of 1937, when Japan’s then leader, Konoe Fumimaro, ruled out negotiations with China’s Chiang Kai-shek in the fateful months leading to full-scale war with China, and when the national media was similarly self-righteous and dismissive of China’s “unreasonableness” and “provocation.”6 To China the Japanese challenge seemed plain. In April China for the first time declared Diaoyu a “core interest,” and in May the People’s Daily added that the status of Okinawa itself had to be negotiated. China’s riposte to Abe’s threat of “physical force” came months later when Major-General Luo Yuan declared that China would depend for resolution of the Diaoyu problem on “the elevation of our comprehensive national strength,” to which end it would proceed with mobilizing its forces into Diaoyu waters, so that “when needed we can turn the three major fleets into a fist to draw out the [Japanese] blade” (China Military Online 2013). The election in Japan late in that year of a government of “Shinto” believers in the uniqueness of emperor-centred Japan who were also denialists of Nanjing and “Comfort Women” and proponents of a stronger Japan, with a fresh constitution to warrant greater military build-up, could scarcely fail to ring alarm bells in China and elsewhere throughout Asia (McCormack, 2012). It also caused concern in Washington that Abe’s neo-nationalist and historical revisionist (rejecting “the narrative of imperial Japanese aggression and victimization of other Asians”) agenda might be “divisive” and “could hurt U.S. interests” spread in Washington (and throughout the US media).7 When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Foreign Minister Kishida Fumio at their meeting in Washington in January 2013 that there was indeed a dispute and that Japan should sit down with China to negotiate it (Clinton 2013; Norimatsu 2013), it was in effect a rebuke. Abe subsequently moderated his language and policy, but when he visited Washington in late February 2013 he was given neither dinner nor even a joint press conference, and the Joint Communique made no reference to what he most sought: US backing for the Japanese claim to sovereignty over Senkaku/Diaoyu, but was devoted instead entirely to a single issue, the TransPacific Partnership, or TPP, Washington’s primary agenda (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013b). Abe stood alone at the press conference to declare the alliance strengthened.

Japan’s Senkaku, China’s Diaoyu The Japanese Senkaku claim rests on three fundamental assertions: that the islands, though annexed in 1895 just after China’s defeat in war and three months prior to the Treaty of Shimonoseki by which Taiwan and other islands were specifically ceded to Japan, were not “war spoils” (or “stolen territories” in the words of the 1943 Cairo Agreement), but terra nullius; that the Japanese occupation had been unchallenged between the act of annexation in 1895 and the publication of the ECAFE report in 1968, for at least 70 years; and that the islands were in some almost metaphysical sense Japan’s intrinsic, inalienable territory (with the sense of “from time immemorial”): its koyu no ryodo. The terra nullius claim is surely of dubious merit. It harkens back to the time when imperialist countries divided up the world at their will. As for the islands being “intrinsically” Japan’s, that had to mean that they were part of “Ryukyu/Okinawa, yet they were not part of Ryukyu’s “36 islands” in pre-modern times nor when the prefecture was established in 1879, but only tacked on to it 16 years later. “Intrinsic” is an ironic appellation for islands unknown in Japan till the late 19th century, then identified from British naval references, not declared Japanese 189

Gavan McCormack

till 1895 or named until 1900, (with neither name nor Japanese claim revealed until 1952 and the “markers” authorized by the 1895 cabinet resolution not actually set up on the islands until May 1969) (Lee and Ming 2012: 7). Furthermore, the island group comprised sometimes two, sometimes three, and sometimes five islands. Furthermore, it is surely disingenuous to argue that the Japanese annexation of 1895 (following ten years of deliberation) was unrelated to the victory Japan had just seized over China in war. As to the Japanese position that China’s silence on the Japanese occupation of the islands until 1970 could be construed as consent, such a claim is undermined by the secrecy Japan long maintained and by the exclusion of China from the San Francisco negotiations on the peace settlement. It is also the case that international law anyway offered no system to which aggrieved colonial or semi-colonial countries could appeal. Once the withdrawal from Okinawa became imminent and focused attention on what was and what was not “Okinawa” and to whom it should be “returned,” both China and Taiwan made their claims clear. The Chinese claim (People’s Republic and Republic alike) to Diaoyu rests on history (the records of the Ming and Qing dynasties) and geography (the continental shelf and the deep gulf that sets the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands apart from the Ryukyu island chain). For both, the islands are an integral part of Taiwan’s territory, illegally appropriated by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War (a “spoil of war”) that should therefore have been returned to China under the Potsdam Declaration. From China’s viewpoint, a single line of Japanese imperialism and aggression may be drawn from Ryukyu (1879), Senkaku (1895), Taiwan (1895), to Dongbei or “Manchuria” (1931). The People’s Daily in May 2013 drew precisely such a line.

Conclusion: Settling the past, opening the future As Kyoto University’s Inoue Kiyoshi put it 40 years ago, “Even though the [Senkaku] islands were not wrested from China under a treaty, they were grabbed from it by stealth, without treaty or negotiations, taking advantage of victory in war” (Inoue 1972: 123). It is a judgement confirmed in 2012 by The Economist, which wrote: “Whatever the legality of Japan’s claim to the islands, its roots lie in brutal empire-building” (see chapter 17 in this volume; Economist 2012b). The ambiguous formula adopted in the absence of major parties at San Francisco in 1951 has generated a fierce dispute and it is hard to imagine any advance on the current, increasingly militarized confrontation over these islands unless and until Japan concedes that there is a dispute. The longer it resists doing so, the greater the loss of face it stands to suffer when eventually, likely under US pressure, it finds that it has to. Although the Government of Japan reiterates its stance that the islets are “intrinsic Japanese territory” over which there is no dispute, in fact its position was disputed on all sides: by Washington (tacitly, since it remains agnostic as to sovereignty), and by Beijing and Taipei (publicly and explicitly). Answerable to neither Beijing nor Taipei, the Chinese diaspora too seems united on this question. It stands somewhere to the “left” of both Beijing and Taipei. The question is not simply territorial but deeply rooted in history. The “Senkaku” issue today carries a “blowback” quality of unassuaged Chinese suspicion over Japan’s long neglected or insufficiently resolved war responsibility, the high-level denials of Nanjing, the periodic rightwing attempts to sanitize history texts, the refusal to accept formal legal responsibility for the victims of the Asia-wide “Comfort Women” slavery system, the periodic visits by Prime Ministers (notably Koizumi, 2001–2006) and prominent government and Diet Members to Yasukuni (Zhang 2012:106; see chapter 16 in this volume). 190

Troubled seas

Japanese elites and the mass media alike seem to have lost the capacity to appreciate the Chinese position or to achieve a self-critical awareness of their own. While projecting a picture of China as threatening and “other,” they pay minimal attention either to the circumstances surrounding the Chinese claim to the islands or to the reasons for the general suspicion of Japan. They take for granted that Japan “owns” the islands and blame it for the crisis over them, and they have little sense of responsibility for the trashing of the “shelving” agreements of 1972 and 1978 (whose existence, for the most part, they simply deny) (Chanlett-Avery, Manyin, Cooper and Rinehart, 2013). Although Japan’s claim is rhetorical and ambiguous, few doubt that that it is “fundamentally solid and quite tenable under existing international law” (Togo 2012). Of the states and societies in the East China Sea Senkaku/Diaoyu vicinity, Okinawa is most distinctive. Okinawans know in the depths of their bones that contest over sovereignty in their regional waters threatens them and that war for the defence of Senkaku would be a “re-run of the battle of the Second World war, with us, Okinawans, the victims,” as Hiyame Teruo of the University of the Ryukyus puts it (Hiyame 2013). Resolutely opposed to militarization, Okinawa also looks back, by contrast with the rest of Japan, on a long historical memory of friendly relations with China. Its civil society therefore takes the initiative in calling for an inclusive and regional, cooperative rather than exclusive solution. In place of the language of intrinsic national territory, Okinawans therefore talk instead of an Okinawa-centred “livelihood zone,” of “a space for co-existence, co-living by Japan, China, and Taiwan, and a symbol of goodwill.” They seek to turn Okinawa itself into a “peace hub for Asia” (Committee of One Hundred 2013). They would extend the Okinawan principle of grassroots democracy that for decades has thwarted Japanese and US plans to further militarize the region so as to negotiate a new kind of future for the East China Sea. Such a perspective, relativizing the nation state and building a structure of cooperation around and across national borders, radically challenges all the surrounding state actors. There is no question but that for Japan, Senkaku/Diaoyu becomes a key element in the definition of a role in the region and the world: a regional state concentrating on building a cooperative order or a US client state cooperating in building a structure of containment of China, even while fearful the US might one day shift its Asian core interest from Japan to China – the trauma of the Nixon shocks remaining deep in the Japanese consciousness. To be able to set aside the deception and sophistry over “inherent” territory and absence of dispute that has been allowed to swallow rational discussion for so long and to respond to the vision articulated by Okinawans, would require nothing short of a “spiritual revolution” (Wada 2012: 19). Yet its urgency grows steadily. China’s readiness in mid-2013 to reactivate the “shelf ” agreement might offer a path to cool tempers on all sides and set the scene for discussions on some form of compromise agreement (Ryukyu shimpo 2013a). The memory of the disastrous path onto which Japan was led over eight decades ago by insistence on “positive diplomacy” to defend the “lifeline” of inalienable territorial rights in “Man-Mo” (Manchuria-Mongolia), and ultimately China proper, has faded in Japan but not in China. The uncompromising repetition of today’s no less strident but vacuous formula of koyu rights to Senkaku/Diaoyu is ominous. Worse, Japan’s irredentism is matched today on all sides – by China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), South Korea and the South China Sea states (in respect of that region’s maritime zones). Opinion polls conducted in both Japan and China in mid-2013 found an unprecedented (over 90 per cent) level of mutual disdain in both countries (Okinawa taimusu 2013). Self-righteous insistence on exclusive ownership is unlikely to offer a way forward and is plainly incompatible with the kind of regional, East China Sea Community of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation, affirmed by Okinawans and alluded to in recent years by Fukuda Yasuo, Hu Jintao, Hatoyama Yukio and others. Since the prospect of a resolution to the sovereignty question is minimal, best, therefore, to set it aside, to revert in effect to the “shelving” 191

Gavan McCormack

agreement of 1972–2010, but to combine that with active cooperation around and perhaps under the islands and with parallel steps towards the construction of such a Community. Cooperative arrangements for fisheries and resource extraction had been put in place in parts of this sea before the crisis that erupted in 2010 froze most of its mechanisms, and could be reinstated and expanded, with the Japan-Taiwan fisheries agreement of 2013 covering the East China Sea in vicinity of Senkaku/Diaoyu a possible model (Yabuki 2013b: 50–52). One hundred years from now, it is likely that the brouhaha over uninhabited East China Sea islets that roiled the region in the early 21st century will be seen as an absurd distraction from the task of creating such a regional community.

Notes 1 There is a strong case, however, for the advantages to be gained by the United States in joining UNCLOS (Harris 2012). 2 For basic data on the Kazan Islands, Minami Torishima, Okinotorishima and Daitoshima, Wikipedia is the most useful reference. 3 These notional lines may or may not reflect some corresponding Chinese strategic concepts, though the general thrust – to concentrate on establishing naval dominance within the First Line (its “near seas”), followed by freedom to manoeuver within the Second (its “mid-far seas”), and eventual global naval presence – seems soundly based. 4 China is reported, however, to have considerable submarine and missile capacity, and the rate of expansion of military spending is certainly significant, increasing by six times over the past 13 years while US military spending heads towards contraction (Sevastopulo 2012). 5 Abe, meeting on October 15 with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, quoted in Tabata (2012: 113). 6 Abe, meeting on October 15 with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, quoted in Tabata (2012: 113). 7 For US national and media thinking on the evolution of the “Japan question” under the Abe government, see Chanlett-Avery, Manyin, Cooper and Rinehart (2013); also, Takeuchi (2013).

Bibliography Abe, Shinzo. (2013). “Atarashii kuni e” [Towards country renewal], Bungei shunju, January: 124–133. AFP-Jiji. (2013). “China hype: Hatoyama war regrets,” Japan Times, January 19. Aoki, Mizuho. (2012). “Poster boasts metro plan to buy Senkakus,” Japan Times, July 14. Asahi Shimbun. (2012). “Okinotorishima kai-iki no tairikudana enshin, Nihon shinsei kokusai kikan ni mitomeru” [Okinotorishima maritime zone extended to continental shelf, Japan’s claim recognized by international body], Asahi shimbun, April 28. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (2008). World Factbook. www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/2008/ Chanlett-Avery, Emma, Mark E. Manyin, William H. Cooper, and Ian E. Rinehart (2013). Japan-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, May 1. China Military Online. (2013). “Viewpoint: National strength still to be raised to solve Diaoyu Islands issue,” China Military Online, May 17. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90786/8247941/ Clinton, Hillary Rodham. (2013). “Remarks with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida after their meeting,” Washington, DC, January 18. http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2013/01/203050.htm/ Committee of One Hundred. (2013). “Urgent appeal: To transform Senkaku islands (called Diaoyu islands in China and Diaoyutai islands in Taiwan) into a shared livelihood zone for Japan, China, and Taiwan,” Concerned Philosophers for Peace, January 10. http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.ca/2013/02/an-urgent-appeal-from-Okinawa-to-turn.html/ Dolven, Ben, Shirley A. Kan, and Mark E. Manyin (2013). Maritime Territorial Disputes in East Asia: Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, January 23. Economist, The. (2012a). “China’s Military Rise – The Dragon’s new teeth,” April 7. Economist, The (2012b). “China and Japan: Could Asia really go to war over these?” September 22.

192

Troubled seas Guo, Nanyan, and Gavan McCormack. (2001). “Coming to terms with nature: Development dilemmas on the Ogasawara Islands,” Japan Forum, vol. 13, no. 2: 177–193. Guo, Nanyan, and Gavan McCormack. (2005). Ogasawara shoto – Ajia Taiheiyo kara mita kankyo bunka [The Ogasawara Islands – Environmental Culture as Seen from the Asia-Pacific]. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Guo Rongxing. (2010). “Territorial disputes and seabed petroleum exploration.” Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, September: 23. Hane Jiro. (2012). “Senkaku mondai ni naizai suru horiteki mujun” [Legal contradictions within the Senkaku problem], Sekai, November: 112–119. Hara, Kimie. (2004). “The post-war Japanese peace treaties and China’s ocean frontier problems,” American Journal of Chinese Studies, 11, 1, April: 1–24. Hara, Kimie. (2006). Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis; especially chapter 7, “The Ryukyus: Okinawa and the Senkaku/Diaoyu disputes.” Harris, Gail. (2012). “U.S. must remove UNCLOS handcuffs,” The Diplomat, March 23. http://thediplomat. com/2012/03/23/u-s-must-remove-unclos-handcuffs/ Hayashi, Nozomu. (2013). “Former LDP elder: Kakuei Tanaka said Senkaku shelved in 1972,” Asahi shimbun, May 6. Hiyame Teruo. (2013). Quoted in “Senkaku kaiketsu e kennai kenkyusha ra shido” [Prefectural researchers play leading role in seeking solution to Senkaku], Ryukyu shimpo, January 13. Hollis, D. (2010): “United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1982,” in Encyclopedia of Earth. Ed. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, DC: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment), first published June 22, 2010, last revised Date September 10, 2010. http:// www.eoearth.org/article/United_Nations_Convention_on_Law_of_the_Sea_(UNCLOS),_1982 Hongo, Jun. (2012). “Tokyo’s intentions for Senkaku islets,” Japan Times, April 19. Hsiung, James C. (2007). “Sea Power, Law of the Sea, and a Sino-Japanese East China Sea ‘Resource War’,” in James C. Hsiung, ed, China and Japan at Odds: Deciphering the Perpetual Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan: 133–154. Inoue Kiyoshi. (1972). Senkaku retto – Diuaoyu shioto no shiteki kaimei [The Senkaku Island Group: A Historical Exposition of the Diaoyu Islands]. Tokyo: Gendai hyoronsha. International Crisis Group. (2012). “Stirring up the South China Sea,” (2), Regional Responses, Asia Report No 229, July 24: 29. Ishihara Shintaro. (2012a). “The US-Japan alliance and the debate over Japan’s role in Asia,” lecture to Heritage Foundation, Washington D.C, April 16, http://www.heritage.org/events/2012/04/shintaro-ishihara/ Ishihara Shintaro. (2012b). Lecture to Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Tokyo, May 29, in Matsubara Hiroshi. (2012) “Tokyo Governor calls out his enemies at FCCJ,” Asahi shimbun, May 29. Japan Times. (2012). “Stop infighting over the Senkakus,” editorial, July 18. Kato, Yasuhiro, et al. (2012). “Deep-sea mud in the Pacific Ocean as a potential resource for rare-earth elements,” Nature Geoscience, 4: 535–539. Koh Choong-suk. (2012). “About Okinotorishima,” Korea Herald, May 15. Kyodo. (2012a). “From Beijing, Hatoyama tells Tokyo to admit row,” Japan Times, January 18. Kyodo. (2012b). “Ad in Wall Street Journal seeks US support for Senkaku purchase plan,” Japan Times, July 29. Latimer, Cole. (2012). “Seabed Mining: Plunging into the depths of a new frontier,” Australian Mining, August 10. http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/ Lee, Ivy, and Fang Ming. (2012). “Deconstructing Japan’s claim of sovereignty over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands,” The Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, December 31. http://japanfocus.org/-fang-ming/3877/ Mainichi Shimbun. (2012). “Senkaku purchase must be settled calmly in Japan,” editorial, July 11. McCormack, Gavan, and Satoko Oka Norimatsu. (2012). Resistant Islands: Okinawa confronts Japan and the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. McCormack, Gavan. (2012). “Abe Days are Here Again – Japan in the World,” Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, December 24. http://japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3873/ Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2005). “Status of Okinotorishima Island,” Press Conference, 18 February 2005. http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/2005/2/0218.html (accessed August 30, 2012). Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2013a). “The Senkaku Islands,” March, http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/ asia-paci/senkaku/pdfs/senkaku_en.pdf Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2013b). “Joint Statement by the United States and Japan,” Washington, DC, February 22. http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/kaidan/s_abe2/vti_1302/pdfs/1302_us_02.pdf

193

Gavan McCormack Nogawa Motokazu. (2012). “Ryodo mondai ni atsuku naru uha rondan no tanjun shiko” [The tendency to simplify on the part of right-wing discussions that grow hot over territorial problems], Shukan kinyobi, May 25: 16–17. Nolan, Peter. (2013). “Imperial archipelagos: China, Western Colonialism and the law of the sea,” New Left Review, 80, March–April: 77–95. Norimatsu, Satoko Oka. (2013). “Kurinton Kishida kaiken hodo: masumedia no aorini damasarenai yo ni” [Don’t be deceived by mass media beat-up, not least in reports of the Clinton-Kishida meeting], Peace Philosophy, January 20. http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com.au/ Okinawa taimusu. (2013). “‘Senkaku kokuyuka 1 nen’ Chugoku to mukiau toki da” [One year after Senkaku nationalization, time to talk to China], editorial, September 11. Panetta, Leon. (2012). “The US Rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific,” Keynote presentation to the First Plenary Session, 11th IISS Asian Security Summit, The Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore, June 2. http://www. iiss.org/conferences/the-shangri-la-dialogue/shangri-la-dialogue-2012/speeches/first-plenary-session/ leon-panetta/. Renmin rihbao. (2013). Series on Senkaku/Diaoyu May 8–10, especially part 3, “[A discussion of the Shimonoseki Treaty and the Diaoyu Island problem] Ma-guan joyaku to Diaoyudao mondai o ronjiru,” May 10. http://j.people.com.cn/94474/204188/8237309.html/ Ryukyu shimpo. (2013a). “Dai kibo kaitei kosho ‘shigen rikken’ mo yume de wa nai” [Resource-based prefectural development of large-scale sea-bed deposits is not a dream], editorial, April 2. Ryukyu shimpo. (2013b). Deputy Chief of General Staff of the PLA, speaking at Shangri La Conference, Singapore, June 2, 2013, “Senkaku tanaage, daiwa no shiganaru minogasu na” [Shelving Senkaku, don’t neglect dialogue], June 4. Sevastopulo, Demetri. (2012). “US plans to boost Pacific naval forces,” Financial Times, June 2. State Oceanic Administration of China. (2012). “Guojia haiyangju pilu Riben wai dalu jiahuajie’an Zhenjiang” [Japan’s outer continental shelf delimitation of truth: The multi-area block area not approved], Dongfang zaobao, July 10. http://www.dfdaily.com/html/51/2012/7/10/822204.shtml/ Tabata Mitsunaga. (2012). “Ryoyuken mondai o meguru rekishiteki jijitsu” [Historical facts concerning the territorial problem], Sekai, December: 104–113. Takeuchi Yoichi. (2013). “Shusho rekishi ninshiki Bei ga kenen ‘Higashi Ajia konran’ ‘Beikoku kokueki gaisuru” [US concern over the Prime Minister’s sense of history], Tokyo shimbun, May 9. Tanaka-Zhou Summit. (2012). “The Japan-China Summit meeting between Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and Premier Zhou Enlai on September 27, 1972,” in Lee and Ming 2012: 36. Togo Kazuhiko. (2012). “Japan’s territorial problem: the Northern Territories, Takeshima, and the Senkaku islands,” The National Bureau of Asian Research, Commentary, May 8. Tokyo Metropolis. (2012). “Okinotorishima no gaiyo.” http://www.sangyo-rodo.metro.tokyo.jp/norin/ suisan/okinotorishima/gaiyou/ Toyoshita Narahiko. (2012a). “Senkaku mondai” to wa nani ka,”“[What is the ‘Senkaku problem’?] Iwanami gendai bunko. Toyoshita Narahiko. (2012b). “Aete hidane nokosu Bei senryaku” [US spark-leaving strategy], Okinawa taimusu, August 12. Toyoshita Narahiko. (2012c). “‘Senkaku konyu’ mondai no kansei,” Sekai, August: 41–49 Uemura Hideaki. (2012). “Ryodo mondai to rekishi ninshiki (Territorial problems and historical understanding), Dai 11 kai “rekishi ninshiki to Higashi Ajia no heiwa Foramu Tokyo kaigi, (11th Tokyo Conference of ‘Historical understanding and the peace of Asia’ Forum), November 24–26. UNCLOS. (2012a). “Summary of Recommendation of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in regard to the submission made by Japan on 12 November 2008,” adopted by the Commission, April 19, 2012. http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/jpn08/com_sumrec_jpn_ fin.pdf p. 4. UNCLOS. (2012b). “Progress of Work in the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf,” Statement by the Chairperson, New York, 30 April. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/ N12/326/32/PDF/N1232632.pdf?OpenElement/ USCAR. (1953). “Geographical Boundaries of the Ryukyu Islands,” US Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands, Civil Administration Proclamation No 27, December 25 (Okinawan Prefectural Archives, Ginowan City). Utsumi Shozo. (2013). “Okinawa mushi, gyogyo kyotei de mo,” Okinawa taimusu, May 17. Wada Haruki. (2012). Ryodo mondai o do kaiketsu suru ka [How to solve territorial problems] Heibonsha shinsho

194

Troubled seas Wedge. (2013). “Kaiyo shigen taikoku’ wa yume monogatari” [Marine resource superpower no dream], Wedge Special report, No. 2, June: 38–42. Wikipedia. (2012a). “Okinotorishima.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinotorishima Wikipedia. (2012b). “Iwo jima.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwo_Jima Wikipedia. (2012c). “Minamitorishima.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamitorishima Wikipedia. (2012d). “Daito islands.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dait%C5%8D_Islands/ Wishik, Anton Lee, II. (2012). “An Anti-Access Approximation: The PLA’s active strategic counterattacks on exterior lines,” China Security, 19, March. http://www.chinasecurity.us/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=487&Itemid=8 Yabuki, Susumu. (2012). “Interview: China-watcher Yabuki says Senkakus are a diplomatic mistake by Japan,” Asahi shimbun, December 12. Yabuki, Susumu. (2013a). Interviewed by Mark Selden, “China-Japan territorial conflicts and the USJapan-China relations in historical and contemporary perspective,” Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, March 4. Yabuki, Susumu. (2013b). Senkaku shototsu wa Okinawa henkan ni hajimaru,” [Clash over Senkaku began with Okinawan reversion], Kadensha. Yamada Yoshihiko. (2011). “Nihon wa sekai yon-i no kaiyo taikoku, Yamada Yoshihiko” [Japan is world No 4 maritime power: Yamada Yoshihiko], Nihon keizai shimbun, November 17. Yomiuri Shimbun. (2012a). “Tairikudana 31 man heiho kiro kakudai – Okinotorishima hoppo nado,” [Continental shelf expansion by 310,000 square kilometres – in Okinotorishima and Northern islands], April 28. Yomiuri Shimbun. (2012b). “Large rare earth deposits discovered, valuable cache found within nation’s EEZ,” June 30. Yomiuri Shimbun. (2013). “Deep-sea mud proves rich in rare earths, but remote deposits hard to extract,” March 22. Yoshikawa, Yukie. (2007). “The US-Japan-China mistrust spiral and Okinawa,” Asia-Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, October 11. Zhang Ning. (2012). “Diaoyudao’ no haigo no Chugoku no shisoteki bunki” [Ideological crossroads for China as background to Diaoyu islands], Gendai shiso, December: 104–112.

195

12 PEOPLE’S DIPLOMACY The Japan-China Friendship Association and critical war memory in the 1950s Franziska Seraphim

Since the end of the Cold War, the Chinese-Japanese relationship has once again emerged as central to regional (and global) security and economic vitality. China’s meteoric rise as an economic superpower, North Korea’s threat to the stability of the region, and the changing politics of Japan-U.S. alliance have sharpened national rivalries at the same time as regional integration has become a desired goal. This realignment of power relations elicited by-now-notorious “history wars” about Japan’s alleged failure to appropriately address its aggressive wartime past, from vague governmental apologies and ambiguous history textbooks to outright denials of war crimes by some nationalist politicians. In the early 2000s, diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and Japan plummeted over prime minister Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s military dead are enshrined along with some Class-A war criminals. Koizumi’s handling of war memory issues also drew unprecedented criticism across the political spectrum in Japan – and especially from the business community – as detrimental to Japan’s diplomatic, political, and economic interests. A decade later, the two countries found themselves mired in a territorial dispute over five uninhabited islands in the South China Sea collectively known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. The (temporary) arrest in September 2010 by Japanese maritime forces of a Chinese fishing vessel’s captain in waters under Japanese control broke open an unresolved issue over national sovereignty concerning these islands with roots in Japanese imperialism as well as the Cold War. Historical memories of Japan’s empire and war in the first half of the twentieth century combine with the very real legacies of America’s Cold War empire in Asia in the second half, and they inform in ever more complicated ways the shifting power relations in East Asia in the twenty-first century’s second decade. The current imbrications of war memory and Sino-Japanese economic, diplomatic, and territorial competition seemingly contrast with the first three Cold War decades, when Japan and China had no official diplomatic relations and Japanese struggles with war memory rarely made international headlines. In fact, however, the desire for trade with mainland China as well as criticism of the U.S.-sponsored political reordering of East Asian relations played a significant role in the way that critical war memories of Japanese aggression assumed public attention in the opening stages of the Cold War. The San Francisco peace treaty negotiations in the last years of the Allied occupation and Japan’s independence in April 1952 galvanized the progressive and radical left in opposition to the conservative Yoshida government and its American supporters. They inspired mass protest movements of unprecedented scale and focused interest politics on 196

People’s diplomacy

issues of the war and its aftermath that had not been adequately addressed under the Allied occupation. One such issue was Japan’s relationship with China after the Communist Revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong in October 1949. The United States’ deliberate exclusion of China and other communist countries from the peace treaty and the growing enmity between the two ideological rivals during the Korean War (1950–53) alarmed many Japanese intellectuals, businessmen, and socialist and even conservative politicians, some of whom had been so-called China hands before and during the Asia Pacific war. Just as Japan’s political options for international rehabilitation became narrowly circumscribed by its alliance with the United States in the deepening Cold War, a whole new range of discursive possibilities concerning Japanese war memories opened up. The return of convicted war criminals to public life (and even national politics), the belated disclosure of the real horrors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, the stories of repatriates from Japan’s former empire, and bestselling collections of war testaments brought a flood of memories to public prominence and provided fertile ground for liberal democrats, pacifists, and nationalists of different vintages to formulate their respective political agendas with great urgency. It was in this context that an eclectic group of people with personal and professional ties to China formed a movement to “set the grand stage of Japanese-Chinese friendship” by promoting cultural and economic exchanges “between the two peace-loving peoples” based on remembering and atoning for Japanese war crimes against Chinese people, especially Chinese forced laborers in Japan. One of the first collaborative projects of atonement was the retelling of an uprising at the Hanaoka mine through a long series of woodcuts. These were originally presented as a slide show (kamishibai) at local storytelling events. Prepared under the guidance of a local artist, Nii Hiroharu, and published in 1951 in book form as Hanaoka Story (Hanaoka monogatari), these woodcuts adapted a Chinese tradition of political protest art that had become very popular in China before and during the war. The series depicted in graphic detail the conditions of Chinese (and Korean) forced laborers in the camp at Hanaoka, a copper mine run by the Kajima corporation, their brutal treatment at the hands of the mine supervisors, the laborers’ uprising, and the Japanese supervisors’ bloody crackdown in June 1945, which left 418 Chinese dead. One of the last panels showed Kajima’s escape from responsibility for this crime as the big capitalists prevailed, undisturbed by the memory of the victims. The book remains in print today after more than sixty years and serves not only as a record of the Hanaoka massacre but also as a powerful reminder of Japanese brutality and aggression against Chinese, Korean, and other Asian laborers.1 This sentiment of remorse and atonement for specific Japanese war crimes was central to the establishment of the Japan-China Friendship Association (Nihon Chūgoku yūkō kyōka, better known as Nitchū yūkō kyōkai) on 1 October 1950, the first anniversary of the Communist Revolution. The Friendship Association held that without a peace treaty and the normalization of official relations with the PRC, the state of war between the two countries continued to victimize both peoples – if not with bullets, then by preventing the settlement of humanitarian issues and economic recovery through trade. In the group’s first statement, leaders blamed “American imperialism” for causing a revival of “Japanese militarism” by pressuring the government into a U.S.-Japan alliance that required remilitarization, thereby implicitly threatening Chinese national security. But it was the Japanese government, they held, that, against the will of its own people, refused to forge amicable relations with Communist China and furthermore failed to acknowledge its wartime crimes. In sharp contrast, China, which had suffered under Japanese militarism, was successfully building a people’s state on the principles of peace and national independence and extending a “hand of friendship” to its neighbor.2 197

Franziska Seraphim

Although the Japan-China Friendship Association did not have a direct prewar or wartime organizational predecessor to salvage or reconnect with, the careers and personal lives of its leading members were deeply entwined with mainland China and the Japanese presence there in the first half of the twentieth century. The Friendship Association’s first president from 1950 to 1953 was Uchiyama Kanzō (1885–1959), who had spent half his life in Shanghai, where he ran a Japanese bookstore from 1917 right through the end of the war. Uchiyama had learned to walk a thin line there, taking advantage of the Japanese army’s protection of Japanese civilians in Shanghai during the 1930s, while offering his bookstore as a secret meeting place for Japanese and Chinese literary figures, some of whom were clearly resisters to Japanese imperialism in China. Known in the early 1930s as the Japanese-Chinese Culture Salon, Uchiyama’s bookstore was a refuge for the famous Chinese writer Lu Xun before his death in 1936 and one of several Shanghai liaison centers for Japanese communists like Ozaki Hotsumi, an Asahi shimbun reporter later involved in the Richard Sorge spy ring. Uchiyama returned to Japan in 1947 and reopened his bookstore in the Kanda district of Tokyo, this time specializing in Chinese books.3 Itō Takeo (1895–1984), another founding member of the Japan-China Friendship Association, had an illustrious prewar and wartime career in the research section of the South Manchurian Railway Company (SMR). As the director of the company’s Shanghai office, he was friends with China specialists in the navy, while also maintaining close relationships with leftwing intellectuals critical of Japan’s war in China, including Ozaki Hotsumi. The discovery of the Richard Sorge spy ring in Tokyo led to a series of arrests of scientists working for the SMR Research Department in Shanghai in 1942–43 and the execution of Ozaki. Ito was sent to prisons in remote areas of northern China in June 1943 but was released the following year. A number of Itō’s Research Department colleagues remained in China after 1945 to oversee the dismantling of the SMR. Others returned to Japan and devoted themselves to building up the field of East Asian Studies at Japanese universities.4 The Japan-China friendship movement also relied heavily on politicians with prewar careers in social activism. Its second director was the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) politician Matsumoto Jiichirō (1887–1966), the founder in 1922 and chairman of the Leveling Society (Suiheisha), an organization for the restoration of the burakumin (outcast class) to full social privileges. Matsumoto was arrested in 1942 but restarted his activism on behalf of buraku emancipation in 1946, developing it into a mass organization backed by many left-wing groups. Another prewar social activist and postwar Socialist politician was Ōyama Ikuo (1880–1955), who had been a prominent Marxist economist and spent the war years in exile in the United States. Returning to Japan in 1947, he became a member of the Lower House of the Diet and a leading member of several peace organizations. Instrumental in the Friendship Association’s quest for the revival of trade with mainland China was the active participation of Hoashi Kei (1905–89), a postwar Socialist politician and Diet member (of both Upper and Lower Houses), who was reelected seven times from 1947 on. Hoashi had been director of the Heavy Industry Council in the prewar period and a consultant to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in the Tōjō cabinet in the early 1940s. He concluded agreements on Japanese-Chinese trade in the 1950s and 1960s and was also on the board of directors for the Japan–Soviet Union Friendship Association and the Association for the Return of Koreans Living in Japan.5 At the time of the Association’s establishment, one third of its seventy-eight founding members were intellectuals and China specialists. Another third came from the business world, half of them representatives of Chinese overseas businesses, and the rest were JSP politicians, labor union representatives, and social movement activists, including the mayors of Kyoto and Yokohama. The professional eclecticism of this organization helped in creating a mass movement in the 1950s around the notion that Chinese-Japanese relations, rather than the U.S.-Japanese alliance, should 198

People’s diplomacy

serve as the basis of postwar peace. It is safe to say, however, that the core of the friendship movement consisted of people like Itō Takeo and Uchiyama Kanzō, who brought to this movement a wealth of personal experience living and working in China before and during the war, and a deep commitment to righting the wrongs of the Japanese imperialist presence there.

Responsibility evaded: Reparations and an “incomplete” peace Japan’s defeat in 1945 did not immediately erase its deep, multilevel entanglement with developments on the Chinese mainland. As the examples above show, many Japanese had made successful careers in China before as well as during the war, and the line between participating in the government’s militarist ventures and nurturing an anti-imperialist attitude deeply sympathetic to the Chinese people was sometimes blurred in real life. Some Japanese recognized, sympathized, and in a few cases actively supported Chinese resistance to Japanese imperialist ventures in China. But most simply played their own small parts in Japan’s vast and multifaceted presence there, which extended far beyond military combat. The legacies of this complicated history, however, were largely buried in new Cold War enmities as perceived by Washington and implemented by the occupation forces in Japan. The Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) dealt directly with two main issues concerning Japanese-Chinese relations: the repatriation of Japanese from the Chinese mainland, and reparations. Repatriation was an ongoing humanitarian problem that spilled over into the 1950s and required the engagement of private organizations such as the Red Cross and the Japan-China Friendship Association. The return of Chinese and Koreans living in Japan at the end of the war, many of them forced laborers, was another matter. The loss of their status as Japanese nationals after the war, as well as the contemporary conditions of civil war in both China and Korea, made this reverse repatriation difficult and in some cases impossible, complicated by the fact that significant numbers chose to stay in Japan rather than return to their war-torn countries (see chapter 19 in this volume). The reparations issue, however, was even more directly bound up with Cold War politics and the interests of the United States in particular. Both the United States and the Chinese Nationalist government had drawn up separate plans demanding Japanese reparations payments well before the end of the war. In contrast to Chinese leaders, who demanded that Japan transfer its assets and industrial infrastructure to rebuild the shattered Chinese economy and compensate for the huge public and private losses it had inflicted in the course of the Asia Pacific war, the U.S. government approached Japan’s reparations as an issue of economic policy rather than of punishment and restitution. The Communist Revolution and the establishment of the PRC in October 1949 sealed the fate of U.S.-Chinese negotiations over Japanese reparations.6 The United States declared Communist China an enemy and brought Japan fully into its own orbit of strategic and economic interests in the region. The resulting mass protests in Japan against the exclusion of China and other Communist countries from the peace treaty and the demand of a “full peace agreement,” however, virtually ignored the abandonment of the reparations program. Indeed, major leaders of the protests, such as the Teachers’ Union, explicitly stated their desire to have reparations waived and instead to rebuild East Asian trade relations so that Japan would not remain dependent on the United States. In contrast, organizations specifically focusing on Japanese-Chinese relations were formed at this time to demand the resurrection of trade between the two countries on the basis of atonement for Japan’s wartime aggression. The Chinese Revolution demonstrated to them that China had in fact thrown off the shackles of the past and was building a peaceful society on new principles, while the Japanese government had failed to make a clean break with its imperialist past by showing remorse for its war conduct. Whereas most on the liberal left saw that break with the 199

Franziska Seraphim

past embodied in the commitment to “democracy,” participants in the Japan-China friendship movement staked their hopes on a fundamentally altered relationship with China, which required a full acknowledgment of Japan’s unilateral responsibility for its aggressive war in Asia. Critical to the unity of this eclectic movement was the belief that the breakdown in relations with China was due to Japan alone. This reflected not only a moral and intellectual standpoint but also a political stance toward the contemporary situation, informed by a particular view of the prewar and wartime past. Essentially, the group held that Japan’s century-long practice of imperialistic and militaristic policies toward China, paired with a popular attitude of contempt for its “backward” neighbor, was now being revived through Japan’s support of American imperialism in Asia. As early as January 1950, a statement of goals for the proposed Friendship Association hinted at this belief: The first step toward rebuilding a democratic Japan is to dispose of our self-satisfied island-nation mentality and to become an international people willing to preserve peace in all directions. It is therefore necessary that not only the Pacific but also the Japan Sea and the East China Sea become “free waterways.” It is an old truth that “Japan will not prosper if China does not prosper.” We should recognize this, but in a way that corrects the old view of China.7 In the early 1950s, the Friendship Association accused the Japanese government of failing in at least three ways to “correct the old view of China.” First, the government both covered up and evaded practical responsibility for Japanese war crimes committed against Chinese people in both China and Japan. One specific example heavily publicized by the Friendship Association in its first years was the Hanaoka massacre of 30 June 1945. Second, it pointed out, neither the Japanese government nor the people correctly understood the significance of the Communist Revolution. It was in China, not in Japan, that people had succeeded in throwing off the shackles of the imperialist past and were building a free society of “new men” based on the principles of independence, equality, and peace. Third, by following the United States in recognizing the Taiwan Nationalist regime as the legitimate representative of China, Japan once again used China’s internal affairs for its own self-serving political interests instead of accepting reality. Specialists on contemporary China, including scholars and critics in the humanities and social sciences, served as the Association’s main resource in its endeavor to articulate a responsible memory of Japan’s war in China. The Japan-China friendship movement attracted intellectuals who had professional or personal ties to mainland China, enthusiasm for the Communist Revolution from an ideological standpoint, and a progressive political understanding of culture. Takeuchi Yoshimi, perhaps the best-known postwar scholar of modern Chinese literature, held views that mirrored those of the Friendship Association but never actually joined the movement and refused several invitations to visit China as a member of a cultural delegation. Although Takeuchi became a political activist for a short time at the height of the 1960 movement against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (Anpo), his understanding of revolution was theoretical rather than practical, and he steadfastly refused to get involved in politics. Nevertheless, Takeuchi’s vision of Chinese resistance to foreign and domestic exploitation as a “model” for Japanese society had great intellectual influence on those active in the JapaneseChinese friendship movement. It resonated powerfully among those who contrasted the success of China’s Communist Revolution with the dearth of revolutionary promise in Japan in the early 1950s. Takeuchi’s China, in Lawrence Olson’s words, “served a vitally affirming purpose as an object of aspiration and an abstract good.” Intellectuals working in the friendship movement, however, devoted themselves to making China the subject of political discourse and popular 200

People’s diplomacy

knowledge in Japan. They accepted the PRC as a “qualitatively different kind of civilization peopled by ‘new men.’”8 As a first step toward changing the Japanese people’s poor understanding of China, the Association printed an article denouncing the Japanese term Shina as imperialist and promoting the use of Chugoku as the correct name for the People’s Republic of China. In fact, intellectuals writing in Japan and China (Nihon to Chūgoku) not only demanded atonement for Japanese wrongdoing in the past but clung to the political and moral notion of a new reality. If Japan had led Asia into war, China was now the leader in building peace and prosperity for all in Asia. Indeed, an 1953 article titled “The New China and Japan” took issue with every criticism of the new regime in China in the contemporary media and turned it around to demonstrate the PRC’s competence and good intentions. Politically, China presented no threat to its neighbors because its strength rested neither on dictatorship nor on monopoly capitalism. With the people taking the lead, “why should a country that has reformed itself, that knows the way to develop on its own . . . be a threat to its neighbors?” Militarily, the Korea conflict had shown that China sent the People’s Liberation Army abroad only to support, not to dominate. It had consulted with the Korean government before dispatching its troops and had been the first to withdraw. Economically, the Chinese Revolution had contributed to building peace because it rested on the economic empowerment of the people. Japan’s history has shown that Japanese colonialism in China and Korea was based on the absence of domestic economic growth. The people were losing their freedom with every day, while the capitalists increased their power. This is the path to invasion, and China is on the opposite path now.9 In fact, China represented an economic asset to Japan in as much as relations could now be formed on the basis of independence and equality instead of colonialism. These arguments lined up all too well with sentiments expressed in Zhou Enlai’s speeches and in People’s Daily editorials. They also overlapped with a wider anti-American, pro-Asian nationalism espoused by many prominent intellectuals on the liberal left, including Maruyama Masao and Shimizu Ikutarō. Opposition to the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, which excluded the PRC and guaranteed the United States military bases in Japan, represented a common starting point for action among pacifists of different ideological convictions and formed the core of the Friendship Association’s campaign for the restoration of formal Sino-Japanese relations. The Asia-Pacific Peace Conference, held in Beijing in the fall of 1952 with participants from forty countries, provided an internationally visible opportunity for “people’s diplomacy” through cultural exchange. Until the last minute, the Foreign Ministry withheld permission for the Japanese delegation of fourteen peace activists (including representatives of the Friendship Association) to travel to Beijing. Preparatory meetings in Tokyo as well as in Beijing attracted wide participation and media coverage. A resolution regarding the “Japan Question,” one of eleven official statements issued over the course of the twelve-day conference, demanded a complete peace treaty with Japan, expressed the Japanese people’s desire to “promote the establishment of an independent, democratic, free and peaceful new Japan by stopping the revival of Japanese militarism,” and called for the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Japanese soil.10 The belief among friendship movement activists that peace in Asia would originate in China once American imperialism was overcome appeared to have been powerfully reaffirmed in the Five Peace Principles of Peaceful Coexistence that Zhou Enlai and Jawaharlal Nehru announced at their summit in June 1954: mutual respect for territorial sovereignty; nonintervention; nonaggression; equality and reciprocity; and peaceful coexistence despite rival ideologies. This held 201

Franziska Seraphim

enormous significance for the intellectual left as an attempt to apply democratic principles directly to international relations rather than to domestic affairs alone. Moreover, the left regarded this extension of democracy as having originated in Asia and not the West. It gave intellectuals involved in “cultural diplomacy” a sense of triumph over America and Europe in the realm of political ethics. Shimizu Ikutarō expressed this sense when he wrote: If we think about the significance of these five principles, it must be seen as only natural that these principles, differing from the great principles and theories to date, were created not in Washington, Paris or Moscow, but in a corner of Asia. That is not in the company of power, but rather in opposition to power. . . . The life of democracy is, through the hands of the peoples of Asia and Africa, being reborn.11 The movement to change the basis of international relations in Asia from the U.S.-Japan security alliance to Sino-Japanese friendship rested in part on a new ethnic nationalism centering on Asia. It was a reactionary nationalism in the sense that it was born out of resistance particularly against the United States (and the Cold War system), and thus in some ways resembled the Greater Asianist thought of the Meiji period. But in defining a shared Asian identity and destiny, perceptions of cultural and racial commonality retreated behind a belief in historical progress. For it was in Asia that a new system of international peace, independence, and democracy promised to replace the old capitalist nationalism that had caused World War II and was still championed by the United States.

Grassroots diplomacy Within the contemporary political environment and from the standpoint of resistance against the state, the Japan-China Friendship Association adopted “people’s diplomacy” as its modus vivendi. This term, kokumin gaikō in Japanese, was adapted from the Chinese renmin waijiao, coined by the PRC’s first premier, Zhou Enlai. However, the Chinese term renmin (jinmin in Japanese) means “the people” in communist terminology, whereas kokumin, the Japanese appropriation, implies the people of a nation, rather than a proletariat (see chapter 20 in this volume). The Friendship Association did not simply adopt communist terminology but adjusted it to reflect the political realities of Japan. Conceptually, “people’s diplomacy” shifted the agency in foreign relations from states (which conducted wars) to “the people” (who created peace). Practically, the term was used to describe the informal relations between the Chinese “people’s” state and Japanese civic organizations like the Friendship Association. The Friendship Association thereby insisted on the putative unity between the Chinese people and their (communist) state on the one hand, while simultaneously stressing the diametric opposition between the Japanese people and their government under the thumb of the United States on the other. “People’s diplomacy” was not only born out of the political realities of the day but in turn shaped the place of critical war memory in public life. Far from simply an opposition movement, the Friendship Association’s work supplemented official policy in ways that even conservative politicians welcomed. Its success in managing Sino-Japanese relations in fact depended on the tacit consent of the government: the Friendship Association persistently lobbied the same state institutions it protested against, so as to ensure its position in brokering relations with the PRC. To be sure, the Association deserved credit for creating and maintaining important channels of communication with the PRC from which official relations, once they were normalized (in 1972) and formally restored (in 1978), could easily be institutionalized. Nevertheless, until then its activities also helped to perpetuate the political arrangement by which relations with 202

People’s diplomacy

China remained outside the political mainstream, while official policy focused on relations with the United States. This political arrangement created the framework in which the Friendship Association’s memory of the war commanded public attention. Acknowledgment of and atonement for Japan’s wartime aggression had its legitimate place in postwar public life – namely, as part of special interest politics. But insofar as this interest remained outside the political mainstream, it did not effectively challenge official policy, which marginalized China and ignored war responsibility because it was politically expedient to do so in a Cold War context in which the United States was the hegemonic power. Although the Japan-China Friendship Association established itself within a few years as a political interest group connected with the opposition Socialist Party (and indirectly with the Communist Party) and recognized on the highest bureaucratic level, it styled itself as a “people’s movement.” One of the Association’s efforts to bring together people from all walks of life and establish relations with Chinese people involved a letter-writing campaign on the occasion of the fourteenth anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge incident – the military clash between Chinese and Japanese troops on 7 July 1937 that marked the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. Between 1 July and 15 August 1951, the Association called on individuals and groups from political, economic, cultural, scholarly, labor, and housewives’ circles to send greetings to Chinese individuals and groups on the mainland and on Taiwan. An article in Nihon to Chūgoku titled “Considering August 15th: Let Us Send Greetings to China!” invited people to write down their “heartfelt thoughts and wishes for the Chinese people” and send these letters to the Friendship Association to be mailed to Chinese newspapers (and ultimately collected and published in a single volume). The letters urged readers to remember the human misery set in motion by the Marco Polo Bridge incident, not only for the Chinese but also for the Japanese, who “were driven into such an aggressive war [by the militarist state]” and for the whole world. Moreover, current circumstances threatened to revive the horrors of that war: In the past two to three years, as the crisis in Korea poisoned both the international climate and that in our own country, our hopes for peace – acquired at the highest sacrifice – are fading, and the sound of shells and smell of gun-powder have returned. Given Japan’s precarious past, we have to establish friendly relations with our neighbor China. We cannot allow hostile relations to develop nor can we tolerate them. Cooperation between the Chinese and the Japanese is our heart’s desire . . . and we commemorate this year’s anniversary of 7 July as the most straightforward step toward mutual understanding between our two peoples.12 The letters reprinted in subsequent issues of Nihon to Chūgoku, typically written by presidents of labor unions and other organizations, echoed the sentiments expressed in this passage. They emphasized the unity between the Chinese and Japanese peoples by stressing their common victimization at the hands of Japanese militarists in the past and the conservative Japanese government in the present. This characterization of Japanese attitudes toward China closely matched the Chinese Communist Party’s official criticism of Japan and exposed the Japan-China Friendship Association to accusations of acting as the CCP’s mouthpiece. The Mainichi shimbun carried an article on 17 July 1950, even before the Association’s official establishment, branding the movement’s leaders “a group of spies” who carried out subversive activities against the U.S. military without the knowledge of the majority of its would-be members. At the height of the Red Purge, this amounted to no small threat for the movement, and the Association would have to defend itself 203

Franziska Seraphim

against such accusations for years to come. Throughout the months leading up to the signing of the peace treaty in September 1951, moreover, the PRC mobilized youth groups, student organizations, and the councils of every major city in China to send messages to “the Japanese people” encouraging them to protest the treaty. Statements opposing a “partial peace” by the Chinese National Association of Social Scientists and the Association of Natural Scientists dovetailed neatly with the peace appeals issued earlier by Japanese scientists and the Peace Problems Discussion Group around Maruyama Masao and Nanbara Shigeru. Friendship movement activists in Japan translated and distributed all these messages. Conversely, the Friendship Association accused the Japanese government of using anticommunist ideology to avoid facing the new political realities in Asia and escape responsibility for Japan’s wartime aggression. During the peace treaty negotiations, this was an especially heated argument voiced by much of the opposition on the left. A public controversy unfolded when it became known that Prime Minister Yoshida had secretly written to John Foster Dulles on 10 February 1952 agreeing to conclude a peace treaty with the Nationalist regime on Taiwan without having formally brought this matter before the Diet. An article in Nihon to Chūgoku denounced the “Yoshida letter” in moral terms, as a continuation of the utter disrespect for China that had caused the war in the first place – and a denial of responsibility for the war against the Chinese people: If Prime Minister Yoshida felt even an inch of remorse for Japanese militarist undertakings in China, why would he refuse to recognize the government which represents all of China at the present time and instead conclude a “peace treaty” with a government exiled to Taiwan?13 To highlight Japan’s past and present practice of construing the political reality in China in its own interest, the statement quoted wartime prime minister Konoe Fumimaro. Konoe had insisted, in 1938, that “we will not deal with Chiang Kai-shek” at a time when Chiang did in fact represent China while Japan supported a puppet regime in Nanjing. Now that Chiang was exiled, the argument continued, the Japanese government insisted on recognizing him, this time in order to bolster its alliance with the United States. The authors of the statement also pointed to the February 1947 massacre in Taipei of Taiwanese resisting the Chiang regime. They stressed that by recognizing Taipei instead of Beijing, Japan had again allied itself with an aggressor rather than with the communist liberator. Indeed, it was the Association’s view that establishment politics in Japan had not fundamentally changed since the war. Building a people’s movement, however, entailed specific organizational strategies in addition to community work. By 1953 the Friendship Association had secured a wide net of political affiliates. Six smaller organizations had joined as members, all offering specialized services in one or another aspect of Chinese culture. In addition, two Japan-China trade organizations, two academic research institutes, and two organizations facilitating repatriation of Japanese from China became close affiliates. The largest, if least structured, reservoir of recognition came from so-called mass organizations across the political spectrum, including seventeen labor unions and eighteen peace groups. In addition, all six main political parties and five powerful bureaucratic agencies (the cabinet, the Foreign Ministry, the Health and Welfare Ministry, the Labor Ministry, and the Agency for Assistance to Returnees) recognized the Japan-China Friendship Association as a major political pressure group. The Association in turn facilitated the establishment of other China-related organizations such as the Committee to Commemorate Chinese Prisoner of War Martyrs in 1953, the Japan-China Association for Cultural Exchange in 1956, and the Liaison Society for Returnees from China, also in 1956. 204

People’s diplomacy

People’s diplomacy enjoyed almost immediate public visibility and success in relation to the issue of restarting efforts to repatriate Japanese nationals left in China at war’s end. After the initial wave of 1,492,397 returnees from China through 1946, the numbers plummeted to 3,758 in 1947 and to 92 in 1951. On 1 December 1952 the Beijing government announced that about 30,000 Japanese still residing in China enjoyed the protection of the Chinese government, lived happy lives, and even sent money back to their families in Japan. It asserted that those who chose to return to their homeland would receive assistance from the Chinese government, but since China could not provide enough ships, it asked for the help of Japanese citizens’ groups under the leadership of the Chinese Red Cross Society. The Japanese Red Cross, the JapanChina Friendship Association, and the Peace Liaison Society became the liaison partners on the Japanese side. The Friendship Association immediately contacted some of the Japanese living in China through their newspaper Minshu shinbun (People’s Newspaper) as well as their families in Japan. The first ship of Japanese returnees arrived in Japan on 23 March 1953, and the number of repatriates reached 26,051 by the end of the year. The Japanese government had provided the ships but offered few services to help the newcomers relocate in Japan. The successful repatriation efforts clearly endorsed the Association’s “people’s diplomacy” and offered an opportunity to convince the public that the Japanese government not only took little responsibility for its militarist past, but in fact continued it. In sharp contrast, the Chinese government appeared willing both to lay the past to rest and build an amicable relationship with Japan and also to share its peaceful progress with Japanese individuals who could now transmit their positive experiences to their compatriots at home. Even before their return, the Japanese left in China had become one of the Friendship Association’s constituencies. The Association gave them a voice in Japan by printing their letters in its periodicals and provided mediation services for their return, but also clearly used them to support the Association’s political goals. When the first ship arrived, the Friendship Association’s vice-president, Hirano Yoshitarō, personally welcomed the one thousand returnees as “victims of Japan’s aggressive war who return not defeated but with important gains from the new China.” He expressed regret at the lack of government measures to help relocate them, which demonstrated the state’s unwillingness to assume responsibility for its own citizens as well as for the Chinese killed by Japan during the war. Most of all, Hirano urged the returnees to become ambassadors of China through their personal lives and experiences there: We believe that you are the people who can connect our two countries because you have first-hand knowledge of the new China. The Japanese people are thrilled to have you home, so please use this opportunity and teach them about the new China and deepen their interest and commitment to friendship with China.14 Japanese war criminals tried and convicted at Chinese war crimes tribunals received special attention upon their return to Japan in 1956. They had received comparatively light sentences so as not to harm Sino-Japanese friendship, as a Chinese official statement explained, and had undergone significant reeducation during their eleven-year residence in China. Once in Japan, some of them spoke publicly at town meetings and various local committees about their experiences in China and served as cultural ambassadors of the “new China.” Most importantly, they brought the issue of war responsibility into sharp focus by strongly criticizing their own wartime actions and forming their own groups built upon the notion of atonement. The Friendship Association reminded its readers that the punishment of these war criminals did not absolve the rest of the Japanese of their responsibility for the war. In a sense, the war criminals were also victims 205

Franziska Seraphim

of Japan’s militaristic policies. But unlike the majority of Japanese living in Japan after the war, they had deeply reflected on their crimes during their stay in China. While the repatriation issue struck a humanitarian chord and thus received public attention, the trade issue played a significant role in the confrontation between the Japanese government and the PRC-backed opposition. Trade with China enjoyed support across political lines. Insofar as the particular political arrangement in which the revival of trade with China took place in the 1950s revealed competing goals, the China trade was an obviously charged issue in both foreign policy and domestic politics. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) did its best to keep the China trade outside Japan’s international relations framework, which was guided by the U.S.Japan Security Treaty. The JSP, however, sought to use the China trade to attack and eventually alter Japan’s international position as a principal ally of the United States. In a speech to the Japan-China Friendship Committee on 13 July 1950, Katsumata Seiichi, head of the Socialist Party’s Policy Research Committee, highlighted the connections between economics and foreign policy. He argued that American economic aid artificially propped up the Japanese economy instead of allowing it to develop the self-sufficiency that was vital for true national independence. Even though MacArthur insisted on the purely economic nature of American aid, the advent of the Korean War had exposed underlying political considerations. But as long as the focus remained on mutual economic benefits, the restoration of trade relations was marked by successful cooperation because it was desired by all sides, if for different reasons and in different forms. No conservative cabinet – from that of Yoshida Shigeru’s to Kishi Nobusuke’s and beyond – wanted to sacrifice the China market, even if the Friendship Association accused them of deliberately hindering the people’s “natural” aspirations to trade with the Chinese. The conservatives in turn regarded communism in China as “unnatural” and probably short-lived, and were prepared to wait until the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the PRC would no longer demand Japan’s abrogation of the San Francisco Peace and Security Treaty. Yoshida had argued in 1951 – in defense of his decision to conclude a peace treaty with Taiwan – that formal relations with the nationalist regime on Taiwan did not preclude informal trade relations with the PRC. Picking up on this quote, Democratic Party vice-president Shigemitsu Mamoru opined that Yoshida Shigeru had hoped to speed up this process by “Europeanizing” China through the promotion of trade relations. In fact,Yoshida’s “separation of politics and economics” (seikei bunri) and Zhou Enlai’s “people’s diplomacy” dovetailed rather nicely on the issue of trade. The Chinese insistence until the mid1950s on dealing with the Japanese people but not their government only reinforced Japan’s policy of treating trade and official diplomacy as separate matters, informally consenting to the former while officially refusing the latter. The work of the Japan-China Friendship Association was clearly welcomed by some LDP politicians and businessmen who recognized China’s crucial role in Japan’s economy. Murata Shōzō, president of the Japan International Trade Promotion and a member of elite financial circles, worked closely with the Association and traveled to Beijing numerous times to negotiate and sign trade agreements with the Chinese. He considered diplomatic relations with the PRC to be premature, given the international situation in the 1950s, and insisted that the establishment of economic relations precede the restoration of diplomatic relations. Murata thus supported the government’s position while taking the lead in ensuring the success of people’s diplomacy. And yet, people’s diplomacy was also able to challenge, and even undermine, the official separation of politics and economics by working toward closing the perceived gap between “the people” and “government.” M. Y. Cho observed a gradual politicization of successive informal trade agreements with China, originating from pro-China organizations and even extending to the cabinet itself. Whereas the first trade agreement of 1 June 1952 was decidedly apolitical, the third agreement of 4 May 1955 clearly outlined the establishment of mutual and permanent 206

People’s diplomacy

trade representation missions in each country, with personnel to be granted the same status as official diplomats. Moreover, their responsibilities were to include political lobbying within their respective governments for normalization of official diplomatic relations. In this way, pro-China organizations in Japan not only benefited from the increased power vested in them because of the government’s seikei bunri policy, but in turn used their success in promoting trade relations to advance a broader agenda vis-à-vis the conservative establishment. There were nonetheless significant setbacks, for example the Kishi cabinet’s refusal to sign the fourth trade agreement in 1958, after the PRC had openly demanded that Japan commit itself to China’s three political principles – “no hostilities against the PRC, no involvement in the two-China conspiracy, no hindering the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations.” Despite this temporary failure of people’s diplomacy, informal mechanisms remained in place for the quick revival and expansion of economic relations with China in the early 1960s, eventually leading up to Sino-Japanese rapprochement in 1972.15 Clearly, the Friendship Association aimed to shelter a wide range of affiliations and constituencies under the umbrella term “people’s movement.” Its commitment to further its aims through people’s diplomacy thus acquired different forms and meanings in different settings. Socialist and Communist Party politicians representing the Association’s interests in the Diet presented themselves as the “voices of the people” vis-à-vis the conservative establishment. Business people who depended on trade with China and their political representatives drew on the contemporary flow of private trade on a regional and business-centered basis, as well as on the desire in financial circles to reestablish China as a principal market for Japanese goods. Japanese repatriates from China as well as Chinese residents in Japan could act as the most direct ambassadors for SinoJapanese friendship, precisely because they personally bore the marks of Japanese hostility against China. Perhaps most importantly, intellectuals and scholars, for whom intellectual freedom was a concern, practiced a more direct form of people’s diplomacy. As authorities on Chinese affairs, they were able to give the Japanese public an alternative view of contemporary China through lectures and the collection and distribution of documents that were otherwise unavailable. These four constituencies thus highlight the diverse means by which the Friendship Association’s interest politics contributed to the dynamics of war memory in the postwar political arena.

Remembering Japanese aggression The Japan-China Friendship Association never failed to emphasize the centrality of cultural exchange in the process of building good relations between the two countries. These cultural activities nevertheless had clear political implications, not only because of the Association’s favorable treatment of Chinese communism, but because of the prominence of cultural policy generally in diplomatic relations among countries all over the world. As Iriye Akira has shown, cultural internationalism became an urgent matter in the aftermath of World War II, reflected, for example, in the establishment of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), whose 1945 constitution declared that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” So widespread was the belief in the importance of cultural contact for the preservation of peace – perhaps especially among countries that had suffered defeat in war – that a West German Press and Information Bureau release could express perfectly the general aspirations of the Japan-China Friendship Association: “Through alliance policies, you win allies, through trade policies, business partners, through cultural policies, friends.”16 This could equally well have been the motto of the JapanChina friendship movement. The preface to a joint statement of 51 intellectuals in support of friendly cooperation with China in March 1952 defined friendship as a matter of “civilization” that manifested itself through cultural exchange. 207

Franziska Seraphim

From the early 1950s on, the Friendship Association collected Chinese printed and visual materials, including newspapers, magazines, research documents, photographs, art, and movies, and distributed them to publishing companies, schools, and its own members. Until its closure in March 2005, copies of these materials were collected in the Japan-China Friendship library, located in the Nitchū yūkō kaikan in Tokyo. Unlike the Association’s political work, which was handled mainly by the central office in Tokyo, cultural activities were carried out predominantly on the prefectural and local levels. Local chapters were heavily involved in community work, creating public awareness about the PRC through lectures, movies, photo and art exhibitions, publications of war memoirs, and the distribution of Chinese-language books and magazines. Much of this cultural activity took place under the rubric of the “movement never again to allow war between Japan and China” (Nitchū fusaisen undō) and focused on the commemoration of Japanese wartime aggression against Chinese people. This included observance of the anniversaries of the main war events on the Chinese mainland, in particular the Manchurian incident (1931) and the Marco Polo Bridge incident (1937), which were studiously ignored in the national press until decades later. Most of the war crimes commemorated by local Friendship Association chapters had taken place in Japan proper, however, and involved Chinese forced laborers and prisoners of war. These local organizations coordinated research into wartime incidents at mines, factories, or farms in 135 locations all over Japan, with the heaviest concentration in Hokkaido, and compiled exact data on the Chinese laborers who had worked and died there. They began by collecting the remains of the Chinese dead and conducting Buddhist ceremonies to honor them before returning them to China in white boxes. The Japanese government apparently did not involve itself in such basic humanitarian work and left the bodies of these Chinese dead scattered in the fields near their workplaces. A gruesome photo of piles of skulls and bones near the Hanaoka mine in Akita Prefecture taken in November 1945 attests to this.17 In addition to many small, local ceremonies, large commemorations were held in bigger cities. The first of these took place in April 1953 at the Honganji temple in Asakusa, Tokyo. In February of that year, the Chinese Victims Commemoration Committee had been set up to coordinate these activities. These were Buddhist ceremonies, whose rites were shared by Japanese and Chinese alike, at least in principle. As such, they formed an important contrast to the Shinto ceremonies usually employed for the commemoration of the Japanese war dead. Later ceremonies, such as a commemoration held in Fukuoka in March 1971, included Korean and Japanese victims of wartime mining incidents as well.18 Throughout the postwar decades, but especially from the 1960s through the 1980s, local Friendship Association chapters erected stone monuments all over Japan to commemorate Chinese victims of Japanese wartime aggression, to reflect on Japan’s war responsibility, and to remind subsequent generations of the lessons of that war and the abuse of human rights in the name of imperialism and militarism. Many of these monuments seem to blend harmoniously into their park environs, bearing the characters for “Never again war between Japan and China” (Nitchū fusaisen) in front and a more detailed inscription in the back or on the sides. Some of these monuments stand out for their abstract designs. A five-meter-tall stone pillar commemorating the Hanaoka massacre was erected near the mine in 1966 and bears the characters for “growing tradition of friendship” (hatten dentō yūgi) on one side and “against aggressive war” (hantai shinryaku sensō) on the other, using Chinese, rather than Japanese, word order. The inscription on the back of the Hanaoka Memorial reads: With the support of caring people from both Japan and China, we have erected this monument to friendship and never again to allow war between Japan and China. In 1944–1945, 993 Chinese, who had been brought here illegally under Japanese 208

People’s diplomacy

militarism, lived here in the Chūsan Dormitory at the foot of this mud-filled dam, abused and forbidden to speak their native language. On 30 June 1945, these laborers as well as those who wanted to protect the honor of their fatherland rose up as a group to at last oppose Japanese imperialism heroically. Here lie the remains of 418 people who gave their lives patriotically to this cause. We will forever remember this incident, our prayers never again to allow war between Japan and China chiseled into stone for the grandchildren of both countries.19 Although this inscription clearly places the responsibility for this human rights abuse on Japan and “Japanese militarism,” it avoided an opposition between the Japanese and the Chinese people by including Japanese resisters to militarism among the “patriotic” victims murdered here. The Friendship Association attracted the sometimes violent attention of those who interpreted their activities as politically motivated and in fact dictated by the PRC. Indeed, the American occupation forces themselves lashed out at the group in 1951 (in the so-called People’s Daily Distribution Suppression incident), when it arrested several members for distributing “communist propaganda.” In the Nagasaki incident in May 1958, right-wingers burned the Chinese flag that had been displayed at a local conference to promote Japanese-Chinese trade and cultural exchange. Monument inscriptions that referred to Japan’s war in Asia as unambiguously “aggressive” also invited vandalism. After a wave of popular protests against Japan swept China (and to a lesser extent Korea) in the spring of 2005, the Japan-China Friendship Association received threats from right-wing groups in Japan that made it cancel the annual meeting scheduled for late May in Awara, Fukui Prefecture, and switch to a new venue in Tokyo in November. According to the China Daily, managing director Yazaki Mitsuharu said in an official announcement that the Association could not guarantee the participants’ and local residents’ safety in the face of these threats. This did not keep the Association from issuing a formal letter on 2 August urging Prime Minister Koizumi not to visit Yasukuni Shrine on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the war’s end out of respect for Chinese suffering at the hands of Japanese militarism during the war. Throughout the postwar decades, the Japan-China Friendship Association stood committed to the acknowledgment of Japanese war crimes against Asia in general and China in particular. Above all, its shift in focus from the national to the international level and its belief in ChineseJapanese cooperation as the only way to a peaceful future set it apart from other organizations concerned with war memory. This bilateral focus was supported from various angles, including geographic proximity, economic necessity, cultural affinity, and ideological commitment. The Friendship Association regarded the Cold War split of Asia as reproducing the deeper and longer split separating Japan and China throughout modern history. At the same time, it recognized the displacement of this historically problematic relationship by the Cold War system and protested it as Japan’s “second guilt,” to borrow a phrase Ralph Giordano coined for postwar Germany (the first guilt being Japan’s condescending attitude and military conduct toward China during the war). For at least three decades, Cold War divisions continued to define both Japanese and world politics, effectively marginalizing voices such as that of the Friendship Association. And yet the Friendship Association’s view of Japan’s war and postwar enjoyed an informal, unofficial public visibility that paralleled its political position in managing informal Japanese-Chinese relations. War memory that acknowledged and probed into Japan’s war responsibility toward Asia was neither absent from Japanese public life nor actively silenced by a dominant, official narrative. If silencing mechanisms were in place, they did not appear to hinder the Association’s extensive public activities – lecturing in schools, maintaining archives open to the public, or erecting memorials to Chinese victims of Japanese aggression. Rather, the Friendship Association’s 209

Franziska Seraphim

attempt to shift the parameters of public discourse from a national or trans-Pacific understanding of the war and the postwar to one centering on East Asia did not muster the kind of political expediency necessary to challenge official policy under the Cold War system. Because so much of the Association’s work appeared to be an advertising campaign for the PRC at a time when the majority of Japanese held deep suspicions of communism, the Friendship Association’s work (and its rendition of war memory) had limited appeal. When the Cold War context gradually dissolved in the 1980s, Chinese-Japanese relations “naturally” took center stage, and the acknowledgment of Japanese war crimes in Asia found increasing public support.

Notes This chapter was previously published, in slightly modified form, in Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus on August 18, 2007. 1 From Nozoe Kenji, ed., Hanaoka monogatari [Hanaoka Story]. Akita: Mumyōsha shuppan, 1995. Reprinted with the publisher’s permission. 2 “Tōmen no mokuhyō nitsuite” [About Our Current Objectives], Nihon to Chūgoku, 20 February 1950. This journal, Japan and China, was inaugurated in February 1950 under the auspices of the Japan-China Friendship Association Preparatory Committee and grew into the Friendship Association’s main organ after its formal establishment in October 1950. 3 See Joshua Fogel, “The Other Japanese Community,” in Wen-hsin Yeh, ed. Wartime Shanghai. Routledge, 1998, pp. 42-61. 4 For more on Ito Takeo, see Joshua Fogel, ed., Life along the Manchurian Railway. M.E. Sharpe, 1988. 5 Shakai undō chosakai. Sayoku dantai jiten [Encyclopedia of Social Movements]. Tokyo: Kyokutō shuppansha, 1966. 6 See Okamoto Koichi, “Imaginary Settings: Sino-Japanese-U.S. Relations during the Occupation Years.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2000. 7 “Tōmen no mokuhyō ni tsuite” [About our Current Objectives], Nihon to Chūgoku, 11 December 1953. 8 See Lawrence Olson, “Takeuchi Yoshimi and the Vision of a Protest Society in Japan,” in Ambivalent Moderns. Roman & Littlefield, 1992, pp. 58 and 45. 9 “Shinchūgoku to Nihon” [The New China and Japan], Nihon to Chūgoku, 11 December 1953. 10 Nihon Chūgoku yūkō kyōkai zenkoku honbu, Nitchū yūkō undō shi [History of the Japan-China Friendship Movement]. Shonen shuppansha, 1980, p. 58. 11 Quoted in Rikki Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan. Routledge, 1996, pp. 173–74. 12 “8.15 o mezashite: Chūgoku ni aisatsu o okurō!” [Considering 8.15: Let’s Send Greetings to China!], Nihon to Chūgoku, 10 July 1951. 13 “Yoshida shokan nitsuite no seimei” [Statement on the Yoshida Letter], Nihon to Chūgoku, 15 February 1952. 14 Hirano Yoshitarō, “Kikokusha no minasan e” [To All You Returnees], Nihon to Chūgoku, 1 April 1953. 15 In Nitchū yūkō kyōkai, Shōgen: Chūgokujin kyōsei renkō [Testimony: Chinese Forced Labor], pp. 82–83, a booklet accompanying a three-part documentary video made by the Japan-China Friendship Association between 1991 and 2001. A detailed analysis of this process can be found in M.Y. Cho, Die Volksdiplomatie in Ostasien: Entstehung, Theorie, und Praxis. [People’s Diplomacy in East Asia: Origin, Theory, Practice]. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1971. 16 Quoted in M.Y. Cho, Die Volksdiplomatie in Ostasien, p. 149. 17 In Nihon Chūgoku yūkō kyōkai, ed., Nitchū yūkö undō no hanseiki [A Half Century of Japan-China Friendship Movement], pp. 27–28. 18 Ibid., p. 27. 19 China Daily, 19 May 2005.

Bibliography Cho, M.Y., Die Volksdiplomatie in Ostasien: Entstehung, Theorie und Praxis. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1971. Fogel, Joshua, “The Other Japanese Community,” in Wen-hsin Yeh, ed. Wartime Shanghai. London; New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 42–61.

210

People’s diplomacy Fogel, Joshua, ed., Life along the Manchurian Railway. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1988. Kenji, Nozoe, ed., Hanaoka monogatari [Hanaoka Story]. Akita: Mumyōsha shuppan, 1995. Kersten, Rikki, Democracy in Postwar Japan. London: Routledge, 1996. Koichi, Okamoto, “Imaginary Settings: Sino-Japanese-U.S. Relations during the Occupation Years.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2000. Nihon Chūgoku yūkō kyōkai, Shōgen: Chūgokujin kyōsei renkō [Testimony: Chinese Forced Labor], Video Guidebook produced by Nitchū yūkō kyōkai, 1995. Nihon Chūgoku yūkō kyōkai, ed., Nitchū yūkō undō no hanseiki [A Half Century of Japan-China Friendship Movement]. Tokyo: Keyaki shuppan, 2000. Nihon Chūgoku yūkō kyōkai zenkoku honbu, Nitchū yūkō undō shi [History of the Japan China Friendship Movement]. Tokyo: Shonen shuppansha, 1980. Olson, Lawrence, “Takeuchi Yoshimi and the Vision of a Protest Society in Japan,” in Ambivalent Moderns. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992, pp. 47–78. Shakai undō chosakai, Sayoku dantai jiten [Encyclopedia of Social Movements]. Tokyo: Kyokutō shuppansha, 1966.

Articles in Nihon to Chugoku [Japan and China] “8.15 o mezashite: Chūgoku ni aisatsu o okurō!” [Considering 8.15: Let’s Send Greetings to China!], 10 July 1951. “Kikokusha no minasan e” [To All You Returnees], 1 April 1953. “Shinchūgoku to Nihon” [The New China and Japan], 11 December 1953. “Tōmen no mokuhyō nitsuite” [About Our Current Objectives], 20 February 1950. “Yoshida shokan nitsuite no seimei” [Statement on the Yoshida Letter], 15 February 1952.

211

13 THE ROLE OF COMPENSATION IN SINO-JAPANESE RECONCILIATION Compensation as a means to restore justice Ja-hyun Chun

The Sino-Japanese War started on the night of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937 and ended on September 2, 1945 upon Japan’s surrender. Japan argued that the full-scale battle started due to China’s calculated military maneuver against the Japanese army, and this was contrary to China’s previous agreement to ceasefire. After having taken Beijing and Tianjin, Japanese troops advanced to Shanghai and went on to massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians in Nanking in December, 1937. China’s Kuomintang and Communist Party joined together in their resistance. The conflict was prolonged, and Japan tried to find a way out by merging the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) with the Pacific War (1941–1945), which we often remember as the Asia Pacific War. A large number of civilians were killed during the Sino-Japanese War. Ienaga (2005) claims Japan’s major battlegrounds during 15 years of the war were not the Pacific or Southeast Asia, but China. He states that the war was brutal and no army had ever committed violence of this scale and atrocity. The most representative incident was the “Nanking (aka Nanjing) Massacre (1937).” Nanking was not the only place of mass killings, but the number of casualties outnumbered that in any other city in China. The Nanking Massacre is often called the “Asian Holocaust,” and is one of the worst massacres of the Second World War (WWII). Despite their crossed paths producing such tragic history, China and Japan made progress in mending broken relations during the second half of the 20th century. The efforts, no matter how inconsequential, were driven primarily by Japan’s national interests. Japan was not able to establish direct diplomatic ties with China due to its relations with the United States (US). However, when the US and China established diplomatic relations on December 15, 1978, Japan felt threatened that it could lose its leadership in future Asia-Pacific geopolitics. After the war, Sino-Japanese ties were directly linked to Sino-American relations, so it was impossible for Japan to build independent diplomatic relations with China without consent, explicit or implicit, from the US. Therefore, the sudden announcement of President Nixon’s visit to China on July 15, 1971 alarmed the Sato administration. This news was a fatal blow to Prime Minister Sato’s cabinet and the conservatives within Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, who had sacrificed Sino-Japanese political and economic relations out of loyalty to the US despite mounting domestic pressure. 212

The role of compensation

As a consequence, improving relations between Japan and China became a domestic issue closely linked with Japan-US ties, and soon created political setbacks. Nixon’s trip to China put Sato’s cabinet into a difficult position politically and heightened domestic expectations for a speedy recovery of relations between Tokyo and Beijing. Some believed the US-China détente eliminated environmental hurdles for Japan to become friendlier with China (Son 2004). Prime Minister Sato used unofficial diplomatic channels with China to normalize diplomatic relations. Japan was not only seeking to satisfy political and national security interests, but it sought economic benefits as well. In Japan, diplomatic normalization with China had been an on-going process even before the US-China détente, and the economic circles had been the first to express their interests. Although Japan owns advanced technologies and is rich in capital, the country lacks natural resources and raw materials. For example, 99.8 per cent of Japan’s oil consumption is import-reliant. Due to a relatively small domestic market, Japan needs to export more than 30 per cent of its steel and 60 per cent of its automobiles. Hence, trade regulations in Europe and the US motivated Japan to look for new markets in the 1970s. China was a priority destination due to its geographical proximity, rich natural resources, and a vast domestic market (Bank of Korea 1988). Kansai economic groups around Osaka, which were greatly interested in trading with China, as well as business organizations in Tokyo, pressed for the normalization of diplomatic ties with mainland China. In 1971, Japan’s business community Keirendan, for instance, issued a statement urging the government to include China in the international community. In January 1971, Kimura and his delegates from the Kansai area met with Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, followed by a visit in November made by Tokyo’s business leaders to meet with Zhou and other key officials. The business circles’visit became a cornerstone in Japanese politics. Upon their return, the team pressed the Sato administration to “work on conditions to normalize diplomatic ties with China as soon as possible” (Son 2004: 122). Japan’s Ministry of International Trade Industry calculated China’s trade potential and reported that recovering diplomatic ties would bring a significant advantage to the Japanese economy (Taylor 2000). Current Sino-Japanese relations cannot be described in simple terms. As mentioned, bilateral ties were improved based on national interests and the two countries are clearly major powers in East Asia today. Even 70 years after the war, historical and territorial issues still plague bilateral relations (Hasegawa and Togo 2008; Shin 2010). Asking whether the two sides have reconciled would be too simple of a research question. Hence, this chapter will introduce a framework that divides international reconciliation into three stages, and apply it to analyze the status quo of Sino-Japanese relations. In addition, this chapter will explain reconciliation between China and Japan while concentrating on material reconciliation and compensation issues, which have been major sources of contention to date. This study will focus on how Japan compensated China for its losses because true reconciliation cannot be achieved until individual victims are fully compensated. Material reconciliation will be explained in three parts – economic cooperation and post-war compensation lawsuits – to evaluate its progress. This study will conclude with a brief analysis of future Sino-Japanese reconciliation.

Three stages of international reconciliation1 Procedural reconciliation Procedural reconciliation is the mildest form of reconciliation that begins with the signing of a peace treaty. A peace treaty refers to a written agreement between two or more hostile parties to formally end a war (Grewe 1982; Kunz 1952; Starke 1968). A peace treaty puts an end to armed 213

Ja-hyun Chun

conflicts and prevents the rise of potential struggles. It also has a binding force because it stipulates the conclusion of a war. With a peace treaty, two or more hostile forces can boost mutual trust, reduce the possibility of future violence, and restart bilateral ties from an equal military and political standpoint (Ohlson 2008). Various terms are used to explain how international relations are built, such as “recognition,”“establishment of diplomatic ties,” and “normalization of relations.” Similar to a peace treaty, all three take place in the early stages of reconciliation between hostile countries. Another term, “approval,” is used when a former colonial power acknowledges its colony’s independence and accepts its sovereignty under international law. After the approval stage, the two countries move on to establish diplomatic relations. Diplomatic relations are essentially between two nations, and their conditions are based on mutual agreement. Establishing diplomatic ties usually leads to the setting up of an embassy and an exchange of diplomatic missions. However, these diplomatic ties are not always the same as normalization of relations. Even after diplomatic ties are in place, there is still plenty of room for conflict in areas other than diplomacy. For this reason, a more comprehensive process called “normalization of relations” is necessary. Here, “normal” is used to describe a non-hostile and non-discriminative relationship between two countries as compared to general bilateral ties. It also refers to a state of recognizing each other based on mutually fair rights and benefits, without discrimination. In other words, a relationship will be considered “normal” if there are no limits or sanctions on economic activities and if the parties treat each other fairly. As an example, a country could bestow on it counterpart the title “most favored nation.”

Material reconciliation Material reconciliation takes place when economic exchanges are made between two hostile countries. Passive levels of material reconciliation include economic cooperation and provision of foreign aid. Economic cooperation refers to the transfer of both private and public capital between countries such as providing official development assistance (ODA) and other government, private, and non-government funds. Broader levels of economic cooperation may include providing foreign aid, such as an ODA that transfers reserves to developing countries under conditions most favorable to the recipients. Economic cooperation and the act of providing foreign aid were originally initiated by the perpetrators who tried to avoid responsibility for colonizing or committing war crimes. They wanted to rinse off their wrongdoings by providing tangible aid to the affected country driven by a so-called “moral” motif. “Claims” and “reparations” are more developed forms of reconciliation that refer to one country providing material reparations to another and acknowledging responsibility for past misdeeds. Since the First World War (WWI), the meaning of compensation took a different turn. Before the war, the defeated nation was obliged to compensate the victor regardless of the war’s origins. The defeated had to pay so-called “indemnities” to acknowledge its loss and provide the full amount of war expenses that the victor requested. However, the term “reparation” came into use after WWI as a result of increased civilian losses. While traditional international law only recognized compensation between countries, the Versailles Treaty justified compensation claims between individuals and the government. Hence, individuals’ rights to claim post-war compensation became separate from those rights of the countries, thus marking a clear distinction between compensation and reparations. It is worth noting that compensation connotes a strong moral meaning such as atonement for one’s crime. Individual compensation for civilian victims is accomplished when the 214

The role of compensation

perpetrator fully acknowledges responsibility for its past wrongdoings, thereby establishing complete material reconciliation.

Ideational reconciliation Ideational reconciliation refers to a stage where parties no longer try to distort or hide a dark past but work to get it out in the open in order to overcome it and build constructive relationships. This relates to mental and psychological healing for both parties. One of the ways to achieve ideational reconciliation is to co-publish a history textbook. A textbook builds a basic foundation for educating the next generation and is often viewed as an authoritative medium that represents the authoritative voice of each nation state’s historical perception (Shin 2010). Historical writings by countries previously in conflict tend to be biased about each other. However, collaborating on a textbook by establishing an institutional foundation, such as a consultation body, writing recommendations, and publishing material that carries content acceptable to both countries is a rare but meaningful accomplishment. Furthermore, if the two countries co-publish a history textbook, and if the citizens of the countries learn about history using the same material, it becomes a meaningful sign of overcoming past hostilities by facing the truth about an uncomfortable history. In terms of remembering and commemorating, countries have to honor the victim country and its people, and try not to forget or repeat past mistakes. Pre-WWII war memorials tried to beautify the war by glorifying the honorable sacrifices of those killed in action. However, this traditional meaning is no longer appropriate. Unprecedentedly high number of civilian casualties occurred during WWII, and the war memorials had to be about more than just remembering the dead soldiers. Monuments were needed, not to glorify the past but to reflect upon it (Buruma 2002; Koshar 2000; Young 1993). Such self-reflection led to a movement calling for an appropriate way of remembering and honoring the past, calling for social debate on what and how to remember. True ideational reconciliation is achieved when the victims are appropriately remembered and their sacrifices honored.

Types of atonement2 Economic cooperation and foreign aid In broad terms, economic cooperation refers to all international economic activities between developed and developing nations including trade, foreign investments, and various individual exchanges. It also includes all forms of fund transfers between countries in both public and private domains including ODA. Rix (1990) suggests two types of economic cooperation: (1) any bilateral trading of goods and services between developed and developing countries, including commodities exchange, construction orders, and sending manpower abroad; and (2) government-level flow of capital consisting of donations and loans between nations. Economic cooperation is an umbrella concept that includes all kinds of public and private fund transfer and donations from non-government organizations (NGOs) and ODA is one type of economic cooperation. It is necessary to define ODA in theory and in practice before moving forward. Wall (1973) argues the term “foreign aid” can be controversial and different from consultation. The broader concept refers to overt transfer of actual resources to underdeveloped countries under concessional terms. The source of the funding matters little for this particular definition. Under the consultative concept, economic cooperation should be defined as a government’s granting of aid 215

Ja-hyun Chun

to another government under concessional terms, thus only referring to government-sourced funding. Meier (1974) imposes an even stricter definition of foreign aid. Meier states that funding should be non-profit, thus true aid only refers to “grant aid,” which enables the recipient country to use the funds freely to develop its economy without any binding liabilities or conditions. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines ODA as governmental-level economic assistance provided to developing nations. ODA, a fund provided by public organizations (e.g., central or local governments, and their administrative branches) to developing countries or multilateral organizations, has to meet three conditions: First, it must be provided by the government or its affiliated organizations; second, its main purpose must be to promote economic and welfare development of the developing country; and third, the grant element must be more than 25 per cent of the total amount. ODA refers to what is commonly known as foreign or economic aid. Unlike direct investments or provision of private finances, ODA must be a transfer of public capital. In addition, it must have more lenient conditions than commercial trade. ODA or economic aid should meet such core conditions (Koppel and Orr 1993; Meier 1974; Wall 1973).

Reparation and claim In the modern international system, wars start due to conflicts of interest between countries and power games in international relations. Such power structures decide how post-war treatment is carried out, where the victor can demand the defeated country to pay all the costs of war, or “indemnities.” For example, the Treaty of Shimonoseki signed after the Sino-Japanese War was demanding China to pay indemnities to Japan. As mentioned above, the 1919 Versailles Treaty signed after WWI changed the definition of indemnities completely. Although the European continent was the major battle theater during WWI, the war quickly spread to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The Versailles peace system consisting of five peace treaties was established to end the brutal war, and the Versailles Treaty was signed primarily to define Germany’s reparation and compensation. The Treaty’s definition of reparations, a turning point for the reparations movement, is still valid today. Before the war, reparations had to be paid by the vanquished country regardless of who started the war. The full payment of the war funds was an admission of defeat. However, a new term called “reparation” was coined after WWI in the wake of huge civilian losses and suffering. Chapter 8 of Articles 231–247 of the Versailles Treaty focuses on “reparations.” Article 231, in particular, acknowledges that Germany, the war initiator and defeated nation, is responsible for the damages and losses of the war, and Article 232 specifies Germany’s full responsibility over lost civilian lives and assets of the allied forces. This refers not only to the indemnity provided by the defeated country, but also the reparations of damages caused by an illegal war.3 Hence, the reasoning for reparation shifted from defeat to war responsibility.4 Reparation as defined in the Versailles Treaty states that war damages and losses could be paid in the form of money, goods, or labor or help retrieve full war expenditures. On the other hand, a “claim” refers to settling of accounts between the colonial power and its former colony after independence. The term “claim” referred to one’s entitlement and was distinguished from the concepts of compensation or reparation. However, with the acceptance of “claim” as a valid measure, it now carries a similar meaning as compensation. In South KoreaJapan relations, the term is used to define the actual damage or loss experienced by South Korea or the South Korean people during Japan’s colonial rule.

216

The role of compensation

Compensation for individuals After WWI, the laws of war were influenced by humanitarianism and efforts to prevent illegal wars. Since the Versailles Treaty, compensation for damages inflicted due to illegal invasion became an important agenda. Article 302, Clause 2 of the Versailles Treaty, which defines compensation methods for individual damages, stipulates claims between individuals and the state. This distinguishes the rights of the country from the rights of individuals in post-war reparation settlement, hence drawing a fine line between reparation and compensation. Compensation is a moral obligation of atonement. After WWII, cases of individual compensation rose more visibly than those of reparation. Once the rights of states and individuals were separated, a clear line was drawn between country-to-country reparation and individual compensation. Yano (2006) says reparation takes place between countries based on international law, while compensation is a payment made by a country to a group or individual victims afflicted by the war. Yang (2002) concurs that reparation is between nations and that compensation is driven by a country or company to individual victims. Post-war compensation refers to measures taken by the perpetrator to enable the individual’s recovery from physical and/or psychological damage caused by the war. In other words, the government helps individual victims regain human rights violated during wartime by taking a moral view of past aggression. Kim (2002) claims that execution of post-war compensation mirrors the country’s perception of history. Views may differ slightly, but the definitions of “reparation” and “compensation” can be summarized as follows: reparation is a payment by a perpetrator country to a victim country for its damages, while compensation refers to payments made to individual victims by a government that violated international law. It also entails a moral aspect of atonement and reinstatement of the victims.

Sino-Japanese material reconciliation Providing yen loans to China The Potsdam Declaration(1945) accepted by Japan at the end of WWII emphasizes the need for collecting indemnities. In the Treaty of Peace with Japan, Japan agreed to pay compensation to the allied powers for the damage and pain it inflicted during the war. China ended the war by separately signing a peace treaty with Japan, but during the process it decided not to demand reparations from Japan (Tanaka 2000). In July 1972, Komeito Chairman Takeiri brought back what is known as the “Takeiri Notes” from Zhou Enlai during his China visit. The notes contained two vital messages: the alliance Japan had with the US was compatible with the normalization of relations between Japan and China, and China’s yielding of its war indemnities. Article 7 of the joint statement proposed by China states that “for the friendship of China and Japan, the People’s Republic of China abandons its right to claim war indemnities” (Tanaka 1991:77–79). This relieved Japan’s burden to provide war indemnities to China, and Japan then started a foreign aid plan to the victim countries in Southeast Asia. Japan started providing reparations after signing the 1951 San Francisco Treaty. Since China gave up its right to claim in 1972, Japan started providing a heavy yen loan package to China during the Ohira administration (1978–1980), after signing the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Beijing. The loan was provided in the form of economic cooperation, not reparation, hinting that an implicit agreement may have been made when China gave up its claim rights.

217

Ja-hyun Chun

Japan’s aid to China reflected changes in their respective domestic political landscapes. The Japanese government-initiated economic cooperation with China usually refers to providing China with yen loans, which is a form of ODA to a developing country. This occurred during phase four of Japan’s foreign aid development called “the strategic expansion period (1977– 1988).” The Japanese government’s post-war diplomacy was used as a tool to access the Chinese market and resources, and maintain friendly relations with Beijing. This contributed to China’s modernization and market economy (Son 2004). Japan officially agreed to provide ODA to China in 1979, a year after signing the peace and friendship treaty. When Prime Minister Ohira made a state visit to China in early December 1979 to hold a summit with Premier Hua Guofeng, Japan expressed a strong desire to proactively support China’s reform policies and informed China of its decision to provide six loan projects worth 50 billion yen in 1979. In addition, it agreed to provide loans worth a total of 330 billion yen from 1979 to 1984, with 3 per cent interest, payable in 30 years including a 10-year grace period. Although the two countries signed the 50-billion yen loan contract in April 1980, the Japanese government’s data shows the loan was provided in 1979 as it was notified in advance (Son 2004). Japan’s ODA provision to China was both a strategic choice and an alternative to post-war reparation. It was a result of Japan’s calculation that it was better to promote China’s modernization than deal with a poor, politically unstable China which could undermine Japan’s national interests. Thus, Tokyo supported Beijing’s reform because a stable China would promote peace and prosperity in Japan and throughout East Asia. The strategic decision also reflected Japan’s plan to build an externally strong China to counter the Soviet Union’s military threat. Hence, nurturing China with economic aid would benefit the free world including Japan itself (Son 2004). Secondly, China’s abandonment of wartime indemnities in 1972 influenced Japan’s decision to provide ODA to Beijing (Sato 2001). Japan’s official position, however, is that the ODA provision was unrelated to China’s decision. The following is Prime Minister Ohira’s response to the National Diet regarding ODA provision to China and reparations: “China decided not to claim reparation. Therefore, it is not correct to look at Sino-Japanese relations in light of reparation, and I believe it is not China’s intention as well.” However, there are signs suggesting that Japan provided the ODA as an alternative to wartime indemnities. The Japanese government was proactive in providing the special yen loans under conditions favorable to China. It was not only large in size, but the amount of the loan was decided using an uncommon method compared with other loans. The “long standing decision method” was applied until 2000. These circumstances suggest Japan deliberately decided to provide ODA instead of wartime indemnities (Yi 2006).

