Northeast Asia's Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies)

Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies General Editors: Andrew Hoskins and John Sutton The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory; panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years. Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This groundbreaking series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’ under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination? Brian Conway COMMEMORATION AND BLOODY SUNDAY Pathways of Memory Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz (editors) NORTHEAST ASIA’S DIFFICULT PAST Essays in Collective Memory Forthcoming titles: Richard Crownshaw THE AFTERLIFE OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–23851–0 (hardback) 978–0–230–23852–7 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past Essays in Collective Memory Edited by

Mikyoung Kim Hiroshima City University—Hiroshima Peace Institute, Japan

and

Barry Schwartz University of Georgia, USA

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz 2010 Individual chapters © contributors 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–23747–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Northeast Asia’s difficult past : essays in collective memory / edited by Mikyoung Kim, Barry Schwartz. p. cm. — (Palgrave Macmillan memory studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–23747–6 (alk. paper) 1. Japan—History—20th century. 2. Collective memory—Japan. 3. Nationalism and collective memory—Japan. 4. China—History— 20th century. 5. Collective memory—China. 6. Nationalism and collective memory—China. 7. Korea—History—20th century. 8. Collective memory—Korea. 9. Nationalism and collective memory—Korea. 10. Asia—Relations—Case studies. I. Kim, Mikyoung, 1963– II. Schwartz, Barry, 1938– DS885.2.N67 2010 951.05—dc22 2010002701 10 19

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To Sunjung Clara and Jihong Eliote and Ian

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Contents List of Figures

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List of Tables

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Acknowledgement

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Notes on Contributors

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Introduction: Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem Barry Schwartz and Mikyoung Kim

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Section I Japan Studies 1 The Yasukuni Shrine Conundrum: Japan’s Contested Identity and Memory Mike M. Mochizuki

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2 Japanese Pacifism: Problematic Memory Mikyoung Kim

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3 Responsibility, Regret and Nationalism in Japanese Memory Kazuya Fukuoka and Barry Schwartz

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Section II China Studies 4 Political Centres, Progressive Narratives and Cultural Trauma: Coming to Terms with the Nanjing Massacre in China, 1937–1979 Xiaohong Xu and Lyn Spillman 5 Alternative Genres, New Media and Counter Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Guobin Yang 6 The Changing Fate of the Chinese National Anthem Tim F. Liao, Gehui Zhang and Libin Zhang 7 Memory Movement and State–Society Relationship in Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement Against Japan Bin Xu and Gary Alan Fine vii

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Section III Korea Studies 8 Exacerbated Politics: The Legacy of Political Trauma in South Korea Don Baker 9 The Chos˘ on Monarchy in Republican Korea, 1945–1965 Christine Kim 10 Parallax Visions in the Dokdo/Takeshima Disputes Heonik Kwon

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Epilogue: Caught between Contentions and Dialogues: Historical Memories in Northeast Asia Jae-Jung Suh

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Index

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List of Figures 3.1 Cultural differences in reaction to oppression 7A.1 Core and periphery of political opportunity structure 7A.2 China’s political opportunity structure in the 1990s

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The cover photo, designed by Tim Liao, consists of three photographs, one each from the three core countries of Northeast Asia: China, Korea and Japan. Each photo forms one layer of the finished design. The first layer is a photo of the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, with its iconic torii, a Japanese gate at the entrance of the Shinto shrine, and chrysanthemum symbols also used as the imperial seal. The second layer is a 2001 photo showing a South Korean civic group protesting the revision of a Japanese history textbook at the Japanese embassy in Seoul. The angry man in glasses holds protest banners urging a boycott of Japanese products in retaliation for Japan’s distortion of history. The third layer of the photo portrays Shanghai protests against 2005 Japanese textbook revisions. The young men in the lower part of the image hold a long white banner urging all to “Protest against Japanese History Textbooks!” Like the three merged photographs, national memory can be multilayered, fused and con-fused, with events from various sources. By capturing this effect, the photo design previews the volume by reflecting Northeast Asia’s memory wars. Tim Liao’s own contribution to this volume appears in Chapter 6.

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List of Tables 1.1 Japan prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine since end of World War II 3.1 Frequently named sources of “Dishonour, Disgrace, Shame” in American history (N = 1109) 3.2 Frequently named sources of “Dishonour, Disgrace, Shame” in Japanese history (N = 530) 3.3 Sense of moral responsibility for national misdeeds 3.4 Factor correlations 3.5 Mean difference (t-test): Asia sensitive dimension and moral responsibility 3A.1 Factor loadings 6A.1 Lyrics (current and original), “March of the Volunteers” 6A.2 Lyrics (1966–1978), “The East is Red” 6A.3 Lyrics (1978–1982), “March of the Volunteers”

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41 74 75 76 82 83 90 161 162 163

Acknowledgement With generous funding from the Hiroshima City University—Hiroshima Peace Institute, two workshops were held to produce this volume.

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Don Baker teaches Korean history and culture in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He first became involved with Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer in the provincial capital of Kwangju from 1971 to 1974. He has published widely on Korean traditional science, religion, philosophy and history. His most recent book is Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaii Press, 2008). Gary Alan Fine is the John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. He received his PhD from Harvard University in Social Psychology. He has written widely on reputational entrepreneurs and the construction of reputation, and is the author of the book Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept and Controversial. Along with Bin Xu, he is currently examining the construction of the reputation of policy experts, focusing on Owen Lattimore in the McCarthy-era debate in the early 1950s over “Who Lost China?” Kazuya Fukuoka (PhD, University of Georgia) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University. His research interests include nation and nationalism, politics of memory and international relations of East Asia. Christine Kim is Assistant Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of History at Georgetown University. She is presently completing a manuscript that examines the twentieth-century history of Korea’s monarchical institution. An article, “Politics and Pageantry in Protectorate (1905–10) Korea: The Imperial Progress of Sunjong”, appears in The Journal of Asian Studies 68.3 (Fall 2009). Mikyoung Kim is Associate Professor at the Hiroshima City University— Hiroshima Peace Institute. Before assuming her current position in 2005, she taught at Portland State University as a Fulbright Visiting Professor. She served with the US State Department from 2000 to 2004 in the field of public diplomacy. She has published numerous articles on memory, human rights and gender in Northeast Asia in English, Japanese, and Korean. Her book, North Korean Human Rights Debates in East Asia, is forthcoming. Heonik Kwon is a reader in Anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of the prize-winning After the Massacre (2006) and Ghosts of War in Vietnam (2008). His forthcoming new book is The Other Cold War (Columbia, 2010). Heonik Kwon’s current research focuses on the xii

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commemoration of the Korean War and the culture of commemoration in North Korea. Tim F. Liao is Professor of Sociology and Head of Department, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He previously taught at Peking Language Institute, the University of Georgia and the University of Essex in the UK. In addition to interest in collective memory, he has researched in historical sociology, family and demographic studies, inequality, and methodology. His broad academic interests go beyond sociology. An ethnic Chinese married to a Japanese, he has conducted research on five societies and commands three different languages. Mike M. Mochizuki holds the Japan–US Relations Chair in Memory of Gaston Sigur at the Elliott School of International Affairs in George Washington University. Previously he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, co-director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at RAND and has taught at the University of Southern California and Yale University. Besides numerous journal articles, his recent books include Japan in International Politics: The Foreign Policies of an Adaptive State (2007) and The Okinawa Question and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (2005). Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Georgia, received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous articles; his most recent book is Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in the Late Twentieth Century (2008). Since 1982, Schwartz has examined collective memory issues in a wide range of contexts, including work on American presidents and in comparative studies of the United States, Germany, Japan, Korea, China and ancient and modern Israel. Lyn Spillman is the author of Nation and Commemoration (Cambridge University Press, 1997); “When Do Collective Memories Last?”, in Jeffrey K. Olick (ed.) States of Memory (Duke University Press, 2003); “Texts, Bodies, and the Memory of Bloody Sunday” (with Brian Conway), in Symbolic Interaction 30 (2007): 79–103 and other articles, chapters and edited volumes on cultural sociology, theories of nationalism and causal reasoning. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and teaches at the University of Notre Dame, USA. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for her current research on culture and economic action. Jae-Jung Suh is currently Associate Professor and Director of the Korea Studies Program at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. An expert on the US–Korea relations, US policy towards Asia, international relations of East Asia, international security and IR theory, he has authored and edited numerous journal articles and books, including Power, Interest and Identity in Military Alliances

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(2007); Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power and Efficiency, co-editor (2004); and many other articles. He is a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships. Bin Xu is a PhD candidate at Department of Sociology, Northwestern University. His research interests focus on the intersection of politics and culture. Recently he has studied historical reputation, collective memory movements and political rituals. His articles appear in Social Psychology Quarterly and China Quarterly. He is currently working on his dissertation about effects of three state rituals in China in 2008: the Olympic torch relay, the Sichuan Earthquake mourning and the Beijing Olympics. Xiaohong Xu is a PhD candidate in sociology. He is in the beginning stages of his dissertation research, entitled “Secularizing Revolution? Remaking Moral Order in Revolutionary England and China”, which examines two moral reform movements in early 18th-century Britain and early 20th-century China and compares their roles in shaping the dominant moral visions in Western modernity and its Chinese counterpart. He is broadly interested in revolution and the modern transformation of religious politics. Guobin Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures in Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (2009) and the editor (with Ching Kwan Lee) of Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China (2007). Gehui Zhang is currently a PhD student of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the Sociology Department at UIUC, she earned her MA degree in Sociology at Georgia State University, with particular concentration on aging and life course studies. Her current academic interests include consumption and consumer society, commercialization of childhood, the emergence of new market economy and social stratification and inequalities in China. Libin Zhang is a PhD student of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are demography, adversity and resilience over life course, inequality and psychological well-being, immigration and Chinese society.

Introduction: Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem Barry Schwartz and Mikyoung Kim

Communities . . . have a history—in an important sense they are constituted by their past—and for this reason we can speak of a real community as a “community of memory,” one that does not forget its past. In order not to forget that past, a community is involved in retelling its story, its constitutive narrative, and in so doing, it offers examples of the men and women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community. These stories of collective history and exemplary individuals are an important part of the tradition that is so central to a community of memory . . . But the stories are not all exemplary, not all about successes and achievements. A genuine community of memory will also tell painful stories of shared suffering that sometimes creates deeper identities than success. . . . And if the community is completely honest, it will remember stories not only of suffering received but of suffering inflicted—dangerous memories, for they call the community to alter ancient evils. —Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart Every nation-state faces the problem of representing its past in a credible and moving way. Many nations fail, and that failure constitutes a “Memory Problem”. In the West, the Memory Problem consists of an erosion of national narratives, a loosening of the bond between present and past and a fragmenting of the historical continuum into “pure, unrelated presents in time” (Jameson 1984: 72; see also Terdiman 1993). Extending Maurice Halbwachs’s ([1950] 1980) observation that “history starts when tradition ends and the social memory is fading or breaking up” (p. 78), Pierre Nora (1996) asserts that “memory is constantly on our lips because it no longer exists.” Just as history replaces tradition, commemorative symbolism, including monuments, shrines, relics, iconography and ritual, becomes “fleeting incursions of the sacred into a disenchanted world; vestiges of parochial loyalties in a society that is busily effacing all parochialisms” (p. 8). It is not new or revised 1

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historical narratives that are distinctive of the West, but an unprecedented sense that all such narratives are irrelevant. The above assertions summarize the state of memory in the West, but do they apply in the East? We use the terms “Western” and “Northeast Asian” as shorthand for two clusters of nations, each having a definite core and indefinite boundaries. Western countries are exemplified by central and western Europe, Great Britain and its three major settler societies: the United States, Canada and Australia. Northeast Asia is exemplified by three core nations: China, Japan and Korea. No absolute unity can be claimed for these nations, but the differences among them—differences in religion, philosophy, literature, visual arts, music, moral values and worldviews—are small compared to differences between them and the nations of the West. This East–West divide is not to be dismissed as a product of Eurocentric bias; it is palpable and consequential. Associated with the contrast between Asia and the West are unexplored issues in the field of collective memory. The Northeast Asian Memory Problem involves a surfeit rather than a deficit of memory, and this excess is negative: unforgettable traumas prevent nations from coming to terms with the problems of the present. In the West, business among nations is typically conducted with little thought of historical animosities; in the countries of Northeast Asia, the past is present at every business negotiation table; debates over historical events complicate domestic politics and international relations. Intellectuals have already developed a concept, “The History Problem”, to emphasize the significance of these debates, and they use that concept frequently and deliberately. Only indirectly, however, is the History Problem a historiographical matter; rather, it concerns the way Asians invoke the past and play the history card in their relations with one another. It concerns the way they conceive and symbolize historical events. The History Problem is, in fact, a Memory Problem that facts alone cannot resolve. At issue is not the objective detail of Japan’s World War II atrocities but the spectacle of Japanese leaders commemorating those who perpetrated them and the exculpatory tone of much Japanese political and historical discourse. At issue is the implacable refusal of Chinese and Koreans to accept declarations of regret, to demand in every gesture of apology a level of incontestable “sincerity”—in short, proof of the unprovable. International discourse on human rights and growing economic and political interdependence within Northeast Asia define the context of the Memory Problem. In addition, political benefits, including the securing of internal cohesion and legitimacy, abound. But why does memory perform these functions? Why is the problem of memory more acute in Asia than elsewhere? What factors about Asian history, culture and society make the past so relevant and its problems so enduring? In recent years the problem of Asian memory has been amply studied, but not within a sociology of memory framework. Memory, History, and

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Opposition Under State Socialism (1994), edited by R. S. Watson, limits itself to China, with Eastern Europe’s socialist states as comparative points of reference. The collection is worth mentioning because it prefigures a theme that will show up in later works, including our own, namely, the tension between official history and popular histories, the latter embodied not in monographs but in practices and oral traditions, including holiday rites, jokes and stories, even architecture, which can be deployed against authoritarian regimes. Likewise, Gerrit W. Gong and Philip West’s collection, Remembering and Forgetting: The Legacy of War and Peace in East Asia (1996), analyzes the impact of World War II on national identities and international relations. The history of war, which consists of “fighting stories”, differs from the history of other forms of conflict, for it raises questions of suffering, death, grief and justice. But the question this fascinating book ignores is whether variation in the remembering and forgetting of war results from elite conspiracy or public receptivity. Gong and West’s collection also depicts, but never assesses, the significance of the role of “non-state actors” in determining what gets remembered. Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War (2001), edited by T. Fujitani, Geoffrey White and Lisa Yoneyama, is another effort to give voice to those marginalized and silenced by “hegemonic” accounts of World War II. The 16 chapters demonstrate that the Allies were not all virtuous; the Japanese were not all evil. Emphasizing America’s moral shortcomings, the book is in some ways a deconstruction of World War II history. It makes no effort to grasp forgotten “hegemonic events”, including the story of the Four Chaplains, no effort to understand why certain counter-histories, including the Japanese internment, are commemorated, as well as compensated, by the guilty state itself. This “history from below” makes minimal effort to add to a general understanding of World War II memory let alone a general theory of national memory. Most recently, Mark Gallicchio’s The Unpredictability of the Past: Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in U.S.-East Asian Relations (2007) assembles essays, mainly by historians, on how Asia-Pacific War memory continues to affect relations among China, Japan and the United States. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter’s Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia (2007) is also concerned to show the role of memory as a mediator of Northeast Asian international relations. The topics include China’s expanding consciousness of its World War II losses, its growing nationalism and resentment against Japan and, in Korea, revisionist understandings of the Korean War that promote hostility towards the United States. These two sets of essays on commemorative biography, poetry, monuments and ritual are rich and expansive, but they are silent on how symbols function as vehicles of Asian memory. To say, as these books do, that the memory of conflict is constructed and manipulated to flatter and strengthen the state ignores important questions: Why do elites choose a 75-year-old war (beginning

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with the 1931 Manchurian Incident) as their tool? Which parts of a war are remembered but not used for the purpose of manipulation? Which parts are used for the purpose of expressing regrets? While the foregoing collections ask about the what of the Memory Problem, we are concerned about the why and the how. Our goal is to pursue a new direction, with an emphasis on collective memory as a general form of knowledge; we want to know what the field of collective memory would look like if it had originated and matured in Northeast Asia rather than the West. Such a question is difficult to pose because it assumes fundamental differences that many scholars are loathe to contemplate, let alone concede. Their reservations are part of The Great Contradiction of our day: the simultaneous celebration and denial of diversity among peoples. Our job is not to solve the Great Contradiction but to transcend it and so demonstrate how the very meaning of collective memory varies according to where we study it. The “politics of regret”, a sub-field of collective memory scholarship, now grows rapidly in the United States (Torpey 2006; Olick 2007), but our understanding of regret itself assumes a conception of guilt unfelt and strange to most Asians. This shortcoming prevents us from grasping the basis of “Northeast Asia’s Stunted Regionalism” (Rozman 2004; Wan 2006). Collective memory is, thus, a key to understanding broader problems in transformative politics and regional reconciliation.

