Published in the Nikkei Asian Review 16/4/2015
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
George Orwell’s line from 1984 has particular resonance in East Asia this year as a whole series of events will focus attention on historical controversies.
In late April Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Gyeun-hye will travel to Indonesia to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, progenitor of the Non-Aligned Movement. Interest will be focussed on what the three leaders have to say about present and past relations.
Soon afterwards Abe flies to Washington D.C. where he will have, for a Japanese leader, the unprecedented privilege of addressing a joint session of Congress. Here too his approach to historical issues will be closely watched.
All this is a preamble to much higher-profile events later in the year, as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Last year’s 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War attracted saturation media coverage, but passed off smoothly. In contrast, this year’s commemoration is likely to prove more fractious.
The reason is simple. The key combatants of the war in the Pacific continue to jostle for influence and the national narratives they create are important tools for projecting power. Historical disputes are not the cause of present-day conflicts of interest, as is sometimes assumed. Rather, it’s the other way round, as Orwell perceived. Present-day conflicts of interest drive the historical disputes.
Europe is similar. Until recently the dominant narrative was that Germany had confronted the horrors of its past and made full amends. The reality, though, was that no conflict of interest existed between Germany and its EU partners. Now Greece, its economy ravaged by debt deflation, is demanding an enormous sum in compensation for the Nazi looting of Greek assets. The present has suddenly changed; therefore so has the past.
BURYING THE HATCHET
Most Asian countries buried the hatchet with Japan long ago. Chiang Kai Shek’s Taiwan had friendly relations with Tokyo despite the brutal clashes- including the Nanjing Massacre – between his Kuomintang forces and the Japanese military in mainland China. Indonesia was close to Japan from its beginnings under President Sukarno, who presided over the original Bandung Conference. Sukarno visited Japan several times, once taking home with him the young Japanese woman now known as Madame Dewi Sukarno.
In the 1980s, President Mahathir of Malaysia took Japan as a model for his “Look East” campaign and co-authored a book with Shintaro Ishihara, the right-wing gadfly who went on to become Governor of Tokyo. More recently Philippine foreign minister Albert Del Rosario expressed strong support for Japanese re-armament. Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar all appear to have harmonious relations with Tokyo
Many Asian countries have been willing to let bygones be bygones because they see their interests as congruent with Japan’s. In some cases Japanese financial and economic support helped them to economic independence after the forced exit of Western colonial powers. In other cases the key factor has been the desire to find a counter-weight to rising Chinese influence. The countries that are most vociferous in harking back to the events of 70 and 80 years ago, South Korea and China, are Japan’s rivals today – albeit in different ways.
South Korea competes directly with Japan across a range of industries – steel, shipbuilding, autos and electronics, amongst others. Its relationship with its former colonial ruler is complex and volatile. Until the late 1990s, items of Japanese popular culture, such as manga, pop music and movies, were banned. This century South Korea has bet big on China. As a share of GDP Korean exports to China are six times Japan’s and the number of South Koreans studying at Chinese universities is proportionally seven times the number of Japanese.
With the fate of North Korea largely dependent on Chinese intentions, it is perhaps unsurprising that South Korea is triangulating between its traditional allies and its huge neighbour. Whether South Korea adopts the US’s “THAAD” missile defence system, which China strongly opposes, will be a critical indicator of where it is heading.
THE FORGOTTEN “KOIZUMI MOMENT”
The position of China itself is more easily understood. It is in geopolitical competition with Japan and the US for regional supremacy. History is a means of legitimizing its ambitions in the eyes of both domestic and international audiences by recalling, in the words of Oxford University’s Professor Rana Mitter, “a time past, but not long past, when China stood alongside the other progressive powers against fascism.”
Leaving aside the question of whether the China of Chiang and Mao Zhedong – let alone Stalin’s Soviet Union – can be counted as progressive powers, it is clear that rekindled historical controversies will always be a win for China and a loss for Japan. It is in China’s interest to keep them smouldering as long as possible and in Japan’s interests to snuff them out.
In 2001, then-Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi attempted to lay the demons to rest by echoing the famous “Willy Brandt moment” of 1970, when the German Chancellor fell to his knees in Warsaw as symbolic atonement for the Holocaust.
Koizumi visited the Marco Polo Bridge, site of the Japanese provocation that led to the full-scale invasion of China in 1937. As the English language version of the People’s Daily noted at the time, he expressed heartfelt apologies to the Chinese victims, laid a wreath and bowed and prayed in silence.
At the nearby Memorial Hall of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, Koizumi pledged that “Japan will learn from its history, take a peaceful road and continue to co-ordinate and co-operate with the international community.”
Back then China’s economy was far smaller than Japan’s and the pragmatic Jiang Zemin was adhering to the “peaceful rise” doctrine originated by Deng Xiaoping. Today’s China is a very different entity and the “Koizumi moment” has been expunged from the official narrative. Needless to say, it never appears in the acres of verbiage about Sino-Japanese relations produced by the global media.
According to Nietzsche, “there are no facts, only interpretation.” To which British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm riposted “We cannot invent our facts. Either Elvis Presley is dead or he isn’t.”
Both men are right. Facts exist, but the most heated debates concern the way they are selected, framed and interpreted. To triumph in the battle of the narratives, Abe needs to emphasize the “now”, even as Japan’s rivals seek to turn the clock back to the “then” of 1945.