China-Japan drifting further apart

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): As he addressed the Japanese Diet on Oct. 8 South Korean President Kim Dae-jung pithily described how history bedevils Asian politics.

"There are many people in Asia, including Korea," Kim said, "who still cannot discard their suspicions of Japan... They believe that Japan has not done enough on its own to understand correctly and reflect humbly upon its past... The fact that such doubts and mistrust still exist is very unfortunate not only for Japan but also for all the countries in Asia".

In East Asia, the reconciliation process has at last begun between Japan and South Korea -- but not between China and Japan.

One question above all others looms over the unsuccessful six- day visit of President Jiang Zemin to Japan: why didn't the Japanese leadership accord to Jiang the same treatment as that given to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in early October?

On Oct. 7 at the state banquet for Kim, Emperor Akihito recalled that "there was one period when Japan brought great suffering on the people of the Korean peninsula. The deep sorrow which I feel over this never leaves my memory."

The next day, President Kim and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi were able to sign a joint declaration, the most crucial paragraph of which read " Prime Minister Obuchi, looking back on the relations between Korea and Japan in this century, humbly accepted the historical fact that Japanese colonial rule inflicted unbearable damage and pain on the Korean people, and expressed remorseful repentance and heartfelt apology for the ordeal".

"Remorseful repentance and heartfelt apology" was the crucial phrase, which encouraged foreign observers to assume that all Japan had to do was to repeat that formula for President Jiang -- and a new day would dawn in East Asia.

But Japan could not or would not fit so neatly into gaijin (foreigner) dreams.

Ironically, the immediate excuses offered by Japan displayed the sheer ignorance of history which will increasingly bedevil Sino-Japanese relations, as eyewitnesses of the actual events between the 1895 Sino-Japanese War and 1945 die and those events sink back into nationalist myth.

Obuchi's spokesman claimed that it was inappropriate to bestow the same treatment on China because Korea was a colony whereas China was not. So how do the Japanese classify Manchukuo, the name they gave to Manchuria, as Chinese colonial puppets ruled the northeast provinces of China under Japan's Rising Sun flag and military control from 1931 onwards? Manchukuo was a Japanese colony just like Korea.

Curiously, both Chinese and Japanese leaders suffer from amnesia when it comes to remembering Manchukuo. Too often Chinese and gweilos alike talk about the Japanese invasion of China proper in 1937 -- rather as if there was, and is, something improper about China's claim to Manchuria. The 60th anniversary of the invasion of China was celebrated in Beijing and elsewhere in 1997, but the invasion of China proper in 1931 received much less attention in 1991.

Yet the Japanese conquest of Manchuria, and the weak- kneed reaction of the League of Nations to it, encouraged Hitler to embark upon aggression in Europe and so marked the true beginning of World War II.

Another excuse offered by the Japanese was that former Socialist Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama had already apologized in 1995 for World War II on the 50th anniversary of the ending of that war. This excuse assumes that the rest of the world has forgotten that Murayama's apology was a general one not directed at China. His Liberal Democratic Party coalition partners were quick to point out that Murayama then spoke on his own behalf, not on behalf of his government. The one apology that would have had an official ring to it in 1995 was a Diet resolution on the 50th anniversary. But parliamentary consensus could not be attained before the Japanese Diet adjourned. A resolution of official regret was never passed.

A third semi-official excuse has been that Emperor Akihito has been to China and apologized, whereas he has yet to go to South Korea. Again, the Japanese offer an explanation, expecting gaijin to be forgetful of the fact that Akihito did not apologize while he was in China.

Nor does one expect him to do so. If any apology is to be forthcoming, it should come from the head of government -- as was the case with Obuchi apologizing to President Kim.

Yet this excuse has some validity. The Emperor's visit, in Japanese eyes, marked a new beginning when he went to China. It will carry the same meaning when he goes to Korea. Chinese leaders and diplomats should have made sure that Akihito's visit marked the final end of the history controversy. In other words, the time for China to pressure Japan over history was before the Akihito visit, not after it.

The fact that Chinese pressure over the history issue has continued relates of course to the tendency of Japanese cabinet ministers occasionally to remember the Sino-Japanese past as if it was a blessing for the Chinese, and to pay official visits to the Shinto temple at Yasukuni where the spirits of war criminals are honored and enshrined.

But the fact that Chinese pressure over history still continues only reinforces the Japanese conviction that it will be impossible to ever satisfy the Chinese on this score. This Japanese conviction was only hardened into certainty when the Chinese side let friendly foreign journalists know that they regarded President Jiang's visit as a success, precisely because it enabled China to retain the history issue as a pressure-point on Japan.

These rationalizations of the summit failure convinced some Japanese officials that they had been right to dig in their heels over giving any apology to China.

China shares the blame for the Sino-Japanese summit failure in a more substantial way: Beijing's negotiators were less deft than their Korean counterparts.

President Kim had all along framed his visit in terms of ending one backward-looking chapter and starting a fresh forward- looking one.

Moreover the Koreans offered an incentive -- that they would gradually lift Korea's bans on the import of Japanese culture if the Kim visit brought forth the right Japanese response.

Kim quickly delivered on his promise: "South Korea Begins Opening Its Borders To Japanese Culture" ran the top headline in the Japan Times on Oct. 21.

China, by contrast, was loyal to the traditions of the Middle Kingdom. Beijing's diplomats concentrated almost exclusively on what Japan must give -- on history, on yen loans, on Taiwan, on limiting its defense arrangements, on its alliance with the U.S. and so on. Steeped in its own Middle Kingdom traditions, Japan declined to accept the role of being China's tributary state.

China's Middle Kingdom complex dictated that President Jiang had to compensate for the summit's failure by continuously lecturing Japan on its need to face up to history right up until his departure for home. President Kim Dae-jung, by contrast, refrained from continually lecturing the Japanese. He recognized that Japan's inward-looking pride would make too many such lectures counter-productive.

President Jiang's harping on the history issue only serves to further postpone the already distant day when Japan will confront its past on its own initiative.

While Japan and Korea are slowly coming closer together, China and Japan are drifting further apart.