Compensation for individual Chinese victims (1) Post-war lawsuits in Japan The Japanese government did not set up any laws or funds to compensate Chinese civilian victims of the Sino-Japanese war. These victims had to file individual lawsuits. To understand how they were compensated, the series of post-war compensation lawsuits and their results must be scrutinized. “Post-war compensation lawsuit” is a term that refers to all charges lodged in national courts by those who experienced loss or suffered human rights violations due to restrictions imposed by the Japanese government, military or private companies 218

The role of compensation

during WWII. Adachi defines “post-war compensation trials” as “usually charges lodged to seek for compensation in Japan’s court by Japanese citizens and/or foreigners who experienced physical, psychological, or material damage due to a violation of domestic or international law by the Japanese government, military or company during the Second World War” (Fujita 2005: 23–25). Many private organizations were formed in the 1990s to support war victims with their compensation lawsuits. NGOs, such as the Society to Support the Demands of Chinese War Victims, were established in Japan. The Society carried out an international letter campaign supporting the “Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and the Indiscriminate Bombing” lawsuit. Scholars, lawyers, and NGOs conducted large-scale research and investigations to clarify historical facts and provided necessary data to war victims. In 2001, a civilian court in the Hague, the Netherlands, ruled in favor of the sex slaves and acknowledged Japan’s responsibility for operating the comfort women system. However, the vast majority of civilian compensation lawsuits still failed to achieve satisfying results, and only a few trials recommended reconciliation. Unfortunately, winning at a district court does not always lead to the same results at a High Court. The 2001 case of a Chinese national who was forced into labor is a good example. Liu Lianren was forcibly brought from Shandong Province to Japan in September 1944 to work in a Hokkaido mine as a slave laborer. He worked in the Showa Mining Factory of Meiji Mining Company. Unable to bear the harsh working and inhumane living conditions, Liu ran away in July 1945 with four co-workers. After June 1946, he was alone after having lost contact with the others. Unaware that the war had ended, he hid in mountainous area for 13 years before he was found in January of 1958. He subsequently sought compensation from the Japanese government. In the 1990s, he went to Japan five times to disclose the crimes of Japan’s militarism, and sued the Japanese government in 1996. Five years later, the Tokyo District Court judgment fully recognized Liu’s compensation request. The judgment rejected the statutory limitation based on the following facts: first, from the MOFA report, Liu requested compensation when he was found in 1958 and the Japanese government knew of Liu’s suffering but did not respond to Liu’s request nor did any research on his case; second, it only became possible for Liu to litigate in 1994 when he became aware of the existence of the MOFA report on him. It would be unjust and unfair if the statutory limitation is applied in this case to exempt the Japanese government from its responsibility (Osame 2002: 11, 15–17). This was the first case in which a Japanese court fully recognized a plaintiff ’s right to request compensation in post-war compensation lawsuits. However, the Japanese government appealed to the High Court and this lawsuit is still on-going. There were other lawsuits that lost at the High Court after winning at the district court, such as the lawsuit against Nishimatsu Construction, Nanking Massacre, and the 731 Germ Program. The Supreme Court dismissed claims made by conscripted Chinese laborers who were forced to work for the Nishimatsu Construction in Hiroshima prefecture.5 The five Chinese nationals who were forced into harsh labor at a hydroelectric power generator construction site claimed damages worth 27 million yen against Nishimatsu Construction. However, on April 27, 2007, Japan’s High Court dismissed their claim. The judges totally dismissed all judicial remedies put forward by the victims by ruling that all post-war compensation issues were resolved when the joint communiqué was signed between China and Japan, and individuals did not have the right to claim damages in court.6 Due to the High Court’s ruling, the Chinese plaintiffs lost in more than 20 lawsuits related to post-war compensation (Asahi Shimbun 27 April 2007). 219

Ja-hyun Chun

The PRC Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Liu Jianchao commented on such decisions made by the High Court, saying: The waiver of war reparations claims against Japan made by China in the China-Japan Joint Communique was a political decision undertaken with the aim of achieving amity and coexistence between the peoples of both countries. The interpretation of the China-Japan Joint Communique by the Japanese Supreme Court is illegal and invalid. . . . The Chinese government has already requested Japan to effect an adequate resolution with a responsible attitude to history.7 A Japanese court also refused compensation for Chinese victims of some of imperial Japans’ most notorious atrocities, including the Nanking Massacre. The Tokyo High Court said the government compensated governments, not individuals, for past wrongdoing. “Under international law, individual war victims do not have a right to directly seek compensation from a warring nation,” presiding judge Monguchi Masahito said. “Under civil law, the country does not bear responsibility either”(AFP 19 April 2005). The lawsuit case of Unit 731 was similar. A Japanese High Court has rejected appeals by 180 Chinese demanding compensation for damages caused by Japan’s WWII germ warfare program. The plaintiffs, all Chinese citizens, filed the case in 1997, demanding an apology and US$89,300 each from the Japanese government. In an August 2002 ruling, Tokyo District Court acknowledged that Japan used biological weapons before and during WWII. But the court rejected the Chinese plaintiffs’ demands, saying foreign citizens cannot seek compensation directly from the Japanese government under international law. It also said Japan had already paid compensation under post-war peace treaties. In 2005, three years after the ruling, a group of 39 surviving relatives of the victims of Japanese germ warfare from Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, departed from Hangzhou for Tokyo to support a lawsuit to seek an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. The Tokyo court on Tuesday rejected compensation, but acknowledged the Japanese military had engaged in germ warfare.8 The logic behind Japan’s argument is based on Article 5 of the 1972 Japan-China Joint Communique that helped normalize ties between the two countries. This clause says: “The Government of the People’s Republic of China declares that in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, it renounces its demand for war reparation from Japan”(World Press 7 March 2014). The Court also found that, for its part, Japan had considered that the issues of war reparations and claims have already been settled under the Japan-ROC Peace Treaty. In this context, the Court found that the Joint Communique had the substance of a peace treaty from perspective of both governments (Asada and Ryan 2009: 266). The decision rejected the victims’ claims, holding that in this case, individuals do not have the right to ask directly for compensation from the Japanese government. The judge cited international law, stating that the issues of compensation for damages caused by an enemy nation are generally resolved by diplomatic negotiations between the nations, not by individual suits against the former enemy nation. Regarding the war crimes committed by the enemy nation, the victims as individuals could logically have the right to claim for redress of the violation by the assailant nation. However, the Japanese court concluded, considering the justice of the whole human race, the problems of compensation with respect to former enemy nations should be solved comprehensively by the post-war

220

The role of compensation

friendship treaty between the nations, even if it is the case that each individual’s justice cannot be restored in terms of civil law. (Asada and Ryan 2009: 270)

(2) Post-war suit in China As observed above, a series of lawsuits were heard in Japan, and they are still on-going. But when cases that won in the district court repeatedly lost at the High Court, the Chinese victims began to sue the Japanese government in Chinese territory. A Beijing court accepted a lawsuit on Wednesday, 26 February 2014, demanding compensation for Chinese citizens forced by the Japanese to work as laborers during WWII. Dozens of wartime compensation suits have been filed previously in Japan against the Japanese government and companies associated with its aggression in the first half of the 20th century, including WWII. Almost all have been rejected by Japanese the courts (Global Post 27 February 2014). In February 2014, a group of Chinese experts and citizens filed suit against two Japanese companies, seeking compensation for victims of wartime forced labor. The group of 40 people is seeking compensation of US$163,000 for each victim of wartime forced labor, as well as apologies for them and their families, from Mitsubishi Materials Corp. and Nippon Coke & Engineering Co., formerly known as Mitsui Mining Co. The 37 plaintiffs, who include victims, lawyers, and scholars from the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Peking University, filed the lawsuit with the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court (The Japan Times 26 February 2014; AFP 20 March 2014). This lawsuit received attention from China and Japan, as well as the wider international community. In the end, a Beijing court for the first time agreed to hear a lawsuit by Chinese citizens demanding compensation from Japanese companies for WWII forced labor. The Japanese government is very wary of the Chinese court’s decision to accept a lawsuit against a Japanese company. And Japan is still trying to prove the lawsuit’s unfairness based on the two countries’ joint communiqué. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide expressed remorse over forced labor, but said that a 1972 joint communiqué nullified Chinese rights to demand war-related compensation. He said: “Regarding the forced recruitment and labor of Chinese people, the government cannot deny that many people fell into unfortunate situations in those days.” However, the Japanese government kept its distance by defining the case as being “between individuals and private companies.” Despite his quote, Suga expressed concern on behalf of the government by adding, “we cannot help worrying seriously about the possible impact on war settlement between Japan and China and bilateral economic relations as it could trigger similar cases in China”(Global Post 26 February 2014; AFP 20 March 2014). The Chinese post-war compensation suits in China did not always end in failure. In February 2000, Japanese construction giant Kajima decided to compensate Chinese laborers who were tortured or died during WWII. In June 1945, Chinese workers killed a Japanese manager as they were forced to work in dire conditions with no food in the Hanaoka mine in northern Japan. Consequently, Kajima murdered up to 113 Chinese laborers and tortured other workers. Eleven plaintiffs, including eight surviving victims of the Hanaoka incident, demanded an official apology and compensation from Kajima. The Japanese company expressed an apology but did not admit to its wrongdoings. Hence, in 1995, the victims demanded 5,600,000 yen compensation and another public apology, but this was denied. Later in December 1997, the Tokyo District Court dismissed the lawsuit and the Chinese individuals appealed to the higher court in 2000, where they finally won (Hankook Ilbo 30 November 2000).

221

Ja-hyun Chun

According to the compensation clause, both sides reconfirmed the intention of Kajima’s 1990 apology, and ordered Kajima to give 5,600,000 yen in a trust fund to the Chinese Red Cross. This trust fund was to help the victims under the name “Hanaoka Peace and Friendship Fund.” Judge Niimura Masato added in the ruling: “I recommended reconciliation to fully resolve damage brought by the war. . . it is meaningful that this was resolved before the end of the 20th century (Chun 2014: 256).” This is the first time a Japanese company created a fund to help victims who were forced into labor during the war.

Conclusion After WWII, Europe and Asia undertook very different paths on post-war reconciliation. Germany’s series of post-war compensations and sincere apologies helped neighboring countries forgive its misdeeds. Germany was able to recover its position as the center of Europe’s economy and politics. On the other hand, Japan is still severely criticized for its insufficient efforts to deal with its past with China and Korea, and continues to be a subject of international criticisms each time they mention “normal country” or “constitutional reform.” However, some say Japan has contributed enough to regional development with its vast scale of economic aid to Asian countries. Hence, how Japan dealt with post-war compensation is still a topic of heated debate, even 70 years after the war. This study examined Sino-Japanese relations from a reconciliation perspective in international politics, focusing especially on the controversial issues of material reconciliation and compensation. By applying the three stages of the international reconciliation model to China-Japan relations, we explored more than just answering the question, “Have China and Japan reconciled?” Critics may argue that reconciliation and forgiveness cannot be bought. However, it should be regarded that compensating individual victims is not an act of buying reconciliation, but a means to achieve restorative justice. Restorative justice theorists point at the meaninglessness of “hating” and the need to break through the cycles of violence and hatred. Although the legitimacy and usefulness of expressing anger is not denied, they stress that resentment may become counterproductive. The culture of restorative justice is “non-punitive.” Many restorative justice theorists argue that punishment carries the seeds of more social discord and non-well-being, and thus of more hatred (van Stokkom 2008: 402). Considering the value and power of restorative justice, it may be exactly what China and Japan need today. Current Sino-Japanese relations are caught in a vicious cycle of mistrust and hatred due to one country evading responsibilities for its past wrongdoings, while the on-going criticisms of each other is putting the security and stability of the wider East Asia region at risk. As two major players in the region, friendly ties are crucial for peace and stability. The on-going post-war compensation lawsuits in Japan and China can be one means to achieve restorative justice. And this way of solving the issue – by approaching former enemy states by restoring, not punishing – will take us a step closer to achieving reconciliation between China and Japan.

Notes 1 This framework is cited from the article by Ja-hyun Chun, 2015. “Have Japan and South Korea Reconciled? Focused on Three Stages of Reconciliation,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 16:3. 2 This section is based on the article by Ja-hyun Chun (2014), “Japan’s Post-War Compensation to China,” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 70:1, 245–249. 3 ARTICLE 231. The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated

222

The role of compensation Governments and their nations have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon by the aggression of Germany and her allies. ARTICLE 232. The Allied and Associated Governments recognise that the resources of Germany are not adequate, after taking into account permanent diminutions of such resources which will result from other provisions of the present Treaty, to make complete reparation for all such loss and damage. The Allied and Associated Governments, however, require, and Germany undertakes, that she will make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied and Associated Powers and to their property during the period of the belligerency of each as an Allied or Associated Power against Germany by such aggression by land, by sea and from the air, and in general all damage as defined in Annex 1 hereto [the rest has been omitted by the author]. 4 Accepting responsibility for the losses from the war, not for war crimes (Ikenberry 2001). 5 The Nishimatu Construction Case concerned forced relocation to Japan of Chinese nationals and forced labor during WWII. In the course of persecuting the war against China, the Japanese Government decided to import Chinese nationals to meet labor shortage. Nishimatsu Construction was unable to secure the necessary labor for the construction of the Yasuno Power Plant. To meet the shortage Nishimatsu sought government approval to import Chinese labor and received 360 Chinese laborers in Quindao on 19 July 1944. The five victims in this case were among these. After the laborers arrived in Japan, they were put to work under very poor conditions at the Yasuno Power Plant. They either were sent back to China when no longer able to work because of serious illness, or died or incurred physical disabilities through exposure to the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 (Asada and Ryan 2009: 159–160). 6 An English translation is available at http://www.courts.go.jp/english/judgements/text/2007.04.27– 2004-Ju-No..1658.html 7 Comments on the “Nishimatsu Construction” Case. Spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs(28 April 2007). Website of the Chinese Embassy of Japan: http://www.china-embassy.or.jp/ jpn/fyrth/t314884.htm. 8 After decades of denial, Tokyo confirmed the existence of Unit 731 in 2002, but has yet to disclose specifics about the unit’s activities (July 19, 2005). According to the court of Tokyo judgment, “there is evidence that unit 731 worked under orders of the army headquarters to use germ weapons in actual warfare causing many casualties.”(Donga Ilbo8 December1997; Hankyoreh 27 August 2002).

Bibliography Asada and Ryan (2009) ‘Post-War Reparations between Japan and China and Individual Claims: The Supreme Court Judgments in the Nishimatsu Construction Case and the Second Chinese “Comfort Women” Case’, Journal of Japanese Law 27, 257–284. Borries, B.V. (2003) ‘The Third Reich in German History Textbooks since 1945’, Journal of Contemporary History 3:8. Buruma, I. (2002) The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, London: Jonathan Cape. Chun, J. H. (2014) ‘Japan’s Post-War Compensation to China’, Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 70:1. Chung, J.S. (2010) ‘Gun “weanboo”’ [Military ‘Comfort Women’], in Cho Gwang (ed.) Hanil youksaeui Jaeng jum, vol. 2 [The Controversy of Korea-Japan History, 2], Seoul: KyungIn Munhwasa. Fujita, H. (2005) ‘Sengo hosho no Rironteki mondai’ [Study on the Theory of Post-War Compensation]. Kokusai juken [International Human Rights], 5:2. Grewe, W. G. (1982) ‘Peace Treaties’, in Rudolf Bernhardt (ed.), Encyclopedia of Public International Law, 4: 104, Amsterdam: North-Holland. Ienaga, S. (2004) Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One Historian’s Odyssey. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Ikenberry, G. J. (2001) After Victory, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kim, D. Y. (2002) ‘1990nyundai ilboneseoeui “jeonhoobosangron”kwa hankookineui insik’ [‘Postwar Compensation’ and Korean Perspectives in 1990s], Hanilminjokmunje Yougu [Journal of Korea-Japan Nationalism Studies] 2. Koppel, B. M., and Orr, R. M. (eds.) (1993) Japan’s Foreign Aid: Power and Policy in a New Era, Boulder: Westview Press.

223

Ja-hyun Chun Koshar, R. (2000) From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory 1870–1990, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kunz, J. L. (1952) ‘Ending the War with Germany’, American Journal of International Law 46: 114. Meier, G. (1974) Problems of Cooperation for Development, New York: Oxford University Press. Ohlson, T. (2008) ‘Understanding Causes of War and Peace’, European Journal of International Relations 14. Osame S. (2002) Presentation paper at Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WWII in Asia. Rix, A. (1990) Japan’s Aid Program: A New Global Agenda, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing. Sato, Kazuo. (2001) “The Japan-China Summit and Joint Declaration of 1998: A Washed for Japan-China Relations in 21st Century?” January. Brookings Working paper. http://www.brookings.edu/research/ papers/2001/01/01china-sato Shinich A., and Kim, T.W. (2006) Yŏksahwahaenŭnganŭnghanga-dongasiayŭksamunjaeŭihaepŏpŭlchajasŏ [Is Historical Reconciliation Possible? Finding Solutions for Historical Issues in East Asia], Seoul: MiraeM&B. Son, G. S. (2004) ‘Il-joong jungchi gyungje kwangye eseoeui “72nyun cheje” eui baljeonkwa jeonhwan’ [The Development of Political Economics of Sino-Japan Relations], Ilbon yongu nonchong [Journal of Japanese Studies] 19. Starke, J. G. (1968) An Introduction to the Science of Peace, Leyden: Sijthoff. Van Stokkom, B. (2008) ‘Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Restorative Justice Conferences’, Ethical Perspectives, September. Tanaka, A. (1991) Nit-Chu kankei 1945–1990 [Sino-Japanese Relations 1945–1990], Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press (in Japanese). Tanaka, A. (2000) Wado Poritikusu: Gurobarizeshon no naka no Nihon gaiko [Word Politics: Japanese Diplomacy under Globalization], Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo (in Japanese). Taylor, R. (2000) ‘Sino-Japanese Economic Cooperation since 1978’, in Peter Drysdale and Dong Dong Zhang (eds.), Japan and China-rivalry or cooperation in East Asia? Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, pp. 71–91. Ueno, C. (2008) ‘Asia Yŏsŭngkigŭmŭiyŭksajŭkchongkwal’ [Historical Overview on the Asian Women’s Fund], in Korea-Japanese Coalition (ed.), Han ilyŭksanonjaengŭimetahistori, Seoul: Ppuriwaipari, pp. 180–201. Wall, D. (1973) The Charity of Nations: The Political Economy of Foreign Aid, London: Macmillan. Yang, K. H. (2002) ‘Jeonhoo bosang kwa hangook chungbooeui daeung’ [Postwar Compensation and the Response of Korean Government], Ilbonhakbo [Japanese Studies] 53. Yano, H. (2006) Baisho To Hoshŏ [Indemnities and Compensations]. Tokyo: Iwanami Bunko. Yi, W.D. (2006) Hanilhuidamaesŏnatananilbonŭisikminjijibaeinsik [Japanese Perspective over Colonial Rule in Korea-Japan Talks], HankuksaYŭngu [Journal of Korean Studies] 31. Young, J. E. (1993) The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, New Haven: Yale University Press.

News Stories AFP 19 April 2005. AFP 20 March 2014. Asahi Shimbun 27 April 2007. DongA Ilbo 12 August 1997. DongA Ilbo 8 December 1997. Global Post 2 February 2014. Hankook Ilbo 30 November 2000. Hankook Ilbo 30 April 2007. Hankyoreh 27 August 2002. NHK 23 October 2009. The Japan Times 26 February 2014. World Press 7 March 2014.

224

PART 5

Korea-China relations

This page intentionally left blank

14 RECONCILIATION AND THE GOGURYEO/GĀOGŌULÌ DISPUTES BETWEEN CHINA AND SOUTH KOREA David Hundt and Baogang He

History tends to be written for specific audiences, and the Goguryeo/Gāogōulì1 dispute between Korea and China is no exception. According to Chase, ‘shared stories of the past are a primary source of national identity’.2 All histories are contemporary histories, or the history of ideas.3 In the eyes of Oakeshott,4 historians create history through their writing. If the writing of history is predominantly the remit of state elites, the facts at the heart of nationalist narratives may be fabricated and lack deliberative qualities. And if history is reimagined and rewritten free of competing voices, it is vulnerable to ‘mythmaking’. That is, the ‘divergence of national memories created by elite historical mythmaking’ has ‘perpetuated and reinforced the problems of history’5 in relations between East Asian states. In China, for instance, ‘historical writing . . . has been closely linked to elite political power’.6 East Asian history – particularly the legitimacy of national boundaries and political units – has been fiercely contested since the Pacific War (1941–45). The aftermath of the war witnessed the emergence and reemergence of independent nation-states, which have appropriated that trauma and used it to forge new identities. History plays a significant role in nation building and the construction of identities, but it has also hindered regional integration. The nationalist politics of history is often deliberately subjective, and distorts the past.7 History may legitimate territorial claims, and nationalists often appeal to historical ‘facts’, but Renan noted a century ago, ‘Getting history wrong is an essential part of being a nation’.8 The Goguryeo/Gāogōulì dispute is a primary instance of history being a source of tension and animosity in East Asia. The names of the disputed kingdom are based on the same Chinese characters (高句麗) but are pronounced differently in each language. Both sides agree that Goguryeo/Gāogōulì survived for seven centuries, from about 37BC until 668AD. The kingdom is commonly agreed to have occupied territories that are now recognized as Manchuria in northern China and the Korean Peninsula. Goguryeo is of great historical importance to Korea, being one of the kingdoms (along with Silla and Baekche) that were unified and formed the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392AD). For Koreans, Goguryeo is intrinsically linked to nationhood and identity formation. China, in contrast, claims that Gāogōulì was but one territory that forms part of the multimillennial, multicultural Chinese civilizational sphere. In this view, China is a super-state that has absorbed minority peoples. This is a political principle to which most Chinese people subscribe.9 227

David Hundt and Baogang He

The historical dispute involves the possession – both in the physical and spiritual sense – of cultural assets derived from long-extinct civilizations. China and the Koreas both claim to be the legitimate heirs to a kingdom that occupied certain parts of what are now northern China and the Korean Peninsula. In addition to the Goguryeo/Gāogōulì dispute, there are other disputed issues such as the lineage of Confucius, the poet Qu Yuan, Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong, traditional medicine, calligraphy and the Dragon Boat (Dano/Duanwu, 端午) Festival between Korea and China.10 What makes the Goguryeo dispute unique is that in securing a claim to the history of an ancient civilization, governments have sought to eliminate competing claims in the present to their sovereign right to the territories where those civilizations existed – and all people, natural resources and other assets within those territories. What Koreans refer to as the Goguryeo kingdom encapsulates territory within China’s present borders, but Koreans have not – as yet – sought to reclaim that territory. They have, however, sought to lay claim to the history of the kingdom. China is intent on preventing any claims by Korea to lands now under Chinese jurisdiction. Moreover, the dispute concerns historical memory and legacy: how an ancient kingdom relates to the present-day identities of China and Korea. In seeking to ‘gain control of their past and explore their heritages’,11 these two states have made competing and seemingly mutually exclusive claims about the history of the kingdom. After the dispute erupted in an uncontrolled manner via online forums, leaders from both societies attempted to reappropriate the debate and reach an elite settlement. This fits well a general pattern whereby national leaders and elites have been critical in handling the politicization of the past, and the identity conflicts it causes. A collection of essays on the politicization of history confirmed that efforts by political leaders are critical in controlling the retelling of the past and in achieving justice.12 Germany took great efforts to face up to traumatic history of World War II and openly made an official apology in dealing with the legacies of Nazi fascism.13 Japanese political leaders have also become more conscious of regional reactions to how history textbooks represent events of the war. In 1998, former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi offered South Korean President Kim Dae-jung ‘a written apology . . . for past sufferings’ which Japan caused its neighbors prior to and during the war. Further, ‘Kim accepted with sincerity this statement of Obuchi’s recognition of history and expressed his appreciation for it’.14 Unfortunately the momentum toward reconciliation did not continue. Former Prime Minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi, made several visits to Yasukuni Shrine between 2001 and 2006, in order to secure the electoral support of rightwing groups such as the Association of Bereaved Families. The current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, also visited the shrine in December 2013. In a comprehensive study of the Pacific War, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun (see chapter 5 in this volume) argued that Yasukuni acts as a symbolic impediment to better relations with its neighbors.15 That is, visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders, and the vitriolic response from their Chinese and Korean counterparts, were not conducive to the resolution of history disputes. In contrast, both China and South Korea have made a conciliatory effort to settle down the Goguryeo/Gāogōulì dispute; this result has not followed the prediction that ‘a dangerous cycle of existential conflict is likely to ensue’.16 This chapter will study how Goguryeo/Gāogōulì became a source of tension between South Korea and how this issue is reconciled and managed. It proceeds as follows. The next two sections review how Chinese and Korean scholars have interpreted the history of Goguryeo/Gāogōulì, and thereby identify how the dispute is situated within the wider memory problems in East Asia. The chapter next analyzes how this seemingly intractable Goguryeo dispute was managed through a compromise between China and Korea. In the conclusion, we account for the three factors or mechanisms that facilitate the reconciliation of historical disputes. 228

Reconciliation and Goguryeo/Gāogōulì

Chinese perspectives on the kingdom Tang-era (618–907AD) records referred to Goguryeo, Silla and Baekje as ‘the three kingdoms east of the sea’ (海東三國). The Han and Tang courts did not consider Korea to be part of China, and instead referred to it as an ‘eastern barbarian’ state.17 Similarly, Chinese records refer to the Balhae kingdom, the successor to Goguryeo, as a non-Chinese state. Balhae was referred to as ‘the flourishing kingdom east of the sea’ (海東盛國), adding further weight to the claim that it was separate from China.18 In 1934, Lu Simian, a Chinese historian, wrote a book of Chinese nationalities including a lengthy discussion about Gāogōulì. He examined Chinese and Korean sources to trace the origin and evolution of Gāogōulì. Lu mentioned that the Han dynasty established a county government there.19 Fan Wenlan, a famous Marxist historian, endorsed the principle that because China is a multi-ethnic state, all minorities ought to be treated equally. He called Sui’s war against Gāogōulì an invasion and regarded Tang-era Emperor Tachong’s war against Goguryeo as unjust, which led his failure to conquer Gāogōulì in 644AD.20 These two famous historians struggled with the historical question of how to treat Goguryeo. Both regarded it as one of China’s nationalities, but they did not define Goguryeo as a ‘Chinese regional dynasty’ or a ‘local kingdom under the auspices of the ruling authorities of ancient China’. In the late 1990s, Chinese developed a revisionist view of the kingdom’s history. At a symposium on Gāogōulì held at Tunghua University in 1998, Han Zhongfu proposed that Gāogōulì was a provincial state (a ‘local regime’) which an ancient Chinese tribe founded; and that it was a provincial Chinese state that later became a neighboring (non-Chinese) state, following the relocation of its capital from Jian to Pyongyang.21 Chinese historians ‘cite the evidence of tribute and investiture’ to argue that Goguryeo shared a ‘subordinate relationship’22 with China. They also, however, reflect China’s long-standing self-image as a Confucian moral exemplar to other states, such as Korea. Chinese school textbooks in the 1930s and 1940s, for instance, referred to Gāogōulì and Balhae as kingdoms that Chinese culture ‘assimilated’ or ‘absorbed’. Due to Sino-centrism, the distinction between ethnic minorities and foreign states is often blurred to Chinese eyes.23 In particular, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has organized the Northeast Project, which focused on China’s borders with the two Koreas, together with other research projects on China’s borders with Russia and Mongolia, as well as Tibet and Xinjiang. Importantly, three heads of the department of propaganda in three northeast Chinese provinces have been involved in the Northeast Project on Goguryeo. In response to it, the Korean side berated China for ‘stealing’ Korean history, and responded by establishing the Goguryeo Research Foundation in 2004. The prime minister and the minister of culture chaired meetings relating to the history project, underlining the importance of the issue at that time.24 The dispute intensified due to the competing bids by China and North Korea to have Goguryeo artifacts listed by UNESCO as world cultural heritage sites. North Korea’s bid to include Goguryeo murals in the north of the Korean Peninsula listed by UNESCO as worthy of World Heritage protection in 2003 elicited a response from China, which lodged a claim in relation to Gāogōulì castles and tombs located in Manchuria. The South Korean government supported the North’s bid, supplying $100,000 a year in aid for the conservation of Goguryeo tombs. The dispute escalated when South Korean scholars viewed China’s claim in light of the expanding Northeast Project, under the aegis of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which intended to strengthen Chinese claims to Gāogōulì. China refused to allow Korean survey teams to inspect Goguryeo sites and artifacts, and to verify or disprove Chinese assertions that the artifacts were of 229

David Hundt and Baogang He

Chinese origin. Chinese scholars associated with the Northeast Project also claimed that Gojoseon, Gando and Balhae were of Chinese origin, which raised tensions with Korea even further.25 Arguably, the main motivation for Chinese claims to Gāogōulì was to strengthen its claims to its northeast territories for fear that a reunified Korea might seek to appropriate some parts of Manchuria. Specifically, China sought ‘historical justification for the modern-day inclusion of ethnic Koreans and other minorities, as well as their territories’ into the PRC.26 Modern conceptions of the nation-state, which imply exclusive sovereignty over a fixed territory and a population sharing a common language and culture, were applied to events that occurred at a time when borders and sovereignty were far looser concepts.27 Yi In-cheol, of the Goguryeo Research Foundation, argued that ‘Chinese history precisely is “not” the history of today’s China . . . [this] vision of history . . . is utterly territory-centered . . . History is not the sum of past events taking place within a defined area of land, but an aggregate of human actions and affairs’.28 The main motivation of China’s claim to Gāogōulì is territorial, but the driving force behind it has been associated with Chinese continuing struggle with its own modern conception of national identity. Given the fact that China inherited the territories of Qing dynasty, modern China cannot build its nation upon a narrow Han nationalism. Consequently China has revised historical texts and historical evaluations. For example, Zen Guofan, who served the Qing and defeated a peasant rebellion, was regarded as a Han traitor, but now is embraced as a great Chinese national hero.29 With regards to the Gāogōulì issue, even in the 1930s under the Republic of China, Gāogōulì was treated as an ethnic minority. Those scholars who hold the view that Gāogōulì is China’s minority regime just follow the intellectual extreme logic of China’s national identity building without considering the feelings of Koreans.

Korean perspectives on the kingdom Most Korean historians argue that Goguryeo was a kingdom that inhabitants of the Korean Peninsula founded, and that refugees from Goguryeo proceeded to found the Balhae and Goryeo kingdoms, forerunners to the modern Korean state. For these reasons, they contend that the kingdom was wholly or predominantly Korean.30 According to Cho Bob-jeong of Woosuk University, ‘Korean history developed along the lines of Tangun Joseon-Gojoseon-Yemaek and Buyeo-Goguryeo-Balhae . . . the Korean view of history has been maintained for more than 1,000 years and the Chinese and Japanese history documents also support this part of Korean history’.31 Official Korean histories, such as the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms and History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa and Samguk sagi) contain numerous references to the historical continuity of Goguryeo and modern Korean states. These histories refer to battles between Goguryeo and various Chinese regimes and therefore an assertion of Korean identity over the kingdom. In this view, Goryeo’s naming was a clear indication that the new state was the successor to the northern origins of Goguryeo.32 For then-South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon, the Goguryeo issue ‘is directly related to the roots and identity of the entire Korean people’.33 In other words, the issue relates to historical memory rather than territorial claims. According to one Korean writer, Manchuria ‘disappeared from Korean history after the fall of the Balhae kingdom’.34 Given that Goguryeo occupied a specific physical space, however, territorial aspects of the dispute are also relevant (cf. chapter 15 in this volume for Koreans’ imagination of Manchuria). Korean historiography depicts Goguryeo as a powerful, independent Korean kingdom. Nationalist historians of the early 20th century, especially Shin Chae-ho, sought to promote a racially defined national identity at a time when Korea’s very independence as a people and a state was under threat. For Shin, a homogeneous and inclusive Korean race could trace its 230

Reconciliation and Goguryeo/Gāogōulì

historical trajectory back to its mythical Tangun founder, through Goguryeo, and onward to modern Korea.35 Korean nationalists have ‘de-centered China’, and emphasized the Manchurian region’s centrality to Korean history and identity: the dynasties of Goguryeo, Gojoseon, Balhae and Goryeo can be traced to the region.36 Some Koreans regarded an article published in Guanming Daily as ‘a declaration of war’.37 Park Sun-young, from Pohang University of Science and Technology, for example, asserted: ‘China has declared a “history war”, into which other countries, in particular Korea, find themselves unwillingly being drawn into’. The Northeast Project was a ‘politically motivated undertaking’ that aims to reinforce ‘the political influence of the Chinese leadership in regard to assuring national integrity, unity and stability’.38 For another Korean historian, ‘the project is not simple historical research. Its ultimate goal is to come up with weapons of historical theories for contemporary political needs’,39 such as promoting a sense of unity among ethnic minorities in northeast China and combatting attempts by ‘hostile forces’ to interfere in what China claims are its internal affairs. Koreans also objected to claims by Chinese historians such as Geng Tiehua (a recipient of support from the Northeast Project) that because Goguryeo was an ancient tribe from northeast China, Korea did not have a legitimate claim to its cultural heritage, despite the transfer of the kingdom’s capital to Pyongyang.40 A joint seminar by Korean academic societies in late 2003 was held in order to ‘counter China’s distortions of Goguryeo history’.41 Korean scholars accused their Chinese counterparts of being in the service of an overtly political agenda. According to Yeo Ho-kyu (professor of history, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies), ‘The theory of a unified multi-ethnic nation is nothing more than a “territory-first historical outlook” that attempts to determine the nature and course of history solely on the basis of contemporary domain, ignoring the legitimate movers and flows of history’.42 Korean scholars criticized publications sponsored by the Northeast Project for their ‘selective and discriminate use of Chinese sources and disregard of epigraphic evidence’.43 Yi In-cheol claimed that Chinese scholars such as Liu Ju presented a misleading interpretation of Goguryeo history, and one that was intended to convey the impression that the kingdom was a provincial state of China. According to Yi, Goguryeo never entered into tributary relations with China.44 Claims that Goguryeo belongs rightfully to Chinese history, Korean scholars argued, rely heavily on a short passage in Jin Yifu’s Comprehensive History of the Northeast (Dongbei Tongshi), a patriotic historiography written in 1941 when China was at war with Japan: the people of Goguryeo ‘came from Puyo and they are a part of our “zhonghua minzu [Chinese ethnicity].” Koguryŏ is the oldest of the states established in the Northeast region’.45 Korean historians noted specific instances of what they claimed were a distortion of Goguryeo history, such as the kingdom’s defiance of Chinese orders to join in military action against Xiongnu in 12AD. Ma Dejian argued that Goguryeo was subordinate to China, and that Goguryeo’s leader was killed for defying China.46 An alternative interpretation, however, was that Goguryeo defied the directive of China, retaliated against Chinese settlements and killed a local governor.47 Another volume sponsored by the Northeast Project emphasized the tributary relations between China and Goguryeo, and downplayed the kingdom’s resistance to Chinese invasions and attacks.48 Korean scholars such as Im Ki-hwan, professor of history at Hanshin University, argued that tributary relations were ‘a diplomatic formality’ practiced throughout East Asia at the time (see chapter 26). It was ‘logically inconsistent to single out Goguryeo’ and treat it as a provincial regime.49 A defining feature of the Goguryeo dispute was the intensity of online discussions between Chinese and Korean netizens. South Korean netizens waged campaigns to press Korea’s claims to Goguryeo. Chinese netizens responded in kind, leading to a series of highly charged online 231

David Hundt and Baogang He

spats. Rather than engendering a more critical evaluation of the competing historical claims, online debates about the disputed kingdom resulted in the exaggeration of foreign threats, the demonization or mischaracterization of dissenting opinions and the unwillingness and inability of nationalists to critically examine orthodox views of national history.50

Reconciliation: Shared history and dual legacy Elite compromise In early 2004 the South Korean minister for culture and tourism, Lee Chang-dong, criticized the ‘heated media coverage’ of the dispute.51 The South Korean and Chinese governments recognized the potential of the dispute to damage bilateral ties. According to Kim Tae-ho of Hallym University, ‘Korea and China . . . understand that the issue, if left alone, would destroy ties’.52 On 22 August 2004, Wu Dawei, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs from China, visited Seoul and reached a verbal agreement with his counterpart from South Korea after nine hours of discussion.53 China agreed to ‘make efforts to correct existing distortions’ published on a state-run website, and avoid ‘additional distortion of interpretation of Goguryeo’s history’, as the first steps to implementing the verbal agreement with South Korea. The Korean side monitored implementation of the agreement, and noted corrections to various websites and deletions of offending articles and signage in the vicinity of historical artifacts.54 Since this agreement, China has adopted the following measures, including the alteration of the Foreign Ministry website’s distorted contents in August 2004, the deletion of the People’s Education Press website’s distorted contents in September 2004, the correction of Xinhua News Agency website’s introductory section in January 2005 and the deletion of Xinhua News Agency internet edition’s distorted article in July 2005.55 The reconciliation between two governments has cooled down the scorching dispute. This relative success is due to the prudent political elites from both China and South Korea. Wen Jiabao, the former Chinese premier, intervened in this matter and gave an order to settle the dispute. It is vital for both state leaders to make a compromise as East Asian states oversee the preparation of school history textbooks, and history as an academic discipline has been used to construct a linearity of collective memory.

The conciliatory idea of shared history The significance of Goguryeo to the formation of national identity in China and Korea contributed to the intensification of the dispute. It is mutually incompatible and irreconcilable for Korea to claim that the kingdom is solely Korean, and for China to argue that it is solely the inheritance of China. Rigidly dichotomous views of history (whereby Goguryeo is purported to belong solely either to China or to Korea) result only in the perpetuation of inter-state tensions. The solution lies in developing a reconcilable and agreeable idea by both sides. Such an idea is that of shared history and dual inheritance. During a conference in 2004 held in Yanji, Li Sheng, a member of Northeast Project Expert Panel, expressed a conciliatory view of Gāogōulì: that China and Korea share the history of the kingdom.56 Jiang Mengshan is credited with proposing the theory of ‘one history shared by two states’ (一史两用論), or a ‘dual inheritance’ that more than one modern state can claim. According to Jiang, Gāogōulì ruled territories situated in modern-day Korea and China, its political, economic and cultural center shifted from Jian to Pyongyang, its people moved to China after the fall of the kingdom, and it maintained tributary relations with various Chinese dynasties. 232

Reconciliation and Goguryeo/Gāogōulì

Scholars who hold this position (most of whom are Korean–Chinese scholars from northeastern China) acknowledge the legitimacy of Korean claims, but maintain that the kingdom ‘belongs first to Chinese history and then to Korean history’. For this reason, they argue, the history of Gāogōulì ‘should be the “one history shared by two states”’.57 Reconciliation requires the Korean side to be comfortable with the notion of shared history. Fortunately enough, there is limited and conditional support in Korea for this notion. For Park Doo-bok of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security,‘ancient history can be shared’. According to Park, ‘complex historical processes . . . have occurred during the development of human civilization’, and ‘existing national boundaries are also a product of such historical developments’.58 For another Korean scholar, it was completely understandable that the kingdom should be remembered differently by China and Korea: ‘Chinese historians have clearly concluded that the history of Goguryeo is an integral element of Korean history and at the same time also a part of the history of China’s northeastern region’. It would be ‘unrealistic to attempt to separate the history of Goguryeo from China’s historical boundaries, for as long as the northeastern region remains part of Chinese sovereign territory’.59 A new history textbook even urged Koreans to revisit their view of Balhae, and to see it as a multiracial empire founded by the heirs and refugees of Goguryeo which had previously subjugated the Mohe/Malgal people of northern China. In other words, Koreans were encouraged to shift somewhat from the conventional view of themselves as a culturally homogenous group.60 Consequently, the history of Goguryeo was reconsidered in less absolutist zero-sum terms. According to Lim Jie-hyun, professor of history at Hanyang University, The battle is very unhistorical. In fact, it doesn’t make sense to distinguish between Korean and Chinese surrounding the history. At that time, there existed neither China nor Korea. What existed was only Goguryeo. We have to return the history of Goguryeo to the folks of Goguryeo (not the Chinese or Koreans).61 The intense debates about relations between Goguryeo and various Chinese dynasties also had the useful effect of highlighting to scholars in both China and South Korea that it is difficult to draw clear and uncontestable links between the long-extinct kingdom and various Chinese dynasties. It is unrealistic and unfair to expect a group of people to willingly cede territories over which they have exercised ownership for a lengthy period of time purely based on competing historical claims. The problem here is that modern conceptions of the nation-state, which imply exclusive sovereignty over a fixed territory and a population sharing a common language or culture, have been applied to events that occurred at a time when borders and sovereignty were far looser concepts.62 It is questionable at best to apply the contemporary ideal-type conception of the nation-state to modes of political organization in the distant past, especially given that the Sino–Korean border was only formalized in its current terms early in the 20th century.63

International implications China and South Korea are not the only two states to contest sovereignty of both past and present borders. As Wang reminds us, ‘History education is no longer a domestic issue in East Asia’.64 To handle historical disputes successfully, it may be necessary to have mediation from the international community.65 In July 2004 UNESCO reached a decision that alleviated some of the tensions in the Goguryeo dispute: it accepted both sets of claims in relation to the remains of the capital cities, mountain fortresses and tombs that China and North Korea had submitted. Rather 233

David Hundt and Baogang He

than declaring that Goguryeo belonged exclusively to either one side or the other, UNESCO had declared that both sets of claims had some validity. The decision provided a degree of international legitimacy for the idea of shared history discussed above; and it helped to reconcile this historical dispute. In contrast, UNESCO’s decision on the inscription of Preas Vihear temple on 8 July 2008 intensified the historical dispute between Thailand and Cambodia. Thai Foreign Minister Nappadon Pattama initially supported Cambodia’s bid for World Heritage listing. However, the Thai Constitutional Court ruled that the foreign minister had violated Article 190 of Thailand’s 2007 Constitution, which calls for a public debate and Cabinet-level approval. As a result Nappadon Pattama resigned over the listing of Preah Vihear by UNESCO on 10 July 2008. Since then Thai government has claimed its historical territories and even sent over 1,000 troops to defend the temple. International arbitration helped facilitate a compromise in the Goguryeo/Gāogōulì case, but it was less effective in the dispute between Cambodia and Thailand. Specific issues, such as the loss of several lives on the Thai and Cambodian sides and the appointment of exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as an advisor to the Cambodian government,66 added a degree of tension to the temple dispute that was absent in the case of Goguryeo/Gāogōulì. Another difference was that the Thai–Cambodian dispute centered on a single tangible site, whereas the Sino– Korean case entailed a much wider expanse and range of artifacts. The temple dispute revolved around a single site, so international arbitration was in essence a ‘zero-sum game’ in which there could be only one winner. The notion of shared history, by contrast, was developed with the express intention of allowing both sides to ‘win’ insofar as they could incorporate the kingdom into their own historical accounts.

Conclusions The outcome of the Goguryeo dispute was a compromise. Three sets of actors contributed to the partial reconciliation. At the international level, UNESCO’s judgment that both sets of claims had some validity helped both sides to reach compromise. At the national level, state leaders in China and Korea cooperated to resolve the matter after parallel domestic dialogues – or perhaps more strictly, monologues – degenerated in such a way that bilateral relations were damaged. At the societal level, the Chinese scholars have developed the notion of the ‘shared history’ of Goguryeo/Gāogōulì, while some Korean scholars were comfortable with and supported it. These three sets of actors worked together to find and develop a fruitful way to resolve issues surrounding ancient kingdoms. So far both sides have managed to control the dispute; for example, the dispute over Goguryeo was not mentioned in the Modern History of East Asia, a historical textbook jointly produced by scholars and civil society from China, South Korea and Japan.67 The Chinese government has also respected the settlement reached in 2004. The prediction on a dangerous cycle of conflicts does not happen. The successful reconciliation of this dispute may offer valuable lessons to the other historical disputes in East Asia, and the key to reconciliation is the idea of shared history. In this world, East Asians have to share common and overlapping history to reduce conflicts.

Notes The authors are grateful to the editor for organizing this collection, and for providing timely and thoughtful feedback on an earlier version of the chapter. 1 To the greatest extent possible, we use the Revised Romanization of Korean (RRK) system to transliterate Korean terms and names (see http://www.korean.go.kr/eng/roman/roman.jsp), and for Chinese terms

234

Reconciliation and Goguryeo/Gāogōulì

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

and names, we use the Wade–Giles (WG) system (see http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/romcover. html). If authors romanize their names in ways that do not comply with these systems, however, we use their preferred spellings. And when authors who we cite use spellings that do not comply with the RRK or WG systems, we retain the original spellings. T. Chase, ‘Nationalism and the net: Online discussion of Goguryeo history in China and South Korea’, China Information 25/1, 2011, 62. B. Croce, History as the story of liberty. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1941; R.G. Collingwood, The idea of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946. M. Oakeshott, Experience and its modes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933. Y. He, ‘National mythmaking and the problems of history in Sino–Japanese relations’. In P.E. Lam, ed., Japan’s relations with China: Facing a rising power. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006, p. 69. Chase, ‘Nationalism and the net’, 64. M.O. Heisler, ‘The political currency of the past: History, memory and identity’, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 617, 2008, 14–24. Cited in E. Alterman,‘Untangling Balkan knots of myth and countermyth’, New York Times 31 July 1999. J. Sun, ‘Some issues regarding the study of ownership of Kogoryŏ’, Dongjiang Journal 18/3, 2001, 20–5. S. Lee, ‘Internet rumors roil China–Korea ties’, Asia Times 9 August 2008. http://www.atimes.com/ atimes/China/JH09Ad02.html. Accessed 9 August 2008. E.J. Schultz, ‘How English-language scholarship views Kogoryŏ’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 89. M.O. Heisler, ‘The political currency of the past’, and other articles published in Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 617, 2008; G. Shin, S. Park and D. Yang, eds, Rethinking historical injustice and reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean experience. New York: Routledge, 2006. Heisler, ‘Challenged histories and collective self-concepts: Politics in history, memory and time’, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 617, 2008, 199–211. G.W. Gong, ‘The beginning of history: Remembering and forgetting as strategic issues’, Washington Quarterly 24/2, 2001, 46, 50; see also C. Schneider, ‘The Japanese history textbook controversy in East Asian perspective’, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 617, 2008, 107–22. T. Takahiko, ‘The Yomiuri project and its results’, Asian Perspective 31/1, 2007, 43–60. P.H. Gries,‘The Koguryo controversy, national identity and Sino–Korean relations today’, East Asia 22/4, 2005, 14. J.B. Kim,‘A critique of the Chinese theory of “one history shared by two states” (一史两用論) as applied to Koguryŏ history’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 7; Schultz, ‘How English-language scholarship views Kogoryŏ’, 90. J. Jeong, ‘History is the future (Yeoksa-neun mirae-da)’, Joongang Ilbo 20 October 2012. S. Lu, A history of China’s nationalities (Zhongguo minzu shi). Shanghai: World Publishers, 1989, pp. 81–4. W. Fan, A concise history of China (Zhongguo tongshi jianbian). Beijing: People’s Publishers, 1965, pp. 2, 163. S. Park, ‘China’s “Northeast Asia Project”: Launch of a “history war”’? Korean Historical Review June 2004. http://www.koreafocus.or.kr/design1/Essays/view.asp?volume_id=36&content_id=62&category=G. Accessed 1 August 2013. P.N. Mohan, ‘China’s nationalist historiography of the “Northeast Project” and the Australian response to its challenge’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 32. A. Jones, ‘Nationalizing the past: Korea in Chinese history’, Journal of Northeast Asian History 6/2, 2009, 103, 117. S. Go, ‘Jungguk-ui Hanguk-e daehan insik: sujikjeok insik-eul neomeoseo supyeongjeok insik-euro-ui baljeon jeonmang (China’s perceptions of Korea: the prospects for advancing beyond vertical perceptions to horizontal perceptions)’, Gukka Jeollyak 12/4, 2006, 112–13; Mohan, ‘China’s nationalist historiography of the “Northeast Project” and the Australian response to its challenge’. The foundation was later renamed as the Northeast Asia History Foundation (NAHF), and in September 2006 relaunched with a stated mission of ‘establishing a basis for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia by confronting distortions of history that have caused anguish in this region and the world at large’. The NAFH, whose three main activities are ‘historical research and reconciliation’, ‘preparation for an East Asian community’ and ‘historical dialogue and exchange’, is the product of a more conciliatory attitude toward historical disputes in the region. See: Northeast Asia History Foundation, ‘Our mission’, Seoul: NAHF, 2008. http:// www.nahf.or.kr/eng/. Accessed 12 February 2014. Editorial, ‘Contest over kingdom’, Korea Herald 7 July 2004, 10; W. Park, “‘Goguryeo, China” and “Dokdo, Japan”’? Hankyoreh Sinmun 12 January 2004. http://www.koreafocus.or.kr/design1/Society/ view.asp?volume_id=32&content_id=502&category=D. Accessed 1 August 2013.

235

David Hundt and Baogang He 26 Chase, ‘Nationalism and the net’, 64; see also W. Zhang, ‘A review of issues on Korea’s history of Koguryo’, Journal of International Information 9, 2004, 27–31. 27 N. Ryuichi, “‘Dong Asia”-ui ganeungseong (The possibility of “East Asia”)’, Changjak-gwa-Bipyeong 131, 2006, 401–18. 28I. Yi, ‘Review: Gāogōulì lishi wenti yanjiu lunwenji’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 150; see also I. Yi, ‘Flawed arguments of Chinese historians’, Donga Ilbo 13 August 2006. http://www. koreafocus.or.kr/design1/Society/view.asp?volume_id=36&content_id=56&category=D. Accessed 1 August 2013. 29 Y. Guo and B. He, ‘Reimagining the Chinese nation: the Zeng Guofan phenomenon’, Modern China 25/2, 1999, 142–70. 30 G. Choe, Jungguk ui Goguryeo-sa waegok (China’s distortion of Goguryeo’s history). Seoul: Sallim, 2004; J.B. Kim, ‘The name “haedong samguk” (Three kingdoms east of the sea) as recorded in traditional Chinese historical documents’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 1/1, 2005, 7–23. 31 B. Cho, ‘Problems concerning China’s research’, Korea Herald 4 February 2004, 20. 32 Schultz, ‘How English-language scholarship views Kogoryŏ’, 92; 88, 94. 33 Cited in Korea Herald,‘Q&A session with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon’, Korea Herald 22 October 2004, 25; see also MOFAT, ‘Issues in Focus: Goguryeo’, Seoul: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2007. http://www.mofat.go.kr/english/political/hotissues/goguryeo/index.jsp. Accessed 14 August 2008. 34 T. Ha,‘The spirit of Goguryeo in Manchuria (Goguryeo-ui hon sumswi-neun Manchu-beolpan)’, Donga Ilbo 25 October 2011, A30. 35 Chase, ‘Nationalism and the net’, 65. 36 S. Lee, ‘The changing Korean ego in the Northeast Asia era (Dongbuka sidae Hangukin-ui ja-a byeonhwa)’, Hanguk Jeongchihak Hoebo 46/1, 2012, 203–28; Mohan, ‘China’s nationalist historiography of the “Northeast Project” and the Australian response to its challenge’, 36. 37 D. Li, ‘On the issue of Gāogōulì historical research (Shilun Gāogōulì lishi yanjiu de jige wenti)’, Guangming Daily 24 June 2003. http://www.chinazangnan.com/show.aspx?id=45&cid=19. Accessed 11 August 2008; MOFAT, ‘Issues in focus’. 38 Park, ‘China’s “Northeast Asia Project”‘. 39 Cho, ‘Problems concerning China’s research’. 40 Yi, ‘Review’, 145. 41 Park, ‘China’s “Northeast Asia Project”’. 42 Yeo, ‘Chinese views on the origins of Goguryeo’. 43 Mohan, ‘China’s nationalist historiography of the “Northeast Project” and the Australian response to its challenge’, 36. 44 Yi, ‘Review’, 142, 144. 45 Jin cited in Kim, ‘A critique of the Chinese theory of “one history shared by two states” (一史两用論) as applied to Koguryŏ history’, 18. 46 D. Ma, ed., Continued essays on the history of Gāogōulì in ancient China (Gudai Zhongguo Gāogōulì lishi xulun). Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Science, 2003. 47 Mohan, ‘China’s nationalist historiography of the “Northeast Project” and the Australian response to its challenge’, 32–3. 48 T. Geng, The 1560th anniversary of the King Hotae stele (Haotaiwang bei yi qian wu bai liu shi nian zai). Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Science, 2004. 49 K. Im, ‘Goguryeo’s relationship with China’, Korea Herald 19 February 2004, 3. 50 Chase, ‘Nationalism and the net’, 61–63. 51 Cited in Editorial, ‘Historical sovereignty’, Korea Herald 11 January 2004, 32. 52 Cited in S. Choi, ‘Questions remain on verbal pact with China’, Korea Herald 25 August 2004, 24. 53 Y. Jiang, ‘China and South Korea reach five-point agreement on Goguryeo history’, CVN 25 August 2004. http://www.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2004/08/200408250300.shtml. Accessed 30 January 2014. 54 MOFAT,‘Issues in focus’; see also Chase,‘Nationalism and the net’, 61; Editorial,‘Contest over kingdom’; Korea Herald, ‘Q&A session with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon’. 55 MOFAT, ‘Issues in focus’. 56 Yi, ‘Review’, 142; Yanbian University, The question of Gāogōulì: A collection of historical papers (Gāogōulì lishi wenti yanjiu lunwenji), Yanji: Yanbian University, 2005. 57 Jiang cited in Kim, ‘A critique of the Chinese theory of “one history shared by two states” (一史两用論) as applied to Koguryŏ history’, 9; see also D. Ha, ‘Han–Jung jeongsang huidam-ui

236

Reconciliation and Goguryeo/Gāogōulì

58 59 60 61 62 63

64

65 66 67

seonggwa-wa uimi (Results and significance of the Korea–China summit meeting)’, Jeongse-wa Jeongchaek November 2006, 12; Sun, ‘Some issues regarding the study of ownership of Koguryo’; Park, ‘China’s “Northeast Asia Project” ’; Yi, ‘Review’, 147. D. Park, “‘History of Goguryeo” calls for fact-based research (“Goguryeo-sa” silsa-gusi jeopgeun-eul)’, Donga Ilbo 27 January 2004, A7. Park, ‘China’s “Northeast Asia Project” ’. S. Ham,‘A bias-free look at Korean history (Chiwoochin sigak geodeonaego bon uri yeoksa)’, Hankyoreh Sinmun 19 February 2011, 15. Cited in H. Jin, ‘Nationalism prevalent in Korean history textbooks, experts say’, Korea Herald 7 May 2005. Ryuichi, ‘The possibility of “East Asia” ’, 406–10. L. Zabrovskaya, ‘A brief history of the Sino–Korean border from the 18th century to the 20th century.’ In R. Frank, J.E. Hoare, P. Köllner and S. Pares, eds, Korea Yearbook: politics, economy and society. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2007, 285–86. Z. Wang, ‘National humiliation, history education and the politics of historical memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China’, International Studies Quarterly 52/4, 2008, 801; see also B. He, ‘East Asian ideas of regionalism’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 58/1, 2004, 105–25; C. Moon and S. Suh, ‘Burdens of the past: overcoming history, the politics of identity and nationalism in Asia’, Global Asia 2/1, 2007, 32–48. F. Qian, ‘Internationalizing the memory: The building and rebuilding of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial’. Paper presented at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, April 2009. S. Strangio,‘Good relations on the horizon’, Phnom Penh Post 7 July 2010. http://www.phnompenhpost. com/national/analysis-good-relations-horizon. Accessed 12 February 2014. See B. He and D. Hundt, ‘A deliberative approach to East Asia’s history disputes’, Japanese Journal of Political Science 13/1, 2012, 37–58.

Bibliography Alterman, E. ‘Untangling Balkan knots of myth and countermyth’, New York Times 31 July 1999, B1. Chase, T. ‘Nationalism and the net: Online discussion of Goguryeo history in China and South Korea’, China Information 25/1, 2011, 61–82. Cho, B. ‘Problems concerning China’s research’, Korea Herald 4 February 2004, 20. Choe, G. China’s distortion of Goguryeo’s history (Jungguk ui Goguryeo-sa waegok). Seoul: Sallim, 2004. Choi, S. ‘Questions remain on verbal pact with China’, Korea Herald 25 August 2004, 24. Collingwood, R.G. The idea of history. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946. Croce, B. History as the story of liberty. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1941. Editorial. ‘Contest over kingdom’, Korea Herald 7 July 2004, 10. Editorial. ‘Historical sovereignty’, Korea Herald 11 January 2004, 32. Fan, W. A concise history of China (Zhongguo tongshi jianbian). Beijing: People’s Publishers, 1965. Geng, T. The 1560th anniversary of the King Hotae stele (Haotaiwang bei yi qian wu bai liu shi nian zai). Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Science, 2004. Go, S. ‘China’s perceptions of Korea: The prospects for advancing beyond vertical perceptions to horizontal perceptions (Jungguk-ui Hanguk-e daehan insik: sujikjeok insik-eul neomeoseo supyeongjeok insik-euro-ui baljeon jeonmang)’, Gukka Jeollyak 12/4, 2006, 105–34. Gong, G.W. ‘The beginning of history: Remembering and forgetting as strategic issues’, Washington Quarterly 24/2, 2001, 45–57. Gries, P.H. ‘The Koguryo controversy, national identity and Sino–Korean relations today’, East Asia 22/4, 2005, 3–17. Guo, Y., and He, B. ‘Reimagining the Chinese nation: The Zeng Guofan phenomenon’, Modern China 25/2, 1999, 142–70. Ha, D. ‘Results and significance of the Korea–China summit meeting (Han–Jung jeongsang huidam-ui seonggwa-wa uimi)’, Jeongse-wa Jeongchaek November 2006, 11–13. Ha, T. ‘The spirit of Goguryeo in Manchuria (Goguryeo-ui hon sumswi-neun Manchu-beolpan)’, Donga Ilbo 25 October 2011, A30. Ham, S. ‘A bias-free look at Korean history (Chiwoochin sigak geodeonaego bon uri yeoksa)’, Hankyoreh Sinmun 19 February 2011, 15.

237

David Hundt and Baogang He He, B. ‘East Asian ideas of regionalism’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 58/1, 2004, 105–25. He, B., and Hundt, D. ‘A deliberative approach to East Asia’s history disputes’, Japanese Journal of Political Science 13/1, 2012, 37–58. He, Y. ‘National mythmaking and the problems of history in Sino–Japanese relations’. In P.E. Lam, ed., Japan’s relations with China: Facing a rising power. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006, pp. 69–91. Heisler, M.O. ‘The political currency of the past: History, memory and identity’, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 617, 2008, 14–24. Heisler, M.O. ‘Challenged histories and collective self-concepts: Politics in history, memory and time’, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 617, 2008, 199–211. Im, K. ‘Goguryeo’s relationship with China’, Korea Herald 19 February 2004, 3. Jeong, J. ‘History is the future (Yeoksa-neun mirae-da)’, Joongang Ilbo 20 October 2012, 38. Jiang, Y. ‘China and South Korea reach five-point agreement on Goguryeo history’, CVN 25 August 2004. http://www.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2004/08/200408250300.shtml. Accessed 30 January 2014. Jin, H. ‘Nationalism prevalent in Korean history textbooks, experts say’, Korea Herald 7 May 2005. Jones, A. ‘Nationalizing the past: Korea in Chinese history’, Journal of Northeast Asian History 6/2, 2009, 103–39. Kim, J.B. ‘A critique of the Chinese theory of “one history shared by two states” (一史两用論) as applied to Koguryŏ history’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 6–26. Kim, J.B. ‘The name “haedong samguk” (Three kingdoms east of the sea) as recorded in traditional Chinese historical documents’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 1/1, 2005, 7–23. Korea Herald. ‘Q&A session with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon’, Korea Herald 22 October 2004, 25. Lee, S. ‘Internet rumors roil China–Korea ties’, Asia Times 9 August 2008. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/ China/JH09Ad02.html. Accessed 9 August 2008. Lee, S. ‘The changing Korean ego in the Northeast Asia era (Dongbuka sidae Hangukin-ui ja-a byeonhwa)’, Hanguk Jeongchihak Hoebo 46/1, 2012, 203–28. Li, D. ‘On the issue of Gāogōulì historical research (Shilun Gāogōulì lishi yanjiu de jige wenti)’, Guangming Daily 24 June 2003. http://www.chinazangnan.com/show.aspx?id=45&cid=19. Accessed 11 August 2008. Lu, S. A history of China’s nationalities (Zhongguo minzu shi). Shanghai: World Publishers, 1989. Ma, D., ed. Continued essays on the history of Gāogōulì in ancient China (Gudai Zhongguo Gāogōulì lishi xulun). Beijing: Chinese Academy of Social Science, 2003. MOFAT. ‘Issues in focus: Goguryeo’, Seoul: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2007. http://www.mofat. go.kr/english/political/hotissues/goguryeo/index.jsp. Accessed 14 August 2008. Mohan, P.N. ‘China’s nationalist historiography of the “Northeast Project” and the Australian response to its challenge’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 27–46. Moon, C., and Suh, S. ‘Burdens of the past: Overcoming history, the politics of identity and nationalism in Asia’, Global Asia 2/1, 2007, 32–48. Northeast Asia History Foundation. ‘Our mission’, Seoul: NAHF, 2008. http://www.nahf.or.kr/eng/. Accessed 12 February 2014. Oakeshott, M. Experience and its modes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933. Park, D. “‘History of Goguryeo” calls for fact-based research (“Goguryeo-sa” silsa-gusi jeopgeun-eul)’, Donga Ilbo 27 January 2004, A7. Park, S. ‘China’s “Northeast Asia Project”: Launch of a “history war”’? Korean Historical Review June 2004. http://www.koreafocus.or.kr/design1/Essays/view.asp?volume_id=36&content_id=62&category=G. Accessed 1 August 2013. Park, W. “‘Goguryeo, China” and “Dokdo, Japan”’? Hankyoreh Sinmun 12 January 2004. http://www. koreafocus.or.kr/design1/Society/view.asp?volume_id=32&content_id=502&category=D. Accessed 1 August 2013. Qian, F. ‘Internationalizing the memory: The building and rebuilding of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial’. Paper presented at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, April 2009. Ryuichi, N. ‘The possibility of “East Asia” (“Dong Asia”-ui ganeungseong)’, Changjak-gwa-Bipyeong 131, 2006, 401–18. Schneider, C. ‘The Japanese history textbook controversy in East Asian perspective’, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science 617, 2008, 107–22. Schultz, E.J. ‘How English-language scholarship views Kogoryŏ’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 80–94. Shin, G., Park, S., and Yang, D., eds. Rethinking historical injustice and reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean experience. New York: Routledge, 2006.

238

Reconciliation and Goguryeo/Gāogōulì Strangio, S. ‘Good relations on the horizon’, Phnom Penh Post 7 July 2010. http://www.phnompenhpost. com/national/analysis-good-relations-horizon. Accessed 12 February 2014. Sun, J. ‘Some issues regarding the study of ownership of Kogoryŏ’, Dongjiang Journal 18/3, 2001, 20–5. Takahiko, T. ‘The Yomiuri project and its results’, Asian Perspective 31/1, 2007, 43–60. Wang, Z. ‘National humiliation, history education and the politics of historical memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China’, International Studies Quarterly 52/4, 2008, 783–806. Yanbian University. The question of Gāogōulì: A collection of historical papers (Gāogōulì lishi wenti yanjiu lunwenji). Yanji: Yanbian University, 2005. Yi, I. ‘Flawed arguments of Chinese historians’, Donga Ilbo 13 August 2006. http://www.koreafocus.or.kr/ design1/Society/view.asp?volume_id=36&content_id=56&category=D. Accessed 1 August 2013. Yi, I. ‘Review: Gāogōulì lishi wenti yanjiu lunwenji’, Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3/1, 2006, 141–51. Zabrovskaya, L. ‘A brief history of the Sino–Korean border from the 18th century to the 20th century.’ In R. Frank, J.E. Hoare, P. Köllner and S. Pares, eds, Korea Yearbook: Politics, economy and society. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2007, 283–97. Zhang, W. ‘A review of issues on Korea’s history of Koguryo’, Journal of International Information 9, 2004, 27–31.

239

15 MANCHURIA An imagined space for emancipation, conflict, and reconciliation Sunyoung Park

As the process of globalization expands throughout the world, nations experience various exchanges of culture and movements of people.1 Mutual interactions between different cultures are bound to create both conflicts and acceptance. Multicultural tolerance and peaceful coexistence requires transformative realization where the shared historical paths among China, Japan, and Korea are no exception. This chapter analyzes the 1931 Wanpaoshan incident involving multiple cultures, identities, and interests in order to delineate a useful template for today’s historical reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. The Wanpaoshan incident happened in July 1931, when the Koreans built a canal on the land that they borrowed from the Chinese near the Wanpaoshan area of Manchuria. The Japanese became involved in the local skirmish in order to protect the Koreans, the colonized subjects at that time, thus creating a three-party conflict among Chinese, Koreans, and the Japanese. Some of the existing studies view the Wanpaoshan incident as the precursor of Manchurian incident of 18 September 1931,2 while other studies have focused on the anti-Chinese movement in Korea and the complicated relations between the nationalist party (Guomin party) and the Communist party of China.3 Most common analytical foci include international relations, significance of the incident,4 and cultural and literary study of the Wanpaoshan incident.5 These frameworks, however, suffer from limitations when it comes to understanding in examining the conflicts among Korea, China, and Japan in the particular context of cultural harmony advocated by the Manzhouguo (Manzhou government), the puppet state established in Manchuria by Japanese in 1932. Failing to notice the distinct characteristics of the spatial context, Manchuria, makes it difficult to understand why and how a mere water canal problem in one farming town created such international ripple effects of the time. To understand the Wanpaoshan incident in a holistic sense, it is necessary to review the 1947 Wanpaoshan trial in China and the 1948 trial in Tokyo concerning the incident, which have been previously overlooked. This chapter aims to better understand how cultural conflict can be transformed into multicultural coexistence by analyzing the Wanpaoshan incident. Its review includes the national and cultural structure of Manchuria, ripple effects of the Wanpaoshan incident on the Japanese Empire, and Manchuria as the space of multiethnic cohabitation. In doing so, this chapter will address the importance of multicultural coexistence and the wisdom of a multicultural society. 240

Manchuria

“National harmony”: Manchuria as a space of coexistence Manchuria as a place Key moments in history, such as the secession and return of the Liaodong peninsula, the SinoJapanese war, and the Russo-Japanese war, demonstrate that many imperial nations have tried to conquer the Manchuria. The Manchurian region has been the most contested land during the wars because of its geo-strategic location (Yubing 1957: 1). It functions as the entry point into Asia, like the Balkans (Wang Defu 1957: 1), and is a crucial trading post and the regional transportation hub. It has thus been an arena of competition among the powerful often described as the “world’s danger zone” and a “nucleus of fluctuation.” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Qing dynasty’s new government policy and the development of Manchuria as a result of inland migration and especially by Russian and Japanese migrants created various reasons for a promising future for the settlers, who migrated into the area rapidly. The Qing dynasty was founded by the Manchu ethnic from Manchuria but did not fully integrate their homeland into China, which had remained a closed and underdeveloped area until then. In the late nineteenth century, people from Shandong and Hebei province suffered from enormous hardships due to natural disasters along with a lack of land. This caused a large scale migration to Manchuria. Manchuria featured multiethnic coexistence among various minorities, including Manchurians, Mongolians, and Hui ethnic minority. Manchuria became the new spotlight attracting a wave of newcomers from China, Korea, Japan, and Russia in the nineteenth century. Manchuria even became a home to the residents Polish, American, British, German, French, Italian (MJA 1938: 10), and Jewish origins who were moving across national boundaries. These people participated in building Manchuria. For example, architects from Poland built Harbin city and the railroad near Songhua River. Russians moved in along with Ukrainians, Tartars, Armenians, and Jewish migrants (Yan 2006: 397–398). Before Manzhouguo became a country, the Jews remained a minority, but 20,000 Jewish migrants rapidly moved in after the Soviet Union announced Manchuria its Far East Jewish district (MJA 1938: 73). Japan also flexed its imperial muscle by colonizing Korea and expanding into Manchuria without significant in-migration of the population. The countries and the people shared a common aspiration in coming to Manchuria: to find hope and emancipation, and to start a new life. Chinese and Koreans moving from their respective jurisdictions wanted to be free from hunger, develop land, and create wealth. For most of them, Manchurian migration was a first step to become rich and to test repressed cultural desire. For Russia and Japan, conquering Manchuria was the first step in expanding their empire, an utmost desire. In the late nineteenth century in Manchuria, the new “land of hope,” there were 17 million people, including Manchurians,6 Koreans, and the Chinese. By 1938, the population increased dramatically to 38,623,640, thus creating a population density of 29.6 people per square kilometer.7 By the end of 1939, according to Japan’s statistics, the Manchurian population consisted of 6,447,594 households at the total of 39,454,026 persons. When this number is divided by nationality, 36,373,414 were Manchurian or Chinese, 1,035,525 were Mongolian, 172,894 were the Hui minority, 1,162,127 were Koreans, and 642,356 were Japanese (Fang Dexiu 1969: 55). In the 1940s, Manchuria’s temporary internal revenue report counted a total population of 4.3 million, with 86 percent Chinese, and the remaining 14 percent Manchurian, Muslim, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, and Russian, among others.8 There was some level of residential integration among the people living under the Manzhou government, but most groups created their own separate residential areas. The Chinese lived across most of the area, while Manchurians resided in their traditional regions. Mongolians inhabited the western region, Koreans lived near the Gando border region opposite of the Amrok 241

Sunyoung Park

and Duman rivers of the Korean peninsula, and the Japanese lived along the South Manchuria Railroad urban areas or near the Russian border.9 There were conflicts, both cultural and otherwise in nature, between the various nations, but the Chinese and Koreans clashed over the land lease. According to a 1930 Chinese report, there were 250,000 Koreans leasing two million shang (垧)10 of land from the Chinese near Liaoning province. In addition, 300,000 Koreans leased four million shang in Jilin province, and 50 to 60 thousand Koreans leased 150,000 shang of land in Heirongjiang province (Shen Zongming 1931: 8–10). The Chinese intended for the Koreans to pay for the lease every year through a Japanese company, Totaku (東拓), but some of the Koreans delayed payment or did not pay at all with the power of the Japanese company’s backing, and this partially led to an average of more than 1,500 lawsuits every year.11 Against this backdrop, the conflict between Chinese and Korean farmers became an international news item when the Wanpaoshan incident took place in 1931.

Manchuria and national harmony Manchuria became a regional hub for imperial expansion, and migrants flowed into the area because of political and economic reasons. Conflicts occurred primarily due to different cultural traits, habits, and attitudes. Manchuria also served as a buffer zone, where the people of different backgrounds could dream of new hope, engagement, and freedom from the old regime. Most of the people living in Manchuria moved from the neighboring countries, and they were thus called “cross-border” people. Because of geo-political reasons, when conflict occurred, it could easily spread to nearby areas. It was eminently important for the Manzhou government to create harmony among the different nationalities in order to maintain political stability. Among the various nationalities in Manchuria, the Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese became the focus of special concerns given their numbers, interrelated interests, and colonial milieu. The ideology of harmony between nations is that no nationality is superior to any other, and the five specifically mentioned equal nationalities were the Han Chinese, Manchurians, Mongolians, Koreans, and Japanese (Shinzo 1995: 269). The Manzhou government’s motivations in establishing harmony among different groups were to minimize ethnic conflict and create “the paradise of the kingly way”: a harmony of nations. The Wanpaoshan incident was like the eye of a storm that saw the collision of three nations, Korea, China, and Japan. The way the Wanpaoshan incident has been portrayed in existing studies is clearly dichotomous, where three different kinds of dualisms are claimed: hostile invader vs. resistor; perpetrator (exploiter) vs. defendant (exploited); and self vs. other. Nevertheless, this incident was very complicated and multilayered at the same time. When seen from the perspective of internal narrative structure, it was not a simple occurrence where dormant hostile relations among nations were demonstrated, or a clear binary fission was manifested. Conflict between the Chinese and Koreans was about land reclamation between a proprietor and a lessee. The national relationship between Chinese and Koreans in Manchuria had a relational pattern of landowner and tenant farmer who relied on each other for livelihood (Yoda 1976). When the Japanese became involved in the situation, things got much more complicated. Japan’s claiming of the Koreans as their own nationals in Manchuria shifted dynamics of the situation. As the Koreans were receiving financial assistance and protection from Japan, the Chinese were put on the defensive being confronted with the Korean perpetrators, the new identity assumed in the colonial context with Japan’s expanding desire to acquire Manchuria. Many nationalities had been active in the area before the Manzhou government was established, but the number increased with the implementation of a migration policy intended to control the Manchurian borderlands. With the foundation of the Manzhou government, a large 242

Manchuria

number of migrants from many different nations moved there, where their past conflicts were turning into reality as the level of their dissatisfaction with their living situation increased (Kim Yongsam 1938: 8). Koreans residing in Manchuria remembered the pressure and unequal treatment they received from the Chinese during the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China, breeding a fertile ground for their hostility toward the Chinese. The Chinese, on the other hand, felt that Manchuria belonged to China, and pushed for unjust arrangements undermining the spirit of harmony with other nations. The Japanese felt that they were an advanced civilization, and were not hiding their sense of superiority toward other people.12 When we look at the Manzhou government from the perspective of nationality, the Chinese and the Mongolians shared harmonious relations. In addition, while the Han Chinese felt superiority and antagonism toward the Koreans, they could not easily reconcile with each other, either.13 To resolve this lingering issue, plans and strategies were proposed to build harmony and reconciliation (Lee Shangha 1939: 4). Harmony between nations was not just the directive for Manchuria, but was regarded an imperative to achieve peace in the entire East Asian region.

Structure and understanding of the Wanpaoshan incident Wanpaoshan’s location To understand the Wanpaoshan incident more thoroughly, we need to look at the Wanpaoshan area. According to Lytton’s report, “Wanpaoshan is a small village located 18 miles south of Changchun, called Yitonghe, swag of river valley” (Park Yongsuk 1986: 136). According to the Tokyo Asahi Newspaper, Wanpaoshan is an undiscovered high plateau wasteland located six li (里) north of Changchun. The newspaper reported that Korean farmers tried to develop land comprised mostly of weeds, but complications arose between the Chinese and Koreans.14 According to an investigation undertaken by the Changchun city preparatory office, the size of Wanpaoshan town is about four li wide from east to west, and three li long from north to south. Its terrain has some hills but little water in a lower part of the southwest region. During the period of the Jiaqing Emperor of the Qing dynasty, an order was issued to create a town and develop the deserted area. At the time of the Wanpaoshan incident, the town was still underdeveloped. There were 16 stores, 92 houses, and 1,100 men and women, and the market was open every third, sixth, and ninth day of the month.15

The Wanpaoshan incident There are three main contributing factors behind the Wanpaoshan conflict regarding the land development between the Koreans and Chinese. First, there were inadequate legal preparations regarding the land lease. In April of 1931, a Chinese Hao Yongde leased 500 shang of deserted land near Wanpaoshan, of Changchun county, to 12 people, including Su Hanlin, Zhang Hongbin, and Meng Zhaohe, for a period of ten years. Chapter 13 of the contract states, “This contract is valid only by current government’s ratification and not valid without it.”16 However, in April 1931, Hao Yongde leased land to Lee Seunghun and other Koreans for a period of ten years without the government’s approval,17 and there was no regulation stating that government approval was necessary to make the deal legally effective. During this lease period, it became obvious to the Korean tenants that a water canal was necessary to develop the wasteland. The Changchun public security bureau, however, halted the canal construction, and this sparked a conflict. The Chinese Hao Yongde did not secure the proper permit to re-lease the land for ten years from the government, as was specified in the contract. The Koreans who re-leased the land from Hao 243

Sunyoung Park

Yongde for ten years and built the canal had a contract that did state that the government permission was required. Therefore, the Korean tenants were not at fault. Second, Korean migration to Wanpaoshan to develop the wasteland became a problem. Koreans leased the land from Hao Youngde, and 188 people moved to an area near Wanpaoshan to develop leased land on 9, 10, and 13 April 1931.18 There are some disagreements on the details of the migration. On 7 April 1931, the Japanese ambassador Tashiro reported to foreign minister Shidehara Kijuro that 50 out of the 83 households moving to Sanxingbao farm included unemployed people (Gaimusho 1995: 177–178). Kamada Sawaichiro wrote in his book on 2 April 1931 that 113 farmers created a land association in the 10 yuan ratio of 1 shang, started land conversion work, and obtained permission for a land lease agreement from the Changchun county government on 16 April. In the end, all the matters were resolved and 38 families and 187 people moved to the area on 23 April (Kamada 1934: 158). According to the Changchun county government’s security bureau investigation record on the Korean residents, there were 188 people, including 130 men and 58 women. There were 31 heads of household with their families and 53 laborers, including one person on the record and two people not shown on the record.19 Family members of one household usually consisted of wife, brothers, and relatives. This shows how Korean families migrated to Wanpaoshan in order to complete the land conversion project. In addition, the 53 laborers who moved there individually had the average age of 32. Tashiro described the Koreans moving to Wanpaoshan as unemployed people from Changchun, whereas Sawaichiro Kamada described them as farmers. However, according to the Changchun county security bureau’s data, people who moved to Wanpaoshan did not all come from Changchun. Some of them came from Jilin province and its surrounding areas. Of the Korean people who moved to the Wanpaoshan area, 73 people were naturalized Chinese, 12 people of unknown nationality, and 103 were not naturalized. The statistics of the people who were naturalized are as follows: in 1921, there were four people; in 1923, there were 17 people; in 1927, there were 50 people, and in 1928, there were two people. Between 9 and 13 April 1931, 188 Koreans moved in without much time for compromise, and became involved in complications with Chinese farmers over the water canal construction. Whether naturalized citizens or not, the Koreans were labeled as antagonists of local Chinese residents. One of the reasons for this antagonism stems from the Jilin province government, and the details will be discussed in the next section. Third, the Chinese stereotype of Koreans and the different governing approaches of Japan and China also created problems. On 6 May, the Jilin province government issued a secret order20 to the Changchun city preparatory office that current Korean residents had to be evacuated and newcomers should not be allowed to move in. They cited the reason that Koreans were known to create conflicts in other areas. On 27 May, Chinese farmers launched a formal petition to the Changchun city preparatory office complaining about the Koreans building the water canal. The Jilin province government stated, “Koreans did not obtain the proper government permission to move into the farms. We therefore order the police to evacuate the Koreans from the area.”21 Japanese forces were thereby dispatched to protect Koreans and to prove that they had the rights to reside in Wanpaoshan. This escalated the tension between Koreans and the Chinese as well as that among Koreans, Chinese, and the Japanese. The Wanpaoshan incident was about the issues of legal residency, land lease agreements, and other related legal problems. It was also about land sharing cooperation, consular trials, and dual citizenship (Shen Zhongming 1931: 55–66). To sum up, the Wanpaoshan incident happened due to cultural conflict, imperial invasions, and legal problems. The Japanese person is wielding a sword while holding a Korean from the back and inciting him to fight the Chinese. The victims 244

Manchuria

of this conflict are the Korean and Chinese. This constitutes the crucial aspect of the Wanpaoshan incident.

Connections behind the causes of the Wanpaoshan incident Extension of the incident The Wanpaoshan incident was not just a conflict between Koreans and Chinese farmers in Wanpaoshan, but was extended to the global level beyond the boundaries of China, Korea, and Japan. When the Wanpaoshan’s water canal problem escalated on 8 June 1931, both China and Japan mobilized their police forces and agreed upon a joint investigation. They did not, however, agree on the results of the investigation. While the Chinese side claimed the water canal construction was an intrusion of the Chinese farmers’ rights, the Japanese side argued that the Koreans did not violate the lease agreement and the permission for the water canal construction had to be granted. On 1 July, about 400 Chinese farmers chased out the Koreans and re-filled the canal. Japanese police forces were dispatched to the scene and fired their guns to protect the Koreans; there were no casualties and the Japanese forces stayed until the Koreans finished building the water canal and the Yitonghe bank (Park Yongsuk 1986: 138). The Korean, Japanese, and Chinese media also got involved in a media war over the Wanpaoshan incident. In Korea, The Korean Times (Chosun ilbo) and The Dong A Newspaper (Donga ilbo) reported the abuse of Koreans by Chinese. A boycott campaign against the Chinese happened in several cities in Korea, including Incheon, Wonsan, Shineujoo, Pyongyang, Sakjoo (朔州), and Anjoo (安洲). The Japanese Tokyo Asahi Newspaper reported that this Chinese boycott was rapidly spreading to Gyungsung, Incheon, Pyongyang, Suwon, Gaesung, Yongdengpo, and other areas, where 6,000 Chinese people were assaulted.22 In China, Dagong Newspaper (Dagongbao), Shenyang People’s Newspaper (Shenyangminbao), Beijing Morning Post (Beijing Chenbao), and Yishi Newspaper (Yishibao)23 reported on the importance of the Wanpaoshan incident and the Korean boycotting the Chinese.24 China was enraged that Japan irresponsibly encouraged the boycott, and they thereby started an anti-Japanese movement in China. The anti-Japanese movement included severing the economic relationship with Japan, boycotting Japanese products, refusing to use Japanese trade ships, and using products made in China instead. This movement was advertised in the media, flyers, meetings, and posters.25 There were different organizations leading this movement in different cities, where students were joining the protests as well. Business circles and celebrities also made statements in their support of the anti-Japanese movement.26 At the same time, the incidents of Koreans getting harassed in Manchuria were contributing to their out-migration, and things then became out of control. More information is listed in Table 15.1. The New York Times in the U.S. also reported about this incident, stating the Wanpaoshan incident was causing retaliation against the Chinese in Korea, and that there were murders in Pyongyang and a boycott in China.27 On 7 July, the American consulate in Fengtian John Carter Vincent reported to Minister Councilor Nelson Trusler Johnson in Beijing that on 2 July, there had been complications among Chinese police, Korean farmers, and Japanese police, but there were no casualties and order prevailed while Japanese police were stationed to safeguard the area. After receiving the memo about the incident, Johnson routed the memo to Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson the next day.28 From the beginning, the Wanpaoshan incident drew attention from the international community primarily through the various reports made by foreign ministries and media stationed in the area. Wanpaoshan did not see any casualties, but there were 127 245

Sunyoung Park Table 15.1 Investigation of persecuted Koreans by Chinese Date

Former residence

Temporary shelter

Reasons for fleeing

4 July

Fuyu county Taolaizhao Fuyu county Taolaizhao Andong county zhinating dongdingzi Andong county zhinating

Changchun land attached Haerbin etc.

Irritated by Chinese authorities’ evacuation order

Andong land attached Andong land attached

Unstable situation due to the rumor that it is Korea’s internal problem Increasing of assault and boycott against Koreans; those who are passing through Chinese town because of the incident brutally get evacuated Dangerous situation created by riot of nearly 200 Chinese people. Preliminary caution and evacuation considering many conflict between Chinese and Koreans

4 July 7 July 8 July

9 July 10 July

Andong xialiu sandaolangtou Fushun zhinating

Andong land attached Fushun land attached

Source: adopted and modified from gandocho keimukyokucho, ‘Conflicts with Koreans and vigilance’ [Senshijin shototsu jiken no kannai hakyu to keikai] (11 July 1931), Wanpaoshan Farm incident/General opinion for the tone of the press No. 7, Japan Center for Asia Historical Records, B02030184000.

deaths, 393 injured, and 2.5 million Japanese yen worth of Chinese property damage reported in Korea amid anti-Chinese movement (Park Youngsuk 1986: 129). According to a Japanese newspaper article of 9 July 1931, there were 180 deaths.29 To lessen the severity of the situation, the Chinese and Japanese in the area, along with their central government agencies, conducted negotiations from 22 July to 15 September, and an agreement was signed regarding the Wanpaoshan area. Japan agreed to pull their police forces out of Wanpaoshan, and yet the Koreans continued rice farming there, so the problem was never really resolved until the Manchuria incident occurred on 18 September 1931 (Park Yongsuk 1986: 139–140). To resolve the Wanpaoshan incident, China arrested Hao Yongde and jailed him until an agreement was reached. Japan also used Hao Yongde as leverage to get a better deal from the negotiations and released him afterward (Park Sunyoung 2009: 195). On 18 September 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. The Republic of China wanted to resolve the issue through diplomacy and raised their concerns over Japan’s illegal invasion to the League of Nations. The League dispatched the Lytton Commission to investigate the situation. The Lytton Commission paid particular attention to Wanpaoshan as a background of Japan’s Manchuria invasion. The investigation’s report was filed, and Japan avoided a second round of international investigation by withdrawing from the League of Nations. After Japan’s unconditional surrender in 1945, China put those involved with the Wanpaoshan incident on trial, and this also became a case at the Far East’s Tokyo military trial,30 which was overseen by the U.S. On 1 November 1947, Cao Yanshi, 62 years old, was charged and brought to the Jilin Supreme Court of Justice. This was the court trial for the individuals responsible for the Wanpaoshan incident. Before 18 September 1931, Cao Yanshi served as the council of Jilin Province, president of Changchun County’s agricultural department, and Changchun’s 1st district 246

Manchuria

representative. He was sentenced to two years and six months in prison, and three years of citizenship forfeiture on the ground that he communicated with foreign spies and helped them to take over China’s territory.31 Before the judgment was made, there was an open trial of the codefendants, Cao Yanshi and Hao Yongde, on 19 February 1947, in a local Changchun court. There were two reasons for the open trial. First, there was the prosecutor’s indictment of Hao Yondge around the end of 1946, for “robbery and conspiracy” related to the Wanpaoshan incident.32 Hao Yondge had already served several months in the Changchun County prison after the Wanpaoshan incident,33 but was released at Japan’s request. However, he was re-booked and placed in jail in 1947 for the same incident. The defendant Hao Yongde, codefendant of Cao Yanshi, and four Koreans, Byun Sangyin, Lee Johua, Yim Jintae, and Ryu Ryonghua, were openly interrogated in front of an audience of 500 people.34 The second reason was that, in January of 1947, the Republic of China announced general amnesty for those who had been sentenced to life. Both the defendant and codefendant in the Wanpaoshan incident were considered for a pardon. In 1947, a judge in a local Changchun court, Luo Fengming, knew that Hao Yongde would not get a life sentence with the charges of robbery and conspiracy, so he added more evidence35 to prosecute him with the high treason charge. With the additional charge of high treason, the only other possible sentence was the death penalty. The judge at that time thought that the Wanpaoshan incident was too big of a crime to warrant a pardon from a life sentence in prison. The verdict reads: Hao Yongde communicated with the empire of Japan to take over China’s territory and caused serious harm to the nation. Furthermore, his motive, resource, condition, development, and result of the incident warrant death penalty. Therefore, adding high treason to the charges of his crime justifies the death penalty. (Luo Fengming 1985: 54) Hao Yondge was dead two days before the judgment in jail due to illness. Therefore his indictment was dismissed according to criminal code. Other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for having threatened a pregnant woman, leading to her death. But the defendants denied all the charges against them and appealed to the Jilin Supreme Court. Defendant Cao Yanshi also denied all the charges against him, arguing that he was just charged as a codefendant in the case. He was sentenced to limited penal servitude in prison, and was later released from prison with the charges against him dismissed according to general amnesty (Luo Fengming 1985: 54–55). Most of the defendants in the Wanpaoshan incident, even as they had been put on trial for various other crimes, were dead before the trial sentence could be delivered, or had received life in prison later to be pardoned by the general amnesty and released. This can be seen as the simple outcome of the Wanpaoshan incident. The Wanpaoshan incident, which occurred between Korean and Chinese farmers near the town of Changchun, had a global impact. However, there was no clear resolution in the end. After the Manchuria invasion, the Lytton Commission investigated the Wanpaoshan incident, but their investigation was limited to making a report of the incident’s details. An anti-Chinese movement took place in Korea, but it remains unclear whether any of those involved were ever prosecuted. The Wanpaoshan incident was also discussed in the Tokyo trial, but was simply regarded as a precursor of the Manchuria invasion. After 16 years of the incident, re-trial of the individuals involved in the incident was simply impossible because of the deaths and general amnesty of the defendants. Therefore, nobody took historical responsibility for the incident, and it simply faded from the public memory without any clear-cut resolution. 247

Sunyoung Park

Different understandings of the Wanpaoshan incident are held by China, Korea, and Japan. How did other nations view the Wanpaoshan incident? First, different factions within China had different understandings of the incident. The Guomin government’s idea, for instance, was different from that of the Chinese Communist party. Both parties agreed that Japan was to blame for the incident, but the Guomin government placed the blame more on Japan’s invasion, while the Communist party blamed the nationalistic sentiments of China and Korea,36 because the mutual antagonism made it more difficult to form an allied anti-Japanese front in Manchuria.37 The Guomin government emphasized that the Wanpaoshan incident was not a mere accident, but was in line with a carefully planned38 and executed invasion policy into Manchuria and Mongolia on the part of the Japanese empire, which was using Koreans as an excuse to take over the territory.39 There were four specific pieces of evidence to support this claim. The first was the inclusion of Hao Yongde and Su Hanlin in the group of 12 people who signed a lease agreement that was not approved by the Chinese government. The second was that building a water canal disrupted the Yitonghe river stream, infringing on the rights of Chinese farmers. The third was that Koreans were not allowed to cultivate in this area in the first place. And finally, Japan escalated the problem by dispatching its police forces into China (Park Sunyoung 2009: 185). The Guomin government understood the incident as a leasing problem that negatively affected the rights of Chinese farmers, land usage, and extraterritoriality. China’s Communist Party viewed the Wanpaoshan incident in the following four ways. First, the incident exposed the Japanese empire’s attempt to invade the Manchurian region. Second, it was also an attempt to invade the Soviet Union later on. Third, it was the result of a Guomin party warlord surrendering to the Japanese empire in Manchuria. Fourth, the incident was a result of the Guomin party warlord expelling the revolutionary Koreans from the region.40 The Communist party emphasized that “Koreans are under the rule of Japanese empire and are exploited by Chinese warlord. Therefore let’s not discriminate against Koreans to seek their cooperation in our Communist unification efforts.”41 There were also different ideas about how to view those who were responsible for the Wanpaoshan incident. The Guomin government suggested that Japan was responsible for the invasion, while the Communist party claimed, “it is not Koreans who are responsible, but the Japanese Empire and proprietary classes of Nationalists and the warlords, who rely on imperialism and assist them.”42 The Japanese and Koreans, on the other hand, saw no problems with the lease agreement, and therefore blamed the Chinese for exerting unnecessary pressure on the Koreans. Novels written about the Wanpaoshan incident have different takes on the situation according to the country of publication. In August 1931, the Japanese writer Nakanishi Inosuke wrote about the Wanpaoshan Koreans for Chuokoron, and claimed that the root cause lay with Chinese harassment of Koreans over naturalization and dual citizenship problems.43 In October 1931, another Japanese writer, Ito Einosuke, wrote a short story titled Wanpaoshan, for Kaizo. He argued that the Chinese government was behind the conflict between the Chinese and Koreans. In March of 1933, Chinese writer Li Huiying published a novel called Wanpaoshan, which was published by the Shanghai Hufeng Press. This novel inspired the left-wing revolution and the formation of an opposition to the Japanese imperial invasion advocating Chinese- Korean coalition.44 Korean writers also wrote about the Wanpaoshan incident in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Kim Dongin’s Red Mountain described a complicated scenario between a Chinese perpetrator and a Korean victim evocative of the incident (Chung Haeyoung 2000: 74). In 1937, Lee Taejoon’s Farmers and An Sugil’s Rice were printed in the Mansun Daily Newspaper from 15 November 1941 until 25 December, featuring the Wanpaoshan incident in fictionalized form. The Japanese monthly Chuokoron carried Korean writer Zhang Hyukjoo’s Cultivation in April of 248

Manchuria

1943, which described the Japanese efforts to save Koreans from the Chinese in order to justify Japan’s Manchuria invasion as a way of bringing peace to East Asia.45 An analysis of the novels on the Wanpaoshan incident from the three different nations reveals the differences of opinion according to the author’s nationality (Kim Changho 2004: 384). The Wanpaoshan incident started out as a regional conflict, but became a starting point for a large-scale conflict throughout East Asia. The incident at the same time alerted the world to the importance of peaceful coexistence among different cultures.

Solutions of the Wanpaoshan incident and harmony among nations The Guomin government of China claimed the Wanpaoshan incident was a civil case and a criminal case, which later developed to become a diplomatic issue. It was a civil case because it started out as a complication over a land leasing agreement. It was a criminal case because the Koreans who should have followed Chinese law disobeyed the local Chinese government’s order. It became a diplomatic issue when the Koreans were not prosecuted by China with Japan’s interference (Park Sunyoung 2009: 197). According to the Lytton report, “Wanpaoshan incident was the direct cause of crisis between China and Japan in Manchuria along with captain Nakamura incident” (Park Yongsuk 1986: 135). Ikeda Hideo looked at the problem as “Koreans being pressured by Chinese in Manchuria for over hundreds of years” (Ikeda 1934: 30). Kamada Sawaichiro viewed the incident as “historic cause for the Manchuria incident” (Kamada 1934: 157). Ogino Fujio thought of the Wanpaoshan incident as “oppression by China’s government toward Korean farmers and also a starting point for Manchuria incident” (Ogino 2005: 276). The Xinmin Evening Post of Fengtian claimed that “Japan agitated Koreans to start riots in Korea immediately after the Wanpaoshan incident” (Ikeda 1934: 32). Therefore, forming a unified front between Koreans and Chinese was necessary. Regardless of these differences in opinion, one thing that was clearly understood by all parties was that the Wanpaoshan incident eventually led to Japan’s invasion of China. It took a natural procession of the incident that Japan had to bear the responsibility. However, the question of how to resolve cultural and ethnic conflicts as seen by the Wanpaoshan incident remains. Tianjin Dagong Newspaper in this regard emphasized two points about the incident. First, wherever the Japanese go, so do the Koreans. Thus, Koreans and Japanese must be treated equally. Second, the Japanese must understand that Koreans residing in China must follow the laws of the Chinese government, while the Chinese government must treat Koreans fairly, which would make it easier for Koreans to become naturalized Chinese nationals. These two conditions were deemed necessary in order to eliminate diplomatic conflict and learn from the Wanpaoshan incident. If no lessons can be drawn, the Wanpaoshan incident will be a waste of time for all the related parties and the problems will remain unresolved.46 Chinese intellectual Shen Zhongming proposed a political and diplomatic solution. He argued that the following seven rules must be abided by within the Chinese sovereign state: 1) Naturalized residents must obey China’s law; 2) Non-naturalized residents must register and follow the customary China-Japan laws; 3) Restrictions of government action and civil rights during a certain time period will be decided by detailed regulations of naturalized Korean resident laws on the lease and the management of land; 4) Severe punishment for the monopoly of county land will be reinforced; 5) Koreans will be taught about the policy of assimilation to propagate Chinese language and history in order to internalize national ideology; 6) Intensive controls will be implemented in order to control continuous and increasing Korean migration; and 7) Immigration policy must be reinforced to stop Koreans and Japanese from moving into the northern region. The following seven foreign policy recommendations were also made: 1) Immediate retreat of 249

Sunyoung Park

Japanese forces from the Wanpaoshan area; 2) Japanese compensation for the land damage caused by Koreans; 3) Japanese compensation for damages to civilian houses during Japan’s invasion; 4) The nullification of lease agreement between Hao Yongde and Koreans; 5) Japan will no longer interfere with conflicts between China and Korea; 6) Absolute disapproval rights shall be given for Korean lease land and cohabitation in inland areas; and 7) Japan will stop illegal propaganda activity (Shen Zhongming 1931: 76–81). These solutions suggest that the Wanpaoshan incident started because of dual citizenship, land leasing agreement, and the rights to cohabit in the inland area. Therefore, the proposals aimed to maintain legal bases and strengthen political restrictions to solve the problems. However, these do not resolve the basic problem of multicultural conflicts, and Japan tried to solve this problem by using force to invade Manchuria. Japan’s use of armed force still was not effective to resolve the multicultural conflict, and to achieve peace and harmony in Manchuria. When Japan established the Manzhou government, its top priority was to achieve harmony among nations.

Conclusion: Conflict resolution and the dilemmas of reconciliation Japan tried to create multicultural harmony from the beginning of the Manzhou government. Japan came to a full understanding of multicultural conflict during the 1931 Wanpaoshan incident, and learned that multicultural harmony was a necessary condition to control the Manzhou government. The conflict of the Wanpaoshan incident led to a chain of successive events: Korea’s anti-Chinese boycott; China’s anti-Japanese movement; the Manchuria incident; the League of Nation’s Lytton Commission investigation of the Wanpaoshan incident and its report; the establishment of the Manzhou government; the resolution of the League of Nations; Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations; November 1947 criminal trials for those responsible for the Wanpaoshan incident; and the Far Eastern Military tribunal on 4 November 1948. The Wanpaoshan incident involving China, Japan, and Korea became a global concern. Japan tried to solve the Wanpaoshan problems through forces deployment, instead of engaging in communication and international exchanges. After taking over Manchuria by force, Japan began to emphasize the idea of cultural harmony to solve intercultural conflicts. The dual citizenship constituted one of the core problems in the Wanpaoshan incident, and should have been resolved with the legislation of a nationality act by the Manzhou government, but the government never clearly resolved the problem. The Japanese instead used armed force in lieu of legal and policy implementations to resolve the problems. Japan flexed its muscle as the leader of the Manzhou government to enhance sociability among the nations. “Hand or foot and other parts of the body do what the brain commands them to do. Japanese made propaganda that all the peoples needed to cooperate with Japanese in order to achieve cultural harmony” (Kim Yongsam 1938: 8). The idea of national harmony, or a coalition under Japanese control, however, magnified the conflict between cultures and led to the eventual collapse of the Japanese empire. The historical understanding of Manchuria clearly shows that “multicultural cooperation is not about using force to obtain submission, but is about respecting each other.”47 History tells us that unilateral obedience and conflict is not realizable. What is more important is to learn how to understand and cultivate wisdom of coexistence and coprosperity. To achieve this end, addressing the practical issues such as land leasing agreements, dual citizenship, and the right to live together were important. But what mattered more was to discover and cultivate the value of multicultural coexistence. For a multicultural environment to sustain itself, consistent communication and interchange between different cultures are necessary to accept each other and go beyond the dichotomous thinking of mainstream vs. non-mainstream, subject vs. object, perpetrator vs. victim, majority 250

Manchuria

vs. minority, self vs. other, and authority vs. obedience. We are living in an age of globalization entailing many cultural conflicts and social chaos. East Asia is still coping with the dark legacies of past aggression, victimization, and unresolved restitution, compensation, and apology. The Wanpaoshan incident of more than 80 years ago provides East Asia an important lesson that we need to more aggressively seek a resolution for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence.