Legacies of war For the past quarter of a century, social science and humanities scholars everywhere have laboured over the sources and consequences of national memory, but, with a few exceptions, systematic efforts to build a collective memory discipline have been confined to the West. So far as Asian scholars labour on analytic problems in memory, they usually do so with indigenous data but under Western influence (Zhang and Schwartz 1997; Schuman et al. 1998; Hashimoto 1999; Schwartz and Kim 2002; Wang 2004; Schwartz et al. 2005; Saito 2006; Lee and Yang 2007). The present project addresses this imbalance by showing how the relation between local history, commemoration, and belief limits the generalizability of Western scholarship. The limits of Western approaches to collective memory inhere in its origin. Collective memory scholarship, like the sociology of knowledge, arose as an effort to systematize post-World War I disillusionment and doubt. “What nobody would have thought possible” in those days “suddenly turned out to be real; what everyone had taken to be reality itself now stood revealed as an illusion” (Kesckemeti 1952: 2). For the first time, ordinary people as well as intellectuals began to believe there are no longer absolutes of time and space, of good and evil or even of knowledge (Johnson 1991: 1–14). Not only Halbwachs but also New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann ([1921]

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1968; see also Kirk and Thatcher 2005) and historian Carl Becker (1935) claim to have captured the shams and distortions of their forebears. Theirs are instances of what Karl Mannheim calls “the unmasking turn of mind”, which refutes ideas by revealing their functions. Unmaskers inevitably challenge the authority of the past, for once one sees the “extra-theoretical function” of an idea it loses its efficacy (Mannheim [1928] 1952: 140). In such reflexive environments, shared orientations diminish and are overshadowed by widening cynicism; universes of discourse challenge one another; and assertions about reality are assessed in terms of the interests of those making them. The cynical science of collective memory, with its emphasis on a past that is unreal or, at best, disputable, temporary and mutable, “thrives in a society where large groups of people have already become alienated from common values; where separate universes of discourse are linked with reciprocal distrust” (Merton 1957: 459). Economic depression subdued but could not eliminate the cynicism of the 1920s. The great atrocities of World War II, on the other hand, embodied a watershed. Aleida Assmann (2007) believes that if Europe is to achieve a “community of memory”, it must be based on the Holocaust. Human rights and the notion of a common humanity emerging from the experience of Nazi Germany’s atrocities, observes Michael Schudson (n.d.), “now serves as a common cultural memory for our day”. The Holocaust has become a definitive mnemonic symbol for later evocations in describing the African tragedies of Uganda and Rwanda, Latin American brutalities in Argentina, Nicaragua and Chile, and Southeast Asian atrocities committed in Cambodia. The Holocaust is a powerful framing tool for the violations of universal human rights in cultural contexts far removed from Europe. World War II was a pivotal moment in Asian memory, however, because its violence awakened dormant feelings about earlier humiliations. Japan’s mid-twentieth-century atrocities precipitated memories of the nineteenthcentury colonial invasions, collaboration with the West and war against Asia. Colonialism was the beginning of Asia’s modernization, but the reactions of individual countries varied. Japan modernized rapidly and became a world power; China sank in dignity, wealth and influence; Korea vanished into what proved to be the beginning of a Japanese Empire (Reischauer and Fairbank 1962: 669–70). Japan, thus, chose not to resist the Western powers but to become one of them. China lost the most. After millennia of Japanese reverence for China, Meiji elites held it in contempt, and they adopted towards the rest of Asia an attitude of even sterner superiority (Itoh 1998: 68–70; cf. de Bary et al. 2006: 50–1). China’s “century of humiliation” lasted from the time it submitted to Great Britain’s imposition of the Nanjing Treaty in 1842 to indigenous economic reform under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s (Wu 2001: 77). The memory of dehumanization under Japanese fascism (Moore 1966: 228–313) defines Northeast Asia’s felt past. But China and Korea’s suddenly

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deploying the vocabulary of human rights to articulate that past puzzles Westerners because the rights actually possessed by Chinese and Korean people conform imperfectly to Western ideals. The concept of inalienable human rights is foreign to China, and even Korea’s democratically elected regimes have periodically regressed towards pre-democratic eras where the interests of political elites superseded individual rights. That national identity politics trumps citizen rights takes us to the distinctiveness of Asian memory. From the Chinese and Korean standpoint, Japan not only violated the entitlements of their citizens but also offended their nation’s honour, shamed and demeaned it and refused to repent by humbling itself, as it had humbled them, through convincing apology. At this point, the difference between Asian and European mentalities becomes patent. The Holocaust might well be the core of European memory, but shame is peripheral to the Holocaust’s legacy. Jewish survivors of the Holocaust do not condemn Germany for humiliating them. Captured American and British soldiers died at the rate of 3 per cent as German prisoners of war; 45 per cent, as Japanese prisoners (Chambers 1999), but the latter survivors felt neither shame nor dishonour. Like Holocaust survivors, they condemn their tormentors for denying their humanity and ruining their lives. In dignity cultures, then, aggressors can assuage their guilt only by apologizing for the rights they have violated, and having their victims accept those apologies as compensation for physical and mental suffering. In honour cultures, compensation is more difficult, for there is no convincing vocabulary of regret for wounding another’s honour (Berger et al. 1973: 83–96; Taylor 1994). Thus, in China, Korea and Japan, as in the Western nations, the politics of regret is widely practised, but the content and functions of regret differ. Asia’s Memory Problem is so stubborn because violations of honour are more resonant than violations of dignity, while sentiments of shame outweigh those of guilt. During the last third of the twentieth century, Japan remained Northeast Asia’s moral pariah. Only the clearest expressions of remorse could have begun to mitigate resentment, but instead of remorse Japan extended formal apologies. Remorse is a sentiment accompanying the realization of wrongdoing; apology is the communicative format through which remorse is conveyed. Even today, China and Korea, under the influence of Confucian formalities, remain too aware of the separate realms occupied by ritual, true feeling and the telltale signs of inauthentic performance. Repeated insults and denials by Japanese politicians raise suspicions of broader Japanese indifference and intensify demands for authentic remorse. But how does any official of any nation act “authentically”? Does not the very deliberativeness of enacting a feeling, even if authentic, subvert the impression of sincerity? Here lies a perceptual dilemma worsening the Memory Problem and separating Japan from its former victims.

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Perspectives Asia’s Memory Problem refers to its “collective memory”, namely, the distribution of beliefs, feelings and moral judgements about the past. The primary vehicles of collective memory are history, the establishing of facts about the past through research monographs, textbooks, museums and mass media, and commemoration, the process of selecting from the historical record those facts most relevant to society’s ideals and marking them through iconography, monuments, shrines, music, place-names, ritual observance and other products of “reputational enterprise” (Fine 1996; see also Lang and Lang 1990). Only individuals possess the capacity to contemplate the past, but this does not mean that beliefs originate in the individual alone or can be explained on the basis of his or her experience. Individuals do not know the past singly; they know it with and against other individuals situated in different groups, and through the knowledge that predecessors and contemporaries transmit to them (Halbwachs 1926; Shils 1981). Collective memory, then, consists not of history, commemoration or belief, but of the relationship among them (Schwartz and Schuman 2005). During the last three decades, two perspectives on collective memory have emerged, each of which is defined by analytic models depicting the way memory works. In the presentist perspective, articulated by constructionist, postmodern, interest and pragmatist models of memory, beliefs about the past are construed as hostage to present circumstances, and different elements of the past become more or less relevant as these circumstances change. In its extreme form, presentism holds that contemporary events alone are real and that the past can only be fabricated from present standpoints. We use the most inclusive term, “presentist”, in order to emphasize what these analytic models, however extreme or understated, have in common, namely, a focus on current situations, including political, economic and ideological predicaments, as the basis of the past’s perception. In this light, collective memory becomes a dependent variable as the political and knowledge elites in each new generation and in each nation forge a past compatible with their own circumstances (see, for example, Halbwachs 1926, 1950; Mead 1929; Hobsbawm 1983; Maines et al. 1983; Tuchman 1989; Bodnar 1992; Coser 1992; Gillis 1994; Barthel 1996; Spillman 1997; Zerubavel 2003). The second, cultural, perspective manifests itself in traditionalist and realist models which define memory as an ordered system of information and symbols, animated by cultural values that supply standards and frames of reference for the present. The term “cultural memory” will be used here in the “metaphysical” sense (Rorty 1989), which means that the past is no less real than the present and exists independently of the concepts we use to describe it. The carriers of this classical perspective—from

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Max Weber ([1904–1905] 1958), Ruth Benedict (1934, 1946), David Riesman et al. (1950), Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils (1951) to Philip Rieff (1966), Digby Baltzell (1979), Robert Bellah et al. (1985), Seymour M. Lipset (1989), Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington (2000)—are sensitive to variation within cultures but find most significance in variation between cultures. This difference—and there is no way to overemphasize the point—refers to variant “patterns of culture” (Benedict 1934) or, more precisely, “axial dichotomies” (Bell 1976): Apollonian vs Dionysian cultures; cultures of selfdenial vs self-fulfilment, inner- vs tradition-direction, communitarianism vs individualism, and honour vs dignity. These axial dichotomies describe discontinuity in kind between cultures. The classical tradition in the study of culture—or, rather, our recovery and use of it—affirms that memory is a “cultural system” in its own right (Schwartz 1996) but it does not reduce culture to its memories or claim that culture is best known through material objects, including the historical texts and commemorative symbols where memories are embedded (Griswold 1987). In this tradition, culture’s roots in individual activity are recognized, but culture’s “emergence” from these roots is deemed a fact rather than an exercise in “reification” or “objectivation” (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 79–92). In short, the cultural perspective shows collective memory as an objective entity whose essential elements (Shils 1981: 1–62; 162–94) remain stable as it is modified across generations and nations. For every generation and every nation, collective memory is a source of moral direction, an independent variable and a constituent of cultural uniqueness (see also Burke 1790; Durkheim [1915] 1965; Pelikan 1984, 1985; Schudson 1989, 1992; Assmann 2006; Yerushalmi [1982] 1996). In this light, the works of memory agents and entrepreneurs account for nothing; their ideas and activities are themselves to be explained. The presentist and cultural perspectives are the two great ideas of collective memory research. But if their models are known, they have hardly been investigated. Neither perspective gives us an adequate understanding of symbolic formulation. Much is said about memory being “invented” or its providing a controlling “blueprint” for experience, but we know little about how either is accomplished. The link between the causes and consequences of memory seems weak because the “connecting element, the process of symbolic formulation”, as Geertz (1973) would call it, is passed over. The present volume discusses many of these formulations: national anthem lyrics and melodies, moods and motivations aroused by national symbols, universalist and particularistic discourse, official and unofficial memory carriers, the rise and fall of hegemonic narratives, shrines and their visitors, concepts of responsibility and apology, the remaking of royal families and their capitals. The geographical context for presentist and cultural memory perspectives must now be specified.

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Northeast Asia as a memory setting Northeast Asia includes China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan and parts of eastern Russia; but political currents blur the line between geography and identity. Although much of Russia resides in Northeast Asia, most Asians regard Russia as European. Mongolia shares substantial ethnic and racial similarities with Asia, but its relations with China are distant while its alliance with Russia is close, going back to the 1924 proclamation of the Mongolian People’s Republic. China’s and Taiwan’s World War II experience differs. Although occupied by Japan throughout the war, the Taiwanese felt little oppression and now bear little resentment towards Japan (Ching 2001; Eskildsen 2005: 282; cf. Katz 2005). Indeed, the trauma that Taiwanese remember best is General Chiang Kai-shek’s 28 February 1947 massacre of aboriginal inhabitants and Chinese emigrants after he, his supporters and army arrived from the mainland. North Korea is also part of Northeast Asia, but its isolation makes its Memory Problem more difficult to study than South Korea’s. China, Japan and South Korea, the three nations on which we concentrate, have been described as neighbours stuck with each other in a relation charged with coexisting feelings of identification and resentment. But there is more to the relation among these countries than ambivalence; they are the main driving force of East Asian regionalism, with Japan and, to a lesser extent, Korea “at its financial, capital, techno-industrial centre and China at its market and low cost production centre” (Dent and Huang 2002: 1). Entangled among these factors is a dense culture of memory (Habermas 1989; Bohman 1998; Lynch 1999).

Northeast Asian history and memory Two aspects of Northeast Asian scholarship are relevant to this project. Studies of the Meiji period reveal the causes and ideological justifications of Japan’s opening up to the West; doing so, they illuminate that country’s unique and rapid ascension as a world power (see, for example, Gluck 1985; Gordon 2003). World War II, however, has occasioned the largest body of scholarship. After Hirohito’s 1989 death relaxed constraints on discussion of the government’s war-time activities (Dower 1993; Igarashi 2000), long-suppressed questions about Japan’s aggression against Asia, suicidal war against the United States and attributions of responsibility for both began to emerge. Hiroshima, in this regard, occupies a unique place. The atomic bomb story not only symbolizes the victimization of the Japanese people (a powerful post-war theme) but also blunts criticism of their government’s war-time atrocities. The suffering of the Japanese offsets, somehow, the suffering caused by the Japanese (Hersey 1946; Treat 1995; Hogan 1996; Hein and Selden 2000).

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Korean memory studies, in contrast to Japan’s, are thematically scattered. The time-span extends back to 2,333 BC, the year of Korea’s mythical beginning. Indigenous publications relevant to national glory include the fourth-century Korean kingdom’s influence on Japan and the fifth-century kingdom whose territory now belongs to China. Current research attends closely to the nation’s ideological divisions (Lee et al. 1985; Jun 2001, 2005; Pratt 2006), but the Japanese occupation (1910–1945) and the 1950–1953 Korean War engage a disproportionate amount of attention (see for example, Cumings 1992, 2004; Stueck 1997, 2004). Analyses of the Park Chung Hee regime (1961–1979), the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and other instances of state oppression also multiply unabated. Chinese memory studies, in contrast to Japan’s and Korea’s, are limited by powerful state controls (Watson 1994). Forgetting (or repressing) is widespread among domestic witnesses of internal strife (Thurston 2001), but persecuted writers often publish outside China where they can freely describe their experiences, including life during the Cultural Revolution (Chang 1991; Feng 1996; Zhang 2004; Yu 2005). Following Mao’s Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the current best-seller is Wolf Totem, written by an anonymous dissident sent down by the Chinese authorities to the Inner Mongolian countryside. In contrast, those participating in the Revolution as Red Guards (Gao 1987; Jiang 1998) publish exculpatory accounts of their activities in Chinese. These writers hold the Gang of Four responsible for the Cultural Revolution’s excesses as they describe the circumstances mitigating their own activities. Historians, political scientists, and Asian Studies scholars sample regional memory content, but they leave important questions unanswered. How bitter are memory wars within Japan, Korea and China compared to memory wars among them? At what level of concreteness or abstraction are events selected for analysis? Which aspects of these events are taken as given and which remain problematic? What causes and functions are attributed to them? In what social locations (for example, state, class, community, generation, institution and interest group) is the account of historical events located and produced? Which cultural forces (values, climate of opinion and cultural mentality) inspire them? Is the relation between memories and their social contexts causal? Semiotic? Functional? Hegemonic? The chapters comprising this volume address these and related questions.

Northeast Asia’s memory problem: selected debates and quarrels Japan is the antagonist in Northeast Asia’s memory wars. Germany, which shares borders with nine of the countries it conquered, admitted war guilt quickly and unequivocally. Japan, spatially isolated and economically superior to its former victims, took its time. Post-war Japan deemed demands for apology and compensation less urgent than its own citizens’ sense of

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victimhood, but as former victim-nations became economic competitors during the twentieth-century’s last decade, Japan mellowed. If this point stands alone, however, we are left with the conclusion that generations change their minds about the past when it becomes good for business, and that China and Korea press claims because they are now strong enough to rub Japan’s nose in its own sins. Resentment grows, it is true, as economic and political circumstances change, but with no conception of national culture and its symbols, we are inclined to dismiss memory changes as epiphenomena “reflecting”, “expressing” or “articulating” power differences, thus denying the very existence of a Memory Problem. Ten chapters on Japan, China and Korea clarify this problem from the standpoint of both the aggressor and the victim.

