Washington Japanwatch / Japan must face up to its past
Weston S. Konishi / Special to The Daily Yomiuri
With each step into Yasukuni Shrine, Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi has taken Japan’s regional diplomacy two
steps back. Koizumi’s visit to the shrine last week, on the
anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of the Second
World War, was no less damaging, with Seoul and Beijing issuing
another salvo of protests. Even in the United States, where Yasukuni
is a less visceral issue, newspaper op/eds roundly criticized the
visit and argued for the next Japanese leader to settle the history
problem once and for all.
As desirable as that goal may be, the question is whether reconciliation—which
has eluded Japan for the better half of the 20th Century—is
any more attainable in the 21st century.
Recent signs in Japan suggest that the nation might, after all,
be on the cusp of a fundamental debate over its wartime legacy.
One development is the newly released records revealing the late
Emperor Hirohito’s reticence to visit Yasukuni after 1975,
when 14 Class-A war criminals were enshrined. This revelation has
bolstered proposals to remove the Class-A war criminals from Yasukuni
or find another politically neutral way of honoring Japan’s
war dead.
Along with these developments is a new wave of introspection regarding
Japan’s responsibility for the war and its oppressive colonization
of other nations. In conjunction with the August 15 anniversary
of the war’s end, the Yomiuri Shimbun released the results
of an extensive study of the decision making that led to and propelled
Japan’s fatal war machine, including a list of leaders that
the paper determined to be most responsible for the wartime policies.
Public opinion polls also indicate that most Japanese believe their
nation has not done enough to examine its responsibility for the
war or to apologize to the victims of past aggression.
Japan’s half-century quest for historical reconciliation
is fraught with countless setbacks and equivocations. Even now,
as signs of progress appear, there is an ominous backlash from
nationalist elements seeking to intimidate internal debate. On
August 15, a right-wing member of a Yakuza gang set fire to the
home and office of former LDP Secretary-General Kato Koichi, who
has been critical of Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine.
Despite these set backs, progress on the history front right now
would be most welcome, especially given the rising tensions affecting
the Northeast Asian region. In the face of mounting outside pressure
for Japan to “confront the past” and “settle” wartime
grievances once and for all, there is a new sense of urgency behind
Japan’s recent introspection.
Sadly—both for those who suffered under Japan’s imperial
rule and those who hope for a future-oriented Japan—the goal
of resolving the wartime legacy in any comprehensive and conclusive
way is a false one.
That opportunity expired fifty years ago.
There are many explanations for Japan’s failure to settle
the past, much the way Germany has since the end of the war. Indeed,
critics often point to Germany as a model for Japan’s effort
to come to terms with the past. However, applying the German reconciliation
model to Japan is problematic, not least because of Germany’s
head start in the process.
West Germany, in particular, began mending ties with its neighbors
immediately after sovereignty was handed back to the country by
the allied occupation. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the nation’s
first postwar leader, made reconciliation a top policy priority,
assuring surrounding countries and victims of Nazi aggression that
Germany was no longer a threat. In postwar Japan, on the other
hand, no Adenauerian leader with a vision and commitment to reconciliation
emerged.
Instead, under the cover of the Cold War, Japan went into hibernation
at just the time when it should have been mending ties with its
neighbors. Japan only established diplomatic relations with South
Korea in 1965 and with China in 1972—in both cases, decades
after the close of hostilities.
At such a late stage, Japan never had a chance to build the diplomatic
and political groundwork that could help restore trust in the region.
In addition, the lack of diplomatic ties for so many years after
the war allowed mainland resentment toward Japan to fester without
any on-the-ground means of addressing it.
Japan’s relative isolation also shielded the nation from
having to apologize for the war until it was too late. Such a job
would have been all the more meaningful if it had been conducted
early on by the generation of Japanese that had played some part
in the war. As that generation fades away, it is unfair for young
Japanese to inherit the burden of apologizing for what they have
not done.
Should, then, Japan give up its current attempts to settle history?
Clearly it should not. The effort to reconcile the past counts,
even if the end result is likely to fall short of any satisfying
conclusion.
The best Japan can do now is to avoid exacerbating the history
problem by opening up old wounds and unnecessarily provoking emotions
in China and South Korea. That is why, for instance, a creative
solution to the Yasukuni Shrine controversy is so important and
why some delusional Japanese leaders should stop denying what clearly
happened during the war.
A more active regional diplomacy would also help China and Korea
see Japan in a broader context, rather than simply, from their
eyes, a provocateur of sensitive issues. Under Koizumi’s
leadership, Tokyo has willingly drifted away from its neighbors—a
trend that resembles Japan’s isolation after the war.
With
a new prime minister taking power next month, there is an opportunity
for Japan to refocus attention on shoring up relations with the
mainland.
None of these measures will bring closure to the history problem
once and for all. But in the absence of any sure fix, time is all
that is left to heal the lingering wounds of war.
A version of this article appeared in The Daily Yomiuri on August
29.
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