Notes 1 This includes people settling in a new territory because of immigration, wars, district boundary changes, or any other of a number of naturally occurring reasons. These people later developed into one minority population of a nation. 2 Park Yongsuk (1985) Manboshan yongu [Research on Wanpaoshan], Seoul: Asia Publishing House; Yang Zhaochuan (1988) ‘Wanbaoshan shijian’ [Wanbaoshan Incident], in Yang Zhaochuan (ed.), Zhongchao Guanxishi lunwenji [Papers on Sino-Korea Relations], Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe; Cui Xilan (2006) ‘Wanbaoshan shijianzhi yanjiu’ [Research on Wanpaoshan incident], Master’s thesis of Yanbian University, Yanji. 3 Midorikawa katsuko (1969) ‘Man hozan jiken oyobi chosen naihaika jiken ni tsuite no ichi kosatsu’ [Wanpaoshan incident and anti-Chinese incident in Korea], Chosenshi kenkyukai longmonshu [Bulletin of the Society for the Korean Historical Science] 6; Min Dugi (1999) ‘Manbosan sagon gwa hanguk onronui daeung’ [The Wanpaoshan incident and response of Korean media], Dongyang sahak yangu [Journal of Asian Historical Studies] 65; Kikuchi Kazutaka (2007) ‘Manhozan chosen jiken no jitai to gojo’ [Condition and structure of Wanpaoshan and Chosun incidents], Ninken bunka [Human culture] 22; Sa Bohye (2009) ‘Manbosan sagen gwa incheon hwakyo baechuk sagun yonku [Incheon Chinese boycott research: Perspective of Korean and Korean-Chinese relationship], Master’s thesis of Inha University, Incheon; Son Senghoy (2003) ‘Manbosan sagun gwa jungguk gongsandang’ [The Wanpaoshan incident and Chinese communist party] , Dongyang sahak yongu [Journal of Asian Historical Studies] 83; Lee Jaryung (2004) ‘Namkyung gukmin jungbu shiki jungguk ui hanguk yinsik’ [China’s view of Koreans during Nanjing National government era: Centered at movement of media toward the Wanpaoshan incident], Jungguksa yanku [Journal of Chinese Historical Research] 31. 4 Usui Katsumi (1965) ‘Chosenjin no kanashimi man hozan jiken showashi no shunkan’ [The Wanpaoshan incident, Korean’s sorrow: The moment of Showa history], Asahi Janaru 7–11; Sato Fumihiko (1991) ‘Manhozan jiken no lekishi teki yiki’ [The Wanpaoshan incident’s meaning], Aichi kakuyin daikaku bukakubu kiyo [Bulletin of Aichi University Literature] 21; Nagata Akifumi (2007) ‘Manpozan jiken to kokusai kankei beikoku gaikokan nado ga mita jiken no ichi sokumen’ [Wanpaoshan incident and international relationship: USA diplomat’s perspective], Jochi shikaku [Jochi History Journal] 52. 5 Ito Einosuke (1931) ‘Manhozan’ [Wanpaoshan], kaizo 10; Lee Taejoon (1939) ‘Farmers’, Bunsho 7; Li Huiying (1933) Wanpaoshan, Shanghai: Shanghai Hufeng Press; Chung Haeyoung (2000) ‘Kim dongyin ‘akai yama’ to manhozan jiken: 1930 nendai no shosetsu ni arawareta manshu’ [Dong-In Kim’s Red Mountain and Mt. Manpo conflict: Manchuria in the 1930s Korean and Japanese Literature], Bunkaku kenkyu lonshu [Journal of Literature Studies] 18; Ren Xiubin (2004) ‘Manshu: manhozan jiken (1931 nen) to chukoku, nihon, kankoku bunkaku’ [Manchuria, Wanpaoshan incident (1931) and literature of China, Japan and Korea], Tokyo daikaku chukokuko chukoku bunkaku kenkyushitsu kiyo [Tokyo University Journal of Chinese Literature] 7; Zhang Yunhyang (2008) ‘Chosenjin nomin no yume to namida kaikon no manpozan jiken o chushin ni’ [Hopes and tears of Korean farmers: Cultivation of Manchuria incident], Kindai bunkaku lonshu [Journal of Modern Literature] 34; Li Xiaoming (2008) ‘Lishi jijian yu zuoyi xiaoshuo shushi moshi: li Huiying ‘Wanbaoshan zhi yanjiu’ [Left wing influential novel: Lee, Hwi Young’s Wanpaoshan research], Master’s thesis of Donbei Normal University, Changchun. 6 Manshu koku shi hensan kanko kai (eds)(1971) Manshu koku shi: solon [History of Manzhou Government: General Introduction], Tokyo: Manmo do ho engokai, p. 74. 7 The population density in the mountain region was less than ten people per 1 km square. 8 Manshu koku shi hensan yiyinkai (eds)(1971) Manshu koku shi: kakulon [History of Manzhou Governement: Particular], Tokyo: Manmo do ho Engokai, p. 58. 9 Manshu koku shi hensan kanko kai(eds)(1971) Manshu koku shi: solon [History of Manzhou Government: General Introduction], Tokyo: Manmo do ho engokai, p. 6. 10 Shang (垧) was a measure of land equal to 15 mu in most parts of the Northeast and three or five mu in the Northwest.

251

Sunyoung Park 11 ‘Zhongyang xuanchuanbu dui wanbaoshan canan ji chaoxian paihua xuanchuan dagang’ [General introduction of propaganda by Central Publicity department about Wanpaoshan and Anti-Chinese Incident] (1931), Guomin party central committee, Wanbaoshan shijian ji Chaoxian paihua canan [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean Boycott incident], Nanjing: Guomin party central committee, pp. 9–10. 12 Lee shangha (Gandosheng Choktak)(1939) ‘minzok hyuphua en gazok hyuphua eseo’ [Nation harmony starts from family harmony], Jae man chosun in tongxin [Korean Correspondence in Manchuria] 63–2, Fengtian: Hunga hyuphoi, p. 3. 13 Kantogun sanbo connoisseur Katakura (1937) ‘manzhuguk ui myengranghua nen hyuphua undong ui shilchon esoman minzok munje ui haegyul en minzok hyuphua dalsung esoman’ [Manchuria’s cheerfulness from exercising unification and solution to cultural conflicts comes from nation harmony], Jae man chosun in tongxin [Korean Correspondence in Manchuria] 30–31/7, Fengtian: Hunga hyuphoi, p. 19. 14 ‘Gakchi wo ohareta sennoga yuyitsu no katsulo: jiken no ura ni ukoku shina ganken no te’ [Only exit strategy for Korean farmers that were deported: Hand of China’s authorities, which move within the incident] (4 July 1931), Tokyo Asahi Newspaper. 15 Guomin zhengfu guoshiguan dangan [Archive of National History of Guomin Government], ‘Changchunshizheng choubeichuwei diaocha wanbaoshan shijian zhi jilinsheng zhengfu dianchao jian’ [Investigative report which was sent to Jilinsheng government done by Changchun city preparatory committee] (14 August 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). 16 ‘Changnong daotian gongsi jingli haoyongde yu didong qianding de zudi zhongdao qiyue’ (16 April 1931) [The lease agreement between Hao yongde, the president of Changnong Daotian company and the tenant], in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 10. 17 ‘Haoyongde yu xianren lee shenghun deng jiuren suo ding de zhuanzu qiyue’ (April 1931) [Lease agreement between 9 other Koreans with Hao Yongde and Lee Seung hoon], in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds) (1991), pp. 11–12. 18 ‘Changchunshizheng Choubeichu wei diaocha wanbaoshan shijian zhi jilinsheng Zhengfu dianchaojian’ [Archives of National History, ‘Investigative report which was sent to Jilin Province government done by Changchun city preparatory office’] (14 August 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). 19 ‘Changchunxian gonganjuzhang wei rijing chetui hou xinlai hanmin renshu zaoce gei jingwuchu de chengbao’ [Population report that was reported to police department of Korean who moved in after Security officer of Changchun county deported Japanese police force] (16 August 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), pp. 103–110. The security office of Changchun County twice surveyed newly migrated Koreans to the Wanpaoshan area, on 4 May and 16 August 1931. There was very little overlap of persons in the data, but it is still very useful in studying Korean immigrants. 20 ‘Jilinsho seifu no chosenjin attpaku mituleini gansuru ken’ [Jilin Governments pressure on Koreans about secret order] (8 May 1931), Zai Changchun Tashiro ryoji youri shidehara gaimu daijin ate [Ambassador Tashiro of Changchun mail to foreign ministry Shidehara], from 7 April 1931 to 15 June 1931, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, B02030167100. 21 ‘Jilinsheng zhengfu di 1273 hao zhiling’ [No. 1273 order of Jilin province government] in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 5. 22 ‘Senshijin no shototu zenji gaku chiho ni hakyusu’ [Conflict between Korean and Chinese gradually influence to many places] (6 July 1931), ‘rokk sen no boto detuya de socho’ [6 thousand gangster overnight disturbance], Tokyo Asahi Newspaper; Pyongyang no hohuku bodo [Rebenge riot in Pyongyang] (7 July 1931), Tokyo Asahi Newspaper. 23 ‘Dongbei hanren wentizhi zhongdaxing’ [Importance of Korean issue in Manchuria] (7 July 1931), Beijing chenbao; ‘Chaoxian paihua echao zhi fenxi’ [Analysis on bad tide of boycott Chinese in Korea] (10 July 1931), Beijing chenbao; ‘Wanbaoshan shijian zhi yanzhonghua’ [Getting severe of Wanpaoshan incident] (5 July 1931), Daagongbao; ‘Chaoxian paihua yu dongbei hanqiao wenti’ [Anti Chinese in Korea and Korean problem in Manchuria] (9 July 1931), Dagongbao; ‘Minzhong dangqian zhi jiwu’ [Urgent needs for people today] (12 July 1931), Shenyang minbao; ‘Wanbaoshananzhi zhongyao wenjian’ [Important records of Wanpaoshan incident] (13 to 15 July 1931) I II III, Yishibao. 24 ‘Wanbaoshanan jiaosh wutouxu’ [No clue to negotiate for Wanpaoshan Case] (6 July 1931), Hubei zhongshan ribao; ‘Wanbaoshan jiaoshe shangwu touxu’ [Still no clue to negotiate for Wanpaoshan Case] (6 July 1931), Hankou zhongxibao; ‘Zaocheng dier jinan canan’ [Build the second Jinan case] (6 July 1931), Hankou zhongxibao; ‘Wanbaoshan rijing shuhua nongan’ [Japanese police man kill Chinese in Nongan] (6 July 1931), Xinminbao. 25 ‘Chukaminkoku ni okeru hai nikka undo’ [Boycott Japanese products in Republic of China], Japan Center for Historical Records, B02030172600.

252

Manchuria 26 ‘Manhozan nocho jiken/hainitu kankei’ [Wanpaoshan Farm Incident] No. 1–5, Japan Center for Historical Records, B02030168100, B02030169700, B02030171000, B02030172200, B02030173500;‘Changchuxian jiaoyuhui nonghui zong shanghui zhi jilinsheng zhengfu dian’ [Letter to Changchun county from education association, famers union, commercial union] (5 July 1931); ‘changchushi xuesheng kangri houyuanhui xuanyan’ [Announcement of student anti-Japanese supporter in Changchun city] (5 July 1931); ‘shanxisheng taiyuanshi dierci shimin daibiao dahui kangyi riren zhizao wanwan dian’ [Telegram of Shanxi Province Taiyuan city on the second civilian activity about against Japanese who made Wanpaoshan incident] (6 July 1931); ‘Yazhou wenhua xiehui zhi geguo dongdian’ [Telegram from Asia culture association to foreign countries] (7 July 1931); ‘liaoning guomin waijiao xiehui andong fenhui gao chuanguo dongbaoshu’ [Andong branch of Liaoning National diplomat association letter to nationwide compatriot] (10 July 1931); ‘Harbinshi shanghui shengtao riben diguozhuyi zhizao wanbaoshan shijian zhi tongdian’ [Telegram of Harbin firm condemn on Japanese Imperialism made Wanpaoshan incident] (12 July 1931); ‘Tianjinshi fanri yuanqiaohui tongdian’ [Telegram of Tianjin city support for anti-Japanese] (15 July 1931); ‘suifenhe shanghui quanshi shimin wei wanbaoshan shijian tichu jiaoshe santiao zhi tongdian’ [Telegram of Sufenhe firm for whole citizen on Wanpaoshan incident about 3 clauses negotiation] (21 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), pp. 381–439; ‘Gedi minzhong tuanti dui wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian paihua canan zhi wendian’ [Telegram of various places of civilian group on Wanpaoshan incident and Korean boycott Chinese incident], Wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian paihua canan [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean Boycott Chinese incident], Nanjing: Guomin party central committee, pp. 95–131. 27 ‘Attacks on Chinese renewed in Korea’ (6 July 1931);‘Koreans massacre Chinese at Heijo’ (7 July 1931); ‘Korea quiet again: Riot toll put at 89’ (8 July 1931); ‘Korean rioting diminishes’ (11 July 1931); ‘Japan shows regret For Korean trouble’ (10 July 1931); ‘Chinese act to boycott Japan for Korean riots: Will meet tomorrow to denounce killing’ (12 July 1931);‘Deny planning boycott’ (13 July 1931); Herbert E. Moy, ‘Chinese dislike for Koreans’ (9 August 1931); ‘Demand Japan apologize’ (25 August 1931); ‘China again seeks Japanese apology’ (27 August 1931). All of these articles are from The New York Times. 28 Johnson to Stimson, 8 July 1931, 895, 4016/3, Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Korea, 1930–1939, Microfilm (National Archives, Washington, 1986), No. M176, Reel 1; Nagata Akifumi (2007) ‘Mahozan jiken to gokksai gankei: beigoku kaikogan natoga mita jiken no ittsokumen’ [The Wanpaoshan incident and international relationship: View of USA’s diplomat], Chochi Shikaku [History Journal of Sophia University] 52, 1–37, p. 10. 29 Zhang yunhe zhixin: zairi huaqiao louzao xiongou’ [Zhang yunhe’s letter: Repeated assault on Japanese Chinese man] (9 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 239. 30 ‘Manshu ni okeru nika chototu no kaikyo: Manhozan jiken’ [Conflict between Japan and China in Manchuria region], A kyu kyokudo gokksai gunji saipan giroku [A Level Military Trial Document of Far East] no. 75, Japan Center for Historical Records, A08071288500. 31 ‘Jilin gaodeng fayuan xingshi panjueshu [Verdict from high court of justice of Jilin]), 1 November 1947 trial, in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 667. 32 ‘Changchun defang fayuan gongkai shenxun wanbaoshanan zhufan Hao Yongde’ [Public investigation of regional court of Changchun of main offender Hao Yongde] (19 February 1947), Zhongyang ribao. 33 ‘Haoan fayuan pangtingji’ [Court record of Hao Yongde] (20 February 1947), Zhongyang ribao. This article states that he was sentenced for six months. But, according to Truth of Sino-Japan Problem, a report from the Guomin Government to the League of Nations, the Japanese report indicated that he was released from prison on 20 September 1931. Therefore, this chapter states that Hao Yongde was imprisoned for many months, because there is not enough evidence to be more specific. 34 ‘Gongshen Hao Yongde dengren’ [Public investigation of Hao Yongde] (20 February 1947), Zhongyang shibao [Zhongyang Times]. 35 ‘Shentushuguan faxian wanbaoshan dangan’ [The Wanpaoshan data obtained at Shenyang library] (9 March 1947), Shishi Gongbao. 36 ‘Zhonggong Manzhoushengwei guanyu wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian canan xuanchuan dagang’ [General propaganda of Manzhou provincial committee of Chinese Communist party on Wanpaoshan and Korean Incident] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 362. 37 ‘Zhongguo gongchandang wei riben diguozhuyi zai wanbaoshan tusha zhongguo minzhong xuanyan’ [Announcement made by China’s communist party for Japan empire’s slaughter of Chinese people in Wanpaoshan] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 360. 38 Zhongguo guomindang harbin dangwu tepaiyuan banshichu [Harbin Branch of Chinese Guomin Party Correspondent Office] (1931) Wanbaoshan jishian zhi zhenxiang [The truth of Wanpaoshan incident],

253

Sunyoung Park

39

40

41

42

43

44

45 46 47

Zhongguo guomindang haerbin dangwu tepaiyuan banshichu bianyin [Harbin branch of Chinese Guomin Party Correspondent office], p. 11. Nanjing Tebieshi zhixing weiyuanhui tongdian [Telegram of executive committee of Nanjing], Wanbaoshan shijian ji Chaoxian paihua canan [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean boycott Chinese incident], Nanjing: Guomin party central committee, p. 64. ‘Zhonggong Manzhoushengwei guanyu wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian canan xuanchuan dagang’ [General propaganda of Manzhou provincial committee of Chinese Communist party on Wanpaoshan and Korean Incident] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 362; Zhongyang Danganguan [Central Archives] Liaoning sheng danganguan [Liaoning Provincial Archives], Jilinsheng danganguan [Jilin Provincial Archives], Heirongjiang sheng danganguan [Heirongjiang Provincial Archives], Dongbei diqu geming lishi wenjian huiji [Historical Records Bulletin of Revolutionary in Manchuria] A8 (1931.4–1931.7), pp. 225–229. ‘Zhongguo gongchandang wei riben diguozhuyi zai wanbaoshan tusha zhongguo minzhong xuanyan’ [Announcement made by China’s communist party for Japan empire’s slaughter of Chinese people in Wanpaoshan] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 361. ‘Zhongguo gongchandang wei riben diguozhuyi zai wanbaoshan tusha zhongguo minzhong xuanyan’ [Announcement made by China’s communist party for Japan empire’s slaughter of Chinese people in Wanpaoshan] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991), p. 361. Nakanishi Inosuke (August 1931), ‘Manhozan jiken to senno’ [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean farmer], Chuo koronsh, Tokyo: Chuo kornsha; Nakanishi Inosuke (August 1931) ‘manshu ni hyohaku suru chosenjin’ [Korean floating in Manchuria], Tokyo: kaizo. Li xiaoming (2008) ‘lishi jijian yu zuoyi xiaoshuo shushi moshi: li Huiying ‘Wanbaoshan zhi yanjiu’ [Left wing influential novel: Lee, Hwi Young’s Wanpaoshan research], Master’s thesis from Donbei Normal University, Changchun. Kim Hakdong (2007) ‘Zhang Hyukzhu ui ‘gaegan’ gwa manboshan sagun’ [Zhang Hyukzhu’s “cultivation” and Wanpaoshan incident]), Inmunhak yonku [Journal of Humanities] 34–2, p. 81. ‘Jiejue wanbaoshan zhi qiantu’ [Propagation for the solution of Wanpaoshan incident] (13 August 1931), Tianjin Dagngbao. Sanyupbu takzhengsa samuguan Jin Yanggen [Officer of Industry Department] (January 1939) ‘Imin gwa minzok hyuphua’ [Immigration and nation harmony], Jae man chosun in tongxin [Korean Correspondence in Manchuria] 30/31–7, Fengtian: Hunga hyuphoi, p. 41.

References ‘Attacks on Chinese renewed in Korea’ (6 July 1931), The New York Times. ‘Changchunshizheng Choubeichu wei diaocha wanbaoshan shijian zhi jilinsheng Zhengfu dianchaojian’ [Archives of National History, ‘Investigative report which was sent to Jilin Province government done by Changchun city preparatory office’] (14 August 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Changchunxian gonganjuzhang wei rijing chetui hou xinlai hanmin renshu zaoce gei jingwuchu de chengbao’ [Population report that was reported to police department of Korean who moved in after Security officer of Changchun county deported Japanese police force] (16 August 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Changchunxian jiaoyuhui nonghui zong shanghui zhi jilinsheng zhengfu dian’ [Letter to Changchun county from education association, famers union, commercial union] (5 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991) . ‘Changchun difang fayuan gongkai shenxun wanbaoshanan zhufan Hao Yongde’ [Public investigation of regional court of Changchun of main offender Hao Yongde] (19 February 1947), Zhongyang ribao. ‘Changchunshi xuesheng kangri houyuanhui xuanyan’ [Announcement of student anti-Japanese supporter in Changchun city] (5 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991) . ‘Changnong daotian gongsi jingli haoyongde yu didong qianding de zudi zhongdao qiyue’ [The lease agreement between Hao yongde, the president of Changnong Daotian company and the tenant] (16 April 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Chaoxian paihua echao zhi fenxi’ [Analysis on bad tide of boycott Chinese in Korea] (10 July 1931), Beijing chenbao. ‘Chaoxian paihua yu dongbei hanqiao wenti’ [Anti Chinese in Korea and Korean problem in Manchuria] (9 July 1931), Dagongbao.

254

Manchuria ‘China again seeks Japanese apology’ (27 August 1931), The New York Times. ‘Chinese act to boycott Japan for Korean riots: Will meet tomorrow to denounce killing’ (12 July 1931), The New York Times. ‘Chukaminkoku ni okeru hai nikka undo’ [Boycott Japanese products in Republic of China], Japan Center for Historical Records, B02030172600. Chung Haeyoung (2000) ‘Kim dongyin “akai yama” to manhozan jiken: 1930 nendai no shosetsu ni arawareta manshu’ [Dong-In Kim’s Red Mountain and Mt. Manpo conflict: Manchuria in the 1930s Korean and Japanese Literature], bunkaku kenkyu lonshu [Journal of Literature Studies] 18. ‘Demand Japan apologize’ (25 August 1931), The New York Times. ‘Deny planning boycott’ (13 July 1931), The New York Times. ‘Dongbei hanren wentizhi zhongdaxing’ [Importance of Korean issue in Manchuria] (7 July 1931), Beijing chenbao. Fang dexiu (eds) (1969) Dongbei difang yange ji qi minzu [History of Northern Area and the People], Taipei: Taiwan kaiming shudian. Gaimusho (eds) (1995) Nihon gaiko bunsho [Archives of Japanese Foreign Ministry], Showa period 1, 1–5(1931), Tokyo: Foreign Ministry. ‘Gakchi wo ohareta sennoga yuyitsu no katsulo: jiken no ura ni ukoku shina ganken no te’ [Only exit strategy for Korean farmers that were deported: Hand of China’s authorities, which move within the incident] (4 July 1931), Tokyo Asahi Newspaper. ‘Gedi minzhong tuanti dui wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian paihua canan zhi wendian’ [Telegram of various places of civilian group on Wanpaoshan incident and Korean boycott Chinese incident], in Wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian paihua canan [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean Boycott Chinese Incident], Nanjing: Guomin party central committee. Guomin zhengfu guoshiguan dangan [Archive of National History of Guomin Government], ‘Changchunshizheng choubeichuwei diaocha wanbaoshan shijian zhi jilinsheng zhengfu dianchao jian [Investigative report which was sent to Jilinsheng government done by Changchun city preparatory committee] (14 August 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). Zhongguo guomindang haerbin dangwu tepaiyuan banshichu bianyin [Harbin Branch of Chinese Guomin Party Correspondent Office] (1931) Wanbaoshan jishian zhi zhenxiang [The Truth of Wanpaoshan incident], Harbin: Harbin branch of Chinese Guomin Party Correspondent office. ‘Haoyongde yu xianren lee shenghun deng jiuren suo ding de zhuanzu qiyue’ [Lease agreement between 9 other Koreans with Hao Yongde and Lee Seung hoon] (April 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Haoan fayuan pangtingji’ [Court record of Hao Yongde] (20 February 1947), Zhongyang ribao. ‘Harbinshi shanghui shengtao riben diguozhuyi zhizao wanbaoshan shijian zhi tongdian’ [Telegram of Harbin firm condemn on Japanese Imperialism made Wanpaoshan incident] (12 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). Herbert E. Moy, ‘Chinese dislike for Koreans’ (9 August 1931), The New York Times. Ikeda Hideo (1934) Manshu tochiron [Control Theory of Manchuria], Tokyo: Nihon Hyo ronsha. ‘Japan shows regret for Korean trouble’ (10 July 1931), The New York Times. ‘Jilin gaodeng fayuan xingshi panjueshu’ [Verdict from high court of justice of Jilin] (1 November 1947 trial), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Jiejue wanbaoshan zhi qiantu’ [Propagation for the solution of Wanpaoshan incident] (13 August 1931), Tianjin Dagngbao. Johnson to Stimson (8 July 1931), 895, 4016/3, Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Korea, 1930–1939, Microfilm (National Archives, Washington, 1986), No. M176, Reel 1. Kamada Sawaichiro (1934) Manshu imin no atarashiki michi [New Path to Manchuria Immigration], Tokyo: Chikura Shobo. Kim Changho (2004) ‘Dongasian ‘taja’ hyungsang bikyo yonku: manboshan sagun ul suyonghan hanjungil sosul ul jungsimuiro’ [East Asia ‘other’ shape comparison research: Focused on Chinese, Korean, and Japanese novels about Wanpaoshan incident], Jungguk hyundae munhak [Modern Chinese Literature] 31. Kim Hakdong (2007) ‘Zhang Hyukzhu ui ‘gaegan’ gwa manboshan sagun’ [Zhang Hyukzhu’s “cultivation” and Wanpaoshan incident]), Inmunhak yonku [Journal of Humanities] 34–2. ‘Gongshen Hao Yongde dengren’ [Public investigation of Hao Yongde] (20 February 1947), Zhongyang shibao. Kantogun sanbo connoisseur Katakura (1937) ‘manzhuguk ui myengranghua nen hyuphua undong ui shilchon esoman minzok munje ui haegyul en minzok hyuphua dalsung esoman’ [Manchuria’s cheerfulness from exercising unification and solution to cultural conflicts comes from nation harmony], Jae man chosun in tongxin [Korean Correspondence in Manchuria] 30/31–7,

255

Sunyoung Park Kim yongsam (1938) ‘naesun ilche wa minzok hyuphua’ [Unification of Japan and Korea and nation harmony], Jae man chosun in tongxin [Korean Correspondence in Manchuria] 61–12. ‘Koreans massacre Chinese at Heijo’ (7 July 1931), The New York Times. ‘Korea quiet again: Riot toll put at 89’ (8 July 1931), The New York Times. ‘Korean rioting diminishes’ (11 July 1931), The New York Times. Lee shangha (Gandosheng Choktak) (1939) ‘minzok hyuphua en gazok hyuphua eseo’ [Nation harmony starts from family harmony], Jae man chosun in tongxin [Korean Correspondence in Manchuria] 63–2. ‘Liaoning guomin waijiao xiehui andong fenhui gao chuanguo dongbaoshu’ [Andong branch of Liaoning National diplomat association letter to nationwide compatriot] (10 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). Li xiaoming (2008) ‘lishi jijian yu zuoyi xiaoshuo shushi moshi: li Huiying ‘Wanbaoshan zhi yanjiu’ [Left wing influential novel: Lee, Hwi Young’s Wanpaoshan research], Master’s thesis from Dongbei Normal University, Changchun. Luo Fengming (1985) ‘wanbaoshan shijiande shenli’ [Investigation of Wanpaoshan incident], Faxue Zazhi [Journal of Law] 6. MJA (Manshu Jijo Annaijo) (1938), Manshu koku no genju minzoku [Current Residing Nationals in Manchuria], Xinjing: Manshu Jijo Annaijo Press. ‘Manhozan nocho jiken/hainitu kankei’ [Wanpaoshan Farm Incident] No. 1–5, Japan Center for Historical Records, B02030168100, B02030169700, B02030171000, B02030172200, B02030173500. Manshu koku shi hensan kanko kai (eds)(1971) Manshu koku shi: solon [History of Manzhou government: General introduction], Tokyo: Manmo do ho engokai. Manshu koku shi hensan yiyinkai (eds)(1971) Manshu koku shi: kakulon [History of Manzhou Governement: Particular], Tokyo: Manmo do ho Engokai ‘Manshu ni okeru nika chototu no kaikyo: Manhozan jiken’ [Conflict between Japan and China in Manchuria region], in A kyu kyokudo gokksai gunji saipan giroku [A Level Military Trial Document of Far East] no. 75, Japan Center for Historical Records, A08071288500. ‘Minzhong dangqian zhi jiwu’ [Urgent needs for people today] (12 July 1931), Shenyang minbao. Nakanishi Inosuke (August 1931) ‘Manhozan jiken to senno’ [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean farmer], Chuo koron, Tokyo: Chuo kornsha. Nakanishi Inosuke (August 1931) ‘Manshu ni hyohaku suru chosenjin’ [Korean floating in Manchuria], kaizo. Nagata Akifumi (2007) ‘Mahozan jiken to gokksai gankei: beigoku kaikogan natoga mita jiken no ittsokumen’ [The Wanpaoshan incident and international relationship: View of USA’s diplomat], Chochi Shikaku [History Journal of Sophia University] 52. Nanjing Tebieshi zhixing weiyuanhui tongdian [Telegram of executive committee of Nanjing], in Wanbaoshan shijian ji Chaoxian paihua canan [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean Boycott Incident], Nanjing: Guomin party central committee. Ogino Fujio (2005) Gaimush keisatsushi: zairyu min hogo torishimari to Tokko Keisatsu kino [The Police of Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Protection and Arrest by Special Police Duty for Residents], Tokyo: Azekura Shobo. Park Sunyoung (trans)(2009) Jungil munje ui jinsang [Truth of Sino-Japanese Problem], Seoul: East Asia Historical Foundation. Park Yongsuk (trans)(1986) Lytton Report, Seoul: Tamgudang. ‘Pyongyang no hohuku bodo’ [Rebenge riot in Pyongyang] (7 July 1931), Tokyo Asahi Newspaper. Sanyupbu takzhengsa samuguan [Officer of Industry Department] Jin Yanggen (January 1939) ‘Imin gwa minzok hyuphua’ [Immigration and nation harmony], Jae man chosun in tongxin [Korean Correspondence in Manchuria] 62, Fengtian: Hunga hyuphoi. ‘Senshijin no shototu zenji gaku chiho ni hakyusu’ [Conflict between Korean and Chinese gradually influence to many places], ‘rokk sen no boto detuya de socho’ [6 thousand gangster overnight disturbance] (6 July 1931), Tokyo Asahi Newspaper. ‘Shanxisheng taiyuanshi dierci shimin daibiao dahui kangyi riren zhizao wanwan dian’ [Telegram of Shanxi Province Taiyuan city on the second civilian activity about against Japanese who made Wanpaoshan incident] (6 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). Shen zhongming (1931) You wanbaoshan shijian shuodao dongbei cunwang [Existence and death of North Eastern Area from Wanpaoshan incident point of view], Harbin: Guangsheng Press. ‘Shentushuguan faxian wanbaoshan dangan’ [The Wanpaoshan data obtained at Shenyang library] (9 March 1947), Shishi Gongbao.

256

Manchuria Shinzo Araragi (1995) Manshu imin no rekishi shakaigaku [History of Sociology about Manchuria Immigration], Kyoto: Korosha. ‘Suifenhe shanghui quanshi shimin wei wanbaoshan shijian tichu jiaoshe santiao zhi tongdian’ [Telegram of Sufenhe firm for whole citizen on Wanpaoshan incident about 3 clauses negotiation] (21 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Tianjinshi fanri yuanqiaohui tongdian’ [Telegram of Tianjin city support for anti-Japanese] (15 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Wanbaoshan shijian zhi yanzhonghua’ [Getting severe of Wanpaoshan incident] (5 July 1931), Daagongbao. ‘Wanbaoshananzhi zhongyao wenjian’ [Important records of Wanpaoshan incident] (13 to 15 July 1931) I II III, Yishibao. ‘Wanbaoshanan jiaosh wutouxu’ [No clue to negotiate for Wanpaoshan case] (6 July 1931), Hubei zhongshan ribao. ‘Wanbaoshan jiaoshe shangwu touxu’ [Still no clue to negotiate for Wanpaoshan case] (6 July 1931), Hankou zhongxibao. ‘Wanbaoshan rijing shuhua nongan’ [Japanese police man kill Chinese in Nongan] (6 July 1931), Xinminbao. Wang Depu (1957) ‘dongbei wentide jiantao’ [Re-examination of North Eastern problem], in Wang daren (eds), Dongbei yanjiu lunji [Journal of North East Research] 1. Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991) Wanbaoshan shijian [Wanpaoshan incident], Changchun: Jilin Renmin Press. Yan Sleki (2006) ‘Yuda ya hatkei lojin ni totte no manshu’ [Jewish and White Russian people in Manchuria], in Fujiwara Shoten henshubu (eds), Manshutowa nandattanoka [What was Manchuria], Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten. ‘Yazhou wenhua xiehui zhi geguo dongdian’ [Telegram from Asia culture association to foreign countries] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). Yoda Yoshiie (1976) ‘manshu ni okeru chosen jin imin’ [Korean immigration on Manchuria road], in Association of Manchuria Immigration, nihon teikoku shuki shita no manshu imin [Manchuria Immigration under Japanese Empire], Tokyo: Ryukei Shosha. Yu Bing (1957) ‘Dongbei yu shijie dazhan wenti’ [Problem of north eastern and world war], in Wang daren (eds), Dongbei yanjiu lunji [Journal of North East Research] 1. ‘Zaocheng dier jinan canan’ [Build the second Jinan case] (6 July 1931), Hankou zhongxibao. Zhang yunhe zhixin: zairi huaqiao louzao xiongou [Zhang yunhe’s letter: Repeated assault on Japanese Chinese man] (9 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Zhonggong Manzhoushengwei guanyu wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian canan xuanchuan dagang’ [General propaganda of Manzhou provincial committee of Chinese Communist party on Wanpaoshan and Korean Incident] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Zhongguo gongchandang wei riben diguozhuyi zai wanbaoshan tusha zhongguo minzhong xuanyan [Announcement made by China’s communist party for Japan empire’s slaughter of Chinese people in Wanpaoshan] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Zhongyang xuanchuanbu dui wanbaoshan canan ji chaoxian paihua xuanchuan dagang’ [General introduction of propaganda by Central Publicity department about Wanpaoshan and Anti-Chinese Incident] (1931), in Wanbaoshan shijian ji Chaoxian paihua canan [Wanpaoshan incident and Korean Boycott incident], Nanjing: Guomin party central committee. ‘Zhonggong Manzhoushengwei guanyu wanbaoshan shijian ji chaoxian canan xuanchuan dagang’ [General propaganda of Manzhou provincial committee of Chinese Communist party on Wanpaoshan and Korean Incident] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Zhongguo gongchandang wei riben diguozhuyi zai wanbaoshan tusha zhongguo minzhong xuanyan’ [Announcement made by China’s communist party for Japan empire’s slaughter of Chinese people in Wanpaoshan] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). ‘Zhongguo gongchandang wei riben diguozhuyi zai wanbaoshan tusha zhongguo minzhong xuanyan [Announcement made by China’s communist party for Japan empire’s slaughter of Chinese people in Wanpaoshan] (7 July 1931), in Wanglin, Gaoshuying (eds)(1991). Zhongyang Danganguan [Central Archives], Liaoning sheng danganguan [Liaoning Provincial Archives], Jilinsheng danganguan [Jilin Provincial Archives], Heirongjiang sheng danganguan [Heirongjiang Provincial Archives](eds), Dongbei diqu geming lishi wenjian huiji [Historical Records Bulletin of Revolutionary in Manchuria] A8 (1931.4–1931.7).

257

This page intentionally left blank

PART 6

Japan-Korea relations

This page intentionally left blank

16 COMFORT WOMEN CONTROVERSY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR JAPAN-ROK RECONCILIATION Yangmo Ku

Imperial Japan forced a large number of young women to work as military prostitutes during World War II. These so-called “comfort women”1 endured tremendous agonies under inhumane conditions, and their suffering continued even long after the end of the war. Despite its traumatic features, this comfort women issue remained largely unacknowledged for more than four decades following Japan’s defeat in 1945. This long-overlooked issue eventually created political and social controversies in the early 1990s. The Japanese government made apologies, and helped establish a nongovernmental fund, Asian Women’s Fund (AWF), to compensate the surviving comfort women in the early and mid-1990s. Since then, however, the Japanese state has often retreated from its previous apologetic attitudes. Why did the comfort women issue remain unaddressed for such a long time? What motivated Japan to exhibit an apologetic, though not a full-fledged, stance on the past wrongs in the early and mid-1990s? Why did the Japanese state frequently roll back from its former apologetic postures? In responding to these questions, the analysis in this chapter unfolds in three parts. First, it briefly explores the historical background of the comfort women issue. Second, the chapter traces how controversies over the issue have evolved since the end of World War II, particularly following the late 1980s when nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in South Korea began to raise the issue seriously. Lastly, it analyzes what implications this comfort women controversy has for Japan-Republic of Korea (hereafter, ROK or South Korea) reconciliation.

Historical background During World War II, imperial Japan forcibly recruited a vast number of women from its colonized and occupied territories into military prostitution. It has been estimated that these comfort women, whose number ranged from 50,000 to 200,000, were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers between 1932 and 1945 (Soh 1996; Piper 2001; AWF 2007). Comfort stations were first established in Shanghai around 1932, and the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 prompted the Japanese military to take the general policy of establishing military brothels in various occupied locations (Yoshimi 2000: 43–51). Despite the lack of accurate information, unearthed documents and testimony show that Koreans made up about 80 to 90 percent of comfort women, and were 261

Yangmo Ku

mostly in their mid-teens and early twenties (Chung 1995: 16–19). The most common method of recruitment was to deceive women with false promises of employment in Japan.2 Among other methods were recruitment by more violent means such as abduction and human trafficking, and destitute families selling daughters into indentured prostitution (Soh 2008: 107). The Japanese imperial government and army decided to set up the military comfort women system mainly for the following three reasons (Chung 2004: 88–90). The first was to prevent the rape of civilians by Japanese troops, which often provoked strong anti-Japanese sentiments in occupied areas. The second motive was to protect Japanese soldiers from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) by enforcing them to exclusively use military comfort stations. The Japanese military authorities had already found the prevalence of STDs among Japanese soldiers during the Japanese advance into Siberia between 1918 and 1922, and considered it a problem. The third was to uplift the spirit of the soldiers. The military leadership believed that the extension of the war led to the weakening of the soldiers’ fighting spirit, thus causing many difficulties in managing occupied territories. The conditions under which these comfort women were forced to serve as sex slaves were harsh and traumatic. Yoshimi Yoshiaki posits that under the surveillance of military authorities, a woman would have to serve twenty or thirty men on daily average, and in extreme cases the number reached to sixty (Yoshimi 2000: 139–51). In the process, the comfort women were subject to mental anguish, sexually transmitted diseases, and violence from soldiers. The end of the war did not alleviate the women’s plight and in many cases, it worsened (Coomaraswamy 1996: 23–24). Many were abandoned at their stations, or were killed by retreating Japanese troops (Soh 2008: 141). In some cases, they were forced to commit suicide along with the soldiers. While some survivors were sent back to their homelands by the Allied Powers, others chose to stay abroad out of their deep pain and humiliation. Surviving victims continued to suffer physical afflictions and mental illnesses in addition to facing social stigma (Yoshimi 2000: 196–97).

Evolution of the comfort women controversy3 The comfort women controversy has evolved in three phases. In the first phase, from 1945 to the mid-1980s, Japan showed little concern or remorse toward the historical wrongs, despite the publication of numerous books and articles on the issue in domestic Japan.4 The lack of remorse is attributed to the absence of political and societal actors dedicated to the issue. In the second phase, from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, the Japanese state issued apologetic statements and established a nongovernmental fund, Asian Women’s Fund, to compensate former comfort women victims. This shift in behavior was due in large part to powerful transnational comfort women movement led by societal groups in South Korea and Japan, and a brief rule of the progressive ruling elites in Japan. Lastly, in the third phase, from the mid-1990s to the present, the Japanese state frequently lapsed into oblivion due to the rise of the systematic history revisionist movement and the conservative governing elites in Japan.

Phase I, absence of activism and indifference: 1945 to the late-1980s The Japanese state remained silent regarding the comfort women issue during this period, as there were no political and societal agents that voiced the concerns in Japan or in the victim states, particularly Korea. Postwar Japan was ruled mostly by the conservative elites, many of whom were involved in the expansion of imperial Japan, the war against the U.S., and wartime crimes (Berger 2007: 186–87; Seraphim 2006: 317–18). A former Korean foreign minister stated that Japan’s conservative leaders were reluctant to acknowledge their past misdeeds, as it would 262

Comfort women controversy

have posed a threat to their political standing.5 It was natural for the leaders to avoid confronting the question of whose responsibility it was for the war and wartime atrocities. In addition, conservative governing elites placed strong emphasis on the restoration of Japan’s national pride, which they regarded an important psychological element necessary for a successful defense policy and economic revival. Under the long conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule for more than three decades, the Japanese government had no stake in voluntarily addressing the past historical issues, which could seriously undermine its ruling legitimacy. The main victim state – Korea – on the other hand, did not have enough national energy to take the comfort women issue into account during this period, given the political and social turmoil produced by the unexpected territorial division in the Korean peninsula after the 1945 liberation followed by the outbreak of Korean War in 1950. Furthermore, the patriarchal social atmosphere in Korea, which put the victims of sexual violence to shame, prevented former comfort women from speaking about their experiences (Chung CS 2004: 100–101; Soh 2008: 168). Two additional factors also contributed to Japan’s postponement in dealing with the issue. First, the Japanese government and military authorities attempted to destroy all of the related documents immediately after the defeat in order to evade its war responsibility (Soh 1996: 1229–31; Chou 2003: 158–59). The relative deficiency of irrefutable evidence contributed to the historical concealment of forced recruitment. Second, the comfort women issue was excluded from agenda items in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946–48) because the Tribunal paid little attention to Japan’s war crimes committed in Asia (McDougall 2004). During World War II, the U.S. government already knew that Japan was transporting a number of Korean women to China and Manchuria in a systemic manner (Chou 2003: 158). Furthermore, numerous U.S. military documents from 1944 and onward dealt with the Japanese Army’s operation of brothels and comfort women situations. Despite this knowledge, the United States was reluctant to punish Japanese war criminals who had designed and managed the comfort women system because such vilification would have been detrimental to their Cold War containment policy. The U.S. needed Japan to contain communist expansion and thus shifted its policies toward Japan from demilitarization to remilitarization.

Phase II, transnational activism and moving forward: The late 1980s to the mid-1990s It was not until the late 1980s that societal actors in South Korea and Japan began to seriously address the comfort women issue. In 1988, the Korean Church Women United (KCWU) and Professor Yun Choˇ ng-ok conducted field research in Japan to examine the issue with the support of a Japanese organization – the Association to Challenge the Prostitution Issue (Chung 2001: 165). Their research findings first raised the underlying connection between the mobilization of comfort women in colonial Korea and Japanese men’s sex tourism in contemporary Korea. The KCWU then sought to publicize the issue while noting the increase of Japanese men traveling to Korea for sex tourism following the 1988 Seoul Olympics (Chung EJ 2004: 39). As a result, a number of Korean women’s organizations, the majority of which were associated with Christian churches, joined the nascent campaign calling to redress the comfort women issue. In January 1989, members of the women’s groups staged a street demonstration in Seoul against the Korean government’s plan to send an emissary to the funeral of Emperor Hirohito. Korean activists seized a similar opportunity to raise the question of reparations for comfort women when Korean President Roh Tae-woo announced his state visit to Japan in May 1990. Prior to Roh’s visit, they made a list of demands to the Japanese government, including investigation of the comfort women and apology for its involvement (Soh 1996: 1232). 263

Yangmo Ku

Meanwhile, Japanese Socialist Party member Motooka Shoji raised the comfort women issue in the upper house of the Diet in June 1990, requesting the Japanese government investigate the historical matter (Chung 2001: 166). A Japanese government representative replied, “After listening to elderly people and piecing together what they say, it appears that the wartime comfort women were taken by private entrepreneurs to different places, following where the military went. Frankly, even if one were to conduct an inquiry into the circumstances, it would not yield any results” (AWF 2007: 117). As a result, Korean women’s organizations sent an open letter to Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki before his visit to Korea in October 1990 demanding Japan’s admission of culpability, an apology, and compensation for the sufferings of the former comfort women. South Korean women’s leaders also formed two new nongovernmental organizations to conduct a more systematic campaign for redressing the comfort women issue. The Korean Research Institute of Chǒngsindae6 (KRIC), which began as a small study group in July 1990, was formed to conduct scholarly research and circulate information on the issue. The second was the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (hereafter, the Korean Council), which was formed in November 1990 as an umbrella activist organization that consisted of thirty-seven women’s groups (Chou 2003: 159–60). The Korean Council played a key role in launching and strengthening a transnational movement aimed at redressing the comfort women issue. From its outset, the Korean Council sought to examine this issue with the support of the KRIC. In this process, a Korean victim – Kim Hak-sun – for the first time reported her suffering as a comfort woman during World War II. Subsequently, the Korean Council appealed to the former victim to deliver public testimony on her ordeal in August 1991 (Piper 2001: 162). In a press conference, Kim stated through bitter tears that at age seventeen she had been forced to serve Japanese troops as a sex worker and suffered from her terrible experiences to that very moment. Kim’s testimony attracted much attention from the Japanese public, notably promoting the cooperation of many Japanese groups with the Korean Council. Among these groups were the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the National Council of Churches in Japan (NCCJ), and the Asian Women Association (Chung 2001: 167–68). In December 1991, Kim and two other victims also filed a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government, requesting twenty million yen each for compensation. Along with Kim’s testimony and litigation, the uncovering of official documents in Japan significantly strengthened the transnational comfort women movement. In January 1992, historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki unearthed several documents regarding military comfort women at the National Institute of Defense Studies Library in Tokyo (Hayashi 2001: 573). The national daily Asahi Shimbun reported Yoshimi’s discovery of the official documents on January 11, 1992, notably increasing public interest in issue (Seaton 2006: 103–5; also see chapter 5 in this volume). These documents proved that the Japanese government had been systematically involved in establishing and managing the military comfort women stations. The appearance of documentary evidence and the subsequent media coverage motivated many lawyers, historians, and intellectuals to actively engage in the issue and to view it as part of Japan’s postwar responsibility. Facing the Japanese government’s tepid reaction to the issue, concerned lawyers and historians created an executive committee in September 1992 to host the International Public Hearing Concerning Japan’s Postwar Compensation in Tokyo in December 1992 (Mitsui 2007: 39–41). The executive committee invited surviving former comfort women from six countries (South/ North Korea, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, and the Netherlands) to testify at the public hearing. A former Korean comfort woman, Kang Soon-ae, said that she was forced to serve about thirty Japanese soldiers per day as a sex worker in Southern Pharaoh after she was kidnapped by Japanese military police at the age thirteen. 264

Comfort women controversy

Following this event, in April 1993 the executive committee established the first nongovernmental organization committed to research on Japanese war crimes – the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility (JWRC). The JWRC conducted fact-finding investigation and greatly supported the transnational movement for redress of wartime sexual slavery against women (Hayashi 2001: 574). Responding to the demand from International Commission of Jurists, the JWRC issued its first research report on the comfort women issue in June 1993. The JWRC published a quarterly journal, Report on Japan’s War Responsibility (Senso Sekinin Kenkyu) starting in September 1993 and provided the U.N. special rapporteur with relevant information on the issue (Soh 2008: 65). The JWRC also held joint seminars to address the comfort women issue in August and December 1993 and assisted the Korean Council in filing a lawsuit against the Japanese government in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Meanwhile, the Korean Council strove to internationally publicize the military sexual slavery issue by appealing to the U.N. Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in March 1992 (Soh 2003: 215–16). The Korean Council requested that the UNHRC investigate Japanese atrocities committed against Korean women during World War II and help push the Japanese government to compensate the former comfort women who had filed lawsuit. In response to this appeal, the UNHRC placed the issue on its official agenda for the August 1992 meeting in Geneva and allowed delegates from the Korean Council and one former comfort woman to testify. As a consequence, the UNHRC’s Subcommittee for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities declared the Japanese military comfort women system as “a crime against humanity that violated the human rights of Asian Women and the international agreement prohibiting forced labor that Japan signed in 1932” (Soh 1996: 1235). This initial support from the UNHRC led to the issuance of two influential reports, written by the U.N. special rapporteurs in the mid1990s that included the comfort women issue. The Korean Council also elicited strong support from international nongovernmental organizations such as the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the World Council of Churches (WCC). While the WCC assisted with the Korean Council’s activities at the U.N., the ICJ offered legal advice for requesting compensation from the Japanese government (Yu 2003: 257–58). In November 1994, the ICJ issued a detailed report declaring that Japan had a responsibility to pay reparations to former comfort women and assist in otherwise recovering their honor. In contrast to the Japanese government’s official position, the ICJ report noted that the 1965 Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement did not nullify individual compensation claims from surviving comfort women. According to the report, the Claims Agreement failed to address the violation of individual rights caused by war crimes against humanity by only determining reparations for material damage. Given this rationale, the ICJ recommended that as an interim measure, the Japanese state pay US$40,000 to each survivor (Soh 1996: 1236–37). To build solidarity, the Korean Council also paid great attention to networking with women’s organizations in other Asian countries where their women citizens had suffered. The first Asian Women’s Solidarity Forum was held in Seoul in August 1992 under the auspices of the Korean Council. Victims and many support groups from Asian nations, including the Asian Center for Women’s Human Rights in the Philippines and the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, attended the regional conference that formalized a transnational network dedicated to the comfort women issue (Chung CS 2004: 120–21). Representatives from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines agreed that the comfort women issue encompassed a variety of brutal crimes committed by Japan’s militarist state, including forced recruitment, gang rape, torture, and slaughter (Yoon 2007: 29). They also pointed out that the issue was an example of how the patriarchal system and the war colluded with each other in the violation of women’s human rights. The resolution of the military comfort women issue, they asserted, was an important task to prevent the recurrence of 265

Yangmo Ku

such war crimes and to build a peaceful world. In the wake of this forum, there was an upsurge of the cooperation among the groups in the countries of victims and groups in Japan (Hayashi 2001: 574). These newly networked groups actively sought to raise the military sexual slavery issue in international conferences sponsored by the U.N. such as the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna and the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing (Yoon 2007: 36–37). During the Vienna Conference, the “Asian Women’s Forum” was launched and adopted a resolution demanding that the U.N. investigate the Japanese army’s sexual slavery system. Representatives from the Asian groups frequently participated in preliminary meetings for the Beijing Conference and worked as lobbyists publicizing the serious suffering inflicted on former comfort women. As a result of their efforts, the Vienna Conference clearly included “sexual slavery” as a violation of women’s human rights under armed conflict in the Vienna Declaration. In its code of conduct, the Beijing Conference stipulated that as sexual slavery was a war crime, perpetrator states should investigate allegations, punish the persons in charge, and compensate surviving victims. An important backdrop to these important achievements was mass rape occurring in Bosnia that had begun in the spring of 1992. This event contributed to the promotion of women’s rights in the international community particularly cognizant of sexual violence against women during armed conflict (Soh 2008: 33). As a result of this transnational comfort women movement, the Japanese state begun to change its original position around the early 1990s (see chapter 4 in this volume).7 The first change in this official position was Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi’s command that the pertinent governmental agencies investigate the comfort women issue at the budget committee of the House of Councilors in December 1991.8 In January 1992, Kato conceded that given the official documentary evidence and surviving victims’ testimonies, the Japanese government had been involved in establishing and managing the comfort women system.9 Furthermore, during his state visit to the ROK in January 1992, Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi made a formal public apology for Japan’s past wrongs. In a speech to South Korea’s National Assembly, Miyazawa said, “Recently, the issue of comfort women in the service of the Imperial Japanese Army has come into light. I cannot help feeling acutely distressed over this, and I express my sincerest apology.”10 He also expressed his regret and apology in the Japanese Diet for the first time.11 In the first official investigative report of July 1992, moreover, the Japanese government admitted to the military’s involvement in the comfort women issue, although it did not acknowledge its forceful recruitment. Kato made the following statement: The Government had been involved in the establishment of comfort stations, the control of those who recruited comfort women, the construction and reinforcement of comfort facilities, the management and surveillance of comfort stations, the hygiene maintenance in comfort stations and among comfort women, and the issuance of identification as well as other documents to those who were related to comfort stations. . . . The Government again would like to express its sincere apology and remorse to all those who have suffered indescribable hardship as so-called “wartime comfort women,” irrespective of their nationality or place of birth. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan)12 Despite the government’s initial steps, the first report spawned strong opposition from victim survivors and their support groups in other Asian countries. Given these protests, in August 1993 the Japanese government issued a second official report that partially admitted its involvement in the forceful recruitment of comfort women. Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei announced: 266

Comfort women controversy

The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military. The Government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere. . . . Undeniably, this was an act, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, that severely injured the honor and dignity of many women. . . . We hereby reiterated our firm determination never to repeat the same mistake by forever engraving such issues in our memories through the study and teaching of history. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan)13 This report, however, failed to acknowledge that the Japanese government and military were the main actors in establishing and managing the comfort women system. A Japanese civil activist states, “The report was not fully apologetic because it did not clearly state who had established the system.”14 In addition, the Japanese government still refused individual compensation for the surviving victims on the ground that “Japan had earlier provided reparations to, or reached agreements with, the governments concerned” (Hayashi 2001: 574). Meanwhile, Prime Minister Murayama made a series of apologetic statements regarding the comfort women issue during this second phase. He commented in August 1994 that “on the issue of wartime comfort women, which seriously stained the honor and dignity of many women, I would like to take this opportunity once again to express my profound and sincere remorse and apologies.”15 In July 1995, Murayama also stated: The problem of the so-called wartime comfort women is one such scar, which, with the involvement of the Japanese military forces of the time, seriously stained the honor and dignity of many women. This is entirely inexcusable. I offer my profound apology to all those who, as wartime comfort women, suffered emotional and physical wounds that can never be closed. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan)16 As such, the Japanese government acknowledged its moral responsibility for the suffering inflicted on the former comfort women. In December 1994, however, the Japanese government reconfirmed that it could not pay compensation to individuals because it had already addressed reparation issues in accordance with the San Francisco Peace Treaty, bilateral peace treaties, and other relevant accords (AWF 2007: 174–75). As a consequence, instead of providing direct state compensation, the government helped establish a nongovernmental fund, the Asian Women’s Fund, in order to “express a sense of national atonement from the Japanese people to the surviving victims” (Soh 2003: 218). To implement this atonement project, the AWF contained the following three major elements: (1) to provide “atonement money” (two million yen per person) donated by the Japanese people to former comfort women; (2) to send a letter from the Japanese Prime Minister to surviving victims; and (3) to disburse “about 830 million yen from government funds over a five-year period for victims’ medical care and welfare” (AWF 2007: 125). Therefore, compared with the first phase, Japan’s behavior toward the comfort women issue moved significantly toward a more penitent stance during this second period between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. Nevertheless, these changes were not satisfactory to former comfort women and their support groups, as apologetic statements were somewhat ambivalent and the 267

Yangmo Ku

Asian Women’s Fund was at nongovernmental level, and thus not a direct admission of Japan’s war responsibility.

Phase III, conservative reaction and stalemate: The mid-1990s to the present This third phase, from the mid-1990s to the present, witnessed a charged controversy between transnational forces and Japanese conservatives. Many transnational groups that had persistently requested state compensation, including the Korean Council, were vehemently opposed to the establishment of the AWF because they regarded it as an attempt of the Japanese government to avoid its legal responsibilities. Even before the AWF’s inception, the Asian Women’s Solidarity Forum promulgated a resolution criticizing what they perceived to be Japan’s plan to evade its responsibility for war crimes by establishing the nongovernmental fund at its 1995 conference (Soh 1996: 1237). At the following 1996 and 1998 forums, representatives from other Asian countries demanded the dissolution of the AWF and the enactment of a special law that would commit the Japanese state to carrying out the compensation scheme (Korean Council Sourcebook 2007: 31). A variety of Japanese groups also formed a unified organization called “Executive Committee for Destructing AWF,” campaigning against the AWF through street rallies of protest, signature collections, and international conferences (Chung 2001: 180–81). The Korean Council’s intense lobbying efforts led the Korean government instead to pay an equivalent amount of atonement money (about $26,000) to each survivor in 1997 (Soh 2003: 228–30). Such payment was conducted under the condition that the recipients would not accept AWF compensation.17 Transnational activist groups continued to pursue two different pathways for resolving the comfort women issue. First, these groups held the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 in Tokyo. More than 150 NGOs in Asia supported the 2000 Tribunal and international law experts, who had participated in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, played important roles as chief prosecutors and judges for the event (Mitsui 2007: 46). Its primary goals were “to establish that Japan’s military sexual slavery constitutes a war crime against women, to identify those responsible for the crime, and to record the complete findings and proceedings of the tribunal for history” (Piper 2001: 163–64). The tribunal first found Emperor Hirohito guilty of war crimes, and ascertained the responsibility of the Japanese government for establishing and managing the military comfort women system. In the final judgment reached in September 2001, twenty other military and political leaders were accused of crimes against humanity (Hayashi 2001: 579). Second, the transnational groups continued to lobby the Japanese Diet for reparation laws (Chung 2001: 185–86). A variety of legal groups and the Campaign for Completing Postwar Compensation prepared reparation bills for the Japanese Diet. After organizing a citizen convention, moreover, a number of groups such as the JWRC and Violence Against Women in War Network, Japan (VAWW-NET Japan) sought to constitute a fact-finding bill demanding the Japanese Diet’s investigation into Japan’s comprehensive war responsibility including the comfort women issue. These legal approaches were not successful, but transnational groups including the Postwar Compensation Network continue to lobby Japanese politicians, particularly Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Diet members to enact reparation laws.18 Meanwhile, beginning in the mid-1990s, Japanese conservatives launched a systematic counterattack against the transnational comfort women movement and the Japanese government’s softening stance on the issue. In right-leaning magazines, conservatives published a number of articles arguing that Japan’s imperial war was justifiable in the context of world history at the time (Chung 2001: 141). They even asserted that the comfort women system had been a good 268

Comfort women controversy

institution that prevented local women from being raped. The conservatives further declared that all postwar reparations claims had been resolved by means of the San Francisco Peace Treaty and various bilateral agreements between Japan and other countries. In her book, Soh articulates illuminates this phenomenon: The Coomaraswamy Report submitted to the United Nations in January 1996 set off an urgent wakeup call to Japan’s conservatives. In particular, the mention of comfort women in new history textbooks for the middle school, which reflects one of the United Nations’ recommendations, sparked a strong wave of masculinist neonationalism across the country in 1996, resulting in what the feminist historian and activist Suzuki Yuko called an anti-comfort women campaign. Senior politicians, prominent journalists, and public intellectuals, including university professors, have joined forces to argue that the comfort women were nothing more than licensed prostitutes and that there is no evidence of their forced recruitment by the state or the military. (Soh 2008: 66) At the center of these systematic conservative campaigns was the Research Association of Liberal Historical Perspectives that Tokyo University Professor Fujioka Nobukazu founded in February 1995 (Chung 2001: 140–47). The Research Association emerged primarily in response to the official history textbooks released in 1994 that included the descriptions of Japan’s past wrongs, including comfort women, Unit 731, and the Nanjing Massacre (Kim 2008: 103). The Research Association aimed to remove all mentions of comfort women from the textbooks in order to recover damaged Japan’s national pride. It attacked the textbooks’ content, claiming that “comfort women were protected and well treated, not exploited by the Japanese military and government authorities” (Hayashi 2001: 576). In support of this movement, the Sankei Shimbun published a series of articles titled “What the school textbooks do not teach (Kyokasho ga oshienai rekishi),” written by Research Association authors. Additionally, in its daily editorials the Sankei launched a campaign to eliminate comfort women-related content from history textbooks (Chung 2001: 143). The conservative backlash in Japan reached its pinnacle in January 1997 when nationalist LDP members and conservative academics such as Fujioka founded the Japanese Society for Composing New History Textbooks (Atarashii Rekishi Kyokaso o Tsukurukai, hereafter Tsukurukai). The Tsukurukai engaged in active public outreach programs, publishing many books and holding symposia/conferences, in order to promote conservative perspectives that emphasized Japan’s positive historical achievements and national pride (Han 2000; Saaler 2005). The Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact also continued to publish a number of articles and books that denied Japan’s past wrongs such as forced recruitment of comfort women.19 Given these controversies, the Japanese government generally reaffirmed Prime Minister Murayama’s apologetic statement of 1995 during this third phase. In October 1998, for instance, Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo expressed his deep remorse and heartfelt apology, stating that Japan caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of the Republic of Korea during a certain period in the past.20 Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro also stated in the official letter sent to the former comfort women in 2001: As Prime Minister of Japan, I thus extend anew my most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women. We must not evade the weight of the past, nor should we evade our responsibilities for the future. I believe 269

Yangmo Ku

that our country, painfully aware of its moral responsibilities, with feelings of apology and remorse, should face up squarely to its past history and accurately convey it to future generations. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan)21 The Japanese state also carried out its nongovernmental compensation project through the Asian Women’s Fund during this period. Japan went ahead with the national atonement project for former comfort women in spite of strong resistance from legal compensation advocates. Despite this pressure from transnational actors, the Japanese government kept refusing to assume legal responsibility for the war crime against humanity committed against comfort women during World War II. It also declined to directly pay individual compensation. In addition, Japanese courts continued to mostly dismiss lawsuits brought by former comfort women (Soh 2003: 218). This period was marked by frequent backsliding. First, Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro was reportedly reluctant to send apologetic letters to former comfort women in 1996 (Onuma 2007: 75–76). When Chief Cabinet Secretary Igarashi Kozo announced the objectives of the “Asian Peace and Friendship Foundation for Women” in June 1995, the Murayama cabinet and the directors of the AWF had an agreement to send Prime Minister’s letter to each victim to express the nation’s feelings of sincere remorse and apology. Conservative LDP Diet members were strongly opposed to this plan, however. As soon as he came into power in January 1996, LDP Prime Minister Hashimoto – who had been the president of the Japan Bereaved Families’ Association (Nihon Izokukai) – took a passive stance on writing the apologetic letters. In response to this position, Miki Mutsuko, one of the primary proponents of the AWF, accused the Japanese government of breaking its promise and thus resigned from her position in protest. Through attracting significant media attention, this event played a critical role in compelling the Hashimoto cabinet to agree with sending the letters to each victim. Furthermore, high-ranking Japanese government officials contradicted the previous apologetic statements by making a series of blunders that attempted to justify or gloss over Japan’s past wrongs. For example, LDP politician Okuno Seisuke commented twice in June and July 1996 that “comfort women volunteered to participate in commercial transactions and they were managed by commercial businesses” (Yang 2008a: 79). “There were military nurses but no military comfort women,” Watanuke Tamisuke, former vice secretary of International Trade and Industry, stated in September 1996. Another LDP politician, Shimamura Yoshinobu, also asserted in February 1997 that “most of the comfort women were recruited by foreign prostitution rings, not by Japanese military” (Yang 2008a: 79). Another blunder was made by Nakagawa Shoichi, the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, who stated that it was not possible to know whether comfort women had been forced or not. The Japanese government also exerted pressure on NHK not to air TV documentaries showing its involvement in the wartime sex slave system. For instance, “In 1997, NHK produced a documentary about the comfort women, but the Ministry of Justice forbade the producers to make the assertions contained in the documentary, claiming there was no evidence to prove the Japanese government’s involvement.”22 In addition, due to political pressure from LDP politicians, crucial alterations were made to the content of NHK documentary on the 2000 Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal (Morris-Suzuki 2005). LDP politicians – Deputy Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzo and Economics and Industry Minister Nakagawa Shoichi – met with senior staff of NHK to discuss the content of the program on January 29 in 2001, one day before its broadcast. Tessa Morris-Suzuki presents the last minute changes made to the content of the program following this meeting: 270

Comfort women controversy

After the meeting with Abe, senior NHK management demanded further last minute changes. The length of the broadcast was now to be cut from 44 to 40 minutes; testimony by Chinese victims of military sexual abuse was to be excised, as was the testimony of former Japanese soldiers who spoke of the military’s responsibility for the comfort station system and of the violence inflicted on the women recruited to work there. As a result, the final version of the documentary included no visual footage of the Tribunal’s proceedings at all and no mention of its findings. (Morris-Suzuki 2005: 5) A Japanese journalist also points out that the NHK aired many TV programs dealing with Japan’s wartime responsibilities in the 1970s and 1980s. NHK television producers, however, could not easily make such programs under the pressure of the conservative LDP-led governing coalition from the late 1990s.23 In March 2007, then Prime Minister Abe Shinzo also stated, “there was no evidence to support the initially accepted notion that coercion was used by the Japanese military or government in recruiting wartime comfort women” (Yang 2008a: 74). Facing this statement, the world media reacted swiftly and critically (Soh 2008: 67). Nevertheless, Abe further argued, “the Japanese government would not issue an apology to comfort women in response to passage of House Resolution 121 by the U.S. House of Representatives and that the resolution had not been based on objective facts” (Yang 2008a: 75). Despite these fairly clear signals, however, Prime Minister Abe later stated that “he stood by the consistent position of the government of Japan, represented by the statement of the former Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono, and expressed heartfelt sympathy and sincere apologies to the women who suffered immeasurable pain and hardships” (Yang 2008a: 75). During an inquiry session in the Diet in April 2013, furthermore, Prime Minister Abe recognized that Japan had caused great suffering and damage during World War II. However, he mentioned that he did not fully agree with a historic apology issued by Prime Minister Murayama in 1995, and he questioned whether Japan had actually committed “aggression” against anyone during the war. Abe also said, “The definition of aggression has yet to be established in academia or in the international community.”24 Unsurprisingly, these remarks brought about strong protest from China and South Korea.

Implications for Japan-ROK reconciliation Drawing on a hypothetical reasoning, the comfort women issue could have arguably served as a catalytic momentum for Japan-ROK reconciliation in the mid-1990s. Two scenarios could have unfolded. First, what if the Japanese government had accepted strong requests from transnational groups in the mid-1990s and provided a full state compensation to former victims instead of indirectly supporting the nongovernmental fund, Asian Women’s Fund? This would have become a symbolic breakthrough that could have a positive spillover effect on other historical issues such as textbook disputes stimulating Japan-ROK reconciliation. In addition, this event would have later had a great synergic effect on accelerating interstate reconciliation between the two former adversaries with the new Japan-ROK partnership for the twenty-first century jointly declared in 1998 by President Kim Dae-jung and Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo (Moon and Suh 2005, 564). Indeed, a progressive non-LDP coalition and the first Socialist Prime Minister since 1948 came to power between 1993 and 1995, thus creating a window of opportunity for sincerely addressing Japan’s injustices committed in Asia during World War II. When closely examined, however, Japanese political condition at that time was not very conducive to this counterfactual outcome. Prime Minister Hosokawa’s unprecedented 271

Yangmo Ku

apologetic statements25 triggered strong opposition from conservative camps. For instance, about 100 LDP Diet members organized the Committee for the Examination of History, which campaigned to foster historical views that recognized World War II as justifiable and denied the existence of the military comfort stations (Nozaki 2005: 293). Nationalist organizations such as the Japan Bereaved Families’ Association and the Yasukuni Shrine “issued counter-statements praising the Greater East Asian War as a war of self-defense to secure the livelihood and property of the Japanese people” (Saaler 2005: 71). And when Prime Minister Murayama sought to adopt an “apology resolution” marking the fiftieth anniversary of Japan’s surrender, his endeavor was also confronted with robust resistance from the conservative LDP, the dominant coalition partner, and eventually resulted in adopting an ambiguous and compromised Diet resolution that satisfied no one (McCormack 2000; Lind 2008). Under these political circumstances, it was not plausible to expect Japanese state’s full compensation for former comfort women. Second, what if the transnational activist network, led by the Korean Council, had acknowledged the clear limitation of Japan’s domestic political condition at that moment and accepted the compensation measures offered by the AWF? This compromised action could have arguably stopped a subsequent long contention between transnational groups representing former comfort women and the Japanese government. Indeed, many of Japan’s prominent activists and organizations, which had previously aligned with the Korean Council, supported the formation and activities of the AWF.26 The primary reason for these groups’ support was “to take some concrete action for elderly survivors before they died without receiving any tokens of atonement, let alone legal compensation” (Soh 2003: 224). Besides, a Tokyo University professor stated, “I personally acknowledge the achievement of the Korean Council in publicizing the comfort women issue and promoting human rights in the international community. It was not right, however, for the Korean Council to completely disregard the atonement money from the AWF. Surviving comfort women themselves had to decide whether or not they accept AWF money.”27 In a similar vein, a Korean diplomat criticizes the Korean Council of having placed more weight on its own aims than respecting for the former comfort women’s human rights.28 Despite some relevance of these criticisms, however, it was not easy for the Korean Council to scale back from its originally strong demands and to accept the compromised solution, as its transnational campaign was gaining momentum. Unfortunately, these two counterfactual events have not taken place. To Koreans, the comfort women issue has instead become an important symbol of Japan’s impenitent stance on its past misdeeds along with its biased history textbooks and Japanese leaders’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. In their official speeches, South Korean Presidents have often remarked sufferings afflicted on former comfort women by Japanese troops and urged the Japanese government to do more to resolve a dispute over compensation for the victims. In the 2007 anniversary honoring the 1919 independence movement against Japanese colonial rule, for instance, President Roh Moohyun stated, “no matter how hard the Japanese try to cover the whole sky with their hand, there is no way that the international community would condone the atrocities committed during Japanese colonial rule.”29 In the 2012 anniversary commemorating Korea’s liberation from Japan, President Lee Myung-bak also said, “it was a breach of women’s human rights committed during wartime as well as a violation of universal human rights and historical justice. We urge the Japanese government to take responsible measures in this regard.”30 In a similar vein, most Korean publics have shown a very negative perception of Japan’s unapologetic attitudes toward former comfort women. According to the 2008 Pew survey, 96 percent of Koreans believed that Japan has not apologized enough for its military actions during the 1930s and 1940s.31 The 2013 Pew survey also found that 98 percent of Koreans have not accepted Japan’s apology for 272

Comfort women controversy

past wrongs.32 A prominent Korean civil activist added that Korean activists have taken almost all possible actions to pressure the Japanese government to change its stance on the comfort women issue but they have not worked very well. As a result, many activists are feeling the so-called “activism fatigue.”33 In addition to Koreans’ negative views of Japan, Japanese domestic political conditions make it harder to resolve the comfort women controversy. Above all, the nature of Japanese ruling elites, who arguably hold a key to the resolution of the issue, has been moving toward a more conservative direction. Following the brief rule of a progressive non-LDP coalition in 1993–94, the LDP continued its conservative rule with coalition partners such as New Komeito until 2009 without any strong check and balance,34 and the progressive Japanese Socialist Party (JSP) became marginalized in Japanese politics in 1996 when it lost most of its seats in Diet. Although an opposition party – the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) – took power during 2009–2012, the DPJ, consisting of both conservative and progressive members, was not very active in grappling with the comfort women issue. Rather, in August 2012 the DPJ Prime Minister Noda said, “there are no documents or testimonies on the Japanese side that confirm the coercive recruitment of comfort women,” moving away from the Japanese government’s apologetic statement announced in 1993.35 The returning of the LDP as a ruling party in 2013, furthermore, has been sending highly pessimistic signals in terms of Japan’s coming to terms with past wrongs. The conservative LDP, led by Prime Minister Abe, has publicly sought to revise the Peace Constitution – a symbol of Japan’s postwar pacifist polices, let alone to deny the forced mobilization of former comfort women. In addition, a recent Pew poll found that 63 percent of Japanese think Japan has apologized enough for the war, and the figure rises to 73 percent among those aged between eighteen and twenty-nine.36 Hence, this chapter argues that the prospects for a successful JapanROK reconciliation in the near future is not very likely, as the comfort women issue could often pose as a significant barrier to the improvement of the relationship between the two neighboring countries.

Notes 1 The term ‘comfort women’ is a euphemism for “women drafted for military sexual slavery by Japan” during World War II. This chapter uses the term, as most scholars have commonly used it in their works. 2 Considering the accounts of survivors, Sarah Soh points out that Korean collaborators during the colonial era sought out profits by human trafficking, and that was in addition to emphasizing the criminal role played by Japan’s wartime military government in exploiting colonial subjects (Soh 2008, 139–40; also see chapter 10 in this volume). 3 The author used some empirical elements regarding the comfort women controversy from his recently published article (Ku 2015). 4 Between the 1950s and the 1980s, “more than two hundred Japanese documents concerning the comfort stations were published in a variety of formats, such as books, magazine articles, biographies, and memoirs.” Some books indeed became best-sellers in the 1970s. By contrast, “Korean-language publications were very few in number, and none enjoyed the wide readership (Soh 2008: 146–47). 5 Personal Interview, Seoul, October 7, 2008. 6 Its English translation is Female Wartime Volunteer Corps (joshi teishintai). See chapter 5 in this volume for more details. 7 Up until the late 1980s, the Japanese government denied any Japanese military involvement in organizing the wartime military comfort stations, and it instead regarded them as private enterprises. The Japanese government also insisted that the 1965 Normalization Treaty between Japan and the ROK had resolved all the historical issues. Accordingly, the Tokyo government had refused to conduct its investigation of the issue, let alone to issue apology and provide reparations. 8 Proceedings of the 122th Budget Committee at the House of Councilors (December 12, 1991) 9 Segye Daily, January 14, 1992. 10 New York Times, Seoul Shinmun, January 18, 1992.

273

Yangmo Ku 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36

Donga Daily, January 30, 1992. Online at http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/postwar/state9207.html (accessed January 5, 2009) Online at http:// www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html (accessed January 5, 2009) Personal Interview, Tokyo, October 25, 2008. Online at http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/state9408.html (accessed January 5, 2009) Online at http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9507.html (accessed January 5, 2009) In December 1997, the Taiwan government also paid about $17,000 to each survivor with the same condition as the Korean government requested. Personal Interview, Tokyo, October 27 and 31, 2008. The Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact: http://www.sdh-fact.com/ (accessed January 13, 2009) Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan: http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/korea/joint9810.html (accessed January 15, 2009) Online at http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/pmletter.html (accessed January 15, 2009) Online at http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/asian_studies/000010.shtml (accessed January 20, 2009) Personal Interview, Tokyo, October 21, 2008. Online at http://nation.time.com/2013/05/20/sorry-but-japan-still-cant-get-the-war-right/ (accessed September 10, 2013) Upon taking office in August 1993, Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro made an unprecedented remark that characterized Japan’s past actions in Asia as an “aggressive war” (shinryaku senso) and “wrong war” (ayamatta senso). In a following speech, he also named Japan’s presence in Korea as “colonial rule” rather than using the conventional euphemism of “annexation.” At his summit meeting in Seoul with South Korea President Kim Young Sam, Hosokawa proceeded to issue a statement of apology for Japan’s past wrongdoings such as the mobilization of comfort women (Nozaki 2005: 292). Among them were university professors, lawyers, the Association of Japanese Women (Nihon Fujin Kaigi), the Association for Solidifying Japan’s War Responsibility (Nihon no Sengo Sekinin o Shikiri Saseru Kai) and Jichirou, an influential local labor union (Chung 2001: 179–80). Personal Interview, Tokyo, October 24, 2008. Personal Interview, Tokyo, October 15, 2008. Online at http://www.japanfocus.org/-K-MIZOGUCHI/2368 (accessed September 17, 2013). Online at http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/comfort-women-issue-still-sours-ties-between-japanand-south-korea (accessed September 12, 2013) Online at http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/06/12/chapter-4-views-of-asian-powers (accessed September 12, 2013) Online at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/15/decades-after-wars-end-some-of-japansneighbors-still-see-need-for-atonement (accessed September 12, 2013) Personal Interview, Seoul, July 13, 2011. For instance, considering a self-reflective view on history as being masochistic, Japanese conservative governing elites have vigorously sought to restore their state consciousness and pride through nationalistic history education. This effort culminated in amending the Basic Law of Education by inserting a “patriotism clause” in 2007, preventing a more cooperative spirit with neighboring countries (Kim 2008: 113). This revised education law, which emphasized “love of country” and “tradition,” handed greater control over education to politicians. Online at http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/korean_peninsula/AJ201208290036 (accessed September 15, 2013). Online at http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/07/11/japanese-publics-mood-rebounding-abe-stronglypopular/ (accessed September 15, 2013).

References Asian Women’s Fund. 2007. The Comfort Women Issue and AWF, Tokyo: AWF. Berger, Thomas U. 2007. “The Politics of Memory in Japanese Foreign Relations,” in Thomas Berger, Mike Mochizuki, and Jitsuo Tsuchiyama, eds., Japan in International Politics: The Foreign Policies of an Adaptive State, Lynne Rienner Publishers.

274

Comfort women controversy Chou, Chih-Chieh. 2003. “An Emerging Transnational Movement in Women’s Human Rights: Campaign of Nongovernmental Organizations on Comfort Women Issue in East Asia,” Journal of Economic and Social Research, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 153–81. Chung, Chin-Sung. 1995. “Korean Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan,” in Keith Howard, ed., True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women, London: Cassell. Chung, Chin-Sung. 2001. Social Movements in Modern Japan [Hyundae Ilbon ui Sahoe Undongron], Seoul: Nanam Publishing House. Chung, Chin-Sung. 2004. Japanese Army’s Sexual Slavery: The Reality of Japanese Army’s Comfort Women Issue and the Movement for Its Resolution [Ilbonkun Sung Noyeje: Ilbonkun Yianbu Munje ui Silsang kwa keo Haekyeol ul uihan Undong], Seoul: Seoul National University Press. Chung, Eunjeong. 2004. “The Study of Korea-Japan Transnational Advocacy Network [Hanil Chogukjeok Onghomang e kwanhan Yeongu],” MA Thesis, Seoul: Kyunghee University. Coomaraswamy, Radhika. 1996. Report on the mission to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the issue of military sexual slavery in wartime, Commission on Human Rights, E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1. Han, Sangil. 2000. “Moving toward the Right in Japanese Society: Focusing on Historical Revisionism [Ilbon Sahoi ui Wookyunghwa: Yǒksa Sujungjuui rul Chungsimuro],” in Hosub Kim, ed., Ilbon Wooik Yongu, Seoul: Chungshim. Hayashi, Hirofumi. 2001. “The Japanese Movement to Protest Wartime Sexual Violence: A Survey of Japanese and International Literature,” Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 572–80. Kim, Mikyoung. 2008. “Myths, Milieu, and Facts: History Textbook Controversies in Northeast Asia,” in Hasegawa Tsuyoshi and Togo Kazuhiko, eds., East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport: Praeger Security International. Ku, Yangmo. 2015. “National Interest or Transnational Alliances? Japanese Policy on the Comfort Women Issue,” Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 243-69. The Korean Council. 2007. The Korean Council’s Sourcebook [Cheongdaehyeop Charyojip], Vol. 12 (December). Lind, Jennifer. 2008. Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. McCormack, Gavan. 2000. “The Japanese Movement to Correct History,” in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Mitsui, Hideko. 2007. “The resignification of the comfort women through NGO trials,” in Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-Won Park, and Daqing Yang, eds., Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia, New York: Routledge. Moon, Chung-in, and Seung-won Suh. 2005. “Security, Economy, and Identity Politics: Japan-South Korean Relations under the Kim Dae-jung Government,” Korea Observer, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 561–602. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2005. “Free Speech – Silenced Voices: The Japanese Media and the NHK Affair,” Asia Rights, Issue 4, pp. 1–21. Nozaki, Yoshiko. 2005. “Japanese Politics and the History Textbook Controversy, 1945–2001,” in Edward Vickers and Alisa Jones, eds., History Education and National Identity in East Asia, New York: Routledge. Onuma, Yasuaki. 2007. Ilbon eun Sajoe hago sipda: Ilbonkun Yianbu Munche wa Asia Yeoseong Kigeum [ Japan wants to apologize: the Comfort Women Issue and the Asia Women’s Fund ], translated into Korean by Hyunsook Chung, Seoul: Chonryak kwa Munhwa. Piper, Nicola. 2001. “Transnational women’s activism in Japan and Korea: the unresolved issue of military sexual slavery,” Global Networks, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 155–70. Saaler, Sven. 2005. Politics, Memory and Public Opinion: The History Textbook Controversy and Japanese Society, Tokyo: German Institute for Japanese Studies. Seaton, Philip. 2006. “Reporting the Comfort Women Issue, 1991–1992: Japan’s Contested War Memories in the National Press,” Japanese Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 99–112. Seraphim, Franziska. 2006. War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Soh, C. Sarah. 1996. “The Korean Comfort Women: Movement for Redress,” Asian Survey, Vol. 36, No. 12, pp. 1226–27. Soh, C. Sarah. 2003. “Japan’s National/Asian Women’s Fund for Comfort Women,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2, pp. 209–33. Soh, C. Sarah. 2008. The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

275

Yangmo Ku Yang, Kiwoong. 2008a. “South Korea and Japan’s Frictions over History: A Linguistic Constructivist Reading,” Asian Perspective, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 59–86. Yoon, Mihyang. 2007. “15-Year Asian Solidarity for Resolving Japan’s Military Comfort Women Issue [Ilbonkun Wianbu Munche Haegyeol ul wihan Asia Yeondae 15 Nyeon],” Cheongdaehyeop Charyojip [The Korean Council’s Sourcebook], Vol. 12. Yoshimi,Yoshiaki. 2000. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, translated by Suzanne O’Brien, New York: Columbia University Press. Yu, Hyun-Seok. 2003. “Transnational actors and foreign policy making in South Korea: The case studies,” Korea Observer, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 245–67.

276

17 KOREA-JAPAN RECONCILIATION AND THE DOKDO (TAKESHIMA) ISSUE Seokwoo Lee and Hee Eun Lee

Located in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), Dokdo (Takeshima)1 is a group of rocky islets that are 87.4 kilometers (km) from the Korean island of Ulleungdo and 157 km from the Oki Islands of Japan at N 37°14”, E 131°52”.2 Formed from volcanic activity, Dokdo is comprised of two large rocky masses that are referred to by Korea as Dongdo (East Island) and Seodo (West Island), which are surrounded by thirty-two smaller outcroppings. Dokdo has a mere total area of 180,902 m2. This relatively small feature in the waters between Japan and Korea has been the source of a bitter territorial conflict between the two neighboring countries which has intensified greatly since President Lee Myung-bak’s visit to the islets on August 10, 2012. In response, the Japanese government raised the national profile of Takeshima and renewed calls for the issue to be resolved by the International Court of Justice.3 While the Dokdo issue can largely be described as an international legal matter that can be resolved by recourse to the principles of international law and through the means of peaceful conflict resolution employed in international relations, reconciliation between Japan and Korea in regard to Dokdo involves complex historical, political, and legal issues that are intertwined and indeed made its prospects more difficult because it is representative of the problem of deep-rooted historical bitterness in the region resulting from the legacy of Japanese militarism and colonialism that continues to divide East Asia today.4 Any attempt at reconciliation between the two sides will necessarily have to address these underlying factors that exacerbate the issue. The positions taken by Japan and Korea on Dokdo are reflective of these factors which demonstrate the difficulty in reconciling the respective positions of both countries. The perception of history looms large. The official Japanese position on Dokdo can be summarized as follows: Japan has long recognized the existence of Takeshima as Matsushima, as it was once referred to as found in various old maps, including the Kaisei Nippon Yochi Rotei Zenzu (Revised Complete Map of Japanese Land and Roads – first published in 1779), by Sekisui Nagakubo. Sovereignty over Takeshima by Japan can be proven through the permission that was given to Japanese merchants by the Shogunate via the feudal lord of Tottori in the early seventeenth century and the subsequent activities that were undertaken by merchants on and in the waters surrounding Dokdo in harvesting abalone, hunting sea lions, and 277

Seokwoo Lee and Hee Eun Lee

gathering lumber. Moreover, while passage was banned by the Shogunate to a nearby island, Utsuryo, passage to Takeshima was not, which further demonstrates Japanese sovereignty over the islets. In the twentieth century, sovereignty over Takeshima was demonstrated when Shimane Prefecture formally incorporated the islets in 1905, which was followed up with a cabinet decision to reaffirm the Japanese government’s intention to incorporate Takeshima. The San Francisco Peace Treaty, which formally ended World War II in the Pacific, did not give sovereignty over Takeshima to Korea as the United States, as the principal drafter of the treaty, did not regard Takeshima as being a part of Korea and rejected Korea’s request to include Takeshima among the islands Japan had to renounce all right, title, and claim. The United States subsequently treated Takeshima as a part of Japan as it was utilized as a bombing range for U.S. forces in Japan as decided by a committee established as part of an agreement between Japan and the U.S. Therefore, Korea is in illegal occupation of Dokdo with sovereignty of the islets belonging to Japan.5 The official Korean position on Dokdo can be summarized as follows: Korea has a long historical claim to Dokdo as far back as 1,500 years into the Silla Kingdom period, along with maps from Korea that show the same. There is map evidence from Japan in the late 1700s and early 1800s that appear to recognize that Dokdo was a part of Korea. On October 25, 1900, Emperor Kojong of Korea promulgated Imperial Ordinance No. 41, which established the county of Ulleungdo and clearly included Dokdo within its boundaries. Japan’s claim to Dokdo by its incorporation into Shimane Prefecture in 1905 was made during the period when Japan was engaged in unrelenting efforts to exert increasing military and civilian control over Korea, which led to the establishment of a protectorate over Korea in November 1905 and formal annexation in 1910. On February 23, 1904, eleven months prior to Japan’s claim to Dokdo, Japan sent troops into Seoul and compelled Korea to sign a protocol agreement giving Japan effective control over Korea’s governmental activities. This protocol marked the moment when Korea lost its ability to act independently. The Korean government attempted to protest Japan’s claim to Dokdo in 1906, but its independence had been swallowed up by Japan by then, and its voice was muffled. In 1946, after World War II, the Allied Powers occupying both Japan and Korea issued instructions that separated Dokdo from Japanese territory. But the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers made no specific mention of Dokdo. Once Korea became freed from the occupation, it quickly and vigorously reasserted its claim to Dokdo in 1952, built a guarded lighthouse on it in 1954, and has maintained a presence there ever since. In 1965, the Republic of Korea and Japan normalized their diplomatic relations in a formal treaty. Japan sought to address Dokdo during the negotiations that led to this treaty, but Korea refused. Dokdo was never listed as an official agenda item for discussion during the protracted negotiations that produced this treaty, and the issue is ignored in the treaty. Japan’s willingness to enter into the normalization treaty without 278

Korea-Japan reconciliation

pressing its claim to Dokdo might be seen as a waiver by Japan of its claim and an acceptance of (or acquiescence to) Korea’s sovereignty over Dokdo.6 Therefore, Korea asserts that it possesses sovereignty over Dokdo. As seen above, there is a wide gap between the official positions taken by Japan and Korea over Dokdo. The arguments put forward by each side are diametrically opposed to each other. Contentious situations of this sort can be resolved by applying international legal principles. Indeed, as member states of the United Nations, Japan and Korea commit themselves to “settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.”7 The UN Charter further states that “The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.”8 While Japan and Korea might resort to formal adjudicatory forums, such as the International Court of Justice9 that Japan has proposed and Korea has rejected, or other forms of formal dispute resolution, such as international arbitration, the Dokdo issue presents unique circumstances that make any resolution and reconciliation difficult. For one, this territorial dispute is unlike other around the world because it involves a former colonizer, Japan, versus its former colony, Korea.10 In examining the dispute between the two countries, complications involving the legacy of Japan’s historical interaction with Korea often hinder attempts to find ways to constructively deal with the issue. For example, from Korea’s perspective, during the twentieth century when the critical events that gave rise to Japanese claims over Dokdo occurred, Japan is viewed as the aggressor state and Korea as the victim. The aggressor-victim paradigm as presented by Korea is based on the perspective that present-day Japanese positions on Dokdo are seen as justifications of past military aggression and, more notoriously, signal the future intention of Japan to remilitarize and reconquer the Korean peninsula. Moreover, when seen in light of official Japanese governmental actions in relation to visits to pay homage at the Yasukuni Shrine, the portrayal of Japanese actions during the colonial period and World War II in history textbooks, and the denial of claims made by “comfort women” and those engaged in forced labor, the emphasis placed on historical recognition has made the Dokdo issue part and parcel of the historical legacy of Japanese imperialism in Asia and as a result, on the Korean side, created an environment where resolution would be virtually impossible without sufficient recognition of this historical reality.11 Despite the seemingly impossible task of bringing about a complete resolution of the Dokdo issue, there have been proposals put forth to settle the dispute in varying degrees. These proposals can be divided into four categories. The first type is a pragmatic approach, which attempts to separate the issue of sovereignty over Dokdo from the allocation of maritime zones and other related matters dealing with the law of the sea. The second kind of approach places importance on the Japanese territorial disputes involving China over the Senkaku Islands (Diayudao) and with Russia over the Northern Territories (Kurile Islands), to understand Japanese intentions in relation to Dokdo. The third category of approaches places emphasis upon the role of the United States in bringing about a resolution. The last approach links the historical legacy of Japanese colonialism over Korea to the Dokdo issue.

Pragmatic approach Utilizing legal principles found in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a pragmatic approach to deal with the Dokdo issue separates out the issue of which country possesses sovereignty over the islets from maritime delimitation and maritime zones. The 279

Seokwoo Lee and Hee Eun Lee

1982 UNCLOS, which entered into force in 1994, currently has 162 state parties. In addition to providing for maritime boundaries, this multilateral treaty also provides for other regimes, such as fishing and navigational rights and marine environmental protection. To fully comprehend the various and wide-ranging provisions, one needs to understand the areas of water lying outside the baselines of a territory as defined in the UNCLOS. This begins with internal waters immediately adjacent to land over which a state has full sovereignty. Next, states may claim a territorial sea up to 12 nautical miles where a state has full sovereignty over the seabed, water column, surface, and airspace, but must permit the “innocent passage” of other countries’ vessels. Beyond the territorial sea, a state may claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending up to 200 nautical miles in which they enjoy “sovereign rights” over resources but cannot restrict freedom of navigation, overflight, or the laying of undersea cables. Finally, a state may claim authority over the continental shelf, which may extend up to 350 nautical miles depending upon the existence of a “natural prolongation,” after which lie the high seas, where all states are free to navigate and exploit natural resources (see chapter 11 in this volume). Based on these legal principles regarding the differentiated maritime zones as established by the UNCLOS, it is believed that Japan and Korea would be able to achieve meaningful cooperation over these issues without having to get to the difficult question of ownership over Dokdo and related matters such as maritime delimitation. For example, Japan and Korea have in the past been able to cooperate in the waters between them where their exclusive economic zones overlap. Both countries have agreements in place that delimit the continental shelf and establish joint development of resources on the seabed12 and that establish joint fishing zones.13 Given that this is the situation in regard to the waters surrounding Dokdo, this pragmatic approach views the insistence of sovereignty over Dokdo as not being in the best interests of both Japan and Korea, as both countries have demonstrated that maritime cooperation is possible and that success can be found through this route for the maintenance of friendly relations. Another version of this pragmatic perspective approaches the issue by examining whether Dokdo would be considered a “rock” or and “island” in considering how to delimit the maritime boundary between Japan and Korea. In applying the UNCLOS to Dokdo, there has been a determination that Dokdo should be viewed as a rock, as it is unable to sustain human habitation. Therefore, according to Article 121 of the UNCLOS, “[r]ocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.” Even if Dokdo was considered an island, it would not be given much weight given its small size and relative insignificance by an international tribunal based on the precedents found in arbitral tribunals and the International Court of Justice, and therefore, Dokdo would not be given consideration when deciding maritime delimitation.14 If that is the case, then a boundary could be established equidistant between Korea’s Ulleung Island and Japan’s Oki Island. This would provide the basis for a quicker resolution of the dispute over Dokdo, as such a line would include Dokdo on Korea’s side of the equidistant line, while at the same time Korea would give up its claim to a full 200 nm economic zone, which might be more palatable for Japan, as it would been seen as having won on some issues in the process while giving in on Dokdo’s sovereignty.

Linkage with other territorial disputes involving Japan Another approach in dealing with the Dokdo issue involves examining other territorial disputes Japan has with China and Russia to see if any insight can be given in resolving the Dokdo issue. A number of observations can be made to determine whether factors, such as economic interdependence and incentives and considerations of domestic political capital, are necessary when seeking to resolve territorial disputes with Japan. 280

Korea-Japan reconciliation

The row between Japan and Russia over ownership of Etorofu (Iturup), Kunashiri (Kunashir), Shikotan, and the Habomais located east of Hokkaido and known as the Northern Territories provides a number of insights on how the standoff between Japan and Korea over Dokdo should be handled by both sides. Negotiations between Japan and Russia over the potential transfer of the Northern Territories has demonstrated that despite sizable economic incentives Japan offered to Russia, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union during President Boris Yeltsin’s tenure,15 and the increasing economic ties between the two countries, an agreement to transfer ownership never materialized. The difficulty in forging an agreement lay in the relatively low domestic political capital President Yeltsin had when he undertook negotiations with Japan over the Northern Territories. Essentially, President Yeltsin was unable to make a deal with Japan because it would be too costly for him on the domestic front, where he would lose political legitimacy for appearing to sell the Northern Territories to Japan. Likewise, in relation to China and the Senkaku Islands dispute, despite increased economic ties between China and Japan when the value of trade between the two countries was $60 billion USD in 1996 and drastically increased to $200 billion USD in 2006, and direct foreign investment went from $3.2 billion USD in 1998 and soared to $40 billion USD in 2003, such economic factors were not enough to bring about a resolution of the dispute. Indeed, it is claimed that the economic interests of each side contributed to an intensification of the dispute. The actual and potential economic resources available in the waters around the islands gave each side a reason to raise the stakes over ownership.16 Contrary to the theory that economic interdependence should lead to greater collaboration and cooperation between countries, political factors were important in contributing to the tensions between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands. Given Japan’s position in occupying the islands in question, there seems to be no political need to compromise with China, and moreover, the pitfalls of a domestic political message in budging on a firm policy against China in relation to the Senkaku dispute would probably amount to a loss in the polls for any political party which dared to do so. For instance, the Tokyo government’s handling of the Chinese fishing boat collision incident in 2010 cost the Kan administration a dramatic decline in approval ratings. Though Korea and Japan enjoy an extensive and deep economic relationship, the political factors that animate the Dokdo dispute must be understood in order to help facilitate a settlement of the issue. Each country should be keenly aware of the domestic and international political circumstances facing the other country and make judgments as to how to approach negotiations and what deals to propose based on the amount of political capital each ruling administration is in possession of. A proper understanding of the political realities can also lead to the use of economic incentives in a manner that encourages compromise. Nevertheless, the political circumstances might be such that a deal potentially concluded between the two countries may not resolve all issues related to Dokdo. Political leaders on each side must prepare their people or prepare for a possible backlash. Another aspect of the linkage of the Dokdo issue with the territorial disputes Japan has over the Senkaku Islands and the Northern Territories is the distinction that can be made as to the character of the territories in question. For Japan, the Northern Territories are significantly more meaningful to Japan than Dokdo because there are ethnic Japanese living on the islands and there are historical ties to the islands that run very deep.17 The impact of any deal made by Japan with Korea over Dokdo will be significant in relation to Japan’s dispute with Russia over the Northern Territories. If Japan surrenders one claim, its position over the others would be undermined. Thus, in relation to Dokdo, if Japan conceded its claim to Korea, it would lose all hope of obtaining the return of the Northern Islands, which are significantly more important to it as homeland territory in comparison with Dokdo, which is less important to Japan. Given 281

Seokwoo Lee and Hee Eun Lee

these circumstances, any public efforts by Korea to confront Japan on Dokdo would be ignored and may in fact have the effect of strengthening Japan’s resolve on the issue. This approach toward resolving the Dokdo issue focuses upon an appreciation of the importance of the linkage between the Northern Islands and the Dokdo disputes for Japan, which will allow Korea to formulate a regional approach in dealing with Japan that may serve to remove the blockages in the Northern Islands dispute and in turn, help to resolve the Dokdo issue.18

The role of the United States A focus on the role of the United States in potentially fostering a resolution of the Dokdo issue is another approach that looks to the United States as a global superpower and as a key mutual ally for both countries (see chapter 25 in this volume). The U.S. is seen as a potential broker to work out a deal on Dokdo. However, the official position of the United States is that it does not have a position on the ultimate sovereignty of Dokdo, and it has called on both Japan and Korea to deal with the issue peacefully.19 Given U.S. neutrality on the question, this approach recognizes the difficulty Korea faces, given the fact that there is an absence of any reference to Dokdo in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. This is especially true since the U.S. was the primary drafter of the Treaty, and while Dokdo was included in previous drafts of the Treaty article concerned with the territorial disposition of Korea, it was not included in the penultimate draft (see chapter 22 in this volume). Given this, Korea has three potential policy options to promote it claim. One option is for Korea to focus on maintaining and strengthening its present physical control, anticipating that the current status quo will cause other nations to recognize Korea’s claim and force Japan to abandon its own claim. Another option is to submit the dispute for settlement by third-party adjudication, such as through the International Court of Justice. A third option is for a negotiated settlement between the two countries. In choosing a particular policy option, Korea will have to deal with significant factors that have contributed to Korea’s “Japan bashing.” There are views within Korea that the Dokdo issue is part of a broader conflict with Japan and that Japan has designs to invade Korea, as it has done in the past, and there are emotional reactions to any Japanese action in relation to Dokdo. These important elements have impacts not only upon Japan’s approach on Dokdo and other issues related to its relationship with Korea, but also on the United States’ attitude and perspective on the Dokdo issue.