Japan China and Korea take great interest in the way their Japanese neighbours remember the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945). They get their information from Japan’s textbooks, mass media, official statements, monument visitation and ritual observances. Whether they interpret this information correctly is another matter. The main point of contention is Japan’s alleged whitewashing of its colonial past and war-time atrocities. This mindset has been continually reinforced by Japanese prime ministers paying their respects at the controversial Yasukuni shrine. In “The Yasukuni Shrine Conundrum: Japan’s Contested Identity and Memory”, Mike Mochizuki brings a political science perspective to bear on one of the most important aspects of Northeast Asia’s Memory Problem. His chapter includes a textured chronological survey of the development of the Yasukuni shrine, its relation to religion and politics in Japan, why prime minister visits to Yasukuni stirred little or no controversy until 1985, why actions seeming innocuous to a Westerner cause consternation among Japan’s neighbours, why their outrage became internationalized, why the controversy has ebbed in recent years as the institutions supporting Yasukuni as a site of official commemoration diminish and how Japan’s democracy nevertheless allows the shrine’s exploitation by reactionary forces. Something is tragic about the Yasukuni story, for the Japanese people, like the people of any other nation, require a site to remember their war dead. Yasukuni is even more important, in this respect, than Arlington National Cemetery in the United States, for enshrined there are the souls, not the bodies, of the dead, and the purpose of visitation is to give to these souls peace and comfort. Prominent among these souls, however, are convicted war criminals. Imagine a political faction in the United States honouring in Arlington those whom all Americans define as villains: such an act would desanctify the ground and makes the cemetery a source of controversy rather than a site of national honour.

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Mochizuki’s suggestions for resolution of the Yasukuni problem open fascinating vistas: not the rewriting of history but its re-commemoration, including the de-enshrinement of Class-A war criminals and establishment of alternative secular memorials, which might reduce Yasukuni’s relevance. The latter scenario seems plausible: if American officials can remain indifferent to whether or not their German counterparts pay respects to SS men buried at Bitburg, might not their Chinese and Korean counterparts someday ignore the ritual habits of the Japanese? It depends on whether an American strain of forgetfulness is possible in Chinese and Korean cultures of honour. It also depends on whether Japan’s officials can understand how and why the Yasukuni ritual humiliates its neighbours. Japan has tried hard to convince victim-states that it is now their good and supportive friend. Mikyoung Kim explores Japan’s complicated efforts to establish its respectability by a museological exercise. Japan is both the victim of US atomic bombings and the victimizer of Asian countries; the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, opened in 1955, physically situates both features of Japanese memory. Kim’s provocative and insightful essay, “Japanese Pacifism: Problematic Memory”, is premised on the existence of Japan’s “empty centre”, namely, its moral relativity and nonjudgementalism. Hers is an effort to bring museum debates to bear on the “axial principle” that distinguishes Japan from other Northeast Asian cultures. A nation yet to achieve meaningful reconciliation with neighbouring countries, Japan’s pacifist discourse is based more on utilitarian than moral considerations. The Hiroshima Museum’s displays show Japan’s pacifism to be pragmatic, grounded in selective memory and situational ethics. Kim concludes by arguing that Japanese “pacifism” should be redefined as a “pacifist movement”. Pacifism presumes foundational ethics, whereas pacifist movements succeed or fail according to their ability to accommodate changing political environments. Kazuya Fukuoka and Barry Schwartz, following the implications of both Mochizuki and Kim, ask what people do to make amends for the wrongs committed by their forebears. How many can be expected to feel responsible for wrongs perpetrated by the state before they were born? Answers to this question throw light on both the complexity and the depth of Japanese memory. “Responsibility, Regret and Nationalism in Japanese Memory” shows that an extraordinarily high percentage of Japanese students, compared to Americans, are willing to accept responsibility for the wrongs of their ancestors (see also Yamazaki 2000), but Fukuoka and Schwartz’s questionnaire data fail to demonstrate what responsibility means. They find no correlations among different dimensions of nationalism and willingness to accept responsibility for war-time atrocities. Even respondents conceding atrocity and accepting responsibility admit in interviews that they express more regret than they feel. The disparity between verbal expression and inner feeling of regret, so characteristic of Japan’s apology practices (Yamazaki 2006),

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parallels the verbal acceptance of responsibility without regret. Apologizing and accepting responsibility are gestures meant to preserve honour, harmony and order, not to express inner feelings of remorse. However, if a generation attributes to itself a moral debt it does not feel, its neighbours will doubt the sincerity of its apologies. Japanese officials visiting Yasukuni, denying the very existence of Korean “comfort women” and atrocities against the Chinese or, at best, apologizing on the most superficial level, convince Chinese and Korean observers that the Japanese people bear no resemblance to their German counterparts of the 1960s, who condemned their parents’ role in the Holocaust and the war and cursed the government that caused both. To live at the superficies prevents deep hurts, and the Japanese have a higher tolerance for moral pain than the Germans. That Germany has treated its victims better than the Japanese treat theirs is unquestionable. From Mike Mochizuki’s work on Yasukuni, Kim’s on the Hiroshima Peace Museum and that of Fukuoka and Schwartz on Japanese responsibility, we find a situation different from the West, whose offending states are eager to make amends for the harm they have caused. In Japan, judging from the conduct of leaders, mass media, intellectuals and popular opinion, we find no consensus on how much Japan has hurt its neighbours, what it owes them materially and how to put memory of the war at the margin rather than the centre of consciousness. China and Korea, then, do not misunderstand Japan entirely. It is reasonable to doubt whether Japanese conservatives believe there is really something to atone for. The general public, as noted in the Fukuoka and Schwartz’s chapter, believes the Japanese government has not done enough to compensate its victims, but the government feels its continual apologies and material assistance are adequate compensation. True, for every expression of regret comes a denial or a direct insult to the very nations to which Japan apologizes, but these are minor matters because Japan is a democracy, and its most reactionary citizens are free to disagree with its policy. The main problem is that China and Korea miss the irony: Japan’s wish for regional harmony is utterly sincere, even though the apologies needed to produce harmony may be less than sincere. Modern Japan is important to us for the value it adds to the presentist models of collective memory. When prime ministers visited Yasukuni, they were more concerned with their present political problems than the sacredness of the past. The reconstruction of World War II in the Hiroshima Museum tells more about the cross-pressures on municipal and museum officials than on the war’s facts. Relatively high levels of responsibility expressed by Japanese college students tell more about their commitment to universal rights and Japan’s global role than to the concrete suffering caused by their forebears’ wrongdoing. Thus, a residual culture of communitarianism and honour and an emergent culture of individualism and dignity coexist.

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Conservatives prefer pure nationalism, uncontaminated by memories of atrocity, and they justify Japan’s World War II actions in Asia and the Pacific as acts of self-defence. To this end, they tell their story in television programmes, comic strips and films, which young people avidly consume and discuss. These are the alternatives to state-approved textbooks. As Japan’s political and intellectual leaders seek to instill pride in their youth, the mass media reframe and transfigure an otherwise humiliating World War II narrative. Indeed, facing a difficult past means something unique in Japan. It is not a matter of coming to terms with wrongdoing alone but of resolving the shame and dishonour attending the catastrophic military adventure of which these wrongdoings were a part. Every defence of past wrongdoing is thus rooted in cultural, economic and political contexts that promote official and private expressions of regret. China and Korea enlarge the picture.

China When people are caught in the act of wrongdoing, they provide some “account” (either an “excuse” based on mitigating circumstances, or a “justification” based on higher principle) to make their conduct intelligible. Nations, including Japan, do the same, but some accounts are more likely than others to be honoured. Because Japanese discourse is more exculpatory than Germany’s, Japan’s victims resist it. On the other hand, the antagonism of some victim-states is more contingent than others. China is the best example. Chinese memory, it would seem, conforms to presentist models, for few if any countries in the world are as totalitarian and as capable of managing the content of their history. Yet, it is in China that one is most likely to meet people determined to get the past right, even if it means challenging its official versions. Each of the four chapters comprising this section deals with “informal” or even “underground” historical and commemorative activity. Official memory in China is nothing if not politically framed, but memory’s unofficial carriers affirm its trans-situational essence and continuity. No case better illustrates “the resistance of the past” (Schudson 1992). The state creates its own history, including and omitting events according to their contribution to its honour, but the state cannot cope with living memory and is almost powerless to eradicate the desire to recover the past. That China bore the brunt of Japan’s aggression is unquestionable, and no event symbolizes Chinese suffering more than what Japanese call “The Nanking Incident”. Xiaohong Xu and Lyn Spillman’s “Political Centers, Progressive Narratives and Cultural Trauma: Coming to Terms with the Nanjing Massacre in China, 1937–1979” examines representations of the massacre from its occurrence in December 1937 to the state’s acknowledgement of it. No one in China doubted the fact of the massacre, but the state did not commemorate it until the late 1970s. The self-interest of China’s ruling

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circle—PRC’s Communist Party—excluded the massacre from a prominent place in official memory, thus challenging theoretical arguments that events have intrinsic meanings that defy “presentist” interests. But, as Xu and Spillman deftly show, the present is culturally constituted: communism’s “progressive narrative” prevented the Nanjing Massacre from becoming a cultural centrepiece. Progressive narratives undermine negative historical facts, including defeat, humiliation and suffering, because they interfere with political programmes requiring positive effort: sacrifice, cultivation of strength and the establishment of foundations on which future generations can build. The Communist Party was unmotivated to commemorate the Nanjing Massacre because it diverted attention from its own projects, including opposition to Chiang Kai-shek and the United States. However, with the end of the Cultural Revolution and diminishing fortunes of Mao, the progressive narrative eroded and earlier restraints on the commemoration of Nanjing weakened. Japan’s 1982 textbook revisions, which expressly denied the reality of the Nanjing Massacre, precipitated angry public reaction and permanent state commemoration. Xu and Spillman’s remarkable chapter thus shows the interdependence of memory and forgetting, the “cultural logic” of a totalitarian regime’s use of the past. Guobin Yang’s “Alternative Genres, New Media, and Counter Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution” widens Xu and Spillman’s chapter by showing the Revolution as a contested rather than controlling memory. On the one hand, the state exercises strict control over Cultural Revolution discourse in order to defend the official narrative, which condemns the Revolution as a crime. On the other hand, alternative memory practices related to the Revolution are thriving both inside and outside China. Because so many individuals want to reminisce about their lives during the Revolution, any attempt to construct a master narrative about its causes and effects is bound to provoke counter-narratives. Most Chinese see the Cultural Revolution as an unmitigated disaster, but a minority remembers it as the high point of their lives. Examining a wide range of memory practices, Yang shows why group differences and the multiplicity of genres and media of representation tend to favour local narratives over the master narrative of the state. One of the highlights of Yang’s argument is the extraordinary role of the internet in enlarging the Cultural Revolution’s community of memory. Reminding us of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s ([1979] 1984) vision of petit narratives replacing grand narratives without necessarily turning against them, the internet community represents the most powerful alternative to state power over memory. No single source of memory, Yang explains, can be absolute. For state and civil elites, as for the population at large, commemoration mediates the relation between history and individual belief. National anthems are among the most conspicuous of all commemorative symbols, and Tim Liao, Gehui Zhang and Libin Zhang, in “The Changing Fate of the

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Chinese National Anthem”, present a natural history of China’s hymn. The original Chinese anthem was a battle song composed in 1935 during the Anti-Japanese War. In 1949, the new People’s Republic adopted the song as its official anthem but disowned it during the Cultural Revolution. By 1978, the anthem was restored with new lyrics, and then during the 1982 Japanese textbook controversy the original anti-Japanese lyrics returned. Like memory movements, anthem changes parallel political and economic events, including internal struggles and relations with neighbouring countries. The key achievement of this chapter, however, is its identification of mood and motivation as commemorative media. Lyrics do not mutate randomly but are deliberately changed as they resonate emotionally with new situations. If they “reflect” a new political situation, it is only because they promote a mood of attachment and patriotism, and generate motivation—the direction towards which that mood is directed. The Chinese national anthem thus performs the function of a mirror and a lamp: it reflects current objectives as it inspires and guides future action. In both the Nanjing and national anthem chapters, the advent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) inhibited the commemoration of historical events significant to the people at large. Like all totalitarian states, the People’s Republic demanded total commitment and opposed all competing institutions and cultural forms. When family and religious institutions, or even commemorations of national glory, subtracted from the greatness of the Party and its leader, they had to be subjugated. The Communist Party was thus a “greedy institution” (Coser 1974). Yet, for both the commemoration of the Nanjing Massacre and the natural history of the Chinese national anthem, popular forces operating outside the government proved effective. The next chapter on reparation claims demonstrates further the importance of non-state actors in conflict with state policy. Bin Xu and Gary Fine’s “Memory Movement and State-Society Relationship in Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement Against Japan” is another demonstration of local memory confronting centralized networks of interest and power. But there is much more to their work than a demonstration of memories being passed on and acted upon across generations. Where Xu and Spillman; Liao, Zhang and Zhang; and Yang describe the role of historical narratives and symbols mediating conflict between state and civil society, Xu and Fine’s chapter distinguishes among several types of state–civil society relations. Doing so, they place presentist and cultural memory in a structural context outside of which neither can be understood. The Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement (CWRM) arose in 1972, after the Chinese government renounced reparation payments in exchange for economic assistance. Dedicated activists responded by establishing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to demand reparations from Japan on behalf of individuals. The success of these demands, as Xu and Fine show, depended on whether they were directed to the core or

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peripheral agencies of the Chinese government, and whether their organizational base and discursive style conformed to that of the state. The state, in turn, identified with or separated from these movements as the political situation demanded. International activism, the morality discourse of the Holocaust and reparation programmes outside China fortified the CWRM’s determination to sustain the memory of Japan’s victims. Movement participants were not always moved by the universal values they invoked, and even when memory movements received the tacit approval of the state (usually from its peripheral bureaus), they did not always achieve their goals. Nevertheless, human rights discourse and state approval are necessary if not sufficient conditions of success. In Japan and China, we see a constant push and pull, evidenced in commemorative symbolism representing the past as officially defined and as popularly known. Korean cases display similar tension.