Confronting the historical legacy of Japanese colonialism The last set of approaches toward resolving the Dokdo issue focus on confronting the legacy of Japanese colonialism and using it as the touchstone to bring about reconciliation not on the Dokdo issue itself, but to bring about a new phase in Korea-Japan relations. This approach is centered on the view of Japan’s colonial ambitions in characterizing Japan’s actions regarding Dokdo in 1905. There has been a view expressed in Japan that the acquisition of Dokdo by the Meiji government as it was incorporated into Shimane Prefecture was for military reasons, as a precursor to Japan’s eventual annexation of the Korean peninsula.20 After Dokdo was declared a part of Japanese territory in February 1905, later that same year, Korea was forced by Japan to become its protectorate, which was followed by annexation five years later.21 From a Korean point of view, it is quite reasonable to see a chain of events beginning with Japan’s acquisition of Dokdo that led to a period of great suffering for Koreans at the hands of Japan. This view has led to an understanding in Japan that from Korea’s perspective, the taking of Dokdo was the first step toward Japanese colonization and thus a potent symbol of Japan’s conquest of the Korean peninsula.22 282

Korea-Japan reconciliation

Given this perspective of the history between the two countries, this approach places the burden on Japan to resolve the Dokdo dispute. Japan’s claims over Dokdo are seen as an impediment to the attainment of a number of important Japanese foreign policy objectives related to North Korea, including resolving the issue of Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea’s nuclear program, and fishing rights around Dokdo.23 This approach calls for cooperation with Seoul as more important than pursuing Dokdo, which has only provoked South Korea to the detriment of Japanese interests. Dialogue is called for as opposed to taking a confrontational stance on the question of sovereignty.24 There has also been a call for Japan to withdraw its claim to Dokdo and recognize Korean sovereignty “in the spirit of repentance” for Japan’s colonial rule over Korea.25 This approach assumes that Dokdo was wrongfully taken by Japan in 1905. Considering the historical evidence of Korea’s sovereignty against the official Japanese position that Dokdo was legally acquired by Japan, by balancing the historical and legal arguments taken by both countries on the question of sovereignty over Dokdo, this approach shifts the nature of the dispute from the existing entrenched historical and legal arguments to a simpler, present-day calculation of cost and benefit. Essentially, the conclusion for Japan is that any benefits Dokdo may bring are outweighed by the costs to Japan. Additionally, a moralistic approach on the Dokdo issue that considers both law and the history of Japan’s unjust treatment of Korea and the Korean people during the first half of the twentieth century is seen as a way to bring about a resolution of the Dokdo issue. By focusing attention on the treatment of Korea, which began with annexation and subsequent colonial rule and includes Japan’s actions during World War II and the crimes against humanity perpetuated by Japan during the war, this approach looks to the self-recognition of Japan’s war guilt and Korea’s willingness to abandon parts of its claims to Dokdo to bring about a measure of reconciliation with the past.26 Critical to this approach is the perspective that the context and timing of Japan’s seizure of Dokdo in 1904 and its eventual acquisition can be viewed as invalid since Japan’s conquest of Korea precluded any effective response from Korea. Also, Japan’s literalist interpretation of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which posits that the Treaty omitted Dokdo from among the territories it had to give up, and the Japanese view that any claims of reparations from those who suffered under Japanese rule were waived by the Treaty must be understood in light of the U.S. government’s interest in securing an early conclusion to U.S. occupation of Japan and Allied backing of a peace treaty that would be generous to Japan, along with the U.S. policies in the region spurred on by the Korean War and the Cold War (see chapter 22 in this volume). This moralistic approach views the Treaty not as providing the highest level of immunity, as Japan maintains, but setting forth the minimum set of obligations Japan owes to Korea. If that is the case and such a perspective on the Treaty and history is adopted, Japan could come to terms with its past by abandoning its claim to Dokdo in connection with a formal apology and restitution to those it harmed, while Korea would respond by agreeing to limit its claim to a territorial sea around Dokdo and compromise on fisheries and other resources in the exclusive economic zone.

Conclusion The most precise expression of the Korea’s understanding of the issue of sovereignty over Dokdo was perhaps the Special Address by President Roh Moo-hyun on Korea-Japan Relations delivered in April 2006, which resulted from the dispute surrounding Japan’s plans for hydrographic survey exploration within the Korean exclusive economic zone near Dokdo. The address stated that Dokdo was the first part of Korean territory that was annexed by Japan in the course of its 283

Seokwoo Lee and Hee Eun Lee

usurpation of the Korean peninsula, and that Dokdo was a symbol of a complete recovery of sovereignty. It also stated that along with homage paid by the Japanese leaders to the Yaskuni Shrine and as reflected in Japanese history textbooks, Dokdo was a touchstone of Japan’s recognition of its past history as well as its determination for Korea-Japan relations for the future and peace in East Asia. Such a definition, emphasizing the historical awareness of Korea-Japan relations, is presently, and will continue to be, the basis upon which a Korean perspective on resolution and reconciliation is centered. In other words, the possession over Dokdo is a conflicting issue in Korea-Japan relations and, for the Korean people, the substance of their identity. The most recent spat between Japan and Korea over Dokdo regarding President Lee Myungbak’s unprecedented visit to Dokdo in 2012 and Japan’s proposal to submit the case to the International Court of Justice in response is not a new expression of this dispute. They are standard expressions of the long-repeated conflict between the two countries. In general, the Dokdo issue was a relatively obscure regional dispute that had been largely handled diplomatically over the years. However, the intensification of the efforts by both sides in claiming sovereignty has revealed the political factors lying outside of diplomacy, which has made resolution that much more difficult. The Korean national government and local governments have been busily proposing measures to strengthen sovereignty over Dokdo. Japan’s efforts to publicize its claim over Dokdo have increased accordingly (see chapter 23 in this volume). Both Korea and Japan have been trying to show that their exercise of state authority over Dokdo has been actual, continued, peaceful, and sufficient. This shows that ultimately at the core of the Dokdo dispute exists a dispute over sovereignty. The official position of Korea concerning the Dokdo dispute is that an actual dispute does not exist; that Dokdo is not subject to diplomatic negotiations or judicial evaluation by the International Court of Justice; and that Dokdo has been historically, geographically, and legally part of Korean territory under international law. As a territorial dispute does not exist over Dokdo, blocking Japan’s efforts in making it a dispute does not leave much room for Korea to maneuver. Korea is left essentially with ignoring Japanese arguments and claims and publicizing its own position on the matter. On the other hand for Japan, a concern over deteriorating relations with Korea cannot be ignored as it pursues its Takeshima claim. Ultimately, the resolution of the Dokdo issue lies in a change of understanding. First, Korea and Japan must seriously reconsider their historical relationship and its correlation with the Dokdo. This situation in which one party to a dispute has been colonized by the other party is unique; in other words, there are no precedent cases of a territorial dispute between a colonized state and its colonizing state. Dokdo is a core issue and at the heart of the identity of contemporary Korea-Japan relations. Thus, from a Korean perspective, Japan’s sincere reflection of its colonial past must take precedence, which would be followed by Korea’s positive attitude and response to the same, along with a willingness of both sides to make a compromise over the issue.

Notes 1 Dokdo is referred to as “Takeshima” in Japan. 2 Dokdo is located 215 km from the Korean mainland and 211 km from the Japanese main island, Honshu. 3 In the aftermath of President Lee’s visit to Dokdo, Japan sought to find a way to bring the issue to the International Court of Justice. However, with President Park Geun-hye’s inauguration as Korea’s first female president, Japan indicated that it would not seek to unilaterally bring the dispute to the Court; see Asahi Shimbun (January 9, 2013) ‘Japan won’t bring Takeshima dispute to ICJ’. 4 There are currently three territorial disputes over islands in East Asia in which Japan is a disputant: against Russia, Japan continues to claim sovereignty over the Kurile Islands (Northern Territories);

284

Korea-Japan reconciliation

5 6 7 8 9

10

11 12

13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

against China and Taiwan, over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyudao); and against Korea, over Dokdo (Takeshima). The names of these territories are also subject to dispute: Russia refers to the islands as the “Kurile Islands,” while Japan denotes the area as the “Northern Territories;” China and Taiwan use the terms “Diaoyudao,” “Diaoyutai,” or “Diaoyu Islands,” while Japan refers to is as the “Senkaku Islands.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Outline of Takeshima Issue . See Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Korea, Dokdo, Korean Territory . UN Charter Art. 2, para. 3. UN Charter Art. 33, para. 1. The International Court of Justice has decided a number of cases of territorial and boundary disputes in Asia. See Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge (Malay. v. Sing.) 2008 I.C.J. (Judgment of May 23); Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thail.), 1962 I.C.J. 39, 45 (June 15). Dakas, D. C. J. (2011) ‘Dokdo, Colonialism, and International Law: Lessons from the Decision of the ICJ in the Land and Maritime Dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 93. From the authors’ own experiences, it appears that most Koreans are educated about and aware of the Dokdo issue while many Japanese are not (cf. chapter 23 in this volume). Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning Joint Development of the Southern Part of the Continental Shelf Adjacent to the Two Countries (1974) . Agreement between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning Fisheries (1965 and 1998); Korean Herald (June 24, 2013), ‘Korea, Japan Agree on Fishing Quota in Exclusive Waters’. Van Dyke, J. M. (2011) ‘Addressing and Resolving the Dokdo Matter’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 31–32. At one point, Japan offered $1.5 billion USD in untied aid to Russia. Buszynski, L. (2000) ‘Russia and Northeast Asia: Aspirations and Reality’, Pacific Review 13, 3: 399, 407–10. Blanchard, J. F. (2001) ‘Politics and Economics in the Resolution/Non-Resolution of the East China Sea/Diaoyu Islands and Northern Territories Issues: Feats, Failures, and Futures’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 31–32. See Kim, M. (2012) ‘A War of Memories: Dissecting Doko/Takeshima Dispute’, Global Asia 7, 2: 74–77. See Buszynski, L. (2011) ‘The Dokdo Dispute in Perspective and Avenues for Resolution’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 209–21. Campbell, K. M. (September 20, 2012) Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Washington, DC). Wakamiya, Y. (July 30, 2008) ‘Who Is Smiling at the Latest Row?’, Asahi Shimbun. Wakamiya, Y. (April 2–3, 2005) ‘Dare We Dream of “Friendship Island”?’, Asahi Shimbun. Serita, K. (2007) ‘The Takeshima Dispute: A Radical Proposal’, Japan Echo 34, 1: 32, 36; Wakamiya, supra note 2. Ibid. Arai, S. (November 18, 2008) ‘We Need Solutions by Dialogue’, Keynote Speech at International Conference: Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Seoul, Korea. Wada, H. (March 21, 2005) ‘Let’s Resolve the Dokdo Issue’, Hankyoreh. See Scheiber, H. N. (2011) ‘Legalism, Geopolitics, and Morality: Perspectives from Law and History on War Guilt in Relation to the Dokdo Island Controversy’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice: Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 13–27.

Bibliography Agreement between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning Fisheries (1965), International Legal Materials 4, 6: 1128 –1133. Agreement between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning Joint Development of the Southern Part of the Continental Shelf Adjacent to the Two Countries (1974) . Arai, S. (November 18, 2008) ‘We Need Solutions by Dialogue’, Keynote Speech at International Conference: Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Seoul, Korea. Asahi Shimbun (January 9, 2013) ‘Japan won’t bring Takeshima dispute to ICJ’. Blanchard, J. F. (2001) ‘Politics and Economics in the Resolution/Non-Resolution of the East China Sea/ Diaoyu Islands and Northern Territories Issues: Feats, Failures, and Futures’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 31–32. Buszynski, L. (2000) ‘Russia and Northeast Asia: Aspirations and Reality’, Pacific Review 13, 3: 399, 407–10. Buszynski, L. (2011) ‘The Dokdo Dispute in Perspective and Avenues for Resolution’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 209–21. Campbell, K. M. (September 20, 2012), Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Washington, DC). Dakas, D. C. J. (2011) ‘Dokdo, Colonialism, and International Law: Lessons from the Decision of the ICJ in the Land and Maritime Dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 93. Kim, M. (2012) ‘A War of Memories: Dissecting Doko/Takeshima Dispute’, Global Asia 7, 2: 74–77. Korean Herald (June 24, 2013) ‘Korea, Japan Agree on Fishing Quota in Exclusive Waters’. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Korea, Dokdo, Korean Territory . Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (April 4, 2014) Outline of Takeshima Issue . Scheiber, H. N. (2011) ‘Legalism, Geopolitics, and Morality: Perspectives from Law and History on War Guilt in Relation to the Dokdo Island Controversy’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 13–27. Serita, K. (2007) ‘The Takeshima Dispute: A Radical Proposal’, Japan Echo 34, 1: 32, 36. Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge (Malay. v. Sing.), 2008 I.C.J. (Judgment of May 23). Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thail.), 1962 I.C.J. 39, 45 (June 15). UN Charter Art. 2, para. 3. UN Charter Art. 33, para. 1. Van Dyke, J. M. (2011) ‘Addressing and Resolving the Dokdo Matter’, in S. Lee and H. E. Lee (eds) Dokdo: Historical Appraisal and International Justice, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff: 31–32. Wada, H. (March 21, 2005) ‘Let’s Resolve the Dokdo Issue’, Hankyoreh. Wakamiya, Y. (April 2–3, 2005) ‘Dare We Dream of “Friendship Island”?’, Asahi Shimbun. Wakamiya, Y. (July 30, 2008) ‘Who Is Smiling at the Latest Row?’, Asahi Shimbun.

286

18 TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE, RECONCILIATION, AND POLITICAL ARCHIVIZATION A comparative study of commemoration in South Korea and Japan of the Jeju April 3 Incident Sungman Koh

This chapter discusses so-called Transitional Justice in post-conflict societies, and the archivization of deaths in commemoration, through a comparative study of South Korea and Japan. The study addresses the following three questions. First, ‘How does a nation-state such as South Korea that once committed massacres of its own people address and redress those deaths in the context of Transitional Justice?’ Second, ‘How are the deaths caused by such massacres archived, and how do they represent the status of moral objects in official commemoration?’ Third, ‘How do the families of the dead seek to restore justice through the politics of mourning in non-national contexts, such as the Zainichi community in Japan?’ To investigate these questions, this chapter will analyze the April 3 Incident, which took place on Jeju, the southernmost island of the Korean peninsula, and its aftermath between 1947 and 1954. The chapter will then shift its focus to the major tasks of the National Committee for Investigation of the Jeju April 3 Incident and Recovering the Honor of Victims (usually called the 4.3 Committee), established in 2000 as one of the Transitional Justice strategies of the South Korean government. When a massacre, which inevitably results in many losses and the infringement of human rights, is over, nation-states in times of transition to new democratic regimes often adopt strategies to redress the dark days of the past, and to integrate and rebuild society. However, in many cases, the government faces the dilemma of conflicting elements within the purposeful strategy, such as how to deal with past incidents righteously and to restore human rights, and how to stabilize the state politically through the integration of the people and the achievement of national reconciliation. As is well-known, many scholars in the field of Transitional Justice argue that most post-conflict societies have failed to overcome this dilemma.1 This is because conflicts and compromises among the members of communities are unavoidable in the struggle over memory and the symbolic representation of the past. Post-conflict societies which are well-known in the world, such as South Africa, Chile, and Argentina, also attempted to realize Transitional Justice by establishing Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Their attempts, however, have been criticized as “reconciliation without justice” (Mamdani 1996) or mere “political compromises” 287

Sungman Koh

(Phakathi and Merwe 2008). These harsh criticisms have been generated despite their pioneering efforts and outcomes. The author also believes that the 4.3 Committee cannot avoid the similar criticisms on similar grounds regardless of its outcomes. This study does not aim to raise objections to the assignation of historical meanings by the 4.3 Committee. It represents a fruition of the long and hard struggle by the bereaved families, the Jeju people, and many activists from inside and outside Korea who longed for Korea’s democratization.2 Instead, it tries to examine concrete examples of Transitional Justice programs carried out by the 4.3 Committee, and to seek other solutions to overcome the ‘dilemma’ created by them. This chapter consists of three parts. The first part is a brief overview of the Jeju April 3 Incident. The second part analyzes the 4.3 Committee’s overriding project: the selection and reorganization of the dead. That covers how the South Korean government screens the dead within the varying historical background and how it officially proclaims them as ‘4.3 victims’ or not. There is also a review of the establishment of official monuments, which was one of the major projects of the Committee along with the formalization of the dead. Through the work of reorganization of the dead and the archivization of deaths, such as inscription of each victim’s name on the monument, the Committee situates them in the context of official history. The final part of the chapter provides critical insights into reorganization of the dead and the archivization of deaths by the 4.3 Committee, indicating possible problems in recognizing history caused by the Transitional Justice program. This chapter also seeks for the possibility of overcoming those problems in an alternative justice framework as is attempted in a non-national context, such as the Zainichi community in Osaka, Japan.

Resistance, massacre, and aftermaths Bruce Cumings (2005:219) observes, “Before 1950 no place suffered the political conflicts of liberated Korea like Jeju.” At the end of World War II in 1945, in the same way as in other regions of Asia-Pacific, the US Army took over the southern half of the Korean peninsula, replacing the defeated Japanese Army. Nonetheless, the policy of the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) was in constant and continuous confusion, and there were conflicts between right- and left-leaning political forces in South Korea. Furthermore, in the case of Jeju Island, worsening poverty and infectious diseases, especially cholera, with a sharp rise of returnees from Japan, triggered rising instability and discontent among the inhabitants. In this atmosphere of confusion, on March 1, 1947, the police under the USAMGIK opened fire on people assembling for a demonstration, and six residents were shot dead, while six other people were severely injured (the 4.3 Committee 2003:107–109). This assault, which is called the 3.1 Incident, led to an armed uprising by the left-wing factions in the following year. Calling for a fair assessment of the situation, the residents also started a general strike. USAMGIK realized the seriousness of the affair and dispatched a fact-finding mission to Jeju Island. However, they concluded that it was just an ‘anti-American demonstration’ (the 4.3 Committee 2003:100), and then indiscriminately rounded them up in a rough crackdown operation. The Jeju branch of the South Korean Labor Party, being pushed into a corner, took advantage of public sentiment by turning against USAMGIK in order to sustain their organization, and planned an armed uprising in order to protest against the partition of the Korean peninsula and UN-sponsored elections in the South (the 4.3 Committee 2003:157–160). In the end, under the slogans “Oppose the separate election only in South Korea” and “We stand against any crackdown through resistance”, guerrillas attacked police garrisons in the morning of April 3, 1948. Right-wing factions with the support of the USAMGIK were seeking to establish a separate government in the South, but 288

Transitional justice

their move was opposed by the Jeju branch of the South Korean Labor Party and Jeju residents through the uprising. Washington and Seoul considered the attacks the opening salvo of a pro-Communist movement and branded Jeju “Little Moscow” or the “Red Island”.3 Thus, the officials launched a sweeping Red-baiting operation known as the “program of mass slaughter”.4 Both the newly established South Korean government and USAMGIK recognized the uprising not as a mere regional problem but as a serious crisis threatening the identity of a new anti-communist nation, and a disturbance to the emerging Cold War order in East Asia as conceived by the United States. As Kim (2010:45) indicates, “As the Jeju April 3 incident occurred both before and until after North and South Korea each established their own government, in South Korea mopping up the left wing appeared to be a national agenda. Government seemed to face political crisis, but taking this as an opportunity, they could weed out the opposition forces and strengthen the source of their power.” To put down the uprising, a number of soldiers and the police force, and the North West Young Men’s Association, which was a private organization of the extreme right, were dispatched from the mainland. Through the Red Hunt operation, innocent civilians as well as guerrillas became the targets of mass killings. The massacre utterly transformed the human geography of Jeju (Morris-Suzuki 2010:75). After all these, as the last guerrilla was captured in September 1954, the armed uprising led by the resistance group ended in failure. Although the armed uprising broke out to prevent the nation from getting divided, two different governments were established in 1948 and 1949 in the south and north respectively. Since South and North Korea concluded an armistice in 1953, three years after the outbreak of the Korean War, the two Koreas remain divided until this day. As Kwon (2010:104) notes, “This violent period was in many ways a prelude to the Korean War”. When the Korean War broke out, numbers of Jeju men who remained alive from the slaughter chose to go to the front line in the war, half willingly and half not. They could prove that their family and they themselves were not Reds, by becoming anti-communist Cold War Warriors, and fighting with bravery in the battlefield (Kim 1999:369–375). Jeju people could be born again as the citizens of Republic of Korea through the baptism of mass slaughter and the civil war.

The Transitional Justice programs of the 4.3 Committee South Korea’s efforts to redress the past A reappraisal of the April 3 Incident became possible as the South Korean government took action to come to terms with the past. With societal democratization from the late 1980s, policies to overcome the negative past and to actualize ‘reconciliation’ and ‘coexistence’ were introduced in earnest. As part of this policy, The Special Act for Investigation of the Jeju April 3 Incident and Recovering the Honor of Victims (usually called the 4.3 Special Act) was enacted in 2000. In the same year the 4.3 Committee was organized as a governmental organization in order to redress the wrongs of the Jeju April 3 Incident. As seen in Table 18.1, the Committee’s programs are divided into two general parts. Among these programs, the Committee puts greatest emphasis on ‘identifying the victims and their bereaved families’. This is because ‘those who they recognise as the victims’ defines the primary objective of Transitional Justice programs. Furthermore, it is directly connected to defining the character of the whole incident under scrutiny. In accordance with this Act and the Committee, the South Korean government screened the dead, and pronounced selected ones to be officially recognized ‘4.3 victims’. 289

Sungman Koh Table 18.1 The 4.3 Committee’s major programs Investigation and reporting of the truth Restoring the honor of ‘victims’ and ‘bereaved families’

• • • • • • • •

to identify ‘victims’ and their ‘bereaved families’ to collect and analyze evidence as part of fact-finding investigation to publish a report on the findings of the investigation to identify ‘victims’ and their ‘bereaved families’ to build shrines and memorials to honor the deceased to state the government’s official position on the incident to excavate mass graves and historical sites, and exhume bodies of victims to provide medical and financial assistance to the ‘severely physically injured survivors’1

1. The Committee has yet to take measures with regard to the mentally injured, such as with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Selection and classification of the dead5 The 4.3 Committee (2003:366–367) stated that the number of people who died during the incident is now estimated at 25,000 to 30,000. As part of the Transitional Justice programs, the 4.3 Committee received 15,450 applications on behalf of victims between June 2000 and February 2013.6 Among them, 14,033 applicants have been recognized as official ‘4.3 victims’.7 According to the statistics that the 4.3 Committee received, 86% of the killings were committed by the suppression forces and 13.9% by the resistance groups.8 These statistics are similar to the G-2 US military report, which stated that more than 80% of the killings were attributed by the suppression of the uprising.9 However, the Act is not free from problems, in that it classifies only a certain types of victim, such as ‘the dead’, ‘a missing person’, ‘a handicapped person’, and ‘a convict’, without clearly stating who will be recognized as ‘4.3 victims’ among the different types of the dead (Constitutional Court of Korea 2001). Thus, the Transitional Justice programs of the 4.3 Committee had to start with the question of ‘who were the official victims?’ As soon as the Committee was formed, groups with different understandings and perspectives on the incident, both inside and outside the Committee, had heated debates on the standard to define and screen the ‘4.3 victims’.10 After recurrent conflicts, negotiations, and compromises, they managed to establish the classification criteria for the victims of the April 3 Incident: It should not debase the identity of the Republic of Korea and the basic liberal-democratic order of constitutional spirit. . . . ① Key executive members of the Jeju Branch of the South Korean Labor Party who were directly responsible for the outbreak of the Jeju April 3 Incident and ② ringleaders of the armed civilian groups who aggressively confronted the military and the police force cannot be protected under the constitution of our nation as a person who undermined the basic liberal-democratic order. Therefore, they should be excluded from the category of ‘victims’. ( The 4.3 Committee 2008:149–150) As a result, the classification of the dead in the context of the Transitional Justice was reorganized, as seen in Table 18.2. However, this classification could not avoid controversies in terms of who could be included, and, therefore, who should be excluded from the status of ‘4.3 victim’. The people in the

290

Transitional justice Table 18.2 ‘Victims’ and ‘non-victims’ Perpetrators (combatants) In the context of the conflict In the context of the Transitional Justice

Those killed (non-combatants)

Suppression groups

Resistance groups

Civilians

‘Victims’

‘Non-victims’

‘Victims’

so-called suppression group such as soldiers, the police, and the right-wing youth organizations, the actual perpetrators of the massacre, as well as the civilians they killed, can be regrouped as ‘4.3 victims’. Meanwhile, those who belonged to the resistance group such as the armed guerrillas who confronted the US military and the South Korean government, and those who held strong leftist ideological convictions of Korea at that time, are excluded from victim status. In the context of the official history of South Korea, the latter are nothing but the ‘impure dead’ who damaged the legitimacy of the nation-state. Nevertheless, it does not mean that they are automatically defined as perpetrators, the opposite category of ‘4.3 victim’. This is because the purpose of the Committee is not to ferret out the principle individuals responsible for the killings and to punish them. The Committee only screens ‘victims’ and ‘non-victims’ in order to consecrate the former. As a major outcome of Transitional Justice programs, the Committee announced the statistics of ‘4.3 victims’ who passed the screening process every year. Furthermore, inscription of the names on the monuments prior to the commemorative ritual held on April 3 every year reveals concrete evidence of those defined as ‘victims’. They would be considered witnesses of an era which future generations can refer to in pursuing reconciliation, harmonious coexistence, and peace in the island. On the other hand, the existence of the ‘non-victim’ category still remains in oblivion.

The establishment of the national memorials The classification criteria to sort the dead into officially recognizable and non-recognizable ‘victims’ borders on the boundary of the historical facts as defined by the nation-state. Furthermore, the politics of death surrounding this boundary determines the range and characteristics of the national records. The peculiarity of this concept for the ‘4.3 victims’ appears more concretely on the national memorials which the Committee established in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park. The memorials function as a record and commemoration at the same time. As shown in Table 18.3, the 4.3 Committee spent eleven years from 2000 in erecting a monument and memorial hall inside the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park.11 These three monuments were built at different times with different designs. However, they share a similarity in that the dead presented on the monuments are limited solely to those who are recognized as ‘victims’. On the memorial day, an official ceremony is held in front of these monuments to remember the dead. Thus it serves as an instrument to commemorate the ‘victims’ and also serves as the record of the victims at the same time. As Kim (1999:256) indicates, “the state functions like a chief priest-shaman performing public rituals through these monuments, and transforms itself from ‘the perpetrator group’ to ‘the judicious group redressing the negative past’ ”.

291

Table 18.3 Monuments and memorial spaces at the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park Type

Title

Outline

Monument

The enshrinement site of the spirit tablets

Completed on April 3, 2004. About 14,000 tablets inscribed with the names of recognized ‘victims’ classified by their place of family registration.

The monument of remembrance

Completed on April 3, 2009. Name, sex, age, date of death or disappearance, and type (e.g. dead, missing, prisoner, etc.) of the ‘victims’ are inscribed and classified by their place of family registration.

The tombstones of the missing people

Completed on October, 2009. Individual tombstones of about 3,400 missing persons among the ‘victims’ with inscriptions of their names, places of family registration, birth dates, dates and places of disappearance are installed and classified by place of disappearance such as Jeju, Gyeongin, Yeongnam, Daejeon and Honam.1

The Jeju 4.3 Peace Memorial Hall

Completed on March 28, 2008. Historical records and relics are exhibited and showcased using art work techniques. The records and relics draw on The Jeju April 3 Incident Investigation Report officially published by the 4.3 Committee in 2003.

The enshrinement site of the exhumed remains from the killing sites

Completed on 26, March, 2011. This edifice enshrined the exhumed remains of the 4.3 victims from 2006 until 2010 after cremation. The exhibition displays life-size replicas of the excavation sites.

Memorial Hall

1 During the April 3 incident, many Jeju residents who were wrongfully accused of being rebels were illegally transferred to prisons on the mainland on the grounds that there was no prison in Jeju. In the chaos during the Korean War, those imprisoned were slaughtered by the Force of the South Korean government retreating southward while they remain in the official status of ‘the disappeared’. Some prisons were occupied by the North Korean troops, and some of the prisoners are still alive in the North. Photos ©Sungman Koh (2008–2013)

Transitional justice

Some critical comments on the ‘4.3 victims’ and official memorials Some of the critical comments on the ‘victims’ and the political archivization by Transitional Justice programs include the following:

Selection and reorganization of the dead The first criticism regard the Committee’s classification of the dead into only two contrasting categories: ‘victims’ and ‘non-victims’, as seen in Table 18.2. The suppression group and civilians categorized as ‘victims’ leave the strong impression of having been patriotic martyrs embedded in the narrative of self-sacrifice. The resistance group, on the contrary, is consistently degraded as ostracized traitors. Their names could not be recorded on any monuments set up by the South Korean government (see Kim, MK 2010). After those who were involved in the resistance activities were excluded from the ‘victims’ category, all records of them were immediately removed in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park. The resistance groups opposed the pro-American government in the South because they believed that the United States tried to seize the Cold War hegemony in East Asia after World War II, and it intended to establish a separate government only in the southern half of the peninsula in order to contain Communism. The intentions of the US were perceived to be detrimental to the unified Korean peninsula. These were the reasons why the resistance groups and their family members were slaughtered. And yet the South Korean government labeled them as those who “debased the national identity of the Republic of Korea” (The 4.3 Committee 2008:149), completely ostracizing them from the Transitional Justice program (Koh 2011; 2012). The idea of justice in the Cold War environment categorizes communists out of political convenience, and it is uncritically reproduced in today’s Transitional Justice strategies. The second criticism concerns the complicated relations shared by and among the dead when a conflict society is in flux while transiting toward a post-conflict society. There are diverse kinds of the dead: the perpetrator or victim of slaughter, informer, collaborator, and bystander. These important situational variations cannot be factored in when they exist only two categories of dead – ‘victim’ or ‘non-victim’. Through the politics of archivization of deaths, the collective memories of the 4.3 Incident are integrated into the national history. The memories are transmitted primarily through the monumental records and annual commemorative rituals. Meanwhile, the reconstitution of the dead and its archivization generate inescapable conflicts among the relevant parties. This explains the reason why bereaved families excluded from ‘victim’ status refuse to attend the commemorative ceremonies organized by the government. The South Korean government’s attempt ‘to deal with the past righteously’ led to the selection and official recognition of deaths which did not debase the national identity of Republic of Korea, and this is regardless of the diverse kinds of deaths caused by the massacre. The government’s logic escapes the universal justice norms of human society. As stated above, these observations are not to deny the contributions made by the 4.3 Committee to redress the negative legacy of the past. However, they cannot avoid the criticism that their Transitional Justice strategy simplifies the various types of the dead and archives their deaths aiming to singularize the multifaceted historical facts into one version of official history (Koh 2011; 2012). These lead to the fermentation of nationalism at the hands of the nation-state.

293

Sungman Koh

The politics of memorials Monument While the monuments may differ in their form, content, and production date, they share the similarity of memorializing the ‘victims’. As seen in Table 18.3, each monument involves only minimal information on the victim, such as name, age, and place of death. For example, there are no details of their deaths, such as why, how, or by whom the individual was killed. Moreover, we cannot know the concrete relations among the ‘victims’ recorded on the monuments. The explanations about their sacrifice etched on the stones are too simple. When future generations pay tribute at the monuments, they will no longer understand the turbulent historical milieu the dead experienced and the relations shared among the ‘victims’. However, not all ‘victims’ are equal because of the rank ordering practice of the ‘victims’. Only the word ‘victims’ and the minimal information is inscribed on each monument, with no mention of the most salient facts on the death – namely, why, how, or by whom the person was killed. While all the ‘victims’ would fall into one major category, the relations between the perpetrator and the offended are classified as one sweeping category of victims. Once again, the politics of death are evident even in the categorization and placement of the monuments. On the one hand, the spirit tablets for those excluded from ‘victim’ status are conspicuously absent, and the outcome of the 4.3 Committee’s 2006 decision to withdraw the enshrinement tablets of nine such individuals can be seen in Figures 18.1.1 and 18.1.2. Their spirit tablets were replaced with blank tablets. Although the enshrinement site for the spirit tablets was originally built to accommodate every death, the Committee removed the tablets for those ‘non-victims’ and replaced them with blank ones. As this decision was made after the enactment of the enshrinement site, the blank tablets are a stark reminder of how certain deaths have been officially forgotten in the public memory. In this regard, the site is the only facility in the 4.3 Peace Park that signifies the contradictory nature of how the victims were selected. The specter of blank spirit tablets and empty spaces poses the question, ‘who exactly were the victims?’ Awed by the scale and grandeur of the site, visitors evidently see the vast amount of resources mobilized for the commemoration project. They only see the names etched into the stones with the invisible ideology at work.

Figures 18.1.1 and 18.1.2 Withdrawn enshrinement tablets Photos ©Sungman Koh (2008, 2013)

294

Transitional justice

Memorial Hall In March of 2008, the Peace Memorial Hall opened with an exhibition based on “The Jeju April 3 Incident Investigation Report (Jeju 4.3 Jinsang Josa Bogoseo)”. The exhibition is divided into six parts: ‘Prologue’, ‘Uprising’, ‘Massacres’, ‘Aftermath’, ‘Examination of the Truth’, and ‘A New Beginning’. Right-leaning critics were concerned whether the exhibition’s narrative might be yet another example of the government’s botched attempts to settle the past. Their doubts were well-founded because certain works were removed from the exhibition shortly before the opening ceremony of the Memorial Hall. The Committee banned the painting titled “Truth of the Ora-ri Incident (Ora-ri Sageon ui Jinsil)” showing the burning of the village with an image of the White House in the background as seen in Figure 18.2.1. It was part of the original display. As seen in Figure 18.2.2, the original artwork was withdrawn, leaving an empty wall for a while. Now, the space is filled with different materials, as seen in Figure 18.2.3. The 4.3 Committee explained that the painting was replaced because it did not have either historicity or a factual basis.12 The painting alluded to a possibility that the Jeju situation was reported to the US government and that the orders to burn down the villages and to kill the residents were issued by the White House. However, historical materials to support this hypothesis have not been discovered so far.13 In addition the US and South Korean soldiers dispatched to Jeju Island to suppress guerrillas were painted in red, and this was another reason for the replacement.14 This suggests poor planning on the part of the 4.3 Committee and inadequate research on the part of the commissioned artists.

Figures 18.2.1, 18.2.2 and 18.2.3 Removed images from the Peace Memorial Hall Photos ©Kyounghoon Park and Sungman Koh (2008, 2010, 2013)

295

Sungman Koh

Figures 18.3.1 and 18.3.2 “The Disappeared” displayed and removed Photos ©Sungman Koh (2008, 2012)

The Committee also took issue with a caricature of President Syngman Rhee15 and massacre victims, a realistic piece portraying the massacres as a highly organized operation, insisting that these artworks were deemed to be “excessive or exaggerated [historical facts]”.16 Figure 18.3.1, titled “The Disappeared (Haengbangbulmyeong)”, was the original exhibit. Now, as seen in Figure 18.3.2, the portrait of Syngman Rhee has been removed from the original display. By deleting his portrait, the hypothetical relationship between Syngman Rhee and the murdered civilians can no longer be postulated. These works were replaced or altered and, to this day, they have never been exhibited as originally intended. “Truth of the Ora-ri Incident (Ora-ri Sageon ui Jinsil)” was replaced by a scene from a silent film and photos produced by the US Army stationed in South Korea at that time, while “The Disappeared (Haengbangbulmyeong)” was taken out from another piece leaving a blank space, as shown in Figure 18.3.2. Censorship of the Memorial Hall’s exhibition blurred, if not distorted, representations of the perpetrators, a consequence of the 4.3 Committee’s strategy to focus on ‘reconciliation’ and harmonious ‘coexistence’ instead of truth-finding.

Exploring the possibility of alternative justice: Experiences of the Zainichi community Commemorative ritual in Osaka Enforced erasure of memory and revision of the history of the massacre do not always succeed. A wide variety of spheres in the Zainichi community in Japan, including town communities,17 families, and individuals, attempt to repair broken communities and restore justice. Zainichi from Jeju are (re)producing a version of memory probably more truthful to what has really happened in Jeju due to relatively little political intervention from the homeland of the Korean peninsula. The first-generation Zainichi from Jeju and their descendants in Osaka have been conducting ritual ceremonies to console the grief caused by the April 3 Incident. The Jeju islanders considered Japan and Jeju to be the same living sphere since the Japanese occupation due to the island’s very close physical location vis-à-vis the island nation. Taking advantage of its geographic proximity, many Jeju people crossed to Japan, though illegally, to escape the massacres of more than sixty years ago.18 Osaka, in which many people from Jeju are residing now, is the only place where a memorial ceremony for the April 3 Incident is being periodically held outside Jeju Island.19 An assembly to commemorate the Incident has been held in Tokyo as well, but the ritualistic ceremony of calling back the spirits of the dead for consolation is held only in Osaka. 296

Transitional justice

It started in the year 1949, a period when the suppression operations were still ongoing in Jeju (Fujinaga et al. 2008). However, the memorial service was discontinued from the late 1950s (Moon 2010).20 After that, along with the democratization of South Korean society, the memorial ceremony was revived in the ethnic Korean community of Japan. In April 1989, a remembrance assembly was held in Tokyo for the first time, and it served as the momentum for its revival in Osaka. It was also a result of the cumulative civil rights movements against ethnic discrimination in Japanese society such as the ‘Anti-Fingerprinting Movement’ (Chung 2010:142). It was 1991 when the Zainichi community in Osaka restarted holding a memorial ceremony. The first-generation Zainichi in Osaka were still coping with the guilt from fleeing the island and the traumatic memories. The memorial ceremony in Osaka every April involves the participation of all generations of Zainichi. As the number of participants is growing every year, the facts about April 3 Incident are being more widely disseminated.

Political ambiguity Attempts to repair broken communities and restore justice in the Zainichi community have developed in a completely different context from Korean society. Above all, the archivization of deaths and commemoration by the Zainichi communtiy in Osaka has some notable differences from the Transitional Justice project initiated by the South Korean government. The major distinction is that the politics of selection and classification of the dead are clearly discerned in the Jeju site in the nationalistic milieu. The Zainichi community, on the other hand, adopts political ambiguity as a commemorative strategy.21 They do not clearly define the moralistic goals of the memorial service. Furthermore they neither impose artificial categories on the dead, nor reorganize them. For example, as seen in Figure 18.4.1, the commemorative ritual simply describes the dead as ‘the 4.3 victims’ souls (Yonsan Jiken Giseisha no Tamasī)’. The individual names of the dead are not spelled out. In the other case, as seen in Figure 18.5.2, all of the names of the dead are randomly dispersed on the stage, reminiscent of the dead bodies scattered at the massacre site. It is quite a contrast to the names arrayed in logical order on official monuments in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park. The figures below are scenes from the 2011 commemorative performance at the Jeju 4.3 Memorial Service in Osaka.22 When the illegal killing is over, a woman carefully moves into piles of corpses. She is searching through the piles looking for her husband taken by the soldiers

Figures 18.4.1 and 18.4.2 Memorial service in Osaka Zainichi community Photos ©Sungman Koh (2010, 2011)

297

Sungman Koh

Figures 18.5.1, 18.5.2, and 18.5.3 Shamanistic ritual in Osaka Zainichi community Photos ©Sungman Koh (2011)

(Figure 18.5.1). When she cannot find him, she loses her mind and cries out. She again frantically digs into the piles of corpses (Figure 18.5.2). After a long search, she finally finds her husband’s body and then she begins crying out loud (Figure 18.5.3). When the performance was over, the first-generation Zainichi Koreans of bereaved families placed flowers on the papers scattered on the stage spontaneously even before the actress had left the stage (Figure 18.6.1). In solemnity, the audiences watching the performance followed them in, offering flowers and prayers (Figure 18.6.2). This happened all of sudden and unexpectedly. What motivated the audience to do this? The onlookers’ impromptu participation in the ritual is noteworthy. The unidentifiable paper sheets written in Korean were symbolizing the corpses, and the audience – most of whom were Japanese or second or third-generation Zainichi born and raised in Japan who did not know how to read Korean – turned themselves into active participants in the ceremony. The boundary between onstage and offstage disappeared at that very moment. It was a rare moment of collaboration between the dead and the living. The temporal wall between someone looking for a family member’s body during the massacres and the audience in the present day became irrelevant. In the back of the audience’s mind, did they consider those names as categorized ‘victims’ in the Transitional Justice context or as the dead victimized during the massacre? In fact, present were the names of both ‘non-victims’ and official ‘victims’ as defined by the South Korean government.23 Those actions of trying not to assign moralistic meaning of the memorial service are similar to their own survival strategy as an ethnic minority with an ambiguous position in terms of postwar Japan’s legal status.24 This also reflects the practicality of Jeju people, who regard kinship relations and regionalism as being very important in their lives. This political ambiguity paradoxically invites the dead to the memorial service irrespective of historical background, and thus effectively unites the Zainichi community. This is a drastic contrast to the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park, where only officially recognized ‘victims’ are permitted in the commemorative space. The Osaka memorial service has a significant meaning because it seeks to create an alternative form of historical memory. 298

Transitional justice

Figures 18.6.1 and 18.6.2 Collective grieving at shamanistic ritual in Osaka Zainichi community Photos ©Sungman Koh (2011)

The Zainichi community in Osaka does not argue about issues such as ‘who were the 4.3 victims?’, or ‘who is the moral object of the memorial service?’ This is unlike what has been going on in South Korean society. Of course, it does not mean that Zainichi society is uninterested in the April 3 Incident, or that they have an adversarial relationship with Korean society. Actually, different generations of Zainichi also participate in the memorial ceremony held on April 3 every year in Jeju. Moreover, they are involved in the victims screening process conducted by the 4.3 Committee. However, they do not actively confront the reality that the leadership of the armed civilian groups cannot be recognized as victims.25 They just keep an eye on how the Transitional Justice in Korean society is progressing. Overall the ceremony can be conducted according to the convention, needs, and initiatives of people who oppose the regime which is attempting to integrate the meaning of the deaths into the justification of the nation within post-conflict society (Koh 2012).

Conclusion This chapter analyzes the political commemoration of the Jeju April 3 Incident as one of the massacres and infringements of human rights committed by national governments in the twentieth century. As many genocide researchers note, “The Jeju April 3 Incident was not a local issue restricted to one region but part of the worldwide events and the obvious state violence caused by the Cold War between East and West” (Jeju 4.3 Research Institute, 1999:5). This study argues that the recognition of the dead and the politics of commemoration between the national and non-national domains are different. Now we are at the crossroads between encountering the dead or the ‘4.3 victims’ as South Korea is transiting toward a post-conflict society (Koh 2012:71). The 4.3 Committee has rendered a pioneering service of identifying the victims and constructing commemorative sites. The Transitional Justice strategy helped the national and local communities to overcome the negative legacy of the conflict. Their work unfortunately, however, is forcing the non-experienced generations to rank-order the dead. The grandeur of the monuments, for instance, misleads them to hold the erroneous idea that only the names inscribed represent the totality of the rather complicated multiplicities of the April 3 Incident. The Zainichi community’s rituals provide a useful commemorative paradigm in achieving reconciliation mediating between the past and present. Alternative strategies are necessary to achieve alternative justice. The Zainichi community adopts much more inclusive categories for the dead 299

Sungman Koh

from those of the South Korean government. No individual names of the dead are spelled out, and this very blank inclusivity leaves room for healthy discussions on ‘who are the victims, and what makes them so?’ Furthermore, their ambiguity leads to the formation of thoughts free from the confining rules imposed by the classification schemata. This chapter argues that the potential to counter the hegemonic archivization of deaths lies with the alternative strategy employed by the Zainichi communities. This transnational approach leads us to a much less oppressive historical consciousness, and opens up a venue to challenge the nationalistic reconstruction of memories. The author believes that the Zainichi community’s model provides a meaningful alternative to the government-initiated strategies, to achieve transregional and transnational reconciliation.

Notes In the process of preparing this chapter, the author newly revised and edited the paper prepared for presentation at the 40th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology (IIS), New Delhi, 2012, and the World Congress for Korean Politics and Society 2013 in Seoul. The author is appreciative for the research funding provided by the 2013–2014 research grant program from Research Center for Human Rights (RCHR) at the Osaka City University, the Toyota Foundation, and the Resona Foundation for Asia and Oceania. And thanks Minyoung Moon, Satoshi Nakano, Seongnae Kim, Gwisook Gwon, and Mikyoung Kim for their helpful comments on the earlier drafts of this chapter. 1 Conflicts generated by Transitional Justice’s aims, strategies, its process, and their resolution are analyzed in detail in Bassiouni (1996); Furuuchi (2008); Zuin (2008); and Nao (2012). 2 The history of the truth-seeking movement before the enactment of the 4.3 Special Act is analyzed in detail in Kim (1999), Moon (2008), Park (2008), Kim (2009), Koh (2009), etc. Also see chapter 9 in this volume. 3 Hq. USAFIK, 1947, “G-2 Periodic Report” No. 693, November 25, quoted in the 4.3 Report. 4 Hq. USAFIK, 1949, “G-2 Periodic Report” No. 1097, April 1, quoted in the 4.3 Report. 5 Though there are many types of victims, this chapter discusses only the case of ‘the dead’. 6 Retrieved from Jeju Special Self-Governing Province’s homepage March 15, 2013, http://www. jeju.go.kr/contents/depart.php?job=detail&mid=14&silkuk=33&ebcf_id=JUNEWS3&page=1& year=2013_2&month=6&day=28&board_id=JUNEWS3&write_method=common&neti_sess= &eb_seq=231114. 7 Retrieved from Jeju Special Self-Governing Province’s homepage January 22, 2011, http://www. jeju.go.kr/contents/depart.php?job=detail&mid=14&silkuk=33&ebcf_id=JUNEWS3&page=2& year=2013_2&month=6&day=28&board_id=JUNEWS3&write_method=common&neti_sess= &eb_seq=174101. 8 Retrieved May from the 4.3 Committee’s homepage September 22, 2013, http://jeju43.go.kr/english/ sub05.html. 9 Ibid. 10 Personal interview, Kim Jong-min, Seoul, South Korea, September 5, 2012. He was an expert advisor to the 4.3 Committee from August 2000 to June 2013. 11 Surviving victims such as prisoners and the mentally and physically damaged can be recorded on the monument after their deaths. 12 A person serving the 4.3 Committee explains, “‘Truth of the Ora-ri Incident’ (Figure 18.3.1) was based on the imagination of the artist, therefore, it can cause another distortion of the historical fact. That is why we replaced it with the exhibition of objective historical records.” (from personal interview, Jeju, South Korea, September 11, 2011) 13 Personal interview, Park Kyoung-hoon, Jeju, South Korea, April 8, 2010. He is an artist and was a team leader in the exhibition department in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Memorial Hall. 14 Ibid. 15 Syngman Rhee was the first President of South Korea, whose presidential term lasted from 1948 to 1960. He declared martial law on Jeju Island in November 1948, leading to the intensification of the mass killings on the island. 16 Personal interview, Kim Jong-min, Seoul, South Korea, September 5, 2012. 17 We can find the possibility to overcome the potential conflict in the context of alternative justice seen in communal town space. There is the example of Kim Wan-bae, who was a member of the Jeju branch

300

Transitional justice

18

19

20

21 22

23

24

25

of the South Korean Labor Party. He was excluded from consideration as a ‘victim’ by the Committee. Therefore, we cannot find his name on any monument in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park. We can find his name, however, on the other monument set up at his hometown of Buckchon-ri. The 4.3 Committee removed his name from the monument under the judgment that he debased the national identity of the South Korean government. Nevertheless, the people in his hometown say, “He is not our enemy. He has nothing to do with the slaughter of villagers”. Korean legal/illegal immigration into Japan since the Japanese Colonial Era is analyzed in detail in Sugihara (1998) Morris-Suzuki (2007; 2010); Ijichi and Murakami (2008); Ryang and Lie (2009); Fujinaga (2010), etc. After the Korean War, the population structure of the peninsula was sharply reorganized as the Japan’s repatriation project to North Korea was carried out (see chapter 19 in this volume). Those who experienced the Jeju April 3 Incident also moved to the North voluntarily or enforcedly. Moon (2010:63–64) explains that there is a difficulty in forming public opinion on the April 3 Incident in Japanese society due to the Red complex rampant among the Zainichi Koreans from Jeju, and the existence of two rival organizations blindly following two competing Korean states: The Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan) and the North Korea-oriented General Association of Korean Residents (Chongryun). Political ambiguity in life strategies of the Zainichi Koreans is analyzed in detail in Chung (2003) and Han, Singhal, Hanaki, Kim,and Chitnis (2007, esp. 167), among others. As this commemorative performance was received well, the group of actors and actresses were invited to perform again at Jeju 4.3 Theatrical Festival, one of the memorial events for the Jeju April 3 Incident, the following year. However, one actor was refused the entry into South Korea for his nationality is ‘Chosen-seki’. He is a third-generation Zainichi from Jeju, born in Osaka. The rest of the cast could perform in Jeju (from personal interview, Kim Min-soo and Kim Cheol-ui, Osaka, Japan, April 22, 2012). As Morris-Suzuki (2006) notes “More importantly, individuals had to apply to become ‘Treaty Permanent Residents’, and could acquire this status only if they were South Korean citizens. The new system therefore excluded large numbers of Koreans in Japan who continued to identify themselves with the North Korean regime, or who chose to define themselves as nationals of ‘Korea as a whole’ rather than of South Korea, and who remained stateless.” Zainichi nationality issues reflect on the reality of East Asia still entangled with post-colonialism and the cold war structure. Personal interview, Kim Min-soo, Osaka, Japan, April 17, 2011. She is an actress who performed at the 4.3 Memorial Service in 2011 in Osaka. She is a third-generation Zainichi from Jeju, born in Osaka. Lie (2008:xi) argues that a wide array of names for Koreans in Japan (e.g., Zainichi Chōsenjin, Kankokujin, Zainichi Kanjin, and Zainichi Korians) indicates that “such multiplicity and instability that suggests conundrum of a population stubbornly struggling for recognition while being denied – and at times denying themselves – their place in Japanese society.” Personal interview, Mrs. Lee, Osaka, Japan, February 9, 2013. She is a niece of Lee Deo-koo, who was the second commander of the resistance group. In the middle of a massacre, she escaped to Japan by herself, and has been living in Osaka until now. Fourteen of her family members killed at that time have been recognized as ‘4.3 victims’. However, she did not report her uncle, Lee Deo-koo, for he would be excluded from ‘victim’ status. Meanwhile, Mr. Boo, a first-generation Zainichi from Jeju, said that he would not report his family members who were killed to the 4.3 Committee until Lee is recognized as a ‘victim’ (from group interview, Tokyo, Japan, July 19, 2009).

References Bassiouni, Cherif, 1996, “Searching for Peace and Achieving Justice: The Need for Accountability”, Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 59, No. 4, pp. 9–28 (Retrieved December 5, 2011, http://www.jstor. org/stable/1192187). Chung, Ah Young, 2010, “The Programs of the Remembrance of April 3 Event in Japan and the Experience and Thought of the Second Generation Korean Japanese (Ilbon ui 4.3 Sageon Chudo Saeop gwa Jaeil Dongpo 2 Sedeul ui Cheheom gwa Sasang)”, Jeju 4.3 Research Institute (ed.), 4.3 and History, Vols. 9 & 10, Jeju: Gak, pp. 135–152. Chung, Erin Aeran, 2003, Non citizens,Voice, and Identity: The Politics of Citizenship in Japan’s Korean Community, San Diego: University of California. Cumings, Bruce, 2005, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, New York: W.W. Norton.

301

Sungman Koh Constitutional Court of Korea, 2001, “Cancellation of Resolution about ‘The Special Act for Investigation of the Jeju April 3 Incident and Recovering the Honor of Victims’ (Jeju 4.3 Teukbyeolbeob Uigyeol Haengwi Chwiso Deung)”, Law Reports of Constitutional Court of Korea, Vol. 13, No. 2. Fujinaga, Takeshi, 2010, “Zainichi Jeju People and ‘Stowaways’ (Jaeil Jejuin gwa ‘Milhang’)”, Jeju 4.3 Research Institute (ed.), 4.3 and History, Vols. 9 & 10, Jeju: Gak, pp. 153–176. Fujinaga, Takeshi, Ko, Jeongja, Ijichi, Noriko, Chung, Ahyoung, Hwangbo, Kayoung, Takamura, Ryohei, Murakami, Naoko, and Fukumoto, Taku, 2008, “A Survey of the Life Histories of Resident Koreans in Japan from Jeju Island in the Immediate Postwar Period (6)-Part I-An Interview with KIM Hojin (Kaihō chyokugo Zainichi Saishūdō shussinsha no Seikatsusi Cyōsa)”, Osaka sangyo ronshu, Vol. 4, pp. 131–155. Furuuchi, Yohei, 2008, “The Relationship Between Transitional Justice and Political Stability: Rethinking the South African Model (Ikōki no Seigi to Sejiteki Antei: Minami Africa Hōsiki no Saikō)”, Hitotsubashi Journal of Law and International Studies, Vol. 3, No. 7, pp. 905–941. Han, Min Wha, Singhal, Arvind, Hanaki, Toru, Kim, Dokyun, and Chitnis Ketan, 2007, “Forced Invisibility to Negotiating Visibility: Winter Sonata,the Hanryu Phenomenon and Zainichi Koreans in Japan”, Keio Communication Review, Vol. 29, pp. 155–174. Ijichi, Noriko, and Murakami, Naoko, 2008, “Voices of Jeju Islanders: Migration and life history of immediately following liberation (Kaihō chyokugo Saishūdō no hitobitono idō to seikatsushi: Zainichi Saishūdō shussinsha no katari kara)”, Araragi Shinzō (ed.), Migration and Repatriation: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire (Nihon Teikoku o meguru jinkō idō no kokusai shakaigaku), Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, pp. 87–115. Jeju 4.3 Research Institute (eds.), 1999, East Asia Peace and Human Rights (Dongasia Pyeonghwa wa Ingwon), Seoul: Yeoksa Bipyeong. Kim, Hunjoon, 2009, “Seeking Truth after 50 Years: The National Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju 4.3 Events”, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 3, pp. 406–423. Kim, Jongmin, 1999, “After the Jeju 4.3, 50 Years (4.3 ihu 50 nyeon)”, Jeju 4.3 Research Institute and Korean History Research Association (ed.), Study on the Jeju 4.3, Seoul: Yeoksa Bipyeong, pp. 338–424. Kim, Mikyoung, 2010, “Lingering Memory Problems: Compromising Hearts and Resentful Resistance,” Marie Soderberg (ed.), Changing Power Relations in Northeast Asia: Implications for Relations between Japan and South Korea, New York: Routledge, pp. 119–137. Kim, Seongnae, 1999, “Modernity and Violence: the Politics of Discourse on Jeju April 3 Incident (Geundaseong gwa Pokryeok: Jeju 4.3 ui Damronjeongchi)”, Institute for Korean Historical Studies, Institute of Historical Studies, Jeju 4.3 Research Institute and Korean History Research Association (eds.), Study on the Jeju 4.3 (Jeju 4.3 Yoengu), Seoul: Yeoksa Bipyeong, pp. 238–267. Koh, Sungman, 2009, “A Study on the Special Committee for Investigation of the Truth about the Jeju Uprising and the Decision Making Process for Determining ‘Who is a victim?’ (Tairyōgyakusatsu no Kakoseisan ni okeru ‘Gōi’ ni Kansuru Kenkyu: Jeju 4.3 Iinkai no Giseisha Singi/kettei wo Jirei ni site)”, Kyoto Journal of Sociology, Vol. 17, pp. 87–111. Koh, Sungman, 2011, “Liquidation of the Past History of April 3 and the Concept of ‘the Victim’: Reconsideration of the Reorganized Death by Social Agreement (4.3 Kakoseisan to ‘Giseisha’: Saikōsei sareru Si ni taisuru Sikō)”, Tamla Munwha, Vol. 38, pp. 249–277. Koh, Sungman, 2012, “The Ascription of Meaning to Mass-Killing in the Post-Conflict Society: From Two Case Studies: The Post-War Process in the Battle of Okinawa and Liquidation of the Past History of the Jeju April 3 Incident (Hunsōgōshakai ni okeru Tairyōsi no Imizuke: Okinawasen no Sengosyori to Saisyu4.3jiken no Kakoseisan no Jireikara)”, Sociology, No. 174, pp. 59–74. Kwon, Heonik, 2010, The Other Cold War, New York: Columbia University Press. Lie, John, 2008, Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity, Berkeley: University of California Press. Mamdani, M., 1996, “Reconciliation without Justice”, Southern African Review of Books, Vol. 46, pp. 3–5. Moon, Kyoungsoo, 2008, Death and Rehabilitation of ‘Island Country’ (Saisyu yonsan jiken-‘Tamuna no kuni ni’ no shi to saisei no monogatari), Tokyo: Heibonsha. Moon, Kyoungsoo, 2010, “Beyond the Wall of Silence: Remembering the Movement in Japan Regarding 4.3 Incident (Chinmoku no kabe wo koete: yon san jiken wo meguru nihon deno torikumi wo hurikaeru)”, Jeju 4.3 Incident Memory and Truth (Saisyu yon san jiken Kioku to shinjitsu), Tokyo: Shinkansha, pp. 63–67. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 2006, “Invisible Immigrants: Undocumented Migration and Border Controls in Early Postwar Japan”, Japan Focus, August 31 (Retrieved June 16, 2015, http://japanfocus.org/Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/2210/article.html).

302

Transitional justice Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 2007, Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 2010, Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nao, Shimoyachi, 2012, “The Dilemma of International Criminal Justice (Kokusaikeijisaibansyo no Dilema no Seijikōzō)”, The Peace Studies Association of Japan (eds.), Restoring Human Rights and Transitional Justice, Peace Studies Vol. 38, pp. 57–76. Park, Chansik, 2008, 4.3 and Jeju history (4.3 gwa Jeju Yeoksa), Jeju: Gak. Phakathi, Timothy Sizwe, and Van der Merwe, Hugo, 2008, “The Impact of the TRC’s Amnesty Process on Survivors of Human Rights Violations,” Audrey R. Chapman, and Hugo van der Merwe (eds.), Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Did the TRC Deliver?, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 116–142. Ryang, Sonia, and Lie, John, 2009, Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press. Sugihara, Toru, 1998, People of Crossing Border: Study of History of Joseon People in Modern Osaka (Ekkyōsuru tami: Kindai Ōsaka no chōsenjinshi kenkyū), Tokyo: Sonkansha. The 4.3 Committee, 2003, “The Jeju April 3 Incident Investigation Report (Jeju 4.3 Jinsang Josa Bogoseo)”, Seoul: Sunin. The 4.3 Committee, 2008, “Reconciliation and Coexistence (Hwahe wa Sangseng)”, Seoul: The 4.3 Committee. Zuin, Margherita, 2008, “A Model of Transitional Justice for Somalia”, PRAXIS: The Fletcher Journal of Human Security, Vol. 23, pp. 89–108 (Retrieved August 15, 2012, http://fletcher.tufts.edu/Praxis/ Archives/~/media/Fletcher/Microsites/praxis/xxiii/PRAXIS-ModelofTransitionalJusticeforSomalia. pdf).

303

19 THE REPATRIATION MOVEMENT Lingering legacies of DPRK-Japan collusion Tessa Morris-Suzuki

When Kim Jong-un succeeded his father, Kim Jong-il, as leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) in 2012, his accession to power prompted much debate and speculation in the world’s media. Only a few reports, though, mentioned a particularly fascinating fact about the new North Korean leader: his mother was born and spent her childhood in Japan, and several of Kim Jong-un’s relatives are still living in the island country. Kim’s mother, Koh Young-hui, was born in the Tsuruhashi district of Osaka in 1953 to a family which had migrated to Japan from the southernmost Korean island of Jeju during the colonial period. In 1961, she and her immediate family boarded a “repatriation” ship taking Koreans from Japan to North Korea, though several of their relatives remained in Osaka. She thus became part of an extraordinary mass movement which resulted in the relocation of over 90,000 people (most of them ethnic Koreans) from Japan to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea between 1959 and 1984.1 Koh Young-hui was one of the repatriation success stories. Supported by the influence of her father, a prominent figure in the martial arts world, she joined the famous Mansudae Art Troupe, becoming its lead dancer by the 1970s. It was here that she attracted the attention of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. She became Kim’s consort and bore him three children, of whom the second was Kim Jong-un, but succumbed to cancer in her early fifties and died in 2004. Kim Jong-un’s family connection to Osaka symbolizes a connection between the DPRK and Japan that neither country celebrates, and that both governments indeed seem eager to forget. But the repatriation had profound consequences for the lives of hundreds of thousands of people – both the repatriates themselves and their relatives still living in Japan. Those consequences are still felt today, and will continue to have implications for North Korea and Japan for decades to come. The repatriation occupies an ambiguous and in some ways ironic place in processes of regional reconciliation. The mass return of ethnic Koreans from Japan to North Korea was made possible by the 1959 Calcutta Accord, signed between the Japanese and North Korean Red Cross societies. At the time, this was seen as a major act of reconciliation between Japan and North Korea, which had (and still have) no diplomatic relations. Many commentators believed that the Accord would open the way to the normalization of relations between the two countries. But that moment of political cooperation, as we now know, was motivated by the self-interest of both governments, and was carried out at the expense of the well-being of the returnees themselves. Diplomatic relations between Japan and North Korea were not restored, and indeed 304

The repatriation movement

worsening relations between the two countries in recent times have added to the sufferings of the families divided by the repatriation. New forms of reconciliation are now urgently needed to restore the family ties severed by the repatriation.

The background to the repatriation The mass repatriation of Koreans from Japan to North Korea has its roots in the colonial era. From the 1920s onward, a growing stream of migrants flowed from the Korean Peninsula to the colonial ruling power, Japan, in search of work or better life opportunities. Many came from poor rural areas where life had been disrupted by colonial agricultural policies, and from the late 1930s on, the colonial authorities also began to recruit Korean laborers to work in mines or on construction sites in Japan. By the end of the Asia-Pacific War in 1945, there were over two million Koreans living in Japan, and although some two thirds of them returned to Korea soon after its liberation, economic disruption, the political division of the country and then the outbreak of the Korean War made it difficult for others to return. At the beginning of the 1950s, there were between 600,000 and 700,000 Koreans living in Japan (commonly known as Zainichi Koreans). The Japanese authorities by and large regarded the Korean minority in Japan as an unwelcome presence. Although colonial subjects had held Japanese nationality before 1945, as soon as the end of the postwar Allied occupation ended, the Japanese government unilaterally rescinded the Japanese nationality of Koreans and Taiwanese. So Koreans living in Japan found themselves in a state of legal limbo, lacking any clearly defined residence rights or access to most forms of welfare, and generally discriminated against when they sought employment.2 The situation was further complicated by the presence of a substantial number of Koreans – probably tens of thousands – who had crossed the sea between Korea and Japan during the occupation years. Immediately after the end of the Asia-Pacific War, many Koreans had returned to Korea to visit relatives, and others had gone intending to resume their lives in their homeland, only to discover that there were no homes or jobs awaiting them in Korea. When these migrants attempted to cross back to Japan, where many had lived for most of their lives, they discovered that a new regulation made it impossible for them to enter Japan legally. Substantial numbers boarded “people smuggling” boats (mikkosen in Japanese and milhangsun in Korean) and entered in secret, but these illegal entrants (mikkosha, as they were called) were unable legally to obtain the alien registration cards that all Koreans in Japan were required to carry, and were liable to arrest, internment in Ōmura Detention Center (near Nagasaki) and deportation to South Korea at any time.3 Over 96% of Koreans in postwar Japan originated from the southern half of the Korean Peninsula (which is geographically nearer to Japan than the north), but a substantial number were left-wing in political beliefs, and more sympathetic toward the Russian-backed Kim Il-sung regime in North Korea than toward the American-backed Syngman Rhee regime in South Korea. Other members of the Korean community in Japan wished to identify themselves neither with North nor with South, but only with a single united Korea; but the Cold War division of their homeland forced itself upon them. The two halves of the divided Korea had chosen different names by which to call their nation: the South came to be popularly known as Hanguk (Kankoku in Japanese), an abbreviation of Daehan Minguk which echoed the name Daehan Jaeguk, used by the short lived Korean Empire in the years before the imposition of colonial rule; the North used the name Joseon Inmin Minjujueui Gonghwaguk (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), incorporating the name Joseon (Chōsen in Japanese), which had been used by Korea during the period from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and also during the era of colonial rule. When Koreans in Japan registered as foreigners, they had to identify themselves either as Hanguk-in (Kankokujin) or as Joseon-in (Chōsenjin). By 1960, of the 613,671 registered 305

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Koreans in Japan, 162,871 had registered themselves as Hanguk-in, and 444,586 as Joseon-in.4 English accounts of the Korean minority in Japan often misleading translate “Joseon-in” as “North Korean,” a fact which compounded international misunderstanding about the repatriation, since the movement included a substantial number of Zainichi population with South Korean origin.

The road to repatriation On April 13, 1959, the Japanese and North Korean Red Cross Societies began a series of meetings in Geneva which resulted in an agreement on a so-called “repatriation” – more accurately a “mass migration” – of ethnic Koreans from Japan to North Korea. The first repatriation ship left the port of Niigata for North Korea in December 1959, and by the time the mass migration ended in 1984, 93,340 people had left Japan to start new lives in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.5 The vast majority of the Koreans who, as the official rhetoric put it, “returned” to North Korea under this repatriation project actually originated in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula. Their number also included over 6,000 Japanese citizens, including of them Japanese spouses of ethnic Koreans. In theory, the repatriation was voluntary, a fact that was supposed to be verified by a “confirmation of free will,” conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at Niigata, the port of exit. In practice, more than 2,300 were former inmates Ōmura Detention Center, who were being deported from Japan,6 and in a number of other cases it is clear that reluctant “returnees” were persuaded to leave by family elders or influential community members.7 The background to this strange mass migration was a complex and murky Cold War story. Its origins lie both in the Japanese government’s desire to reduce the size of an ethnic minority which it saw as undesirable and potentially subversive, and in various strategic and economic calculations of self-interest on the part of the North Korean government. Another significant piece of the jigsaw puzzle was the fact that South Korea in the late 1950s was ruled by the Syngman Rhee dictatorship, which showed very little willingness to accept Korean migrants returning from Japan. The Rhee regime at that time had many domestic problems to manage, such as postwar reconstruction, and tried to avoid the additional socio-economic burden caused by the returnees. Declassified documents reveal that as early as 1955, the Japanese Foreign Ministry had already drawn up a secret draft plan for a mass “return” of Koreans to North Korea. This plan specifically targeted the poor and unemployed members of the ethnic minority, who were seen as a burden on the welfare budget. The processes for repatriation were outlined in considerable detail, and involved close cooperation between the Japan Red Cross Society and the pro-North Korean General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun in Korean; Chōsen Sōren in Japanese), which had been founded earlier in the same year.8 The Japanese government realized that this scheme was going to evoke massive opposition from South Korea, and that the US would also be hostile toward a mass migration from the “Free World” to communist North Korea at the height of the Cold War. There was therefore a good deal of internal debate about the repatriation within the Japanese political and bureaucratic elite.9 In January 1956, representatives of the Japanese and North Korean Red Cross Societies met in Pyongyang to discuss the return of Japanese citizens who had been stranded in North Korea since the collapse of the Japanese empire in 1945. During these negotiations, the Japanese side (particularly the Japan Red Cross Society’s director of foreign affairs, Inoue Masutarō) raised the question of Koreans in Japan, and tried to persuade the North Korean side to enter into negotiations about a large-scale repatriation of Koreans from Japan to the DPRK.10 The same issue was 306

The repatriation movement

raised by the Japanese Red Cross with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (hereafter ICRC), who visited Japan and both Koreas in April–May 1956.11 There were indeed some Koreans in Japan who were very eager to leave for North Korea. They included members of the small proportion of the Korean community in Japan who originally came from the North, and political enthusiasts for the communist vision of Kim Il-sung’s republic. A small-scale repatriation of just under fifty people took place in 1956 and 1957, and there is clear evidence that the Japan Red Cross Society envisaged this as the start of a mass repatriation of thousands of people.12 But intense pressure – including threats of war – from South Korea persuaded them that a large-scale repatriation would only be possible if it was conducted under the auspices of the international and impartial International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The Japan Red Cross Society (with the backing of senior government officials) therefore energetically lobbied the ICRC to play a central role in the scheme.13 For North Korea, migration of ethnic Koreans from Japan, particularly of those who originally came from capitalist South Korea, would provide wonderful propaganda for their communist regime. It would also create opportunities to increase North Korean influence over the Korean community in Japan. Another crucial consideration was the Kim Il-sung regime’s desire to disrupt any moves toward better relations between Japan and South Korea. During the early to mid-1950s, North Korea showed a willingness to accept some Koreans from Japan, but it was only in 1958, as it embarked on a new and ambitious economic development plan, that the regime threw its full support behind mass inflow of Koreans from Japan. Public statements by Kim Il-sung and his foreign minister, Nam Il, offered Koreans from Japan full citizenship, free housing, jobs, education and welfare. It was hardly surprising that tens of thousands responded, attracted by the vision of a better life in the Socialist Fatherland. In Japan, the benefits of this new life were energetically propagated by the pro-DPRK Chongryun, while similar propaganda was also disseminated by groups like the Zainichi Korean Repatriation Cooperation Association, a body which included senior Japanese politicians from a wide range of political backgrounds. The Association’s head was Hatoyama Ichirô, who had been the first Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister.14 The International Committee of the Red Cross was initially cautious of involvement in the project, but was persuaded to take part by vigorous lobbying from Japan. The ICRC made efforts to ensure that repatriates were provided with proper information about their choices, and that a really effective “confirmation of free will” was carried out, but these were undermined by fierce opposition from Chongryun and by the Japanese government’s willingness of compromise with Chongryun’s demands.15 Within six months of the start of the repatriation, the Japanese government and Red Cross had already become aware that a considerable number of Koreans arriving in North Korea were shocked and disillusioned by the conditions they found in the new environment. Indeed, by 1961 the government was actually quoting letters sent by “returnees” to their relatives in Japan in its intelligence assessments to demonstrate the dire state of the North Korean economy.16 Yet it did nothing to stop or slow the scheme, or to warn departing Koreans of the fate that awaited them. All of this suggests that the Japanese government and Japan Red Cross Society share in the moral responsibility to address the plight of the returnees, at least by extending assistance to those who are now escaping from North Korea and seeking resettlement in Japan or elsewhere. On the other hand, the North Korean side surely carries historical responsibility for the political persecution of returnees, which seems to have begun around the time that Japan normalized its relations with South Korea in the middle of the 1960s. Though there have been some success stories (like the case of Koh Young-hui), most “returnees” were assigned to the lower ranks of North Korea’s increasingly complex class system. Thousands (though an unknown number) were sent to labor camps, where it is likely that many were either executed or died as a result of 307

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

the appalling conditions. The worsening economic situation from the late 1980s onward and particularly the famine of the 1990s were major factors propelling the outflow of “returnees” and other refugees.17

Forgetting and remembering the exodus The Japanese media played an enormous role in the repatriation project. Throughout 1959, the Japanese press followed the plans for a mass repatriation with intense interest, generally expressing strong enthusiasm for the scheme. The interest continued as the first few repatriation ships departed from the port of Niigata for the North Korean port of Cheongjin. Newspapers and TV reports generally highlighted the bright future that awaited the “returnees” in the DPRK, and carried pictures of streamer-festooned ships laden with repatriates sailing out toward new lives. By about mid-1960, however, interest in the topic had subsided, and thereafter the media largely forgot the repatriates, and expressed very little curiosity about their fate. At least until the end of the twentieth century, English-language studies of Japan and Korea hardly ever mentioned the repatriation, and the few studies that did address the topic usually confined their discussion to brief sections of works on other subjects. For example, Richard H. Mitchell’s The Korean Minority in Japan (1967) discussed the repatriation in the context of North Korea’s active policy of engagement with the Korean community in Japan.18 As far as Japan’s motivation was concerned, Mitchell wrote that “it is impossible to determine how much the Kishi government was motivated by humanitarian reasons and how much by self interest,” but concluded that “the repatriation of the Koreans to North Korea provided a partial solution to one of the most pressing problems of Japan.”19 Olive Checkland’s study of the history of the Japan Red Cross Society, Humanitarianism and the Emperor’s Japan, 1877–1977 (1994), described the repatriation as a humanitarian response to a movement started protests outside the Red Cross headquarters in 1956, and described the repatriation negotiations between the Japanese, Soviet, Chinese and North Korean Red Cross Societies as “valuable not only to those who returned to their homeland, but also to enable the humanitarian societies to re-establish links previously broken.”20 In Japan, too, the story remained relatively neglected until the start of the twenty-first century. Though many works on the Korean community in Japan and on Japan’s relations with North Korea referred to the repatriation in passing, one of the few books to address the subject in detail was Kim Yeong-Dal and Takayanagi Toshio’s valuable collection of documents on the subject published in 1995.21 In the early years of the twenty-first century, though, the situation was transformed, and a new interest in the repatriation led to revived debates about its origins and nature.22 This was partly evoked by the outpouring of feeling that followed Kim Jong-il’s 2002 admission that North Korea had been responsible for the kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The abduction issue awakened wider interest in North Korea’s human rights problems, including the treatment of Korean “returnees” from Japan. Meanwhile, growing numbers of North Korean refugees, including former returnees, were starting to tell their stories in public, and vital documents about the background to the repatriation were beginning to be declassified. Until that time, most accounts of the repatriation had assumed that the driving force behind the project had been the North Korean government and its chief intermediary in Japan, Chongryun. In 2003, though, a former (now disillusioned) official of Chongryun, Chang Myong-su, published a popular work suggesting that the Japanese government and Red Cross had been deeply involved in planning and promoting the repatriation project.23 Some of Chang’s claims were proved to be correct when, in 2004, the International Committee of the Red Cross declassified 308

The repatriation movement

its large archive of material on the repatriation. Its documents indeed showed that the Japan Red Cross Society and some Japanese politicians and bureaucrats had been actively pushing for a mass repatriation of Koreans to North Korea as early as 1955.24 The new revelations sparked a heated debate, with some writers continuing to insist that North Korea held full responsibility for the repatriation and its outcome. Former immigration official Sakanaka Hidenori, for example, claims that the repatriation amounted to a mass abduction of ethnic Koreans from Japan by the North Korean state.25 Journalist Kikuchi Yoshiaki accepts that the Japanese government supported and encouraged the repatriation to some degree, but argues that repatriation itself was not a problem. The problem was that the repatriation became a mass movement, and for this he squarely blames North Korea and Chongryun.26 Meanwhile, research by Korean historian Pak Jeong-jin shed further light on the background to support for the repatriation within North Korea,27 and another important release of previously classified documents revealed new elements to the Japanese involvement in the scheme.28 The question of responsibility for the repatriation and its outcomes is an important one for two reasons. First, a growing volume of testimony from former “returnees” who have since escaped from North Korea paints a vivid picture of the misery, suffering and (in some cases) death that awaited repatriates on their arrival in North Korea.29 Though a few did well, and others survived and (at least to some degree) adjusted to the harsh conditions of life in the DPRK, for many the repatriation was an unmitigated disaster that led to persecution and imprisonment at the hands of the North Korean government.30 Second, the continuing sufferings of former “returnees,” and the continuing outflow of “returnee refugees” [dappoku kikokusha in Japanese] from North Korea (discussed in the final section of this chapter), mean that the repatriation is not simply past history, but also has present and future policy implications for the governments and non-governmental bodies involved.

Media representations of the repatriation Before turning to contemporary issue of the “returnee refugees,” let us consider how the repatriation has figured in Japanese popular culture, for this has shaped public understandings of the event, and will help to shape public responses to the refugee issue in the future. During the period from 1960 to the 1980s, one of the very few popular media works that helped to keep a memory of the repatriation alive was Urayama Kiriro’s 1962 movie, Kyûpora no aru Machi (known in English under the title Cupola, Where the Furnaces Glow).31 This popular and successful film, set in the harsh industrial landscape of Kawaguchi, on the fringes of Tokyo, tells the story of a Japanese teenager named Kuroishi Jun (played by actress Yoshinaga Sayuri, who was launched into stardom by her role in the film). Along the way, the narrative touches on a range of contemporary social problems, including trade unionism, education, social inequality and women’s rights. But the movie also focuses particularly on the relationship between two brother-and-sister pairs: teenager Jun and her younger brother Takayuki; and Jun’s best friend Kanayama Yoshie and her younger brother Sankichi. Yoshie’s and Sankichi’s father is Korean, and an important sub-theme of the film is the Kanayama family’s decision to leave Japan for North Korea under the repatriation scheme. The future in North Korea seems uncertain, but against the background of poverty and discrimination which still pervaded Japanese society, Sankichi and Takayuki laughingly agree that there is “no way” that Zainichi Koreans could become poorer than they are already. The repatriation story is intertwined with the film’s positive ending. The heroine Jun finds work in a shining new electronics factory, which will enable her to move out of poverty and lead a modern and independent life. The disappearance of the Kanayamas to North Korea is part of a narrative 309

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

which was widespread in the Japanese media at the time of the repatriation. In this narrative, Zainichi Koreans (particularly left-wing and impoverished Zainichi Koreans) were portrayed as an unfortunate residue of prewar colonialism and postwar economic chaos, and their departure to the socialist fatherland was perceived as part of the process necessary to create the new era of Japan’s “economic miracle.” The Kanayamas’ decision to take part in the repatriation, however, is given a complex edge by the fact that Yoshie’s and Sankichi’s mother is Japanese, and has chosen to remain in Japan. When the moment of departure arrives, Sankichi cannot bear to be parted from her, and leaps off the repatriation train half way through its journey to Niigata, only to make the devastating discovery on his return to Kawaguchi that his mother has already left the area and moved in with another man. The film ends with Jun and Takayuki waving farewell to Sankichi as he departs for a second time to join his sister and father in North Korea. Urayama’s film thus highlights the pain of conflicting emotions: the desire to leave Japan in search of a better future, anxiety toward the unknown “homeland” to which Zainichi Koreans were returning, and grief at parting from friends and family in Japan. The twenty-first century revival of academic interest in the repatriation coincided with the growing popularity of “multicultural” movies, dealing with the issues of ethnic minorities in Japan and (in a number of cases) produced by Zainichi Korean directors. Several widely viewed movies of released in the century’s first decade not only dealt with the lives of Koreans in Japan, but also touched on the question of the repatriation. One of these was Sai Yōichi’s 2004 movie Blood and Bone [Chi to Hone], based on Yang Sok-Il’s novel of the same name, which is in turn a lightly fictionalized account of the life of Yang’s father, an immigrant from Jeju to Osaka, and of the troubled relationship between father and son.32 Though most of the film is set in Osaka, its closing scenes present a chilling image of the repatriation. They depict the death of the main protagonist, the tyrannical and violent father figure, who has “returned” from Japan to North Korea, taking with him his youngest son and all the family’s savings. Now a frail and pathetic figure, he lies dying in a cold, bare farm cottage, while his son, without even a word or gesture of pity for his dying father, directs all his energies into finding food to save himself from starvation, and digging a grave for his father in the frozen earth. In striking contrast to Blood and Bone, the box-office hit Pacchigi!, released the following year, uses the format of the teen movie to deal with serious themes, including ethnic discrimination, conflict between young Zainichi Koreans and right-wing Japanese youths, and the relationship between North Korea and the Zainichi Korean community. Pacchigi!, which is set in 1968, is a lighthearted story of the relationship between Japanese teenager Matsuyama Kōsuke and Zainichi Korean schoolgirl Lee Kyeong-ja. Its audience appeal probably lies as much in the film’s humorous nostalgia for late 1960s music and its (often gratuitously violent) fight scenes as in its social message. But the repatriation movement runs as a background theme throughout the film, since Kyeong-ja’s tough, street-fighting older brother An-seong has decided to “return” to the socialist homeland, and the closing scene shows him with his Japanese girlfriend and their small son heading toward the sea in what may or may not be the direction of North Korea.33 Blood and Bone and Pacchigi! revived dormant memories of the repatriation, but did not confront its history head-on. Several recent documentaries, however, have focused centrally on the repatriation and its legacies. Of these, the most influential is Yang Yong-hee’s award-winning Dear Pyongyang. The film begins by moving from the narratives of “big history” to the deeply personal. In the opening sequence, the bare facts of the migration of Koreans to Japan, their political divisions, their experiences of discrimination and their repatriation to North Korea are introduced in a long series of black frames inscribed with white text, and interspersed with archival photographs of the repatriation: and then, abruptly, we are confronted with a photo of 310

The repatriation movement

the filmmaker herself as a child, and the words, “I was one of the people who went to see off the returnees.” Yang Yong-hee’s documentary style is radically and painfully personal. Dear Pyongyang is a documentary about Yang’s family, in which the repatriation plays a central role because all three of her brothers were sent to North Korea under the scheme, while her parents and Yang herself remained in Japan. The film explores Yang’s reunion with her brothers in Pyongyang and most centrally her deeply ambivalent relationship with her father, a first generation migrant from Jeju to Japan and a lifelong member and senior official of Chongryun. Yang’s father – a dominating, patriarchal, warm-hearted, lovable and ideologically rigid man who has given a life of service to Chongryun and Kim Il-sung thought – is indeed the central figure of the film. Yang describes her father’s life as a migrant from Jeju to Japan and a political activist, and traces her own education through the Chongryun school system, before taking the viewers across the sea on a family visit to her three brothers in Pyongyang. Though her brothers live in the capital, enjoying lives which are less materially deprived than those of rural North Koreans, it is obvious that they have suffered greatly. The documentary particularly highlights the fate of Yang’s eldest brother, a passionate lover of classical music, who in 1971 found himself sent “home” to an utterly unfamiliar country in which classical music was banned. Little by little, the gap between Yang’s own beliefs and her father’s ideology becomes visible, leading to the climactic moment in the film where she finally confronts her father about his decision to send his three sons to North Korea. Pressed on the subject, her father slowly, quietly and with deep reluctance, expresses his regrets. “Now they’ve gone, it can’t be helped,” he murmurs, “but I think it would have been better if they hadn’t gone . . . I thought the problem would be resolved more quickly, particularly North-South problems . . .” Yang’s story highlights the diversity of experiences of repatriates in North Korea: even among her three brothers, one has adapted to the harsh circumstances relatively well, while another has suffered a sense of extreme dislocation. The most disturbing scenes of the documentary occur in the final sections, which were filmed after Yang’s father suffered a severe stroke. He is shown lying in hospital, bedridden and half paralyzed, and eventually breaking into wails of grief as his daughter insistently talks to him about his relationship with his wife and family. Yet this portrayal, although extremely painful, also seems a deeply loving one. Dear Pyongyang is the story of a political and personal tragedy, summed up in the film’s final and profoundly ambiguous word: an inarticulate cry from Yang’s stricken father as he lies in his hospital bed: “Kaerou!” [“Let’s go home!”] In Korea, too, the repatriation has recently reappeared in interesting ways in popular culture. The 2008 North Korean film The Kites Flying in the Sky [Haneul eul Naneun Yeondeul] presents a fictionalized version of the true story of a returnee who had come to North Korea with her mother as a small child following her father’s death in Japan. The heroine becomes a marathon runner, but then abandons her dreams of sporting glory in order to look after children orphaned during the “Arduous March” campaign (the North Korean euphemism for the famine of the mid-1990s).34 Although the treatment both of the repatriation and the famine in the film is greatly simplified, distorted and romanticized, The Kites Flying in the Sky is unusual in taking up these two difficult themes within the format of a mass-consumption movie. In South Korea, meanwhile, the national broadcaster KBS focused attention on the repatriation, which it featured in a two-part documentary broadcast in December 2013. This combined documentary footage from the late 1950s and early 1960s with interviews with returnee refugees, highlighting the complex political maneuvering that had led to the repatriation, and the disastrous human consequences of this supposedly “humanitarian” project.35 311

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The legacy Where is “home” for the repatriates and their descendants? A growing number are leaving North Korea along the dangerous refugee routes that cross its northern border, and little by little, some are trickling back to Japan. Since the middle of the 1990s, about 200 people been accepted for resettlement by the Japanese government, but these people do not fit into any of the normal categories of refugees or foreigners in Japan, and no official figures of the number are published. Once they arrive in Japan there is no policy framework, either national or local, to assist their resettlement. The number of people seeking to leave North Korea for Japan is almost certain to rise in the future, and could plausibly be expected to reach the thousands. For this reason, the silence and the apparent policy vacuum surrounding them is troubling. Let us follow the path taken by the returnee refugees on their journey to Japan, before going on to consider some of the issues raised by their resettlement. Every refugee’s story is different, but a number of common trajectories can be identified. Some of those who have reached Japan are ethnic Japanese women who were married to Koreans, and who have since been widowed.36 Others are Koreans who have family members living in Japan. In some cases, people living near North Korea’s border areas with China make repeated crossings to trade, in the desperate attempt to make enough money to keep their families alive. As in the case of most North Korean refugees, the crossing of the border takes place at night and on relatively narrow and isolated stretches of the rivers separating North Korea from China. Money often changes hands with border guards or brokers in the effort to secure a safe crossing, but testimony from refugees shows that this has become an increasingly difficult, dangerous and expensive process in the past couple of years as North Korea has attempted to tighten border security. Once the decision is taken and the first dangerous crossing is completed, the next step is to gain acceptance to Japan. This may involve a prolonged period of hiding in China and a further perilous journey to a third country, such as Mongolia, Laos, Thailand or Vietnam.37 Some refugees also reach Japan directly from China. The way that this is done involves diplomatically sensitive issues. Although the process is, in broad outline, well known to people who work with the refugees, and has sometimes been discussed in the media, there are concerns that wide public discussion would cause diplomatic problems which would make the journey of the refugees even more difficult and uncertain than it already is. For this reason, I shall not go into further details here. The secrecy and opacity of the process of entry to Japan, however, raises issues of principle which need further discussion. How does the Japanese government decide whom to accept? Japan has no explicitly declared policy on the subject, and the “returnee refugees” do not go through the normal process of applying for asylum. Instead the government quietly and on the basis of its own discretionary powers grants the right of entry to people (or at least to some people) who can prove that they are either Japanese or are Koreans who lived in Japan for an extensive period and took part in the repatriation project. This discretionary process raises important questions. What happens if the would-be refugee’s identity cannot be confirmed – if it is impossible to prove that he or she ever lived in Japan? So far, no cases of this type have been reported – but then again, there have been almost no published reports about any aspect of this process. For those who are recognized as returnee refugees and given the discretionary right to resettle in Japan, the next stage is the journey to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. The Japanese government, working with an NGO, often provides assistance at this point, sometimes organizing the journey and sending their staff to accompany the returnee refugees (most of whom have never been on an aircraft before). After the returnee refugees arrive at Narita Airport, however, the Japanese 312

The repatriation movement

government has no framework in place to receive the refugees, and the new arrivals have to rely heavily on the support of NGOs. One significant source of assistance, at least for ethnic Korean returnee refugees, is the South Korean-affiliated Korean Residents Union in Japan (known in Japanese as Zai-Nihon Taikanminkoku Mindan or Mindan for short), which has close links to the South Korean government. Mindan’s Support Center for Refugees from North Korea provides arriving returnee refugees with a one-off grant of 100,000 yen (about $1,000) to buy basic essentials, and helps them find work or apply for Livelihood Protection (the basic form of government welfare given to those without other means of support).38 There are three Japanese NGOs which focus specifically on the problems of returnee refugees: the Society to Help Returnees to North Korea [Kita Chôsen Kikokusha no Seimei to Jinken o Mamorukai, or Mamorukai for short] was created in 1994, while the Japan Aid Association for North Korean Returnees [Kikoku Dappokusha Shien Kikô, abbreviated below to Shien Kikô] set up in 2005 by the recently retired head of the Japanese government’s Immigration Bureau, Sakanaka Hidenori. Both provide valuable practical support for refugees.39 The Mamorukai has been particularly active in assisting them to reach Japan, and the Shien Kikô runs an educational center staffed by volunteer teachers which gives classes in Japanese language and culture. The third and more recently created group, Okketonmu (meaning “friends”), was created by volunteers who had worked with the Shien Kikô, and offers social support and networking for returnee refugees in Japan. This rather small NGO support base raises a number of problems which may become particularly pressing as the inflow of refugees expands. Despite the lack of government support, there can be no doubt that most returnee refugees are enormously glad and grateful to have reached Japan. Yet adjustment is difficult, even for the young, and still more for older “returnee refugees” who do not speak fluent Japanese and whose educational qualifications are not recognized in Japan.40 The situation of refugees in Japan is complicated by the intense public hostility to North Korea, which has been intensified by revelations about North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 1980s. Most returnee refugees respond by seeking as far as possible to conceal their past from neighbors and workmates, sometimes pretending to be recent migrants from South Korea. In these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that a Mindan survey conducted in 2006 found over 60% of North Korean refugees in Japan to be unemployed.41 As numbers increase, so does the urgent need for more systematic form of support for returnee refugees in Japan. One option, favored by some in Mindan, would be the establishment of a residential training center for returnee refugees, similar to the South Korean Hanawon.42 However, the Hanawon itself has been subject to some criticism within Korea, and, as an institution which grew out of South Korea’s history of accepting political defectors from the North, it is not necessarily a good model for Japan. Japan itself has some experience of developing a reception system for refugees, based on its relatively generous response to the Vietnamese refugee crisis during the 1980s. An alternative to residential centers would be for the national or local governments to provide practical non-residential training courses on everyday skills such as computer use, driving, dealing with banks, taxes, etc., as well as Japanese language and culture. There is also an obvious need for linguistically and culturally sensitive psychological support services. One concern, however, is the fact that the whole returnee refugee issue is highly politically charged, and that both the NGOs and the politicians most closely associated with the issue have distinct political agendas. Japanese support groups tend to see returnee refugees as a kind of “model minority.” Returnee refugees, because of their dire experiences in North Korea, are expected to be profoundly hostile to Kim Il-sung ideology and to communism more generally, and to be very eager to assimilate back into the Japanese society which they so greatly regretted 313

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

having left in the first place.43 In many cases, this image of the returnee refugee may be correct. Most hope to blend into Japanese society and make successful lives for themselves there. But returnee refugees, like all other migrants, are individuals. Their experiences vary. Some may wholeheartedly wish to assimilate to Japanese society, while others retain a stronger sense of attachment to Korea. Some may wish to be actively engaged in campaigns for North Korean human rights, while others seek a quiet and apolitical life in Japan. After half a century of political manipulation, they surely above all else have the right to determine their own identities without having to conform to somebody else’s grand political vision. In the context of the ongoing crisis of North-South Korean relations, some Japanese observers have produced alarmist visions of an impending tsunami of North Korea refugees (particularly returnee refugees) sweeping onto Japan’s shoreline. In the 1990s, Sakanaka Hidenori was reported as citing a possible figure of 300,000, and a more recent projection by a government think tank came up with a figure of 100,000–200,000.44 These predictions are far-fetched, but it does seem likely that the numbers will continue to grow rapidly, and it is plausible to suggest that Japan is very likely to find itself facing demands for resettlement from several thousand returnee refugees.

Repatriation, recompense and reconciliation There are strong moral and practical grounds for arguing that the Japanese government should respond to the problem by working with the Japan Red Cross Society and the ICRC to create an effective reception program for returnee refugees and their families – and perhaps also for other North Korean refugees more generally. The history of repatriation movement shows that the government and the various Red Cross Movements (along with the pro-North Korean group Chongryun) have a still unacknowledged and unfulfilled responsibility toward the survivors of the mass migration from Japan to North Korea decades ago. To overcome the problems of politicization discussed earlier, it is also important that a wider range of NGOs take up the issue, and also that local governments become more actively involved both in lobbying the central government and in providing their own support to the refugees. A just and fair reception program for returnee refugees would provide a measure of recompense for the wrongs of the past. But another essential step in righting these wrongs is to re-open the door to reconciliation through cross-border interaction between Japan and North Korea. In the 1990s, Japan and North Korea entered into negotiations on the fate of the Japanese wives who had accompanied Korean husbands to North Korea under the repatriation program. In 1997 and 1998, two small groups of Japanese wives were allowed to make their first return trip to Japan, where they were briefly reunited with families they had left behind thirty or more years earlier. But the freeze in relations between Japan and North Korea which followed the 2002 revelations of the abduction of Japanese by North Korea brought an end to this cautious opening up of relations. Though the political divide between Japan and North Korea remains intractable, the North Korean government has recently shown some willingness to discuss humanitarian issues such as the possible return of the remains of Japanese nationals who died in North Korea following the collapse of the Japanese empire in 1945. Steps to reunite the families divided by the repatriation by allowing easier telephone communication, reopening direct travel links between Japan and North Korea, and allowing temporary visits to Japan by former returnees (including the Japanese wives) could be important steps toward a gradual thawing of the freeze in relations between the two countries. In this way, the returnees might finally a bridge in a reconciliation process that would help to ease the human suffering caused by Northeast Asia lingering Cold War divisions. 314

The repatriation movement

Notes 1 See Kokita Kiyohito, Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Mark Selden, ‘Koh Tae Mun, Koh Chung Hee, and the Osaka Family Origins of North Korean Successor Kim Jong Un,’ The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 9, Issue 1, No. 2, January 3, 2011, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Kiyohito-Kokita/3465. 2 For a vivid personal account, see Kang Sang-jung, trans. Robin Fletcher, ‘Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood,’ Japanese Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2, December 2006, pp. 267–281, also published in Japan Focus, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Kang_-Sang_Jung/2343 3 See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 4 Richard H. Mitchell, The Korean Minority in Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, p. 131. 5 Kim Yeong-dal and Takayanagi Toshio, Collection of Documents on the North Korea Repatriation Project [Kita Chōsen Kikoku Jigyō Kankei Shiyrōshū], Tokyo: Shinkansha, 1995, see particularly p. 341. 6 Immigration Control Bureau, ‘Monthly Report on Repatriation to North Korea no. 59,’ Nov. 30, 1964, in the Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva (hereafter ICRC Archives), B AG 232 103–030. 7 See, for example, Lee Hana, A North Korean in Japan: Lee Hana, Step by Step [Nihon ni Ikiru Kita-Chōsenjin: Lee Hana no Ippo Ippo], Osaka: Asia Press, 2013; Han Sok-gyu, The Story of People who Returned to ‘the North’ from Japan [Nihon kara “Kita” ni Kaeta Hito no Monogatari], Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2007, pp. 116–120. 8 Japan-Korea Diplomatic Normalization Negotiations – Overview, Vol. 6 – The Problem of the Repatriation of Koreans and the Conclusion of the Repatriation Accord [Nikkan Kokkō Seijōka Kōshō no Kiroku, Sōsetsu Vol. 6 Zainichi Chōsenjin no Kikan Mondai to Kikan Kyōtei no Teiketsu], document 126 of the third release of official material pertaining to Japan-ROK relations, released November 16, 2007, pp. 47–51. 9 See for example letter from Inoue Masutarô to Léopold Boissier, May 31, 1957, ICRC Archive), B AG 232 105–005.01. 10 Masutaro Inoue, ‘Report of the Phyongyang Conference held by Japanese and North Korean Red Cross Societies (January 27th–February 28th 1956),’ March 17, 1956, p. 3, in ICRC Archives, B AG 232 055–001. 11 ‘An Account of the Visit of the ICRC Delegates to Japan’ [‘Déroulement de la Visite des Délégues du CICR au Japon’], May 27, 1956, in ICRC Archives, B AG 232 105–002. 12 See for example letter from Shimazu Tadatsugu (President of the Japan Red Cross Society) to Carey, June 11, 1956, and letter from Shimazu to Sir Alexander Grantham, June 11, 1956, in ICRC Archives, B AG 232 105–004. 13 For further discussion, see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, chs. 11–12. 14 Yi Sang-jin, ‘The Nature and Role of the Japan-Korea Association’ [‘Nicchō Kyōkai no Seikaku to Yakuwari’] in Takasaki Sōji and Pak Jung-jin, eds., What was the Repatriation Project? [Kikoku Undō to wa nan datta no ka], Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2005, pp. 235–267, see particularly pp. 251–252; ‘A Great Movement to Promote the Repatriation of Koreans’ [‘Chōsenjin Kikoku Sokushin no Dai-Undō’], Akahata, December 15, 1959. 15 See Morris-Suzuki, Exodus to North Korea, chs. 15–17. 16 ‘Information for Judgment of North Korean Situation,’ British National Archives, file no. FO 371–158554. 17 See Kim (2012), Securitization of Human Rights. 18 Mitchell, The Korean Minority in Japan, p. 139. 19 Mitchell, The Korean Minority in Japan, p. 144. 20 Olive Checkland, Humanitarianism and the Emperor’s Japan, 1877–1977, London: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, p. 169. 21 Kim and Takayanagi, Collection of Documents on the North Korea Repatriation Project [Kita Chōsen Kikoku Jigyō Kankei Shiyrōshū]. 22 For example, Okonogi Masao, ed., Why did Zainichi Koreans Repatriate? [Zainichi Chōsenjin wa naze Kikoku shita no ka], Tokyo: Gendai Jinbunsha, 2004; Takasaki Sōji and Pak Jung-jin, eds., What Was the Repatriation Project? [Kikoku Undō to wa nan datta no ka], Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2005. 23 Chang Myong-su, Trickery: The Truth of the Japan Red Cross North Korea ‘Repatriation Project’ [Bōryaku: Nihon Sekijūji Kita Chōsen ‘Kikoku Jigyō’ no Shinsō], Tokyo: Satsuki Shobō, 2003. 24 See Morris-Suzuki, Exodus to North Korea. 25 Sakanaka Hidenori, ‘The True Nature of the North Korea Repatriation Problem’ [‘Kita Chōsen Kikokusha Mondai no Honshitsu’], in Sakanaka Hidenori, Han Sok-gyu and Kikuchi, The History and Issues of the

315

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

26 27

28 29

30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43

44

North Korea Returnee Problem [Kita Chōsen Kikokusha Mondai no Rekishi to Kadai], Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2009, pp. 7–114. Kikuchi Yoshiaki, The North Korea Repatriation Project: ‘Great Abduction’ or ‘Eviction’? [Kita Chōsen Kikoku Jigyō: ‘Sodai na Rachi’ ka ‘Tsuihō’ ka], Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho, 2009. Pak Jung-jin, The Origins of the Japan-North Korea Cold War Structure: A Diplomatic Relationship Defined in the Years 1945–1965 [Nicchō Reisen Kōzō no Tanjō: 1945–1965 ni Fūin sareta Gaikō], Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2012. Japan-Korea Diplomatic Normalization Negotiations – Overview, Vol. 6 [Nikkan Kokkō Seijōka Kōshō no Kiroku, Sōsetsu Vol. 6]. See, for example, Han Sok-gyu, The Story of People who Returned to ‘the North’ from Japan [Nihon kara ‘Kita’ ni Kaeta Hito no Monogatari], Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2007; Saitō Hiroko, Forty Years Married to North Korea: Notes by a Japanese Refugee Wife [Kita Chōsen ni Totsuide Yonjūnen: Aru Dappoku Nihonjinzuma no Shuki], Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2010. For example Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, trans. Yair Rainer, New York: Basic Books, 2001. The Town of the Cupolas [Kyûpora no aru Machi], dir. Urayama Kiriro, starring Yoshinaga Sayuri and Hamada Mitsuo, Nikkatsu, 1962. Blood and Bone [Chi to Hone], dir. Sai Yôichi, starring Kitano Takeshi and Suzuki Kyoka, Shochiku, 2004; based on the novel by Yang Sok-Il, Chi to Hone, Tokyo: Gentôsha, 1998; see also Sai Yôichi, Chung Ui-Shin and Yang Sok-Il, ET [Eiga ‘Chi to Hone’ no Sekai], Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2004. Pacchigi!: We Shall Overcome, dir. Izutsu Kazuyuki, starring Shioya Shun, Takaoka Sôsuke and Sawajiri Erika, Cinequanon, 2004. The Kites Flying in the Sky [Haneul eul Naneun Yeondeul], dir. Phyo Kwang and Kim Hyon-chol, starring Kim Soon, 2008, Korean Artistic Film Studio (Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). Deported to the North [Buksong], dir. Ko Jung-hun, 2013, Korean Broadcasting System (Seoul: Republic of Korea). For one such story, see Saitō, Forty Years Married to North Korea [Kita Chōsen ni Totsuide Yonjūnen]. See Kim, Securitization of Human Rights. Interview with staff of Mindan’s Support Center for Refugees from North Korea, 4 July 2008. See also the Mindan refugee support website: http://www.mindan.org/dappokusien/index_eng.htm. Mindan also provides other forms of psychological support, such as organizing get-togethers for returnee refugees, and seeking out trauma counselors (though refugees in Japan, like those in Korea, are often reluctant to seek psychiatric help because of the stigma attached to psychological disorder in both Korea and Japan). See the websites http://hrnk.trycomp.net/index.php and http://hrnk.trycomp.net/archive/kiko1.htm. For an interesting first-person account of the issues of adjustment to life in Japan, see Lee, A North Korean Living in Japan [Nihon ni Ikiru Kita-Chōsenjin]. Mindan Support for North Korean Refugees Report [Mindan Dappokusha Shien Repōto], no. 7, February 24, 2006. Interview with staff of Mindan’s Support Center for Refugees from North Korea, July 4, 2008. See for example Miura Kotarō,‘For the Reception of Returnee Refugees in Japan’ [‘Dappoku Kikokusha no Nihon Ukeire no tame ni’], Shokun, September 2006, pp. 92–101; Miura Kotarō,‘The Arrival of Four Refugees from North Korea’ [‘Dappokusha 4-nin no Nihon Tōchaku’], June 2007, http://www1.ocn. ne.jp/~rachi/miura2.htm; Sakanaka Hidenori, Immigration War Diary [Nyūkan Senki], Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2005, particularly pp. 151–154. See Chōsakai Nyûsu, no. 511, June 2, 2007; Asahi Shinbun, January 5, 2007.

Bibliography Han, Sok-gyu. 2007. The Story of the People Who Returned to ‘the North’ from Japan [Nihon kara ‘Kita’ ni Kaeta Hito no Monogatari], Tokyo: Shinkansha. Kang, Chol-Hwan, and Rigoulot, Pierre. 2001. Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, trans. Yair Rainer, New York: Basic Books. Kang Sang-jung. 2006. ‘Memories of a Zainichi Korean Childhood,’ trans. Robin Fletcher, Japanese Studies, Vol. 26 No. 2, December, pp. 267–281. Kikuchi, Yoshiaki. 2009. The North Korea Repatriation Project: ‘Great Abduction‘ or ‘Eviction’? [Kita Chōsen Kikoku Jigyō: ‘Sodai na Rachi’ ka ‘Tsuihō’ ka], Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho.

316

The repatriation movement Kim, Mikyoung. 2012. Securitization of Human Rights: North Korean Refugees in East Asia, New York: Praeger. Kim, Yeong-dal, and Takayanagi, Toshio. 1995. Collection of Documents on the North Korea Repatriation Project [Kita Chōsen Kikoku Jigyō Kankei Shiyrōshū], Tokyo: Shinkansha. Lee, Hana. 2013. A North Korean Living in Japan: Lee Hana, Step by Step [Nihon ni Ikiru Kita-Chōsenjin: Lee Hana no Ippo Ippo], Osaka: Asia Press. Mitchell, Richard H. 1967. The Korean Minority in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morris-Suzuki. 2007. Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan’s Cold War, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2010. Borderline Japan: Foreigners and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Era, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okonogi, Masao ed. 2004. Why Did Zainichi Koreans Repatriate? [Zainichi Chōsenjin wa naze Kikoku shita no ka], Tokyo: Gendai Jinbunsha. Takasaki, Sōji, and Pak, Jung-jin, eds. 2005. What Was the Repatriation Project? [Kikoku Undō to wa nan datta no ka], Tokyo: Heibonsha.

317

This page intentionally left blank

PART 7

North-South Korea relations

This page intentionally left blank

20 SEMANTIC APPROACH FOR INTER-KOREA RECONCILIATION Reflection on conceptual division and political divergence Myoung-kyu Park

In modern state-building, national identity formation constitutes the core of cultural foundation for internal integration and external enclosure for membership clarification (Hobsbawm, Brubaker, Bloom). Unlike visible elements such as territorial boundaries, legal apparatuses, or military institutions, identity formation pertains to culture-psychological dimension which cannot be easily identified. In some cases, ascribed aspects of ethnicity, language, and customs are regarded crucial, whereas other cases prioritize politico-legal definitions of legitimate citizenship (Smith, Soysal, Greenfeld).This explains why the issue of identity formation is complex and contentious in theory as well as in empirical reality. The making of collective communal identity and its sustainment requires shared and agreed upon socio-cultural elements among the members. Sociologists and anthropologists, for instance, argue that socio-cultural interactions based on common symbols are the most important condition of cohesive identity formation (Jenkins, Anderson). Constructivists in contemporary international relations discipline also note that such identities are constituted, not a given a priori, in the socio-historical processes (Bruce Hall; Bloom). In these constituting processes, the clarification and consensus of shared problems, risks, legitimate agencies, and future aspirations play an important role. The common experience of fighting against other community is also a very important in collective identity formation. During the period of socio-political transformation, in particular, the way in which relationships between in-group and out-group members are defined influences the constructive process of group identity (Hobsbawm, Brubaker). Two different, even juxtaposing collective identities have been developed between South and North Korea after political liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. During the sixty years after the two regimes were built in 1948, the difference of collective identity on both sides has been increasing. The Korean War followed by the global Cold War exacerbated the difference to the level of hostile enmity. At the same time, the two Koreas maintain the mission of unification based on the strong sense of common national identity. As a result, collective identity on the Korean peninsula is ambivalent and self-contradictory: hostile in terms of the politico-military aspect, different in socio-economic identity, and homogeneous in terms of the ethno-cultural dimension (Park M. 2012). Even today, inter-Korean relation is shifting between two extremes.

321

Myoung-kyu Park

This chapter tries to explain the translingual practices including translation, reappropriation, and implementation of basic concepts for political identity formation during Korea’s modernization period. An analysis of semiotic concepts situated in a specific historical context can shed useful light in explaining often contentious collective identity formation. The cultural politics of making a borderline between the two Koreas by focusing on the key conceptual descriptions defining and demarcating we-ness and they-ness in rapidly changing social milieu will be explored. Three similar, yet intricately different, concepts of Kukmin (國民), Inmin (人民), and Minjok (民族) deserve a careful investigation as a way to explicate the emergence of different subjectivities and identities at both regimes. Since these concepts are often regarded as of the Western origin, it would not be absolutely erroneous to treat them as the recent introduction of Western values to East Asian societies. It should be noted, however, that they were not simply imported ones but also deeply rooted in the traditional semantic paradigm (Park M. 2009b). All translations regarding political sovereignty in Korea, China, and Japan have a same root term, min, a traditional concept of good governance. We need to take into consideration of three historical processes: the Western influence through the translation of the concept of nation, the long semiotic legacy about people in East Asian tradition, and Koreans’ endeavors to appropriate the concepts for their modernization project.

Social change and conceptual transformation During the process of identity formation, cognitive, emotive, and cultural elements interplay with each other at individual as well as communal levels. Considering the rapidly shifting situation during the late 19th century “Western impact and reform” period, new ideas and concepts from the west were introduced primarily through Japan. For a few decades after the 1876 Kanghwa Treaty, nearly all aspects of communal life underwent major transformations with increasing interstate relations (Shin Y. 1975, Kim Y., Park C. 1997).They included political reforms, economic changes, status system changes, and cultural transformations. These were reflected on the changing vocabularies of the time. The discursive tools of the elites changed dramatically from those of Confucian ethics to those of newly introduced modernity (Ha Y. 2009, Kim Y., Kim Hyojeon). Many of the words in today’s currency were introduced, transmitted, and adopted during that time period via new media, modern social discourses, and foreign influences. Political reformists and enlightened intellectuals eagerly argued for the sanguine need of new key concepts in establishing a modern sovereignty, a necessary condition for maintaining ideational independence in the imperialistic world order of the time. The concepts of international law, constitution, state, and sovereignty were discussed in this context (Kim Y., Kim Hyojeon, Park S.). Melvin Richter summarized the common agenda of the collective research of “History and Society” under the leadership of Reinhart Koselleck, as elaborating the four aspects of conceptualization process (Richter: 37–39; Koselleck). Verzeitlichung (temporalization) is “the practice of inserting modern political and social concepts within one or another philosophy or horizon of history set out teleologically in terms of periods, phases, or stages of development” (Richter: 37). By assigning meaning of historical time to a word, its semiotic concept becomes historicized and the perception of the present is related to the ideational future. Demokratisierung (democratization) entails expansion of the word used by a small number of intellectuals to the ordinary citizens. Emerging new media such as newspapers and journals provide a good environment in which the political ideas can be communicated and shared among the people. The concept becomes familiar and gets commonly used in everyday life and in social discourses. Ideologisierbarkeit (ideologizability) is the cultural capacity which can incorporate concepts into the high level of discourses. It involves the absorption of the word into an ideological scheme as a generalized Weltanschauung (ethos) of the 322

Semantic approach

day. Abstract concepts could be “easily fitted into open-ended formulae which could be defined according to the interests of movements and groups competing for adherents” (Richter: 38). Finally, Politisierung (politicization) is to apply the concept to a concrete social context, such as political mobilization and social movements. The words become a powerful tool of political indoctrination and occasional demagoguery. The concepts are incorporated into the real politics enough to make them appear as ideological struggles, which are very difficult to be compromised. These four aspects are about cultural processes in which diverse political ideas are struggling against each other to achieve a respectively desired future direction. Each aspect involves a deep relationship between the conceptual dimensions and social agencies situated in a concrete socio-political context. The impact from the outside and the response from within are entangled in the transformation of historical trajectory. In the following I will apply these four steps in order to explain the construction of the divisive concepts between South and North Korea regarding the membership of political community. Among the newly emerged vocabularies, the word nation was a key concept without which the entire social transformation of both Koreas cannot be explained, due to its symbolic importance for the complex transformations of the era.

Verzeitlichung (temporalization): Nation as a normative concept With the advent of Western impact followed by the sense of heightened insecurity and crisis, Korean intellectuals began to realize that constructing a new collective identity was crucial to maintain their community intact (Sin C., Shin Y. 1984). The word of nation, via several different translations, was introduced as the essential element for a sovereign community to be a legitimate member of global society. Nation, a word that initially emerged as a sovereign subjectivity during the French Revolution, was now universalized enough to be applied to everywhere in the world. Under the intense pressures of civilization and reformation, the idea of nation was implemented by the intellectuals who aspired for modernization of Korean society. It was the introduction of the new ideas from the West via translation that initiated the temporalization of the concept of nation. In East Asia, those who came to understand the limits of the conventional paradigm in constructing a modern sovereign subjectivity tried to implement the idea in their countries. Japanese scholars who took a great role in introducing the idea of nation, Fukuzawa Yukichi, for example, argued that a newly enlightened nation had to be constructed in order to maintain Japan as an independent state in the struggling international community. For that, those scholars translated the word into several vocabularies such as gokumin and minjoku (Yanabu, Howland). In China, Liang Qi Chao, who performed a leading role in introducing the idea of nation, also claimed that China needed a new nation for political reform and maintaining sovereignty (Jin and Liu, Lee H., Harris). Spencer’s Social Darwinism theorem, in which the real actor in human history was argued to be a struggle among the nations, was welcomed in order to stress the importance of sovereign people. Sin Chaeho, a Korean intellectual stressing the importance of nationalism in politics as well as in historiography, also expressed a similar opinion by accepting the new concept of nation (Shin Y. 1984). Translation is a cultural process through which a new idea of a semantic world is implemented as something meaningful to another semantic world. This translation process, however, was not simply a one-way introduction but was also a complex entanglement practice between two worlds (Liu; Park M. 2009b: 38–49). This was the reason why the vocabularies of translation of nation in three East Asian countries had the same root word, min, a semantic bloc which could link the conventional thinking to the new perspective. At the same time, the word min was combined with other vocabularies in order to express the differences from the conventional terminologies and different aspects of the nation (Harris; Park M. 2009a). Over the course of a few 323

Myoung-kyu Park

decades in East Asia, several transitions became popular to express the tendencies and necessities of the new subjectivities, such as kukmin, sinmin, and minjok. The translation kukmin, literally a combined word of state and people, was used for stressing the deep relation between the min and sovereign state. It was argued that kukmin was a people who had a strong collective identity as a sovereign subjectivity of their state. The translation sinmin, literally meaning “a new min,” was used for expressing the enlightened subjectivity of the nation. Culturally awakened people with a strong enough mentality to be an independent state were the ones who deserved to be called a nation. The word minjok was used to stress the principle of ethnicity in constructing political community. Literally it was a combination of min and jok, an ethnic community, and helped to differentiate oneself from others according to ethnicity. Compared with the two previous terms focusing on the modern state and new enlightenment, minjok was more likely understood as a long-lasting community based on ethno-cultural homogeneity (Park M, 2009a). The concept of nation was implemented with diverse implications by appropriating these translations in different context. In Korea, for example, kukmin was used to stress a people who had a sense of belongingness and commitment to a modern state. When the Chosun dynasty renamed itself the Great Han Empire in 1897, the empire was called Daehan’jekuk, and the people were referred to as the min of the state (Kim Hyojeon). By displacing old terms with new terms, the Chosun dynasty was reinterpreted as a modern state with its people renamed as kukmin. Under the threat of colonization, the concept of kukmin was mentioned to stress the political consciousness of the people as a sovereign community. For stressing the importance of an awakened people with modern knowledge, another term, sinmin, was used. An association named sinmin-group, established in 1907 as a secret organization for recovering the national sovereignty, asked people to be awakened and renewed with the enlightened patriotic perspectives (Shin Y. 1987). After Korea lost its sovereignty in 1910, the concept was integrated with a normative goal for political independence. In the wake of being weakened in state power, after Korea lost its sovereignty in diplomacy and military power in 1907 in particular, another concept of minjok was called into wide circulation referring to an ethno-culturally homogeneous collectivity. As an ethnic unit, it was expected to give a clear common identity regardless of the political condition of the existing state. Different from the kukmin concept, which dissipated as the Korean Empire became incapable of protecting neither its regime nor its people, the minjok could have much influence in maintaining selfidentity(Park M. 2009a). During the period under Japanese colonial rule, Koreans maintained the idea of minjok as a common identity against Japanese kukmin category. The minjok identity could provide the semantic foundation on which Koreans felt they deserved to ask for political independence. Since then, up to today, the concept has served as the basis of national selfdetermination and the will of inter-Korean unification.

Demokratisierung (democratization): Media and public sphere for the socialization of a concept In traditional Korean society, words as constitutive elements of political discourse were monopolized by a small group of intellectuals. Limited public education and a consequential low literacy rate hindered the wide dissemination of ideas. The difficulty of Chinese characters, which had been a cultural weapon of the neo-Confucian literati in traditional Korea, was another reason of the underdevelopment of the public sphere. However, during and after the enlightenment movement of the late 19th century, the new elites skillful in the use of new media assisted the common people in internalizing and using the new concepts for making their voices heard. The democratization of a concept was made possible by the emergence of the new media, a

324

Semantic approach

professional institution for delivering news and communicating ideas between the state and the people, and between the diverse groups of the Korean nation. A new media for mass indoctrination was first established by the ruling group of the Chosun government, which wanted to apply new measures for reform. In 1881, the Chosun government sent a number of delegations to Japan in order to study modern changes, and they returned with diverse information regarding new ideas, measures, and institutions in Meiji Japan. For initiating change to reform the status quo, a government paper was established. Hansung Ten-day Paper, published in 1883, followed by Hansung Weekly, in 1886, opened a new public sphere in which new ideas could introduced and shared among the people (Kim Hyojeon; Kim Y.). A stronger wind of democratization came from non-governmental intellectuals who were aspiring for socio-political reform from below. In 1896, a number of enlightened literati established a new social organization, Independence Club, to introduce Western civilization and promote new socio-political changes. Their positions differed from those of ruling elites for their progressive propensity and open-mindedness to accommodate and adapt to external changes. The Club published a newspaper, The Independent, in vernacular character in order to let ordinary people to get information easily. The activities of the club and the socio-cultural impacts of its official newspaper played a crucial role in introducing new concepts and institutionalizing the public sphere for discussing the common issues in Korean society (Shin Y. 1975). The Independent targeted the commoners without an understanding of Confucian terminologies as their primary readership. The mass largely excluded from the formulation and introduction of the social discourses could now participate in the process as an interactive party. Modern discourses on the key conceptual vocabularies of state, individual, citizen, economy, and society were introduced and written about in the public forum with relation to the Korean affairs (Shin Y.1975; Park M. 2009a). After its closure in 1899 due to the political oppression, two papers, the Hwangsung Paper and the Great Han Daily, subsequently joined, activating discursive space for the “enlightenment movement.” In addition, an indigenous religion mainly supported by peasants published a paper called Mansebo, also printed in vernacular characters, with a clear orientation toward modernization and reform (Park M. 2001). New intellectuals could make their voices heard using the new terminologies through these media. For example, Yun Hyojeong (1858–1939), an enlightened intellectual, wrote several articles on the relationship between the state and the nation using the word kukmin. Sin Chaeho (1880–1936), a celebrated reformer of the day, wrote many articles arguing that all human civilizations included national histories in which only minjok can play important roles. He also used a term meaning “new kukmin” to establish a collective identity with a firm political will and a sense of solidarity. An Changho established a patriotic organization under the name of sinmin. Regardless of the differences in terminology, using those words in a socio-political context on purpose was a semantic practice in which the new idea of nation was combined with the traditional thoughts on the people for constructing a new sovereign identity. Public school education was another important space for “democratizing” new ideas. In the enlightenment movement, new types of schools were established for educating ordinary people with new curricula. School education was expected to be an essential measure for making a sovereign Korean nation by indoctrinating a strong sense of sovereign identity. Instead of Confucian education based on the Chinese classics, new ideas about global history, economic affairs, political issues, and social relations were taught. At the same time, however, the Japanese also used the formation education system to justify the colonization projects and to eliminate “harmful ideas” which supported nationalistic perspectives. Thus, textbooks became a space of discursive struggles between the Japanese colonizer and Korean nationalists, and between the domestic traditionalist and the modernist.

325

Myoung-kyu Park

Struggles for legitimate discourse boomed during and after the 1920s. Several newspapers, magazines, books, and pamphlets were published by different political groups with diverse socio-political orientations (Park C. 1997). Many struggles were not about the new concepts themselves but their appropriate functions in theorizing the holistic interpretation on the topics of subjectivity, modernity, nation, and community. The same concept could be used as a semantic element for a totally different political project. Now, the main problem was not the new concept itself but the paradigmatic context in which each concept was located and interpreted. In this context, a comprehensive ideology rather than individual concepts came to be problematic. The democratization of political procedures was always accompanied with conceptual struggles which were so deeply related to the ideological confrontation.

Ideologisierbarkeit (ideologization): Nationalism, liberalism, and socialism Words are not simple vehicles to contain concepts. Instead they are articulate manifestations of comprehensive ideological paradigms. Some concepts are monopolized by a specific ideological framework, while others can be used commonly with different connotations. For example, the political implications of min can convey different meanings according to the ways the word is used in differential ideological paradigms. During and after the colonial period, three ideological paradigms of nationalism, liberalism, and socialism were important in explaining the semantic functions of those key concepts. Nationalism is the first ideology which should be mentioned. Nationalism is a comprehensive Weltanschauung that regards nation as the very agent of the human history. The more the nationalistic perspective is asserted, the more the concept of nation becomes something honorable, natural, and eternal. In this context perennial elements such as ethnicity, language, and customs were regarded as essential rather than the modern aspects of enlightenment and political reformation (Park C. 2010). As a result, the nationalism that developed in colonial Korea has a strong affinity with the idea of ethnicity. In this paradigm, the real agent of global order creation and human development has to be a nation, translated into minjok, an ethno-cultural community (Park M. 2009b). It could be a discursive weapon to criticize the colonized discourses on kukmin, royal members of the Japanese Empire. The semiotic tension between minjok and kukmin was indispensable because the Japanese colonialist tried to de-politicize the elements of ethnicity, language, and customs while the Korean nationalists tried to politicize them. It is one of the reasons why Korean nationalism entails the ethnic component so much. Even after the political liberation, ethnic nationalism had a strong influence in the establishment of the two different regimes in the Korean peninsula. Also, it could legitimatize an authoritative regime oppressing individual freedom and democratic participation of the social groups in the name of nation, a sacred agent. Second, liberalism was another important paradigm in explaining the concept of nation. Liberalists who agreed with Western modernism explained the concept of nation as a totality of individuals who were living within a political community (Tamir, Park C. 2010). The idea of social contract was believed to be the philosophical foundation of the legitimacy of the state. The most important element that bound individuals as a nation was a legal system that protected the rights and duties of individuals regardless of socio-economic status. This was the perspective of many enlightened intellectuals who believed that self-awakened individuals could establish a strong nation (Kim Hyeonju). Though the weak legal legitimacy of Japanese colonial rule led the liberalists to highlight cultural commonalities instead of laws, the belief of the democratic principle in constructing sovereign community was strongly implemented in Korea. From the paradigm of liberalism, fighting against Japanese colonial rule in the name of nation was essentially a struggle 326

Semantic approach

for democracy. A nation needs to be understood not as a sacred being opposing individuals but as a harmonious entity based on individual freedom. A principle of self-determinism is applied not merely to the nation but also to the each member who constitutes the national community. Needless to say, however, it was impossible to realize the democracy in the colonial context. After the March 1st independence movement of 1910, the Japanese rulers tried to de-politicize the concept of nation and reappropriate it by allowing freedom for non-political activities to the Korean people. Koreans had suffered from the colonial rule based on the authoritative Emperor and the differentiation policy according to the ethnic principle. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that liberalism was one of the ideological resources in constructing a Korean modern nation. That is why the social disputes on the meaning of democracy were heated just after the political liberation in 1945. Third, socialism was one of the very important ideologies in making social discourses on national affairs. Socialists appropriated the concept of nation as an organizing principle of collectivity in explaining the situation from the class struggle perspective. Socialists disagreed with nationalists’ argument that a nation is the highest political agent in the modern international order. They also criticized the liberalism which regarded individuals more important than any other social category. Socialists believed that the real agent in human history was neither nation nor individual but the economic class which had its special position in the production system. For them, the nation was nothing more than a contentious space in which class struggles continue to take place. During the 1920s and 1930s, Korean socialists criticized the nationalist idea of nation as a way to start class struggle against the Japanese colonial and Korean capitalists (Park C. 1997, 2010; Bang). Korean socialists launched criticisms against bourgeois nationalism and cultural definition of a nation while criticizing Japanese colonialism as a capitalistic imperialism. Thus, they preferred the word inmin, a more lower-class-oriented term, to describe the political agent for anti-colonial competition (Park M. 2009b). The Korean socialist movement was strongly influenced by the international communist movement aiming at the global struggle against capitalism via collaboration with the Soviet Union and anti-imperialism of the third world peoples who were suffering under colonial rule. In 1935, a thesis titled “Anti-Fascist People’s Frontline” was adopted at the 7th Comintern, where the unity of inmin was advocated as a desirable type of political coalition among different classes in the colonial society (Lee Aesook). Numerous disputes were made by socialists to criticize liberalists, colonialists, and nationalists regarding the proper agency and subjectivity of the revolutionary change. Differentiation regarding the concepts of minjok, kukmin, and inmin were closely related to the political struggles in the form of ideological battles. Different political groups with differential ideologies tried to monopolize or appropriate the concepts of nation to their own advantage. After liberation, with the emergence of Cold War confrontation in East Asia as well as in the global order, the ideological confrontation among nationalism, liberalism, and socialism was reinforced. The ideological confrontation for state building in the post-colonial period was the very context in which the concepts were highly politicized. Without having open dialogue between them, every discourse had to be adjusted to the ideologically differentiated framework of the struggle of each regime.

Politisierung (politicization) Concepts can be used as weapons of politics. In times of rapid social change where groups engage in highly contentious struggles among themselves, concepts are not simply words of description but become those of mass mobilization and political criticism. Battles over concepts are always related to socio-political struggles that are ideologically defined. Political struggles between 327

Myoung-kyu Park

Japan’s colonial order and the Korean liberation movement portended the collapse of the Japanese Empire. In that struggle, the words minjok and kukmin reflected the opposite sentiments and identities of the ruled and the ruler. While the concept of kukmin was politically exploited by colonial discourse, that of minjok as a cultural, ethnic, historical community was a very important discursive weapon to support an independent collective identity. Upon Korea’s liberation with the end of the Second World War, it was believed that the Korean people could build an independent state according to the will of nation. Diverse concepts for expressing “we-ness” as a sovereign subjectivity emerged (Kang). However, it did not take long to realize that the collective identity based on a monolithic element such as ethnic homogeneity was insufficient to establish a new modern state. As disagreement among diverse political groups regarding who could be the legitimate agent for leading the state-building process increased, it became difficult to reconcile opposing state-building projects by different agents. In addition, tensions between the United States and the USSR worsened the situation. Commonality pertaining to anti-Japanese nationalism alone was not able to mitigate conflicting views on nation-building programs between liberalists and socialists. Political confrontation between North and South combined with the ideological struggle between socialism and liberalism brought about the division of discursive sphere, too. For elaborating the political legitimacy, political elites on both sides tried to mobilize basic concepts for their strategic interest. The sharp contrast between the social usage of kukmin and that of inmin was a typical example of the politicization of concept. Socialists tried to convey the concept of inmin to gain hegemonic power in the state-building process. Just after liberation, many local organizations emerged with pro-socialist state-building orientation with the names of “committee of inmin.” On August 28, 1945, a group of socialists announced that a new regime, the Republic of Inmin, was established by the representatives of the socialist camp. It was a premature, illegitimate polity that quickly evaporated, but it left a strong image of the concept of inmin among the relevant parties. Yeo Un-hyung (1886–1947), a leader of that socialist movement, was criticized for using the term inmin in the short-lived socialist republic, but he held his ground (Seo). The name of the party he created in 1946 was the “Inmin Party.” Left-leaning intellectuals published journals and pamphlets to mobilize people as inmin in favor of the socialist ideology and to stall the liberal-led state-building process. In the North, a state-building process was more organized under the socialist principle. Ideologically well-trained personnel worked together to establish a socialist regime under the influence of the USSR. Kim Il-sung and his comrades got the leading power along with several other political groups. North Korea also referred to their newly established institutions using the word inmin. The list includes the “army of inmin,” the “school of inmin,” and the “hospital of inmin.” The vocabulary inmin had a clear political implication arguing the exemption of the colonial collaborators and bourgeois nationalists from the legitimate agent of the state building in the post-colonial context. This was also a common practice in China when Mao’s communist group established the Communist Republic of China in 1949 (Park M. 2009b). Zhou Enlai mentioned that the word kukmin included traitors and collaborators, and it therefore could not describe all the Chinese persons for the new China. Inmin, which signifies the common people and excludes those traitors and collaborators, was identified as the real foundation of the new Peoples’ Republic of China. While inmin was the main concept of the socialist paradigm, the liberal nationalists preferred that of kukmin. The word kukmin was controversial due to its colonial implications, but both liberalists and nationalists found that it could have political efficacy in strengthening the people’s identity by reimagining kukmin. It was in active use during the enlightenment period before Korea’s colonization and could counter the communist discourse. It was symbolic that the first party created by the liberalists in 1945 was called the “Chosun Kukmin Party.” It was later renamed 328

Semantic approach

as the “Kukmin Party” with the consolidation of several political groups. The Korean Democratic Party, established on September 16, 1945, announced that their party aimed to “enhance the lives and education of the kukmin” and “protect the free development of the kukmin.” The word kukmin became so familiar with those who had endured the colonial brutalities that the word was believed to include diverse groups of people in the post-liberation era. In addition, the concept of kukmin was more likely to be identified with minjok, the cultural-ethnic community of the Korean people. It was noteworthy that the word inmin was expunged from the Constitution of the Republic of Korea after rancorous debate. When the well-known legal scholar Yu Jin-O (1906–1987) was asked to draft the constitution of the new state, he wrote an article on sovereignty, in which he stated, “The sovereignty of the state belongs to the inmin and all sovereignty comes from the inmin.” He used the word inmin as the proper concept of sovereign peoples of a newly established state, mainly attributing it to its long history in East Asian discourse. However, it was changed to kukmin for a very clear conceptual differentiation from the socialist ideology of inmin sovereignty. After 1948, when two different political regimes were respectively established in South and North Korea, the sovereign people in both Koreas were identified differently as kukmin of South Korea and inmin of North Korea. Different concepts were used according to different political memberships despite the fact that both Koreas regard themselves a homogeneous minjok. During and after Korean War brought about by the North Korea’s military invasion to the South, the concept of inmin was so deeply related to the communist party and partisan militarism that it became a taboo which was hardly used in ordinary discourse. Many people were executed without the proper legal process in the name of inmin. The North Korean army was called the military of inmin, while the South Korean army was named that of state or kukmin. It took several decades before the word inmin began to be discussed in South Korean public sphere.

Semantic approach to inter-Korea reconciliation If the political confrontation was deeply related to the semantic tensions, endeavors to figure out ways of lessening the semantic gaps might be a form of reconciliation. It is also necessary to understand the historical context in which those meanings were constructed. Three points need to be added to enhance the interpretative capacity of synthesizing the conflicting concepts: elaborating the root idea of min, relativizing the minjok identity, and reflecting the collective identity by thinking on the citizenship.

Reimagining the semantic root of min To go beyond highly politicized semantic usages regarding national identity, looking into the traditional word of min in East Asian civilizations might be the first step. The word min, literally meaning the people in general, has been one of the most frequently used vocabularies in East Asian civilizations. It is a very old word, but it has a semantic element that needs to be revived in contemporary discourse. In the Classics of Poetry, the oldest book of poetry in ancient China, the word min is found more than a hundred times. The Classics of History a compilation of documentary records related to historical events in ancient China, noted that the principle of min is the “only foundation of the country.” Though the min was not recognized as an agent of sovereign people, the ruler and the ruled were expected to have reciprocal relations, exchanging the duties to protect and the obligations to obey. After Confucian ideology was introduced into Korea during the Koryo Dynasty (918–1392), the idea of min was used in general with two different yet ambiguous meanings: the foundation of the state and the object of governance. The succeeding Chosun dynasty (1392–1910) was founded on the same idea of min is the only foundation of the 329

Myoung-kyu Park

country.” Chung Do-jeon (1342–1398), the ideological architect of the Chosun dynasty, argued that min had to be the raison d’être of the newly established neo-Confucian state. According to him, the legitimacy of ruling dynasty came from the happiness of the min. The ruling neoConfucian ideology regarded min as the foundation of the state and its governance. The idea of “for the min” constituted the core of the political legitimacy of the dynasty, where the ruler was respected as a good patron or a sage for the people. The king at the central government and his delegations dispatched to local areas were expected to fulfill their duty to deliver happiness and secure living of the min. The governance catchphrases such as “govern the people” (mokmin), “love the people” (aemin), and help the people (hyulmin) are easily found in the historical records on state affairs. Jeong Yak-yong (1762–1836), a leading intellectual in the late 18th century, wrote an essay about the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Jeong’s idea that equated the king’s authority with the consensus of the min appears very radical for its logical similarity with the Western “people’s sovereignty” principle. An idea of minguk, literally a state based on min, emerged in this context. Due to the legitimacy function of the word min, most political uprisings during the Chosun period tried to explain their revolts with the idea of the min being the “foundation of the state.” Protests by the peasants, merchants, and other lower classes of people were usually called “the upheavals of the min.” They were unorganized and spontaneous protests without formal networks or leaders that resulted in social unrest without yielding significant institutional changes. In these incidents, however, the word min was used to denote the inevitability or legitimacy of criticizing the status quo. For example, the Tonghak peasant army in 1894 made a declaration that “we are a gathering of people” who are protesting against the miserable lives of the ruled mass. They claimed that they represented the will of min against the corrupted government. A government official of the time referred to this popular uprising as a special type of min-gathering. As mentioned, the word min has a semantic dimension which provides a principle of people’s sovereignty that can be maintained regardless of the types of regime. Those translations of nation, kukmin and inmin, tried to differentiate themselves from the conventional term of min. Today, a critical elaboration of the conventional meaning of min could help to relativize those politicized concepts from the perspective of the ordinary people. The slogan of “people are the only foundation of the country” is able to be a common ground on which historically constructed political identities can be synthesized. Regardless of the differences in ideologies, political interests, and even emotional differences among the people, to think about the category of min in general can provide a new way of synthesizing different concepts on historical agencies. If the medieval ideology of dynastic rule can be eliminated, the min-centered discourse might be mobilized as a semantic foundation for elaborating new identity. The normative philosophy of neo-Confucian discourse which had remained at the level of “for the people” is able to be translated into the actualization of a “by the people” principle.

Reflection on the ethnocentrism in minjok discourse In thinking about inter-Korean unification, the concept of minjok is inevitable. Regardless of the confrontation between different political identities in both Koreas, Seoul and Pyungyang agree that they belong to the same minjok originating from the same ethno-cultural root. The minjok concept has revealed significant discursive power in diverse measures for inter-Korean reconciliation: the divided families reunion project, cultural exchange programs, mutual help in post-colonial historiography, and the ultimate dream of national unification. Even for promoting inter-Korean cooperation in the business sector, a minjok concept is indispensable to define the specific realm of national business in the Kaesung Industrial Complex, for example, as the third 330

Semantic approach

sphere different from both the domestic and the global ones. It also helps Korean diaspora people living outside the Korean peninsula to have a sense of brotherhood. German unification revealed the fact that the discursive power of nation was very powerful in mobilizing people toward a unification process and promoting a sense of common identity. Thus, it is needless to say that the minjok identity would be important in Korean reconciliation and unification. At the same time, however, it is very important to understand that the concept could have a negative influence which would bring about significant hurdles in the way of reconciliation. Above all, the minjok concept itself has been distorted too much to be a foundation of the unified Korea in the future. In particular, North Korea reconceptualized Korean minjok as an “honorable nation sharing the same ideology of Juche led by Kim Il Sung.” By making a specific amalgamation among the ethnic element, socialist principle, and Juche ideology of Kim Il Sung, North Korea now declares themselves a very unique nation which is hardly identified with the South Korean people, who cannot and will not share Juche ideology. Another factor to be considered is the increasing tendency of multiculturalism in South Korea. With the globalization effect after the end of Cold War era, the ethnic homogeneity of South Korean society is continuously weakening. The number of Korean citizens who have different ethnic origins is continuously increasing, while lots of ethnic Koreans are living outside the Korean peninsula with different citizenships. As a result, stressing the minjok identity, usually understood as a homogeneous ethnic community, could bring about socio-cultural tensions within South Korea, not to mention between two Koreas. In 1997, a famous association of Korean literature decided to get rid of the word minjok from its name. Since 2011, Korean military officers are required to swear an oath not for minjok but for kukmin, due to the non-ethnic Korean soldiers. A reflexive usage of minjok discourse is necessary in order to escape from the ethnic conflicts in diversified Korea. Thus, it would be wise not to consider the minjok identity as the sufficient foundation of the political reconciliation between two Koreas. On the contrary, there could be the possibility of increasing conflicts due to the adherence to the minjok concept in the process of inter-Korean reconciliation. To escape from the negative influence in inter-Korean relations the, minjok concept needs to be separated from both the political ideology and ultra-ethnocentrism. Minjok identity has to be softened enough to justify the multicultural condition of Korean society and the increasing regional cooperation in East Asian region. Its sense of brotherhood as an emotional community can be expanded toward new members who want to live together on the Korean peninsula regardless of their ethnic origins. It is needless to say that North Korea’s conceptualization of minjok by Juche ideology should be changed by separating ethnicity from their political ideology. Softening the discursive power of the minjok discourse by differentiating the ethnocentric emotionalism from the communal sense of brotherhood is a necessary condition for semiotic reconciliation of two Koreas.

Democratization of kukmin: Collective identity by enlarging the civil sphere One of the most significant results of the state-building procedure was the different definitions of political subjects appearing in the two constitutions of the South and North Korea. There is an interesting parallel between the two constitutions regarding political sovereignty. Article 2 in both constitutions is as follows: The sovereignty of the Republic of Korea belongs to the kukmin, and all powers come from the kukmin. (South Korea) 331

Myoung-kyu Park

The sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea belongs to the inmin. Sovereignty is realized through the supreme committee of inmin and local committees of inmin. (North Korea) Both remind us of article 3 in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution, which became a universal theorem of all societies: “The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially in the nation. No body and no individual may exercise authority which does not emanate expressly from the nation.” It means that these concepts are deeply rooted to a universal value which human history has achieved through the global civilization. Both the concepts of kukmin and inmin, two essential ideas in constructing political identity in both Koreas, are referring the people as a whole. Both can be understood as different cases of historical realization of the modern idea of nation as a sovereign subjectivity. In the modernization process, the political realization of the nation was diverse according to the local contexts (Greenfeld). Just like a French concept of nation was criticized as a sacred whole which was independent from the individual members, however, it is necessary to recognize that both concepts could be mobilized as the logic of state authoritarian rule (Terrier). North Korea has kept a totalitarian rule without allowing the individual freedom in the name of inmin. The concept of inmin is too politically distorted by the totalitarian Juche ideology to be the principle of the people’s sovereignty in reality. For inter-Korean reconciliation, democratization of the political meaning of inmin in North Korea is necessary. In South Korea, in spite of the successful democratization, the cultural legacy of the state-led authoritative strategy remains in kukmin discourses. Kukmin identity needs to be flexible to develop an elaborative democracy which respects every human being as the ultimate subject in society. In that regard, a new idea of simin, citizenship, is important. The word simin is deeply related to the idea of civil society, which has been regarded as an autonomous social world in which diverse types of individuals are living together. It is the world of free individuals who have their own rights in doing business, participating in political affairs, and pursuing personal interests in their private lives. It is also the world of struggle where free competition, responsibility, and diversity should be admired. The idea of human rights is also important to imagine the meaning of subjectivity in the process of inter-Korean reconciliation. It would be wrong to displace both kukmin and minjok identities with the simin identity as long as the state system remains a basic community. Nevertheless, the simin concept will be a good reference on which the collective identity in both Koreas can be reconstructed in accordance with the principle of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence within each society as well as between two divided societies. The democratic principle in the simin identity can help to enhance the deliberate democracy not only in South Korea but also to reform North Korean regime, where the human autonomy is severely restricted due to the lack of civil rights. When the concepts of kukmin, inmin, minjok, and simin are elaborated sincerely in the form of mutual understanding and humanistic reformation, a new way of reconciliation will be found.

Conclusion As discussed thus far, the social use of concepts in contemporary Korea cannot be understood without considering the socio-political changes that have occurred during the complex nationstate-building process. When considered solely in terms of terminology, the words kukmin, inmin, and minjok are neither strange nor contested. However, ideological division and political

332

Semantic approach

contestations require intellectuals to transform the semiotics of these words into highly politicized concepts in Korea’s modern history. The concept of kukmin is related to the idea of national sovereignty as it was widely accepted during the late 19th century. The concept of inmin, which was used for a long time during the Chosun dynasty, was reinvented to refer to ordinary people without power and property. During the first half of the 20th century, especially when national sovereignty was forfeited after the 1905 Protectorate Treaty (after which the country became virtually semi-colonized), a fundamental reflection on cultural reconstruction emerged. During this process, the concept of minjok garnered strong discursive power. In the period when national sovereignty was threatened and when voluntary movements to achieve independent modern reforms were active, the concept of inmin also became a term associated with these phenomena. The integration of individual solidarity and collective strength through voluntary organizations and groups, the activation of public discussions, and the democratization of power made it possible for these concepts to be reinvented in Korea. These concepts reemerged unfettered after 1945, but their meanings were at odds with each other. They were selected as critical political concepts for regime legitimacy – not only in Korea but in China and Japan as well. During the Cold War, these concepts have remained highly contested concepts in both South and North Korea. Broadly speaking, while the flow of diverse social concepts was maintained among intellectuals who led the idea of recovering sovereignty and strengthening individual abilities, the concepts of kukmin and inmin now have new political implications which cannot be explained without considering post-liberation Korea’s political state-building process. For more than half a century, both Koreas have struggled with each other on almost every issue. Both Koreas use the same language, and many words are commonly used in both societies. However, their usages and political implications are sufficiently different so as to hinder social communication between the two Koreas. Even the concepts commonly used in both countries such as minjok and tongil (unification) are not the same in their meanings and usages in a sociopolitical context. We can say that the division of the Korean peninsula has resulted in the division of these concepts, too. Is it impossible to overcome this problem? How can we go beyond disputes mired in ideologically contaminated concepts to arrive at a common semantic structure on which real communication and dialogue can be built? Should we find new concepts or use familiar words with different perspectives? Is the common language in both Koreas positive or negative when the two countries are communicating with each other? What types of relationships are there among the language structure, political discourses, and concepts? Ultimately, what would all these questions mean for inter-Korea reconciliation prospects? These questions cannot be easily answered in theory nor in reality. I argue that three approaches need to be implemented in tandem. First, it is useful to think about the historical roots of the conceptual division through the archaeological elaborations on the conventional ideas on the people and their modern transitions. The idea of min, a common basic concept of East Asian civilization regarding good governance, could give some mindset for us to go beyond both Eurocentrism and narrow nationalistic approach. Second, a far-reaching effort to eliminate the conflict and lessen the mistrusts between the two Koreas will be a very important step toward solving the semantic disorder within the Korean language, minjok identity in particular. At the same time, a sincere and serious research about the conceptual division and semantic changes between North and South Korea is also needed to engender communicative rationality between North and South Korea as well as between conservatives and progressives in South Korea. Third, thinking about

333

Myoung-kyu Park

the human rights and the civil sphere in imagining the common Korean community in the 21st century is needed. Neither state authoritarianism nor ethnocentric communalism provides the answer for mutual reconciliation between two Koreas. New ideas on citizenship in the multicultural, global, and diversifying society are discursive elements helping the reconstruction of a unified Korean identity in the future. Inter-Korean reconciliation involves multifaceted dimensions, and this chapter ventures into an unchartered yet crucial aspect of semiotic divergence between the North and South Korea. Creating an environment and atmosphere for reconciliation between the two rival regimes should entail a redefinition and reunion of linguistic concepts as the precursor as well as the result of an ideological thaw in the Korean peninsula. Because the political procedure came first and the conceptual disputes followed in the Korean situation, successive confidence-building and trust-building activities on the Korean peninsula could enhance the capacity of conceptual integration and communicative rationality.

References in Korean Bang, Gijung, 1992, Hangukgeunhyeondae sasangsayeongu (Modern Korean Political Thoughts), Seoul: Yeoksabipyeongsa. Ha,Yongsun, et al., 2009, Geundaehangugui sahoegwahag gaenyeomhyeongseongsa (Historical Formation of Concepts in Korean Modern Social Sciences), Seoul: Changbi. Jin, Guantao, and Liu, Qingfeng, 2010, Gwannyeomsaran Mueotinga (What Is the History of Ideas), translated by Yang Ilmo, Seoul: Pureunyeoksa. Kang Hojeong, 2008, “Saeroun gukgaeui juchewa gongdongchejihyangeui eoneo (Vocabularies for New Subjectivity and National Community),” Urieomunyeongu, Vol. 31, pp. 215–241. Kim Hyeonju, 2007, “Geundae gaenyeomeoyeonguui donghyanggwa seonggwa: eoneoui yeogsa seonggwa siljaeseonge jumoghala! (Researches of Modern Concepts: Focus on Historicity and Reality of Language),” Sangheohagbo, Vol. 19, pp. 205–241. Kim Hyojeon, 2009, Heonbeob (Constitution), Seoul: Sohwa. Kim Yonggu, 2008, Manguggongbeob (International Law), Seoul: Sohwa. Lee Aesook, 2004, “Iljemalgi banpasijeum inminjeonseonron (Discourse on Anti-Fascist People’s Frontline in the Late Japanese Colonialism),” Hanguksayeongu, Vol. 126, pp. 203–238. Lee Hyegyeong, 2002, Cheonhagwangwa Geundaewharon: Yanggyecholeul jungsimeuro (Liang Qichao’s Thoughts on Tradition and Modernity), Seoul: Munhakgwajiseongsa. Liu, Lydia, 2005, Eoneoheongdanjeok Silcheon ( Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900–1937), translated by Min Jeongki, Seoul: Somyeong Publishing. Park Chanseung, 1997, Hangukgeundae jeongchisasangsa yeongu (Study on Modern Korean Political Thoughts), Seoul: Yeoksabipyeongsa. Park Chanseung, 2010, Minjog, Minjogjuui (Nation and Nationalism), Seoul: Sohwa. Park Myoungkyu, 2001, “Hanmal sahoegaenyeomui suyonggwa geuuimichegye (Adoption of Concept of ‘Society’ in the Late Chosun dynasty and Its Signification),” Sahoe-wayeogsa, Vol. 59, pp. 51–82. Park Myoungkyu, 2009a, “Neisyeongwa minjog: gaenyeomsalo bon uimiuigangyeog (Nation and Minjok: Distance of Significance from the Conceptual History),” Dongbanghagji, Vol. 147, pp 27–65. Park Myoungkyu, 2009b, Gugmin-inmin-simin: gaenyeomsalo bon hangugui jeongchijuche (Nation, People, Citizen: Conceptual History of Korean Political Subjects), Seoul: Sohwa. Park Myoungkyu, 2012, Nambuk gyeonggyeseoneui sahoehak (Sociology of Boundary in Inter-Korean Relation), Seoul: Changbi. Park Sangseob, 2008, Gugga, jugweon (State and Sovereignty), Seoul: Sohwa. Seo Jungseok, 1999, Jobongamgwa 1950 nyeondae ( Jobongam and the Age of 1950s), Seoul: Yeoksabipyeongsa. Sin Chaeho, 1995, Sinchaeho yeoksanonmunjip (Collected Works of Sin Chaeho), Seoul: Hyeondaesilhaksa. Shin Yongha, 1975, Dongniphyeophoeyeongu (Study of the Independence Club), Seoul: Iljogak. Shin Yongha, 1984, Sinchaehoeui Sahoesasang yeongu (Study on Social Thoughts of Sin Chaeho), Seoul: Hangilsa. Shin Yongha, 1987, Hangukgeundaesaheosayeongu (Korean Modern Social History), Seoul: Iljisa. Yanabu Akira, 2003, Beonyeokeo Seongnipsajeon (Formation of Translated Vocabularies), translated by Seo Hyeyoung, Seoul: Ilbit Publisher.

334

Semantic approach

In English Anderson, Benedict, 1991, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Bloom, William, 1990, Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, Rogers, 1992, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruce Hall, Rodney, 1999, National Collective Identity, New York: Columbia University Press. Greenfeld, Liah, 1992, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harris, Peter, 2002, “The Origins of Modern Citizenship in China,” Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 43, No. 2. Hobsbawm, Eric, 1983, “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914,” in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 263–307. Howland, Douglas, 2000, “Society Reified: Herbert Spencer and Political Theory in Early Meiji Japan,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 42, No. 1., pp. 67–86. Jenkins, Richard, 1996, Social Identity, New York: Routledge. Koselleck, Reinhart, 2002, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, translated by Presner et al., Stanford: Stanford University Press. Richter, Melvin, 1995, The History of Political and Social Concepts, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soysal, Yasemin, 2007, Limits of Citizenship, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Anthony, 1986, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, New York: Basil Blackwell. Tamir, Yael, 2007, Liberal Nationalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Terrier, Jean, 2011, Visions of the Social, Leiden: Brill.

335

21 REUNITING FAMILIES, REFRAMING THE KOREAN WAR Inter-Korean reconciliation and vernacular memory Nan Kim

Regarding historically controversial events, the passage of 50 years is a momentous occasion for commemoration, when witnesses have the chance to leave an imprint collectively on the legacy of public remembrance before large numbers of their generation begin to pass away. The half-century anniversary indeed offers a compelling temporal marker, providing a balance between distance and proximity: contested incidents are far enough in the past to be revisited with more perspective, and yet those events still remain within living memory (Niebuhr 1995; Morris-Suzuki 2005: 44). However, in the traditional East Asian worldview, it is the anniversary of 60 years that betokens a more meaningful milestone. Reaching 60 years of age represents a full life cycle (see Hong 2012),1 the completion of five iterations of the classic 12-year astrological cycle. For Koreans, hwan’gap, or an elder’s 60th birthday, was traditionally marked with a festive gathering, a counterpart to the dol, the celebration of an infant’s first birthday. Both comprise key rites of passage in the collective recognition of personhood toward the beginning and the end of life among one’s family and one’s community. But in recent decades in South Korea, because of longer life expectancies, the milestone of hwan’gap has become a more downplayed occasion in favor of families waiting another decade or two to fête their elder with a grand birthday party. Notably, among those for whom the Korean War’s major hostilities in 1950–1953 was a formative period in their lives as teens and young adults, the 60-year commemorations of the war in 2010 would occur when they were in their mid-70s and 80s or older. For the Korean War generation, then, the contemporary equivalent of a full life cycle would coincide with marking 60 years since the life-altering upheavals that occurred beginning in 1950. If one compares these two significant milestones at the 50-year and 60-year marks, 2000 and 2010 could hardly be more different with respect to South Korean official memory of the Korean War. A comparison of the political context is striking: if 2000 promised the beginning of a new era of reconciliation and cooperation between the two Korean states, 2010 underscored the continuation of an old war. It was during the summer of 2000 that the historic first inter-Korean summit took place in June, the first meeting between the two Korean heads of state since South Korea and North Korea were established as separate republics in 1948. The outcome of that summit was the June 15 Joint Declaration, signed by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. In South Korea, that Joint Declaration would become 336

Reuniting families

the hallmark of Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy,” which marked an unprecedented departure from the prior official position that had long opposed or attempted to contain North Korea as an enemy. Instead, the Sunshine Policy pursued a new inter-Korean approach based on engagement, emphasizing diplomatic dialogue, mutual recognition, economic cooperation, and peaceful reconciliation. Those South Korean overtures came amid a change in leadership in North Korea in 1998, when Kim Jong-il fully assumed power after a four-year period of transition following Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994. During this period, North Korea also moved to overcome its isolation, seeking to revitalize its economy while establishing diplomatic ties with several countries in Western Europe and Southeast Asia. Though the Sunshine Policy was continued in South Korea by Kim Dae-jung’s liberal successor, Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008), as the “Peace and Prosperity Policy,” engagement was abandoned in 2008 when the conservative Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) assumed the presidency and returned to a harder line toward North Korea. At around this time, the North Korean leadership was also preoccupied with uncertainties regarding its own transition, given Kim Jong-il’s poor health after suffering a stroke in August 2008. Valerie Gelézeau, Koen De Ceuster, and Alain Delissen point out that, as North Korea anticipated its leadership transition, it retreated to survival mode in an effort to avoid further destabilizing effects stemming from the inter-Korean rapprochement during the 1998–2008 period. They argue that, while the dramatic changes during the Sunshine Policy Era could be understood as a “de-bordering” between the Koreas – that is, the breaking down of borders not only physical but also cultural, social, and psychological in nature – the political changes that took place thereafter since 2008 represented no less than a process of “re-bordering” (2013: 2). In 2010, a little more than a decade following the June summit, an alarming military crisis involving North Korea’s shelling of Yŏngp’yŏng Island amid South Korea’s artillery exercises brought the two Koreas to what many believe was the brink of war, or at least perilously close to the point of reigniting large-scale conflict (Kim 2011). Although that crisis would eventually pass after several tense weeks, the recurrence of such hostile North-South relations on the Korean peninsula in recent years raised questions about how to assess the dramatic developments toward reconciliation that took place during the prior decade of active inter-Korean engagement. Despite the reversion to inter-state hostility after 2008 on the Korean peninsula, the breakthroughs toward North-South Korean reconciliation undertaken in the early 2000s would remain as a legacy of the South Korea’s decade of center-left government. Even after 2008, among South Koreans there remained a general consensus that favored peaceful engagement over hostile confrontation and regarded inter-Korean cooperation as advantageous to both Koreas (Armstrong 2008; Choi 2010: 134). By the time of the presidential election campaign of 2012, the two major candidates differed little in their policies regarding North Korea, as both promised to calm the volatility that had characterized the incumbent Lee’s unpopular hardline policy (Sohn and Kang 2013: 201). As a result, it was notable at the time that, unlike in previous South Korean elections, North Korea hardly registered as a campaign issue. That is, a return to engagement with North Korea was advocated by both Park Geun-hye, a political conservative and the eventual winner, and her opponent Moon Jae-in, a progressive lawyer who had served as chief of staff for the Roh Moo-hyun administration. The resiliency of a consensus among South Koreans favoring reconciliation, even despite sharp ideological differences in other respects, indicates why the pivotal months at the start of the engagement period during the Kim Dae-jung presidency warrant greater attention and deeper understanding. This chapter revisits that period at the start of the millennium, which saw the most rapid change ever to take place in relations between North and South Korea. While discussing implications of inter-Korean developments, this analysis focuses on South Korea, the context where the Sunshine Policy arguably had its widest immediate social impact. Indeed, a criticism of the 337

Nan Kim

Sunshine Policy in the initial months following the summit was that its efficacy was questioned since there was little apparent change within North Korea; however, as I argue in this chapter, the more dramatic social developments of that incipient period of inter-Korean engagement actually occurred in South Korea, with more lasting implications than has been generally acknowledged. During the weeks and months immediately following the June summit, pundits and observers described a “post-summit euphoria” in South Korea, implying that it was a phase of irrational exuberance that would soon pass. Yet, the months following the summit marked a significant cultural shift, whose wider implications would outlive that temporary boost in public interest. This chapter considers what occurred on the level of popular memory and cultural practice during the crucial period following the June 2000 summit, which contributed toward making reconciliation possible to imagine, thus facilitating the political agency for changes in South Korea’s inter-Korean policy that would set the course for the ensuing decade of engagement. That period of rapprochement in turn helped to generate a counter-narrative in popular memory, which not only provided a break from the Cold War enmity of the past but also offered an alternative path to reject the inter-Korean confrontation of a mutual war-footing amid the return to volatile hostilities that grew particularly intense in 2010.

Reframing the war This chapter focuses on the events and implications surrounding one of the Sunshine Policy’s hallmark breakthroughs: achieving the first sustained series of meetings among closely related kin who had lost all contact for over 50 years on opposite sides of the Korean divide. As negotiated and arranged by representatives of the two Korean states, the August 2000 reunions were a simultaneous exchange in which 100 Northerners came to Seoul and 100 Southerners went to Pyongyang, each to meet with a small handful of family members over the course of four days. Delegations of elderly Korean War survivors were flown across the de facto border in both directions so that they could each meet briefly with five family members with whom they had had no communication for a half-century and who in most cases had long given them up for dead. These “North-South separated-family exchange visits” (nambuk isan’gajok kyohwan pangmun) – or “reunions,” as they are generally called in English-language sources – in August 2000 were the most prominent inter-Korean events involving civilians. Contrary to assumptions that Korean separated-family meetings have amounted to little more than a fleeting emotion-filled national drama or intermittent gestures of diplomatic goodwill, these events should be recognized both as a political threshold ritual with enduring policy repercussions as well as a cultural prism refracting multiple dimensions of South Korea’s era of liberal engagement with North Korea. The impact of these events was furthermore heightened because the reunions precipitated the unexpected resurfacing and temporary return of hundreds of those presumed to have died a half-century earlier during the Korean War. To prepare for the reunions, the two governments exchanged lists of 200 names in order to confirm whether the family members of these “reunions candidates” were still alive. From that initial pool, a delegation of 100 from each side was to be selected to participate in the August family meetings. In South Korea, these names appeared as a list on national television broadcasts, under the heading “Seeking Family in the South,” which temporary interrupted normal programming. The reports directed family members to confirm the survival of relatives by calling or visiting in person the South Korean Red Cross headquarters in Seoul. Through breaking news reports, it quickly became apparent that the names sent from the North were of people who had been missing since the early 1950s, nearly all of whom had been long given up for dead. The sudden discovery that these individuals had been alive on the 338

Reuniting families

other side of the 38th parallel for five decades brought about complex new circumstances in which their families reckoned with the personal consequences of national division, family separation, and the unresolved Korean War. As hundreds of such people resurfaced, the very meaning of war death became unsettled. Prior to 2000, the dilemma of inter-Korean separated families had been perceived as an important but relatively marginal issue, affecting a small fraction of the overall Korean population.2 Yet, virtually every Korean lost a relative or family member during the chaos and devastation of the Korean War, including countless deaths in which bodies could not be reclaimed. It was a shocking development for South Koreans to learn that North Korea sent information about so many of the presumed dead – including several holding prominent or high-ranking positions within North Korean society. As one separated family member put it when I met him at the South Korean Red Cross headquarters in July of that year, “If even these people can come forward looking for their family in the South, then things must finally be changing, aren’t they?” As scores upon scores of people who had long been counted among the dead were in fact discovered to be alive in the North, suddenly there arose the possibility that nearly any Korean family could prove to be a North-South separated family, with the potential to shake basic assumptions about family identity, personal history, and selfhood. In this way, the reunions also indirectly recalled the war’s catastrophic toll of mass death. While accurate numbers for deaths are imprecise, Bruce Cumings notes that the number of civilian casualties in the Korean War represented a disturbingly high proportion; among the war’s more than four million casualties, more than half are believed to have been civilians, a greater percentage than World War II or Vietnam (2010: 35). Given the destruction of the Korean War, the hardships of the postwar period, and the discrimination against those who had relatives believed to be on the other side of the Korean divide, it is not surprising that many of the separated family members said they eventually had to give up searching for their relatives who went missing during the war. In South Korea, the period of the Korean War is often called “the time of June 25th,” or literally “6–25 time” (yugio-ddae). Such naming reflects the orthodox historical interpretation in South Korea that blames the Korean War entirely on communist aggression when North Korea launched a general invasion along the 38th parallel on the day of June 25, 1950 (D. Kim 2009: 3–9). This common vernacular reference obscures a more complex understanding of the war’s origins. To grasp how the conditions leading to war arose in a wider social and historical context than simply the circumstances surrounding the North Korean invasion, one must recognize how an intensifying rivalry between mutually negating nationalisms during the late 1940s proved to be an unmistakable catalyst in the precipitation of all-out confrontation in Korea. Following Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces at the end of World War II, Korea was liberated in 1945 after 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. However, Korea did not become an independent nation, but rather was partitioned into two zones occupied by the United States south of the 38th parallel and by the Soviet Union north of that dividing line. The national partition confused and later outraged Koreans across the political spectrum, who had expected no less than the restoration of the peninsula’s longstanding territorial integrity. As US-Soviet relations deteriorated amid the rivalry of the early Cold War, this jeopardized international negotiations intended to resolve Korea’s temporary partition. The conditions for enduring national division soon thereafter took root when separate elections were held in the two halves of the peninsula in 1948, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the South and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the North. As both Korean states laid claim to sovereignty over the entire peninsula, each denounced the other as a traitorous puppet of foreign powers, and the competition for legitimacy grew more heated as skirmishes increasingly broke out along the border (Cumings 1990, Lee 2001). 339

Nan Kim

Historian Park Myung-Lim has argued that the post-1945 partition produced a driving imperative to restore the lost unitary nation on both the opposing sides, which gave rise to the tension and conflict on the peninsula that culminated in the Korean War (1996). Both Syngman Rhee in the South and Kim Il-sung in the North were determined to unify the country by military means, and this generated an uncompromising zero-sum rivalry. In August 1948, Kim Il-sung put unification at the center of the DPRK’s nascent political program, referring to the “completion of the national territory” (kukdo wanjong) as a coded intention to end national division by defeating Rhee (Wada 2013: 3). As Kim in the North called for the destruction of the Southern regime, so did the new South Korean President Syngman Rhee vigorously push for a ROK strategy of unification by force, advocating a military campaign with the slogan “Advance North, Unify the Nation” ( pukchin t’ongil ) (Wada 2013: 8). Amid anxieties over the prospect of a resurgent Japan allied with both the US and the nascent South Korean Rhee regime, Kim Il-sung eventually persuaded Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to support a military plan for unifying the country. Full-scale war broke out when North Korean forces, supplied with Soviet weapons, invaded the South in June 1950. The resulting Korean War would draw the United States and China into a grim and bitter conflict alongside South Koreans and North Koreans, while the threat of thermonuclear warfare and the possibility of a third world war loomed ominously. The major hostilities would eventually end in a stalemate that returned the line of Korea’s division roughly to the same location as it had been prior to the fighting. Although combat was suspended with the signing of an armistice on July 27, 1953, a peace treaty was never signed. The war left Korea’s national division further entrenched, and the two Korean states would remain in a technical state of war that endures until the present. Korea’s ongoing division meant the continued prohibition of communication and contact across the border, leaving war survivors unable to ascertain whether their lost relatives were dead, missing, or somehow alive on the other side of the border. During the fiercely embattled period from June 1950 until July 1951, Seoul changed hands four times, as did nearly all of the territory on the peninsula at least once during the war. The wide-scale separation of Korean family members largely resulted from temporary domestic migrations during the war, as people fled or were conscripted. Such displacement would later unexpectedly become permanent inter-state relocations when the border later became impassable to citizens on either side. For an ordinary citizen to attempt making private contact with anyone on the other side was an offense punishable by imprisonment in both Koreas, leaving hundreds of thousands of Koreans unable to learn the fates of family members and relatives. In the case of the North-South Korean separated family members who participated in the reunions, they had not only been physically separated from each other, but were essentially lost to each other for five decades. In the months following the June summit and at a transformative moment in the history of inter-Korean reconciliation, I argue that the reunions between families separated between North and South Korea in August 2000 effectively served as the first joint North-South Korean commemoration of the Korean War. Although timed to mark the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule on August 15, 1945, the reunions in August 2000 opened a liminal space in which both North Koreans and South Koreans could remember the consequences of the Korean War in what effectively amounted to a commemoration centered on ordinary people as the war’s victims. For Koreans, it has been problematic to honor the loss of those who died in the war without playing into divisive ideological overtones (De Ceuster 2010; D. Kim 2009), so the invocation of social suffering at the heart of reunions in August 2000 should not be taken for granted. Rather than condemn, the reunions offered a form of war remembrance glimpsed through the trauma of those bereft by the war’s destruction and massive loss of life, a sense of victimhood and bereavement to which both sides could lay claim. Prior to the two states’ proceeding with the terms of inter-Korean economic cooperation, the reunions afforded a space to 340

Reuniting families

recognize the staggering human devastation of the war while stopping short of assigning blame or guilt. The reunions among separated families thereby offered a lens for approaching the cultural process of moving from a disposition of enmity to one of mutual recognition amid the complex legacies of civil war inflected by the global Cold War. Notably, in the literature on inter-Korean engagement, the separated-family reunions generally receive only a token mention, while the legacy of rapprochement under the Kim and Roh administrations is largely examined by way of their agreements, policies, and crises vis-à-vis North Korea (Moon 2012, Lim 2012, Kim and Kang 2009, Son 2006). Yet, as the first important concrete outcome of that summit, these family meetings carried heavy political significance. South Korean officials described the successful accomplishment of the reunions as no less than a prerequisite to fulfilling other aspects of the agenda of economic cooperation, anticipating these events to serve as a sign that other aspects of the June 15 Joint Declaration could be taken in good faith (Kim 2014). In South Korea, television ratings proved to be higher for the August 2000 family meetings than for the June summit coverage itself (Cho 2001), amid interest and curiosity over how the relatives from the two sides would interact. Despite speculation that the North Koreans might use the meetings mainly as a vehicle for propaganda,3 the scenes of reunion would generate searing images characterized by wrenching emotion and intimate expressions of affection, where mutual resemblances among the participating families were unmistakable. Notably, it was the reunions and not the summit that saw the peak of South Korean public opinion favoring engagement. That is, the reunions marked the highest point of approval among South Koreans for the Sunshine Policy, reaching nearly 88 percent in favor of engagement with North Korea in August 2000, compared to 49 percent in February and approximately 75 percent at the time of the June summit (Choi 2010: 134). Although public interest would fall off for subsequent rounds of such family meetings, the first set of inter-Korean reunions held in the wake of the June summit clearly represented the social and cultural counterpart to the diplomatic and political breakthroughs of the period (Cho 2001). Regarding the social construction of history and the role of popular memory, anthropologist Allen Feldman writes in 2004, “Perhaps the most powerful insight to emerge from cultural anthropology in the last decade is that history does not constitute a neutral milieu within which people act, but that it is the constructed object of social action, situated performances, and symbolic mediation. The vernacular depiction of history and the mobilization of popular memory inform and structure political agency” (62). This insight builds upon Paul Connerton’s (1989) model of cultural memory as mediated through deliberate interventions by social actors who work to disrupt or alter dominant systems of meaning with intentional performances. Through “legitimized agents of memory, collective recollection practices, and formal spaces for the articulation and public depiction of memory” (Feldman 2004: 62), popular memory is culturally reproduced and generated under conditions shaped in no small part by events, which in turn have political effects. The anthropologist Veena Das (1995) has argued for a form of ethnography that plumbs the transformative potential of events, exploring the implications of “critical events” whose impact resonates across multiple institutions simultaneously. Following Das, anthropologist Emma Tarlo describes such moments of intense dynamism as those that “bring about new modes of action and encourage new social and political formations as people are propelled into unpredicted terrains” (2003: 7). The Korean family reunions that took place in 2000 provide quintessential examples of such processes. By giving voice to counter-memories that supported a then-nascent pan-Korean nationalist discourse (Jager and Kim 2007) in favor of reconciliation, the reunions opened a space to recognize North Koreans not as simplistic personifications of evil, but within vernacular idioms of belonging shared by average South Koreans: both as bloodrelated kin and as those traumatized by war and national division. 341

Nan Kim

Post-summit, post-authoritarian This chapter approaches the reunions in August 2000 as critical events that provide an analytical prism through which to consider the mobilization of popular memory at the onset of the decade of inter-Korean engagement. It also seeks to complicate John Bodnar’s distinction between official and vernacular memory. In a widely cited discussion on public memory and commemoration, Bodnar sets up a conceptual opposition by arguing that official memory serves to stabilize the status quo for the interests of elites, while vernacular memory addresses the concerns of ordinary people and involves events of most immediate impact to the masses (1994: 14–22). However, such a dichotomy presumes overly simplistic notions of the power of the state. In the case of the Kim Dae-jung administration, the South Korean state actually held a politically weak position as a minority government facing domestic skepticism with respect to its Northern policy. This skepticism stemmed partly from ambivalent attitudes among South Koreans toward reunification and also from the strong opposition by elites and political conservatives who remained both distrustful of North Korea while also invested in the status quo of national division (see Paik 2011). Kim Dae-jung himself was a longtime opposition candidate who had been imprisoned and narrowly escaped assassination during South Korea’s period of military authoritarian rule. After eking out a razor-thin victory over his conservative rival, Lee Hoi-chang, Kim Dae-jung assumed the presidency in 1998 in South Korea’s first democratic transfer of power to the opposition party. Though Kim’s election victory had profound resonance with the generation of Koreans who had participated in the democratization movement in the 1980s, his government would face the formidable challenge of navigating a far-reaching bureaucratic turnover while also managing the fallout of the Asian Financial Crisis amid a divided electorate. Kim therefore came into office with a bold inter-Korean reconciliation agenda but a relatively weak political base (Son 2006). During the week when the two Korean leaders held their historic meeting in Pyongyang, the summit was celebrated as a success for yielding the Joint Declaration and, above all, for exhibiting a spirit of amity, rather than hostility, as images of the convivial handshake between the two Korean leaders were circulated throughout the world. Such scenes flew in the face of decades of anti-North Korean education in South Korea, where they were not universally greeted with approval. As Gi-Wook Shin observes, “Although most South Koreans eventually embraced the historic summit with enthusiasm, their initial reaction was one of shock and confusion because their suspicion and fear of the Communist regime runs so deep” (2006: 151). In the days and weeks that followed the June summit, examples in wider South Korean popular culture would nevertheless reveal a shift toward greater receptiveness to reconciliation, characterized not only by openness but a lighthearted irreverence that would have been unimaginable a few months earlier. On the evening variety programs, celebrities were quizzed on their knowledge of the North Korean equivalents for common words and phrases (e.g. kirim bap, or “oiled rice,” instead of bokkŭm bap, for “fried rice”), and the jaunty North Korean song “P’angapsŭmnida” (“Pleased to Meet You”) received wide airplay, with the South Korean girl-band Pinkel performing their own pop rendition. A visually arresting television commercial, produced by the South Korean internet search engine Daum (translated as “Next”), was frequently broadcast on the network channels that summer. Shot in black and white, the commercial opens by showing two soldiers facing off yards from each other, standing motionlessly in a dreary downpour. One soldier wears a South Korean uniform, and his counterpart, a North Korean one. They are on duty at P’anmunjom, the site within the Korean Demilitarized Zone at the inter-Korean border where negotiations take place in stark institutional buildings. In the commercial, the layered staccato rhythms of the driving rain gradually intensify as the camera-angles alternate between the two guards, each shown tensely and warily holding his ground. Next, across the screen appears a 342

Reuniting families

grey concrete strip, resembling an unpainted speedbump, where a tiny frog hops over and across. Then the camera pans out to an overhead shot, showing a replay of the frog as it leaps obliviously from one side to the other. The concrete strip is of course the marker that divides the two sides in the Joint Security Area. A close-up of the frog captures its landing on the boot of the South Korean guard, where it makes a little ribbit. Then a whistle blows, indicating a changing of the guard. The commercial ends with two close-ups of each of the soldiers, though they do not make eye contact. First the South Korean, peering out at a point off-screen, makes a small but warmly affable smile. Then the camera shows the North Korean still at attention but relaxing visibly to respond with his own friendly smile, as if the two are appreciating a private joke. The voiceover concludes, “We still have many boundaries to overcome. The Internet tears down the walls of the mind.” Another less subtle example of South Korean material culture that captured the post-summit mood was an advertisement for a domestic online vendor of digital books. As part of a campaign that included full-color placements in South Korean magazines and posters displayed in subway cars throughout Seoul, the advertisement showed a smiling model dressed in a 1950s-era school uniform with her hair parted in two braided plaits, primly holding what at first looks like a textbook but is actually a notebook computer. Running the length of the ad on the right-hand side, the headline reads, “Mother, the road to the North is finally open” [“Ŏmoni, dŭdiŏ ibuk ŭro ganŭngil i yŏllimnida”]. In Korean, this ad copy reads as an irreverent play on words; it is clearly intended to make whimsy out of the coincidence that the English loanword for electronic books, “e-book,” is a homonym in colloquial Korean for the politically neutral term for North Korea, “ibuk” [“the North”]. The pun therefore suggests this young woman is publicly and rather gleefully expressing her intention to visit North Korea. By addressing this sentiment to her mother, it also implies that the daughter is fulfilling a wish that had been instilled in her since childhood by her family. That nuance is highlighted by the fact that the Korean word for “finally” (dŭdiŏ) is added in with an editor’s caret, as if to convey both emphasis and a sense of relief. Meanwhile, the audacity of this advertisement lies in how its cheekiness effectively pokes fun at the anachronism of South Korea’s still-existing National Security Law, which could be used to interpret such a statement as an offense punishable by imprisonment. The proliferation of such material culture, which was technically still contraband, raised the hackles of conservatives, who were dismayed by the rapid pace of political change and the trivialization of the North Korean threat. Yet, with its coy, ironic historical references, the E-Book poster provides a good example of the millennial zeitgeist in South Korea, best characterized by the juxtaposition between retro and futurist. Breaking with the pathologies of national division – which seemed to be forever throwing the nation back to what novelist Choi In-hun called the “Imprisoned Age” of the Korean War era (1988: 138) – a wired generation’s 21st-century hightech sensibility made anything seem possible. This change in attitudes toward the possibilities for inter-Korean contact in post-summit South Korea would help to supplant the demonized anticommunist caricatures that had then still been prevalent and provided the context in which the August 2000 reunions would unfold as critical events facilitating the transformation of North Koreans “from enemies to brethren” in the national imaginary.

Passages and reversals On the evening of the initial reunions, a banner festooned over the entrance to the Convention and Exhibition Center (COEX) proclaimed, “We Are One Bloodline, One Brethren, One Spirit” (Uri nǔn Hanp’itchul, Han’gyŏre, Hanmaǔm). The two delegations traveled by airplane, but notably they did not cross over the demarcation line in the airspace over the Korean peninsula itself. 343

Nan Kim

A direct flight between the two Korean capitals, which are 195 kilometers apart, would have taken only fifteen minutes, but the route followed a detour that prolonged the trip by an hour. A single plane was used, a Koryo Airlines wide-body aircraft, which departed from Pyongyang with the North Korean delegation at ten o’clock on the morning of August 15. Rather than flying directly from Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport to Seoul, the plane followed a flight path resembling a sideways U-turn, initially flying westward into international airspace before heading south and then turning back eastward to land at Seoul’s Kimpo International Airport. After the Northern delegation arrived and deplaned in Seoul, the Southern delegation boarded the same Koryo Airlines plane to fly back via the same route to Pyongyang. This deliberate avoidance of such a border crossing was, according to a ROK Ministry of Unification official, at the insistence of the North Korean side. The official speculated that allowing a delegation to cross an overland border was being withheld, presumably to utilize as a bargaining chip for future negotiations in exchange for additional aid or concessions. This circumvention of the de facto border effectively served to reinforce the construction of a boundary, as it was no longer simply a territorial line of division but became projected vertically into sky and space. With word that the delegation was finally approaching, people inside the convention hall started gathering near the entrances. Each visitor from North Korea was escorted by a “minder,” presumably a DPRK state intelligence officer, toward the table where their relatives were waiting. Beginning with a small cluster of cries, suddenly names were shouted and there were loud outbursts of sobbing. A rising wave of aggrieved wails swept the room, as all one hundred reunions took place within moments of each other. The mood shifted instantly from a restive anticipation to plaintive lamentation. Amid the family members sobbing while clutching each other in tight embraces, some of the initial reunions were particularly anguished and intense. One South Korean participant, Paik Bok-hwa, grabbed her brother, Paik Gi-taek, and fell to the floor, shaking him vigorously by the shoulders and shouting: I thought you had been shot! So we didn’t look for you. But your sister went to look for you. You don’t know how long she’s been looking for you. She climbed mountains and crossed rivers to look for you everywhere. But she couldn’t find you. Mother was so happy to have you. You were the only son. She was always looking for you, even in her dreams. When she died, she didn’t even close her eyes. How could you? How could you? You go tell her to close her eyes! (Korean Overseas Information Service, 2000) Several such wrenching scenes of uncontrollable emotion were captured on tape, and television stations immediately began to air edited compilations of the most sensational clips. After these initial encounters, families were gradually escorted to their tables, and much of the next hour was more subdued as each family spent time with their long-lost relative, exchanged embraces and stories, poured drinks, and shared family albums. Yet, it was only the sensational clips that were played repeatedly during newscasts, in between news segments, and on network talk shows for several days afterwards. Such images highlighted a spectrum of grief that separated Korean families had endured for decades, largely in obscurity, and the prodigious circulation of video footage and photographic images of reuniting families foregrounded the trauma of these families in the national imaginary. For some, these encounters were indeed the occasion to mourn parents and other close kin who had passed away brokenhearted while waiting for the missing family member’s return, as well as to lament the impossibility of lives that they were unable to have lived. Yet, despite their fraught nature, these family meetings should not be regarded as occasions of unremitting 344

Reuniting families

tragedy. As one woman said in an interview about meeting her elder brother in the August 2000 reunions, “I kept asking myself, ‘Is this a dream? Or is it real?’ . . . We are so glad. We are so glad that he did not die young as a student in the war and that he did not die young in vain.” Other participants similarly described these encounters in terms of joy and gratitude for their relative’s survival, recognizing that for them to meet is to celebrate the improbable survival and presence of the other. During the August reunions, actually two simultaneous meetings took place among Korean separated families, one in Seoul and another in Pyongyang, each involving 100 elderly citizens who traveled to the opposite respective capital to meet with five of their relatives. While there were also highly emotional scenes of tearful reunions in Pyongyang, the South Korean print and broadcast news outlets largely downplayed them, focusing instead on those held in Seoul. This disparity in exposure stemmed in part from the discrepancy in logistical support for the journalists covering the events. Compared to Pyongyang, the press pool in Seoul had far greater access and freedom to shoot extensive on-site footage of the family meetings. Moreover, members of the North Korean delegation were relatively younger, selected not by age but by such criteria as political status, party loyalty, and professional achievement. Many of the North Korean group visiting Seoul included prominent cultural figures in North Korea (Kim and Kim 2009). In contrast, the South Koreans who met their relatives in Pyongyang were selected by lottery using criteria primarily based upon age. They were mostly in their late 70s and 80s and too old to have surviving parents in the North. Meetings involving North Koreans returning to reunite with their elderly parents in Seoul lent themselves far more readily to the melodramatic media narratives favored in the South Korean coverage. In the international media as well as among the South Korean news outlets, an emphasis on the Seoul events would become representative of these historic family reunions. This meant in August 2000, at the moment when there was the greatest interest in separated families, those who would be iconic participants in these historic reunions were those who had never before even been recognized in the past as part of the sympathetic category of “separated families” (isan’gajok), which referred exclusively to the families of former war refugees who had fled from North Korea during the war. Rather, the participants in the Seoul reunions had been marginalized as those who had a close relative known or rumored to have crossed to the North during the Korean War. Anthropologist Soo-Jung Lee has analyzed how the participants in the Seoul reunions, as former targets of state anticommunism in South Korea, underwent a reversal of signification (Lee 2013). Emerging from obscurity as those formerly silenced and socially stigmatized, these individuals were suddenly elevated to high-profile visibility so as to become the representative figures of national reconciliation at a historic juncture in North-South engagement. Their newfound celebrity posed an ironic contrast with their previous status as “invisible” families, many of whom had hidden their histories to escape the intense stigmatization that prevailed for decades against those suspected to have relatives in North Korea (Kim 2004). In light of the unexpected media exposure, these family members found their public identities transformed, as their fleeting “family reunions” came to embody the hopes, aspirations, and limitations of inter-Korean reconciliation. In South Korea, until the post-summit period, the category of “separated family” was commonly understood to denote exclusively those who left family behind when they fled as war refugees to the South from the North. The “separated family” therefore became an ideological construction as a nationalist anticommunist identity denoting the quintessential “victims of division,” a category which did not include the families of those who crossed over to the North during the war (Lee 2006, Kim 2004). As Heonik Kwon writes, “In the South, the war generated not only a host of outlawed individuals but also politically non-normative consanguine relations 345

Nan Kim

and ideologically impure and undesirable families” (2010a: 3). After the 1950–1953 period of the Korean War in South Korea, the families of those suspected to have gone to the North were subject to harassment by rightist youth groups and also underwent surveillance and investigation by local authorities, who suspected them of maintaining ties with relatives on the other side of the border (Cho 2008, Lee 2003). This made the Seoul reunions in August 2000 that much more dramatic because they centered on families who, after decades of keeping silent or actively hiding their politically sensitive kin ties, were suddenly propelled virtually overnight from the margins of South Korean society to a highly visible position of national prominence at the center of official and popular discourses on inter-Korean reconciliation. In this way, the reunions illustrated how measures undertaken by the two states to realize inter-Korean rapprochement magnified a reckoning within South Korea regarding the suppressed Cold-War-era legacies of repression.

Reconciling the nation, ritualizing division Notably, the photographs and footage that were to become among the most prevalent icons of the entire reunion program were those depicting mother-son meetings. The use of mothers as forces of social unity at moments of commemoration is not unique to Korea, but the ubiquitous images of these tearful embraces served to transform the returning North Koreans from bloodless heartless traitors to unfilial but repentant sons. The physical presence of the most elderly mothers also intensified the poignancy and dramatic suspense of the reunions. Among the most moving scenes at the Seoul meetings were those of the “ambulance reunions,” which had been arranged for two mothers who were too frail to take part in the regular program. In the taped footage of one such reunion, a klieg light flashes into the ambulance’s dim interior through a rear door, revealing the grown son sobbing and heaving with tears as he bent over the gurney bearing his debilitated mother, whose gaunt, brittle appearance gave the impression that she was barely alive. These family meetings took place at the human outer limit of survival. Their raw anguish provided a visual and public representation of the countless separated family members who had not lived to see the reunions come to pass. On the morning following the initial family meetings on August 15, every major national daily newspaper in South Korea ran its own version of the seemingly timeless motif of moja sangbong (“reunion between mother and son”). Large half-page photo enlargements showing a mother and son embracing were printed under banner headlines – “Pyongyang and Seoul Both Cried” and “A Sea of Tears” – confirming the emotional nature of the scenes that had been broadcast on television the night before (Lee 2013). The iconic value assigned to the mother-son reunions was not just limited to the four days of the reunions, but also in later days and weeks, newspaper stories related to the reunions would be indicated with an inset graphic showing a small photographic image of an elderly South Korean mother tenderly wiping tears from the cheek of her grown son from North Korea. The state-run television station KBS also devoted one of its most prominent prime-time slots on the Sunday immediately following the reunions to a documentary called, “Mother’s Tears,” which featured vignettes about eight different South Korean mothers and their families who participated in the reunions. Soon after they were successfully concluded, economic cooperation projects proceeded apace, culminating in the signing of four major agreements on inter-Korean economic cooperation in December 2000 (Jhe 2004). While goods and capital could subsequently move more freely across the Korean border, the territorial aspects of division were maintained, including restrictions on place of residence in North Korea and limitations on contact between the populations of the two Korean states. Revealing an incongruity inherent to the reconciliation framework, the heart-wrenching reunions unfolded in full view of press cameras in 2000 only to be followed 346

Reuniting families

shortly by another separation, when the family members had to part again after only four days together. Following Bourdieu, these rites of passage were therefore revealed to be in fact rites of institution, such that what was important in these political rituals was not so much the celebration of the passage as it was the reinstatement of the line itself (1991: 171). Bourdieu argues that ceremonious crossings in fact consecrate borders, which becomes reinforced through the practices surrounding rites of passage. Koreans on both sides solemnly transgressed the boundary only to return to a state of separation despite their renewed kinship and emotional attachments. The border remained as a formidable divide that even ties of blood could surmount only for a brief span of time. In this way, although the reunions renewed hopes for reconciliation and eventual reunification, they also served for the time being to solidify the border’s durability and to ritualize the continuation of Korean division. Apparent here is the paradox at the center of the South-North Korean family meetings. Though widely recognized in South Korea as a breakthrough in inter-Korean reconciliation, the reunions also served to shore up some aspects of national division, affirming the necessity for the time being of a continued separation of populations. No one could witness these emotional meetings without recognizing how they were circumscribed by highly restrictive conditions, including: the limits on time and place; the assumption by participating families that they were under state surveillance, a sense exacerbated by the pervasive presence of media cameras; and most significantly, the lack of any guarantee or indication that the family members would be able to maintain contact or to meet again. In other words, for all their fanfare as events reuniting long-separated kin, for all their promise as a newly mediated model of intimacy evoking the possibilities of eventual reunification of the nation, the reunions lasted only a few days before the families were again forced to separate again and lose contact on opposite sides of the border. To grasp these contradictions, it is helpful to turn to theorizations about Korean division drawn from Paik Nak-Chung, the South Korean literary critic and public intellectual. Paik argues that the particular nature of Korean division differentiates it from other precedents, with a division structure more stable than that of Vietnam but which, unlike Germany, had involved both civil war and a postcolonial struggle (2011: 20–21). Overcoming division in Korea, he argues, would therefore require not military means or rapid annexation, but rather a gradual process marked by many smaller steps, including an intermediate stage of a loose union or confederation of the two existing states (Paik 2011: 35–36). Reflecting such logic, the crossings of the separated-family reunions also symbolically affirmed that reconciliation would not entail a near-term compromising of borders, in keeping with the two states’ formal recognition of each other for the first time in their history. For example, when I spoke afterwards to South Korean Ministry of Unification officials, they said an important criterion by which they deemed these early reunions as a “success” was the fact that there were no defections on either side. They were not only worried about this risk on the North Korean side; one official said there was considerable concern about one elderly South Korean man of very modest means who had no family on this side of the border. Given that these events carried the intention to secure greater South Korean support behind the reconciliation agenda, the reunions among separated families served as political rituals that provided a symbolic rationale for South Korea’s moral incorporation of the other – the transformation of enemies into brethren – reflecting a logic crucial to a newly cooperative inter-Korean economic strategy in response to global financial pressures. Yet the participating family members had few expectations of their families being permanently reunited in their lifetimes. These family meetings therefore enabled inter-Korean rituals of reconciliation they simultaneously ritualized division. By offering a glimpse of post-division society, the reunions furthermore 347

Nan Kim

served to shift the space of inter-Korean reconciliation beyond the state to the intimate relations among families and individuals, encompassing the sentiments, identities, and experiences of ordinary people.