Korea Unlike their colleagues in Japan and China, Korean scholars devote a large portion of their time examining The Memory Problem as a source of internal strife. In “Exacerbated Politics: The Legacy of Political Trauma in South Korea”, Don Baker discusses four domestic traumas: Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Park Chung Hee regime (1972–1979) and the Kwangju Massacre (1980). In each case the memories are traumatic, which allows Baker to raise issues that most Koreans hesitate to discuss publicly. Japanese occupation, although cruel and humiliating, led to the expansion of education, transportation and other beneficial modern infrastructures. Resistance to the occupation was real, but collaboration was no less so. Moreover, the political atmosphere of post-war South Korea muted debate over whether North Korea invaded the South to reunify a divided nation or to expand communism. Baker, throughout, views the writings of historians, activities of commemorative agents and beliefs of ordinary individuals being governed by a principle that selects historical explanations that please them and rejects those which do not. Political and ideological principles are also at work. Battles over how to remember traumatic events break out regularly because they have such direct implications for the present. Whether the tyranny of the Park Chung Hee regime was necessary to its economic revolution makes a difference as to how the contemporary polity and economy is to be managed. Whether the Kwangju Massacre was victim-precipitated, whether resisters are to be canonized or condemned, reflects how the people of this city, and this country, conceive themselves. On each issue, there is a clear left–right divide over what to remember and how to gauge its impact on Korean life. Also, history from below and hegemonic history sometimes change places. At times the

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government wields command over history textbooks and the content of film and literature. At times, Koreans’ fierce nationalism and desire to remember their history in the best light determine memory’s content. In each case, Baker highlights the way current conflicts affect what is worth remembering and how to judge it. The more we dwell on the difference between Baker and those writing about China and Japan, the more Korean memory strikes us as inwardly oriented, less a reaction against its former oppressor than an exercise in moral reconstruction, a deliberate effort to replace a “tarnished past” with a “noble” one. Christine Kim’s “The Chosˇ on Monarchy in Republican Korea, 1945–1965” moves towards this same inner horizon. Sixty years after the end of Japanese rule, South Koreans became obsessed with their colonial past. A populist project to “settle the past” (kwago ch’ongsan) brought nationalist historians and left-leaning politicians together in an effort to re-examine the colonial period (1910–1945), then to pass legislation to revive royal history. As these endeavours generated criticism of elite families which prospered under the colonial regime, popular media embraced the Chosˇ on royal house and its descendants. In a complete reversal of early post-war discourse, which condemned the dynasty’s corruption and incompetence, the royal house today is a symbol of nationalism and defiance of foreign powers. Musicals (The Last Empress: Princess Tokhye) and TV serials (Seoul 1945) transform years of humiliation into years of dignity. The city of Chonju, formerly the dynastic seat, has even installed an heir to promote tourism, which has in turn energized a restoration movement. Korea finds the meaning of its growing political and economic power by reliving the decades of vulnerability that preceded it. Korea’s use of the past to reinforce itself in the present draws from Japanese occupation in other ways. The Dokdo-Takeshima island controversy exemplifies the Memory Problem because it concerns a group of uninhabited and rocky islets claimed by both Japan and Korea. That the island is practically useless makes it a perfect symbol of the Northeast Asian memory wars. In this regard, Heonik Kwon’s chapter yields a twofold insight. First, his work demonstrates the powerful effect of the “parallax vision” on the Memory Problem. Parallax vision entails a change in the appearance of an object, event or issue resulting from a change in the position of the viewer. In this case, the viewer is the United States, which is preoccupied with communist rather than fascist expansion. New threats cause even powerful states to see the world differently. The San Francisco Treaty, composed during the Korean War, when the United States sought Japanese support against the communist threat to Asia, means a great deal to Japan, for it constitutes proof of its being an ally of the democracies, a respectable nation that has compensated for its historical crimes. In this treaty, the United States, over the objection of its European allies, leaves the legal status of the islands ambiguous enough for Japan to claim ownership. The Korean claim to the islets, in contrast, is

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based on remembrances of past suffering and disgrace—intensified on the anniversaries of Japanese occupation of Korea, the end of World War II and the normalization of diplomatic relations with Japan. The conjunction of the Cold War’s immediate threats and the memory of Japanese colonialism thus combine to make the Dokdo-Yakeshima island, rather than some other geographical site, the source of dispute. Because nothing is materially at stake in this dispute, the islands become “good to think with”: for Japan, symbols of national integrity and pride; for Korea, humiliation and suffering.

Resolution The previous chapters deal with the Memory Problem as it manifests itself in specific nations: China, Japan and Korea. Each chapter aligns change and conflict in beliefs about the past to change and conflict within the society. In the final chapter, “Caught between Contentions and Dialogues: Historical Memories in Northeast Asia”, Jae-Jung Suh conceives the memory war among Korea, Japan and China as a structural rather than cultural or interest-driven phenomenon, a product of relationships among societies— although the connections he describes are culturally and politically driven. Not the nation but the relation between nations is Suh’s subject. The chapter is counter-intuitive, explaining how relations of conflict (the “History Problem”, as it is called in the region) can actually facilitate diplomatic relations and promote agreement. Suh’s argument contains two assertions: (1) disagreement about historical reality creates the desire to negotiate differences, but only when each side acknowledges the other’s legitimate right to participate in the debates; and (2) when the content of divergent views are commonly framed—that is to say, when participants argue with rather than past one another. Each participant must see his or her country’s history through the eyes of the other, such that opposing positions are mutually comprehensible, verifiable and falsifiable. This condition creates a public space for regional dialogue. Opportunity for conflict resolution or intensification is set when intra-national controversy spills over into this space—as during the series of Japanese textbook incidents beginning in 1982. These incidents lead Suh to an “institutional” argument. Because historical controversies are often symptoms of political disagreements, their resolution enables countries to carry out normal diplomacy and to reform regional political structures. The theoretical implication is plain: not only does the History Problem reflect the fault lines separating China, Japan and Korea; it can also contribute to the maintaining of regional stability. Specifying how interests and history combine to resolve conflict, Suh sees the Northeast Asian Memory Problem maintaining its malleability and open-endedness, lending itself to solution or intensification. In sum, Japan and China are the strong players in the Northeast Asia memory war, while Korea is the weak player. But in certain ways, and at certain

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times, observes Jae-Jung Suh, their seemingly fractious memories can reduce political conflict.

Politics, honour and memory We have just reviewed 11 contributions on the way elites and ordinary citizens in three nations think, feel and judge their past. The first point to be drawn from these chapters is that memory’s essence is dual, at once presentist and cultural, but one cannot study both aspects at the same time. If one looks for political forces shaping memory, one will find them; if one looks for cultural influences, one will find them, too. But it is difficult to look for and find both at once. The second conclusion concerns the complementary patterns of honour separating China and Korea from Japan. These forms are so taken for granted that our authors rarely discuss them explicitly; yet, they form the visible subtext of their chapters. The “recovery of honour” (myongyehoebok) is the overriding mnemonic task in contemporary South Korea (Kwon 2006; Shindong-A 2007, June). Amid democratization and rising affluence, those “wronged and defamed” under Japanese hegemony are reclaiming “historical justice” (yoksa’jok jungeui): collaborators are identified and punished. Relative to the continuing resentment against Japan, some Koreans see their memory war as a manifestation of rising nationalism despite, or because of, globalization (Samin 2002). Others see Korean honour manifesting a unique version of the norm of reciprocity, linked as it is to a sense of justice so strong that, to Japanese critics, Koreans seem “dogmatic”, that is, morally self-indulgent and unforgiving as a matter of principle. In turn, Koreans see “opportunism” in Japanese officials’ empty apologies. Of all Japan’s twentieth-century victims, China has suffered the most, but Korea endures the deepest sense of shame and harbours the greatest resentment—even as it earnestly rebuilds its own past. The Chinese, in contrast to the Koreans, believe their century of subordination to be an anomaly and foresee the recovery of their nation’s traditional dominance. Chinese honour is therefore more pragmatic than Korean (Hu 2001: 59). Harmony (he) and moderation (zhongyong) are virtues that an ethnically diverse nation like China requires in order to remain unified. Benevolence accompanied by severe penal codes, a Confucian strategy for recognizing ethnic diversity while legitimating the hierarchical statusquo, is readily generalized. After the war, China treated Japanese prisoners with magnanimity and allowed most to return to Japan. Today, anger over Japan’s war-time brutality grows in passion and piety, but the state upholds its wounded sense of honour in the restrained contempt with which it confronts its former tormentor.

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Japanese honour, which takes the form of particularism, a refusal to submit its “soul” to foreign ideas—whether Chinese or Western—energizes and sustains its modernity. Without transcendental reference points to critique wrongdoing (Bellah 1970: 100–45, 2003), however, recollection by the Japanese of their country’s atrocities leads more to silence than to remedial action. They also expect silence from their former victims. When China and Korea protest their forebears’ exploitation, many Japanese hear instances of “noisiness” (urusa)—which refers not to acoustics but impatience and annoyance with allegedly insincere complaints. To conceive these different outlooks as a “memory war” is reasonable but does not get to the core of the problem, for it is ultimately a matter of one nation misreading another’s cultural codes, not its memories.

Asian memory and Western memory: distinction or continuity? The ultimate question is whether Asian sites for collective memory research add value to a discipline that confines itself to Western premises and conclusions, or whether Western concepts provide valid and invariant reference points. Every chapter of this book suggests that Asian and Western memory have much in common. As our contributors address the tension between presentist and cultural memory, they address universal problems of power and vulnerability, consensus and conflict, the divergence between official and popular memory, events chronicled and commemorated, the past retrieved and constructed, a mirror of and model for reality, how new ideas about the past replace and superimpose themselves upon new ones and how individual beliefs about events differ from historical and commemorative accounts. Every chapter touches on these general issues. Comparison, however, clarifies aspects of memory otherwise obscured or unnoticed. This book is not a comparative study, but every distinction claimed for China, Japan and Korea is supported by direct evidence or reference to evidence from other sources. These differences in degree add up to a difference in kind. Looking at Northeast Asia and the West through presentist and cultural lenses reveals six significant dissimilarities. First, Asia’s Memory Problem is unique. Chinese, Japanese and Koreans deem their respective pasts relevant and unforgettable. Disagreements about one another’s history and commemorative practices are heated, and affect diplomatic and economic relationships. Westerners find their past less relevant, embrace it less emotionally, commemorate it with less passion and rarely allow it to interfere with normal diplomacy, commerce and international relations—even with old adversaries. Second, honour and shame societies teach their members to think about the past differently than do societies of dignity and guilt. In Northeast Asia, the events judged most negative reveal weakness or incompetence and induce shame; in Western nations, unprovoked aggression against the

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weak and incompetent induces guilt. Atrocities suffered by Asian victims are resented because they dishonour as well as injure; atrocities suffered by Western victims are resented because they violate what they take to be inherent rights and dignity. The Western “politics of regret”, then, cannot be directly generalized to Asia. Third, regret itself is a key element in modern rituals of commemoration. Westerners generally assume agents of regret are sincere in what they are admitting or, at the very least, are aware that insincere apologies will not have their intended effect. Asians disagree about the meaning of apology. In Japanese life, including the Japanese legal system, apologies are meant to restore harmony and order; the sincerity of the person making the apology is a secondary concern. Korean and Chinese expressions of regret also tend to be affectively neutral, but because they are sensitive to insincerity in others, they dismiss Japanese apologies as empty performances. Fourth, regret and responsibility for national wrongs are closely related. Northeast Asia’s communitarianism inclines people to accept responsibility for their country’s past wrongdoing at a higher rate than is found in the United States (Schwartz et al. 2005). Acceptance of responsibility, like expressions of regret, however, is formal and not accompanied by equally strong feelings of shame. In contrast, Western individualism inhibits people not only from assuming responsibility for offenses in which they had no part but also from feeling guilty about them. Fifth, the Memory Problem is exacerbated by divergent historical beliefs. Asian intellectuals accuse one another of distorting history, but beneath their accusations is the belief that something real is there to distort. For a significant minority of Western scholars, “texts”, the imposition of “narratives” on events, “deconstruction”, “story-telling” and “invention” have to an extent replaced the search for the past as it was. It is difficult to imagine that Chinese scholars would think of Nanjing as many Western academics describe the Holocaust—something whose reality is resident in texts and narratives. A final peculiarity of all variants of Asian memory is responsiveness to the demands of the state. Time and again we have seen how profoundly the Chinese Cultural Revolution and respect for the Japanese Emperor inhibited commemoration of past tragedies and atrocities. The Cultural Revolution and Emperor’s authority shaped memory because both were aspects of centuries of authoritarian rule to which the people’s willingness to defer has been, with the noted exceptions, traditional. Besides generating hypotheses about the uniqueness of Asia’s Memory Problem, this volume is filled with many rich accounts of memory aggravating and mitigating international conflict. These accounts also contain information about memory as an entity in itself—an ordered system of symbols, driven by honour and shame, that make experience, including traumatic and criminal experience, meaningful. The ultimate power of such

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chapters is to show why Northeast Asians and Westerners remember trauma differently and why the discipline of collective memory would differ in its fundamental premises if it had been formed and developed in the culture of Northeast Asia. There it would be a discipline driven not by disillusion and cynicism but by a deep sense of the presence of the past—a presence not only recognized but also embraced and condemned, a real rather than constructed presence which all must acknowledge and come to terms to with. This is not to say that Asian societies are strictly traditional or that their members are fundamentalists who “live in the past”; but Asian and Western societies display qualitative differences that must be recognized. In Northeast Asia, at least, we find an emergent rather than established recognition of individual dignity and a rising rather than time-honoured pluralism. “Detraditionalizing” rather than “detraditionalized” (Heelas et al. 1996), Asia is a privileged site for the study of memory. In no other regional setting is the interdependence of history, commemoration and belief so significant and problematic. In no other setting is the Memory Problem so acute.

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Section I Japan Studies

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1 The Yasukuni Shrine Conundrum: Japan’s Contested Identity and Memory Mike M. Mochizuki

For most countries, remembering and mourning the war dead is natural and uncontroversial. In Japan, however, how to venerate those who lost their lives fighting in wars has been contentious because of the Yasukuni Shrine issue. During the pre-1945 period, the shrine was the central military institution for honouring the war dead; in the post-World War II era, it became a key symbol in the passionate conflict over historical memory and national identity. The dispute was especially intense in 2001–2006, when Prime Minister Koizumi Junichir¯ o made annual visits to the shrine despite protests from Japan’s neighbouring countries as well as significant segments of Japanese society. After Koizumi stepped down as prime minister, the controversy subsided because his successors have so far refrained from making the Yasukuni pilgrimages. Nevertheless, the Yasukuni problem and the question of how to mourn the war dead remain unresolved in Japan. Resolving this issue poses a difficult challenge because the Yasukuni question has become more complicated over time. First, the transformation of Yasukuni into a private religious institution enabled the shrine to preserve its pre-war ideology and Shint¯ o practices. But at the same time, the effort of shrine supporters to restore state patronage clashed with those who wanted to protect the constitutional doctrine separating state and religion. Second, with the enshrinement of the so-called Class A war criminals, the shrine became entangled in a heated debate about war memory and responsibility. Third, the emergence of the distinction between “official” and “private” visits to the shrine added a new layer to the conflict and aggravated the question of Yasukuni’s constitutional status. Fourth, the internationalization of the Yasukuni issue and the trade-off between diplomatic interests and indigenous beliefs and cultural practices fuelled nationalistic resentment and embedded the shrine in debates about foreign policy. By examining the history of Yasukuni issues, this chapter will show how the question of 31

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mourning the war dead became such a conundrum in Japan and suggest how this conundrum might be resolved.

Historical background The Yasukuni Shrine was originally established in 1869 as the Tokyo Shokonsha (Tokyo Spirit-Inviting Shrine) to “console the spirits” of those who fought and died for the imperial cause during the time of the Meiji Restoration. At the suggestion of Emperor Meiji, the shrine was renamed the Yasukuni Jinja (Shrine of the Peaceful Land) in 1879. Whereas other special shrines established during the Meiji Era enshrined prominent individual historical figures as deities, Yasukuni honoured ordinary soldiers who had died in battle, of battle wounds or battle-related accidents, or in detention by the enemy and eventually those who had lost their lives from war-related illnesses. The enshrinement rite entailed adding names of the deceased to a Book of Souls, thereby transforming the individual souls to a deity attached to the nation rather than to a particular household. The souls of the dead were enshrined collectively, rather than as individuals, and ashes or mortu¯ 1984: 124–5; ary tablets of the deceased were not placed in the shrine (Oe Tokita 2003: 48–9). Yasukuni was second only to the Ise Grand Shrines in symbolic hierarchy because the emperor himself honoured the commoners apotheosized there. The imperial tribute involved the emperor receiving a sprig of sakaki plant (an evergreen considered sacred in Shint¯ o) from the shrine’s head priest and holding it for some time before returning it to the priest who then placed the sakaki on the shrine’s altar (Hardacre 1989: 90). Yasukuni was intimately related to the Meiji regime’s effort to develop state Shint¯ o as the spiritual foundation of the new Japanese political order. This project linked the imperial line that was now said to rule Japan to traditional Shint¯ o ceremonies and developed the ideology of a family-state as articulated in the concept of kokutai [literally “national body”]. But Meiji leaders were also sensitive to the Western principle of separating state and religion and incorporated this notion into the Meiji constitution as evidence of Japan’s political modernization. To address the contradiction between state Shint¯ o and the doctrine of state–religion separation, the Meiji government split off the ceremonial aspects of Shint¯ o from the more obvious religious elements (such as funeral rites) and employed the former for state rituals. The state thus did not consider Shint¯ o a religion in a formal sense. This manoeuvre had the effect of drawing a clear distinction between Shint¯ o and Buddhism that had coexisted and intermingled for centuries. It also allowed the state to make obligatory public participation in Shint¯ o rites and to challenge and even suppress any religion that opposed such rites (Hardacre 1989: 27–40; Tokita 2003: 48; Yamaori 2003: 46–7). For example, after Catholic students at J¯ ochi (Sophia) University in Tokyo refused in 1932 to participate in a Yasukuni ceremony honouring those who had died in the

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Manchurian Incident, the Japanese military began to view Christianity as a hostile force and the Catholic church in Japan was compelled to accept State Shint¯ o by distinguishing between public deeds and private beliefs (Takayama 1988: 332; Grove 2006). The Yasukuni Shrine was closely tied to the military. The head priests tended to have military backgrounds rather than Shint¯ o training; and unlike other Shint¯ o shrines that were administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Yasukuni came under the jurisdiction of the Army and Navy Ministries. The shrine grounds served as the scene for military victory celebrations— sometimes with the emperor in attendance. In 1882, the Y¯ ush¯ ukan opened as the nation’s public military museum with weaponry and war relics on display. After the nation’s victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, Chinese and Russian military memorabilia were exhibited as the spoils of war (Hardacre 1989: 91, 144; Breen 2008b: 14–17). As Japan’s foreign policy became more militarily aggressive and the number of war dead increased, imperial pilgrimages to the shrine became more frequent. Whereas the Meiji Emperor (1868–1912) visited the shrine seven times during his 45-year reign and the Taish¯ o Emperor (1912–1926) went three times during his 15-year reign, the Sh¯ owa Emperor (the posthumous name of Emperor Hirohito) in full military uniform made 20 shrine pilgrimages in the 20 years of his reign ¯ 1984: 135). before Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945 (Oe In symbolic terms, the Yasukuni Shrine had two dimensions. On the one hand, as Helen Hardacre argues, the shrine became “a powerful vehicle for the glorification of war in general and of death in battle in particular” and exemplified “the symbolic unity of the emperor with his subjects” (Hardacre 1989: 91, 133). On the other hand, the shrine also addressed the Japanese folk belief about “bad death”. According to folk culture, the spirits of those who die an untimely death in battle or through political intrigue become bitter and full of hatred. Following this tradition, enshrinement at Yasukuni was a way to calm and appease these vengeful spirits so that the country can be a “peaceful land” [yasukuni] (Antoni 1988; Breen 2008c: 146). Reform under the US occupation In November 1945, the US occupation permitted a ceremony at Yasukuni to venerate en masse all the unidentified war dead since the 1931 Manchurian Incident. The Yasukuni Shrine saw this ceremony as just temporarily enshrining the spirits of the war dead in the Side Chamber of the Main Sanctuary until they could be transferred to the Innermost Chamber after the shrine was informed of their names and the details of their deaths at a later date. In addition to Prime Minister Shidehara Kij¯ ur¯ o, Emperor Hirohito attended, wearing civilian attire rather than a military uniform as he had done during his previous shrine visits (Tanaka 2002: 9–10; Breen 2004: 80; Breen 2008b: 19). Soon thereafter, occupation authorities moved to dismantle State Shint¯ o. The December 1945 Shint¯ o Directive nullified the Japanese

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government’s policy of classifying State or Shrine Shint¯ o as a “non-religious national cult” and declared that Shrine Shint¯ o would be recognized as a religion “after having been divorced from the state and divested of its militaristic and ultranationalistic elements” (Hardacre 1989: 136–7). As part of its campaign to eliminate the use of war memorials by militarists, the occupation prohibited government or public officials in an official capacity from attending funerals for the war dead or making condolence speeches. The one important exception to this prohibition concerned the internment of ashes of the Tokyo bombing victims in the Tomb for Unidentified War Victims (Mumei Senshisha By¯ o) at Chidorigafuchi in Tokyo—a secular memorial that was completed in 1959 (Hardacre 1989: 140–2). Occupation authorities initially seemed receptive to the option of transforming Yasukuni into a state-supported secular memorial for the war dead, but Japanese government representatives favoured preserving Shint¯ o beliefs and practices at the shrine (Mitsuchi 2005: 185–90, 213–17). Thus Yasukuni became a private religious entity with its administrative and financial ties to the government formally severed. In reality, however, ties between the shrine and the state continued. Following pre-1945 practice, the Demobilization Ministries (successors to the Army and Navy Ministries) conducted investigations and submitted to the shrine the first set of names of war dead from the Asia-Pacific wars (1931–1945) and the details of their deaths so that they could be formally enshrined as deities in Yasukuni’s Innermost Chamber. Between 29 April and 1 May of 1946, Yasukuni’s managers held an enshrinement ceremony for some 26,969 war dead. But breaking with traditional practice, the emperor cancelled his scheduled pilgrimage during this ceremony just before it was due to take place. Although the exact circumstances of this cancellation are unclear, occupation authorities probably exerted some influence (Tanaka 2002: 17–18; Nakamura 2007: 193–9). Upon learning of the spring 1946 enshrinement, occupation authorities promptly prohibited the next enshrinement round scheduled for fall 1946 and began to consider abolishing the shrine itself. They were alarmed that the imperial ideology that had glorified dying for the emperor was being preserved at Yasukuni and could re-emerge and be harnessed for Japan’s remilitarization. But by this time, survivors of the war dead had launched a petition campaign in support of maintaining Yasukuni. Moreover, the coming of the Cold War in East Asia began to alter US priorities regarding Japan. Fearing a Japanese backlash and recognizing the need to respect the freedom of religion doctrine (now that Yasukuni was formally a religious institution), occupation authorities eventually abandoned the option of dismantling the shrine. As an alternative approach, they favoured a public secular ceremony to honour the war dead that might gradually dilute the influence of a military shrine like Yasukuni. This notion was realized in part with the secular ceremony held at the Shinjuku Gyoen [Gardens] on May 1952. With the Emperor and Empress attending as well as the Supreme Commander of the

Mike M. Mochizuki 35

Allied Powers and the US Ambassador to Japan, the Shinjuku ceremony mourned not only the military war dead but also victims of the fire and atomic bombings (Mitsuchi 2005: 200–19, 262; Nakamura 2007: 199–252). The Japanese government, however, was not shy about trying to preserve the centrality of Yasukuni for mourning the war dead. Soon after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in September 1951, restrictions on the participation of public officials in war memorial services were relaxed. Seizing this opportunity, Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru made an official pilgrimage to Yasukuni during the Great Fall Festival in October 1951, thereby becoming the first prime minister to visit the shrine since the November 1945 ceremony. Then, in October 1952 (about half a year after Japan regained its sovereignty) Emperor Hirohito made his first visit to the shrine in nearly seven years (Tanaka, N. 2002: 25–32). In the meantime, the secular and inclusive ceremony for mourning the war dead was not held again until 15 August 1963 in Tokyo’s Hibiya Public Hall. Interestingly, in the following year this national ceremony of mourning for the World War II dead was held on the grounds of Yasukuni. Thereafter, the ceremony has been held annually on 15 August in the Bud¯ okan (the stadium originally constructed for the judo competition of the 1964 Tokyo summer Olympics) near the Imperial Palace and the Yasukuni Shrine. The competitive relationship between this secular ceremony and Yasukuni exemplified Japan’s post-war contestation about national identity and historical memory.

Domestic controversies about Yasukuni By the time the Allied occupation came to an end, a movement to restore Yasukuni’s status in Japanese society and political order was gaining traction. The issue that provoked the greatest domestic dispute was related to the attempted reinstatement of state patronage for the shrine. By contrast, the question of who was to be enshrined at Yasukuni initially stirred little controversy. State patronage for Yasukuni The core political force that pressed for reviving state support for Yasukuni was the Japan Association for War-Bereaved Families (Nihon Izokukai, hereafter Izokukai). The Izokukai grew out of a network of war-bereaved self-help groups and war widows who sought to reinstate and increase government pensions for war-bereaved families. Formed in 1953, the Izokukai believed that restoring state patronage for Yasukuni would once again make the shrine the official site for honouring the war dead and obligate the state to venerate appropriately according to pre-1945 tradition those who sacrificed their lives for the nation (Tanaka, N. et al. 1995: 34–61; Seraphim 2006: 60–85, 237–8). Another key group supporting this campaign was the

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Association of Shint¯ o Shrines (Jinja Honch¯ o), which was organized in 1946 as a private religious organization representing Shint¯ o groups after the occupation directive abolishing State Shint¯ o. Seeking to revive the public legitimacy of Shint¯ o as the spiritual essence of Japan’s polity, Jinja Honch¯ o shared the Izokukai’s criticism of the reforms under the occupation (Seraphim 2006: 35–59). By the time the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was formed in 1955, through the unification of various conservative parties, the Izokukai had become a key voting bloc essential for the LDP’s political dominance. To solidify this political linkage, LDP leaders assumed Izokukai leadership positions, and many LDP Diet members made a point of visiting Yasukuni during the shrine’s major festivals. From this Izokukai–LDP partnership emerged the Yasukuni Shrine bill that was submitted to the National Diet in 1969. According to the proposed legislation, the purpose of the Yasukuni Shrine is “to express the people’s feeling of reverence for the spirits (eirei) of the war dead and those who died while serving their country, to remember the benefits of their virtue, to console them, and to perform ceremonies, events, etc. to praise their deeds, and thereby convey their great achievements forever.” The bill stipulated that Yasukuni would receive state funding, be supervised by the prime minister who would appoint the institution’s chairperson and board of directors and conduct its activities according to tradition established since the shrine’s founding. To address the constitutional doctrine of separating state and religion, the legislation would terminate Yasukuni’s status as a religious entity and prohibit the shrine from embracing any particular dogma or engaging in any religious activities such as proselytizing (Kobayashi 1979: 68–73). The bill’s introduction brought Yasukuni to the forefront of ideological conflict in Japanese politics. Initially, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) was willing to accept Yasukuni as a public institution if it were stripped of its Shint¯ o religious features. For example, in 1956 the JSP proposed converting the shrine into the Yasukuni Peace Hall (Yasukuni Heiwad¯ o). But by the late 1960s, the JSP had decided to oppose without any compromise the LDP bill by arguing that the measure threatened the separation of state and religion (Mitsuchi 2007: 54). This parliamentary resistance to the bill received vigorous support from a broad coalition of leftist political parties, labour unions, citizen and peace movements, the centrist K¯ omeit¯ o representing the religious organization S¯ okagakkai and various Christian and Buddhist groups. Despite LDP assurances that the bill would not compromise religious freedom, religious groups invoked memories of how the state had repressed religions that rejected State Shint¯ o. For its opponents, the legislation not only endangered post-war democracy, but also could help revive militarism by extinguishing in Japan a sense of war guilt and responsibility (Tanaka, N. 2002: 110–11; Seraphim 2006: 239–41). In the end, the bill failed to pass despite being introduced five times. Even some LDP members of the

Mike M. Mochizuki 37

Upper House opposed the measure after being pressured by their Buddhist support groups. In the course of this controversy, some supporters of state patronage for Yasukuni became ambivalent about the legislation. After the bill’s submission to the Diet, the House of Representatives Legal Affairs Bureau voiced its opinion about how the legislation would have to be implemented so that it would not contradict the constitution. The bureau argued that many of the traditional Shint¯ o rituals would have to cease. For the shrine’s ardent backers, this was a high price because it would strip Yasukuni of its essence (Kobayashi 1979: 80–107; Tanaka, N. 2002: 109–10). Enshrinement of war criminals While the question of state patronage for Yasukuni was being hotly debated, the matter of who was to be enshrined received minimal public attention and provoked little controversy. Now that the shrine was formally a religious institution, a strict interpretation of constitutional doctrine would require that Yasukuni decide who would be enshrined without state guidance or interference. But following tradition, the Yasukuni Shrine continued to rely on the government to compile the list of eligible war dead. This task went to the War Victims’ Relief Bureau, which was staffed by former military officers and housed in the Ministry of Health and Welfare. To give this process a legal foundation, the bureau used the War-injured or -sick and Wardead Survivors Relief Law passed in 1952 as one basis for setting the criteria. As a consequence, those eligible went beyond deceased soldiers to include deceased civilians who had been mobilized for the war effort and those who had died while performing public duties [k¯omu]. Under this broadened criterion, nurses who had died in the Battle of Okinawa and even school children who had lost their lives when their evacuation ship heading for Kyushu from Okinawa was sunk qualified for deification at Yasukuni. Expanding those eligible for enshrinement had the effect of enlarging the potential societal support base for the shrine. With the help of local governments, the Relief Bureau assembled and submitted the lists to Yasukuni, which in turn conducted the apotheosis rites (Murakami 1974: 208–9; Tanaka, N. 2002: 37–9; Tokita 2003: 49; Akazawa 2005: 91–8). The path to enshrining war criminals opened up with the revision of the Survivors Relief Law and the passage and subsequent revision of the Military Pension Law during the period 1953–1955. These pieces of legislation enabled war criminals and their survivors to receive relief and pension benefits—even for time served in prison. The implication was that while these individuals may have been arrested and/or convicted for war crimes in post-war tribunals, they were not guilty of crimes under Japanese law. Indeed those who had been executed for war crimes or had died while detained were now considered to have died while performing public duty. Despite the potential challenge they posed to article 11 of the San Francisco Peace

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Treaty, which stated that “Japan accepts the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and of other Allied War Crimes Courts both within and outside Japan”, these measures garnered support from socialist as well as conservative parties in the National Diet, suggesting widespread public sympathy for the families of the deceased war criminals (Tanaka, N. et al. 1995: 93–6; Tanaka, N. 2002: 38–9; Kamisaka 2006: 123–34). According to documents released by Japan’s National Diet Library1 in 2007, Relief Bureau officials went in April 1958 to Yasukuni to ask the shrine to consider the enshrinement of executed Class B and C war criminals.2 Sensitive to the political ramifications, however, they subsequently suggested that the war criminals be enshrined in small groups so as not to attract attention. By 1966, over 900 Class B and C war criminals had been enshrined. Also in this year, the Relief Bureau submitted to Yasukuni a list of Class A war criminals who had either been executed or been died in prison as eligible for enshrinement. When the final decision to enshrine the Class A war criminals was made in 1969, the bureau and the shrine agreed to refrain from making a public announcement and only to have the shrine inform relatives directly. But a year and a half later, they decided to defer the apotheosis after “considering all circumstances” (Mainichi Shinbunsha 2007: 142–9). The newly released documents suggest that the shrine had been relatively cautious about enshrining the Class A war criminals. A key factor was Yasukuni’s chief priest at the time: Tsukuba Fujimaro. Sensitive to the US occupation’s misgivings about military men serving as chief priests, Yasukuni appointed Tsukuba, a historian with ties to the imperial family, to become the head priest in January 1946. An advocate of nuclear disarmament, Tsukuba became convinced that Yasukuni must express to the world its own message for peace after his 41-day trip to Europe and North America in 1963. He constructed in 1965 a minor shrine named Chinreisha (Spirit Pacification Shrine) off to the side of the Main sanctuary of Yasukuni. This small wooden structure honoured the foreign war dead from the Asia-Pacific war as well as the Japanese who had died fighting the pro-imperial forces during the 1860s. For Tsukuba, Chinreisha symbolized Yasukuni deities serving as “harbingers of peace” in tandem with the spirits of war dead from all countries. A priest holding such views would understandably balk at deifying those convicted and executed in the Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Breen 2008b: 9; Mainichi Shinbunsha 2007: 54–5, 131–4). The situation changed dramatically after Tsukuba’s death in 1978. Discontent both internal and external to the shrine in the wake of Tsukuba’s tenure eventually led Yasukuni’s governing council to appoint Matsudaira Nagayoshi as head priest. The son of imperial grand steward Matsudaira Yoshitami, Matsudaira had served in the Imperial Navy and was strongly influenced by imperial ideologues like historian Hiraizumi Kiyoshi of Tokyo University.3 He insisted that because “Japan cannot restore its spirit without negating the Tokyo Trial, the so-called Class A war criminals must be