Reckoning with the past The continuation of the reunions program itself represented a landmark breakthrough in that a recurring family-reunion program had never been sustained between the two Koreas prior to 2000. Following the first round of reunions in August 2000, meetings among North-South Korean separated families would continue periodically until 2010 – averaging roughly two per year. In all, 19 face-to-face meetings have been held among reuniting families. However, after the first round in the wake of the June summit, the subsequent meetings were characterized by circumstances markedly less celebratory and more contentious in the post-9/11 milieu, and the reunions would never again capture the national imagination as they had in the months immediately following the June summit. In the years since 2000, the cultural meaning of inter-Korean family meetings changed dramatically as the reunions became more marginal, less visible, and repeatedly complicated by cross-border relations. If the inter-Korean summit indicated how direct and mutual recognition is crucial to conciliatory work, those path-breaking bilateral negotiations were nonetheless facilitated by the international climate at the time, and observers have noted that at no time were international conditions more favorable to inter-Korean rapprochement than at the turn of the millennium (Moon 2012, Son 2006). In contrast to the mood of hopeful aspiration that greeted the June summit and August 2000 reunions, the family meetings would be inevitably affected by the heightened preoccupation with national security after 9/11. No longer at the symbolic forefront of the efforts toward reconciliation and cooperation, the family reunions program instead became subject to the erratic nature of the inter-Korean relationship amid both regional and international tensions, as well as complications stemming from expanded economic transactions across the 38th parallel. The controversy and uncertainty that marred the planning of the fourth round of reunions provide a clear illustration of how the international geopolitical environment significantly affected the inter-Korean relationship. The first three reunions in 2000–2001 had been negotiated to take place in Seoul and Pyongyang as part of the agreement signed between the two Korean leaders at the June summit. However, there was no stipulation for such an exchange of delegations across the de facto border for further rounds, and beginning with the fourth round, the reunions would only take place in North Korea. This restriction in part reflected the fact that only a limited number of separated-family members in the North were eligible to travel outside of the country. The fourth reunion had been scheduled to take place in October 2001, and the two sides had exchanged lists of candidates for confirming the survival of prospective reunion participants, as they had done so for the prior three rounds. However, less than a week prior to its scheduled start on October 16, the North abruptly canceled the events, protesting the heightened security in the South. A Pyongyang statement criticized Seoul’s moves to strengthen security as “dangerous acts that severely incite us” and described the cancelation of the reunions as a temporary postponement that would only be removed once South Korea were to lift its special alert status. North Korea demanded a peaceful atmosphere for exchanges, rather than a “situation on the verge of war” (Korean Central News Agency 2001). In other words, the increased security measures in the South, put in place after the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, were viewed by North Korean sources as targeted against the DPRK. Yet, it should also be noted that inter-Korean conditions had already been strained by 348

Reuniting families

then. After the advances of the early Sunshine Period, the reversal of US support for reconciliation that took place after George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001 proved to be a major setback. Despite such uncertainty and challenges, the reunions program would resume and continue, eventually allowing nearly 18,000 individuals, or a total of approximately 4,000 families, to reconnect for the first time since 1953 (Korean Red Cross 2014). By most measures this longevity of the reunions program is a clear indication of its success. Yet, ironically, the significance of the August 2000 reunions as a cultural resource in the complex process of national reconciliation has been obscured by the very continuation of subsequent family meetings amid international geopolitical conditions often at odds with inter-Korean rapprochement. The repetition of the reunions meant that they would no longer draw widespread public interest, particularly amid the deterioration of the inter-Korean relationship. However, the fact that the later reunions occurred under less advantageous and more limited conditions should not take away from an appreciation of the impact of the initial family meetings. The August 2000 reunions were the only reunions to take place amid an unprecedented combination of conditions: the most favorable international climate to date for the Korean peace process; an unusually high level of domestic optimism toward North-South reconciliation; and the impact of the unexpected simultaneous resurfacing of hundreds of those presumed to have died during the Korean War. The reappearance of those presumed dead signified a dramatic break from past practice, providing the clearest indication that a demonstrable change in inter-Korean relations had taken hold, not only through political rhetoric and gestures but also at the level of physical embodiment, in ways that directly affected the lives of ordinary people. This chapter has revisited the events during the immediate post-summit period in order to grasp the affective dimensions of what makes reconciliation possible in a society still divided by the legacies of a devastating civil war. Although the later rounds of reunions may seem to be repetitions of earlier events taking place only among different sets of families, they are in fact of an entirely different nature than the reunions that occurred in August 2000. In Political Crime and the Memory of Loss, John Borneman describes the multiple ways that individuals and groups seek to give new meaning to their losses, primarily through four modes of accountability: (1) retribution; (2) restitution/compensation; (3) performative redress; and (4) rites of commemoration (2011: 3). He thereby distinguishes “rites of performative redress,” which are singular events of cultural accountability, from “rites of commemoration,” which are expected to continue indefinitely. In many ways, the reunions in August 2000 served the purpose of shifting perspectives on the war away from a search for retribution, as had historically dominated war memory for decades on both sides of the Korean divide. Instead, these events served as a rite of performative redress that was intended to acknowledge the devastating human losses of the Korean War. What distinguished the reunion events in August 2000 from subsequent inter-Korean family meetings was the overlapping of a wider reconciliation between the two Korean states on a national scale and, among those who participated, the personal reckoning of family history amid the sudden and unexpected reappearance of the presumed war dead. At the same time, an unexpected dimension of these reunions in South Korea was how they also gave rise to a more inclusive understanding of the sympathetic category of “separated families,” to include those formerly excluded, who had been instead marginalized and stigmatized during the Cold War period. At a time of heightened popular interest among South Koreans, as well as intense national and international media attention, the August 2000 reunions would publicly underscore the connection between inter-Korean reconciliation and a domestic process of reconciliation with respect to South Korea’s past history of state anticommunism under military authoritarian rule. 349

Nan Kim

Layered reconciliations In the opening scenes of the 2006 blockbuster South Korean film Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War, an elderly man receives a phone call from someone who soon apologizes for what he takes to be a case of mistaken identity. The caller is a member of a South Korean army excavation team seeking next-of-kin after unearthing a set of battlefield remains, which they had identified as someone bearing the same name, Lee Jin-seok. The conversation sends the elderly man heading to the excavation site because he suspects what they found is actually the skeleton of his elder brother, Jin-tae, who has been missing for over 50 years since the war. This is the frame-story of the film, whose main narrative is told as an extended flashback when the two brothers are in their youth. That extended central part of the film begins at the time of the war’s major outbreak in June 1950, when the idyllic world of their family is shattered as both brothers are swept into conscription. Assigned to the same unit, the elder brother Jin-tae, an unschooled shoemaker, takes it upon himself to protect the younger Jin-seok, a promising student on whom their family has pinned their future hopes. Jin-seok is bewildered and disturbed to see his brother often putting his own life in danger, unaware that Jin-tae has secured a promise from his commanding officer: in exchange for Jin-tae winning the medal of honor, Jin-seok would then be sent home. After numerous acts of daring that border on foolhardiness, Jin-tae is eventually awarded the medal, but it proves useless for relieving his brother of duty, due to the unexpected turn of the tide following China’s entry into the war. By that point, the younger brother had also grown alienated from Jin-tae after the elder brother’s reckless heroics had cost the life of at least one fellow soldier, a friend whose young child would be left to grow up fatherless. The film challenges orthodox nationalist narratives by suggesting that those fighting the war were largely motivated by loyalty to their families and closest friends, rather than out of commitment to the state or ideology (Baker 2010: 197). But it also shows how complicated many of the circumstances were that led to the separation of families during the war, representing a manifold array of causes resulting from coercion, volition, and happenstance, amid brutal violence that occurred on and off the battlefield. In one scene after the South Korean army retakes Seoul, the brothers return separately to the vicinity of their family home, but the visit soon turns into a crisis when Jin-tae’s fiancée, Young-shin, is abducted by pro-government thugs and accused of being a communist. When Young-shin learns she has been targeted because her name appeared on a list of people who had attended pro-North rallies, she explains in exasperation that she did so to obtain food, rather than allow her family to starve. Ultimately, Jin-tae is unable to save her from being summarily executed, and he later is led to believe Jin-seok died while incarcerated in a military prison that is deliberately set on fire by retreating South Korean troops. Unbeknownst to the elder brother, Jin-seok does survive, though he is injured and ends up in a veterans’ hospital. While recovering, he learns from military officials that Jin-tae has crossed over to fight for the other side, an act of treason by a decorated Southern soldier which scores a huge propaganda coup for by the North. Realizing that Jin-tae would have switched sides out of the rage he must have felt over the murder of both his fiancée and his brother, Jin-seok volunteers to find his older brother and bring him back to the South. After a perilous search on the battlefield, Jin-seok finally reaches Jin-tae, who does not initially recognize the younger brother, whom he believes to be dead. Only after an extended struggle and Jin-seok’s desperate pleas, invoking their once-naive aspirations for their family, does Jin-tae come to his senses. But the two brothers become separated again on the battlefield, where Jin-tae resumes his earlier role as a protective martyr and gives up his life to allow the younger brother to escape back to Southern lines. The film ends in the present with the elderly protagonist Jin-seok speaking at the excavation site and lamenting the fate of his absent brother, who could not keep his promise to return, before 350

Reuniting families

a formal burial ceremony honors the interring of Jin-tae’s remains. The film would go on to break box-office records as the highest grossing film to date in South Korea, and became the first major hit among a new generation of South Korean war films, whose themes about the war’s human costs reflected the warming of relations between the Koreas through its departure from a Cold War interpretation of the war (Hughes 2011). It is notable that the film, which would garner global attention, is readily recognized as a story of a wartime separated family, even though it confounds what had long been the traditional notion of separated families in anticommunist South Korea. That the protagonist who crossed over to the North was not portrayed as a villain or an ideologue further reflected a reconsideration of the complexity of wartime identifications. It also demonstrated that, despite the difficulties facing the political aspects of inter-Korean rapprochement, the reconciliatory events that had taken place at the turn of the millennium would have a profound and enduring cultural impact in South Korea.4 Since August 2000, the North-South separated-family meetings have marked a historic moment when the process of inter-Korean reconciliation precipitated the encounter between those who had been lost to their families for decades on one side of the peninsular divide, and those who had lived long enough to overcome enormous odds for reunion on the other. Although the domestic and international political environment would indeed subsequently grow more challenging for the Sunshine Policy, one should not underestimate how developments in social discourse as well as popular culture in the months following the summit marked a break from the dominant hold of anticommunism as culturally hegemonic in South Korea. Opening a liminal space for collective mourning to recognize what both sides lost, the reunions thereby afforded an opportunity to recognize the humanity of former enemies through a shared legacy of bereavement. In striking contrast to the ways that the North Korean threat had previously been used in order to justify the suppression of dissenters by South Korean military authoritarian governments (Lee 2002), reconciliation with North Korea in the new millennium in turn occasioned the breaking of social taboos in South Korea surrounding those who had been previously silenced and had faced discrimination and persecution by the anticommunist state (G. Kim 2009). In this way, the reunions have brought together survivors of both the destruction of the Korean War and the exigencies of Korea’s division, which itself has lasted nearly a human lifetime.

Notes 1 As sociologist Kang Jeong-Koo describes, “In Korea, the 60th birthday has traditionally been characterized as a milestone that signals the commencement of a new life – one that is qualitatively different from that of the previous 60 years.” Kang was discussing the 60th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement as a landmark among peace activists in their efforts to advocate for a peace agreement. See Hong 2012. 2 As of 2000, there were 127,375 South Koreans registered with the Divided Families Information Center, but that figure does not include all separated families. If we consider the dynamics of wartime migration, border crossings occurred in both directions during the war, but the far larger number of migrants was that of people moving south, whether to relocate by choice or simply to flee the fighting and bombing campaigns. During the period 1945–1953, that group totaled approximately 1,390,000. It is estimated that approximately 286,000 Koreans went from the South to the North during the post-liberation and Korean War periods (Foley 2001). That total number therefore adds up to 1,676,000 border crossers who may likely have been separated from family members after 1953. In comparison, South Korea’s current overall population is roughly 50 million, and North Korea’s population is approximately 24.8 million. 3 The only official exchange of families between the two Koreas prior to 2000 occurred in September 1985, when delegations of 50 separated family members were sent from each side to meet relatives in Seoul and Pyongyang. Out of the 100 people involved in the exchange, only 65 family members were able to meet their relatives. Furthermore, those events were marred by ideological grandstanding on both sides, including North Korean denunciations of the South Korean government and of the United States (Foley 2004).

351

Nan Kim 4 This phenomenon also had roots in more localized efforts during the 1990s to overcome the bifurcation of Cold-War ideological oppositions, a process in which Heonik Kwon identifies kinship as a vital locus of reconciliation (Kwon 2010b: 111–117).

References Armstrong, C. (2008) ‘Contesting the Peninsula,’ New Left Review 51: 115–36. Baker, D. (2010) ‘Exacerbated Politics: The Legacy of Political Trauma in South Korea,’ in B. Schwartz and M. Kim (eds.), Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory. New York: Palgrave-McMillan, 193–212. Bodnar, J. (1994) Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Borneman, J. (2011) Political Crime and the Memory of Loss. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991) ‘Rites of Institution,’ in Thompson, J. (ed.), Language and Symbolic Power; trans. Gino Raymond. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 117–26. Cho, U. (2001) ‘Ch’immukkwa kiŏkŭi yŏksahwa: yŏsŏng, munhwa, ideologi’ [‘Historicizing Silence and Memory: Women, Culture, Ideology’], Ch’angjakkwa bip’yŏng [Creation and criticism] 112, Summer: 76–90. Cho, U. (2008) ‘Wollam gajok kwa wŏlbuk gajokŭi chanyŏdŭlŭi kusulŭl chungsimŭro’ [‘Remembering the Korean War and the Politics of Memory: Experiences of Wollam and Wolbuk Families’ Descendants’], Sahoewa yŏksa [Society and history] 77: 191–229. Choi, I. (1988) A Grey Man. Seoul: Si Sa Yong O Sa. Choi, J. (2010) ‘Sunshine Over a Barren Soil: The Domestic Politics of Engagement Identity Formation in South Korea,’ Asian Perspective 34, 4: 115–38. Cumings, B. (1990) The Origins of the Korean War,Volume II: the Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–1950. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cumings, B. (2010) The Korean War: A History. New York: Random House. De Ceuster, K. (2010) ‘When History Is Made: History, Memory and the Politics of Remembrance in Contemporary Korea,’ Korean Histories 2, 1: 13–33. Feldman, A. (2004) ‘Securocratic Wars of Public Safety: Globalized Policing as Scopic Regime,’ Interventions 6, 3: 330–50. Foley, J. (2001) ‘ “Ten Million Families”: Statistic or Metaphor?’ Korean Studies 25, 1: 96–110. Foley, J. (2004) Korea’s Divided Families: Fifty Years of Separation. London: Routledge. Gelézeau, V., De Ceuster, K., and Delissen, A. (eds.) (2013) De-Bordering Korea: Tangible and Intangible Legacies of the Sunshine Policy. New York: Routledge. Hong, C. (2012) ‘The First Year of Peace on the Korean Peninsula,’ Foreign Policy in Focus, October 11. Online. Available at: http://fpif.org/the_first_year_of_peace_on_the_korean_peninsula/ (accessed October 17, 2012). Hughes, T. (2011) ‘Planet Hallyuwood: Imaging the Korean War,’ Acta Koreana 14, 1: 197–212. Jhe, S. (2004) ‘Four Major Agreements on Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation: Legal Measures for Implementation,’ East Asian Review 16, 4: 19–40. Kim, B., and Kim,Y. (2009) ‘Comparative Study of the Contacts of Divided Families in Korea and Germany,’ North Korean Studies Review 12, 1. Kim, D. (2009) The Unending Korean War: A Social History; trans. Sung-ok Kim. Larkspur, CA: Tamal Vista. Kim, G. (2004) Isan’gajok, ‘ban’gongjŏnsa’do ‘ppalgaengi’do anin: isan’gajok munjerŭl bonŭn saeroun sigak [Separated Families, Neither Anticommunist Warriors nor “Reds”: New Perspectives on the Issue of Separated Families]. Seoul: Yŏksabip’yŏngsa. Kim, G. (2009) ‘Kŭllobŏl sidae hanguk isan’gajokŭi chŏngch’aesŏng kwa saeroun kanŭngsŏng’ [‘Korean Dispersed Families in the Global Era: Their identities and new possibilities’], Sahoewa yŏksa [Society and history] 81: 131–68. Kim, N. (2011) ‘Korea on the Brink: Reading the Yŏnp’yŏng Shelling and Its Aftermath,’ Journal of Asian Studies 70, 2: 337–56. Kim, S. and Kang, D. (2009) Engagement with North Korea: A Viable Alternative. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Korean Central News Agency. (2001) ‘S. Authorities Urged to Create Conditions for Meeting of Separated Families.’ Online. Available at: http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2001/200110/news10/16.htm (accessed November 30, 2001).

352

Reuniting families Korean Overseas Information Service. (2000) Press pool report, unpublished typescript, Seoul, August 15. Korean Red Cross. (2014) ‘Inter-Korean.’ Online. Available at: http://www.redcross.or.kr/eng/eng_activity/ activity_interkorean.do (accessed May 20, 2014). Kwon, H. (2010a) ‘The Korean War and the Political Life of Kinship.’ Paper presented at the British Association of Korean Studies conference, Asia House, London. Kwon, H. (2010b) The Other Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press. Lee, N. (2002) ‘Anticommunism, North Korea, and Human Rights in South Korea: “Orientalist” Discourse and Construction of South Korean Identity,’ in Mark Philip Bradley and Patrice Petro (eds.), Truth Claims: Representation and Human Rights. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 43–72. Lee, R. (2003) ‘War and Women’s Lives: On the Experience of Bereaved Women of Left-Related Victims of the Korean War.’ Review of Korean Studies 6, 1: 85–108. Lee, S. (2001) The Korean War. Harlow, UK: Longman. Lee, S. (2006) ‘Making and Unmaking the Korean National Division: Separated Families in the Cold War and Post-cold War Eras,’ [PhD] Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois. Lee, S. (2013) ‘ “T’alnaengjŏn minjok spekt’ŏk’ŭl”: 2000-nyŏn yŏrŭm nambuk isan’gajok sangbong’ [‘“Post-Cold War National Spectacle”: Reunions of Separated Families in the Summer, 2000’], Minjok munhwa yŏngu [Korean Classics Studies] 59: 95–122. Lim, D. (2012) Peacemaker: Twenty Years of Inter-Korean Relations and the North Korean Nuclear Issue. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Asia-Pacific Research Center. Moon, C. (2012) The Sunshine Policy: In Defense of Engagement as a Path to Peace in Korea. Seoul: Yonsei University Press. Morris-Suzuki, T. (2005) The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History. New York: Verso. Niebuhr, G. (1995) “Whose Memory Lives When the Last Survivor Dies?” The New York Times, January 29. Paik, N. (2011) The Division System in Crisis: Essays on Contemporary Korea. Berkeley: University of California Press. Park, M. (1996) Han’guk jŏnjaengŭi palbal kwa kiwon [The Outbreak and Origins of the Korean War]. Seoul: Nanam Press. Shin, G. (2006) Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sohn Y. and Kang W. (2013) ‘South Korea in 2012: An Election Year under Rebalancing Challenges,’ Asian Survey, 53, 1: 198–205. Son, K. (2006) South Korean Engagement Policies and North Korea: Identities, Norms and the Sunshine Policy. London: Routledge. Wada, H. (2013) The Korean War: An International History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

353

This page intentionally left blank

SECTION III

East Asia’s challenges and prospects of reconciliation

This page intentionally left blank

22 THE SAN FRANCISCO PEACE TREATY AND THE REGIONAL CONFLICTS The Cold War legacies1 Kimie Hara

Introduction: The San Francisco System and the Cold War frontiers in East Asia The emergence of the Cold War was a process in which the character of Soviet-US relations was transformed from cooperation to confrontation. With respect to the international order in East Asia, the Yalta blueprint was transformed into the “San Francisco System.” The US-UK-USSR Yalta Agreement of February 1945 became the basis for the post–World War II order in Europe. Following a series of East-West tensions, notably the communization of Eastern Europe and the division of Germany, the Yalta System was consolidated in Europe, and the status quo received international recognition in the 1975 Helsinki Accord. By the early 1990s, however, the Yalta System had collapsed, accompanied by significant changes such as the democratization of Eastern Europe, the independence of the Baltic States, the reunification of Germany, and the demise of the Soviet Union. Since then, many have viewed “collapse of the Yalta System” as synonymous with the “end of the Cold War.” The Yalta System, however, was never established as an international order in East Asia. The postwar international order was discussed, and some secret agreements affecting Japan were concluded at Yalta. The terms “Yalta System” and “East Asian Yalta System” are sometimes used to refer to a regional postwar order based on those agreements,2 but it was a “blueprint” that would have taken effect only if such agreements had been implemented. By 1951, when the peace treaty with Japan was signed, the premises of the Yalta Agreement in East Asia were in shambles. Under the new circumstances of escalating East-West confrontation that had begun in Europe, postwar East Asia took a profoundly different path from that originally planned. The San Francisco Peace Treaty is an international agreement that in significant ways shaped the post–World War II international order in East Asia. With its associated security arrangements, it laid the foundation for the regional structure of Cold War confrontation: the “San Francisco System” fully reflected the policy priorities of the peace conference’s host nation, the United States (Hara 1999, 517–518). Along with political and military conflicts, significant elements within the Cold War structure in East Asia are regional conflicts among its major players. Confrontation over national boundaries 357

Kimie Hara Table 22.1 The San Francisco Peace Treaty and regional conflicts in East Asia Regional conflicts

San Francisco Peace Treaty (relevant articles)

Concerned states

Territorial disputes Dokdo/Takeshima

Article 2 (a) Korea

Japan, ROK

Senkaku/Diaoyu

Article 2 (b) Formosa (Taiwan) Article 3 (Ryukyu Islands)

Japan, PRC, ROC

Northern Territories/ Southern Kuriles

Article 2 (c) Kurile Islands/ Southern Sakhalin

Japan, Russia/USSR

Spratlys & Paracels

Article 2 (f) Spratlys & Paracels

PRC, ROC, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei

Divided nations Korean Peninsula Taiwan-China

Article 2 (a) Korea Article 2 (b) Formosa

ROK, DPRK PRC, ROC

Status Okinawa

Article 3

Japan, USA

and territorial sovereignty emerged from the disposition of the defeated Axis countries. Whereas Germany was the only divided nation in Europe, several Cold War frontiers emerged to divide nations and peoples in East Asia. The San Francisco Peace Treaty played a critical role in creating or mounting many of these frontier problems. Vast territories, extending from the Kurile Islands to Antarctica and from Micronesia to the Spratlys, were disposed of in the treaty. The treaty, however, specified neither their final devolution nor their precise limits (see the Appendix at the end of this chapter), thereby sowing the seeds of various “unresolved problems” in the region. Table 22.1 shows relations between the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the existing regional conflicts in East Asia, indicating the concerned states in these conflicts. The regional conflicts derived from the postwar territorial dispositions of the former Japanese empire can be classified into three kinds: (1) territorial disputes such as those pertaining to the Northern Territories/ Southern Kuriles, Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu, Spratly/Nansha, and Paracel/Xisha; (2) divided nations as seen in the Cross-Taiwan Strait problem and the Korean Peninsula;3 and (3) status of territory as seen in the “Okinawa problem.”4 These problems did not necessarily originate solely from the San Francisco Peace Treaty. For example, a secret agreement to transfer the Kuriles and Southern Sakhalin from Japan to the USSR was reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945. However, the problem emerged or received formal expression at San Francisco, since the peace treaty specified neither recipients nor boundaries of these territories. These problems tend to be treated separately or as unrelated. For reasons such as limitations on access to government records and the different ways in which the Cold War and the disputes developed in the region, their important common foundation in the early postwar arrangement has long been forgotten.

Creating “unresolved problems” Close examination of the Allies’ documents, particularly those of the United States, the main drafter of the peace treaty, reveals key links between the regional Cold War and equivocal wording about designation of territory, and suggests the necessity for a multilateral approach that goes beyond the framework of the current disputant states as a key to understanding the origins, and conceptualizing approaches conducive to future resolution of these problems (Hara 2007). 358

The San Francisco Peace Treaty

Prior to the final draft of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which was completed in 1951, six years after the Japanese surrender, several treaty drafts were prepared. Early drafts were, on the whole, based on US wartime studies, and were consistent with the Yalta spirit of inter-Allied cooperation. They were long and detailed, providing clear border demarcations and specifying the names of small islands near the borders of postwar Japan, such as “Takeshima,” “Habomai,” and “Shikotan,” specifically to avoid future territorial conflicts. However, against the background of the intensifying Cold War, particularly with the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the peace terms with Japan changed in such a way as to reflect new strategic interests of the United States, the main drafter of the treaty. Specifically, Japan and the Philippines, soon to be the most important US allies in East Asia, had to be secured for the non-communist West, whereas the communist states were to be contained. In this context, drafts of the Japanese peace treaty went through various changes and eventually became simplified. Countries that were intended to receive such islands as Formosa (Taiwan), the Kuriles, and other territories disappeared from the text, leaving various “unresolved problems” among the regional neighbors. The equivocal wording of the peace treaty was the result neither of inadvertence nor error; issues were deliberately left unresolved. It is no coincidence that the territorial disputes derived from the San Francisco Peace Treaty – the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles, Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu (Okinawa5), Spratly/Nansha, and Paracel/Xisha problems – all line up like wedges along the “Acheson Line,” the US Cold War defense line of the western Pacific announced in January 1950. With the outbreak of the Korean War (1950–1953), the United States altered its policy toward Korea and China, which it had once written off as “lost” or “abandoned,” and intervened directly in their civil wars. However, in order to avoid further escalation of these regional wars, which could possibly lead to a nuclear war or the next total war, the containment line came to be fixed at the thirty-eighth parallel and Taiwan Strait, respectively. These containment frontiers could be perceived as double wedges from the viewpoint of Japanese defense, together with Dokdo/ Takeshima and Senkaku/Diaoyu (Okinawa) islands. On the other hand, viewed from the perspective of US China policy, China’s ocean frontier problems of Senkaku/Diaoyu (Okinawa), the Spratlys, and the Paracels may be seen as wedges of containment, together with Taiwan. The Spratlys and Paracels disposed of in Article 2 (f ) of the peace treaty and located in the South China Sea, at the southwest end of the Acheson Line, may be viewed as wedges to defend the Philippines, which was the core of US Cold War strategy in Southeast Asia. Although there were differences of degree, Chinese ownership was considered for these territories in US wartime preparations for a postwar settlement. Their final designation was not specified in the San Francisco Treaty, not simply because it was unclear, but more importantly to make sure that none of them would fall into the hands of China. Disputes over the sovereignty of these islands in the South China Sea existed before the war. However, the pre- and postwar disputes differ in terms of the countries involved and the nature of the disputes – that is, prewar colonial frontiers reborn as Cold War frontiers in Southeast Asia.6

Multilateral linkage These postwar territorial dispositions of the former Japanese empire were closely linked in US government studies and negotiations with the other Allies prior to the peace conference. For example, the Kurile Islands were used as a bargaining chip not only to secure US occupation of the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, but also to assure exclusive US control of Micronesia and Okinawa. The deletion of “China” as the designated recipient of Taiwan in the 1950 and subsequent US drafts eventually was extended to all the territorial clauses: that is, no designation 359

Kimie Hara

or ownership of any of the territories was specified. (Hara 2007; also see chapter 11 in this volume) With regard to the regional conflicts that stemmed from the Japanese peace settlement, it is noteworthy that there was no consensus among the states directly concerned with these conflicts. The San Francisco Peace Treaty was prepared and signed multilaterally, making the forty-nine signatories the “concerned states.” Except for Japan, however, the major states involved in the conflicts did not participate in the treaty. Neither of the governments of Korea (ROK/DPRK) nor of China (PRC/ROC) was invited to the peace conference. The Soviet Union participated in the peace conference, but chose not to sign the treaty. The result was to bequeath multiple unresolved conflicts to the countries directly concerned and to the region.

Transformation and contemporary manifestation of the San Francisco System During the sixty years since the San Francisco agreement, East Asia has undergone significant transformations. After periods of East-West tension and then their relaxation, such as the Cold War thaw of the 1950s and the détente of the 1970s, the Cold War was widely believed to have ended by the early 1990s. These changes also affected relations among neighboring countries in East Asia, with important consequences, but not solutions, for some of the lingering territorial problems.

Détente and the Cold War frontiers In 1955, two years after the signing of the Korean War armistice, peace negotiations began between Japan and the Soviet Union amid the Cold War thaw and the new emphasis on “peaceful coexistence.” The following year the two countries restored diplomatic relations and agreed, in a Joint Declaration, to the transfer of the two island groups of Shikotan and Habomai to Japan following conclusion of a peace treaty. Japan, however, was pressed by the United States to demand the return of all four island groups in its so-called Northern Territories. Indeed, the US warned that Okinawa would not be returned to Japan if it abandoned its claims to Kunashiri and Etorofu. US support for the four-island-return formula was made with full knowledge that it would be unacceptable to the Soviet Union (Wada 1999, 255), thus preventing Japan from achieving rapprochement with the Soviet and the communist bloc. Perceiving the “détente” as temporary and serving the Soviet Union’s strategic advantage, the US feared that a Japan-Soviet peace treaty would lead to normalization of relations between Japan and communist China. Furthermore, if Japan settled the Northern Territories problem with the Soviet Union, there would be considerable pressure on the United States to vacate Okinawa, whose importance had significantly increased for the US Cold War strategy in Asia especially during the Korean War. The four-island-return policy also reflected Cold War premises in Japan’s domestic politics. It originated as a negotiation strategy devised by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to elicit the two-island concession from the Soviet Union. However, when the two conservative parties, the Liberals and the Democrats, merged in 1955 to form a large ruling party in opposition to the then-strengthening socialist parties, Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichiro accepted the fourisland claim as a core policy of the new Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). That claim solidified as enduring government policy throughout the long period of LDP hegemony. In East Asia, the Cold War developed differently from the bipolar system in the Euro-Atlantic region. A tripolar system, US-China-USSR, emerged following the Sino-Soviet split. China had 360

The San Francisco Peace Treaty

been targeted by the US containment strategy since its intervention in the Korean War. With its nuclear development in 1964, China came to occupy the central position in the Asian Cold War. Considering that the emergence of nuclear weapons fundamentally changed the nature of post–World War II international relations and became the biggest factor for the Cold War, the US-China confrontation became truly “Cold War” in lieu of direct military clash. They fought “hot” surrogate wars in their satellite states instead. Sino-Soviet confrontation, on the other hand, while bitter, was initially confined to verbal and written communications. However, it escalated into military clashes along the border, especially over ownership of Damansky Island on the Ussuri River in 1969. This Sino-Soviet frontier problem did not derive, and was therefore different, from those conflicts that emerged out of the postwar disposition of Japan. Nevertheless, it came to symbolize the height of Sino-Soviet confrontation that defined the Cold War in East Asia, setting the stage for the dramatic structural transformation of the early 1970s when Sino-US rapprochement occurred. Japan also established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at that time and terminated its official ties with the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. During the détente of the 1970s, Okinawa was returned to Japan, and the focus of the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute shifted to the Senkaku islands, where resource nationalism was accentuated by the new energy potential discovered in the vicinity of those islands. On the reversion of Okinawa, the US government took “no position on sovereignty” over the Senkakus; it merely returned “administrative rights” to Japan, leaving the dispute to Japan and China. Both Chinese governments (PRC and ROC) then and since have claimed that the islands are part of Taiwan. For Japan, however, because the Senkakus had never been in dispute before, it was a “problem that emerged suddenly” as described in a government pamphlet published in 1972 (Gaimusho johobunka-kyoku, About the Senkaku Islands [Senkaku-retto ni tsuite] 1972). The ROC government in Taiwan, moreover, held the position that Okinawa was not Japanese territory and opposed its reversion to Japan. The Nixon administration entered office with its top diplomatic agenda to normalize relations with China. Inheriting the previous administration’s promise to return Okinawa to Japan, Nixon adopted a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the Senkaku issue, despite the fact that the US had administered the islands as part of Okinawa (Hara 2007). The rapprochement with China represented US recognition of the political status quo – a shift to an engagement policy rather than an end to the Cold War. Under Nixon, communist China continued to be perceived as a threat to US interests in East Asia and the Pacific, and US bases in Okinawa had to be maintained. The territorial dispute with China helped justify the bases, especially in Japan. Thus, leaving the dispute unsettled, not taking the side of any disputants, and keeping the wedges among the neighboring states met US interests in retaining its presence and influence in the region. Just as the wedge of the Northern Territories problem was set in place with the four-island-return claim between Japan and the Soviet Union during the Cold War thaw of the 1950s, the Senkaku issue was another wedge set in place between Japan and China.7 In the meantime, the “unresolved problems” that shared a common foundation in the San Francisco Peace Treaty continued to fester. In addition to divided China, the newly independent countries – (South) Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei – joined the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. With Taiwan and South Korea not lost to the West, however, the Cold War nature of the Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Diaoyu, and South China Sea disputes came to be overlaid by other issues, such as nationalism and competition over maritime resources. Furthermore, introduction of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), particularly its rules governing Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and the continental shelf, greatly contributed to complicating these territorial problems, since ownership of the disputed 361

Kimie Hara

territories could determine the location of the EEZ boundaries (for more details see chapter 11 in this volume).8

Remaining regional Cold War structure In the subsequent period of global détente, from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the Cold War was widely believed to have ended. Both US-Soviet and Sino-Soviet rapprochement were achieved, and a remarkable relaxation of tension occurred in East Asia, where expectations soared for solutions to some of the most intractable frontier problems. In the late 1980s, serious deliberations began in Sino-Soviet/Russian border negotiations. The two countries finally completed their border demarcation by making mutual concessions in the 2000s. However, none of the frontier problems that share the foundation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty reached a fundamental settlement. In fact, compared to the Euro-Atlantic region, where the wall dividing East and West completely collapsed, the changes that took place in East Asia left fundamental divisions intact. Except for the demise of the Soviet Union, the regional Cold War structure of confrontation basically continued. Today, in addition to the above-mentioned territorial problems, China and Korea are still divided, with their communist or authoritarian parts still perceived as threats by their neighbors. Accordingly, the US military presence through its hub-and-spokes security arrangements with regional allies, known as the “San Francisco Alliance System,” and associated issues, such as the “Okinawa problem,” continue in this region. Whereas the Warsaw Treaty Organization disappeared and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) lost its anti-communist focus when it accepted formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe as members, there are no indications that the remaining San Francisco Alliance System will embrace North Korea or China. Nevertheless, in some disputing states, where epoch-making changes associated with the “end of the Cold War” took place, notable policy shifts have occurred. In the Soviet Union (later Russia), the government position on the Southern Kuriles/Northern Territories, once so rigid as to deny that a problem even existed, softened in the 1990s to the extent of recognizing the possibility of the two-island transfer promised in the 1956 Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration. In Taiwan, as democratization progressed, public opinion and national policies toward the one-China principle diversified. The non-Kuomintang (KMT) pro-independence government was established in 2000 and the KMT regained its ruling power in 2008 with the support of the people who favored a deepening of PRC-ROC economic ties and cooling tensions with the mainland China (see chapter 25 in this volume). However, no fundamental policy change has occurred in the other regional conflicts, particularly the territorial disputes. Each country has solidified its position as a policy norm while constantly repeating the same claim, with the result that the issue has become one of face-and-prestige for the respective governments. In the sense that the fundamental structure of confrontation remains, the dramatic relaxation seen in East Asia since the late 1980s can be similar to a détente rather than the “end” of the Cold War. The relaxation of tension seen in the Cold War thaw in the 1950s and the détente in the 1970s in both instances gave way to deterioration of East-West relations. Similar phenomena have been observed in East Asia, such as US-China conflicts after the Tiananmen incident of 1989, military tensions across the Taiwan Strait and in the Korean Peninsula, disruption of negotiations between Japan and North Korea to normalize their diplomatic relations, and political tensions involving Japan and its neighbors over territorial disputes and interpretation of the past. Nonetheless, considering that the 1975 Helsinki Accords recognized the status quo of the (then) existing borders in Europe, the political status quo in East Asia, where disputes over national borders continue, may not have reached the level of the 1970s détente in Europe.9 362

The San Francisco Peace Treaty

Deepening interdependence in economic and other relations Whereas countries and peoples in East Asia have been divided by politics, history, and unsettled borders, they nevertheless have become closely connected and have deepened their interdependence in economic, cultural, and other relations. With China’s economic reform, it may be possible to consider that regional Cold War confrontation began to dissolve partially in the late 1970s.10 The economic recovery and transformation of East Asian countries for the last sixty years from the ruins of war are in fact remarkable. Beginning with Japan in the 1950s, followed by the so-called newly industrializing economies (NIEs)11 in the 1970s and 1980s, and now with China’s rise, East Asia, with the exception of North Korea, has become the most expansive center in the world economy. Economy is indeed the glue connecting the regional states. Economy-driven multilateral cooperation and institution building have also shown notable development in East Asia with the creation of multiple institutions, especially since the 1990s. A broad regional framework has emerged in the Asia-Pacific, building on such foundation as the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). In the wake of the global-scale economic crises of 1997 and 2008, additional multilateral forums involving China (PRC), Japan, and South Korea (ROK) have emerged, such as ASEAN+3 (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus the PRC, Japan, and the ROK) and the PRC-Japan-ROK Trilateral Summit, adding new dimensions to an emerging regionalism. In the meantime, Russia, which joined APEC in 1998, is also increasing its presence by enlarging its investment in its Far East region and deepening its economic ties with its East Asian neighbors. Vladivostok hosted APEC meetings in 2012, showcasing Russian presence in the region. With the progressing Arctic thaw and its economic implications, such as new shipping routes and resource opportunities, Russia’s importance in the region is likely to increase further in the twenty-first century. Along with strengthening economic ties, more wide-ranging areas of cooperation are developing among East Asian countries. Ken Coates points out that universities have the potential to be a key force for regional integration. “The emergence of East Asian power is, at least in part, the result of thirty years of investment and commitment to universities, colleges and research” (Coates 2010, 305). In the past, Western countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom were major foreign destinations for Asian students to learn advanced knowledge and technologies. Statistics on international student mobility show much greater movement within East Asia in recent years. The increasing exchange of students and intellectual communities has the potential to reduce barriers in the region and accelerate the process of East Asian integration. Expanded regional cooperation and increased interaction have paved the way for confidence-building measures (CBMs) among neighboring states. Progress in CBMs since the 1990s at both governmental and nongovernmental levels constitutes a leap beyond the Cold War era, particularly in nontraditional security areas such as the environment, food, energy, terrorism, and natural disasters. There have also been significant developments in conflict management or cooperation concerning disputed areas such as fishery and continental shelf. Multilateral cooperation has been actively pursued in diplomatic and security dialogues as well, using multiple regional forums as such those mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, while activities have multiplied, the depth of integration remain pale compared with those of Europe. While the European Community (EC) of the Cold War era has long since evolved into the European Union (EU), even the idea of an “East Asian Community” (not an “East Asian Union”) still remains a future aspiration. As yet, the East Asian countries do not have relations of sufficient mutual trust. They are strongly connected economically, but remain divided politically, and are still in dispute over “unresolved problems,” including those over territorial sovereignty and borders. 363

Kimie Hara

Thus, even though global waves of “post–Cold War” transformations in international relations such as globalization and regionalism have reached East Asia, they do not necessarily deny the remaining structure of confrontation founded in San Francisco in 1951. The end of the Cold War is not yet history in East Asia.

Envisioning a multilateral settlement The Cold War has sometimes been called the period of “long peace” inasmuch as the balance of power was relatively well maintained and international relations were rather stable (Gaddis 1987). Such was the case in the US-Soviet and European context, but in East Asia many regional conflicts emerged, and international relations became highly unstable. These unstable circumstances continue today, even though relations between neighbors may have improved. Many possibilities exist for the resurgence of conflicts. Although efforts to enhance CBMs and prevent the escalation of conflicts are certainly important, CBMs alone do not lead to fundamental solutions. The road to peace ultimately requires removal of principal sources of conflict. Yet is it really possible to solve the problems that have been ongoing for such a long time? If so, different and more creative approaches may be necessary. Such may be found in multilateral efforts that reflect on the historical experience and new reality of international relations. This section explores some ideas for the future resolution of the frontier problems, particularly the territorial disputes between Japan and its neighbors.

Why multilateral? Historical experience suggests that it is extremely difficult to solve those conflicts derived from the postwar disposition of Japan bilaterally or through negotiations confined to the nations directly involved in the disputes. This may be particularly true of contentious territorial issues. In fact, some, if not all, of these issues may be insoluble as long as they remain within such traditional bilateral frameworks. Having been mutually linked and multilaterally disposed of in the context of the post–World War II settlement, it seems worthwhile to return to their common origin and consider their solution within a multilateral framework. In a multilateral framework, mutually acceptable solutions not achievable within a bilateral framework may be found by creatively combining mutual concessions. Such an approach may also avoid the impression of a clear win-lose situation and an international loss of face. Furthermore, multilateral international agreements tend to be more durable than bilateral ones. The more participating states there are, the stronger restraint tends to be, and the greater the possibility that a country in breach will be internationally isolated. Obtaining wide international recognition for settlements is, therefore, desirable. In the contemporary context of regionalism, multilateral problem solving may contribute to regional community building and integration, namely toward building an East Asian Community and possibly even a regional union. Resolution of long-standing issues will not only help remove political barriers to regional integration, but may also help promote the growth of regional identity, thereby reducing the relative importance of national borders. Resolution of the territorial disputes may be sought in this broader context as well.

Possible frameworks: ICJ, trilateral, four party, or six party? What kind of multilateral framework is appropriate for dealing with these regional conflicts in East Asia? An existing framework may be used, or a new framework may be created. Today the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is available for dealing with international disputes. Bringing 364

The San Francisco Peace Treaty

cases to the ICJ, if disputes arise, was also suggested in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Japan, in fact, proposed in 1954, 1962, and 2012 that the case of Takeshima (Dokdo) be brought to the ICJ, but South Korea refused. Bringing individual cases into such a multilateral framework is certainly extremely difficult. Through over half a century of disputes, the positions of all parties are widely known and mutually exclusive. Any settlement produced by an international organization, even within a multilateral framework, could be viewed as a win-lose situation, with a danger of international loss of face. Third-party arbitration runs the same risk of a win-lose situation and potential loss of face – if cases are dealt with individually. However, if at least some of these issues were examined or negotiated together within a multilateral framework, or along with a number of other outstanding issues, the circumstances might be different. For example, Japan’s territorial disputes with its neighbors – Russia, Korea, and China – may be brought to the ICJ together for joint examination and collective settlements, that is, to determine clear post–World War II borders of Japan. If not the ICJ, some existing regional framework may be used. For example, the Japan-ROK-PRC trilateral meetings since the December 2008 Dazaifu summit may have potential for conflict resolution. This trilateral group might add Russia, creating a four-party framework that would consist of Japan and its dispute counterparts that were not signatories to the San Francisco Peace Treaty. This framework would include Russia and China, the two powers that successfully negotiated and achieved the settlement of the world’s longest border demarcation. The Six Party Talks, with the United States and the DPRK added to the four parties mentioned above, offer another potentially useful framework. US participation may make sense, considering its role in preparing the San Francisco Peace Treaty as well as its continuing presence and influence in the region. The Six Party Talks have been the particular forum for negotiating issues surrounding the North Korean nuclear crisis. This issue is essentially about survival of the North Korean regime, which has been trying to obtain cooperation and assurances from the United States and neighboring countries. Originally, this problem developed from the question to which country or government Japan renounced “Korea.” Like Dokdo/Takeshima and other conflicts in East Asia, it was an “unresolved problem” originating from the postwar territorial disposition of Japan. The Six Party framework, although stalled since 2008, may also have the potential to develop into a major regional security organization in the North Pacific in the future. When it comes to detailing the conditions or concrete adjustments necessary for a settlement, multilateral negotiations may be supplemented by parallel discussions in a bilateral framework. If initiating such negotiations at the formal governmental (Track I) level is difficult, they may be combined with, more informal (Track II) level.12 In considering such negotiation frameworks, a key question to be addressed may be whether US involvement would work positively or negatively for the solution of these conflicts. If the United States perceives their settlement as inimical to its strategic interests, its involvement would become detrimental. Historically, US Cold War strategy in the San Francisco Peace Treaty gave rise to various conflicts among regional neighbors. The United States also intervened in the SovietJapanese peace negotiations to prevent rapprochement in the mid-1950s. In the post–Cold War world, where the Soviet Union no longer exists and China has become a large capitalist country, however, the Cold War strategy to contain communism no longer seems valid. Nevertheless, the United States may perceive regional instability as beneficial to its strategy, as long as it is manageable and does not escalate into large-scale war. It is precisely “manageable instability” that helps justify a continued large US military presence in the region, not only enabling the United States to maintain its regional influence, but also contributing to operations farther afield, such as in the Middle East. A solution to East Asian regional conflicts would alter the regional security balance and accordingly influence regional security arrangements, particularly 365

Kimie Hara

the San Francisco Alliance System. Just as was the case during the Cold War détente and after the so-called “end of the Cold War,” considerable pressure would arise for the United States to withdraw from, or reduce its military presence in, the region. This would very likely affect its bases in Okinawa, which still remains the most contentious issue in US-Japan relations. Although an accommodation between Japan and its neighbors is preferable for regional stability, it would not be viewed as beneficial by US strategists if it was perceived as likely to reduce or exclude US influence. Thus, continued conflicts among regional countries may still be seen as meeting US interests (see chapter 11 in this volume). On the other hand, if the United States perceives the resolution of disputes as being beneficial, its constructive involvement can be a strong factor in ending them. How will the United States benefit from resolving these disputes? A peaceful and stable East Asia, a region in which the United States is heavily involved in economic development, trade, culture, and other arenas, surely is a significant US interest. Reduction of its military presence will contribute to cutting US defense spending at a time of heavy budget pressure. US leaders may also be convinced of the value of conflict resolution if it can maintain its influence and presence through security arrangements – for example, a multilateral security organization based on the Six Party or other frameworks. The continuing presence and expanded mission of NATO since the Cold War and after the establishment of the EU may present a notable precedent.

Settlement formula: Mutual concessions and collective gains What kinds of concrete settlements can be envisioned in a multilateral framework? A workable settlement formula would include mutual concessions and collective gains. Each party would have to make some concessions, but the gains would potentially be far greater than the concessions if the region is viewed as a whole. The following are preliminary considerations with hypothetical examples that may be used as bases for further deliberation. In the trilateral framework, Japan might, for example, make a concession to Korea with respect to Dokdo/Takeshima, while China might make a concession to Japan over Senkaku and Okinawa.13 Then, in exchange for these, Korea might offer concessions over the naming issues of its surrounding seas by withdrawing its claim for “East Sea,” “West Sea,” and “South Sea” and accepting “Sea of Japan,” “Yellow Sea,” and “East China Sea,” respectively, as their names. Also, China might receive recognition of its sovereignty over the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, to which it has strong historical links. In the four-party framework, with Russia added to these three countries, Japan and Russia might make mutual concessions and return to the two-island transfer of the 1956 Joint Declaration – an international agreement ratified at the time by their legislatures. This might appear as a win-lose situation in a bilateral framework, but such an impression would be softened by combining the agreement with other territorial settlements and additional conditions. These are basically recognition of the status quo, except for the Russia-Japan islands transfer. Accomplishing that much would at least bring the situation closer to the level of the 1975 Helsinki Accords in Europe. These arrangements may also be combined with mutual concessions in maritime border negotiations, including EEZ delimitations. As mentioned earlier, the introduction of UNCLOS has greatly contributed to complicating territorial problems. Yet it may provide opportunities for dispute settlement by opening up more options for a combination of concessions. For example, instead of using Dokdo (Korea) and Oki (Japan) as base points to draw the EEZ line, Dokdo could be used as the base point for both Korea and Japan, and their median line could be drawn along the twelve-nautical-mile territorial waters of Dokdo. The logic here is that the median line 366

The San Francisco Peace Treaty

would be drawn in ways favorable to Japan in exchange for its recognition of Takeshima (Dokdo) as Korean territory. A similar arrangement may be made for Senkaku/Diaoyu, with the islands used as the base point of both Japan and China for their EEZ. Furthermore, it may be possible to link these problems with other “settlements of the past,” including nontraditional security issues. Such mutual concession could pave the way for reducing tensions and greater cooperation in multiple areas with mutual benefits for all parties. Other settlements might include the demilitarization, international autonomy, or joint development of disputed islands. For those, a historical precedent of conflict resolution in northern Europe – the 1921 settlement of the Åland islands dispute – provides useful lessons, particularly for the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles, where consideration should be given to the residents of the islands. The Åland Settlement, which was achieved in a multilateral framework under the League of Nations, featured settlement of a border dispute through mutual concessions and collective gains. The formula was so mixed that the decision on the islands’ ownership could not be interpreted in the usual win-lose terms. The settlement was also positive-sum for all parties, including the residents of the islands. Finland received sovereignty over the islands, Åland residents were granted autonomy combined with guarantees for the preservation of their Swedish heritage, and Sweden received guarantees that Åland would not constitute a military threat. The settlement also contributed to the peace and stability of northern Europe as a whole. The majority of Ålanders originally wanted to reunite with Sweden, and thus were dissatisfied with the settlement. However, as a result of the settlement, Ålanders enjoyed various benefits and special international status, including passports that now read “European Union – Finland – Åland.” If these innovative arrangements had not been made and Åland had been returned to Sweden, it might well have become merely a run-down and depressed border region, or a military frontier area – quite a different situation from today. The Åland Settlement presents an attractive model of conflict resolution (Hara and Jukes 2009). The Åland model, however, cannot be applied to the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles dispute or any other regional conflicts in East Asia “as is.” The model must be creatively modified to be applicable. For example, the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles, Dokdo/Takeshima, and Diaoyu/Senkaku might all be demilitarized. Also, rather than placing them under a local government jurisdiction, some or all of these territories could become a special administrative region in politics, economy, culture, and environment. Moreover, such arrangements may be guaranteed not only by the governments directly concerned, but also in a wider international framework.14 The settlement ideas explored above may be called “status quo plus alpha” or “modified (East Asian) version of the Helsinki Accord.” Unless there is a clear mutual agreement of territorial transfer, like the 1956 Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration, it is almost impossible to change the existing borders without waging wars again. However, most nations do not favor wars. People in Europe realized this earlier. The Helsinki Declaration was released in 1975, the year of the thirtieth anniversary since the end of World War II, but Europe by then had a long history of wars and conflicts. The Helsinki Accord recognized the (then) status quo of the post–World War II international order, the so-called “Yalta System.” That there is common recognition, or consensus, about the political status quo and existing borders contributes to regional peace and stability. The EC of the Cold War era later developed into the EU, where regional identity has grown while relative importance of national borders decreased. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), where the Helsinki Accord was adopted, also developed into the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. In retrospect, the Helsinki Accord was not necessarily the final postwar 367

Kimie Hara

border demarcation in Europe. In the early 1990s, fifteen to sixteen years later, borders in Europe shifted again, as seen in the reunification of Germany and the independence of the Baltic States. Asia is different from Europe, as often pointed out. It is certainly different and behind in terms of dealing with the past. In order to bring stability and create peaceful regional community in Asia, there are important lessons to learn from the European experiences.

Preparing ideas for the future The San Francisco Peace Treaty was, after all, a war settlement with Japan. Therefore, it may make sense for Japan to take the initiative in solving the “unresolved problems” derived from that treaty. Final settlement will require political decisions. Unless politics, not bureaucracy, can predominate in policymaking, the territorial problems will remain deadlocked. Togo Kazuhiko, a former senior diplomat of Japan who played a leading role in the negotiations with the USSR/Russia from the late 1980s to 2001, identified five opportunities to settle the Northern Territories problem (Togo 2007). Yet none of the proposals presented then was mutually acceptable to both Japan and Russia. As with the Northern Territories and many other international disputes, time may again present opportunities for solutions. Scholars may be able to contribute to such diplomatic efforts by providing ideas and information, to prepare for the time when an opportunity does present itself again.

368

APPENDIX Excerpt from the San Francisco Peace Treaty

Chapter II: Territory Article 2 (a) Japan, recognizing the independence of Korea, renounces all right, title and claim to Korea, including the islands of Quelpart, Port Hamilton and Dagelet. (b) Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores. (c) Japan renounces all right, title and claim to the Kurile Islands, and to that portion of Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it over which Japan acquired sovereignty as a consequence of the Treaty of Portsmouth of September 5, 1905. (d) Japan renounces all right, title and claim in connection with the League of Nations Mandate System, and accepts the action of the United Nations Security Council of April 2, 1947, extending the trusteeship system to the Pacific Islands formerly under mandate to Japan. (e) Japan renounces all claim to any right or title to or interest in connection with any part of the Antarctic area, whether deriving from the activities of Japanese nationals or otherwise. (f ) Japan renounces all right, title and claim to the Spratly Islands and to the Paracel Islands.

Article 3 Japan will concur in any proposal of the United States to the United Nations to place under its trusteeship system, with the United States as the sole administering authority, Nansei Shoto south of 29º north latitude (including the Ryukyu Islands and the Daito Islands), Nanpo Shoto south of Sofu Gan (including the Bonin Islands, Rosario Island and the Volcano Islands) and Parece Vela and Marcus Island. Pending the making of such a proposal and affirmative action thereon, the United States will have the right to exercise all and any powers of administration, legislation and jurisdiction over the territory and inhabitants of these islands, including their territorial waters. Source: Conference for the Conclusion and Signature of the Treaty of Peace with Japan, San Francisco, California, September 4–8, 1951, Record of Proceedings, Department of State Publication 4392, International Organization and Conference Series II, Far Eastern 3, December 1951, Division of Publications, Office of Public Affairs, p. 314.

369

Kimie Hara

Notes 1 This chapter is a revised and updated version of the author’s article “The San Francisco Peace Treaty and Frontier Problems in the Regional Order in East Asia: A Sixty Year Perspectiv,” Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 10, Issue 17, No. 1, April 23, 2012. 2 For example, see Iriye 1974, 93–97, and Soeya 1995, 33–38. 3 With regard to the treatment of Formosa (Taiwan), the peace treaty alone did not divide China. However, by leaving the status of the island undecided, it left various options open for its future, including possession by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or the Republic of China (ROC), or even its independence. The peace treaty also left the final designation of “Korea” unclear. Although “Korea” was renounced and its independence recognized in the treaty, no reference was made to the existence of two governments in the divided peninsula, then at war with each other. There was then, and still is, no state or country called “Korea,” but two states, the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north. 4 Okinawa (the Ryukyus), together with other Japanese islands in the Pacific, were disposed of in the Treaty’s Article 3 (See Appendix). This article neither confirmed nor denied Japanese sovereignty, but guaranteed sole US control – until such time that the US would propose and affirm a UN trusteeship arrangement – over these islands. “Administrative rights,” if not full sovereignty, of all the territories specified in this article were returned to Japan by the early 1970s, without having been placed in UN trusteeship. Yet long after the “return,” the majority of US forces and bases in Japan remain concentrated in Okinawa. 5 The territorial problem between Japan and China was originally over Okinawa. Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China (ROC), representing “China” at the UN, demanded the “recovery” of Ryukyu/ Okinawa in the early postwar years. Meanwhile, the US leadership saw possibility of ROC to be “lost” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as reflected in the Acheson Line of January 1950 excluding Taiwan from the US defense area. Through ROC agency, therefore, the peace treaty left the dispute between Japan and “China,” whose continental territory had become communist. On the other hand, the PRC, soon after its establishment in 1949, supported Okinawa’s reversion to Japan, which was, however, nothing but political propaganda. The PRC was pursuing policy priority of the time, i.e., removal of US military bases from Okinawa to “liberate” neighboring Taiwan, and friendly relations with (i.e., expansion of communist influence to) Japan. For the PRC, if all those areas could fall into the communist sphere of influence, it mattered little to which country they belonged. Reversion to the ROC’s, or China’s traditional, position on Okinawa was a problem that could be dealt with after recovering Taiwan. (This occurred to North Vietnam, which inherited South’s claim for the Spratlys and the Paracels after their reunification in the 1970s.) At this point, the US removal from Okinawa was simply more important than ownership of the islands. 6 Before World War II the countries in dispute in the South China Sea were China and two colonial powers, Japan and France. After the war Japan and France withdrew, and the islands came to be disputed by the two Chinas and the newly independent neighboring Southeast Asian countries. For details on the disposition of the Spratlys and Paracels in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, see Hara 2007, chapter 6. 7 A second Japan-USSR summit meeting held in 1973, after an interval of seventeen years, also failed to resolve the territorial problem or a final peace treaty. Meanwhile, the US military continued to stay in Okinawa. 8 See United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the Convention, in particular Part V for EEZ and Part IV for continental shelf (http://www.un.org/depts/ los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/closindx.htm, accessed February 5, 2015). 9 One exception to this may be the Korean Peninsula. Both North and South Korea joined the United Nations in 1991, as had both East and West Germany in 1973. While the Cold War status quo was receiving international recognition on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia, German reunification, symbolizing the end of the Cold War in Europe, had already taken place in 1990. 10 However, there was then no general recognition that only the US-China Cold War ended and the US-Soviet Cold War continued. 11 These are South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, also called the Four Asian Tigers. 12 The author would like to thank Professor Togo Kazuhiko for his feedback on this at a workshop in Seoul in August 2010. 13 Since the ROC government in Taiwan has not formally withdrawn its claim to Okinawa/Ryukyu, the PRC could disavow it or promise not to revive it. 14 For details, see Hara and Jukes 2009, 119–124.

370

The San Francisco Peace Treaty

References Coates, Ken. 2010. “The East Asian University Revolution: Post-Secondary Education and Regional Transformation.” In Kimie Hara, ed., Shifting Regional Order in East Asia – Proceedings. Keiko and Charles Belair Centre for East Asian Studies, Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Pandora Press, workshop, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, pp. 305–331. Gaddis, John Lewis. 1987. The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2000. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press. First edition, 1971. Gaimusho johobunka-kyoku, 1972. Senkaku-retto ni tsuite (The Public Information and Cultural Affairs Bureau, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, About the Senkaku Islands). At www.worldtimes.co.jp/ gv/data/senkaku/main.html. Gallichio, Marc S. 1988. The Cold War Begins in Asia: American East Asian Policy and the Fall of the Japanese Empire. New York: Columbia University Press. Halliday, Fred. 1983. The Making of the Second Cold War. London: Verso. Hara, Kimie. 1998. Japanese-Russian/Soviet Relations Since 1945: A Difficult Peace. London: Routledge. ———. 1999. “Rethinking the ‘Cold War’ in the Asia-Pacific,” Pacific Review, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 515–536. ———. 2001. “50 Years from San Francisco: Re-Examining the Peace Treaty and Japan’s Territorial Problems,” Pacific Affairs, Fall, pp. 361–382. ———. 2006. “Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: The Troubling Legacy of the San Francisco Treaty.” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, September. At http://japanfocus.org (accessed February 5, 2015). ———. 2007. Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System. New York: Routledge. Hara, Kimie, and Geoffrey Jukes, eds. 2009. Northern Territories, Asia-Pacific Regional Conflicts and the Aland Experience: Untying the Kurillian Knot. New York: Routledge. Hosoya, Chihiro. 1984. Sanfuranshisuko kowa eno michi (The Road to the San Francisco Peace). Tokyo: Chuokoron-sha. Iriye, Akira. 1974. The Cold War in Asia: A Historical Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Nagai, Yonosuke. 1978. Reisen no kigen: sengo ajia no kokusai kankyo (Origin of the Cold War: International Environment of Postwar Asia). Tokyo: Chuokoron-sha. Soeya, Yoshihide. 1995. Nihon gaiko to chugoku 1945–1972 (Japanese Diplomacy and China 1945–1972). Tokyo: keiko gijuku daigaku shippan-kai. Togo, Kazuhiko. 2007. Hoppo ryodo kosho hiroku: ushinawareta gotabi no kitai (The Secret Record of Northern Territories Negotiations: Five Missed Opportunities). Tokyo: Shincho-sha. Wada, Haruki. 1999. Hoppo ryodo mondai: rekishi to mirai (The Northern Territories Problem: History and Future). Tokyo: Asahishimbun-sha, 1999.

371

23 JAPANESE PERCEPTIONS OF TERRITORIAL DISPUTES AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR RECONCILIATION1 Mikyoung Kim

Introduction: Opinion poll and governmental behavior Conventional wisdom is that foreign affairs and public opinion are largely independent from each other. Domestic constituents leave the esoteric field mostly to the elite circles which command expert knowledge, transnational network and diplomatic savvy (Yankelovich, 2005). Elite-centric diplomacy, however, faces challenges when public sentiment surpasses the majority opinion of 50 percent in liberal democracies including Japan (Midford, 2010). Relations between territorial disputes, a foreign affairs domain, and public opinion, a domestic issue domain, deserve a careful examination in order to better understand probable cross-fertilization effects between the two. An observation that Japanese people’s overall interests in the territorial issues are considerably low vis-à-vis those of Chinese and Koreans is no longer valid (e.g., Hyun, 2008). The crucial momentum in shifting the public opinion in Japan took place when Chinese fishing boat collided into the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) patrol vessel in the Senkaku islands (aka, Diaoyudao)2 in September, 2010. The Chinese captain under the influence of alcohol was arrested by the Japanese Coast Guard, but was soon released by the Naha Local Prosecutors’ Office of Okinawa Prefecture. When the information that the Kan Naoto Administration was behind the sudden release of the Chinese captain, the Japanese public opinion began to shift against then ruling Democratic Party of Japan. The opinion deteriorated further when the video footage of the collision scene taped by the JCG staff was leaked to the media. The Tokyo government had ordered the JCG to conceal the audiovisual evidence so as not to agitate the public opinion in Japan, and a whistle-blower took the initiative to make the footage available for the public information. The Kan administration was under severe criticisms, for its handling was interpreted as Japan’s unprincipled kowtow to unruly China. Furthermore, more intense skirmishes began to unfold between Japan and Korea in the following year. The Seoul government denied the port entry of three conservative politicians of Liberal Democratic Party of Japan who tried to visit the Dokdo (Takeshima in Japanese) Museum in August, 2011. The Japanese media reacted critically to the Seoul government’s responses. The conservative Sankei Newspaper, for instance, linked the Korean government’s behavior to the upcoming elections. The incumbent party could not risk the electoral defeat by accommodating 372

Japanese perceptions of disputes

the Japanese politicians’ provocations. The liberal Asahi Newspaper asserted that the border entry denial was an unprecedented diplomatic event between allies. The Nihon Keizai, on the other hand, called for calm and rational approach to the territorial disputes for Korea and Japan need to cooperate with each other on other important bilateral issues. In this unsettling milieu, the East Asian governments are paying increasing attention to domestic public opinion on territorial disputes. The Tokyo government, for example, launched a nationwide public advertisement campaign on Japan’s Takeshima sovereignty claims with 70 domestic newspapers immediately after both leaders of Korea and Japan had agreed to lower the tension level in September, 2012. The public campaign drive was extended to the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s surprise Dokdo visit in August, 2012. The media in Japan reacted, again, with harsh assessments of the unprecedented visit to the disputed islets. NHK News Watch 9, for instance, reported that the Korean leader tried to win the upcoming elections at the cost of Japan-Korea relations. TV Asahi linked Lee’s audacious act to his post-retirement strategies by citing the long list of the previous Korean presidents subject to various punishments. The Japanese weekly magazines well known for scandalous exposé articles also carried the pieces on President Lee’s private affairs. It was one of the rare occasions where so-called “yellow journalism” got involved in foreign affairs. Tokyo proceeded to nationalize the Diaoyudao/Senkaku on September 11, 2012. This decision was a bold reaction to the multiple preceding events such as harsh criticisms against Tokyo government’s China policy, the Tokyo governor Mr. Ishihara’s island purchase maneuverings, the Japanese politicians’ entry denial to Korea and the Korean President’s Dokdo visit, among others. The overall evaluations of the Senkaku nationalization are not all positive. The audacious move was a very clear provocation to China because Japan has been in effective administrative control of the island. It was an excessive move. Furthermore, Tokyo violated the diplomatic protocols in a few important scores. Prime Minister Noda did not inform his Chinese counterpart, Premier Hu Jintao, of the nationalization plan in his personal letter sent around the end of August, 2012. Tokyo also hurried to take the action soon after President Hu’s expressions of strong concerns over Japan’s nationalization move as “illegal” and “ineffective” at the APEC meeting held on September 9. The primary audience of Japan’s territorial provocation was the domestic constituents rather than the disputant, China. These recent events are translated into Japanese public’s rising awareness of territorial disputes. Considering the increasing importance of domestic perception/opinion toward foreign affairs, this chapter aims to investigate causal relations between socio-psychological state and public opinion on territorial disputes.

Existing studies and research hypotheses This study aims to investigate the probably causal relations between socio-psychological conditions and the views on territorial disputes. The recent watershed momentums demand a more thoughtful analysis for the existing explanations linking the impasse to ruling elite behavior are becoming a passe (e.g., Bong, 2013). Should the issue was confined to the limited circle of policy elites, the Japanese government would not have nationalized the Senkaku at the expense of China-Japan relations. The same observation applies to President Lee’s provocation risking Japan-Korea relations. This insight suggests a need for further refinement of the existing conflict cycle model (Fukuhara, 2010). The model involving the procedural steps of status quo, provocation, rise of tension and its relaxation provides few new insights, because prolonged tension cannot sustain itself in any conflict situation. The steps in the model are teleological. Bae reports an interesting empirical analysis that the number of reports on Dokdo/Takeshima in Korea during 1990 and 2005 take up about 60 percent of the total reports from 1952 until 2005 373

Mikyoung Kim

(Bae, 2012). Some of the questions that need further clarifications include “Why did the reports on territorial disputes increase dramatically?”, “Is there any tangible evidence linking the increase to public opinion?” and “Is the public opinion reflection of domestic conditions?”, among others. The issues pertaining to territorial disputes are explored from diverse disciplinary perspectives with particular contributions from each. Historiography, for instance, prioritizes finding and analysis of relevant evidence (Song, 2010; Yanagihara, 2008), while international law compares pertinent cases and refers to precedents (Angie, 2008; Dakas, 2008). Whereas International Relations places national interests at the core of discourse, social science fields explicate the processes and mechanisms of perception formation with more nuanced approach. The recent research trend attempts to surpass disciplinary boundaries by combining historiography, cultural studies and customary law, where Fukuhara’s study of oral history among the Takeshima/Dokdo residents is a good example (Fukuhara, 2010). This study draws on socio-psychological framework of memory studies, and hypothesizes that the present social conditions and psychological future outlook contribute to the formation of territory-related opinions. Public opinion is a measurable manifestation of presentist memory. It tests the following three sets of hypotheses. On the association between socio-psychological status and territorial disputes: Hypothesis 1: The higher the age group, the larger the number of respondents believing the Senkaku/Diaoyudao and Dokdo/Takeshima as Japanese territory; Hypothesis 2: The lower the level of educational attainment, the larger the number of respondents believing the Diaoyudao/Senkaku and Takeshima/Dokdo are Japanese territory; Hypothesis 3: The more pessimistic the future prediction of Japan, the larger the number of respondents believing the Senkaku/Diaoyudao and Dokdo/Takeshima as Japanese territory; Hypothesis 4: The deeper the region-based attachment to the territory issues, the larger the number of respondents believing the Senkaku/Diaoyudao and Dokdo/Takeshima as Japanese territory; Hypothesis 5: The stronger the identification with Asia, the larger the number of respondents believing the Senkakus/Diaoyudao and Dokdo/Takeshima as Japanese territory. On the association between socio-psychological status and China-Korea threats: Hypothesis 6: The higher the age group, the stronger the threat perceptions toward China and Korea; Hypothesis 7: The lower the level of educational attainment, the stronger the threat perception toward China and Korea; Hypothesis 8: The more pessimistic about Japan’s future, the stronger the threat perception toward China and Korea; Hypothesis 9: The deeper the region-based attachment to the territory issue, the stronger the threat perception toward China and Korea; Hypothesis 10: The stronger the identification with Asia, the stronger the threat perception toward China and Korea. On the association between socio-psychological status and policy orientation: Hypothesis 11: The higher the age group, the stronger the support for hawkish politicians and policies; 374

Japanese perceptions of disputes

Hypothesis 12: The lower the level of educational attainment, the stronger the support for hawkish politicians and policies; Hypothesis 13: The more pessimistic about Japan’s future, the stronger the support for hawkish politicians and policies; Hypothesis 14: The deeper the region-based attachment to the territory issue, the stronger the support for hawkish politicians and policies; Hypothesis 15: The stronger the identification with Asia, the stronger the support for hawkish politicians and policies. These hypotheses are to empirically test the presentist framework of memory studies (Schwartz and Kim, 2010) and frustration-aggression psychological model (e.g., Dill and Anderson, 1995). The current social status measured by age and educational level, and psychological propensity measured by future outlook, regional attachment and self-identity are expected to exert influence on the public opinion in domestic Japan.

Data and methods This research conducted two allotments of opinion poll surveys in 2012. The first round of opinion poll was taken in the Shimane, Hiroshima and Oita Prefectures from April until July of 2012. The sample population of 1,500 participants was randomly drawn from the 2012 Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Residential Directory (aka, White Pages), an open and legitimate information source. Considering the differential population size of the three prefectures and the consequentially different number of directory listings, 500 participants were randomly selected at 500th entry of each prefectural directories. Questionnaire surveys were mailed to the participants with a return envelope and postage. The three prefectures (Shimane, Hiroshima and Oita) were selected out of “psychological distance” considerations on the territorial disputes. The Shimane prefecture is claiming the administrative jurisdiction of the Oki Islands, which include Takeshima/Dokdo islets. The Shimane residents are hypothesized to have the strongest opinion as for the directly involved party. The Hiroshima prefecture was included for its assumed sensitivity toward unresolved historical issues. The region is still dealing with forced labor compensation litigations, and atomic bomb-related reparations law suits. Hiroshima residents are hypothesized to have a relatively moderate opinion about the on-going disputes. The Oita prefecture residents are hypothesized to have the most reconciliatory views. The region in the Kyushu area is relatively sheltered from the lingering Asia Pacific War-related memories (cf. Morris-Suzuki, 2013) and consequential territorial conflicts probably leading to the formation of most conciliatory opinion. The average response rate of the first round of surveys was 19 percent, at the total of 288 respondents. The Shimane response rate was 21.4 percent, at 107 replies, out of which there were 94 acceptable returns, six unknown address returns, one refusal to receive the mail through post office and six blank returns. The Hiroshima response rate was the lowest among the three prefectures at 15 percent, with 87 responses, out of which there were 75 acceptable returns, eight unknown address returns, three refusal to receive the mail and one blank return. The Oita prefecture had 16.6 percent survey response rate, with 94 replies, out of which there were 84 acceptable returns, nine unknown address returns and one blank response. The difference in response rate is relatively small among the three prefectures, and yet the low response rate alerted to a need to look at the qualitative data more carefully. When asked to provide explanations on the reasons why they hold a certain opinion, the Shimane residents wrote down the most detailed information in highest frequency. The open-ended 375

Mikyoung Kim

questions included “Why do you think the Senkaku/Diayudao (or Takeshima/Dokdo) is Japanese territory?,” “Please write down the reasons(s) why you think the Japanese government’s response to the Chinese fishing boat collision incident was (very appropriate, appropriate, inappropriate, very inappropriate, don’t know, and no answer)?,” “Please write down the reasons why you think the Liberal Democratic Party members’ attempt to visit the Dokdo Museum was (very helpful, helpful, not helpful, very unhelpful, don’t know, and no answer) to resolve the disputes?,” and “Please write down the reasons why you think the Korea-Japan relations can further deteriorate because of the Takeshima/Dokdo disputes.” The response rate and information quality were the lowest among the Oita residents, followed by Hiroshima. This observation supports the regional sampling criteria to a substantial degree. This research strategy to combine quantitative and qualitative methods is to diversify the data sets for triangulated analysis (Bickman and Rog, 2008; Creswell, 2008). The responses to the open-ended questions were created into verbatim. This analysis utilizes respective strengths of both quantitative and qualitative data sets. The opinion poll surveys taken in Japan show one peculiarity compared to other crossnational surveys. They have higher frequency in the response categories of “Don’t know” and “No answer.” The Japanese people tend to shy away from clearly expressing their thoughts, and this tendency compounded with the esoteric topic could have resulted in unusually low response rate. The low response rate could have reflected on the researchers’ non-Japanese ethnic identity from the name written on the questionnaire. The 19 percent response rate is unusually low vis-à-vis the national average of 60 percent. The conscientious act of returning the survey blank might have been an act of resistance, and those who decided not to reply probably were expressing their disapproval of the research. A few respondents showed their suspicion toward the researcher by placing a question mark next to the name, while others raised questions about the research goals and hypotheses (Kim, 2012). Furthermore, the first round of surveys suffered from unexpected problems of sample population bias. The absolute majority of respondents at 90 percent were male above the age of 60. The sample bias posed serious problem in generalizing the results. It turned out that the source of random sampling, the residential telephone directory, lists the residential home owners who are mostly male and above 60 years of age. The home and residential telephone ownership among the younger generation and female population turned out to be very low. The sample bias problem had to be corrected. An alternative method was to recruit the survey participants over the internet. That method, however, is not free from sampling bias problems. Those in the high age and low income groups do not have compatible internet access like other age and socio-economic groups. It also suffers from the potential prejudice in opinion, for those who decide to participate in the survey are likely to have pre-formed opinions about the advertised topic. Another alternative method was to use the random digit dialing method. And yet it also poses potential sampling bias problems. The telephone interview method used by the professional polling companies and public media such as NHK and major newspapers also target the home owners. It is also prone to have disproportionately high number of the housewife and retiree population, for the calls are permitted only from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. during weekdays per law. This hinders the participation of the male population active in the labor market while unusually high number of housewives and retirees are represented in the surveys. To correct the bias, the second round of opinion polls was taken at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (hereafter, APU) located in the Beppu City of Oita Prefecture. It was conducted from August until November, 2012. The reasons for selecting the APU as complementary sample pool were twofold. First, the APU has higher number of female than male students, at an approximate ratio of 60 percent and 40 percent each. Second, the student population is from all over Japan, unlike at regional universities. A total of 370 undergraduate students participated, making the total population size at 623. 376

Japanese perceptions of disputes

Analyses and results This section reports first on frequency and qualitative data analysis, and then quantitative hypotheses test results. They show a general lack of causal association between socio-psychological indices and the views on territorial disputes.

Survey frequencies Table 23.1 shows improved, and yet still not equitable, representation of gender groups, where male takes up 63 percent of the sample population. The disproportionately large number of male respondents still causes a concern for gender bias. Table 23.2 shows age distribution among the poll participants. With the second round of questionnaire surveys, the large number of participants above 60 years of age has been balanced against the APU student population mostly in their late teens and early 20s. The mode is the respondents in their 20s, followed by those in their 60s and 70s. Table 23.3 summarizes the level of educational attainment among the respondents. With the APU students participating in the poll, the majority is at a four-year college education. Table 23.1 Gender distribution (frequency, %) Region/Place

Male

Female

No response

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

85 (90%) 65 (87%) 77 (92%) 168 (37%) 395 (63%)

7 (7%) 8 (11%) 6 (7%) 198 (53%) 219 (35%)

2 (2%) 2 (3%) 1 (1%) 4 (1%) 9 (1%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 623 (100%)

Table 23.2 Age distribution (frequency, %) Region/ Place

Teens

20s

Shimane 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Hiroshima 0 (0%) 0 (0%) Oita 0 (0%) 0 (0%) APU 123 (33%) 247 (67%) Total 123 (20%) 247 (40%)

30s

40s

50s

60s

70s

80s

90s

Total

1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

4 (4%) 4 (5%) 3 (4%) 0 (0%) 11 (2%)

16 (17%) 8 (11%) 15 (8%) 0 (0%) 39 (6%)

21 (22%) 26 (35%) 31 (37%) 0 (0%) 78 (13%)

36 (38%) 18 (24%) 19 (23%) 0 (0%) 73 (12%)

15 (16%) 18 (24%) 14 (17%) 0 (0%) 47 (8%)

1 (1%) 1 (1%) 2 (2%) 0 (0%) 4 (1%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 623 (100%)

Table 23.3 Level of educational attainment (frequency, %) Region/ Place

Elementary/ Middle school

High school

2-Year college

4-Year college

Graduate school

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU1 Total

14 (15%) 11 (15%) 19 (23%) 0 (0%) 44 (7%)

39 (41%) 21 (28%) 22 (26%) 79 (21%) 161 (26%)

22 (23%) 15 (20%) 24 (29%) 84 (23%) 145 (23%)

10 (11%) 19 (25%) 17 (20%) 207 (56%) 253 (41%)

3 (3%) 4 (5%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 8 (1%)

3 (3%) 5 (7%) 1 (1%) 0 (0%) 9 (1%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 623 (100%)

1. The freshman year undergraduate students are categorized as high school graduates, the sophomores and juniors are grouped as two-year college graduates and the seniors are grouped as four-year college graduates.

377

Mikyoung Kim

Japanese perceptions of the Senkakus/Diaoyudao disputes Table 23.4 is to gauge the level of knowledge and information on Japan’s territorial disputes. The absolute majority at 96 percent have heard about the disputes, and it shows no regional and generational differences. When asked about the sources of information, the majority named the public media, such as television and newspaper. The respondents in their teens and 20s, at 58 percent, named the internet followed by friends (29 percent), family members (27 percent) and textbooks (10 percent).3 Table 23.5 is about the Japanese people’s ownership perception of the disputed Senkaku/ Diaoyudao, and the majority of the respondents, at 69 percent, think of the islands as Japanese sovereign territory. When asked to explain the reasons why they believe so, they mentioned they are the “Japanese territory since ancient times,” “there are records of Japanese fishing in the vicinity,” “Japanese people are currently living in the islands,” “they are registered with Japanese land registry,” and “China began its ownership claim only after a large amount of natural resources are found underneath,” among other responses. Those who do not believe in the Japanese sovereignty of the area are at mere 3 percent, whereas a non-negligible 20 percent chose “Don’t know,” with 8 percent of “No answer.” Table 23.6 shows the knowledge level on the Senkaku/Diaoyudao disputes. About 83 percent of the respondents knew the exact location of the disputed territory, while the positive response Table 23.4 Do you know of the Senkakus/Diaoyudao disputes? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

91 (97%) 71 (95%) 82 (98%) 354 (96%) 598 (96%)

2 (2%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) 12 (3%) 15 (2%)

1 (1%) 4 (5%) 1 (1%) 4 (1%) 10 (2%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 623 (100%)

Table 23.5 Is the Senkaku/Diaoyudao Japanese territory? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

70 (74%) 50 (67%) 68 (81%) 231 (63%) 419 (69%)

0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) 24 (6%) 25 (3%)

13 (14%) 11 (15%) 13 (15%) 99 (27%) 136 (20%)

11 (12%) 14 (19%) 2 (2%) 16 (4%) 43 (8%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 623 (100%)

Table 23.6 Do you know the exact location of the Senkaku/Diaoyudao? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

90 (96%) 71 (95%) 73 (87%) 239 (65%) 473 (81%)

3 (3%) 0 (0%) 3 (4%) 121 (33%) 127 (15%)

1 (1%) 4 (5%) 8 (10%) 10 (3%) 23 (4%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 623 (100%)

378

Japanese perceptions of disputes

rate among the younger generation was substantially low, at 65 percent, compared with other age groups’ average, at 93 percent. Table 23.7 is about the assessment of the Japanese government’s handling of the Chinese fishing boat collision incident of September, 2010. With little regional differences, 39 percent of the respondents evaluated negatively the Naoto Administration’s leniency toward the Chinese offender. This contrasts with 18 percent of positive evaluation and 15 percent of ambivalent assessment. When asked to explain the reasons for the critical assessment, the responses included the following: “The Senkaku are the Japanese territory. The government’s handling was too lenient for the offense,” “The Chinese captain should have been tried in the Japanese domestic court because he caused troubles within Japanese territory,” “The Tokyo government got weakkneed to Beijing” and “The Chinese side violated Japan’s sovereignty,” among others. Those with positive opinions cited pragmatic reasons that “Japan has nothing to gain by worsening its relations with China.” Table 23.8 reports about the Japanese people’s future predictions on China-Japan relations from the perspective of on-going territorial disputes. The majority, of 61 percent, believe the relations will further deteriorate, while only 13 percent hold an optimistic outlook. Those who picked “Don’t know” and “No answer” were substantial, at 21 percent, and at 5 percent each. When asked about the reasons for such predictions, majority of them cited problems with the Chinese behavior, such as China’s greed for natural resources, unruly behavior in international community, and lack of civic and democratic norms. One notable point is the increase

Table 23.7 How do you evaluate Japanese government’s handling of the Chinese fishing boat’s collision into the Japan Coast Guard petrol boat? (frequency, %) Answer/ Region 

Shimane

Very well handled

6

Hiroshima 4 Oita 7 APU 4 Total 21

Well handled

Moderate

-6% 11 -12% 13 -14% -5% -8% -1% -4%

16 11 46 84

-21% -13% -12% -14%

12 15 55 95

Poorly handled

Very poorly handled

27 -29% 18 -19%

-16% 19 -18% 28 -15% 79 -15% 153

-25% -33% -21% -26%

Don’t know No answer

10 -11%

9 -10%

Total

94 (100%)

10 -13% 5 -7% 9 -12% 75 -100% 12 -14% 7 -8% 4 -5% 84 -100% 30 -8% 137 -37% 20 -5% 370 -100% 70 -13% 159 -21% 42 -7% 623 -100%

Table 23.8 Will China-Japan relations further deteriorate because of the Senkakus/Diaoyudao disputes? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

40 (43%) 32 (42%) 36 (43%) 323 (87%) 431 (61%)

18 (19%) 16 (21%) 17 (20%) 10 (3%) 61 (13%)

26 (28%) 20 (27%) 27 (32%) 36 (10%) 109 (21%)

8 (9%) 7 (9%) 4 (5%) 2 (1%) 21 (5%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 623 (100%)

379

Mikyoung Kim Table 23.9 Do you think China is likely to attack Japan to resolve the Senkakus/Diaoyudao disputes? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

15 (16%) 11 (15%) 20 (24%) 200 (54%) 246 (33%)

34 (36%) 28 (37%) 35 (42%) 65 (18%) 162 (30%)

35 (37%) 31 (41%) 26 (31%) 103 (28) 195 (33%)

10 (11%) 5 (7%) 3 (4%) 2 (1) 20 (4%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

of pessimistic outlook from the second round of poll survey. This reflects China’s unexpectedly stern response to Tokyo’s nationalization of the Senkaku, which happened after the collision incident. Table 23.9 is another questionnaire survey item on future predictions of Japan-China relations. While 33 percent of respondents believe in the possibility of China’s military attack on Japan, 30 percent hold opposite opinions. The student group was three times more likely to believe in the possibilities of violent clash, at 54 percent, and the citizens’ groups at 18 percent. This, again, seems to reflect on heightened tension level in the disputed area where the Chinese and Japanese Navy vessels exchanged water cannon attacks since Tokyo’s nationalization of the area in September, 2012. The high proportion of the respondents with “Don’t know,” at 33 percent, and “No answer,” at 30 percent, suggests the unsettled views on the future trajectory of China-Japan relations.

Japanese perceptions of the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes Table 23.10 shows the Japanese information on the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes. The majority, at 91 percent, know of the disputes, and this is about 5 percent lower than those who know of the Diaoyudao/Senkaku conflicts (see Table 23.4). The absolute majority of them named television and newspapers as their primary information source. Among the respondents in their teens and 20s, the internet was the mode, at 61 percent, followed by newspapers, friends, family members and textbooks, in that order. Table 23.11 is a question on the territorial sovereignty perception. The majority, at 67 percent, consider Dokdo/Takeshima as Japanese territory, while 27 percent chose “Don’t know.” This result is almost equitable with the number of Japanese respondents who claim the sovereignty of Senkakus, at 69 percent (see Table 23.5). Table 23.12 is to gauge the level of knowledge on the Takeshima/Dokdo disputes by asking about its exact location, and 76 percent of the respondents know the location. This response rate, however, is lower when compared with 81 percent of the positive reply on the Daioyudao/ Senkaku location question (see Table 23.6). The high negative response among the APU students, at 34 percent, is a drastic contrast of 4 percent negative response among the Shimane residents. The geographical-psychological distance explains this substantial gap. Table 23.13 is about the Japanese people’s assessment of the Tokyo government’s handling of the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes. The questionnaire item is on the three conservative Liberal Democratic Party members’ attempt to visit the Dokdo Museum located in the Ulleung Island in August 2011. The overall evaluation is positive at 46 percent of approval rate. Those who answered “Don’t know” are substantial, at 38 percent. The first and second rounds of survey polls demonstrate, again, the clear difference. The first survey results demonstrate the high frustration 380

Table 23.10 Do you know of the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

84 (89%) 62 (83%) 77 (92%) 348 (94%) 571 (91%)

1 (1%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 16 (4%) 17 (2%)

1 (1%) 3 (7%) 7 (8%) 0 (0%) 11 (3%)

8 (9%) 10 (13%) 0 (0%) 6 (2%) 24 (5%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

Table 23.11 Is the Takeshima/Dokdo Japanese territory? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

81 (86%) 60 (80%) 63 (75%) 176 (48%) 380 (67%)

0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 (1%) 12 (3%) 13 (2%)

6 (6%) 10 (13%) 18 (21%) 166 (45%) 200 (27%)

7 (7%) 5 (7%) 2 (2%) 16 (4%) 30 (5%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

Table 23.12 Do you know the exact location of the Dokdo/Takeshima? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

84 (89%) 64 (85%) 71 (85%) 231 (63%) 450 (76%)

4 (4%) 6 (8%) 6 (7%) 127 (34%) 143 (18%)

6 (6%) 7 (5%) 7 (8%) 12 (3%) 32 (6%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

Table 23.13 How do you evaluate the three LDP members’ attempt to visit the disputed Dokdo/Takeshima islets? (frequency, %) Answer Item

Shimane

Hiroshima

Oita

APU

Total

Played big role Played role About average Not wise Very unwise Don’t know No answer Total

10 (11%) 20 (21%) 13 (14%) 8 (9%) 3 (3%) 28 (30%) 12 (13%) 94 (100%)

5 (7%) 17 (23%) 12 (16%) 8 (11%) 4 (5%) 22 (29%) 7 (9%) 75 (100%)

8 (10%) 11 (13%) 15 (18%) 11 (13%) 5 (6%) 25 (30%) 9 (11%) 84 (100%)

2 (1%) 26 (7%) 47 (13%) 63 (17%) 16 (4%) 178 (48%) 38 (10%) 370 (100%)

25 (5%) 74 (41%) 87 (15%) 90 (13%) 28 (5%) 253 (38%) 66 (11%) 632 (100%)

Mikyoung Kim Table 23.14 Will the Japan-Korea relations further deteriorate because of the Dokdo/ Takeshima disputes? (frequency, %) Origin/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

39 (41%) 35 (47%) 32 (38%) 259 (70%) 365 (49%)

18 (19%) 15 (20%) 23 (27%) 30 (8%) 86 (19%)

30 (32%) 22 (29%) 25 (30%) 67 (18%) 144 (25%)

7 (7%) 3 (4%) 4 (5%) 14 (4%) 28 (5%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

Table 23.15 Do you think violent confrontation is likely to take place between Korea and Japan because of the Dokdo/Takeshima? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

17 (18%) 10 (13%) 11 (13%) 58 (31%) 96 (22%)

35 (37%) 39 (52%) 45 (54%) 68 (36%) 187 (43%)

36 (38%) 23 (31%) 23 (27%) 52 (28%) 134 (30%)

6 (6%) 3 (4%) 5 (6%) 7 (4%) 21 (5%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

level with the Tokyo government’s ambivalence toward the Takeshima situation under Korea’s administrative control. The respondents were approving of the politicians’ audacious acts in general. The college student population for the second round of surveys, however, exhibits more skepticism toward the politicians ,where the majority, at 48 percent, chose “Don’t know.” South Korean President Lee’s surprise Dokdo visit happened between the first and second rounds of the survey, and it seemed to have contributed to more pessimistic outlook on the disputes. Table 23.14 regards the Japanese respondents’ future prediction of Korea-Japan relations due to the Takeshima/Dokdo disputes. The overall reactions are pessimistic, at 49 percent who foresee further deterioration and 19 percent with optimistic predictions. Similar to the results reported in Table 23.13, the first and second rounds of survey demonstrate a clear difference in opinion. The second group is far more pessimistic than the first group because of the tension escalation since the first poll was taken. Table 23.15 is, again, about the future prediction of Korea-Japan relations. When asked about the probability of violent clash between Japan and Korea over the contested territory, the responses are almost evenly split among “Yes,” “No” and “Don’t know.” This alert level is relatively relaxed when compared to the China threat perception (see Table 23.9).

Japan’s identity and future perceptions As for the last questionnaire items, the following two reports are about Japanese people’s selfidentity in Asia, and their outlook on the nation’s future trajectory. Table 23.16 is a summary report of the question, “Is Japan an Asian country?” The majority sees Japan as Asian country which is a drastic increase from the 1987 NHK opinion poll, where 57 percent regarded Japan as a part of the West, not Asia (Hastings and Hastings, 1988: 131). This change in ideational perception seems to reflect Asia’s growth, China’s rise and Japan’s relative decline among others. 382

Japanese perceptions of disputes Table 23.16 Is Japan an Asian country? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Yes

No

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

70 (74%) 52 (69%) 60 (71%) 228 (61%) 410 (68%)

6 (6%) 3 (4%) 2 (2%) 28 (7%) 39 (6%)

10 (11%) 13 (17%) 13 (15%) 91 (25%) 127 (19%)

8 (9%) 17 (19%) 9 (11%) 24 (6%) 58 (10%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (84%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

Table 23.17 How do you predict Japan’s future? (frequency, %) Region/Place

Bright

Average

Dark

Don’t know

No answer

Total

Shimane Hiroshima Oita APU Total

11 (12%) 6 (8%) 12 (14%) 32 (9%) 61 (10%)

37 (39%) 26 (35%) 29 (35%) 51 (14%) 143 (27%)

30 (32%) 32 (43%) 28 (33%) 140 (38%) 161 (37%)

10 (11%) 6 (8%) 13 (15%) 121 (33%) 90 (20%)

6 (6%) 5 (7%) 2 (2%) 26 (7%) 26 (6%)

94 (100%) 75 (100%) 84 (100%) 370 (100%) 632 (100%)

Table 23.17 is about the respondents’ perception of Japan’s future outlook. When asked “How do you predict Japan’s future?,” 37 percent answered “Dark,” with only 10 percent answering “Bright.” The overall response is pessimistic.

Hypotheses test results To test the hypotheses on the causal associations between independent variables (socio-psychological measurements: age, educational attainment level, region, Japan’s Asian identity and Japan’s future outlook) and dependent variables (territorial sovereignty claims, threat perceptions and hawkish policy orientation), logit multivariate regression analyses were conducted (see Table 23.18). On the association between socio-psychological variables and territorial disputes, the only variable which has statistical significance was age. The higher the age is, the stronger the territorial sovereignty claims becomes. On the threat perceptions vis-à-vis China and Korea, all the hypotheses were nullified at 0.05 level. Only the variable of Japan’s future is significant at 0.1 probability level. In other words, the more pessimistic about the future of Japan, the bigger the threat perceptions toward China. On the possibility of violent clash between Korea and Japan over Dokdo/Takeshima, none of the hypotheses were valid at 0.05 probability level. Two variables of Japan’s future and Japan’s Asian identity turned out to be valid at 0.1 probability level. This means the more pessimistic the respondents feel about the future of Japan and the stronger Japan’s identification with other Asian countries, the bigger their perceptions of Japan and Korea’s violent confrontation. On the causal association between socio-psychological variables and the respondents’ support for hawkish government policies, none of the hypotheses were supported at 0.05 probability level. However, the variables of education, Japan’s future, region and Asian identity turn out to be valid at 0.1 probability level. This means the lower the level of educational attainment, the 383

Mikyoung Kim Table 23.18 Results of logit multivariate analyses1 Independent variables/ dependent variables

Dependent variables I. Territorial sovereignty claim; II. Threat perceptions toward China and Korea; III. Policy stance

I. Territory Sovereignty claim

Estimate

Age(age) Educational attainment(edu) Region(region) Future of Japan( ja.future) Asiatic identity( ja.asia) AIC II. Threat perceptions toward China and Korea

Std. Error

z value

Pr (>|z|)

0.267308 -0.034389

0.118768 0.117178

2.251 -0.293

0.0244* 0.7692

0.014139 0.014139 -0.00312 153.25

0.096346 0.096346 0.29173

0.024 0.024 -0.0243

0.8931 0.8931 0.8765

Estimate

Std. error

z value

Pr (>|z|) 0.0025** 0.2143

Age(age) Educational attainment(edu) Region(region) Future of Japan( ja.future) Asiatic identity( ja.asia) AIC

0.4001 0.1640

0.1326 0.1320

3.017 1.242

0.0952 -0.2255 -0.1893 185.1

0.0814 0.3194 0.2081

1.139 –0.706 -0.6521

0.1978 0.4801 0.3709

III. Policy stance

Estimate

Std. Error

z value

Pr (>|z|)

-0.15131 0.10242

0.10808 0.09928

-1.400 1.032

0.1615 0.3023

0.09781 0.53129 0.02378 155.46

0.07823 0.27930 0.09785

Age(age) Educational attainment(edu) Region(region) Future of Japan( ja.future) Asiatic identity( ja.asia) AIC

0.0764 1.902 0.7923

0.2671 0.0571 0.1697

1. The level of statistical analysis is like the following: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’1

closer psychological and geographical distance to the disputed areas, and the stronger Japan’s identification with other Asian countries, the stronger the support for hawkish policy. One thing to note here is that there is inverse association between Japan’s future prediction and support for the hard-line stance. In other words, gloomy future prediction leads to more conciliatory posture toward Japan’s Asian neighbors. The qualitative data embeds illuminating narratives ranging from normative (e.g., “Japan should expand its territorial size in order to become stronger,” etc.) to judgmental (“Any assertion made by China cannot be trusted,” “Today’s Korea was possible thanks to Japan’s modernization policy. Its territorial claim shows regrettable ingratitude,” etc.). The support for the causal association between socio-psychological conditions and territorial perceptions is generally weak in Japan. 384

Japanese perceptions of disputes

Conclusion The findings of this research are mostly consistent with existing studies. For example, Akihisa Nagashima, the former special advisor to the Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs and National Security, stated during an 2011 interview that “The Japanese people believe that Takeshima is 100% Japanese territory because that is what they have been told” (Monthly Chosun, September 2011: 160). Akaha Tsuneo reports of no regional variations in the Japanese sovereignty claims of the contested Northern territory (author correspondence, July 27, 2012). Kono Masaru’s research shows rapidly deteriorating sentiments toward China and Korea upon Tokyo’s Senkaku/ Diaoyudao nationalization and Korean President Lee’s Dokdo/Takeshima visit. Kono’s panel study shows the perceptual gap among age groups where the younger generations are in bigger support for Japan’s military maneuvers to preempt than the elderly groups (Yomiuri Shimbun, November 12, 2012). The polls taken in the 1980s during Nakasone Yasuhiro’s reign and in the early 2000s during the Koizumi Junichiro Administration consistently show the majority’s territorial sovereignty claims. Public opinion fluctuates per contextual tides. One area in need of further exploration is the relationship between public opinion and government behavior, where public opinion functions as an intervening variable. Domestic public opinion exerts limited influence on foreign policy domain. The critical mass factor does exist where the ruling elites can no longer command the exclusive policy autonomy within liberal democratic milieu. The recent watershed momentums in East Asian territorial disputes, for example, suggest limited validity of procedural cycle theorem of conflict resolution. The process instead is more dynamic and interactive, where a national government has multiple behavioral options, which also entails a multitude of choices from the counterpart. The modality should be revised from the static procession of status quo – > provocation – > rise of tension – > relaxation of conflict to simultaneous and interactive interstate behavior expressed like the following: action {tension/status quo/reconciliation} – > reaction {tension/status quo/reconciliation}. One state has one set of three policy options which induces another set of three behavioral responses from its counterpart. When two states interact with each other, nine types of policy options become available. Majority public opinion mediates among the above-mentioned multiple options. When the Korean President Lee decided to visit the Dokdo/Takeshima in August 2012, he was aware of the ardent Korean conviction of the islet ownership. With the strong popular backing, he opted to raise the tension level vis-à-vis Japan. This, in turn, aggravated Japanese public opinion, which was translated into Japan’s nationalization of the Daioyudao/Senkaku in the following month. Should there have been lack of popular support for Tokyo’s tension-raising policy against Beijing, the Noda administration would not have adopted such provocative policy. The public opinion was created because of the unexpected collision incident committed by the drunk Chinese fishing boat captain: a hard-to-predict and difficult-to-control type of contingency which can destabilize East Asian regional dynamics. Another empirical case involved two local administrations of the Shimane prefecture in Japan and Kyungsangbuk-do of Korea. When the Shimane prefecture was receiving the Kyungsangbuk-do delegation in 1992 to celebrate their sister-ship relations joined on October 16, 1989, the Japanese locality displayed a banner on the prefectural building stating, “Takeshima is Japanese territory.” Upon confronting the provocation, the Korean delegation chose the option of status quo in order not to dampen the friendship spirit. The situation was defused because of conciliatory reactions from the Korean counterpart (Lee, 2010). The current conservative political milieu in Japan and Korea is likelyto contribute to more tension-prone policies than other policy alternatives. With the sweeping victories of Abe Shinzo’s 385

Mikyoung Kim

Liberal Democratic Party in the December 2012 elections, Tokyo’s stance demonstrates clear differences from the previous Democratic Party of Japan. The central government, for instance, dispatched a high-ranking official to the Takeshima Day ceremony on February 22, 2013 and 2014. The rising tide of nationalism in China and Korea would lead to a tit-for-tat type of tension escalation. This study demonstrates a very weak causality between socio-psychological measurements and territorial perceptions. It also provides a useful trial-and-error template in conducting opinion poll surveys on sensitive issues by a non-ethnic Japanese researcher. Furthermore this chapter calls for an alternative explanatory model which can encompass the interactive and simultaneous nature of inter-state behavior. Finally, this study suggests a future research direction where public opinion functions as a mediating variable in a government’s foreign policy behavior.

Notes This research was possible with the funding from Northeast Asia History Foundation in Korea (2012). The author, as an individual researcher, bears all responsibility for any potential errors and/or shortcomings. Hiroshima City University has nothing to do with this research. I wish to thank Professor Sato Yoichiro and his colleagues at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan for helping me with the data collection. I also thank Seungmin Kook at the University of California-San Diego for assisting me with statistical analyses. 1 An earlier version of this essay appeared as “Japanese Perceptions of Territorial Disputes: Opinion Poll Surveys in the Southwestern Part of Japan,” East Asia: An International Quarterly, (2015, Vol. 32, No. 3). 2 Considering the disputing nature of territories, the order of the area names is alternated. The same applies to the order of naming countries. 3 The total is larger than 100 percent because of the questionnaire request to name three sources of information.