Mike M. Mochizuki 39

enshrined.” Under Matsudaira’s leadership, Yasukuni quietly apotheosized 14 Class A war criminals (those who had been executed or who died in prison4 ) in October 1978 (Tanaka, N. 2002: 150–4; Mainichi Shinbunsha 2007: 54–65). Although this enshrinement was finally revealed in the press six months later, the news did not stir much public controversy and the matter did not explode as an international issue until 1985. “Private” versus “official” pilgrimages to the shrine After the bill regarding state patronage for Yasukuni failed to pass in the National Diet, supporters of the shrine shifted tactics and began to consider various legislative options to mandate Yasukuni pilgrimages by top government officials and the emperor (Tanaka 2002: 140–2). While this matter was being discussed within LDP circles, Prime Minister Miki Takeo added a further complication to the Yasukuni issue when he visited the shrine on 15 August 1975, thereby becoming the first prime minister to make the pilgrimage on the anniversary date of the end of World War II. Earlier in 1975, Miki had followed the practice of previous prime ministers by going to Yasukuni during the shrine’s spring festival in April. It is unclear exactly why Miki decided to go on 15 August, a date of major symbolic importance because it directly links Yasukuni to the remembrance of World War II. Two months earlier on 16 June, a member of a right-wing group had attacked Miki when the prime minister was attending a memorial service for former Prime Minister Sat¯ o Eisaku who had just passed away. Right-wing groups presumably viewed Miki with contempt given his dovish views on defence policy and his long-term association with the most liberal wings of post-war conservative political parties. To placate the nationalist right to some extent, Miki may have decided to respond to those who wanted to upgrade the shrine’s “official” status by going to Yasukuni right after attending the 15 August national ceremony at the Bud¯ okan to remember the war dead from World War II. When the Japanese mass media probed the implications of this pilgrimage, however, the Miki government backtracked and argued that the prime minister had gone to the shrine in his private rather than official capacity. It elaborated on what constitutes a “private” pilgrimage by articulating four criteria: (1) no use of an official vehicle, (2) no public money for the offering, (3) no inscription of the official title in the registry and (4) no accompaniment by other officials. Heretofore, prime ministers had gone to Yasukuni without any mention of a private or official distinction—it was simply assumed that they went in their official capacity. Miki’s notion of a private pilgrimage galvanized shrine supporters to form a grass-roots organization called the Eirei ni Kotaeru Kai (Association to Answer the Heroic Spirits [of the War Dead]) in 1976 to promote “official” pilgrimages to Yasukuni. In 1978, Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shintar¯ o in the Fukuda government relaxed Miki’s criteria for a private visit by announcing that it was permissible for the prime minister to visit the Yasukuni Shrine as a private citizen,

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go in a government car, be accompanied by other cabinet members and sign his name with the title of prime minister (Tanaka, N. 2002: 142–6). Although Miki himself avoided the 15 August date during his third and last visit to the shrine by going during the October 1976 fall festival, his 15 August 1975 pilgrimage did establish a precedent of sorts. Three of Miki’s successors paid their respects at Yasukuni on 15 August: Fukuda in 1978, Suzuki in 1981 and 1982 and Nakasone in 1983 and 1984. Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro pushed hard to legitimize official visits by prime ministers to the shrine. During his April 1983 pilgrimage, he signed the registry with his official title. Shortly after getting a private advisory group to declare that official visits would not be unconstitutional if their religious elements were kept to a minimum, Nakasone boldly went to Yasukuni on 15 August 1985 and framed the visit as an official one (Tanaka, N. 2002: 170–4). To dilute any religious overtones, he refrained from participating in the Shint¯ o purification rights or bowing and clapping twice according to Shint¯ o practice—much to the consternation of Chief Priest Matsudaira (Breen 2008b: 10). Because of the big buildup to this particular visit, domestic groups that had opposed the Yasukuni nationalization bill during the early 1970s renewed their protest activity. But what was different this time around was that the conflict spilled over from the domestic arena to become an international issue.

Internationalization of the Yasukuni issue Numerous post-war Japanese prime ministers and the emperor himself had visited Yasukuni to pay respects for the war dead during the shrine’s spring and autumn festivals (see Table 1.1) with little foreign interest or protest— even about Prime Minister Nakasone’s early pilgrimages. Why then did his 15 August 1985 visit cause such diplomatic controversy? One answer might be the spring 1979 revelation of the enshrinement of Class A war ¯ criminals. But Christian Prime Minister Ohira Masayoshi visited the shrine in April 1979 right after this revelation without provoking protests from China or South Korea. And his successor Suzuki Zenk¯ o made nine visits to Yasukuni during his 16-month prime ministership with little controversy. Therefore, although the enshrinement of Class A war criminals later became the focal point of Chinese outcries, this matter in itself was not sufficient initially to internationalize the Yasukuni problem. What mattered was the way Nakasone contextualized the August 1985 pilgrimage. Diplomatic repercussions of Nakasone’s August 1985 pilgrimage By emphasizing the “official” nature of this visit beforehand, Nakasone elicited intense Japanese media scrutiny and stirred up political forces on both the left and right, which in turn stimulated greater foreign interest. “Official” visits to Yasukuni were part of his agenda of bringing to a close

Mike M. Mochizuki 41 Table 1.1 Japan prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine since end of World War II Prime minister

# of Visits

Dates of visit

Higashikuni Naruhiko Shidehara Kij¯ ur¯ o Katayama Tetsu Ashida Hitoshi Yoshida Shigeru

1 2 None None 5

1945.8.18 1945.10.23; 1945.11.20

Hatoyama Ichir¯ o Ishibashi Tanzan Kishi Nobusuke Ikeda Hayato

None None 2 5

Sat¯ o Eisaku

11

Tanaka Kakuei

5

Miki Takeo Fukuda Takeo ¯ Ohira Masayoshi Suzuki Zenk¯ o

3 4 3 9

Nakasone Yasuhiro

10

Takeshita Noboru Uno S¯ osuke Kaifu Toshiki Miyazawa Kiichi Hosokawa Morihiro Hata Tsutomu Murayama Tomiichi Hashimoto Ry¯ utar¯ o Obuchi Keiz¯ o Mori Yoshiro Koizumi Junichir¯ o

None None None 1 None None None 1 None None 6

Abe Shinz¯ o Fukuda Yasuo As¯ o Tar¯ o

None None None

1951.10.18; 1952.10.17; 1953.4.23; 1953.10.24; 1954.4.24

1957.4.24; 1958.10.21 1960.10.10; 1961.6.18; 1961.11.15; 1962.11.4; 1963.9.22 1965.4.21; 1966.4.21; 1967.4.22; 1968.4.23; 1969.4.22; 1969.10.18; 1970.4.22; 1970.10.17; 1971.4.22; 1971.10.19; 1972.4.22 1972.7.8; 1973.4.23; 1973.10.18; 1974.4.23; 1974.10.19 1975.4.22; 1975.8.15; 1976.10.18 1977.4.21; 1978.4.21; 1978.8.15; 1978.10.18 1979.4.21; 1979.10.18; 1980.4.21 1980.8.15; 1980.10.18; 1980.11.21; 1981.4.21; 1981.8.15; 1981.10.17; 1982.4.21; 1982.8.15; 1982.10.18 1983.4.21; 1983.8.15; 1983.10.18; 1984.1.5; 1984.4.21; 1984.8.15; 1984.10.18; 1985.1.21; 1985.4.22; 1985.8.15

1992.11

1996.7.29

2001.8.13; 2002.4.21; 2003.1.14; 2004.1.1; 2005.10.17; 2006.8.15

the post-war era through what he called a “general accounting of postwar politics” [sengo seiji no s¯okessan]. He argued that Japan needed a place where the state could officially express its gratitude and respects to those who gave their lives for their country and that place was the Yasukuni Shrine (Tanaka,

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N. 2002: 170–2). Two weeks before his 15 August 1985 pilgrimage, in a speech to the ruling LDP’s summer seminar, he criticized the Tokyo War Crimes Trial view of history and the subsequent spread throughout Japan of “a self-torturing belief that our country was to blame for everything”. He declared, “Casting disgrace aside, advancing forward in the pursuit of glory— this is the essence of the nation and of the people. We must look critically at Japan’s actions in the past and establish our country’s identity from this point of view.” Moreover, Nakasone vowed to abolish the 1 per cent of GNP ceiling on defence expenditures established in 1976 under the Miki government (Wakamiya 1998: 171–2). Although Nakasone’s behaviour at Yasukuni may have irritated Chief Priest Matsudaira, their critical views of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial and the need for Japan’s spiritual revival converged. In other words, Yasukuni visits were not just a matter of mourning the war dead. The shrine had become a nationalistic symbol for changing Japan’s post-war mentality and its defence policy. Another key factor in the internationalization of the Yasukuni issue was Chinese domestic politics. Although Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian had expressed his concerns about the shrine in April 1985, the Chinese government refrained from lodging a formal protest right after Nakasone’s 15 August visit (Whiting 1989: 54, 61). But on 18 September (the anniversary of the 1931 Mukden Incident), anti-Japanese demonstrations spearheaded by students began in Beijing and spread to other cities. Although student discontent with the Chinese regime was one motivation for the demonstrations, their protesting of Nakasone’s Yasukuni visit and what they saw as Japan’s remilitarization and its “second invasion” of China through economic means provided a good nationalistic cover for activism. As students charged that their government was too conciliatory towards Japan, Chinese leaders found themselves in an increasingly delicate political situation. Premier Hu Yaobang, a Chinese leader known to have friendly ties with Japanese leaders, including Nakasone, tried to stabilize the situation by distinguishing between Japanese war criminals who were responsible for the aggression against China and the Japanese people (Whiting 1989: 66–79). But this message did not resonate with Chinese students when the Japanese prime minister had made an official pilgrimage to what they viewed as a militaristic shrine that honoured these war criminals. With the Chinese government conveying to Tokyo the seriousness of the situation, Nakasone decided in the end to forgo further pilgrimages to the shrine. But before doing so, he explored the possibility of de-enshrining the Class A war criminals after learning that their removal might make official visits acceptable to the Chinese government. Since the Japanese government could not force the shrine to do so because of the separation of state and religion doctrine, LDP leaders close to Nakasone enlisted LDP Diet member Itagaki Tadashi (an officer of the Izokukai as well as son of the executed Class A war criminal Itagaki Seishir¯ o) to try to forge a consensus

Mike M. Mochizuki 43

among the direct descendants of the 14 Class A war criminals in favour of de-enshrinement. However, this move failed after T¯ oj¯ o Teruo (the son of T¯ oj¯ o Hideki) adamantly refused (Itagaki 2000: 181–9). To explain his decision not to go to Yasukuni, Nakasone invoked a strategic argument. Continuing the pilgrimages might give ammunition to opposition forces in neighbouring countries (for example, China, South Korea and various Southeast Asian countries) and drive their governments into a corner, thereby leading to a deterioration of relations with Japan. Such a development would please the Soviet Union and go against Japan’s national interests. Nakasone therefore declared, “the spirits of the war dead would understand” and “they too would grieve if the country were driven into a predicament and isolated from Asia” (Whiting 1989: 63). Some years later, Nakasone revealed that he decided to terminate his visits so as not to hurt reformist leader Hu Yaobang politically in China (Nakasone 1995). For the nationalist right in Japan, Nakasone’s decision amounted to an appalling betrayal. Right-wing intellectuals criticized him for buckling under Chinese pressure and some extremists even threatened to assassinate him (Shibuichi 2005: 209). At the same time, the War-Bereaved Families Association for Peace [Heiwa Izokukai], which was formed in July 1986 as a counter to the Izokukai, mobilized nationally against official visits to Yasukuni and for various pacifist causes and collaborated with Christian organizations opposed to the shrine (Tanaka, N. et al. 1995: 148–59). Although Nakasone sought to re-frame Yasukuni visits so that they would become similar to public homages at the Arlington National Cemetery in the United States, his legacy was just the opposite. He re-polarized the issue by linking the shrine to what many foreigners saw as revisionist history and then by giving into foreign pressure, thereby intensifying the nationalism of ardent Yasukuni supporters in Japan. As Professor Tanaka Akihiko of Tokyo University argues, Nakasone’s decision to forgo further pilgrimages implied acceptance of the Chinese view that the shrine symbolized “justification of aggression” (Tanaka, A. 2008: 129). Until Koizumi’s visit in August 2001, pilgrimages by prime ministers, whether official or private, ceased except for two revealing instances. First, Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi secretly went to Yasukuni in November 1992, but it was not revealed in the press until 1996. Although Miyazawa was relatively liberal within the LDP and responsive to Chinese and Korean criticisms regarding history textbooks and the “comfort women” issue, he was also quite willing to strike a political deal with the Izokukai: promise to visit Yasukuni in exchange for the Izokukai’s support in the October 1992 LDP presidential election. But because he did not want to jeopardize Emperor Akihito’s historic visit to China in October 1992, Miyazawa waited until after the imperial trip to fulfil his promise; and even then, he refrained from publicizing the pilgrimage (Itagaki 2000: 275–80; Shibuichi 2005: 209; Tanaka, A. 2008: 131–2).

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The other prime minister to visit Yasukuni after August 1985 was Hashimoto Ry¯ utar¯ o. Unlike Miyazawa, Hashimoto had a long and close relationship with the Izokukai, serving as its chairman in 1993–1995. Therefore, there was natural expectation that he would go to Yasukuni during his tenure as prime minister. In an attempt to re-frame shrine visits as private gestures rather than official acts, he avoided not only 15 August, but also Yasukuni’s spring and autumn festivals. Hashimoto chose instead his birthday—29 July 1996—for his pilgrimage and discussed his wish to fulfil a childhood promise and remember his deceased cousin. Rather than accept Hashimoto’s account of his “private” motive, the Chinese government denounced the visit. Beijing was no longer willing to accept the situation that had existed before 1985 or even 1975 when prime ministers had gone to Yasukuni without foreign protests. Like Nakasone, Hashimoto decided to refrain from going to Yasukuni again while in office for the sake of stable Sino–Japanese relations. This acquiescence had two consequences. First, it reinforced in the minds of Chinese leaders that they could pressure Japanese leaders to back down. Second, the episode began to irritate those Japanese who did not necessarily share revisionist history views of the nationalist right, but who felt that Japanese leaders had the right to mourn the war dead and that China was interfering too much in Japanese domestic affairs (Tanaka, A. 2008: 132–3). International controversy under Koizumi Given the accommodative if not obsequious behaviour of Nakasone and his successors, why did Koizumi publicly announce his intention to visit Yasukuni and why did he continue his pilgrimages despite strong protests from China and South Korea and even criticism from prominent Western commentators? This is especially puzzling because Koizumi did not have a reputation as a nationalist or much interest in defence policy (like Nakasone) and he did not have close ties to the Izokukai (like Hashimoto) although he did make visits to Yasukuni in 1989 and 1997 while serving as Health and Welfare Minister. Part of the answer is intra-LDP politics. Like Miyazawa, Koizumi sought the Izokukai’s support during the 2001 LDP presidential election—the key step to becoming prime minister. This political calculation was especially shrewd because his key rival in the race was Hashimoto who despite being a former chairman of Izokukai had disappointed this organization by backing down under Chinese pressure. Once in office, Koizumi’s stubborn insistence on making repeated shrine pilgrimages despite Chinese and Korean protests and diplomatic snubs contributed to his positive political image at home as a maverick who follows through on his promises. Ironically, the more foreign countries protested, the more the Japanese admired Koizumi for his backbone—even among those who previously had little interest in Yasukuni. In August 2001, an Asahi Shimbun poll showed

Mike M. Mochizuki 45

that only 26 per cent supported Koizumi’s shrine visits while 65 per cent were opposed. But after Koizumi’s final shrine pilgrimage as prime minister in August 2006, at least two media surveys indicated that about half favoured the visits (Rose 2008: 34). Although Koizumi was initially just catering to a traditional LDP interest group, he re-shaped the Yasukuni issue to contribute to his populist appeal and to facilitate his reform agenda including privatization of the postal system. While rebuffing Chinese and Korean calls to stop the pilgrimages, Koizumi tried to delink his visits from a nationalistic view of history. After his first visit as prime minister on 13 August 2001, he cribbed from the 1995 statement of Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi to acknowledge that “Japan caused immeasurable damage and pain to our neighbouring countries in Asia by colonization and aggression.” In October 2001, he went to the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing where the Sino–Japanese war began in 1937 and expressed his “apology and mourning to the Chinese people who were victimized by the Japanese aggression” (Tanaka, A. 2008: 135–6). Koizumi stated that by going to Yasukuni, he was not honouring Class A war criminals or agreeing with the view of history presented at the shrine’s museum Y¯ ush¯ ukan. He insisted that he went to the shrine to console the spirits of the war dead, express respect and gratitude for their sacrifice, reflect critically on the past war and pray for peace. He even avoided going to the shrine on 15 August as he had promised back in spring 2001 until his last visit in 2006 when he stated that he decided to go on that date because it seemed that he is criticized no matter what date he visits. Although his explanation for the shrine pilgrimages resonated with significant segments of the Japanese public, leaders and citizens in both China and South Korea were unwilling to accept it. The governments of these two countries protested and snubbed Koizumi diplomatically. Koizumi’s shrine visits contributed to the intensification of anti-Japanese sentiments in China, which exploded into nationwide riots in April 2005. Despite the merits of the way Koizumi framed his Yasukuni visits, it was still hard to swallow for Chinese or Koreans who felt that Japan as a nation was not sincerely and sufficiently contrite about the past. That Class A war criminals were enshrined there, that the Y¯ ush¯ ukan downplayed Japanese aggression and emphasized Japan’s role as Asian liberators, that Koizumi’s visits energized the nationalist right and that his government was taking steps to expand Japan’s defence role after 9/11 worked together to overwhelm Koizumi’s emphasis on mourning and consoling the war dead (Deans 2007: 282–9; Rose 2008). Conflict about historical memory and national identity In addition to complicating foreign relations, the Yasukuni issue has made it difficult to forge a politically robust consensus in Japan about historical memory and national identity. There does exist in Japan a potential middle