References Angie, Antony, “Kukjae’bup, Shikminjueui’wa Yongto’bunjaeng [International Law, Colonialism and Territorial Disputes],” paper presented at the international conference organized by the Northeast Asia History Foundation and the Inha University (Seoul, November 2008). Bae, Jin-soo, “Ilbon’eui Dokdo Dobal’gwa Hankuk’eui Yongto’jukwon Suho Hyunhwang’mit Chuyi: Dokdo Ivaent Daeituh Kuchuk’eul Tonghan Haegyol’eui Pilyosung [Japan’s Dokdo Provocations and the Trend of Korea’s Territorial Protection: An Empirical Analysis of Dokdo Event Data],” Woegyo Anbo Yongu, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2012), 121–156. Bickman, Leonard, and Rog, Debra, The Sage Handbook of Applied Social Research Method (New York: Sage, 2008). Bong,Young-shik, “The Dokdo Built to Last,” Memory Studies Journal, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Spring, 2013), 191–203. Creswell, John, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods (New York: Sage, 2008). Dakas, Seejay Dakas, “Shikminjueui’ae Daehan Sim’mun: Bakashi, Shikminjueui Chaekim, Kurigo Julsil’han Yureop’joongsim’jueui’jokin Kukjae’bop’eui Tapah [An Interrogation of Colonialism: Bakashi, Responsibility for Colonialism, and the Demolition of Euro-centric Colonial International Law],” paper presented at the international conference organized by the Northeast Asia History Foundation and the Inha University (Seoul, November 2008). Dill, Jody C., and Anderson, Craig A., “Effects of Justified and Unjustified Frustration on Aggression,” Aggressive Behavior, Vol. 21 (1995), 359–369. Fukuhara, Yuichi, “Takeshima/Dokdo’Kenkyuuni’okeru Dai3no’shikaku, Koushou’suru Higashi’ajia: Kindai’kara Gendai’made [The Third Perspective for the Takeshima/Dokdo Research: From Contemporary to Modern Times],” in Preparatory Committee to Celebrate the 70th Birthday of Professor Choi Gil-sung (ed.), Choi Gil-sung’sunsaeng Gohi’ginyum’munjip [A Volume Dedicated to the 70th Birthday of Professor Choi Gil-sung] (Tokyo: Huukyousha, 2010). Hastings, Elizabeth H., and Hastings, Patrick K., Index to International Public Opinion, 1986–1987 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988).

386

Japanese perceptions of disputes Hyun, Dae-song, Hankuk’gwa Ilbon’eui Yoksa’insik: Dokdo, Yasukuni, Wianbu, Gyogwaseo Munjae’eui Geunwon’gwa Jaengjum [The Historical Perceptions of Korea and Japan: The Origin and Controversies over Dokdo, Yasukuni, Comfort Women and Textbook Controversies] (Seoul: Nanam, 2008). Kim, Mikyoung, “A Survey on Japanese Perception of Territorial Disputes,” The Korea Times (July 26, 2012). Lee, Sung-hwan, “Dokdo’wa Kyungsangbuk-do [Dokdo and Takeshima],” paper presented at the Takeshima/ Dokdo Study Group Workshop (Hiroshima, July 2010). Midford, Paul, Rethinking Japanese Public Opinion and Security: From Pacifism to Realism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). Monthly Chosun, “Hyunan Intavyu, Nagashima Akihisa, ‘Dokdo’neun Hankook Ttang, takeshima’neun Ilbon Ttang, Ilbon’eun Takeshima Juldae Pogi Mothae’ [Interview on Current Issue, Nagashima Akihisa, ‘the Dokdo is Korean Territory, the Takeshima is Japanese Territory, Japan Will Never Give Up the Takeshima’]” (September, 2011). Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, “Lavish Are the Dead: Re-envisioning Japan’s Korean War,” The Asia Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 52, No. 3, December 30, 2013 (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/4054/ article.html, accessed November 25, 2014). Schwartz, Barry, and Mikyoung Kim, “Introduction: Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem,” in Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz (eds.), Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory (London: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers, 2010), pp. 1–30. Song, Byung-gi, Ulleung-do’wa Dokdo, Keo Yoksajok Kumjeung [The Ulleung Island and the Dokdo, Historical Investigation] (Seoul: Yoksa Gonggan, 2010). Yanagihara, Masaharu, “Youngyu’kwon Kwanjeom’aesuh’bon ‘Takeshima 1geon’ Jaego [An Analysis of the Takeshima Case from Sovereign Territory Perspective],” paper presented at the international conference organized by the Northeast Asia History Foundation and the Inha University (Seoul, November 2008). Yankelovich, Daniel, “Poll Positions,” Foreign Affairs (September/October, 2005), 2–16. Yomiuri Shimbun, November 12, 2012, page 3.

387

24 EAST ASIA AND COSMOPOLITAN MEMORY Hiro Saito

The Asia-Pacific War ended when Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers on August 15, 1945. It was the largest and bloodiest war that people in Asia-Pacific ever experienced – millions of soldiers and civilians perished. Given its enormous human costs, the war still haunts Japan’s relations with neighboring countries. Especially with China and South Korea, Japan has engaged in intense controversies over commemorations of the war, ranging from prime ministers’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to contents of Japanese history textbooks. This came to be known as East Asia’s “history problem.” Since there is already extensive literature on how the history problem evolved in East Asia (Jager and Mitter 2007; Kim and Schwartz 2010; Liu, Mitani, and Yang 2006; Seraphim 2008), I am not going to recapitulate these historical accounts in this chapter. Instead, I will offer a sociological analysis of the history problem to illuminate its institutional underpinnings. To this end, I first illustrate how the history problem resulted from a collision of mutually reinforcing nationalist memories in Japan, China, and South Korea. Although the Japanese government is primarily responsible for causing the history problem by continuing to defend nationalism in its official memory, the history problem is fundamentally a relational phenomenon, wherein nationalist memories in China and South Korea, too, play an important role (He 2009; Lind 2008). At the same time, I also point out that nationalism is not the only logic available for construction of collective memory. While nationalist memory was dominant in the twentieth century, cosmopolitanism has emerged to facilitate construction of cosmopolitan memory that transcends national borders (Beck, Levy, and Sznaider 2009; Levy and Sznaider 2006, 2010). Put another way, the mixture of defiance and contrition in Japan’s official memory of the Asia-Pacific War (Berger 2012) is embedded in the worldwide, macro-institutional environment that legitimates both nationalism and cosmopolitanism as logics of collective memory. To understand the trajectory and dynamics of the East Asian history problem, then, it is crucial to consider how relevant political actors negotiate tensions between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Here, “relevant political actors” include not only politicians and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) but also historians. Specifically, in response to the escalation of the history problem set off by Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (hereafter Tsukurukai), historians in Japan, China, and South Korea began to organize joint historical research and textbook projects in the early 2000s (see chapters 16 and 25 in this volume). In this regard, they started the East Asian version of “Historians’ Debate” (Habermas 1989), jointly challenging nationalist memories 388

East Asia and cosmopolitan memory

of the Asia-Pacific War. Thus, historians’ activities and their interactions with collective memories hold the key to understanding the recent trajectory and dynamics of the history problem. Moreover, I argue that the East Asian Historians’ Debate points to the necessity of critically reassessing the so-called Tokyo-Trial historical view, a focal point for nationalist memories in Japan, China, and South Korea.1 This historical view, which defines Japan as the sole, absolute perpetrator in the Asia-Pacific War, has fueled resentment against “victor’s justice” among Japanese nationalists, while allowing Chinese and South Korean nationalists to blame Japan alone for the history problem. Here, I suggest that a critical reassessment of the Tokyo-Trial historical view has the potential to facilitate joint construction of cosmopolitan memory by helping Japan accept its share of guilt decisively and China and South Korea accept factual and moral ambiguities of the war. In short, the prospect for reconciliation in East Asia depends on how the people and governments in the three countries will succeed in fostering incipient cosmopolitan memories in light of historians’ critique of existing nationalist memories.

The structure of the history problem To understand institutional underpinnings of the history problem, it is first necessary to clarify the nature of commemoration as a vehicle for constructing collective memory vis-à-vis collective identity. In essence, commemoration is an act of remembering the past that disregards ambiguities of historical facts and provides people with clear-cut narratives as foundations of their collective identity. As philosopher Tzvetan Todorov observed, “While history makes the past more complicated, commemoration makes it simpler, since it seeks most often to supply us with heroes to worship or with enemies to detest” (2003: 133). Even though commemoration oversimplifies and even distorts, it is indispensable to social life because, only through it, can people appropriate history – so vast and complex – to create collective memory and identity (Saito 2010; also see chapter 1 in this volume). Given the intrinsic connection between commemoration and group identity formation, if different groups interact with each other, they are likely to notice disjunctions in how they remember the shared past. These disjunctive collective memories can become sources of controversies and even conflicts between the groups, for foundations of their collective identities are at stake. Thus, a history problem can happen whenever two different groups of people with crossed path interact and, in this sense, it is not unique to East Asia but widespread around the world. Conflicts over commemoration of the past become intractable, however, when they intersect with nationalism, a political doctrine and cultural idiom that divides the world into discrete, mutually exclusive national communities (Billig 1995; Calhoun 1997; Smith 2001). Over the past two centuries, nationalism has been a dominant organizing principle for a wide variety of economic, political, social, and cultural practices, including collective memory. When people construct collective memory by drawing on the nationalist logic, they focus on their co-nationals, whether heroes or victims, without sufficient regard for foreign others. In fact, nationalist memory tends to dehumanize the foreign other to emphasize positive images of in-group members. The focus on co-nationals and dehumanization of the foreign other manifests most clearly in nationalist memory of armed conflicts that elevate fallen soldiers to immortal heroes of the nation (Anderson 1991; Moses 1990) by disregarding whatever sufferings these soldiers might have inflicted on foreign “enemies.” Moreover, nationalism excludes the foreign other in another sense: the principle of national sovereignty prohibits foreign influence over contents of collective memory. This national sovereignty continues to be asserted in history education, where historians who are citizens of a given country are often allowed to write “national history” without consulting with relevant foreign historians. 389

Hiro Saito

In short, by doubly excluding the foreign other – from both the process and content of commemoration – nationalist memory prompts people to embrace a certain version of the past as a foundation of their national identity. As a result, if nationalist memories come into contact with each other, they can cause intense controversies: a collision of contradictory versions of history, predicated on the negation of the foreign other, is a recipe for escalating mutual distrust and denunciation. This is how a historical problem, which is rather commonplace in itself, becomes an intractable point of contention in intergroup relations. In East Asia, too, the history problem began to intensify from the 1990s onward because nationalists in Japan, China, and South Korea mutually reinforced their respective nationalist memories. In the early 1990s, Japanese nationalists who had dominated the government resisted against commemoration of Chinese and South Korean victims of Japan’s past aggression. This in turn galvanized Chinese and South Korean nationalists to heighten their denunciation of the Japanese government. This negative spiral of mutually reinforcement peaked in 2005, when various nationalistic actions on Japan’s part, such as Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and the government approval of Tsukurukai’s nationalist history textbook, were countered by anti-Japanese protests in China and South Korea. It is therefore crucial to recognize that the East Asian history problem is relationally constituted (Berger 2012; He 2009; Lind 2008). Even though Japan’s nationalist memory is a primary cause of the history problem, it is only through its collision with nationalist memories in China and South Korea that the history problem has become intractable.

The dialectic of nationalism and cosmopolitanism Nationalism, however, is not the only logic of collective memory available today. In recent years, sociologists began to explore how globalization of a human-rights discourse facilitates cosmopolitan memory – a new form of collective memory that people construct according to the logic of cosmopolitanism that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a frame of reference (Beck, Levy, and Sznaider 2009; Levy and Sznaider 2006, 2010). Originally, the United Nations (UN) organizations began to promote cosmopolitanism based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the aftermath of World War II, which had brought violent deaths and enormous sufferings to millions of people around the world, cosmopolitanism was espoused as an antidote to nationalism and a new vehicle for creating a more peaceful world. Since cosmopolitanism is increasingly institutionalized in the form of human rights around the world, the horizon of collective memory appears to be extending beyond national borders (Kim 2012a, 2014). By adopting the logic of cosmopolitanism, people can doubly include the foreign other in their collective memory: they remember what happened to foreign nationals as members of humanity while inviting them to participate in the process of shaping the content of their collective memory. As social theorist Ulrich Beck stated, cosmopolitan memory involves acknowledging the history (and the memories) of the ‘other’ and integrating them into one’s own history . . . where the national monologues of victimization that are celebrated as national memory are systematically replaced by transnational forms and forums of memory and dialogue, which also enable the innermost aspects of the national realm – the founding of myths – to be opened up to and for one another. (2005: 43) Put another way, cosmopolitan memory allows people to extend their identifications beyond national borders through transformative dialogues about the past with foreign nationals. 390

East Asia and cosmopolitan memory

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for example, currently administers two projects to promote cosmopolitan memory at the global level. The first is the World Heritage Site Program, launched in 1972 to designate natural and cultural sites around the world as important for humanity as a whole. While cultural sites consist mostly of ancient castles, temples, and monuments, among other historically important buildings – to celebrate outstanding accomplishments by humankind – they also include sites related to the Holocaust and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, to commemorate human suffering during World War II.2 The second program is Memory of the World Program, established in 1992 to protect historic documents, relics, and works of art as focal points for remembering world history. This program also includes projects to preserve historical documents related to negative aspects of world history such as the Holocaust. These two UNESCO programs encourage people around the world to commemorate events that happened to foreign others as fellow human beings so that they can construct collective memory and identity that takes humanity as a primary frame of reference. Nevertheless, it is important to note that cosmopolitan memory is not replacing nationalist memory in a zero-sum manner. Instead, the relationship between the two is open-ended because nationalism continues to operate as a central organizing principle in the contemporary world. While UN organizations promote human rights, national governments are still responsible for implementing them in education systems and other societal institutions. Similarly, even though membership in humanity is emphasized, national citizenship continues to play an important role in organizing economic, political, and social activities (Meyer 2000; Soysal 1994). As Beck put it, “the cosmopolitan outlook doesn’t replace the national outlook; rather, the logics of both co-exist, conflict, overlap, combine and function in separate spaces and worlds” (2005: 268; italics in original). As a result, nationalism and cosmopolitanism generate an institutional contradiction as a focal point of political contestations (Saito 2011). Actors using different logics in constructing collective memory could easily engage in dispute over which logic should be adopted, but their dispute is hard to be resolved because both sides have legitimate claims. In short, nationalism and cosmopolitanism constitute central a dialectic of collective-memory construction in a global world. This nationalism-cosmopolitanism dialectic has manifested in Japan’s official memory of the Asia-Pacific War since the 1990s that combines defiance and contrition, i.e. both denying Japan’s past wrongdoings and apologizing for them (Berger 2012). A case in point was the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. While the resolution by the House of Representatives in June 1995 fell short of offering apologies for victims of Japan’s past aggression due to strong opposition from members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) denying Japan’s wrongdoings, Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) persuaded his cabinet members, including LDP ministers, and issued an official apology in August of that year.3 In fact, throughout the postwar period, especially over the last few decades, Japan’s official memory exhibited a complex mixture of nationalist defiance and cosmopolitan contrition. Even Koizumi, whose visits to the Yasukuni Shrine sparked so much controversy, followed Murayama’s precedent in 2005 and officially offered “sincere apologies” for victims of Japan’s past aggression.4 Here, the mixture of defiance and contrition in Japan’s official memory is part and parcel of the worldwide, macro-institutional environment that creates a contradiction between nationalism and cosmopolitanism as two logics of collective memory. Put another way, analysis of how relevant political actors negotiate the institutional contradiction is a key to understanding the East Asian history problem in its full complexity, the fact that a collision of nationalist memories is intertwined with various attempts to construct cosmopolitan memories. 391

Hiro Saito

The dialectic of commemoration and historiography Understanding the East Asian history problem, especially its recent trajectory and dynamics, however, requires attention to another important dialectic – that of commemoration and historiography – and its intersection with the nationalism-cosmopolitanism dialectic. To begin, historiography, a corpus of writings about the past by historians, always has had a contradictory relationship with nationalism. On the one hand, historians have been indispensable allies of nationalism because they help naturalize the nation as a primordial entity by using it a primary unit of historical analysis (Berger, Donovan, and Passmore 1999; Berger and Lorenz 2010). Put another way, even though historians do not necessarily have the intention to support nationalists, they nonetheless provide a wide variety of historical materials for the latter to construct their preferred version of national memory. On the other hand, historians have been fierce critics of nationalist memory. In reality, available historical evidence is so vast, complex, and ambiguous that historians cannot but engage in ongoing controversies over facts and interpretations. While nationalists try to transform these open-ended controversies into immutable truths as foundations of national identities through emotionally charged commemorations, historians have critiqued such nationalist appropriation of the past by probing its evidential reliability and interpretive validity (Kumar 2006). In recent decades, however, an increasing number of historians have begun to align themselves with the logic of cosmopolitanism that shifts the content focus of historiography from individual nations to transnational interactions while encouraging historians of multiple nationalities to collaborate across national borders so as to incorporate foreign perspectives into historical narratives. A case in point is the Joint German-Polish Textbook Commission. Founded on the initiatives of the West German and Polish UNESCO Commissions in 1972, West German and Polish historians tried to: explore possible factual misrepresentations, prejudices and stereotypes in the history and geography textbooks of both countries, and to intervene in order to ensure that the representation of the conflictive history of relations between the two countries was objective.5 Similarly, historians in East Asia began to organize joint projects in the early 1980s, when the contents of nationalistic Japanese history textbooks drew strong criticisms from China, South Korea, and other Asian countries. In December 1982, for example, Japanese historians formed the Comparative History and History Education Research Group in Tokyo. Since August 1984, the Research Group has organized the East Asia History Education Symposium every five years by inviting Chinese and South Korean historians to exchange interpretations of historical events in the region.6 Then, from the late 1990s onward, transnational joint projects by historians of the three countries began to take off (Kasahara 2010; Saito 2008; Shin and Sneider 2011), as the campaign by Tskurukai and its political allies to promote nationalist history education became a serious diplomatic issue. The largest of these non-governmental joint projects is History That Opens the Future, which enrolled more than fifty historians and history teachers from Japan, China, and South Korea. In addition, the Japanese government launched bilateral joint historical research projects with the South Korean and Chinese governments in 2002 and 2006, respectively.7 Through these joint projects, historians discussed different interpretations of history of Japan’s relations with South Korea and China and began to prepare the ground for further joint research by pooling archival materials and critically examining nationalist biases in their respective versions of history. 392

East Asia and cosmopolitan memory

Overall, the non-governmental and governmental joint projects have been effective in problematizing nationalist biases in Japanese historiographies – to the extent that Falk Pingel, a longtime member of the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany, expressed his concern as follows: In East Asia, only Japanese textbooks are accused, while South Korean and Chinese textbooks are exempted from critical discussion. Reform is one-sidedly demanded on the Japanese side, and it seems impossible to establish open relationships for mutual criticism and critical self-reflections on one’s own history . . . (2008: 29) While it is true that Japanese historiographies have been subjected to much more extensive criticism than their Chinese and South Korean counterparts, critical reflections on nationalism have been reciprocated by Chinese and South Korean historians. Take, for example, Bu Ping, a Chinese professor of history who participated in both the non-governmental and governmental joint projects. At an international symposium in Tokyo in April 2008, Bu admitted, “Previously, Chinese historians conducted China-centered research, and their knowledge of historical materials and research available outside China was inadequate” and, to correct this situation, he emphasized the importance of pooling archival materials and historical research between Chinese and Japanese sides.8 Lim Jie Hyun, a South Korean professor of history at Hanyang University, also stated, The asymmetry in historical experience of imperialism and colonialism should not be used simply to criticize the nationalist historiography of Japan while helping to legitimate the nationalist historiography of South Korea . . . Deconstruction of nationalist historiography cannot be confined within a single country but needs to be carried out simultaneously within East Asia as a whole. (2007: 373) In this respect, East Asia has begun to witness its own version of “Historians’ Debate” that happened in West Germany in the late 1980s. Criticizing nationalist historians who tried to rewrite the history of Nazi Germany in the service of German nationalism, Jürgen Habermas insisted on subjecting history to open-ended critical reflections because that is indispensable for the development of a historical consciousness that is equally incompatible with closed images of history that have a secondary quasi-natural character and with all forms of conventional, that is, uniformly and prereflexively shared identity. (1989: 226–27) Although Habermas directed his criticism at German nationalism, his criticism is equally applicable to any nationalism around the world and can be scaled up to the transnational level. Indeed, the emerging transnational dialogues among historians in East Asia embody concerted efforts to promote the cosmopolitan logic of historiography and thereby counteract nationalist biases in the “historical consciousness” among the peoples of Japan, China, and South Korea.

Beyond the Tokyo-Trial historical view Here, the East Asian Historians’ Debate is almost destined to confront the so-called Tokyo-Trial historical view, a particular interpretation of the history of the Asia-Pacific War enunciated by the Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1946–48). Despite its important contributions to the development 393

Hiro Saito

of international law, the Tokyo Trial had various problems (Tanaka, McCormack, and Simpson 2011; Röling 1993; Totani 2008). To begin with, the Tokyo Trial judged Japan as solely and entirely guilty for the war by accepting that Japan had consistently engaged in aggression toward China and the other Allied Powers in a self-propelled manner. From a long-term historical perspective, however, Japan’s actions should be understood in the historical context of the Western imperial powers’ colonization of Asian countries (Nandy 1995). At the 1983 international symposium on the Tokyo Trial, for example, Yu Xinchun, a Chinese professor of Japanese history, pointed out, “From the Chinese perspective, the victor countries – Britain, the Netherlands, France, and the United States – are all ‘thieves,’” though he acknowledged that Japan had been the most horrible thief to the Chinese people from the 1920s onward. Thus, although the scope of the Tokyo Trial had been limited, Yu had no doubt that, “In the long run, humanity will inevitably put colonialism on trial” (quoted in Hosoya, Ando, and Onuma 1989: 364). From a short-term historical perspective, too, Japan’s act of entering war with the Allied Powers was contingent on a nonlinear sequence of decisions in response to interactions between the two sides, such as the Allied Powers’ economic sanctions against Japan’s military actions in China and Southeast Asia and the changing political and military situation in Europe (Iriye 1987; Kasahara 2010). As B. V. A. Röling, the Dutch judge in the Tokyo Trial, admitted, the case of Japan’s aggression “was what lawyers call a ‘hard case,’” and the complex historical contexts surrounding the Asia-Pacific War at the time made the Tokyo Trial “far more difficult and complicated than the Nuremberg one . . . a clear case of aggression to dominate the European continent” (1993: 87–88). Yet, the Tokyo Judgment imputed all war responsibility to Japan alone. This first problem combines with the second problem: the Tokyo Trial exempted the Allied Powers from the same standard of criminal justice, which has fueled among Japanese nationalist resentment against “victor’s justice.” To be sure, the defense team questioned why only Japan’s war crimes were prosecuted at the Trial. Most famously, Ben Bruce Blakeney, a defense attorney for Class A war crime suspects, forcefully argued that the American government and military leaders who had authorized and carried out the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be prosecuted (reprinted in Tanaka 2011: 294). Even B. V. A. Röling, who firmly believed that the Tokyo Trial was an important milestone in the development of international law, acknowledged that the Trial had elements of victor’s justice: Of course, in Japan we were all aware of the bombings and the burnings of Tokyo and Yokohama and other big cities. It was horrible that we went there for the purpose of vindicating the laws of war, and yet saw every day how the Allies had violated them dreadfully. (1993: 87) In a similar vein, Ienaga Saburo, who dedicated much of his career to exposing Japan’s wartime atrocities, argued that it was indeed problematic to prosecute only the defeated country by completely absolving the victors of their own war crimes, especially the atomic bombings by the United States and atrocities committed by the Soviet Union against Japanese civilians and soldiers (1985: ch. 5). Nonetheless, by exempting war crimes by the Allied Powers from prosecution, the Tokyo Judgment ignored Japan’s (at least partial) victimhood. In short, the first and second problems in the Tokyo Judgment together produced the Tokyo-Trial historical view, a portrait of Japan as the sole, absolute perpetrator – an actor that had committed aggression by itself and suffered no victimization over the course of the war. This particular historical view then became one of the root causes of the history problem in East Asia. On the one hand, the Tokyo-Trial historical view serves as a point of departure for 394

East Asia and cosmopolitan memory

Japanese nationalists to discredit “victor’s justice” and instead justify Japan’s past aggression as an act of self-defense against the Western imperial powers (Fujioka 2000). On the other hand, the Tokyo-Trial historical view helps Chinese and South Korean nationalists focus exclusively on their own victimhood and entirely blame Japan for the history problem, consistent with the historical portrait of Japan as the sole, absolute perpetrator (Seaton 2007). Thus, nationalist memories in the three countries revolve around the factually and morally problematic TokyoTrial historical view, and this means that the possibility of resolving the East Asian history problem – disentangling of the mutually reinforcing nationalist memories – will require a critical reassessment of it. To be sure, historians cannot change the judicial judgment of the Tokyo Trial. However, they can at least revisit and reconstruct the historical judgment of the Trial. As philosopher Paul Ricoeur insisted, historians are different from judges because the former cannot decide and close a case at hand like the latter do; instead, historians always submit historical facts and interpretations “to an unending process of revision, which makes the writing of history a perpetual rewriting. This openness to rewriting marks the difference between a provisional historical judgment and a definitive judicial judgment” (2004: 320). Herein lies the potential of the East Asian Historians’ Debate to help the people and governments of the three countries jointly challenge the existing nationalist memories of the Asia-Pacific War. Nevertheless, given that a critical reassessment of the Tokyo-Trial historical view will entail collective distribution of war responsibility and acknowledgment of Japan’s victimhood, many people are likely to be concerned that it can risk allowing Japan to evade its responsibility for foreign victims of its past aggression. Since Japanese nationalists have been already rejecting the Tokyo Judgment as victor’s justice and arguing that Japan fought a war of self-defense, a critical reassessment of the Tokyo-Trial historical view seems to only boost Japanese nationalist memory. Nonetheless, I argue that these risks can be mitigated, so long as historians engage in rigorous debates and keep alive the dialectic of commemoration and historiography. In fact, I even suggest that collective distribution of war responsibility and acknowledgment of Japan’s victimhood have the potential to produce the opposite effect, i.e. to help the Japanese people to fully accept their share of guilt by easing their resentment against victor’s justice and leaving intact the core of their national identity as both perpetrator and victim.

Cosmopolitan memory as a collective project For better or for worse, the majority of the Japanese identify Japan as being simultaneously perpetrator and victim in the Asia-Pacific War: Japan attacked the Allied Powers and committed atrocities in the Asia-Pacific, but at the same time, it suffered from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and atrocities by the Soviet Union, among other military and civilian casualties (Park 2008). This dual identity has been a major point of contention in the East Asian history problem and a major obstacle to reconciliation. This is because reconciliation requires former enemies to dialogically reconstitute their previous beliefs, attitudes, and identities to make them compatible with each other, so that they can develop mutual trust and sustain peaceful relations (Bar-Siman-Tov 2004; Nadler, Malloy, and Fisher 2008; Shin, Park, and Yang 2007). But at the same time, as social psychologist Herbert Kelman observed, “a revision in the group’s identity and the associated narrative is possible only if the core of the identity remains intact” (2004: 119–20). This means that the majority of the Japanese will likely commemorate the sufferings of Chinese and South Korean victims to the extent that their dual identity is recognized, but this recognition of Japan’s victimhood is difficult for many Chinese and South Koreans who cannot but see Japan simply as the absolute perpetrator. 395

Hiro Saito

Put another way, a resolution of the East Asian history problem will likely require an extraordinary act, reciprocal recognition of humanity among the relevant parties. Needless to say, Japan has been primarily responsible for causing the history problem: nationalistic LDP politicians dominated the government during much of the postwar period and defended nationalist memory that refused to acknowledge decisively how Japan had victimized China and South Korea (see chapter 5 in this volume). Yet, China and South Korea also contributed, at least partially, to the history problem by refusing to recognize the factual and moral ambiguities of the AsiaPacific War, where Japan, too, had been victimized. Here, neither Japanese leftists’ uncritical solidarity with Chinese and South Korean nationalist memories nor the Japanese rightists’ categorical rejection of them would be effective in moving the three countries toward reconciliation. As political scientists Kazuhiko Togo and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa pointed out, “ultimate reconciliation will not be achieved by the complete rejection of Japan’s past as an unmitigated disaster or by defending Japanese colonialism, aggressions, and the Pacific War as completely justifiable actions” (2008: 4). I, too, suggest that what is needed for reconciliation is the middle ground, wherein Japan’s cosmopolitan memory of Chinese and South Korean victims of its past aggression will be reciprocated by Chinese and South Korean cosmopolitan memories of Japan’s partial victimhood. In this regard, it is useful to critically revisit the speech that Richard von Weizsäcker delivered as president of West Germany on the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II: “Anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risks of infection.”9 When people inside and outside of Japan criticize Japan for failing to adequately commemorate its past wrongdoings, they often quote this passage as a way of denouncing the persistence of nationalism in Japan’s official memory and urging the Japanese people and government to fully acknowledge the sufferings of Chinese, South Korean, and other foreign victims. Yet, critics rarely probe into three questions obscured within Weizsäcker’s speech: which inhumanity should be remembered, how should it be remembered, and precisely how will remembrance of the past inhumanity prevent “future infection”? My answer to the first two questions is that the inhumanities suffered by China and South Korea as well as by Japan should be remembered, and such commemoration of the inhumanities on all sides would necessarily require mutual cosmopolitanism. George Santayana’s aphorism “the one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again,” displayed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, is justly famous, but remembering the history of the Asia-Pacific War according to the logic of nationalism may well lock Japan, China, and South Korea into perpetual conflicts. Here, a most effective way to prevent such a conflict – “future infection” – in East Asia is to articulate cosmopolitan memory as a collective project, wherein perpetrators’ decisive admission of their guilt is met halfway by victims’ willingness to affirm the perpetrators’ humanity. Although such reciprocation of cosmopolitan memory may sound idealistic, it has already begun to emerge in East Asia. As I mentioned earlier, a growing number of joint historical research and textbook projects have emerged as infrastructures for joint construction of cosmopolitan memory. The trilateral joint history textbook History That Opens the Future, for example, examines Japan’s past wrongdoings more extensively than do typical Japanese history textbooks, while newly introducing details of Japan’s victimhood, such as the atomic bombings, to Chinese and South Korean students – this inclusion of descriptions of Japanese victims was a significant departure from mainstream history textbooks in China and South Korea (Nitchūkan Sangoku Kyōtsū Rekishi Kyōzai Iinkai 2005). Even though these joint projects do not always succeed in facilitating a mutual critique of nationalist memories or reciprocal recognition of humanity (Kasahara 2010; Saito 2008), the people, governments, and historians of the three countries have 396

East Asia and cosmopolitan memory

nonetheless started making concerted efforts to move away from nationalism toward cosmopolitanism, by which they try to jointly construct a new kind of collective memory that transcends national identities.

Conclusion: The future of the history problem In this chapter, I have offered a sociological analysis of institutional underpinnings of East Asia’s history problem. I first illustrated the structure of the history problem as a collision of mutually reinforcing nationalist memories in Japan, China, and South Korea. Next, I introduced two intersecting dialectics that hold the key to explaining the trajectory and dynamics of the history problem. One is the dialectic of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and another is the dialectic of commemoration and historiography. In light of how these dialectics shaped the evolution of the history problem in recent decades, I suggested that a potential solution to the history problem is likely to require cosmopolitan memory that is collectively constructed by the people and governments in the three countries, accompanied by historians’ critical reassessment of the Tokyo-Trial historical view. Although cosmopolitan memory has emerged as a collective project in East Asia, it remains incipient, and there are at least four factors that can decisively shape its future prospect. The first and most obvious factor is the growing territorial disputes over Senkaku/Diayu Islands and Takeshima/Dokdo (for details, see chapters 11, 17, and 23 in this volume). These territorial disputes are not simply about economic and geopolitical interests but are deeply psychological. Territories are integral to people’s collective identities and, in the context of East Asia, they inevitably evoke memories of Japan’s past aggression for many Chinese and South Koreans. If the territorial disputes escalate, so will the history problem, seriously undermining the possibility of reconciliation (Kim 2012b). The second factor is a change in the balance between nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Japan’s official memory of the Asia-Pacific War. Over the last few decades, the Japanese government came to adopt the mixture of nationalist defiance and cosmopolitan contrition. If the Japanese government decides to tip the balance in one way or another, however, it can trigger intense reactions from political actors that will have lost ground. If the Japanese government puts more emphasis on nationalist memory, for example, it will likely anger China and South Korea. In contrast, if the Japanese government incorporates more cosmopolitanism, it will likely galvanize nationalists in Japan. Thus, how to strike a balance between nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Japan’s official memory will always remain an important and delicate question for those who are involved in the East Asian history problem. The third factor is entry of new actors in the field of the history problem. Such entry will change interactive dynamics among the existing actors in East Asia. The history problem escalated in the early 2000s, for example, partly because Chinese- and Korean-Americans began lobbying American politicians to condemn Japan’s wartime atrocities, such as the Nanjing Massacre and the comfort-women system (Kim 2014; Yoneyama 2003; Yoshida 2006), prompting nationalist politicians and intellectuals in Japan to ever more vigorously reject the Tokyo-Trial historical view as victor’s justice. Thus, if the United States increases its involvement in the East Asian history problem without critically reflecting on its own wrongdoings, such as indiscriminate bombings of Japanese civilians (Linenthal and Engelhardt 1996; Todorov 2003), it can galvanize Japanese nationalists and thereby contribute to an escalation, rather than a resolution, of the history problem (cf. chapter 25 in this volume). The last and perhaps most important factor is the education of younger generations in East Asia, i.e. whether and how nationalism and cosmopolitanism will be incorporated into history 397

Hiro Saito

education. Here, the education of younger generations raises a contentious question: why do younger generations, who did not participate in the Asia-Pacific War, have to commemorate the event? This question of “inherited responsibility” (Kwak and Nobles 2013; Ōnuma 2007) is becoming more important than ever because those who lived through the war are passing away, and postwar generations are now main protagonists in the history problem. Ienaga Saburo, for example, suggested that younger generations of the Japanese have responsibility for remembering the war because they “automatically inherit responsibility for the war from their preceding generations by virtue of the Japanese nation’s continuity” (1985: 307). Ienaga’s position, however, anchors commemorative responsibility in an extreme version of ethnic nationalism that presumes an almost metaphysical form of inborn national guilt. Perhaps a less problematic justification is offered by Takahashi Tetsuya, a prominent Japanese leftist intellectual. He argues that since the Japanese self is constituted in relation to the foreign other, “it is impossible to speak of ‘We the Japanese’ without facing the Asian victim” (Takahashi 2005: 261). Takahashi goes on to elevate the other’s demand on commemoration and prerogatives to offer forgiveness to the level of the absolute by drawing on Jacques Derrida’s ethics of selfother relations, wherein the self must unconditionally respond to the other’s call and the other’s forgiveness constitutes the condition of (im)possibility of reconciliation. Although this kind of ethical formulation is inspiring, Takahashi’s position nonetheless risks providing complete moral immunity to the other (the victim) even when the other adopts nationalist memory and refuses to recognize the counterpart’s humanity. Takahashi’s ethical formulation also ignores the fact that the relationship between the self and the other is fundamentally interactive and often mutually transformative, which renders conditions of reconciliation immanent within interactions among the actors. As an alternative to the essentialist and ethical positions advanced respectively by Ienaga and Takahashi, I suggest a pragmatic approach. As John Dewey stated, a pragmatic approach to the past means that “past events cannot be separated from the living present and retain meaning. The true starting point of history is always some present situation with its problems” (1944: 214). Ultimately, the past should not be commemorated for its own sake but for the sake of the future, immanent in present problematic situations confronting the public. Put another way, younger generations of the Japanese do not bear commemorative responsibility because they have inherited war responsibility or are demanded of ethical responsibility for the Asian other, but because the “present situation” – the history problem – and its future resolution demands presentist commemoration of Japan’s past wrongdoings. Moreover, the pragmatic approach foregrounds the fundamentally dialogic nature of reconciliation by letting protagonists themselves to work out conditions of reconciliation through their mutually transformative interactions. Perhaps the only condition that the pragmatic approach prescribes, as critical theorist Axel Honneth (1995, 2012) noted, is that these interactions should be grounded in the taking of the attitude of the other as a member of the same group, that is, in the reciprocation of recognition of each other’s humanity. In the context of the East Asian history problem, this implies that people in Japan, China, and South Korea bear asymmetrical but reciprocal obligations. On the one hand, people in Japan must continue their efforts to fully remember how people in China and South Korea suffered from Japan’s past aggression. On the other hand, the people in China and South Korea must make efforts to forgive, not by forgetting, but by overcoming hostile emotions toward Japan – anger, hatred, vengefulness – and thereby recognizing Japanese people’s victimhood and their humanity (cf. Margalit 2002). Having put forward my own sociological analysis, I fully acknowledge that observers of the East Asian history problem, including myself, can never remain neutral. In fact, social scientists 398

East Asia and cosmopolitan memory

who offer empirical observations are part and parcel of the history problem because they provide policymakers, NGOs, and concerned citizens with languages and rationales for justifying their positions and framing their preferred solutions. In this regard, I present my own sociological analysis, too, on pragmatic grounds: the goal of this chapter is consistent with Dewey’s call on social science to help “modify the representation the public has of itself fast enough so that we can be sure that the greatest number of objections have been made to this representation” (Latour 2000: 120; italics in original). Put another way, I have tried to present the development of cosmopolitan memory that I believe is already immanent in growing transnational activities among the people, governments, and historians in Japan, China, and South Korea, so that these participants in the history problem can become more reflexive and critical of their own activities and, if they wish, put into use my sociological analysis. Or, alternatively, they can object to my analysis so as to renew the search for a better understanding and resolution of the history problem. Either way, I share the goal with those who have grappled with the history problem – to let war dead finally rest in peace and make East Asia a more peaceful place.

Notes 1 The Tokyo Trial, officially called the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, was held in Tokyo between May 1946 and November 1948. The Tribunal prosecuted Japanese leaders for Japan’s aggression against the Allied Powers. For a historical overview of the Tribunal, see Totani (2008). 2 For the list of World Heritage Sites and selection criteria, see http://whc.unesco.org/ (accessed January 10, 2012). 3 House of Representatives, National Diet of Japan, “Resolution to Renew the Determination for Peace on the Basis of Lessons Learned from History,” June 9, 1945: http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/ pm/murayama/address9506.html (accessed January 10, 2012); “Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama ‘On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the War’s End,” August 15, 1995: http://www. mofa.go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508.html (accessed January 10, 2012). 4 “Prime Minister’s Official Statement,” August 15, 2005: http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/koizumi speech/2005/08/15danwa.html (accessed January 10, 2012). 5 Georg Eckert Institute, http://www.gei.de/en/research/the-european-schoolhouse.html (accessed January 10, 2012). 6 Comparative History and History Education Research Group, http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/ lerrmondream/hikakusi.html (accessed on March 1, 2012). 7 Processes and outcomes of both Japan-South Korea and Japan-China Joint Historical Research Projects are archived, respectively, at http://www.jkcf.or.jp/projects/kaigi/history/ and http://www.mofa. go.jp/mofaj/area/china/rekishi_kk.html (accessed August 1, 2012). 8 Asahi Shimbun, April 28, 2008. 9 “Speech in the Bundestag on 8 May 1985 during the Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the End of War in Europe and of National-Socialist Tyranny,” Media Culture Online, http://www. mediaculture-online.de (accessed May 1, 2012).

References Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Bar-Siman-Tov, Yaacov (Ed.). 2004. From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 2005. Power in the Global Age: A New Global Political Economy. Cambridge: Polity. Beck, Ulrich, Daniel Levy, and Natan Sznaider. 2009. “Cosmopolitanization of Memory: The Politics of Forgiveness and Restitution.” Pp. 111–28 in Cosmopolitanism in Practice, edited by Magdalena Nowicka and Maria Rovisco. Surrey: Ashgate. Berger, Stefan, Mark Donovan, and Kevin Passmore (Eds.). 1999. Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1900. London: Routledge.

399

Hiro Saito Berger, Stefan, and Chris Lorenz (Eds.). 2010. Nationalizing the Past: Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Berger, Thomas U. 2012. War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage Publication. Calhoun, Craig. 1997. Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dewey, John. 1944. Democracy and Education. New York: Free Press. Fujioka, Nobukatsu. 2000. Pathology of Self-Critical Historical Perception [Jigyakushikan no Byōri]. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate. Cambridge: MIT Press. Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi, and Kazuhiko Togo (Eds.). 2008. East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism. Westport: Praeger Security International. He, Yinan. 2009. The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press. Honneth, Axel. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: MIT Press. ———. 2012. The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition. Cambridge: Polity. Hosoya, Chiaki, Nisuke Ando, and Yasuaki Onuma (Eds.). 1989. Raising Questions about the Tokyo Trail [Tokyo Saiban wo Tou]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Ienaga, Saburo. 1985. War Responsibility [Sensō Sekinin]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Iriye, Akira. 1987. The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific. New York: Longman. Jager, Sheila Miyoshi, and Rena Mitter (Eds.). 2007. Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kasahara, Tokushi (Ed.). 2010. On Historical Perceptions of Japan and China for Those Who Have Not Experienced War [Sensō wo Shiranai Kokumin no tameno Nitchū Rekishi Ninshiki]. Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan. Kelman, Herbert C. 2004. “Reconciliation as Identity Change: A Social-Psychological Perspective.” Pp. 111–24 in From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation, edited by Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kim, Mikyoung. 2012a. Securitization of Human Rights: North Korean Refugees in East Asia. Santa Barbara: Praeger. ———. 2012b. “A War of Memories: Dissecting Dokdo/Takeshima Dispute.” Global Asia 7(2): 74–7. ———. 2014. “Memorializing Comfort Women: Memory and Human Rights in Korea-Japan Relations.” Asian Politics and Policy 6(1): 83–96. Kim, Mikyoung, and Barry Schwartz (Eds.). 2010. Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory. London: Palgrave. Kumar, Krishan. 2006. “Nationalism and the Historians.” Pp. 7–20 in The Sage Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, edited by Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar. London: Sage Publications. Kwak, Jun-Hyeok, and Melissa Nobles (Eds.). 2013. Inherited Responsibility and Historical Reconciliation in East Asia. London: Routledge. Latour, Bruno. 2000. “When Things Strike Back: A Possible Contribution of ‘Science Studies’ to the Scoial Sciences.” British Journal of Sociology 51(1): 107–23. Levy, Daniel, and Natan Sznaider. 2006. The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2010. Human Rights and Memory. University Park: Penn State Press. Lim, Jie Hyun. 2007. “The Inside and Outside of Family State: Dissecting Disputes on Territory and History in East Asia [Kokumin Kokkano Uchi to Soto: Higashi Ajia no Ryouyūken Funsō to Rekishi Ronsō ni Yosete].” Pp. 365–75 in Kyōkasho Mondai, edited by Hiroshi Mitani. Tokyo: Tokyo Tosho Center. Lind, Jennifer. 2008. Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Linenthal, Edward T., and Tom Engelhardt (Eds.). 1996. History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past. New York: Henry Holt. Liu, Jie, Hiroshi Mitani, Daqing Yang (Eds.). 2006. History that Transcends National Boundary: An Experiment of China-Japan Dialogue [Kokkyō wo Koeru Rekishi Ninshiki: Nitchū Taiwa no Kokoromi]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai. Margalit, Avishai. 2002. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Meyer, John W. 2000. “Globalization: Sources and Effects on National States and Societies.” International Sociology 15: 233–48.

400

East Asia and cosmopolitan memory Moses, George L. 1990. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York: Oxford University Press. Nadler, Arie, Thomas E. Malloy, and Jeffrey D. Fisher (Eds.). 2008. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nandy, Ashis. 1995. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. Bombay: Oxford University Press. Nitchūkan Sangoku Kyōtsū Rekishi Kyōzai Iinkai (Ed.). 2005. Future-Opening History: Modern and Contemporary History of Three East Asian Countries [Mirai wo Hiraku Rekishi: Higashi Ajia Sangoku no Kingendaishi]. Tokyo: Koubunken. Ōnuma, Yasuaki. 2007. Tokyo Trial, War Responsibility, Post-War Responsibility [Tokyo Saiban, Sensō Sekinin, Sengo Sekinin]. Tokyo: Tōshinsha. Park, Yu Ha. 2008. Towards Reconciliation: Textbooks, Comfort Women, Yasukuni and Dokdo [Wakai no Tameni: Kyōkasho, Ianfu, Yasukuni, Dokto]. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Pingel, Falk. 2008. “Can Research on Textbooks Contribute to Peace Education? [Kyōkasho Kenkyū wa Heiwa Kyōiku e Kouken dekiruka?]” Kansai Daigaku Jinken Mondai Kenkyūshitsu Kiyō 56: 13–30. Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Röling, B. V. A. 1993. The Tokyo Trial and Beyond: Reflections of a Peacemonger. Cambridge: Polity Press. Saito, Hiro. 2010. “From Collective Memory to Commemoration.” Pp. 619–28 in The Handbook of Cultural Sociology, edited by John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-Cheng Lo. New York: Routledge. ———. 2011. “Cosmopolitan Nation-Building: The Institutional Contradiction and Politics of Postwar Japanese Education.” Social Science Japan Journal 14: 125–44. Saito, Kazuharu. 2008. Chinese History Textbooks and East Asia History Dialogue: A Report from the Site of China-Japan-Korea Common History Teaching Material Writing [Chūgoku Rekishi Kyōkasho to Higashi Ajia Rekishi Taiwa: Nitchūkan Sangoku Kyoutsū Kyouzai Zukuri no Genba kara]. Tokyo: Kadensha. Seaton, Philip A. 2007. Japan’s Contested War Memories: The “Memory Rifts” in Historical Consciousness of World War II. London: Routledge. Seraphim, Franziska. 2008. War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center. Shin, Gi-Wook, Soon-Won Park, and Daqing Yang (Eds.). 2007. Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience. New York: Routledge. Shin, Gi-Wook, and Daniel C. Sneider (Eds.). 2011. History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories. New York: Routledge. Smith, Anthony D. 2001. Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Oxford: Polity. Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoglu. 1994. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Takahashi, Tetsuya. 2005. On War Responsibility [Sengo Sekininron]. Tokyo: Koudansha. Tanaka, Yuki. 2011. “The Atomic Bombing, The Tokyo Tribunal And The Shimoda Case: Lessons For Anti-Nuclear Legal Movements.” Pp. 291–310 in Beyond Victor’s Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited, edited by Y. Tanaka, T. McCormack, and G. Simpson. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Tanaka, Yuki, Tim McCormack, and Gerry Simpson (Eds.). 2011. Beyond Victor’s Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Todorov, Tzvetan. 2003. Hope and Memory: Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Totani, Yuma. 2008. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center. Yoneyama, Lisa. 2003. “Traveling Memories, Contagious Justice: Americanization of Japanese War Crimes at the End of the Post-Cold War.” Journal of Asian American Studies 6(1): 57–93. Yoshida, Takashi. 2006. The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

401

25 DIVIDED MEMORIES AND HISTORICAL RECONCILIATION IN EAST ASIA Gi-Wook Shin

Over the past two decades East Asia has witnessed a growing level of regional exchange and interaction, especially in the spheres of culture and economy. There has even been considerable discussion about establishing a formal East Asian community. Still, the region cannot escape the burden of its history, giving rise to what experts call the “Asian Paradox.” Wounds inflicted during times of colonialism and war have not fully healed and have become highly contentious diplomatic matters. Historical and territorial issues continue to provoke anti-Japanese sentiment in China and Korea, while the Japanese suffer from “apology fatigue,” questioning why they must continue to repent for events that took place more than six decades ago. Increased regional interaction has not diminished the importance of disputes over the past. As in many other cases around the world, reconciliation in East Asia first occurred between governments. With the only exception of North Korea, Japan normalized diplomatic relations with all of the countries it had once invaded or colonized: the Republic of China (Taiwan) in 1952, the Republic of Korea (ROK) in 1965, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1972. Nevertheless, these societies have failed to come to terms with their shared past. Japan has paid no “reparations” to its former colonies – though it gave “grants and aid” to South Korea for normalizing relations and provided major economic assistance to the PRC – and China and Korea were not included in the San Francisco Peace Treaty that settled the Pacific War (for details, see chapter 22 in this volume). Historical issues such as war responsibility, disputed territories, and Japan’s colonial rule and atrocities were largely overlooked as the Cold War began and intensified. The question of history remains central to the development of regional relations. Japan-China relations have been conflict-ridden, due in no small measure to both countries’ failure to reconcile their differing views of the past. Similarly, friction between Japan and South Korea about Japan’s role as colonizer remains unresolved. South Korea and China are sparring over the status of the ancient kingdom of Koguryŏ (Gaogouli in Chinese), and Taiwan as well is immersed in a reexamination of the historical past (for details, see chapter 14 in this volume). Even the United States and Russia have been subject to controversy with respect to their involvement in events in East Asian history. Recent disputes over Senkaku/Diaoyu and Dokto/Takeshima are not simply territorial issues: they are closely related to the region’s unfortunate past of war and colonialism (see chapters 11, 17, and 23 in this volume). Questions about and legacies of what happened in the past are difficult to deal with, as they touch upon the most sensitive issues of national identity, the formation of historical memories, 402

Divided memories

and national myths that play a powerful role to this day. Whether it is Japanese atrocities in China or the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, no nation is immune to the charge that it has formed a less than complete view of the past. All share a reluctance to fully confront the complexity of their own actions of the past and blame others for their historical experiences. There is widespread recognition in East Asia of the need for reconciliation and a final resolution of historical issues, both for the sake of justice and to remove a major obstacle to regional cooperation. In fact, many Asians have sought to achieve these goals through diverse means, including apology politics, litigation, joint history writing, and regional communication (Shin 2014). But there is a fundamental obstacle to reconciliation: the existence of divided, contentious historical memories. Involved nations are simultaneously bound together and separated by distinct – often contradictory – historical accounts and perceptions. These are deeply embedded in the public consciousness and are transmitted to succeeding generations formally by education and informally through the arts, popular culture, and mass media. Ultimately, East Asian societies need to come to a shared memory and reconciled view of history to achieve “thick” reconciliation (Crocker 1999).1 However, as Peter Duus aptly points out, writing a “common history” may be feasible intellectually but not politically, because “the teaching of history in many East Asian countries is clearly tied to building and strengthening national identity” (Duus 2011, p. 101). Previous experiences (e.g., the Franco-German case) have taught us that successful reconciliation via shared history requires a particular political environment, one that is absent in East Asia today (Höpken 2003).2 It would thus be more fruitful to recognize and understand how each society has developed its own distinctive memory of the past and how this memory has affected its national identity and relations with others. To illustrate the merits of this approach, I first examine earlier attempts to create a shared memory through common history and their pitfalls.

Writing common history? East Asian nations have engaged in numerous efforts to address contentious historical memories and even to write a common history. Frequent clashes over history textbooks in East Asia (1982, 2002, and 2005) demonstrate that history is not simply about the past but also implicates the present and the future (Kim and Schwartz 2010). Moreover, the situation attests to the central importance of a common view of history that will foster overall reconciliation. One approach to solving this problem has been to form both official and unofficial joint committees that study history and produce commonly written textbooks and supplementary materials. As recently as November 2013, South Korean President Park suggested writing a common history among South Korea, Japan, and China. Such efforts make for a long and complex process and it is too early to make a final judgment about their efficacy. Even in Europe, it took many years to produce common history textbooks. It is already evident, however, that this approach is fraught with difficulty and far from achieving reconciliation (Kitaoka 2007; Kimijima 2000). Japan and South Korea undertook the first official attempt to deal jointly with history in October 2001 by establishing the Japan-ROK Joint History Research Committee. This was the first state-sponsored effort toward placing a reconciled view of the past in a new regional history framework. While not a complete failure, the committee has yet to see its envisioned goals, achievement of consensual interpretation and eventual reconciliation, materialize. Even though it adopted the UNESCO model of writing a “parallel history,” when it finished the first phase in May 2005, both sides disagreed on what exactly should be incorporated into the textbooks. Apparently, there was significant divergence over how to interpret Japan’s colonial rule, including the question of Japan’s role (or lack thereof) in Korea’s modernization. While a consensus was 403

Gi-Wook Shin

reached in some areas, contended areas were relegated to footnotes (International Crisis Group 2005). Following Koizumi’s controversial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, the work of the joint committee was put on hold until October 2006, when Prime Minister Abe and President Roh Moo Hyun agreed to relaunch efforts. The committee finally met on April 27, 2007, in Seoul. In addition to the three existing groups studying ancient, medieval, and contemporary history, members agreed to form a new subgroup that would examine history textbooks. The idea reportedly was to narrow differences between both nations’ textbooks. The second report was published in March 2010. Despite some tangible results of the joint study (e.g., rejection of the existence of Japanese base known as imna ilbonbu between the fourth to sixth century, a claim often used to justify Japan’s colonization of Korea in the 20th century), the report still failed to resolve many points of contention. Japan and China launched a similar effort, also as part of the thaw in relations that followed the leadership transition in Japan from Koizumi to Abe. The two countries announced an agreement to form a similar joint research committee. Compiled of 20 leading historians from both countries, the Japan-China committee commenced in late 2006. Led by Chinese Professor Bu Ping and Japanese Professor Shin’ichi Kitaoka, the committee launched a joint study to produce an account of 2,000 years of Sino-Japanese interaction by 2008. This would be in time to mark the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty in 1978. From the first meeting, it became clear that their goals were daunting, despite their having reached an agreement for further discussion on three broad themes: the 2,000 years of SinoJapanese exchange; the “unfortunate” history of the modern era; and the 60 years of “progress” in relations since the end of the war. Not surprisingly, the Japanese wanted to focus on the postwar era, while the Chinese were more interested in taking inventory of the colonial and wartime periods (Mainichi Shimbun 2006; The Financial Times 2007). At its second meeting in 2007, the committee agreed on a list of major historical events to discuss, including the Nanjing Massacre and Japan’s 21 Demands on China, but the issue of “comfort women” was excluded. The committee released the first report in early 2010. It covers ancient, medieval, and modern history, describing themes from Japanese and Chinese academics’ submitted papers. Similar to the Japan-Korea joint study, there was some progress in mutual understanding of modern history: both sides used the word “aggression” to refer to the invasion by the Japanese army, asserting that it “left a deep scar on China” and that the causes of war “were created by the Japanese side.” However, scholars disagreed on the Nanjing Massacre’s total number of casualties – the Japanese side mentioned various estimates ranging from 20,000 to 200,000, while the Chinese side claimed more than 300,000 (Kyodo News 2010). These official efforts, though useful, are unlikely to produce a common rendition of history, particularly regarding the most controversial periods. As Shin’ichi Kitaoka notes, perceptions of history among East Asian nations will never be identical and efforts should be aimed at “ascertaining precisely where the two sides’ perceptions differ and where they are in agreement” (Kitaoka 2007, p. 4). Moreover, it is a serious challenge to insulate the involved historians from political pressures generated by their respective governments and publics so that they can devote themselves to a careful investigation of historical facts.3 As the Korean historian Chung Jae-Jeong, a member of the Joint Japan-ROK Committee and a former president of South Korea’s East Asia History Foundation, remarks, “It requires a lot of courage, effort, patience and sincerity to publish a history textbook for common use via a joint project spanning countries which had once been antagonistic toward each other” (Chung 2006, p. 14). In contrast to official textbook writing efforts, Japanese and Korean scholars have worked together privately to move toward a mutual understanding of regional history. The first of such 404

Divided memories

efforts was the Japan-South Korea Joint Study Group on History Textbooks. Organized in the late 1980s, without the direct involvement of either the Korean or the Japanese government, the group met four times in 18 months. Similarly, the Korea-Japan Solidarity 21 (Hanil yŏndae 21) was formed with the aim to build regional solidarity between the two nations through self-reflection. Also, after several years of collaborative work, a regional NGO consisting of historians from China, Japan, and South Korea produced the first-ever East Asian common history guidebook, A History That Opens to the Future: The Contemporary and Modern History of Three East Asian Countries (Mirai o hiraku rekishi or Miraerŭl yŏnŭn yŏksa) in early 2005 (Park 2011; Iwasaki and Narita 2008).4 In spring 2007, after ten years of work, another group of 40 historians and experts from Japan and Korea published a comprehensive history of Korea-Japan relations, titled A History of Korea-Japan Relations (Han’il kyoryu ŭi yŏksa). Additionally, a number of teaching materials for history education have resulted from such efforts (Chung 2006).5 It remains to be seen how these “unofficial” history books will be incorporated into schools’ curricula.

Divided memories and identity politics Despite these official and unofficial efforts to reconcile differences over history, we have yet to see the emergence of a shared view of the past, let alone a regional identity among East Asian nations. The official projects to produce joint history texts generated “a certain bond of mutual trust” between scholars and promoted a certain “common intellectual community (Kitaoka 2007, p. 11),”6 but participants came to the painful if not unexpected conclusion that writing a shared official history textbook is all but impossible. At best, historians discussed issues on the basis of open inquiry into historical facts and narrowing perception gaps. Meanwhile, as noted above, the private efforts did result in publishing common history books, but how they will affect the formation of a shared historical memory among East Asians is yet to be seen. If anything, the experience of the past two decades underlines how profoundly historical writing – and especially writing history texts – is affected by nationalist politics (see chapter 4 in this volume). Particularly, an obsession with national history, based on a single historical memory, embodied in history textbooks, has exacerbated Asia’s history problem. Why? As the first modernizing Asian country but still a late developer from the Western point of view, Japan felt an urgent need to catch up through “defensive modernization.” In this process, nationalism, particularly the notion of a racially distinctive and ethnically homogeneous Japanese nation (minzoku), emerged and was promoted as a force for reform and social change. The myth of a racially homogeneous ethno (tan’itsu minzoku) constituted the core of Japanese national history (kokushi) and identity, and remains so even today in the form of theorem on Japanese (nihonjinron) (Yoshino 1992). Korea’s history writing also evolved from dynastic to ethno-national history in the process of modern nation-building. Koreans stressed the uniqueness and purity of the Korean people and developed a nationalist historiography to counter Japanese colonialist historiography. Developed during the colonial period and continuing into the postcolonial era, Korean nationalist historiography reflected the competition between the North and South to claim the sole legitimacy of the Korean ethnic nation (Shin and Robinson 1999; Shin 2006). China’s experience was similar. Early “modern” China (the Republic of China) claimed itself to be “nationalist,” and the PRC prided itself on its victory over colonialism and imperialism; not surprisingly, central to its historical narrative were themes of national resistance and liberation, a focus which remains today. As historian Qi Chen asserts, “The ultimate goal of history education in the People’s Republic of China is to stimulate patriotic feeling and consolidate the national identity of the students” (Chen 2008). 405

Gi-Wook Shin

History education plays a powerful role in shaping historical memory and national identity. History textbooks’ aim is to teach youth a specific “master narrative” as part of defining a nation’s collective identity. As Duus argues, since their invention in the 19th century, history textbooks have been “organized around the narrative or story of a nation or people rather than around a transnational theme,” which remains the case today (Duus 2011; also see chapter 24 in this volume). Because textbooks affect national identity, the politics of nationalism invariably affect their writing. This is especially so in East Asia. According to a public opinion survey of Koreans conducted in 2013, 42.8% of respondents in their 20s – who have no firsthand experience of Japan’s past wrongdoings and perhaps are more familiar with Japanese cultural influence – identified the question of history as the most critical issue to be resolved, while only 34.6% of those who experienced and lived through the period of history in question viewed it as the most pressing problem in Japanese-Korean relations (Ha 2013). Clearly, school education has a great influence in shaping the younger generation’s historical perspectives. In both Japan and South Korea, the Ministry of Education requires all textbooks to undergo a strict screening process (Chung 2006). In China, the Ministry of Education has a more direct role in textbook writing, as history textbooks must “accord with fundamental policies of the government” (Chen 2008, p. 20). This is also the case in Taiwan, where the Democratic Progressive Party government has revised history textbooks in order to emphasize Taiwanese identity. With such heavy state involvement, the resulting history textbooks can easily become international diplomatic issues. Government oversight, as Daniel Sneider argues, makes textbooks a natural and legitimate subject for debate among competing forces within a nation and among nations (Sneider 2011). It is no coincidence that textbooks have become a nexus for significant international tension in East Asia. At the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford University, Daniel Sneider and I have led a collaborative project – “Divided Memories and Reconciliation” – that attempts to comparatively address the history issue in East Asia. The analytical framework we employ is that the greatest obstacle to reconciliation in East Asia lies in the existence of divided, and often conflicting, historical memories. Rather than try to forge a common historical account or to reach a consensus among scholars about specific events, we argue that a more fruitful approach lies in understanding how historical memory has evolved in each country and has been incorporated into respective master narratives. Through uncovering the existence of different historical memories, it is hoped that citizens will develop a more self-critical, self-reflective approach to their own history. Such an introspective effort has the potential to lay the foundation for greater self- and mutual understanding and eventual historical reconciliation in the region. We see reconciliation as a process, not an endpoint. Lily Gardner Feldman suggests that the concept of reconciliation “does not infuse peace with a vision of harmony and tension-free coexistence but integrates differences. Productive contention in a shared and cooperative framework for identifying and softening (but not eliminating) divergence is a more realistic goal than perfect peace” (Feldman 1999, p. 337). In this context, our comparative project can be seen as an effort to create such a cooperative framework to understand divided historical memories in East Asia. To be clear, we are not disputing the importance of historical facts. Historians must strive to establish “accurate” historical facts and write history based on rigorous academic research. History is not solely cognitive memory or a matter of interpretation, even in the age of postmodernism. Nor are we suggesting that we treat aggressors and victims equally. Japan was unquestionably a major aggressor in the region and must acknowledge unequivocally its responsibility. 406

Divided memories

Still, historical facts are inevitably subject to varying and even conflicting interpretations, forming the basis of historical memories. Our focus thus lies on examining how historical facts are recorded and remembered in a given nation and how that, in turn, affects national identity as well as international relations. More specifically, our project examines the formation of historical memory in four East Asian societies (China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) and the United States by analyzing the events from 1931 to 1951. The scope of the period under examination could have been stretched back to the 19th century or included more societies.7 However, for the sake of constructing a manageable comparative study, we have limited the period to the wartime events that began with the opening of the Sino-Japanese conflict in 1931, continued with the widening of that conflict into the Sino-Japanese War and later the Pacific War between the Japanese Empire and the Allies, and concluded with the peace process culminating in the signing of the San Francisco Treaty in 1951. This period encompasses Japanese colonial rule in Korea, Taiwan, and northern China, as well as the decisions at the close of the Pacific War, including the division of Korea. Subjects of focus include general historical issues, China-Japan issues, Taiwan-Korea-Japan issues, U.S.-Japan issues, and postwar settlement issues. The first part of the project is a comparative study of high school history textbooks in these five places, focusing on the period from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1931 to the formal conclusion of the Pacific War with the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951. We specifically compared how these societies remember and teach through formal education eight contentious issues: the Nanjing Massacre, the atomic bombings, the Korean War, the attack on Pearl Harbor, forced labor (including “comfort women”), the Manchurian Incident, economic development under Japanese rule, and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.8 There are similar projects but as far as I know, there exists no such comprehensive study comparing five societies on those topics, especially one that includes the United States. The second comparative study covers popular cinema dealing with historical subjects during roughly the same period. Film, along with television and literature, plays a crucial role in shaping historical memory and provides another means of comparing the formation of historical memory in each of the five societies. This analysis of films has particular importance when one considers that in recent years there has been a significant increase in the exchange of films and other manifestations of popular culture among East Asian nations, in part intended specifically to promote regional reconciliation.9 The third portion of this project comparatively examines views of elite opinion-makers on contentious historical issues. Like film and textbooks, how elites in politics, the media, academia, and business view the past is clearly crucial to the formation of public opinion in East Asia and the United States. However, very little scholarly research has been conducted at the elite level and many unanswered questions remain. Daniel Sneider and I have conducted over 50 interviews with opinion leaders on historical issues in China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States and are currently writing a book based on the interview data. The final phase of the project compares Asian with European experiences in addressing historical disputes and reconciliation. There has been much valuable scholarship on how both Europe and East Asia have approached these issues, but relatively little that directly compares the two areas. A workshop of a group of analysts of the contentious 20th century in both Europe and East Asia was convened at Stanford to deepen the comparative scholarship of how they have shaped their historical memory of the wartime past and how that legacy continues to shape current history in both regions. Each conference panel focused on a key question and paired specialists from Asian and European studies to address that same question (Chirot, Shin, and Sneider 2014). 407

Gi-Wook Shin

The United States in East Asian reconciliation The history issue is not entirely an Asian issue; indeed, it is highly relevant to the United States. The United States has been deeply involved in East Asian affairs since 1941, and even before. Although the occupation of Japan and the Tokyo Tribunal were conducted under the auspices of the Allied Powers, the United States was the undisputed leader of both. As such, many Asians feel that the United States bears responsibility for what they regard as the tribunal’s failure to fully address Japanese war crimes and for the occupation’s inadequate measures to “reeducate” the Japanese about the history of their country’s colonial and wartime actions. There are several specific reasons for including the United States in this comparative study.10 First, the United States did play a crucial role, albeit not always intentionally, in dealing with historical issues in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) focused on the Japanese actions that had most directly affected the Western allies – the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war. The proceedings paid only cursory attention to aggression against Asians, such as Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Nanjing Massacre, and the use of forced Korean labor in Japanese mines and factories (Dower 2000).11 Further, issues such as the conscription of sex slaves (or “comfort women”) were completely overlooked for the issue was not known to the tribunal at that time. Only three of the 11 judges at the trial represented Asian countries, and there was no representative from Korea. The U.S.-led tribunal failed to appreciate or acknowledge the massive suffering of Chinese and Koreans at the hands of Japanese invaders and colonizers and the need to dry up the deep well of anger left behind. This neglect of crimes against Asians is “one of the most serious defects of the Tokyo trial . . . [since] many of the victims of these crimes were left helpless by the injuries they suffered, and they have been left without redress to this day” (Hosoya et al. 1986, p. 54; cf. chapters 3, 7, and 10 in this volume).12 Second, and perhaps most significant, was the U.S. decision to preserve the Showa Emperor in the belief that doing so would facilitate the occupation and reconstruction of postwar Japan. There is still no consensus over the extent of the emperor’s responsibility for Japanese militarism and war crimes (Asahi Shimbun survey 2006; Bix 2001, 2008),13 although the Japanese people fought and died in his name. Even in the tribunal, there were disputes over the emperor’s responsibility. The Australian judge and chair of the tribunal, Sir William Webb, opposed the idea of keeping the imperial institution intact, calling the emperor “the leader in the crime” (The Sydney Morning Herald 1948). However, his was a minority opinion in the U.S.-dominated court, and the opportunity to address the personal and institutional role of the emperor in the historical injustices was lost. As Arnold Brackman, a correspondent for United Press who covered the Tokyo war crimes trials, notes, “Keenan [the Allied powers chief prosecutor] and his staff argued that in both theory and practice the evidence showed that ‘the Emperor’s role [was] that of a figurehead . . . following the line laid down by MacArthur and the Truman administration” (Brackman 1987, p. 86).14 In fact, the Japanese Tokyo Shoseki Japanese History B acknowledges this view by stating that the decision to exclude the emperor from the trials was “determined by the global policy of the United States.” The failure to address the issue of Hirohito’s war responsibility greatly shaped the ways in which the Japanese would remember the war years and later address reconciliation issues with their Asian neighbors. Encouraged by the American decision, the Japanese elite sought to “protect the throne, its occupant, and their own rule” by linking Hirohito to “the idea of peace” (Bix 2008, p. 12). However, the campaign to promote the myth of the emperor’s innocence only strengthened Japanese victim consciousness and impeded the search for historical truth. As Herbert Bix (2008, p. 17) acutely notes, “As long as Hirohito remained on the throne, unaccountable 408

Divided memories

to anyone for his official actions, most Japanese had little reason to question their support of him or feel responsibility for the war, let alone look beyond the narrow boundaries of victim consciousness.” A recent report by the International Crisis Group reached a similar conclusion that “the absolution of the Emperor left the country without anyone to blame” (International Crisis Group 2005). The failure to resolve Japan’s war responsibility has then “provided fertile soil for the growth of a postwar neo-nationalism” there (Dower 2000, p. 444). An exemplary case in point is an award-winning essay by then Chief of Staff of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, General Tamogami Toshio, in the fall of 2008. In what the Economist labeled a “barely warm hash of thrice-cooked revisionism,” he claims that the war was Japan’s attempt to defend its legally held territories of China and Korea against communist conspirators, Pearl Harbor was nothing but an American trap, and Japanese colonial rule was a benevolent undertaking viewed with gratitude by its East Asian neighbors (The Economist 5 November 2008). Any accusation of wartime atrocity is nothing more than a misconceived “rumor,” and Japan must fight to “reclaim its glorious history . . . for a country that denies its own history is destined to fall” (ibid.). Tamogami has advanced a rather extremist view, but his case illustrates that victim identity continues to foster this kind of rightist view in Japan. Third, as Japan’s importance as a bulwark against communism in the region increased with the intensification of the Cold War, the United States sought to quickly put aside issues of historical responsibility. The United States did not press Japan to reconcile with its neighbors as it had with Germany. The San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 formally ended the war, settling Japan’s obligations to pay reparations for its wartime acts. But neither China nor Korea was a signatory, and Japan’s responsibility toward those nations was left unresolved. By then, China had become an enemy of the United States, and Korea was weak and divided. Nevertheless, the 1951 Treaty became a major basis of later court rulings on wartime atrocities and crimes. For instance, in April 2007, Japan’s Supreme Court foreclosed all pending and future lawsuits arising from actions taken by Japan in the course of colonialism and war, referring to article 14(b) of the San Francisco Treaty. Some victims took their cases to the U.S. courts but met the same fate as in Japanese courts. The courts, both Japanese and American, regarded the treaty, drafted at the height of the Cold War largely by the United States and without the participation of China and Korea, as having stripped China and Korea and other countries of legal means to obtain redress. The obstacles to achieve resolution were not cleared either in Japan or in the U.S., both holding the key to historical reconciliation. In 1965, under heavy pressure from the United States anxious to solidify its Cold War security alliance system and to bolster the South Korean economy, the ROK agreed to normalize relations with Japan despite strong domestic protests. For many years thereafter, Korea benefited from substantial Japanese economic assistance, but Japan refused to term this as “reparations.” Issues such as disputed territories and Japan’s colonial rule were again overlooked. Unlike in Western Europe, where the United States established a multilateral security arrangement (NATO) and pushed for Franco-German reconciliation, in East Asia the United States established a bilateral “hub and spoke” alliance system with Japan and the ROK and did not press for historical reconciliation between the two U.S. allies (Palmer 2008).15 As a result, “normalization” occurred at the governmental level but without addressing popular demands for the redress of historical injustices. As one former U.S. senior diplomat points out, “For American policymakers, strategic considerations have consistently trumped issues of equity in historic disputes involving Japan since World War II” (Straub 2008, p. 215). Against this backdrop, there has been some debate in U.S. academic and policymaking circles about the role the United States might play in helping to resolve these historical disputes. A 409

Gi-Wook Shin

predominant view has been that this is primarily a matter for Asians. By taking a specific position, its proponents fear, the United States would be pulled into the Sino-Japanese rivalry and forced to take sides in matters involving its Japanese ally. The other view is that the United States can hardly afford to stand outside these disputes, particularly when it was a participant in their creation. In G. John Ikenberry’s view, Japan’s history problem is an American problem as well, and “Washington should encourage Japan to pursue [a] German path, tying ‘normalization’ to redoubled commitments to regional security cooperation” (Ikenberry 2006; see also Shin 2007). Gilbert Rozman also urges the U.S. to “explicitly challenge revived nationalist interpretations in Japan while also trying to calm historical grievances in South Korea and China” (Rozman 2002, p. 26). As many have noted, any reexamination of the U.S. “national myth” with respect to wartime atrocities is most likely to provoke controversy and spirited rebuttals within the United States. Understandably, there are objections to any efforts that could open this Pandora’s box, as it could become easily and overly politicized. Still, Washington cannot afford overlooking the issues at hand and should reconsider its “hands-off ” posture and take a more proactive role. The United States not only has a responsibility for helping to resolve the disputes but also has a clear interest in ensuring that the peace and prosperity of a region so vital to its future is not undermined by controversies rooted in the past. In other words, resolving the history issue is not simply a matter of helping Asians to achieve overdue reconciliation; it is important if not imperative for U.S. alliance relations and strategic equities in the region as well (Shin and Sneider 2014). As the highly contentious dispute between South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo/Takeshima territorial claims illustrates, the history question can easily spill over into the American policy arena. Thus, it is only fitting to include the Unites States in addressing issues of East Asian historical injustice.

Challenges for East Asia The renewal of the history problem among all the players in the region clearly illustrates that collective memories and reconciliation are rooted not only in colonial and Pacific War injustices, but also in much deeper, more complex, historical, cultural, and political relations. Increased regional interaction offers hope for enhanced regional cooperation, but until they come to terms with the past, there will be clear limits to progress. Fostering a reconciled view of the past will not be easy, however. Past efforts have exhibited slow and protracted progress (Shin 2014). This is not surprising, given that the region is bound by divided, even conflicting, historical memories and identities. Therefore, understanding how each nation has created its own memory and identity is an important first step. Koreans and Chinese, for instance, need to understand the duality of the victim/aggressor identity of conservative Japanese elites (unlike their German counterparts) and how this has been the chief obstacle to Japan’s reconciliation with its Asian neighbors (see chapters 13 and 16 in this volume). Likewise, Japan must understand how central the historical legacy of their aggression has been in shaping the collective identities of Chinese and Koreans. For instance, in Japanese history textbooks, only 4% of the coverage of Japan’s modern history (1868–1945) is devoted to Korea. In contrast, in Korean history textbooks, Japan occupies almost 25 % of its coverage of modern history (late 1800s–1945). In other words, Japan figures far more prominently in the historical memory and identity of Koreans than vice versa. The joint efforts such as Stanford initiative and common history textbook writings by Japan and Korea as well as by Japan and China to (re)examine historical issues have increased the mutual understanding among the relevant parties. Such efforts should continue to be encouraged, despite limitations in producing a common history of East Asia. 410

Divided memories

Ultimately, East Asia needs to foster a shared vision for the region that transcends victim/ victimizer dichotomy and exclusive notions of national identity. However politically convenient and psychologically satisfying it may be to blame others, such an approach will neither heal past wounds nor provide a foundation for a peaceful future. Cultivating a redefined, shared view of the region’s future rests on the shoulders of visionary political leaders and members of civil society, including the mass media. This type of “thick” reconciliation must be based on democratic values and respect for human rights, and both state and society need to be actively involved. In the case of Japan-ROK normalization, when an authoritarian state in Korea suppressed civil society’s attempts to raise historical issues, the resulting reconciliation was so superficial and “thin” that collective memory became skewed. Consequently, even after nearly six decades of normalization with an enormous amount of economic and cultural ties, history issues have become more salient than ever before in shaping bilateral relations. Achieving thick reconciliation also requires educating younger generations to consider the past differently and to reach beyond national borders. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that the younger generation will be more receptive to reconciled views of the past. As aforementioned, history education plays a crucial role in shaping historical memories and perspectives. That explains why the young people of East Asia remain highly nationalistic and why their emotions in regard to history issues are often more intense and bitter than those of their elders. Therefore, educating young East Asians to hold more balanced historical views is an extremely important task for the future. To achieve this, East Asian history educators must encourage diverse views and discussions about their own history rather than just convey a particular – usually nationalistic – master narrative to their students. The current systems of textbook censorship and college entrance exams that mandate one and only one “correct” answer to complex historical issues must be changed. Teachers should be allowed, indeed encouraged, to address contested issues without fear of retribution. Changes in pedagogical methodology, as well as contents, are also needed (Iwasaki and Narita 2008).16 In this regard, recent developments in educational reform in East Asia are encouraging. In South Korea, for instance, starting in 2009, “national history,” a mandatory subject for junior and senior high school students, became “history” and was treated as an independent, not compulsory, subject. In the new curricula, national and world history, which appeared in separate textbooks, were integrated to teach South Korean history “within the context of world history.” “East Asian history,” for the first time, was added as an elective subject in senior high school so that students could learn that “the people of East Asia have created a common cultural heritage through close exchanges.” In Taiwan, “national history” has recently been divided into “Taiwanese history” and “Chinese history” to offer more diversity in historical views.17 Also, like Japan and South Korea, China plans to adopt a textbook screening system that allows schools to choose among multiple texts rather than authorizing only one set of government-designated textbooks. It is a critical time for a new East Asia. Increased regional interaction in recent decades has not diminished the importance of the past; rather, it has become even more contentious as nations vie for regional leadership in East Asia. In fact, as Daniel Sneider (2011) points out, the emergence of history textbooks as an international issue in the early 1980s was a response to Japan’s bid for regional leadership, propelled by its economic success. Now, as China rises as an economic power and a competitor with Japan for regional leadership, the past is becoming even more important and increases potential for conflict in the region. It is hoped that our project, initiated by an American university and supported by multiple Asian institutions, can contribute in this regard and that there will be more of such collaborative trans-Pacific efforts. We must also be patient with the rather slow progress in collective East Asian efforts for reconciliation – even in Europe it took a long time to make significant headways. 411

Gi-Wook Shin

Historical reconciliation, no matter how and where it occurs, is inherently a multilayered, protracted, complex, long-term process. It is predicated on a multitude of actors and demands intertwined participation from the state, civil society, and international organizations. International society must understand the complex layers of East Asian history and reconciliation. It is misleading to mechanically compare, as many casual observers do, the ways that East Asia and Western Europe have dealt with the past. While there are issues surely common to both regions, it cannot and should not be expected that East Asia will simply repeat or emulate the experiences of Western Europe. The regions have distinctive histories, experiences, and memories, and perhaps even different cultural modes of reconciliation (Cole 2007). In fact, as Daniel Chirot, who compares the experiences of historical reconciliation in Asia and Europe, notes, the German model was historically unique (Chirot 2011; Torpey 2006). Accordingly, we must continue to search for an East Asian model, while using the European experiences as a reference. This would include reassessing the U.S. role in facilitating the reconciliation process. Ultimately, overcoming the historical grievances that divide the nations of East Asia is not just a necessary condition to avoid conflict and enhance cooperation; it is a prerequisite for building a new regional community that has important policy implications for the United States. As William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past,” and nowhere is this truer today than in East Asia. We must not allow the future in this important region to be determined by a failure to deal wisely and courageously with the past.

Notes This is a revised version of my chapter “History Textbooks, Divided Memories, and Reconciliation,” pp. 3–19, in Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel Sneider (eds.) History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia (London: Routledge, 2011). I am grateful to Joyce Lee for her assistance in preparing this chapter. 1 To use David Croker’s term, reconciliation in East Asia has been “thin.” He distinguishes reconciliation into varieties of “thin” – formerly hostile parties continue to co-exist without taking active revenge – and “thick,” which entails “forgiveness, mercy, a shared comprehensive vision, mutual healing, or harmony” (p. 60). 2 Wolfgang Höpken notes three conditions for such a political environment: “a general favorable political environment of détente . . . after basic disputes had been settled or lost their significance,” “a broad consensus within the society about the need and the benefit of reconciliation,” and “political elites [to view it] as a matter for increasing their legitimacy and thus find their support or at least acceptance.” In East Asia, these conditions are yet to exist. 3 Still, these joint efforts are useful as a kind of public history education. Through media coverage and public discussion of history textbook issues, many first learned about the Nanjing Massacre, the “comfort women” system, wartime forced labor, and the mistreatment of POWs, as part of the regional wartime experience, and reexamined them with new sensitivity, in light of universal human rights. Both elites and the public in Korea, Japan, and China have widened their scope of understanding of the Asian regional history problems that cross their own national borders. In addition, by acknowledging mutual ignorance, both societies have learned more about each other’s problems. 4 Even in this book, complete agreement is not reached. According to a key participant in this project, all three nations are producing a slightly different version of this common history book. For instance, when referring to “comfort women,” the Korean version uses “sex slaves” while the Japanese one uses “ianfu” (Japanese for “comfort women,” a euphemistic expression). 5 They include Korea-Japan Common History Teaching Materials; History of Korea-Japan Relations from Prehistory to Present (March 2007); Korea-Japan Common History Teaching Materials: From Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s Choson Invasion to the Royal Envoy from the Choson Dynasty (April 2005); Korea-Japan History: Regarding One Another Face to Face (2006); and Modern and Contemporary History of Three East Asian Countries Looking to the Future (May 2005). 6 Chung Jae Jeong also mentions a number of achievements from the joint efforts. They include enhanced understanding of the historical views and textbook censorship systems of each other, development of

412

Divided memories

7 8 9

10 11

12

human networks among historians and history educators of both nations, and improved descriptions of modern Korean history in Japanese history textbooks. We could have included Russia and North Korea but could not do so primarily for logistical reasons. The research was published as a book, History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia (2011, New York: Routledge). We held a workshop about history films on June 6, 2008 and convened a larger conference on December 5, 2008. The conference papers that were assembled as an edited book (Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia, edited by Michael Berry and Chiho Sawada, forthcoming). For more detailed discussion of why the United States should be included in the study of East Asian historical disputes, see Shin (2010) and Shin and Sneider (2014). In Dower’s view, the Tokyo trials focused on “crimes against peace” but ignored “crimes against humanity,” including “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed before or during the war, or persecutions on political or racial grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated” (p. 456). Many war crimes against Asians such as forced labor, “comfort women,” and mass killings of civilians belong to the second category. Paik Choong-Hyun also contends that historical evidence demonstrates that there was a larger number of cases of crimes against humanity: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed by the then existing Japanese government, or with the acquiescence of that government, against minority populations in Japan, Korea, Manchuria, China, the Philippines, and the other Asian regions under Japanese control. But the victorious Allied powers paid very little attention to crimes committed against these colonized peoples, perhaps because the victims of these crimes were not nationals of the victorious nations. (Hosoya, p. 54)

13 An Asahi Shimbun April 2006 survey showed 16% of the respondents believing that the emperor bears “extremely heavy responsibility” for the war, while 15% said that he has “no responsibility.” Another 22% thought that the emperor bears “heavy responsibility,” and 42% say that he has “some degree of responsibility.” 14 He also noted that “to his credit, Keenan admitted after the trial that ‘we gave a good deal of thought’ to indicting him and that ‘strictly legally Emperor Hirohito could have been tried and convicted because under the Constitution of Japan he did have the power to make war and stop it.’ That, of course, was the Australian argument” (p. 86). 15 Another example is the contrasting role of the United States in dealing with foreign forced labor. As David Palmer points out, “the U.S. pressed hard to force the reluctant German government and corporations to admit their role, make a public apology to the aggrieved, and provide compensation. Toward the Japanese government, by contrast, the U.S. position was precisely opposite, protecting it against claims at every step, even before the San Francisco Treaty.” 16 Based on the results of our research project, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) has developed a supplementary curriculum unit for U.S. high school students, titled “Divided Memories: Examining High School History Textbooks in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.” It is designed to encourage students to explore and analyze diverse perspectives on key events in the history between China, Japan, North and South Korea, and the United States, and will be made available to Asians. Similarly, in their piece exploring possible methodologies for textbook writing, Iwasaki and Narita assert the need to avoid singular national history altogether and recognize several different perspectives. 17 This new development may slow down with the 2012 reelection of Ma Ying-Jeou to President of Taiwan and the return to power of the Kuomintang (KMT).

Bibliography Asahi Shimbun (2006) ‘Tokyo Trials Poll’, 2 May. Available at http://mansfieldfdn.org/program/researcheducation-and-communication/asian-opinion-poll-database/listofpolls/2006-polls/asahi-shimbunmay-2–2006-%E2%80%9Ctokyo-trials-poll%E2%80%9D/. Accessed 4 February 2015. Berry, M., and Sawada, C. (eds.) (forthcoming) Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.

413

Gi-Wook Shin Bix, H.P. (2001) Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, New York: HarperCollins Perennial Edition. Bix, H.P. (2008) ‘War Responsibility and Historical Memory: Hirohito’s Apparition’, Japan Focus, 6 May. Available at http://www.japanfocus.org/-herbert_p_-bix/2741. Accessed 4 February 2015. Brackman, A.C. (1987) The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, New York: William Morrow. Chen, Q. (2008) ‘Curriculum Reform and the Writing of High School History Textbook in the People’s Republic of China since 1990’, paper presented at a conference on “Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia”, 11-12 February, Stanford, CA: Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University. Chirot, D. (2011) ‘Europe’s Troubled Word War II Memories: Are They That Different?’, in G.W. Shin and D.C. Sneider (eds.) History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, London: Routledge, pp. 269–285. Chirot, D., Shin, G.W., and Sneider, D.C. (eds.) (2014) Confronting Memories of World War II: Recriminations and Reconciliations in Europe and Asia, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Chung, J.J. (2006) ‘The Korean-Japanese History Conflict and a Direction for Improvement [Hanirŭi yŏksakaldŭmggwa kŭkpokpanghyang]’, paper presented at the International Symposium Commemorating the Launch of the Foundation: “Overcoming Historical Issues for Co-Prosperity in 21st Century Northeast Asia”, 29 November, Seoul, Korea. Cole, E. (ed.) (2007) Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Croker, D. (1999) ‘Reckoning with Past Wrongs: A Normative Framework’, Ethics and International Affairs, vol. 13: 43–64. Dower, J.W. (2000) Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Duus, P. (2011) ‘War Stories’, in G.W. Shin and D.C. Sneider (eds.) History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, New York: Routledge, pp. 101–114. Feldman, L.G. (1999) ‘The Principle and Practice of Reconciliation in German Foreign Policy: Relations with France, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic’, International Affairs, vol. 75, no. 2: 337. Ha, J.H. (2013) ‘Dokdo and History Questions as the Most Critical Problems of the Japan-Korea Relations’, Seoul Shinmun, 4 January. Available at http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20130104003004. Accessed 4 February 2015. Höpken, W. (2003) ‘Reconciliation through Textbooks: Experiences, Achievements, Problems’, paper presented at a conference on “Memory, Reconciliation and Security in the Asian-Pacific Region: Implications for Japan-U.S. Relations”, 31 January–1 February, Washington, DC: George Washington University. Hosoya, C., Andō, N., Ōnuma,Y., and Minear, R.H. (eds.) (1986) The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: An International Symposium, Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd. Ikenberry, G.J. (2006) ‘Japan’s History Problem’, Washington Post, 17 August. International Crisis Group (2005) ‘North East Asia’s Undercurrents of Conflict,’ 15 December. Available at http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/asia/north-east-asia/108-north-east-asias-undercurrents-ofconflict.aspx. Accessed 4 February 2015. Iwasaki M., and Narita R. (2008) ‘Writing history textbooks in East Asia: The possibilities and pitfalls of ‘History that Opens the Future’, in S. Richter (ed.) Contested Views of a Common Past: Revisions of History in Contemporary East Asia, New York: Campus Verlag, pp. 271–283. Kim, M. and Schwartz, B. (2010) ‘Introduction: Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem’, in M. Kim and B. Schwartz (eds.) Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–25. Kimijima, K. (2000) ‘The Continuing Legacy of Japanese Colonialism: The Japan-South Korea Joint Study Group on History Textbooks’, in L. Hein and M. Selden (eds.) Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp, pp. 173–200. Kitaoka, S. (2007) ‘Japan-China Joint History Research Gets Under Way’, Gaiko Forum, vol. 3: 3–13. Kyodo News (2010), ‘Japan, China Still at Odds over Nanjing: Joint History Study Skirts Death Toll’, 1 February. Mainichi Shimbun (2006), ‘Japan-China Joint History Research’, 27 December. Palmer, D. (2008) ‘Korean Hibakusha, Japan’s Supreme Court and the International Community: Can the U.S. and Japan Confront Forced Labor and Atomic Bombing?’ Japan Focus, 20 February. Available at http://japanfocus.org/-David-Palmer/2670. Accessed 4 February 2015. Park, S.W. (2011) ‘A History That Opens to the Future: The First Common China-Japan-Korean History Teaching Guide’, in G.W. Shin and D.C. Sneider (eds.) History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, New York: Routledge, pp. 230–245.

414

Divided memories Rozman, G. (2002) ‘Japan and Korea: Should the US Be Worried about Their New Spat in 2001?’ Pacific Review, vol. 15, no. 1: 1–28. Shin, G.W. (2006) Ethnic Nationalism in Korea, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Shin, G.W. (2007) ‘Beyond apology, moral clarity,’ Christian Science Monitor, 2 April. Available at http://www. csmonitor.com/2007/0402/p09s02-coop.html. Shin, G.W. (2010) ‘Historical Disputes and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: The U.S. Role,’ Pacific Affairs, vol. 83, no. 4: 663–673. Shin, G.W. (2014) ‘Historical Reconciliation in Northeast Asia: Past Efforts, Future Steps, and the U.S. Role,’ in D. Chirot, G.W. Shin and D.C. Sneider (eds.) Confronting Memories of World War II: Recriminations and Reconciliations in Europe and Asia, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, pp. 157–185. Shin, G.W., and Robinson, M. (eds.) (1999) Colonial Modernity in Korea, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University’s Asia Center. Shin, G.W., and Sneider, D.C. (2014) ‘History Wars in Northeast Asia’, Foreign Affairs, 10 April. Available at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141116/gi-wook-shin-and-daniel-c-sneider/history-wars-innortheast-asia. Accessed 4 February 2015. Sneider, D.C. (2011) ‘The War over Words: History Textbooks and International Relations in Northeast Asia’, in G.W. Shin and D.C. Sneider (eds.) History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, New York: Routledge, pp. 246–268. Straub, D. (2008) ‘The United States and Reconciliation in East Asia’, in T. Hasegawa and K. Togo (eds.) East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Westport, CT: Praeger, pp. 207–219. The Economist (2008),‘The Ghost of Wartimes Past’, 5 November. Available at http://www.economist.com/ node/12544740. The Financial Times (2007) ‘Sino-Japanese Historians Battle to Find Consensus’, 16 February. Available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7fe74b56-bd75-11db-b5bd-0000779e2340.html#axzz3e6QtJvhn. The Sydney Morning Herald (1948) ‘25 Japanese to Pay For War Guilt: Hanging for Tojo, Six Others’, 13 November. Available at http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19481113&id= jiARAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0pMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4778,3377070. Accessed 4 February 2015. Torpey, J. (2006) ‘Dynamics of Denial: Responses to Past Atrocities in Germany, Turkey, and Japan’, in G.W. Shin, S.W. Park, and D. Yang (eds.) Rethinking Historical Injustice in Northeast Asia: The Korean Experience, London: Routledge, pp. 173–191. Yoshino, K. (1992) Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan, London: Routledge.

415

26 HISTORICAL MEMORY ISSUES IN CHINA’S RELATIONS WITH ITS NEIGHBORS Xiaoming Zhang

China’s geopolitical location is quite unique. It has been surrounded by many continental and maritime neighbors on all sides over the past 2,000 years. Today China has more neighboring countries than any other nations in the world. It is sharing land borders with 14 countries,1 and maritime borders (or disputed maritime borders) with eight countries2 (two of them, North Korea and Vietnam, share both land borders and maritime borders with China). Dealing with the neighboring countries to ensure a favorable external security environment in the surrounding areas (or zhoubian waijiao in Chinese) has therefore always been on the top of the foreign policy agenda of the various Chinese central governments. In fact, China is probably the only big country in the world that has been so preoccupied with its relationship with the neighboring countries and has spent so many resources in dealing with them. China’s relationship with its neighboring countries has a long history. It could be traced back to as early as the first unification of China by Emperor Qin Shihuang in 211 BC, and it has always been in the process of change. The long history of China’s interactions with its neighbors resulted in rich historical memories. As China and its neighboring countries entered the community of sovereign states, telling and retelling the past, or historical memories (as social facts, and social construction), has always been playing an important role in the modern nation-building process and international relations. Differing historical memories have the potential to disrupt China’s bilateral relations with its neighboring countries, and the regional politics as a whole. The historical disputes or “history problem” between China and its East Asian neighbors in the post-Cold War era, especially in the early 21st century, provided solid evidences on the negative impact of historical memories on China’s relations with its neighbors and East Asian regional politics. Yoich Funabashi (2005), chief diplomatic correspondent of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, wrote the following: “It appears that history, which used to play a supportive role, has become the leading player on the East Asian international political scene where the past is more unpredictable than the future.”3 Choi Woon-do, a research fellow at the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, pointed out, The world is now witnessing the advent of the Asian era, after going through the era of the Atlantic and then that of the Pacific. Korea, China and Japan will be at the center of cooperation and conflicts at the same time in this new era. The future of Asia will depend on whether the three nations move toward cooperation or not, under a trilateral 416

Historical memory issues

regional framework or on a bilateral basis. Collaboration between the three is totally dependent on how they realize reconciliation over history. He further argued, “Reconciliation is indispensable in reducing uncertainties and moving toward cooperation and harmony in Asia. What East Asia needs most is political leadership that will revive the Joint History Research Committee, not reconfirm conflicts but initiate reconciliation.”4 The impact of historical memory on China’s relations with its neighbors is a very broad and difficult research topic. It is not only a historical issue, but the topic pertains to psychological, cultural and political domains as well. Since the author is not able to interpret every aspect of that broad subject matter, this chapter is going to focus on my survey and analysis of the three categories of historical memory in China’s relations with its neighboring countries. They are the Sino-Japanese wars, China’s border wars with its neighbors and the China-centered East Asian tributary system.