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ground about history and its contemporary implications (T¯ og¯ o 2008). Many Japanese believe that Japan engaged in aggressive war in the past, that their nation should acknowledge and apologize for aggression and atrocities and that Japan should learn from its past errors. But at the same time, many believe that Japan’s past history is not all negative, that Japan’s rapid modernization was on the whole remarkable and laudable, that Japan was not the only country responsible for the Pacific War or the only country to engage in colonial domination, that Japan should contribute more actively to international security and that Japan has the right to mourn its war dead like any other country. The way the Yasukuni issue has unfolded after World War II, however, has impeded the political consolidation of this middle ground. Yasukuni was captured as a key symbol by the nationalist right through its agenda of restoring the shrine’s public status while preserving much of the ideology and practices of State Shint¯ o. This agenda naturally invited fierce opposition from those who wanted to preserve and deepen post-war democratic reforms. Liberal intellectuals criticize how Yasukuni denies the right of war dead families to choose whether or not their loved ones are to be apotheosized at the shrine. Many of the shrine backers have used Yasukuni to articulate and promote a historical perspective that casts Japan’s imperial project in an overly positive light while downplaying or ignoring its ruthless and brutal aspects. While it is not surprising for war museums to glorify national history and military heroism, having such a museum on the grounds of Yasukuni inevitably provoked opponents to characterize the shrine as a harbinger of Japan’s remilitarization. For liberals, Yasukuni represents Japan shirking its war responsibilities (Takahashi 2005: 62–96; 2008). Yasukuni has become, therefore, a symbolic battleground between forces on the opposite ends of Japan’s ideological spectrum. Drowned out in this shrill discourse were the voices from the broad middle. Also lost in this debate was the solemn question of how the Japanese can and should mourn and remember their war dead in a way that brings the country together rather splitting it apart. After Koizumi, diplomatic imperatives swayed Japan’s elites, but the question of mourning and remembrance was sidestepped. The business and diplomatic communities on the whole sought a termination of prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni in order to stabilize relations with a China that was becoming an increasingly critical market for Japan’s commercial interests and emerging as a potential military challenger. Five years of Koizumi’s reckless stubbornness was enough; and they were worried that his likely successor Abe Shinz¯ o, a neo-nationalist, might stay true to his ideology and continue the Yasukuni pilgrimages (Abe 2006: 66–74). They were elated when Prime Minister Abe chose to begin his administration in September 2006 by adopting a “neither confirm nor deny” stance about shrine visits and focusing on smoothing relations with both Beijing and Seoul. In some

Mike M. Mochizuki 47

respects, Abe was able to do so precisely because he was such a nationalist and because his right-wing supporters expected that he would eventually go to Yasukuni once his government settled down. By sending a sakaki offering to the shrine during its spring 2007 festival, Abe signalled that he had not forgotten Yasukuni even though he had refrained from making the pilgrimage. But Abe’s neo-nationalist agenda of educational reform and constitutional revision fell flat with a public that was more concerned about social welfare and government ineptness, and voters gave his party an electoral drubbing in July 2007 which led to his resignation two months later. Both of Abe’s successors continued the de facto moratorium on shrine visits. The pragmatic Fukuda Yasuo had been resistant to shrine visits all along and the Roman Catholic As¯ o Tar¯ o did not want to rock the diplomatic boat by going to Yasukuni. As¯ o imitated Abe by sending a sakaki offering to the shrine during the spring 2009 festival.

Possible solutions to the Yasukuni conundrum With the post-2006 moratorium on prime ministerial visits and the LDP’s electoral defeat in 2009, the Yasukuni issue has receded into the background, but the conundrum remains. There is still no resolution of the Yasukuni question or the issue of mourning the war dead. With the ceasefire in the Northeast Asian memory wars, realized in large part because of prime ministerial restraint on Yasukuni, the Japanese debate about remembrance, history and national identity has been suspended in mid-air without the forging of a national consensus. Now that the international controversy has subsided, the domestic political incentive to address the Yasukuni question has also diminished even though this may be the opportune time to do so. It seems better to work towards a solution when there is less rather than more foreign hostility and interference. What then might be possible solutions to the Yasukuni conundrum? When the Yasukuni controversy was at its peak during Koizumi’s last two years, the Japanese debate clustered around two options: (1) change Yasukuni itself or (2) establish a secular national memorial. Changing Yasukuni During the late 1990s, the Obuchi government considered changing Yasukuni from a religious entity to a “special corporation” and having the Class A war criminals enshrined separately. But this proposal floated by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Nonaka Hiromu was quickly abandoned after being attacked on two fronts. Religious groups that had opposed the Yasukuni legislation in the late 1960s objected to the proposal as being similar to the earlier LDP attempt to nationalize the shrine. Leading pro-Yasukuni groups objected to the de-enshrinement of the Class A war criminals and argued that such an action would trample the separation of state and religion

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doctrine (PHP Kenky¯ uj¯ o 2002: 249–51). Some LDP politicians have offered variations of the Nonaka proposal. For example, As¯ o Tar¯ o, when he was serving as foreign minister in the Koizumi cabinet, proposed transforming Yasukuni into a non-religious state-run memorial and designating the ceremonies there to be part of Japan’s cultural tradition rather than a religion (As¯ o 2006; Yoshida 2006a). Ironically, this option was a possibility back in December 1945 during discussions with Allied occupation authorities, but Japanese government representatives preferred to turn Yasukuni into a religious entity. As¯ o’s proposal did not get much traction, however, because Japanese liberals were suspicious that it was just a rehash of the 1969 LDP legislation to nationalize Yasukuni and because As¯ o did not directly address the salient question at the time: what to do about the Class A war criminals. De-enshrinement re-emerged as an option after the revelation about why Emperor Hirohito had stopped going to the Yasukuni Shrine after his November 1975 pilgrimage.5 In July 2006, the Nihon Keizai newspaper published a memorandum written by Tomita Tomohiko, the emperor’s chief steward, revealing that the emperor ceased the pilgrimages because of his displeasure about the enshrinement of Class A war criminals. Then in April 2007, the Asahi Shimbun published excerpts from the diaries of Urabe Ry¯ ogo, who was the emperor’s chamberlain, that seemed to corroborate the Tomita memo. In response, Koga Makoto, the LDP Diet member who was serving as both the party’s secretary-general and president of the Izokukai, convened a study group to consider removing the names of the Class A war criminals from the Yasukuni Repository. Koga and the majority of the Izokukai appeared interested in paving the way for a resumption of imperial pilgrimages. According to press reports, two-thirds of the study group’s members were receptive to considering how to go about de-enshrining the Class A war criminals. When Nakasone tried to remove the Class A war criminals in 1985, the Yasukuni head priest opposed strongly on doctrinal grounds and used the constitutional argument of state and religion separation to rebuff Nakasone. However, if the Izokukai were to insist on this change, the shrine might be persuaded to acquiesce since the Izokukai’s support is so critical to the shrine’s status in society. Koga himself suggested that given the state’s role in providing the names of war criminals for apotheosis at the shrine, the state should also be able to play a role in removing their names (Mainichi Shinbunsha 2007: 9–28; Yoshida 2006b; Breen 2008b: 2–7). Although the enshrinement of Class A war criminals has been the focus of much of the recent international and domestic controversy about Yasukuni, their de-enshrinement may not be sufficient to make the shrine widely acceptable as the key site for mourning and remembering the war dead. The Japanese emperor may become willing to resume imperial pilgrimages, but foreign dignitaries as well as those Japanese on the liberal end of the political spectrum may still be reluctant to pay homage there. To broaden the acceptance, it might be desirable to change Yasukuni even more. First, the shrine

Mike M. Mochizuki 49

could either remove the Y¯ ush¯ ukan war museum from the shrine grounds or drastically change the exhibition so that it gives a more balanced view of Japan’s past wars (T¯ og¯ o 2006: 8–9). Second, Yasukuni could build on the cosmopolitan and pacifist vision of chief priest Tsukuba. For example, the shrine could construct a larger and more prominent version of the Chinreisha to demonstrate that Yasukuni has shed its nationalistic ideology of the pre-1945 era in favour of a more universalistic way of consoling the spirits of the war dead. All of the above changes, however, would require the voluntary action of the shrine itself since the government is hamstrung by the constitution from compelling the shrine to make such changes.

Establishing a national secular memorial Another possible solution to the Yasukuni conundrum is to establish a national secular memorial that might encourage foreign as well as domestic dignitaries to pay their respects to the war dead. This idea is not new. Back in the 1950s, a “tomb of the unknown soldier” was built close to the imperial palace at Chidorigafuchi. In 1974 after the LDP abandoned its legislative goal of making Yasukuni a state-supported institution, then LDP Secretary-General Nakasone proposed the idea of a new memorial, but the idea met stiff opposition from the Izokukai (Seraphim 2006: 241). Since the mid-1960s, Japan has held annually on 15 August a national secular ceremony at Bud¯ okan in Tokyo to remember the war dead from World War II: but this is an event rather than a place of mourning. In 2002, an advisory group of then Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda Yasuo declared the necessity of establishing a non-religious and permanent memorial facility to remember the dead and pray for peace (Akazawa 2005: 246–9; Mitsuchi 2007: 76–9). The K¯ omeit¯ o, the LDP’s coalition partner, came out in favour of this option; but there was strong opposition from within the LDP and the Izokukai. A number of Asian leaders such as former Republic of Korea President Kim Dae Jung have strongly backed this option. Critics of this proposal have pointed out that a secular national memorial would not resolve the problem. They argue that such a new institution would end up coexisting with rather than replacing the shrine, thereby re-polarizing Japanese opinion and sustaining Yasukuni as a controversial issue (T¯ og¯ o 2006: 9). Nevertheless, the secular memorial option continues to be championed by liberal segments of Japan’s polity. In 15 August 2008, K¯ ono Y¯ ohei, speaker of the House of Representative, endorsed such a memorial during the Bud¯ okan ceremony (Hanai 2008). The leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Hatoyama Yukio, reiterated his support for this option during the August 2009 national election campaign. The DPJ has won a parliamentary majority and formed a government, but it remains to be seen how hard the DPJ will push to get the National Diet to legislate the establishment of a national secular memorial. Even the DPJ has some members who are committed

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to Yasukuni and hold nationalistic views of Japanese history. The ensuing debate might indeed reignite the Yasukuni issue, ending the relative calm that has existed since the post-2006 moratorium on prime ministerial pilgrimages. From a long-term perspective, however, there may be a way out of the conundrum. Despite the popularity of nationalistic manga [comic book] authors like Kobayashi Yoshinori, organized support for Yasukuni is ebbing. The Izokukai’s membership has already declined from approximately 8 million to about 1 million; and as the wartime generation passes from the scene, the organization is likely to shrink even further (Shibuichi 2005: 214–15). The difficulty the association is having in recruiting younger members will weaken its political ability to pressure Japanese leaders to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, especially in light of the recent changes in electoral politics and the party system. If a vigorous move to establish a secular memorial did emerge under a DPJ government, the Izokukai and the shrine’s governing council may become alarmed enough to consider seriously some of the above changes in Yasukuni in order to block the proposed new institution. Or if a new secular memorial did get established, rather than polarizing public opinion, the shrine might finally agree to de-enshrine the Class A war criminals and make other changes to encourage the emperor to visit Yasukuni, because that may be the only way to sustain the shrine as a key institution for remembering the war dead. Which, if any, of these outcomes will occur will be known only in the future. The Introduction to this volume relates the Northeast Asian “history problem” to a surfeit of memory on the part of Korea, China and other victims of Japan’s early twentieth-century colonialism and aggression. As we move across Asia, we find many obstacles to solving this problem, including reluctance to accept Japan’s expressions of regret. The present chapter concerns a stubborn Japanese obstacle blocking solution: Yasukuni. The key features of the Japanese case reside in a constitution requiring the separation of religious and political institutions and the investment of political power by popular election. Many exploit these conditions for their own purposes; but the majority of citizens are sincere in their devotion to the democracy that has protected the Yasukuni memorial. For a minority, it is true, Yasukuni has become a symbol of reaction and militarism, but it is also cherished by the survivors of millions who lost their lives during their nation’s wars. Therein resides the irony: no one person or institution in Japan has the power to purge the shrine of the meanings most Japanese citizens prefer to ignore.

Notes 1. These documents, entitled Shinpen Yasukuni jinja mondai shiryoshu [New Edition: Documents of the Yasukuni Shrine Issue], can be accessed at the following website: http://www.ndl.go.jp/jp/data/publication/document2007.html.

Mike M. Mochizuki 51 2. Class B and C war criminals were those convicted for conventional war crimes, crimes against humanity, or leadership responsibility for subordinates committing such crimes. 3. For Ienaga Sabur¯ o’s criticism of Hiraizumi, see Ienaga, S. and Minear: 81–3. 4. Among these 14, former Prime Minister Hiranuma Kiichir¯ o did not technically die in prison after receiving a life sentence at the Tokyo Trial, but he became ill while imprisoned and died shortly after being paroled in 1952. 5. Emperor Hirohito visited Yasukuni seven times after the end of the Allied occupation of Japan: 16 October 1952; 19 October 1954; 23 April 1957; 8 April 1959; 19 October 1965; 20 October 1969; and 21 November 1975 (Tanaka 2006: 32).

References Abe, S. (2006) Utsukushii kuni e [Toward a Beautiful Country]. (Tokyo: Bungei Shunj¯ u). Akazawa, S. (2005) Yasukuni Jinja: Semegiau “Senbotsusha tsuit¯o” no yukue [Yasukuni Shrine: Tracing the Clash about “Mourning the War Dead”]. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Antoni, K. (1988) “Yasukuni-Jinja and Folk Religion: The Problem of Vengeful Spirits”. Asian Folklore Studies Vol. 47, No. 1: 123–36. As¯ o, T. (2006) “Yasukuni ni ‘iyasaka’ are” [“‘Increasing Prosperity’ Exists for Yasukuni”]. Aso Taro Official Website (http://www.aso-taro.jp/lecture/talk/060808. html) (accessed 15 August 2009). Breen, J. (2004) “The Dead and the Living in the Land of Peace: A Sociology of the Yasukuni Shrine”. Morality Vol. 9, No. 1: 76–93. Breen, J. (ed.) (2008a) Yasukuni, the War Dead, and the Struggle for Japan’s Past (New York: Columbia University Press). Breen, J. (2008b) “Introduction: A Yasukuni Genealogy”. In Breen, J. 2008a: 1–21. Breen, J. (2008c) “Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory”. In Breen, J. 2008a: 143–62. Deans, P. (2007) “Diminishing Returns? Prime Minister Koizumi’s Visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in the Context of East Asian Nationalisms”. East Asia Vol. 24, No. 1: 269–94. Grove, L. (2006) “1932-nen J¯ ochi daigaku Yasukuni jiken” [The 1932 Sophia University Yasukuni Incident]. In K. Nakano (ed.), Yasukuni to mukiau (Tokyo: Mekong Publishing). Hanai, K. (2008) “The Road to Yasukuni’s Survival”. Japan Times. September 22. Hardacre, H. (1989) Shint¯o and the State, 1868–1988 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Hasegawa, T., and T¯ og¯ o, K. (eds) (2008) East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism (Westport: Praeger Security International). Ienaga, S. (2001) Japan’s Past, Japan’s Future: One Historian’s Odyssey. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Itagaki, T. (2000) Yasukuni k¯oshiki sanpai no s¯okatsu [Summary Account of Official Visits to Yasukuni]. (Tokyo: Tentensha). Kamisaka, F. (2006) Sens¯o o shiranai hito no tame no Yasukuni mondai [The Yasukuni Issue for Those Who Do Not Know War]. (Tokyo: Bungei Shunj¯ u). Kobayashi, T. (1979) “Yasukuni” mondai: Kemp¯o to Yasukuni h¯oan [The “Yasukuni” Problem: the Constitution and the Yasukuni Bill]. (Tokyo: Ky¯ oikusha).