Sino-Japanese wars The historical memory or the so-called history problem has occupied a prominent position in the relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Japan over the past several decades.5 And the “history problem” has a lot to do with historical memories of the SinoJapanese wars. The Sino-Japanese wars in the late 19th century, and in the 1930s and 1940s, is the most thorny historical memory issue in the Sino-Japanese relationship, and it has had a negative impact on the bilateral relations, and East Asian regional cooperation as a whole. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan soon joined Western colonial powers in posing a challenge not only to the defunct China-centered East Asian regional order (the tributary system) but to the security of China itself as well. The Korean Peninsula became an “invasion corridor,” once Japan, strengthened by the Meiji Restoration, opened the “Hermit Kingdom” by force in 1876.6 Japan annexed Ryukyu Islands in the late 1870s, and claimed its sovereignty over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands shortly after the annexation (see chapters 11, 22 and 23 in this volume). The Sino-Japanese rivalry over the Korean Peninsula developed into a war during 1894–1895. Japan defeated China and forced it to recognize “the full and complete independence and autonomy” of Korea. The war had inflicted much human suffering and humiliation to China with substantially diminishing influence on the peninsula for more than half a century.7 In January of 1895, just before the end of the war, Japan formally claimed Diaoyu Islands as a part of its territory. The current Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku Islands) dispute is reminding the Chinese people of the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War, as those uninhabited and rocky islets are perfect symbols of the memory wars.8 On October 18, 2012, then Japanese foreign minister Koichiro Gemba told the Financial Times in London, “I think the Senkaku Islands issue should not be linked with the historical issue.”9 But to the Chinese, the Diaoyu Islands could not be decoupled from the historical issue of Japanese military invasion and territorial expansion in East Asia.10 The Diaoyu/ Senkaku Islands at the center of the dispute are claimed by both countries, though historically China has the stronger claim (see chapter 11 in this volume).11 The 1931–1945 Sino-Japanese War was a brutal invasion of China by the Japanese militarists, resulting in much more atrocities and humiliation to the Chinese than the previous violence; the memory of that war has always been playing a crucial role in the Chinese perception of Japan. Deng Xiaoping, the late Chinese leader and founding father of the reform and open door policy, once said, “The harm which Japan inflicted upon China is not able to be measured, only in terms of casualty, tens of millions of Chinese people lost their lives. As a result, Japan is a country which owns most of the historical debt to China.”12 417

Xiaoming Zhang

In the 1972 joint communiqué between China and Japan, the end of war was finally announced, China gave up the right for war reparations (see chapter 13 in this volume), the Japanese government expressed its apology for the invasion, and the bilateral diplomatic relationship between Beijing and Tokyo was established. But the Chinese people have been questioning the sincerity of the Japanese government’s apology and concerned about Japanese politicians’ frequent visits to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a war memorial dedicated to 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including those from World War II. The most contentious aspect of the Yasukuni lies with the enshrinement of 14 Japanese Class-A war criminals after 1978. The Yasukuni Shrine is viewed by most Chinese people as a symbol of Japan’s militarism and wartime aggression in Asia.13 During the past decades, the related “history problem” issues, such as the Nanjing Massacre, the “comfort women” and the revision of the Japanese history textbooks, among others, repeatedly emerged, agitating the Sino-Japanese relations. The Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine between 2001 and 2006 even resulted in large-scale anti-Japan demonstrations in Chinese big cities, including Beijing. As the most recent event, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine on December 26, 2013. It was the first visit by a sitting prime minister since Junichiro Koizumi went to mark the end of World War II in 2006. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang issued a strong rebuke in a statement posted on the ministry’s website, and he called the visits to Yasukuni “an effort to glorify the Japanese militaristic history of external invasion and colonial rule . . . and to challenge the outcome of World War II.”14 And in response to a Japanese proposition that Prime Minister Abe wishes to have summit talks with his Chinese counterpart, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, in a blunt public statement, said that Beijing does not welcome him. This amounted to branding the top Japanese leader as persona non grata. Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassadors started a public relations war against Japan in third countries’ media by calling the Abe regime as an “evil force” in public, and the Japanese ambassadors took a tit-for-tat tactic against the Chinese government. On February 27, the Chinese legislature designated two national days to mark victory in the anti-Japanese war and to commemorate victims of the Nanjing Massacre. September 3 was set as the victory day and December 13 as the memorial day, at the bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC). The Chinese media has been reporting on the rightist tendency in the current Japanese politics, especially under the Abe administration. The nationalization of Diaoyu Islands by the Japanese government in 2010, the conservative Shinzo Abe’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine shortly before he was elected as Japanese prime minister at the end of 2012, the Japanese government’s decision to provide noncombat military equipment (including petrol ships) to some Southeast Asian countries which have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, Prime Minister Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party’s desire to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution (including war-renouncing Article 9), Abe’s conservative calls to revoke or change the 1993 Kono statement of apology for Japan’s wartime use of “comfort women” (see chapter 16 in this volume), and his provocative remarks on the definition of invasion, etc., were all described by the Chinese media as the signs of the revival of the Japanese militarism.15 On May 12, 2013, Abe was seen giving a thumbs-up from inside the cockpit of a Self-Defense Forces fighter jet that had the number 731 emblazoned on it – a gesture that some (especially the Chinese and Koreans) saw as very insensitive, if not provocative, given that Japan’s Unit 731, a notorious chemical and biological research unit that conducted medical experiments on living humans during the World War II, was responsible for the deaths of between 3,000 and 12,000 people, mostly Chinese.16 The conservative leader’s gesture was interpreted as another sign of Japan’s dangerous regression to its militarist past. On July 29, 2013, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso caused another international stir by urging Japanese politicians bent on revising the Constitution to 418

Historical memory issues

learn from the way Nazi Germany amended the Weimar charter. “[The Nazis] did it in a ‘let’skeep-it-quiet’ manner, and the Weimar Constitution was changed before most people realized it. Why don’t we learn from that method?” Aso said.17 A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry said on July 31, 2013, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Nazi remarks have alarmed Japan’s neighbors and the international community about the country’s future trajectory. People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper, also criticized Aso’s remark on “Nazi-style” constitutional revision as assault to the conscience of mankind.18 The Chinese media harshly criticized Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine on December 26, 2013.19 Much more coverage in Chinese media on the “rightist” tendency in Japanese politics came out in the beginning of 2014, as this year marks the 120th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese War that broke out on the Korean Peninsula. It is obvious that the historical memory of the Sino-Japanese wars is going to be a great barrier to the future improvement of the Sino-Japanese relationship and East Asian regional cooperation, in the context of the Sino-Japanese geopolitical competition in the early 21st century. The historical memory matters a lot in Sino-Japanese relations; as one analyst commented, “The Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945) was a pivotal moment in history partly because its violence awakened dormant feelings about earlier humiliations. Japan’s atrocities precipitated memories of 19th-century colonial invasions, collaboration with the West and earlier aggression against Asia.”20 And The Japan Times, a Japanese English newspaper, recently pointed out, “Asia’s two biggest economies have long endured a difficult relationship characterized by disagreements on a wide range of issues, many of which are connected to bitter memories of the violence and atrocities waged in Asia by Imperial Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.”21 Contentious historical memory will continue to be an important issue in the Sino-Japanese relationship in the near future. The history problem is and is going to be a hard nut for the Chinese and Japanese governments to crack.

China’s border wars As mentioned above, China shares land borders with 14 countries, and maritime borders (or disputed maritime borders) with eight countries. The border issues or territorial disputes have had a great negative impact on China’s relations with some of its neighboring countries. China has signed border treaties through negotiations with most of its neighboring countries since the founding of the PRC in 1949.22 But China also engaged into several border wars or skirmishes with some of its neighboring countries, which led to nationalist hatred and deterioration of the bilateral relations. The border wars between China and India (in 1962), China and the Soviet Union (USSR, in 1969), China and Vietnam (in 1979) constitute another category of historical memory issue which has been closely related to nationalism, especially in the current Sino-Indian relationship.23 Let me first elaborate on China’s border wars with the Soviet Union and Vietnam, then two socialist neighboring countries of China. China’s border wars with the USSR and Vietnam had once been disruptive issues in the respective bilateral relations for decades. But China managed to resolve all of the land border disputes with the USSR and then Russia, and Vietnam in the 1990s. The deterioration of the Sino-Soviet relationship in the late 1950s and early 1960s resulted in tensions along the 4,380 km border between China and the Soviet Union. Amid heightening tensions, the Soviet Union and China began border talks. The Chinese position was that the 19th-century border treaties, concluded by the Qing dynasty China and the Tsarist Russia, were unequal, and amounted to unfair annexation of the Chinese territory. Moscow could not accept this interpretation. Then at the height of the Sino-Soviet split in 1969, a series of border skirmishes between the Chinese and Soviet forces occurred. The most serious of those clashes took place in March 1969 in the vicinity of the disputed Zhenbao (Jade) Island on the Ussuri 419

Xiaoming Zhang

River, also known as Damanskii Island in Russia. The war started as a group of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops ambushed the Soviet border guards on that island. The Soviets retaliated by bombarding Chinese troop concentrations on the Chinese bank of the Ussuri River and by storming Zhenbao Island. Both the Chinese and the Soviet sides suffered causalities in that war, although the clash did not escalate. It was one of the most dangerous international crises in the Cold War, which led to a rapprochement between the PRC and the US in the early 1970s.24 The memory of that war, to some extent, had shaped the Chinese and Soviet perceptions of and attitudes towards each other from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an agreement on the eastern part of the Sino-Soviet border was finally reached by the Chinese and the Soviet governments, and both sides agreed that Zhenbao Island belonged to China. After the end of the Soviet Union, the Chinese and Russian governments reached and signed a series of border agreements, and resolved all of the territorial disputes between the two countries. As a result, today and in the future, the historical memory of the Sino-USSR border war in 1969 is not and would not be as important as it used to be during the Cold War era, although we could not dismiss the impact of the historical memories in the bilateral relationship.25 As David Shambaugh pointed out in his new book China Goes Global (2013), “Even though the generally good health of the China-Russia relationship today should be seen as positive and conductive to regional stability and security, historical memories and contemporary fears still cast a long shadow.”26 The Sino-Vietnamese border war, known in China as a counterattack against Vietnam in self-defense and in Vietnam as a war against Chinese expansionism, was a brief but bloody border war fought in February–March 1979 between the People’s Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Chinese army (without the participation of its air force and navy) launched the offensive and advanced into the territory of the northern Vietnam, in response to Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia which ended the reign of the PRCbacked Khmer Rouge. China withdrew its troops from Vietnam after one month’s incursion. Both sides of the conflict suffered high causalities and described themselves as victors. Border skirmishes between the two countries continued throughout the 1980s after the 1979 border war ended, Armed conflicts only stopped at the end of the 1980s after the Vietnamese agreed to fully withdraw its troops from Cambodia, and the Chinese and Vietnamese governments started to improve and normalize their bilateral relations. In 1999, after many years of negotiations, China and Vietnam signed a treaty on their land border demarcation. In January 2009, the border demarcation with markers was officially completed, signed by Vietnamese deputy foreign minister and his Chinese counterpart. As a result, the land border is no longer an issue in the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. But the memory of the 1979 border war is and is going to impact the bilateral relationship, as a number of Vietnamese individuals and NGOs occasionally staged demonstrations against China and commemorate the 1979 war. In the early 21st century, as the South China Sea territorial disputes between China and some of the Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, is becoming a hot spot in East Asia, the historical memories of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war and the maritime battles in the South China Sea fought by China and South Vietnam in 1974 over Xisha Islands (the Paracel Islands), and by China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1988 over Nansha Islands (the Spratly Islands), are sure to have some negative impacts on the future development of the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. In comparison with the 1969 Sino-Soviet border war and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war, the historical memory of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war might be much more influential in the bilateral relationship between China and India, because the Sino-Indian border issue is still in progress with no clear sign of resolution. In fact, the Sino-Indian border issue is almost the only remaining land border dispute between China and its neighboring countries.27 420

Historical memory issues

Indian hostility toward China could date back to the border conflict of 1959–1962, where the 1962 border war was a defining momentum.28 The war between China and India over the disputed Himalayan border occurred in October 1962; the Chinese troops advanced over the Indian forces in both the eastern and western parts of the disputed border, and succeeded in securing a substantial portion of the disputed territory. The war ended when the Chinese declared a ceasefire, and simultaneously announced its withdrawal from the occupied area one month later. The causalities on the Indian side were much higher than the Chinese side. To a great extent, the memory of the 1962 war has shaped the Indian perception of China. The aftermath of the war saw sweeping changes in the Indian military to prepare it for similar conflicts in the future, and placed pressure on Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was seen as responsible for failing to anticipate the Chinese attack on India. The late Indian Prime Minister Nehru once displayed his wounds from the war for all to see. “Nothing in my long political career has hurt me more and grieved more,” he said, than “the hostile and unfriendly twist given in India-China relations in recent years, culminating in what is in effect a Chinese invasion of India, in violent contradiction of the claim that China wanted to settle the border question by peaceful means.”29 The Indians used to regard that war as great insult to India, especially to the Indian military. As a result, the Indians would take any opportunity to cure their wounds and recover the honor. As one Indian historian wrote, The victory over Pakistan (in 1971) unleashed a huge wave of patriotic sentiment. It was hailed as “India’s first military victory in centuries,” speaking in terms not of India the nation, but of India the land mass and demographic entity. In the first half of the second millennium a succession of foreign armies had come in through the north-west passage to plunder and conquer. Later rulers were Christian rather than Muslim, and came by sea rather than overland. Most recently, there had been that crushing defeat at the hands of the Chinese. For so long used to humiliation and defeat, India could at last savour the sweet smell of military success.30 As a result, the 1962 border war became a great turning point in the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship, the India-China friendship turned sour after the war, and the diplomatic relationship could not be normalized until the late 1980s.31 Even after the normalization of the bilateral diplomatic relationship, the historical memory of 1962 war has not dissipated in the Indian perception of the so-called China threat. We could find many evidences on that point. In May of 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests and became a de facto nuclear country, and Pakistan, the Indian neighboring adversary, immediately followed suit by conducting its own nuclear tests. The UN Security Council decided to impose sanctions on India and Pakistan. The Indian Prime minister used the “China threat” as the justification for the Indian nuclear tests in his letter to the American president Bill Clinton. The Indian army successfully drove the armed Pakistani intruders out of the Indian-controlled Kashmir region in the 1999 Kagil conflict, and regarded that operation as a victory after the 1962 China-India war. As one analyst commented, “The Indian army had finally redeemed itself. It had removed, once and for all, the stigma of having failed to repulse the Chinese in 1962.”32 On November 3, 2011, the Chinese spaceship Sheng Zhou VIII successfully docked with the first Chinese space station, Tian Gong I. The Indian Defense Minister expressed his concern with the increase of China’s space war capability, and the Indian local media warned that India had to also develop its own anti-satellite weapons, laser weapons and military satellites, in order to avoid the repetition of the 1962 defeat once an outer space war erupts.33 According to one senior Chinese correspondent who has reported on India for many years, the Indian newspaper used to publish a series of articles in mid-October every year, to commemorate 421

Xiaoming Zhang

the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, by taking a retrospect review of the war or drawing lessons from it. She argued in a recent article that China’s image in the Indian people’s mind is still shaped by the 1962 war; a generation of Indian people grew up with the idea that “recovery of the lost territory from China” is the primary goal of India.34 Indian Minister of Commerce Jairam Ramesh, who coined the term “Chindia,” once wrote in his book that the majority of the Indian people are suspicious of China, as the memory of the great Indian defeat in 1962 Himalaya war could not be forgotten.35 One Western analyst drew a similar conclusion on the negative impact of the 1962 border war on Indian perception of China and the India-China relationship.36 As China and India are rising as great powers in the international society, it is an urgent need for the two Asian neighboring giants to overcome the negative impact of the border dispute, as China managed to solve the border disputes with the former Soviet Union, Russia and Vietnam.

Tributary system As for the last topic of ongoing historical problems that China has been facing, let’s turn to the historical memory of the China-centered East Asian tributary system. That might be the longest-lasting historical memory issue, and one important source of the anxiety among some of China’s neighboring countries over China’s rise. As one scholar pointed out, “China’s re-emergence as the central power in Asia has rightly raised the question of the possible relevance of its premodern patterns of external diplomacy to the country’s current situation.”37 Another analyst stated, “All of these nations live adjacent to China (and vice versa), and memories of China’s historical ‘tribute’ relationships still run deep for all parties. These factors will continue to simultaneously bind and divide China and its Asian neighbors.”38 From the first unification of China by Emperor Qin Shihuang in 211 BC until the outbreak of the Opium War in 1840, China had been the so-called Middle Kingdom. For about two thousand years, it had been the most developed and powerful country in East Asia. Its rulers regarded China as the only “civilized” entity or civilization in the world and considered its neighbors “barbarians” or so-called si yi (four tribes), namely man, yi, di, and rong. Because of its both real and perceived material and cultural superiority, China was at the center of the East Asian regional international system, over which it often dominated. Most of the neighboring countries paid tributes to the Chinese emperors from time to time, thus forming a tributary system lasting for about two thousand years.39 In the China-centered tributary relationship, China’s neighboring states almost could not develop normal relations between or among themselves. Their most important external contacts were the regular payment of tributes to the Chinese emperors, at the interval of once a year to once every 10 years.40 China’s relationship with its neighbors could thus be characterized as a center-peripheral one. It was as an unequal and vertical relationship, in which the neighboring countries were treated as inferior. The Sinocentric tributary system was also unique in its own organizing principles, rules, norms and institutions, different from the anarchical international system of sovereign states. A caveat is that China as the center could not be simply categorized as a hierarchical empire. Within the tributary system, China was no doubt the leading power, or to use the current term, a regional “hegemon,” because it led and controlled the foreign relations with the neighboring countries, to some degree. But, in sharp contrast to the Western hegemons and empires, China did not establish a direct control over its vassals. Neither were the tributary states China’s colonies. China’s influence on its neighboring countries was mostly cultural and political in nature, in lieu of exercising direct control by means of territorial annexation and military occupation. Accommodating China did not involve “a significant loss of national independence, as nearby states were largely free to conduct their domestic and foreign policy independent of China.”41 422

Historical memory issues

One analyst even argued that the China-centered East Asian international relations “emphasized formal hierarchy among nations while allowing considerable informal equality.”42 In economic terms, the tributary system was a form of international trade in East Asia.43 The envoys of the vassal states used to bring their home countries’ products to China and traded them with those offered by Chinese businessmen. The value of the Chinese emperors’ return “gifts” to the tributary states was often much higher than that of the paid tributes. To some extent, the Chinese emperors used the tributary system to maintain a good relationship with its neighbors and therefore ensure China’s own security. As one American scholar argued, the tributary system was basically a defensive system, based on Confucian morality and cultural superiority rather than on legal treaties and military dominance.44 On the other hand, from time to time, the Chinese empires did use forces to establish and maintain a tributary relationship with a neighboring country, especially on the Korean Peninsula and in Indochina. China even occasionally launched military attacks abroad. The Mongols, after overrunning the Chinese empire, attempted to invade Japan by sending troops against it in 1274 and again in 1281, for example. They were the greatest maritime expeditions the world had ever seen until then, and were turned back more by the adverse weather—the great typhoon, or “divine wind” as it is called by the Japanese—rather than by the relatively small groups of Japanese knights who tried to beat them off.45 China’s relationship with the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam before the Opium War are two typical examples of the center-peripheral relationship characterized as the tributary system. For centuries, China had been the dominant power on the Korean Peninsula and maintained a relatively stable and close relationship with the countries in that area. The countries on the Korean Peninsula were basically autonomous in handling their domestic affairs and paid tributes to the Chinese emperors on regular basis. At times the Chinese rulers did send troops to invade or even temporarily occupy parts of the peninsula in order to maintain the tributary relationship. And, at the invitation of the Korean ruler, China also sent troops to the peninsula to assist him against the Japanese invasions from 1592 to 1598, and paid a high price. Korea was treated by China as a younger brother per Confucian worldviews, and the bilateral relationship was surely unequal and hierarchical. However, some researchers argued that the Sinocentric tributary system differed from territorial absorption and outright political domination, because that system, based less on force and more on persuasion and emulation, was as much cultural as it was political. It also promoted bilateral commercial and cultural exchanges.46 From the late 16th century, China’s position on the Korean Peninsula began to face challenges from other powers, primarily Japan. But before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, the Sino-Korean tributary relationship remained essentially intact. China directly ruled the northern part of Vietnam (Annam) for about 1,000 years. And Vietnam had been one of the most important tributary states of China since the 10th century. In 1406, during the Ming dynasty, China even sent troops to Annam, and had occupied and ruled that country for 21 years.47 The China-Vietnam tributary relationship had lasted for nearly 1,000, until 1884, when Vietnam became a French colony in East Asia, and the Vietnamese people stopped reading the Confucius classics and using the Chinese language. Instead, they started to use French language and the new Vietnamese language (based on Latin rather than Chinese characters).48 The China-centered tributary system did not collapse until the beginning of the Opium War in 1840, and until then the Qing dynasty government even regarded the West European countries as its tributary states.49 However, beginning in the mid-19th century, the Western colonial powers gradually opened the door of China and its neighbors by using force or the threat of force. The Opium War, a turning point in Sino-Western relations, smashed China’s arrogance and cultural self-confidence. China was compelled by superior British military force to accept unequal treaty 423

Xiaoming Zhang

provisions, first with Britain, then with France and the United States, followed by a series of other such treaties. At the same time, most of China’s neighboring countries, including its tributary states, became colonies or semi-colonies of Western powers. As a result, the Western-centered international system expanded into East Asia and replaced the China-centered tributary system as the legitimate regional order. Since the end of the Opium War until almost the end of the World War II, China was thus recognized not as a sovereign state and a full member of the international society, but as a semi-colonial and semi-independent country. Almost at the same time, such neighboring countries, as Ryukyu Islands, Vietnam, Burma and Korea, were colonized by Western powers (including Japan after the Meiji Restoration). With the end of the World War II, China and its neighboring countries, such as such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and two Koreas, emerged as the modern nation states by joining the international society of sovereign countries. China’s relations with its neighbors thereby entered into a new era. China has had to develop its relations with all of the neighboring countries on the basis of independence and sovereignty ever since. The China-centered East Asian tributary system, as a premodern regional international system, already collapsed and disappeared more than 100 years ago. And there is no doubt that the Sinocentric tributary system could not survive in the modern international system of sovereign states. As a country which has been in the process of integration into the international society, China has neither the will nor the capability to revive the tributary system and dominate its neighboring countries in the future.50 And none of its neighboring countries would welcome the return of the unequal and hierarchical relationship. China’s neighbors seem to fear rather than favor a hierarchical regional order centered on a hegemonic power, although David C. Kang, an American political scientist, is an exception in arguing that Asian countries might wish to return to China-centered hierarchical order quite similar to the old Sinocentric tributary system.51 But on the other hand, it is also too early to say that the historical memory of the China-centered East Asian tributary system will not influence, or do harm to, the future development of China’s relations with its neighboring countries. In fact, as China has been rising on the world stage, the historical memory of the unequal tributary relations has had a negative impact on China’s relations with its neighbors. Although the Chinese leaders have reiterated Beijing’s commitment to the strategy of “peaceful rise” as an opportunity, rather than a threat to its neighbors, China’s growing power and influence nevertheless has aroused fear and anxiety among some of its neighbors; they are suspicious of China’s regional policy. China has to reassure its neighbors of being a responsible and benign power.52 But it might not be easy for China and its neighboring countries to overcome the legacies and the historical memory of the tributary system in the context of China’s rise.

Conclusion Collective historical memories are socially constructed facts. The past is constantly interpreted and reinterpreted by the historians, public intellectuals, mass media and politicians to serve their respective purposes and meet the current needs. As a result, the historical memory is the mixture of truth and myth, and it is difficult for us to find a truly neutral and objective historical text (see chapters 16 and 25 in this volume). As one scholar commented, It is hard to find a well-written history book. All history books cannot but be biased in one way or another, reflecting the level and angle of the author’s view. But we always want to read a “good history book” that at least does not distort facts that are deemed unfavorable or turn a blind eye to what seems uncomfortable.53 424

Historical memory issues

In China’s relations with its neighboring countries, the narration of the past has been playing a very special and important role in the nation-building and identity-constructing process, to mobilize the people and strengthen the nationalist sentiment by interpreting and reinterpreting the past, ever since the Asian countries became independent and entered the international society of sovereign states. In other words, domestic politics have always been one of the key factors in the construction of collective historical memories in this region. And in the early 21st century, China’s rise and power transition in East Asia has also contributed a lot to the steady rise of nationalist sentiment both in China and its neighboring countries, which has been relevant to the historical and territorial disputes between China and some of its neighboring countries. As socially constructed facts, historical memories really matter in China’s relations with its neighboring countries, and they often have been serving as barriers to the healthy development of bilateral relations and regional cooperation in East Asia. In this regard, we have to pay particular attention to the three categories of historical memory issues analyzed in this chapter: the Sino-Japanese wars, China’s border wars with its neighbors and the China-centered tributary system. Given their differences in contents and impact, we need to find different solutions for each category of historical memory issues. Reconciliation is an urgent imperative in the Sino-Japanese relationship, although it may not be so easy to achieve as we hope. A significant part of the problem lies no doubt with Japan’s unwillingness to resolutely apologize for its past wrongs in World War II, making it a drastic contrast to Germany. In Japan, the current government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has embraced a distinctly nationalist posture, adding salt to festering historical wounds.54 And China also needs to improve its history education and media coverage of the past. A peaceful solution of territorial disputes might be helpful to dilute or mitigate the negative impact of the memory of the border wars. But unfortunately, the heating up of territorial disputes between China and its neighboring countries in the near future would not help to reach that goal. Both China and its neighboring countries should manage the territorial disputes in an appropriate way and try to find a creative way to the final solution of the disputes in the near future. And finally, the future policy orientation of the rising China and its neighbors’ response and adaptation to the change have a great deal to do with the impact of the lingering historical memory of the East Asian tributary system. Both China and its neighboring countries have to take great efforts to find the appropriate approach to dealing with each other. China especially needs to take great efforts to assure its neighboring countries that the rise of China is peaceful and will not lead to the return of China’s regional domination in Asia. That will be one of the ways to prepare for more peaceful future.

Notes 1 Russia, Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. 2 North Korea, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. 3 Yoich Funabashi, “East Asia’s History Creating Mistrust,” Asahi Shimbun, 4 January 2005. 4 Choi Woon-do, “History Reconciliation,” Korea Times, June 15, 2011 (http:// www.koreatimes.co.kr/ www/news/include/print.asp?newsIdx+88964, accessed September 15, 2013). 5 Mong Cheung, “Political Survival and the Yasukuni Controversy in Sino-Japanese Relations,” Pacific Review, 23, 4, September 2010: 527–548. 6 In February of 1876, Japan employed gunboat diplomacy to press Korea to sign an unequal treaty, known as The Japan-Korea Treaty of Amity in Japanese or Treaty of Ganghwa Island in Korean. According to the treaty, it ended Korea’s status as a tributary state of China’s Qing dynasty and opened three ports to Japanese trade. The treaty also granted Japanese many of the same rights in Korea that Westerners enjoyed in China, such as extraterritoriality.

425

Xiaoming Zhang 7 Lee Chae-jin, China and Korea: Dynamic Relations (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1996), p. 3. 8 Mikyoung Kim, “A War of Memories: Dissecting the Dokdo/Takeshima Dispute,” Global Asia, 7, 3 (Fall 2012): 74–77. 9 Tom Michele, “Japan’s Foreign Minister: The Islands Dispute Should Not Be Linked with the History Problem,” Financial Times (Chinese edition), October 19, 2012 (http://www.ftchinese.com/ story/001047054, accessed October 20, 2012). 10 Zhang Jie, ed., Zhong Guo Zhou Bian An Quan Xing Shi Ping Gu 2013 [China’s Regional Security Environment Review: 2013] (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2012), p. 30. 11 Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750 (London: Bodley Head, 2012), p. 417. 12 Deng Xiaoping, The Collected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3 (Beijing: People’s Press, 2002), pp. 292–293. 13 Su-Jeong Kang, “Anti-Japanese Popular Nationalism and China’s Approach Towards Japan amid Sino-Japanese Political Tension, 2001–2006,” East Asia, 30, 2, 2013: 164. 14 Mari Yamaguchi and Gillian Wong, “Japanese Prime Minister Visits Yasukuni Shrine,” AP, December 25, 2013 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japanese-prime-minister-to-visityasukuni-shrine/2013/12/25/fe6aa634–6dd2–11e3-a5d0–6f31cd74f760_story.html?tid=up_next, accessed December 26, 2013). 15 Zheng Xing and Zhang Min, “Japan’s Overseas Military Aids Demonstrates Its Ambitions,” People’s Daily (overseas edition), December 1, 2012 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2012–12/01/c_113868349. htm, accessed December 1, 2012); J. Berkshire Miller and Takashi Yokota, “Japan Keeps Cool: Why Tokyo’s New Government Is More Pragmatic Than Hawkish,” Foreign Affairs, January 21, 2013 (http:// www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138770/j-berkshire-miller-and-takashi-yokota/japan-keeps-itscool?cid=nlc-tl, accessed September 15, 2013). 16 Cheol Hee Park, “The Double Life of Shizo Abe,” Global Asia, 8, 2, Summer 2013: 79. 17 Reiji Yoshida, “Aso’s Nazi-Inspired Guip Rubs Seoul the Wrong Way,” Japan Times, July 31, 2013 (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/07/31/national/asos-nazi-inspired-quip-rubs-seoul-thewrong-way/, accessed July 31, 2013). 18 Liu Junguo, Huang Fahong, Ma Fei, Li Ning and Li Boya, “Nazi-Style Constitution Revision Is Provocative to the Conscience Of Mankind,” People’s Daily, August 1, 2013 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/ world/2013–08/01/c_116763376.htm, accessed August 1, 2013). 19 Guo Yina, “Japanese Prime Minister Abe Flagrantly Visits Yasukuni Shrine,” Xinhua News Agency, December 26, 2013 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2013–12/26/c_118723098.htm, accessed December 26, 2013). 20 Mikyoung Kim, “A War of Memories: Dissecting the Dokdo/Takeshima Dispute,” Global Asia, 7, 3 (Fall 2012): p. 74. 21 Hiroshi Hiyama, “Japan, China Envoys Invoke ‘You Know Who’ in Tit-for-Tat Editorials,” Japan Times, January 6, 2014 (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/01/06/national/japan-china-envoys-invokeyou-know-who-in-tit-for-tat-editorials/, accessed January 7, 2014). 22 China signed land border treaties with the following countries: Burma (1961), Nepal (1961), Mongolia (1962), North Korea (1962), Pakistan (1963), Afghanistan (1963), Laos (1991), USSR and then Russia (on the eastern part of the 4300 km border line in 1991, and on the western part of the 55 km border line in 1994), Kazakhstan (1994), Kyrgyzstan (1996–1999), Tajikistan (2000) and Vietnam (1999). A treaty on the demarcation of the Tonkin Gulf was also signed by China and Vietnam in 2000. 23 In addition to the those three border wars, China also got involved in limited military clashes over the offshore islands in South China Sea in the Cold War: with South Vietnam (the Republic of Vietnam) over the Paracels Islands in 1974, and with Vietnam (the Socialist Republic of Vietnam) over a reef of Spratly Islands in 1988. 24 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 703–732. 25 Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750, p. 409. 26 David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 86. 27 China has not signed a border treaty with Bhutan (the Kingdom of Bhutan), a landlocked country in South Asia located at the eastern end of the Himalayas, and a country with a special relationship with India. According to the Indo-Bhutan Friendship Treaty in 1949, the government of Bhutan agreed to be guided by the advice of the government of India in regard to its external relations. The new Indo-Bhutan Friendship Treaty of 2007 clarifies Bhutan’s status as an independent and sovereign nation while stating that the two governments shall cooperate closely with each other on issues relating to their national interests, and neither government shall allow the use of its territory for activities harmful to the national security and interest of the other. Bhutan’s border with China is largely not demarcated and

426

Historical memory issues

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54

thus disputed in some places. Approximately 269 square km remain under discussion between China and Bhutan. But there is not a big dispute between China and Bhutan on the line of demarcation. Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (Basingstoke: Picador, 2008), p. 456. Ibid., p. 333. Ibid., p. 461. Yang Gongshu, Yang Gongshu Hui Yi Lu [Memoir of Yang Gongshu] (Hong Kong: Chinese Culture and Arts Press, 2011), p. 147. Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy, p. 678. Ji Shuang Cheng, “China’s Outer Space Great Leap Forward Is Touching the World,” Global Times, November 17, 2011, p. 16. Tang Lu, “India Is Still in the Shadow of the Sino-Indian War,” International Herald Leader, November 28, 2008. Ibid. Chen Qi and Liu Feng, eds., Zhong Guo Jue Qi Yu Shi Jie [China’s Rise & World Order] (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2011), p. 301. Brantly Womack, “Asymmetry and China’s Tributary System,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, 5, 1 (Spring 2012): 51. David Shambaugh, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, p. 105. Chinese scholars have not reached a consensus on the time of the formation of the tributary system. Some scholars believe that it was only formed during the Ming dynasty (1369–1644). Professor He Fangchuan has argued that the unification of China by Qin laid the foundation for the system, which then developed into a rudimentary international relations system during the Han dynasty. It evolved during the following Chinese dynasties, especially Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties. He Fangchuan, “Hua Yi Zhixu Lun” [“On the Tributary System”], Beijing Daxue Xuebao [Journal of Peking University], 6 (1998): 30–40. In the Qing Dyansty, Korea paid tributes to China once a year, Liu Qiu (Okinawa) once every two years, An Nam (Vietnam) once every three years, Xian Luo (Thailand) once every four years, Su Lu once every five years, and Laos and Burma once every 10 years. Cui Pi, Dongbeiya Guoji Guanxi Yanjiu [History of Northeast Asian International Relations] (Changchun: Northeast China Normal University Press, 1992), p. 29. David C. Kang, “Hierarchy, Balancing, and Economical Puzzles in Asian International Relations,” International Security, 28, 3 (Winter 2003/2004): 165–180. David C. Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 25. Takeshi Hamashita, Jindai Zhongguo de Guoji Qiji [The International Opportunity for the Modern China], Chinese translation (Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press, 1999), p. 35. John King Fairbank and Edwin Reischauer, China: Traditions and Transformations, Chinese translation (Nanjing, Jiangsu: Jiangsu People’s Press, 1996), p. 349. Edwin O. Reischauer and Marius B. Jansen, The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, enlarged edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 55–56. Lee Chae-jin, China and Korea: Dynamic Relations (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1996), pp. 1–2; Choe Yong-shik, “A Look at Sino-Korean Tributary Relations,” Korea Times, February 9, 1998, p. 12. Zhen Peikai and Chen Guocheng, eds., Shi Ji, Wen Xian, Li Shi [Relics, Documents and History] (Nanning: Guanxi Normal University Press, 2008), pp. 15–16. Wu Zhipan and Li Yu, eds., Dong Ya Jia Zhi [East Asian Values] (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2010), p. 50. Cui Pi, Dongbeiya Guoji Guanxi Yanjiu [History of Northeast Asian International Relations], p. 29; Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (London: Leicester University Press, 1991), pp. 68–69. Amitav Acharya, “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” International Security, 28, 3 (Winter 2003/04): 149–164. David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security, 27, 4 (Spring 2003): 57–85. Chia Siow Yue, “The Rise of China and Emergent East Asian Regionalism,” Kokubun Ryosei and Wang Jisi, eds., The Rise of China and a Changing East Asian Order (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2004), p. 52. Ham Seok-jin, “A Bias-Free Look at Korean History,” Korea Focus, 19, 2 (Summer 2011): 54. Charles A. Kupchan, “From Enmity to Amity: Trust’s Part in US Foreign Policy,” Global Asia, 8, 3, Fall 2013 (http: http://www.globalasia.org/Issue/ArticleDetail/458/From-Enmity-to-Amity:-Trust’s-Partin-US-Foreign-Policy-.html, accessed September 25, 2013).

427

Xiaoming Zhang

Bibliography Acharya, A. (Winter 2003/04). “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?” International Security, 28, 3: 149–164. Charles, A. K. (2013). “From Enmity to Amity: Trust’s Part in US Foreign Policy,” Global Asia, 8, 3 (http:// www.globalasia.org/Issue/ArticleDetail/458/From-Enmity-to-Amity:-Trust’s-Part-in-US-ForeignPolicy-.html, accessed September 25, 2013). Chen, Q., and F., Liu (eds.) (2011). Zhong Guo Jue Qi Yu Shi Jie [China’s Rise & World Order]. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Cheung, M. (2010). “Political Survival and the Yasukuni Controversy in Sino-Japanese Relations.” Pacific Review, 23, 4: 527–548. Chia, S. Y. (2004). “The Rise of China and Emergent East Asian Regionalism,” in Kokubun Ryosei and Wang Jisi, eds., The Rise of China and a Changing East Asian Order. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange: 52. Choi, W. D. (2011). “History Reconciliation.” Korea Times, June 15 (http:// www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/ news/include/print.asp?newsIdx+88964, accessed September 15, 2013). Cui, P. (1992). Dongbeiya Guoji Guanxi Yanjiu [History of Northeast Asian International Relations]. Changchun: Northeast China Normal University Press. Deng, X. (2002). The Collected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3. Beijing: People’s Press. Fairbank, J. K., and E., Reischauer (1996). China: Traditions and Transformations, Chinese translation. Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Press. Funabashi, F. (2005). “East Asia’s History Creating Mistrust.” Asahi Shimbun, January 4. Guha, R. (2008). India after Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy. Basingstoke: Picador. Guo, Y. (2013). “Japanese Prime Minister Abe Flagrantly Visits Yasukuni Shrine,” Xinhua News Agency, December 26 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2013–12/26/c_118723098.htm, accessed December 26, 2013). Ham, S.J. (2011). “A Bias-Free Look at Korean History,” Korea Focus, 19, 2: 54. He, F. (1998). “Hua Yi Zhixu Lun” [“On the Tributary System”], Journal of Peking University, 6: 30–40. Hiyama, H. (2014). “Japan, China Envoys Invoke ‘You Know Who’ in Tit-for-Tat Editorials,” Japan Times, January 6 (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/01/06/national/japan-china-envoys-invoke-youknow-who-in-tit-for-tat-editorials/, accessed January 7, 2014). Ji, S. C. (2011). “China’s Outer Space Great Leap Forward Is Touching the World,” Global Times, November 17, p. 16. Kang, D. C. (2003). “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security, 27, 4: 57–85. Kang, D. C. (Winter 2003/2004). “Hierarchy, Balancing, and Economical Puzzles in Asian International Relations,” International Security, 28, 3: 165–180. Kang, D. C. (2007). China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia. New York: Columbia University Press. Kang, S.J. (2013). “Anti-Japanese Popular Nationalism and China’s Approach Towards Japan amid Sino-Japanese Political Tension, 2001–2006,” East Asia, 30, 2: 161–181. Kim, M. (2012). “A War of Memories: Dissecting the Dokdo/Takeshima Dispute.” Global Asia, 7, 3: 74–77. Kissinger, H. (1994). Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Lee, C. J. (1996). China and Korea: Dynamic Relations. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution. Liu, J., F., Huang, F., Ma, N., Li, and B., Li, “Nazi-Style Constitution Revision Is Provocative to the Conscience of Mankind,” People’s Daily, August 1 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2013–08/01/c_116763376. htm, accessed August 1, 2013). Miller, B., and T., Yokota (2013). “Japan Keeps Cool: Why Tokyo’s New Government Is More Pragmatic Than Hawkish,” Foreign Affairs, January 21 (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138770/j-berkshire-miller-and-takashi-yokota/japan-keeps-its-cool?cid=nlc-tl, accessed September 15, 2013). Park, C. H. (2013). “The Double Life of Shizo Abe,” Global Asia, 8, 2: 78–82. Reischauer, E. O., and M. B., Jansen (1995). The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, enlarged edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shambaugh, D. (2013). China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Takeshi, H.(1999). Jindai Zhongguo de Guoji Qiji [The International Opportunity for the Modern China], Chinese translation. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press. Tang, L. (2008). “India Is Still in the Shadow of the Sino-Indian War,” International Herald Leader, November 28, 6. Westad, O. A. (2012). Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750. London: Bodley Head.

428

Historical memory issues Wight, M. (1991). International Theory: The Three Traditions. London: Leicester University Press. Womack, B. (2012). “Asymmetry and China’s Tributary System.” Chinese Journal of International Politics, 5,1: 37–54. Wu, Z., and Y., Li (eds.) (2010). Dong Ya Jia Zhi [East Asian Values]. Beijing: Peking University Press. Yang, G. (2011). Yang Gongshu Hui Yi Lu [Memoir of Yang Gongshu]. Hong Kong: Chinese Culture and Arts Press. Yoshida, R. (2013). “Aso’s Nazi-Inspired Guip Rubs Seoul the Wrong Way,” Japan Times, July 31 (http:// www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/07/31/national/asos-nazi-inspired-quip-rubs-seoul-the-wrongway/, accessed July 31, 2013). Zhang, J. (ed.) (2012). Zhong Guo Zhou Bian An Quan Xing Shi Ping Gu 2013 [China’s Regional Security Environment Review: 2013]. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Zhen, P., and G., Chen (eds.) (2008). Shi Ji, Wen Xian, Li Shi [Relics, Documents and History]. Nanning: Guanxi Normal University Press. Zheng, X. and M., Zhang (2012). “Japan’s Overseas Military Aids Demonstrates Its Ambitions,” People’s Daily (overseas edition), December 1 (http://news.xinhuanet.com/world/2012–12/01/c_113868349. htm, accessed September 15, 2013).

429

This page intentionally left blank

INDEX

A-bomb 98, 102 Abe 88, 189; administration 8; government 7; neonationalist 189; Prime Minister 87; Second Abe Cabinet (2012) 91; Shinzo 7, 72, 79, 80, 188, 270, 385 abduction 262 absurdity 9 Acheson Line 359 acknowledgment 47 accountability 2 Act for Punishing Anti-National Activities 161 activities: meaning-giving 1; meaning-seeking 1, 71 activism: fatigue 273; transnational 263 activists: anti-Japanese 113; pro-democracy 114 adjacent societies 2 Advance North Unify the Nation 340 aggression: Japanese 3, 196; social-imperialist war of 18; Soviet border 19; weapon of 19 Akira, Iriye 207 Aland Settlement 367 alliance 15; circle of 15, 16; of domestic leadership 15; international 15; political 15; transnational 3 Allied Forces 337; Allied Powers 262, 278, 388, 394; Allied Power’s occupation 80, 196, 197, 304; Allie’s documents 358 ambiguity 5; gray zone of 31; historical and moral 389; unsettled 3 American civil rights movement 7 amnesia: collective 64, 65; cultural 29 amnesty 4 animosities; i; ideological 9; mutual 27 anomie 20 anthropology i, 1 anti-American: demonstration 288; sentiments 164 anti-Chinese movement 246 anti-colonialism 164 anti-fingerprinting movement 297

anti-imperialism 327 anti-Japanese: front in Manchuria 248; movement 245, 250; sentiments 164, 262 anti-North Korean education 342 anti-rightist campaign 58 anti-state: activities 164; criminal 150 Anti-War Alliance of Japanese in China 39; League of the Japanese in China 32 Apocalypse of Love 132, 134, 135, 138 apology 3, 7, 47, 268, 269; collective 73; diplomatic 72; fatigue 72, 402; official 71; state 150; profound 267; resolution 272; sincere 70, 83 appeasement 6, 9 April 3: Committee 288, 289, 293, 294, 299, 300; incident 287, 299; Peace Park 291, 292, 293, 294, 297; victims 290, 291 archivization of death 287, 288, 293, 297 Arduous March campaign 311 armistice 289 army: imperialist 32; invading 26; Japanese 7 Arumdaun Yusan 129 Asahi 3, 79; Shimbun 64 ASEAN+3 (Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus the PRC Japan and the ROK) 363 Asia: ascendance 3; Boom 68; emancipator in 66; lost 3; Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 363; Pacific Peace Conference 201 Asian: Center for Women’s Human Rights in the Philippines 265; countries 3; financial crisis 342; holocaust 212; paradox 402; Peace and Friendship Foundation for Women 270; Women’s Association 264; Women’s Fund (AWF) 83, 84, 89, 261, 262, 267, 268, 270, 271; Women’s Solidarity Forum 265, 268 Association between socio-psychological status and territorial disputes 374, 383, 384

431

Index Association for the Return of Koreans Living in Japan 198 Association of Bereaved Families 228 Association to Challenge the Prostitution Issues 263 atomic: bomb 19; bombings 6, 96; of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 197, 395 atonement 272; money 267; Japan’s 6; a sense of national 267, 270 atrocity 40, 212; Japan’s 403; Japan’s war 3; emotionality of 28; Nazi 159; state 47, 48; war 39 attack on Pearl Harbor 407 Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum 396 authenticity 39 authority: rational-legal 5, 21; traditional 5, 21; type 16 authoritarianism 15 autocracy 21 Axis countries 358 Baekche 227, 229 Bai Hua 57 Balhae 229, 230 Barme, Geremie 55 Beijing Municipality 16 Bereaved family 5, 8; of Japan 270, 272 betrayers 159, 160 betrayal 159 big-character posters 53, 54 Big three (Yomiuri, Asahi and Mainichi) 80 bilateral: conflicts 1; confrontation 1 binary: construction 3; David vs. Goliath 36 Biographical Dictionary of Collaborators 111, 116 Biographical Encyclopedia of Pro-Japanese Collaborators 167 Bitter Love 57 black categories 48 blogs 16 Blood and Bone 310 borders 20; national 388, 390 boundary 6 burakumin 198 Cairo Agreement (1943) 189 Cairo Declaration 8 Calcutta Accord (1959) 304 campaign: anti-Japanese 130; for completing postwar compensation 268; fanatical mass 48;journalism 90; letter-writing 203; patriotic education 29, 38; propaganda 38, 40; top-down nationwide mobilization 29 cease-fire 9 Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility (JWRC) 265 Central Committee 50; of the Chinese Communist Party 52; Central Party School 50 challenges: regional 1; internal 1

Chang Kai-shek 189, 204 Chang Myong-su 308 Changchun 243, 244, 246, 247 Chen Yun 17 Cheongjin North Korean port of 308 Chichijima 179, 180 chima-chogori (traditional Korean costume) 130 China: as the victim 40; China as the victor 6, 40 China’s: border wars 419; industrialization 22, 48; lack of democratic progress 3; trading post 7 Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 229 Chinese: citizens 6; socialism 2 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 27, 29, 31, 34, 40, 51, 52, 53, 209; authority 38; leaders 38; led 36, 39; military general 35 Chinese History for Junior High School 35 Chinese People’s Revolutionary Military Museum 37, 38 Chinese Red Cross 222; Society 205 Chinese strategy of A2/AD (Anti-access/Area Denial) 184 Chinese Victims Commemoration Committee 208 Chinese war crimes tribunal 205 Cho Chong-nae 118 Choi In-hun 343 Chongryun 307, 308, 309, 311, 314 Chongsindae 87 Chosun: Diplomatic Procession 135; dynasty 160, 166; kingdom 112 Christian: cosmopolitan 136; faith 129; worldviews 129; Christianity 129 Chronicles of Pro-Japanese Collaborators 167 Chun Doo-hwan 113, 145 Chung Ae Ra 133 Chung Do-jeon 330 citizen: funeral 131; rights as universal human rights 54 civil sphere 331 claims 214, 217; ownership 6 class: brothers 39; struggle 327 Class-A war criminals 67 Class Counselor 55 class fraternity 35 Classics of History 329 Classics of Poetry 329 Cold War 9, 54, 144, 196, 197, 203, 283, 305, 333, 338, 359, 402; containment policy 263; context 210; division 5; emergence of 357; end of 68, 81, 331; environment 65; era 67; fantasy 101; global 321, 341; hegemony 293; lingering threats 8; mid 102; politics 199; post 29, 364; rivalry 4, 8; scars 5; story 306; structure 64; system 209, 210; warriors 289; wounds 4 collaboration: issues 5; Korean 159 collaborators 5, 113, 116, 293; biographical encyclopedia of 163; evil 116; excessive punishment of 159; failed purge of 161;

432

Index former 112; list of 163; Nazi 159; of Japanese colonialism 159; property confiscation 163; removal of 159; resuming justice on 165 collective: amnesia 64, 65; conscience 20; focus 15; singular multiple 20, 21, 22, 23, 24; gains 366; memory 4, 7, 16, 39, 63, 123; mnemonic 58; multiple 20; of ordinary individuals 64; project 24; relative histories as 129; path-dependent remembrance 30; nature of 27; representation 33; singular 20, 21; war renouncing consciousness 20; wisdom 1 collectivization 22, 48 colonial: residuals 168; rule i, 167; system 5 colonization 4, 5 comfort: stations 3, 81, 83, 84, 85, 261, 264, 266, 267; owners 85; women i, 3, 4, 7, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 115, 169, 189, 261, 262, 263, 266, 267, 279, 407, 418; coercive recruitment of 85, 86; controversy 261; hunting 90; investigation of 263; issues 79; mobilization of 263; movement 262; system 219, 267, 397; slavery 190 commemorating 214 commemoration 389; official 287; political 23; post mortem 128; rites of 349; trial 47 commemorative: agent 1, 2; entrepreneurs 24; media 1; practice 64; projects 2; sites 8 Commission to Investigate the Truth of Pro-Japanese Anti-National Activities 163 Committee to Commemorate Chinese Prisoner of War Martyr 204 common good 4 communicative rationality 334 Commission’s Executive Office 147 Communism 51; Communist allies 117; ideas 28; model 39; North 4; population 8; regime 47; revolution 197, 198, 199, 200; revolutionaries 2; society 22; Youth League 55 community 8; East Asian 363, 402; ethno-cultural 326; global 28; history problem 388; KoreanAmerican 90; Korean ethnic 8; international community 3; long-lasting 324; national 58, 113; political 323, 326; reconciliation of 152; sovereign 323 Comparative History and History Education Research Group 392 compensation 6, 47, 151, 212, 272; as a means to restore justice 212; individual 71, 214; post-war 222; role of 212; war damage 6 competing editorial opinions 81 compressed modernity 5 compromise 2, 6 conceptual integration 334 concession 7 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) 367 confidence-building 334; measures 363 confirmation of free will 306, 307

conflict 9; armed 214; bilateral 1, 5, 173; ChineseSoviet border 19; cycle model 373; cycle of existential conflict 228; domestic 3; inter-state 2; resolution 250; territorial 95 Confucian 2; education 325; ethics 3, 322; ideology 329; moral exemplar 229; morality 423; neoConfucian discourse 330; terminologies 325 Confucius lineage 228 conciliatory: gestures 2; outcomes 2 consensus 7 constitution: Article 9 104, 105; Article 24 104, 105; pacifist 80, 105, 418; postwar 81; warrenouncing 81 construction of museums and memorials 28 constructivist 321 Contention: bilateral 7; legalistic 6 continuum 9 convergence: between former foes 41; between memory and historical facts 41 cosmopolitanism 388; logic of 390 cosmopolitan: faith 4; memory 91; morality 73; perspective 10 counterrevolutionary 48, 52, 54 crimes against humanity 268, 270 cross-border people 248 cult of personality 52 Cultivation 248 cultural: affinity 209; diplomacy 202; relic 38, 39, 40 cultural revolution 2, 3, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 37, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 59; devastations of 49; Great Proletarian 48; victims of 51 cultural structure 39 cultural studies 1 cultural vivacity 1 Cupda Where the Furnaces Glow 309 curator 39 de-Asianization 64, 65 de-bordering 337 de-masculinization 96 de-Stalinization movement 51 Dear Pyongyang 310, 311 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution article 332 deletion 1 democracy 15, 21, 51, 58, 112; Korean 4, 113; Wall in Beijing 59 democratic: governance 1; progress 3 Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) 187, 268, 273 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 112, 115, 304, 339, 340 democratization 4, 5, 145; Japan 66; movement 112, 124; South Korea 68, 144, 145, 288 Demokratisierung (democratization) 322, 324 Deng: faction 56; political victory 51; reform 52; reformists 56; regime 58; Xiaoping 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 186, 417

433

Index détente 360 development 20 Development Assistance Committee 216 Devil’s Gluttony 66 Diaoyu 179 dialectic of commemoration and historiography 392, 395, 397; of nationalism and cosmopolitanism 390, 391, 397 dictatorship 112; military 162 diplomacy 6, 201; elite-centric 372; grassroots 202; people 201, 202, 205; positive 191 diplomatic: normalization 213; relations 1; ties 213, 214 disciplinary boundaries 1 discourse: hegemonic 116; victim 40; war-related 29 discrimination 9 displacement: of people 7; from Japanese territory 9 disputes: continuing 8; in East Asia 10; Sino-Japan 6; disputing parties 2 divide: ideological 4; Korean 338; left-right 113, 117; North-South 134; South-South 124, 134 Dokdo/Takeshima (Tkeshima/Dokdo) 7, 8, 10, 72, 115, 169, 277, 358, 365, 367, 372, 402; Dokdo Museum 372 Dongdo 277 Dragon Boat Festival 228 Dream of the Red Chamber 54 Dulles, John Foster 204 Durkheim 20 dynamic economy 1 E Museum for the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery 91 East Asia(n) i, 4, 9; challenges 9; community 363, 364, 402; countries 1; geopolitics of 27; historical reconciliation 9; history problem 388, 396, 397; neighbors 64; others 64; sick man of 17; studies i; at Japanese universities 198; U.S. sponsored political reordering in 196; voice 64 East Asia History Foundation 404 East Asian Community of Peace Friendship and Cooperation 191 East China Sea 179, 185 East Sea (Sea of Japan) 277 Eastern barbarian state 229 Eastern Europe 51 educated youth 48, 49, 53, 54, 57, 58 elites 2, 3, 21; CCP 29; compromise 232; post-Mao 2; power 2, 7; ruling 2, 3, 29, 30 emancipation 241 Embracing Defeat 98 emergency law 145; measures 151 empathetic feelings 9; empathy 5 emperor: centered 189; Hirohito 68, 263, 268; Jiaqing 243; Kojong 278; responsibility for Japanese militarism and war crimes 408; Tachong 229; Qin Shihuang 416

empire: Japan, 196; Japanese 328 empirical particularity 2 empty center 3 encampment 47 Encyclopedia 5; of Cooperative Organizations for Imperial Japan 167; of Korean Collaborators of Japanese Colonialism 5 enemy 39; class 31, 34; common external 16; denouncement of 16; internal 96; international 20; nation 161; real 32; super power 19; unequivocal 31 Engels 17, 19 enlightenment movement 325 enshrinement: site 294; tablets 294 epigraphic evidence 231 equanimity 2 Eternal Zero 106 ethnic chauvinism 3 ethnicity 7 ethnocentricism 330 ethno-cultural homogeneity 324; root 330 ethos of social relativism 3 Etorofu (Iturup) 281 evil cliques 54 Ewha Womans University 167 exceptionalism 40 exclusive economic zone (EEZ) 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 280, 283, 361, 366 Executive Committee for Destructing AWF (Asian Women’s Fund) 268 exhumation 152 exodus 308 external: incentives 160; occupiers 159 Fall of Berlin Wall 7 family registry 154 famine 48; causes of 48; nation-wide 49 Far East Jewish district 241 Far Eastern Military Tribunal 250 fascism 28; fascist ideology 32 feminine/home/periphery 96 feminist 3; movement 3; femininity 96, 105 feudalism 21 fiction and fantasy genre 95 Fireflies 106 Five Peace Principles of Peaceful Coexistence 201 Foolish Mother 129 For Those We Love 106 foreign: domination 159; enemy 16, 29; occupation 159; territory 8 forgetting 1, 5, 15, 24; national 66; forgiveness 5 Framework Act on Clearing up Past Incidents for Truth and Reconciliation (Framework Act) 144, 146, 147, 149 framework: alternative justice 288; analytical 29; ideological 326; interpretive 27 French Revolution 7, 323

434

Index friendship: association 6, 198, 203; reestablishment of 2; Sino-Japanese 32 from enemies to brethren 343 frustration-aggression model 375 Fudan University 55 Fumimaro, Konoe 189, 204 Fumio, Kishida 189 G-7 Club 64 Gadfly 55 Game Beaters 138 Gando 230, 241 Gang, Gao 22 Gang of Four 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57; sinister theory of 57; victims of 51, 57 gender 95; coding 95; equality 95; (hyper) gendering 97, 105; gendering of war and war narratives 96; norms 3; representation 3, 96; specific roles 96; studies i; working of power 97 General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun in Korean; Chosen Soren in Japanese) 306 386 generation 114 Geochang incident 146 geography 7; human 287 geographical proximity 2, 209, 213, 296 geopolitics 26, 242; Asia-Pacific 212 geo-strategic: interests 29; location 241 Gleysteen, William H. 121 Gojoseon 230 Goryeo (Koryeo) 227, 228, 229, 232, 233 Goguryeo Research Foundation 229, 230 Gods-sent gift 8 Goguryeo/Gaogouli 6, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 232, 233, 234; disputes 227; locale for 7 Gongsaengwon 130, 133 grants and aid 402 Great Battles of One Hundred Battalions 31 Great Famine 49 The Great Han Daily 325 Great Leap Forward 2, 17, 20, 22 Greater Asianist thought of the Meiji period 202 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 66 Greater East Asian War 272 grievances 2, 3, 6 Guangming Daily 50, 231 guerrilla pragmatism 50 Gulf war 81 guilt 52, 54, 58; by-association 150, 166; collective 70; second 209; share of 389; war 63, 70, 90 Guomin (Kuomin): government 248, 249; party 240 Habomai 281, 359 Hahajima 179, 180 Hai Rui Dismissed from Office 54

Hanaoka: massacre 197, 200; memorial 208; mine 197, 208, 221; peace and friendship fund 222; uprising 197 Hanaoka Story 197 Hanawon 313 Hansung Ten-day Paper 313 Hansung Weekly 325 Hashimoto Ryutaro 84, 270 Head of the Organization Department of the Party 53 Healing Center for Suffering Victims 153 hegemon 10; hegemonic power 203 Heirongjiang province 242 He Long, 48 Helsinki Accord (1975) 357, 367 Helsinki Declaration 367 hermeneutic reconstruction 30 Hermit Kingdom 417 heroes 165 heroism 41; fierce 40 heterosexism 97; heterosexuality 97, 105; heterosexual relationships 97 hierarchy: gender 96; semiotic 35 high seas 177 Hirofumi, Shimomura 88 Hiroharu, Nii 197 Hirohito’s war responsibility 408 Hiroshima 6, 27, 115, 375, 376, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383 historical: grievances i; meanings 288; shame 4; truth 38; of Orari Incident 295, 296 historiography 1; Marxist 41; moralistic 114; nationalist 405; neo-nationalist 72 history i, 1; battle 112; fabricated 86; of aggression 67; of ideas 227; official 6; parallel 403; politicization of 228; problem 70; shared 232; social 128; reconfiguration of 28; revisionist 40; text 34; untruthful versions of 41; wars 196 History of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk sagi) 230 History That Opens the Future 396, 405 history textbook 34, 35, 116; controversies i Ho Chi Minh 16, 17, 18 Holocaust 27, 28 homophobia 97; homosocial world 105; homosociality 4; male 97, 100 hostility: accumulated 10; diminished 2; historical 6 Hotsumi, Ozaki 198 hub and spoke alliance 409 Hu Feng 54 Hu Fuming 50 Fu Guofeng 49, 50, 51, 52, 55 Hui ethnic minority 241 Hu Jintao 19, 30, 188, 191; president 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 373 Hu Yaobang 50, 53 human rights i, 54; abuses 124, 145, 208; activists 3; awareness 3; discourse 390; infringement of

435

Index 287; protection 5; regimes 63; trafficking 262; universal 54; violation of women, 266 humanitarian settlement 197; humanitarianism 217 humiliation 8, 35; century of 29; public 47 Hungary 51 Husae, Ichikawa 137 Hwang Soon-won 138 Hyde 72 Ichiro, Hatoyama 360 Ideational boundary 4 Identity 1, 4; collective 26, 33, 321, 323, 389; communal 321; competing 4; Japan’s post-War 3; linguistic construction of 9; national 3, 95, 230, 321; nationalistic 30; perpetrator 3; politics 405 ideological: toolkit 30; rivalry i, 9, 80 Ideologisierbarkeit (ideolozability) 322, 326 Ienaga Saburo 212, 394, 398 Ikuo, Oyama 198 Ikutaro, Shimizu 201, 202 imperial expansion 242; subjects 7 Imperial Ordinance No. 41, 278 Imperialism 208; capitalistic 327; Japanese 35; Western 67 Imperialists: Japanese 31; militant 39 inclusion/exclusion 2 inclusivity 1 inculcation 2 indemnity 214, 216, 218 The Independent 325 indiscriminate bombing lawsuit 219 inevitability theses 70 inmin (mass) 322, 327, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333; party 328 Inosuke, Nakanishi 248 Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities 167 institution-building 4 inter-Korean: border 342; confrontation 338; contact 343; developments 337; economic cooperation 340; engagement 338, 341, 342; family reunion 340; rapprochement 337, 346, 348, 349, 351; reconciliation 331, 333, 334, 336, 340, 347 348, 340, 342, 348; reunion 341; separated families 339; unification 324; war 118 interim military 6 International Commission of Jurists 265 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 306, 307, 308, 314 International Court of Justice 277, 279, 282, 284, 364, 365 international law 1 International Military Tribunal for the Far East 33, 66, 263 International Public Hearing Concerning Japan’s Postwar Compensation 264

international relations i, 1 Internal War Crimes Tribunal 270 Internet 16, 343 intranational focus 20 intrinsic (koyu) territory 6, 187, 189 Ishihara 34, 188, 373; Nobuo 85; Shintaro 179 island-nation mentality 200 Ito Einosuke 248 It’s my fault 122 Izu peninsula 179 Jane, G. I. 103, 104 Japan Aid Association for North Korean Returnees 313 Japan as Number One 64 Japan Bashing 67, 282 Japan-China Association for Cultural Exchange 204 Japanese-Chinese Cultural Salon 198 Japan-China Friendship Association 196 197, 198, 199; movement 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210 Japan-China Friendship Treaty 404 Japan-China Joint Communique (China-Japan Joint Communique) 220; Article 5 220 Japan Coast Guard (JCG) 372 Japan-Korea: reconciliation 261, 271; relations 4 Japan-ROK Joint History Research Committee 403 Japan Socialist Party 83, 198, 273 Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration 367 Japan-Soviet Union Friendship Association 198 Japan-US ties 213 Japanese: antagonists 37; colonialism 8, 86, 277; historical legacy of 282; Communist Party 32; imperial army 3, 7; imperialism 196; independence 196; militarism 86, 197, 206, 277; revival of 201; military personnel 7; police force 7; Red Cross 205; society 307 Japanese Self Defense Forces 104 Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform 388 Japanese Socialist Party (JSP) 83, 198, 206, 264, 273, 391 Japanese spouses of ethnic Koreans 306 Jeju: April 3 Commission 146; April 3 incident 287, 296, 299, 300; April 3 Investigation Report 295; April 3 Memorial Service in Osaka 297; April 3 Peace Park 291, 293; Island 8, 82 Jekyll 72 Jeong Yak-yong 330 Jiang Qing 51 Jilin province 242, 244 jingoism 29 jingoist: government 41; Japanese 32; ruling class 32; jingoistic rightists 34 joint communique between China and Japan (1972) 418

436

Index Joint Security Area 343 Joseon, Tangun 230; founder 231 Juche ideology 331 judgment: historical 395; moral 8 June 15 Joint Declaration 336, 341, 342 Junichiro, Koizumi 84, 196, 209, 228, 269, 385 Junko, Kishino 137 justice 2, 9; alternative 296; historical 33; moral 4; procedural 51; resuming 165; restitutive 6; restorative 6, 222 Justice Department of Korea 165 Kaesung Industrial Complex 330 Kanghwa Treaty (1876) 322 Kajima 221, 222; corporation 197 kamikaze 100, 106 Kanzo, Uchiyama 198, 199 Keizo, Obuchi 132, 228, 269, 271; plum trees 132 Khruschchev 52; China 51; Nikita S. 51 Kikiro, Urayama 309 Kikuchi Yoshiaki 309 Kim Dae-jung 4, 9, 114, 120, 132, 146, 162, 228, 271, 342; Sunshine Policy 337, 338, 341, 351; Dongin 248; dynasty 112; Hak-sun 264; Hwal-lan 167; Il Sung 16, 118, 119, 305, 307, 311, 313, 328, 331, 337, 340; Jae-kyu 119; Jung(Joing-)-il 9, 304, 308, 336, 337; kingdom 112; Soo Yong 132; Sungsu 116 Kimchi and Umeboshi 129 Kimura 213 Kissinger, Henry 187 Kite Flying in the Sky 311 Kochi prefecture 129, 136 Koga family 185 Koguryo (Gaogouli) 115, 233, 402 Koh Young-hui 304, 307 Koichi, Kato 266 Kokumin 202 Korea: colonized 4; divided 305; North-South 9 Korea Demilitarized Zone 342 Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement 265 Korea-Japan Solidarity 21, 405 Korean Church Women United (KCWU) 263 Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Korea Council) 264, 265, 268 Korean Research Institute for Chongsindae 264 Korean tenant farmers 7 Korea’s Ministry of Education 152 Korea’s Supreme Court 151 Korean War 4, 9, 95, 111, 112, 113, 117, 122, 128, 130, 197, 206, 263, 283, 289, 305, 321, 329, 336, 339, 340, 343, 349, 359; 65th anniversary of 8; diaspora 331; Japan’s involvement 8; massacre 146, 148; preclude to 289; orphans 139 Koryo 112, 329 koyu (intrinsic) territory 187, 188 Kozo, Igarashi 270

Kuba/Huangwei 185, 188 kukmin (citizen) 322, 324, 325, 327, 329, 330, 332, 333; democratization of 331; discourse 332; identity 332 Kulian 58 Kunashiri (Kunashir) 281 Kuomintang (KMT) 28, 29, 31, 35, 38, 39, 212; non 362 Kurils 359, 367 Kwangju 112, 113, 120, 121; attacks on 121; citizens of 121; democratization movement 121; massacre 121, 122, 145; tragedy 4, 120, 122; people of 113, 122; people’s righteous uprising 121; the significance of 112; Student Uprising in 1929 134; uprising 111 Kwon-taek, Im 117 Kyushu-Palau Ridge (KPR) 183 land of hope 241 land lease 243 landlord 48 law i, 51 labor: forced 26; manual 48 leader: Communist 17; great 47; of beggars 130; religious 3; political 15 League for the Liberation of the Japanese People 32 League of Awakened Japanese 32 League of Nations 246 Lee Chong-sik 120 Lee Hoi-chang 342 Lee Myung-bak 5, 272, 277, 284 Lee Taejoon 248 legacies: dark 2; of Mao years 47; war 3 legality 7 legitimacy: building 27; governing 2; of the party 29; of state 57; of the trial 51 legitimization 3; package 26; project 28; regime 28 Lenin 17 Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom Movement 22 Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thoughts contend 48 Leveling Society 198 Liaodong: peninsula 241; province 242 Li Huiying 248 Li Hungjang 185 Liaison Society for Returnees from China 204 Liaoning province 242 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 81, 82, 83, 87, 88, 186, 206, 212, 263, 270, 360, 372, 391; Committee for the Examination of History 272 Liberalism 326 liberalization 52 liberation 5; from Japan 161; South Korea’s 8 Lin Biao (Piao) 19, 22, 30, 52, 55; incident 18; Vice Chairman 35; Vice President 31, 32, 33, 36, 38 Lin Xinxu 55 lingering resentment 1

437

Index Listen to the Silence 56 literature 47; of the wounded 55; reflection 57 Little Moscow, 289 Little Red Books 18 Liu Huiying 248 Liu Lianren 219 Liu Shaoqi 16, 17, 48, 51, 53, 54 living history 1; reflection 57 Liu Shaoqi 16, 17 logit multivariate analyses 384 Lu Simian 229 Lu Xinhua 55, 56, 57 Lu Xun 198 Lytton Commission 246, 250; Report 249 MacArthur 206 Mainichi Shimbun 64, 80 Major-General Luo Yuan 189 Mamoru, Shigemitsu 206 Manchu: ethnic 241; Manchuria 7, 165, 227, 229, 230, 240, 241, 250; as a buffer zone 242; borderlands 242; incident 208, 407; Manchu region 7, 231; Manchurian incident 240, 241; migration 241; kingdom of Koguryo and Parhae 115; precursor of 240; Manchuguo (Manzhou government) 240, 241, 242, 243, 250 Man-gil, Kang 116 Mansudae Art Troupe 304 Mao 2, 19, 21, 33; Chairman 17, 18, 31, 49, 53; death 47; Madame 22; orthodox 38; past allies 16; post-, 26, 29; thoughts 48, 52; years 47, 51; Zedong 16, 17, 47, 197, 228 Maoist China 27, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 38, 40; classbased ideologies 51; construction 39; discourse 52; era 27, 28, 32, 34, 38, 39; leadership 52; legacies 47, 57; memory, 39, 40; post-, 34, 47, 52, 53; problems 51; reevaluation of 47 March 1st Independence movement 327 Marco Polo Bridge incident 203, 208, 212 maritime law 7 market protectionism 67 Marx 17, 19; the collapse of Marxism 28 masculine 96; masculine/battlefield/center 96; masculine-feminine differentiation 96; masculinist neonationalism 269; masculinity 96, 98, 105, 106; Japanese 99, 100, 102; masculinization/feminization 3 massacre 287; 1947 massacre in Taipei 204 mass: mobilization 327; pageant 15, 16; masses 2, 20, 21; nostalgic 2 massacre: -related 155; site 297 Matsumoto Jiichiro 198 Matsushima 277 Matsutaro, Takao 129 May 18 democracy festival 121; May 18, 122 media: popular 3; printed 37; official 53; saturated world 96; war 96

Meiji Restoration 417, 424 Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (samguk yusa) 230 memorial 28; official 293; politics of 294; preWWII war space at the Jeju April 3 Peace Park 292 memory: boom 63; collective 390; collective war 95; construction of 40; convergence 41; cosmopolitan 91, 388, 389, 397; counter-, 119; cultural 3; curve 27, 29; diversity of 95; divided 402, 405; elite 64; government-imposed 121; hegemonic 63; historical 1, 3, 4, 29; individual 128; international 63; issues 1; legitimized agents of 341; national 55, 389; nationalist 388, 389; negative function of 5; official 27; of official war 27; of the World Program 391; pluralism 63; politics 3; popular war 95; present 30; problems 1; project 15; public depiction of 341; suppressed 29; triumphant 101; vernacular 336, 342; wars 417; web 1 migration: forced 47; history 7; inland 241; Korean 249; mass 306, 307; youth 58 military: base society 8; brothels 3; brothel system 4; coup 112, 113, 122; Japanese 27, 35; operations 8; prowess 1; sexual abuse 271 Military Affairs Commission 50 Military Comfort Women: Accusations of 80,000 Voiceless Women 81 militarism: Japan’s 219; Japanese 32; nationalistic 101 min (people) 326, 327, 328, 329, 330 Minami Torishima 179, 180 Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MEXT) 85 Ministry of Gender Equality and Family 91 minjok (ethno) 322, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 331, 332, 333; discourse 330; identity 331 Minjok Ilbo 151 Minshun Shinbun 205 misogynistic impulse 97 Mitsubishi Materials Corp., 221 Mitsuharu, Yazaki 209 Miyazawa, 83; Kiichi 82, 266; Cabinet 85 mnemonic: artifacts 167; collective 58; elites/ entrepreneurs 63; inertia 40; practice 36; relics 36, 38; shift 64; turn 63; unit 9 model: justice 147; truth and reconciliation 147 Modern History of East Asia 234 modernization 20; China’s 68, 218; Korea’s 321, 323 Mohe/Malgal people 233 Mokpo City 129, 130, 131; First Citizen’s Award 131 Mongolians 241 monuments 215, 294; categorization and placement of 294 mood shift 3 Moon Jae-in 337

438

Index moral: evil 27; judgment 5; motif 214; objects 287, 299; principles 4; reasoning 5; responsibility 267, 307; subject 73 Morihiro, Hosokawa 63, 271 Moscow Declaration 17 most favored nation 214 Mother of 3,000 Children 135 Motegi Plateau (MGS) 183 movement: anti-Chinese 240, 247; anti-rightist 48, 52; counterrevolutionary 49; people’s 203, 207 Ms. Yoon Hak Ja 135 Mukojimka 179 multicultural: coexistence 240, 250; environment 250; society 240; tolerance 240 multilateral: concessions 366; framework 365; settlement 364 Murayama Masao 201, 204 Murayama Tomiichi 63, 71, 72, 83, 267, 391; statement 269 museum 28; military 36; war 28 Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression 37 My War Crimes: Coercive Recruitment of Koreans 82 Nagasaki 6, 115; Incident 209 Nakamura incident 249 Nakasone 68; Yasuhiro 67 naisen ittai 129 Nam Il 307 Nanjing (Nanking) 189, 190; massacre i, 27, 31, 34, 212, 219, 220, 269, 397, 404, 407, 418; museum 34; University 50 Naoto, Kan 392 narrative 39; ascending 33, 39; conflicting 28; Communist 26; counter- 337, 338; grand 40; heroic 29; -making 95; master 162, 406; masculine war 105; Maoist 35; master 162; nationalist 227; of class struggle 29; of legitimate war 102; of resistance 29; of self-sacrifice 293; official 26, 39, 40; official grand 33; patriotic 28; patterns 31; reenactment of victimhood 36; revision 27; structure 27; triumphalist 33, 36; victim 40; victor 28; war- 95 nation campaign 5; patriarchal 95; process 9; socialist 57; -state 15 national anthem 21; Chinese 16; defense 96; desire 95, 96; interest 3, 7, 10; memory i; intelligence Service (NIS) 147, 140; Police Chief 151; Police Reserve 105; Security Law, 118, 145; unity 41 National Committee for Investigating of the Jeju April 3 Incident and Recovering the Honor of Victims (4.3 Committee) 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 294, 295, 296, 299 National Council of Churches in Japan (NCCJ) 264 National People’s Congress (NPC) 418

nationalism 3, 28, 326, 388, 391; anti-American pro-Asian 201; anti-Japanese 328; ethnic 202; ideology of the first person plural 64; panKorean 164; patriotic 2, 28; politics of 406; rising 6; self-serving 10 nationality 7 natural disaster 48 Nazi fascism 228; Germany 88; -style constitutional revision 419 nearby but distant neighbors 7 negotiation 2, 6, 10; diplomatic 7 Nehru, Jawaharlal 201 neo-Confucian literati 324 neoliberal system 5 Netherlands 83, 84 New Village Movement 120 New York Times 88 newly industrializing economies (NIES) 363 NHK 64, 66, 67, 69 Nihon Keizai 80 Niigata 306, 308 Nine-Year Compulsory Education Three-Year Junior Middle School Textbook Chinese History 36 Nippon Coke & Engineering Co. (formerly known as Mitsui Mining Co.) 221 Nippon Foundation 180 Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Residential Directory 375 Nishimatsu Construction 219 Nishinoshima 180 Nixon 186, 212, 213, 361; President 212; trip to China 213 Nobukazu, Fujioka 269 Nobusuke, Kishi 206, 207; government 308 Noda government 179, 188, 273, 373 No Gun Ri 152; incident 144; killings 153; Report 146 nobility of failure 99, 100, 105; oxymoron ethos of 99 non-government organization (NGOs) 216, 219 non-victim 291, 293, 294, 298 Norihiro, Kato 72 normal country 222 normalization of relations 214, 304 Normalization Treaty (1965) 82, 278 normative universality 2 norms: competing 4; gender 4; traditional 2 North Atlantic Treaty Organization 362 Northeast Project 229, 231, 232 North Korea 9; threats 4 North-South separated family (reunions) 338, 339; exchange visits 338 North West Young Men’s Association 362 Northeast Asia History Foundation 115 Northern territories (Kurile Islands) 279, 281, 367, 368

439

Index Nostalgia: Korean 7; retrospective 2 nucleus of fluctuation 241 Nuremberg International Military Tribunal 33 official development assistance (ODA) 214, 215, 218 officials : lower-ranking 48; purged 49 Ogasawara 181; island 179; village 180 Ohira administration 214 Oita prefecture 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383 Oki Islands 277, 280 Okinawa 101, 180, 187, 188, 189, 191, 359, 361; Naha Local Prosecutor’s Office of 372; main island 180; problem 358, 362; prefecture 180; Trough 185 Okinotorishima 179, 180, 181 Omura Detention Center (near Nagasaki) 305, 306 One hundred selected films 38 ontological equality 5 Opium War 423 oppression of the Japanese invading army 26 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 216; Development Assistance Committee (DAC) 217 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 367 Origins of Korean War 117 orphanage 130 Osaka 80 other 191; China 191; collective 96; female 96, 106 overseas development assistance (ODA) 214, 215, 216 Pacchigi!, 310 Pacific War 212, 217 pacifist nation 95 Pacific Tilt doctrine 184 Palisades Park in New Jersey 90 pan-Korean: nationalism 164; nationalist discourse 341 Panmunjom 342 parade 15, 19; military 15, 16; of the masses 15, 16; national day 2, 15, 16, 17, 19, 23, 24 Pan Jiayu village of Hebei province 36 Paracel/Xisha 358 paradigm: aggressor-victim 279; ideological 326; rationalist 2; realpolitik 3 paradise of the kingly way 242 38th parallel 111, 339, 348 Park Chung Hee , 111, 112, 113, 120; hegemonic collective memory of 120; general 118; Presidential Library and Museum 120; regime 4; Yushin system 151 Park Geun-hye 7, 111, 116, 118, 154, 163, 337 Park Jeong-jin 309

particularism 2 past: cleansing of 114; difficult 4; persistence of 30; wrongs i past commands the present 34 paternal lineage 97, 100 patriarchal: paradox 101; system 96; ultimate form of 100; patriarchy 3, 4, 21, 96; stabilization 96; patrimonialism 21 patriotic education 29, 38 PBC News and the World 134 Peace 1, 15; Constitution 8, 273; hub for Asia 191; incomplete 199; keeping operations 104; longlasting 41; loving people 6; partial 204; regional 27; treaty 213 Peace and Friendship Treaty 186 peaceful coexistence i, 2, 240, 251, 360 Pearl Harbor 409 peasant 48, 49 pendulum swing 3 Peng Duhuai 22, 52, 54 people: govern 330; love 330; smuggling boat 305; sovereignty 330 People’s Daily 16, 34, 189, 201, 419; Distribution Suppression incident 209; Renmin Rinbao 50 People’s Education Press 232 People’s Liberation Army 201; August First Film Production Studio 36 performative act 3; redress 349 periphery 4 Permanent Court of Arbitration 26 Perpetrator 2, 3, 5, 8, 32, 41, 48, 49 personality cult 52 2008 Pew Survey 272 Politisierung (politicization) 323, 327 poisonous weeds 54 Poland 51 Politburo 50 political: agency 341; alliance 2; ambiguity 298; as commemorative strategy 297; campaign 55; compromises 287; divergence 321; division 305; elites 20; ethics 202; persecution 47, 48; Science i, 1; supremacy 2, 4 politicization: of commemorative projects 2; of historical past 4 politics: Chinese 47; domestic 48; of death 291; of memorials 294; of mourning 287 portrait 15, 16, 17 post-: apartheid 58; authoritarian 342; Cold War 364; conflict societies 287, 299; dictatorship 58; division society 347; euphoria 338; fantasy 101; liberation chaos 130; 9/11 milieu 300; mood 343; occupation 159; summit 342; traumatic stress disorder 154; war compensation lawsuits 219; lawsuits in Japan 219; socio-political milieu 6; WWII era 159 Potsdam Declaration 217 power 9; powerless 4

440

Index President’s Last Bang 120 presentist: approach 29; Framework 30; preoccupation 9; obsession 5 Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths of the Republic of Korea (PTCSD) 146, 162 pride 1, 8; Japan’s 263, 269; national 79 99 Pro-Japanese Collaborators 167 pro-Japanese factions 160 processes: confiscation 166; legal 159; of othering 63; semiotic 71; of suppression 28; of repression 28 procedural implementation 2 1905 Protectorate Treaty 333 prognoses 6, 7 program of mass slaughter 289 proletariats 32 propaganda: hyper-delusional 37; vehicle for 341 prostitutes 4, 81, 91; indentured prostitution 262; military 261 protest 49 provocation 385 public sphere 324 puppets 160 purge 2, 9 Qing dynasty 241, 243 Qingming Day 49 Qu Yuan the poet 228 questionnaire survey 375 Radhika Coomaraswamy 82; UNCHR report 82 rank order 3 rapprochement 2, 27 Re-Asianization 67 Re-bordering 337 Re-militarization 95 reception 2 reconciliation i, 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 15, 16, 21, 23, 27, 41, 47, 385; achievement of 2; as goals of 47; as mechanisms 47; as a process 406; as a set of tools 47; concept of 58; cultural modes of 412; domestic 91, 95; discourse 9; discriminatory 2, 58; divergent notions of definitions of 1; dilemmas of 250; domestic 16; durable 41; efforts 7; expeditious 4; external 16; fabricated report 88; Franco-German 409; gestures of 3, 59; gloomy prospects of 3; historical 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 402, 412; in Chinese politics 57; in East Asia 72, 402; ideational 215; internal 16; Japan-ROK 261, 271; Korea-Japan 277; layered 350; lessons for 5; major act of 304; material 213, 214, 217, 222; mechanism 47; method 9, 10; mnemonic 4; national 287; new forms of 305; people-centered 6; politics of 55, 59; political 24; politicization of 9; post-war 222; process 5; procedure for 5; procedural 213; prospects for 389; regional 1, 27, 304; role of

state 58; resolution for 251; shallow, 27; SinoJapan 6, 213; socio-political 3; societal 58, 105; society’s 58; thick 403, 411; thin measures of 3; the United States in 408; without justice 287; reconciled state 2; reconciling trajectory 2 reconfiguration 32 rectification 6 Red book 19 Red Cross: Chinese 222; of Japan 307, 308, 309, 314; Movement 314; of South Korea 338, 339 Red Guards 48 red hunt, 8, 289 Red Island 8, 289 Red Purge 203 red universalistic ideas 35 Reds 150 reeducation 48 reevaluation: historical 49; of Mao 50, 51, 52; political 56 reform: economic 19, 22; era 20 refugees 26 regimes: feudalistic 2; types 4 regret vocabulary of 73 rehabilitation 47, 53, 54, 58; Deng’s 50; of cadres and intellectuals 47; of purged officials 50; processes of 54 relations: interstate 26; Japan-China 6; Japan-Korea 6; Korea-China 6; Korea-Japan 7; Sino-Soviet 17, 22; top-bottom 21 remembering 1, 15, 24, 28; selective 128 remembrance: collective 28; new, 30; official 33; public 336; praxis 29; resurgence of 27; suppression 27 remorse 269; expressions of 3; sense of 64 Ren Xudong 37 renmin 202 reparation 47, 199, 214, 216, 217, 402; as an issue of economic policy 199; Germany’s 216 repatriation 304, 305, 306, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314; mass 305; movement 7, 216, 308; project 308 repentance 4, 134 Report on Japan’s War Responsibility 265 Reports on the Investigation of the Truth of ProJapanese Anti-National Activities 163 representation fictional 95; symbolic 287 repression 15, 52 Research Association of Liberal Historical Perspectives 269 resistance: glorious war 33; heroic 28; international 28 resolution 51, 80, 121; anti-Japanese 116 responsibility 1; inherited 398; Japan’s comprehensive war 268; war 263; wartime 63; women’s war 95 restitution i; /compensation 349 restoration of mutual trust 1; restorative measures 151; justice 222

441

Index retribution 349; target of 159 retrieval 1 returnees 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311; as model minority 313; from Japan 288; political persecution 307; refugees 309, 312, 313, 314 reunions 338, 339, 340, 341, 343; ambulance 346; candidates 338; family 345, 348; programs 349 revision 40; of official history 270; revisionism 33; revisionist memory-making 2 revolution 51, 52; sensitivity 73 Rhee, Syngman 4, 113, 151, 162, 296, 305, 306, 340 rhetoric 9, 27; characteristics of 36; Communist 34; Japan’s pacifist 8; rhetorical shift 2 Rice 248 Richard Sorge spy ring 198 Rightists 48, 53; intellectual 49, 52 Right-wing extremists 81 rise of tension 385 Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383 ritualistic symbolism 2 ritual 7; appropriateness of conciliatory 8; commemorative 3, 7; reconciliation 51; theatrical 51 Roh Moo-hyun 4, 5, 114, 116, 120, 146, 283, 337, 404; government 168; peace and prosperity policy 337 Roh Tae-woo 145, 263 romanticized hopes 7 rule of law 2 Russo-Japanese War 241 Ryukyu Islands 417 Ryukyu/Okinawa 189; king 185 Ryukyu punishment (1879) 185 Sai Yoichi 310 Samguk sagi 114 San Francisco Peace Treaty 6, 10, 196, 201, 206, 218, 267, 269, 278, 282, 283, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 365, 368, 402, 407 Sands of Iwo Jima 97 Sankei 79, 80 Sanzo Nosaka the leader of the Japanese Communist Party 32 Sato administration 212, 213 Satoshi, Moriyama 129, 134 Secretary of Defense 151; of State Hilary Clinton 187, 189; Henry L. Stimson 245 security environment external 416 Seeking Family in the South 338 Seiichi, Katsumata 206 Seiron 90 Seisuke, Okuno 270 selection and classification of the dead 290 self-: collective 73; congratulatory 52; contradicting 72; contradictory 52; criticism 50; deceiving 41; defense 66, 67; determinism 327; exalting

39; glorification 38; glorying 36; identification 65; identity 374, 375; indulgent 3; interests 304; intoxicating enthusiasm 31; other identity construction i; other relations 398; perception 4; preserving 40; propelled manner 394; reflection 215; reflexivity 4; reliance 120; satisfied 200; serving 41; sufficiency 206; vigilance 106 semantic 9, 34; approach 321, 329; element 326; functions 326; paradigm 322; root 329; usages 329 semiotic: divergence 334; legacy 322; process of keying 71 Senda Kako 81 Senkaku/Diaoyudao (Diaoyu) 6, 10, 72, 179, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 196, 279, 281, 358, 359, 367, 402, 417 sense of bereavement 39 sentiments 20; nationalist 32; public 3; unsettled 4 Seodo 277 Seoul Olympic Games 68, 69, 263 separated families 340, 345 separation of politics from economy 206 sex tourism 63 sexual: conscription of 408; military 79; slave 87, 219; slavery 7, 26, 90, 266; system 7; violence 263; against women 266; sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) 262 shame 1, 6, 263; historical 128 Shanghai 53, 54, 55; Workers’ Cultural Center 56 Shina 188, 201 Shikotan 281, 359 Shimane prefecture 278, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383 Shinto believers 189 Ship of Japanese men 95 Shoichi, Nakagawa 270 Shoji, Motooka 264 Showa Mining Factory of Meiji Mining Company 219 silence 41; silent service 99 Silla 227, 229; kingdom 278 simin 332 Sin Chaeho (Shin Chae-ho) 230, 323, 325 Sina Weibo 16 sincerity 3 sinmin 324, 325 Sino-: American relations 212; centrism 229; Japan rivalry 410; Japanese Friendship 205; Japanese Rapprochement 207; Japanese War 203, 216, 219, 241, 261, 417; Korea contestations 6; Ryukyu Trough 185 situational logic 4 Six Party Talks 365, 366 slogan 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 Social Darwinism theorem 323 social media 16 social relations 16, 20; rational 16, 20; rational-legal 21, 22, 23; traditional 16, 20, 21, 23, 24

442

Index socialist: camp 17, 20; countries 16; construction 10; fatherland 307; model 15; people’s paradise, 9; revolution 19 Society to Help Returnees to North Korea 313 Society to Support the Demands of Chinese War Victims 219 socio-economic inequality 2 Sociology i, 1 Solidarity: micro-cognitive 20; in-group 115 Sonderweg West German 65 Song Byeong-jun 165 Song of a Pearl 129 Songhua River 241 Sonoda-Deng meeting of 1978, 187 South China Sea, 179, 181, 196 South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly 161 South Korean Labor Party 288, 289, 290 South Manchurian Railway 242; Company (SMR) 198 sovereign rights 228; sovereignty 145 space: for emancipation conflict and reconciliation 240; multicultural 7; multiethnic 7 Spartley/Nansha 358, 359 Special Act for Investigation of the Jeju April 3 Incident and Recovering the Honor of Victims (April 3 Special Act) 289 Special Act to Investigate the Truth of Anti-National Activities Under Japanese Imperialism 163 Special Law to Redeem Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property 165 spies 203 spirit tablets 294 spirit of repentance 283 stability 1 Stalin 16, 17, 19, 51, 340 status quo 385 Story of Wu Xun, 54 storytelling 95 strategic statecraft 3 strategy 9 struggle: class 26; revolutionary class 28 subjugated women 3 Sugil, An 248 Sun Yat-sen 16, 17, 228 superiority: complex 65; Japanese 66, 243 Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP) 199 survivors 8 symbolic: location 7; representation of the past 287; significance 35; space 33 symbolism 9; semantic 9 symbols: common 321; of national integrity 8 Takeiri Notes 217 Tatsuhiko, Shigeno 100 Tauchi (Chizuko) 4, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134; Japanese mother of Korean War orphans 4, 132, 138

Teachers’ Union 199 template for aspiration 2 terra nullius 185, 189 territory 6, 7; inherent 191; territorial conquest 6; demarcation 6; disputes i, 5, 7, 10, 372; issues 8; sovereignty 10 testament 3 Theorem of Pro-Japanese Literature 167 theorem on Japanese 405 Tiananmen 1989 52; April 5, 50; incident 69; movement 50; Square 19, 22, 49 time of June 25th 339 Tokyo 80; metropolis of 179; municipal government 181; Trial 66 Tokyo Asahi Newspaper 243, 245 TOKKO (2007) 106 Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal 4, 393, 407, 408; Trial 389, 395 Tonghak peasant army 330 Toshie, Kanamori 137 Toshiki, Kaifu 264 Toshiki, Kato 264 totalitarian entities 20 Track I level 365 Track II level 366 tradition: cultural 3; ethnic 20; linguistic 20; religious 20; tragedy 47 traitor 150, 160, 165; pro-Japanese 120 translingual practices 322 transnational comfort women movement 264, 266, 272; actors 270 Trans-Pacific Partnership 189 transitional justice 3, 15, 47, 54, 58, 287, 290, 297, 298, 299, 300; strategy 287 trauma 3, 26, 33, 49; domestic 1, 2; of Nixon shocks 191; war 7 traumatic event 111; past 1, 158 Treaty of Shimonoseki 189, 216 tributary system China-centered 422, 424, 425 tribulations 1 tribute relations 232; Beijing-centered 185 triumph 40; in Pinxing Valley 31 truce 1 trust 3; building 333; mentor-mentee 2 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 4, 5, 58, 114, 116, 118, 124; final report of 152; of Korea (TRCK) 144, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155; South Korean 144 truth-telling initiatives 47 Tsuruhashi district of Osaka 304 Tunghua University 229 The Tunnel Warfare 36, 37, 38, 39 types of atonement 215 Ulleung Islands 277, 278, 280 Ulsan’s National Guidance League 151

443

Index United Nations Commission of Human Rights (UNCHR) 82, 265; Subcommittee for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities 265 United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 207 UN: Committee on the Continental Shelf 181; troops 8 UNESCO 233, 234, 391; World Heritage site i, 3, 6, 180, 229; Article 121, 180 United Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 7, 177, 178, 181, 182, 279, 361, 366 United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) 161, 288, 289 Unit 731, 66, 219, 269, 418; lawsuit case of 220 universal: human rights regime 63; motherhood 4; normative 2; rights 58; universalism 2, 70; universalist fraternity 32 Unresolved History 167 Uotsuri/Diaoyudao 185 US 8th Army Headquarters 118 US House Committee 88, 89; of Foreign Affairs 88; of Representatives 80; Resolution 80, 89, 121, 271, 391 US-China détente 213 US-Japan Security Treaty 200, 201, 206; Article 5, 187 Values 20 Verzeitlichung (temporalization) 322, 323 Versailles Treaty 214, 216; Article 231-247 217; Article 232, 216; Article 302, Clause 2, 217; Chapter 8 of Articles 231-247, 216 Victim 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 28, 34, 48, 49; April 3, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 297, 299; of A-bombs and air raids 98; Asian 3; China’s as 40; dignity of, 150; discourse 32; of division 345; heroes 99; history of 99; individual 213; innocent 32; mentality 64, 65, 66, 67, 70; of militarism 65; rank ordering practice of 294 victimizer dichotomy 411 victimhood 2, 4, 32, 40 victimizer 3; in East Asia 65 victimization 2, 5, 28, 40; acknowledgment of 36; China’s 28; Chinese 39; of Chinese people 29; common 203; films 99 Victor 6; China as 29, 40; justice 66, 389, 394; victory 2; bright vision of 33; festive 33; war 4 Vienna: Conference 266; Declaration 266 vindication 5 violation 8; violence 4, 8, 9, 26; Against Women in War Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan) 268; fratricidal 9; inter-and intra-, i; military 96; sexual 7; state 4; US 3; use of 7 visual exhibition 2 Vogel, Ezra 64

volunteer labor corps (chongsindae in Korean teishintai in Japanese) 81, 83, 86, 87 Wall of Democracy in Xidan Beijing 53 Wang Dongxing 49, 50 Wang Gungmei 53 Wanpaoshan 248; incident 7, 240, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 249, 250; location 243; trial 240 war 15, 95; of aggression 67; anti-fascist 35; antiJapanese 28; atrocity 26, 40; civil 111; Class-A criminals 67, 196; crime of sexual slavery 266; discourse 96; faction 6; first hot 9; invasion 32; legitimate 102; memorial 118; memories 26; narrative 96; of resistance against Japan 26, 35; tunnel 36 warfare 3; biological 67; biological and chemical 31; Japan’s 68; Japanese germ 220; landmine 31; people’s 31, 37; proxy 8; tunnel 31, 36 war films 4 war orphans 4 warrior: just 102; male 96; resistance 39 Washington Post 88 Watanuke Tamisuke 270 we-ness 328 Weltanshauung (ethos) 322, 326 Wenhui Daily 55, 56 Wenlan, Fan 229 West 5; imperialist 66 western impact and reform 322 What Are Pro-Japanese Collaborators? 167 What the school textbooks do not teach 269 Whateverists 50, 54, 56 White House 295 Who’s Who During the Japanese Occupied Period 167 Wickham, John A. 121 WILL 90 Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal 268, 270; on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery 88 work units 48 World Conference on Human Rights 1993 266 World Conference on Women (1995) 266 World Council of Churches (WCC) 265 world danger zone 241 World Orphans Day 133 World War I 214 World War II i, 212, 215, 216, 217, 219, 222, 228, 261, 263, 270, 278; forced labor 221; Japan’s action during 283 The Wounded 55, 56 Wu Dawei 232 Wu Han 54 Xi Jinping 59 Xinhua News Agency 16, 232 Xisha Islands (the Paracel Islands) 420 Xu Mau and His Daughters 58

444

Index Yaeyama Island 184 Yalta Agreement 357; collapse of 357; Conference 358; East Asian system 357; spirit of inter-Allied cooperation 359 Yamato 4; a masculine symbol of the unsinkable nation 98; as significant icon 98; animated film Space Battleship Yamato (Uchu senkan Yamato 1977) 95, 99, 101, 103; battleship (Senkan Yamato 1953) 95, 98, 99, 100, 103; epitome of the nation 104; homosocial world of 105; Liveaction remake of Space Battleship (2010) 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105; Men’s (Otokotachi no Yamato 2005) 96, 102, 105; myth 105; Requiem for Battleship Yamato 98, 99; suicide mission to Okinawa 99 yangban 160 Yang Chengwu 35 Yang Sok-Il 310 Yang Yong-hee 310 Yasukuni 67, 190, 391; Shrine 72, 79, 105, 228, 272, 279, 284, 388, 404, 418 Yasuo, Fukuda 191 yellow journalism 373 Yeltsin, Boris 281 Yeo Un-hyung 328 Yi Hae-sung 166 Yi In-cheol 230 Yi Wan-yong 165 Yohei, Kono 83, 226; statement 3, 7, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89 Yomiuri Shimbun 64, 79 Yonaguni Islands 185 Yongpyong Island 337 Yoon Chi Ho 130, 134, 135 Yoon Hak Ja 130

Yoon Hyojeong 325 Yoon: Ki 129, 132, 137, 138; Midori 132, 133; Munji (Fumie) 129 Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) 264 Yoshibonu, Shimamura 270 Yoshida Seiji 81 Yoshida Shigeru 8, 206; government 196; Prime Minister 204 Yoshida’s Story 86 Yoshihide, Suga 221 Yoshimi 81, 82; Yoshiaki 262, 264 Yoshitake Teruko 137 Yoshitaro, Hirano 205 YouTube 16, 19 Youth League 55 Yu Jin-O 329 Yukichi, Fukuzawa 323 Yukio, Hatoyama 188, 191 Yun Chong-Ok 263 Zai-Nihon Taikanmnkoku Mindan (Mindan) 313 Zainichi: community 8, 287, 288, 289, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300; Koreans 305, 310; in Osaka; 288, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300; population 306; settlers 9 Zen Guofan 230 Zhang Hyukjoo 248 Zhenba Island on the Ussuri River (Damanskii Island in Russian) 419 Zhongfu, Han 229 Zhou Yang 57 Zhu Chengshan 34 Zhu De 16, 17 Zhu Enlai 16, 17, 49, 186, 201, 213 Zong Fuxian 56

445