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Mainichi, S. “Yasukuni” Shuzaihan. (2007) Yasukuni sengo hishi: A-ky¯u senpan o g¯oshi shita otoko [The Secret Postwar History of Yasukuni: The Man Who Enshrined the Class A War Criminals]. (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha). Mitsuchi, S. (2005) Yasukuni modai no genten [Starting Point of the Yasukuni Problem]. (Tokyo: Nihon Hy¯ oronsha). Mitsuchi, S. (2007) Atama o hiyasu tame no Yasukuni ron [A Yasukuni Analysis to Cool Heads]. (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo). Murakami, S. (1974) Irei to shokon: Yasukuni no shiso [Consoling and Inviting the Spirits of the Dead: The Thought of Yasukuni]. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Nakamura, N. (2007) Yasukuni: Shirarezaru Senryo shita no k¯ob¯o [Yasukuni: The Little Known Battle under the Occupation]. (Tokyo: Nihon H¯ os¯ o Kyoku). Nakasone, Y. (1995) “Reflections on Japan’s Past”. Asia-Pacific Review Vol. 2, No. 2 (Autumn/Winter): 53–71. ¯ Shinobu. (1984) Yasukuni Jinja [Yasukuni Shrine]. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Oe PHP Kenky¯ uj¯ o (ed.) (2002) Kensh¯o: Yasukuni mondai to wa nani ka [Verification: What Is the Yasukuni Issue?]. (Tokyo: PHP Kenky¯ uj¯ o). Rose, C. (2008) “Stalemate: The Yasukuni Shrine Problem in Sino–Japanese Relations”. In Breen, J. 2008: 23–46. Seraphim, F. (2006) War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center). Shibuichi, D. (2005) “The Yasukuni Shrine and the Politics of Identity in Japan”. Asian Survey Vol. 45, No. 2 (March/April): 197–215. Takahashi, T. (2005). Yasukuni mondai [Yasukuni Problem] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo). Takahashi, T. (2008) “Legacies of Empire: The Yasukuni Shrine Controversy”. In Breen 2008a: 105–24. Takayama, K.P. (1988) “Revitalization Movement of Modern Civil Religion”. Sociological Analysis Vol. 48, No. 4: 328–41. Tanaka, A. (2008) “The Yasukuni Issue and Japan’s International Relations”. In Hasegawa and T¯ og¯ o 2008: 119–41. Tanaka, N. (2002) Yasukuni no sengoshi [Postwar History of Yasukuni]. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Tanaka, N., Tanaka, H., and Hata, N. (1995). Izoku to sengo [The Bereaved and Postwar]. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Tokita, H. (2003) “Eleven Questions about Yasukuni Shrine”. Japan Echo Vol. 30, No. 3 (June): 48–9. T¯ og¯ o, K. (2006) “A Moratorium on Yasukuni Visits”. Far Eastern Economic Review Vol. 169, No. 5 (June): 5–15. T¯ og¯ o, K. (2008) “Japan’s Historical Memory: Overcoming Polarization toward Synthesis”. In Hasegawa and T¯ og¯ o 2008: 59–79. Wakamiya, Y. (1998) The Postwar Conservative View of Asia: How the Political Right Has Delayed Japan’s Coming to Terms with Its History of Aggression in Asia (Tokyo: LTCB International Library Foundation). Whiting, A.S. (1989) China Eyes Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press). Yamaori, T. (2003) “The Warped Wisdom of Religious Thought in Modern Japan”. Japan Echo Vol. 30, No. 3: 44–7. Yoshida, R. (2006a) “Aso Wants Yasukuni as Nonreligious War Memorial”. Japan Times. August 9. Yoshida, R. (2006b) “Yasukuni Gripes Still Dog Nation: Voices from Group of War Dead Kin want Class-A 14 out”. Japan Times. August 12.

2 Japanese Pacifism: Problematic Memory Mikyoung Kim

Memory and pacifism A majority of the Japanese people pride themselves in being citizens of a “peaceful and industrialized country” that rose from “the ashes like a phoenix”. As the primary source of Japan’s national pride, pacifism needs to be situated within the unresolved entanglement of present glory and past shame. Post-war Japan emerged as an economic world power benefiting from a protective American occupation and, later, a working alliance. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the other hand, became the historical precursor of its anti-nuclear pacifist sentiments. Somewhere between these two trajectories, the soul-searching of Japanese intellectuals caused by the troubling past has diminished in intensity. Often being compared to Germany, Japan has been the subject of numerous inquiries about its ambivalence towards the past (for example, Field 1997). Japan’s multiple identities—the aggressor in Asia and the Pacific, victim of indiscriminate US bombing and pacifist advocate—make for an interweaving of anomalous morality and memory. But why would memory have anything to do with morality? Memory often involves changing interpretations of the past reflecting changing predicaments of the present, whereas morality is assumed to be stable across time.1 The Hiroshima experience reminds us that the definition of peace is dictated by changes in social contexts. Hiroshima alerted the world to the appalling possibility for self-annihilation. The classical definition of peace, absence of war, has lost validity since then. Unprecedented progress in science and technology was pressed to the service of protection from our self-destructive impulses. Nuclear power ushered in an ominous era (Hiroshima Peace Culture Center 1991). Can a group, even in a pacifist nation, claim moral authority when unresolved grievances cause it to be ambivalent towards its past sins? Is the experience of victimhood sufficient to exonerate Japan from its past sins and grant it moral leadership? Japan’s Hiroshima is an ideal site to explore the complicated interweaving of contested morality and unsettled memory. 53

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Pacifism at the “empty centre” The psychologist Hayao Kawai has proposed the concept of the “empty centre” as the key to the Japanese mind and the axial principle of Japan’s culture. Beginning with Japanese mythology, he claims that the structure of Japanese culture, society, and human relations is held together by a vacuous moral centre, one characterized by deep-seated moral relativism. When forces confront one another on either side of this amoral zone, its emptiness serves as a buffer that prevents the confrontation from growing too intense (Kawai 1995). Similarly, Ishida described the Japanese “empty state of mind” where equanimity, associated with indiscriminate openness, and non-judgementalism are equated with a thoughtless and morally indifferent bliss (Ishida 1984). Kawai situates his theory in ancient myths and fairy tales, whereas Ishida resonates with Buddhist teachings. The empty centre, asserts Ishida, embodies a situational logic for conflict avoidance, not necessarily conflict resolution. The end result is temporary pacification, not permanent reconciliation (Sugiyama-Lebra 1984). Because aesthetic principles take higher priority in the Japanese mind than moral aspirations (Kawai 2006: 3–11), tensions aroused by the cultural dichotomies of tatemae-honne (front vs. honest inner feelings) and omote-ura (visible vs. hidden layers of self) are mitigated. In terms of Kawai and Ishida’s mental topography, this is because they are resolved of the vacuous centre which filters out moralistic sentiments. The Japanese are therefore inclined to perform situationally appropriate actions divorced from genuine feelings. If the assertion that “to remember (se souvenir de) something is at the same time to remember oneself (se souvenir de soi)” has a certain validity (Ricoeur 2004: 15), how does memory work at the empty centre of the Japanese mind? Remembering the difficult past can constitute an assault on perceptual aesthetics and is better to be avoided than directly confronted, whereas the act of forgetting can be functionally self-preserving. The efforts to search for and give meaning to the shameful past lose their appeal. As the empty centre filters out the unpleasant engagements with one’s own sins, difficult memories make the past unusable. My argument complements the observations made by Fukuoka and Schwartz in this volume on the Japanese ambiguity on war responsibility. The Japanese subjects described in their chapter regret their nation’s wrongdoings because they feel an obligation to do so. The artificial inducement of expected emotions, outcome of mental calculation rather than a reflection of genuine sincerity, are culturally embedded. The values that are ascribed by Northeast Asians to sincere atonement make reconciliation a complicated process. Japanese assessments of the past have been in constant flux. As the circumstances involved in preparing, prosecuting and ending the war remain unearthed (Hasegawa 2005), the interpretations of the war are often ideologically loaded (Sono 2005; Watanabe 2006). The ideological pendulum,

Mikyoung Kim

55

swinging between the Right and the Left, has presented opposing views of the war (Dower 1997), and public opinion has been accordingly split in assessing it (Fukuoka 2007). The Left, spearheaded by progressive circles such as The Asahi Newspaper and Iwanami Publisher, continues to push for war compensation and acknowledgement of war responsibility. The Ienaga history textbook trials in Japanese courts show the Left’s tenancity in the form of multiple lawsuits launched against the government. The Right, on the other hand, has been a strong advocate of Japanese nationalism. The successful 2007 revision of the Fundamental Law of Education opened a way to instill patriotism and accentuate Japanese identity in the school curriculum. Tsukurukai, an association of conservative historians and journalists, has published their version of history, New History Textbook, to counterbalance the Left’s narratives. Conservatives believe in teaching more about Japan’s glory than its shame. Despite the resulting ideological divide, Japanese history is rich with accounts of strategic compromises between political rivals, as powerfully demonstrated by Mochizuki’s analysis of Yasukuni shrine controversies in this volume. The movement of the ideological tide determines who gets to be heard and who gets silenced within a specific socio-political milieu. With tactical innovation as an option, ideology and repeated issues belong to two separate and yet mutable realms. As a country with 8 million divinities, Japanese ambivalence at the “empty centre” does not cause perceptual confusion (Bellah 1970: 114–44). Pervasive cultural norms permit simultaneous multiple contrasts. The Japanese, thus, interpret divinities as “a superior and mysterious force of either creative or destructive character, which resides in natural elements, animals, and certain human beings; it causes ambivalent feelings of fear and gratitude and is the focus of ritual behavior” (Kodansha 2005: 139). Rather than a single social reality, a number of possible perspectives on both self and social life are acknowledged. Interaction in Japanese society then focuses on the definition of the appropriate choice of various possibilities. This means that what one says and does will be different in different situations, depending on how one defines one’s particular perspective versus the social other (Doi 2001). As the context dictates the character of a manifested deity, the ebb and flow of time determine contemporaneous war-memories. The multifarious Japanese mind is not in itself a post-modern phenomenon. While Western post-modernism conceives multiple truths as opposed to the Truth in order to deconstruct an underlying power structure, its antithetical proposition is to challenge binary opposition and the dogmatic truth claim. Because the search for divine intentions in human sufferings is non-existent in Japan (for example, Kraft 2002; Downey 2003), war testimonies mainly focus on personalized guilt for having survived meaningless death (Lifton 1999: 81–4). The wrong in one context can be the right in another, for the Japanese acceptance of multiple truths accommodates situational variations. Interpretive flexibility thus undermines stringent moral judgement.

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Japan’s political and economic success has resulted from its adaptability. When confronted by the Western colonial powers in the late nineteenth century, Japan quickly adapted itself to the geopolitics of imperialism by becoming an imperial power itself (Ishida 2000: 11–43; Saaler and Koschmann 2007). After defeating China and Russia, it aggressively acquired colonies in Asia. As an extension of its territorial expansion, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor—a strategic miscalculation leading to its unconditional surrender after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (Takaki 1996; Walker 1997; cf. Hasegawa 2007). Ironically, the defeat set the stage for a period of phenomenal economic growth, placing Japan second in the world economy. With the 1946 Peace Constitution as the ideological backbone of its mercantile pacifism, Japan succeeded on a grand scale. Yet “making it” requires situational awareness, diagnosis of self-interests and strategic exploitation of competitive advantage. As Japan’s historical trajectory is often attributed to a Social Darwinistic mentality (Ishida 2000: 11–43), the nation’s colonization of the less powerful was an “inevitable” historical course. So was Japan’s “subjugated independence” of the US after defeat. Drawing on “the survival of the fittest” paradigm, Japan ascended in the global market by finding its own competitive niche as a country “with poor natural resource endowment and abundant skilled labourers.” Because Japan’s mercantilist pacifism lacks a transcendent religious centre, it has never involved moralistic quest (Bellah 1970: 118–19).

Hiroshima’s A-bomb and pacifist Japan: identity transformations The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the decisive events marking Japan as torch-bearer of anti-nuclear pacifism (Buruma 1995: 92; Yoneyama 1999; Igarashi 2000),2 and the sense of victimization was the impetus behind its new identity. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, unprecedented in nature and massive in scale, served as a powerful tool in exempting Japan from its war responsibility. Japan saw itself more of a victim of American brutality and less as the victimizer of the Asia-Pacific. This transformation constitutes the core of Japan’s pacifist leadership (Kim 2000). Debates about Japan’s pacifism are usually cast in terms of realpolitik. Realists argue that the US military umbrella is a necessary support of the nation’s economy, and the Peace Constitution is its shield in the global military theatre. Katzenstein (1996: 196–7) summarizes the realist views as follows: Japan was destroyed in the Pacific War, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki became powerful symbols of that destruction. The American Occupation reorganized Japanese politics, and for half a century thereafter American troops stationed in Japan and the U.S. nuclear umbrella protected Japan. Under the Pax Americana Japan grew rich, and so the discredited militarist tradition had no allure for the Japanese public. Japan defined

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security in economic and political terms and resisted all attempts to make military policy more important—exactly what one would expect. In other words, pacifism delivers economic prosperity, and Japan has gained wealth at the price of victimhood. But such analyses fail to help us see the multiplicity of Japanese pacifism. Japanese pacifism has had many faces amid political bipolarization at home and has been in flux relative to the international milieu. The Japanese victim mentality developed in tandem with the narratives in school textbooks. Accentuation of ordinary people’s war-time pain and suffering also marginalized the memory of Japan’s acts of aggression. Post-war pedagogical contents further deepened the victim mentality by attributing responsibility to the Emperor and the military government. The first postwar history textbook, The Country’s Footsteps, represented a radical departure from pre-war pedagogical guidelines issued under the Imperial Rescript on Education. Emphasizing democratic values of egalitarianism and human rights, the first post-war textbooks alluded to the government’s accountability for having started the war and causing great hardship on the people (Gluck 1993: 68). Ordinary people were “duped” by the leaders and they should be exempted from war responsibility. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (1946–1948) effectively put an end to the debates by focusing on a limited number of top war-time leaders. Chukyo Shuppan’s A Bright Society in the 1950s was also vehement in blaming the military and state for massive human casualties. Another publication during the same period, Kyoiku Shuppan’s Japan and the World, was the first to include narratives about the Hiroshima-bombing. It described Japan as the “first country to receive the tragic damage of atomic bombs” (Orr 2002: 84). It was at this time that Japan linked its atomic victimization to its “unique” moral leadership in “building world peace” (Ibid. 85). The sequence of identity transformation from genocide victim to pacifist hero, however, has temporal, empirical and moral gaps. As for the temporal gap, the public’s nuclear awareness did not immediately follow the bombings. With the banning of all materials on the bombings by the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, the general public was kept in the dark about Hiroshima and Nagasaki until the early 1950s (Gluck 1993: 66; Dower 1999: 412–13).3 Due to imposed silence, Japan’s pacifist anti-nuclear movement did not begin until the 1954 Bikini Incident, when the crew of a Japanese fishing vessel, Lucky Dragon, was exposed to fallout from a US hydrogen bomb test on the Bikini Atoll near the Marshall Islands (Mizumoto 2006: 18). One of its 23 crew members died of radiation poisoning. Thereafter, amid heightened awareness of nuclear weapons, the Japanese public began to attend to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and their effects. Ubuki (1999) reports a threefold increase in the number of radiation victim testimonials printed by the Japanese media after the Lucky Dragon incident. Of the total 964 testimonials, about one third (249) were printed before

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the hydrogen bomb fallout incident and the remainder (715) appeared thereafter. Hibakusha, used as an original noun, is a Japanese word for atomic bomb victim. An editorial in The Asahi Newspaper of 6 August 1970, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hiroshima-bombing, linked Japan’s pacifist nationalism to the Lucky Dragon incident: [We] the Japanese who were exposed to nuclear weapons three times, in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and, in 1954, on the Daigo Fukuryu-maru [Lucky Dragon], did not reduce these experiences to matters of racism or antiAmericanism, but rather reflected at the level of all humanity and worked toward the anti-war and nuclear weapons ban . . . The demand to ban war and nuclear weapons which grew out of experiences with nuclear weapons should have become the central pillar of new Japanese nationalism, based on Peace Constitution. It could have been much like the nationalism developed at the time of the French Revolution, based on freedom, equality and fellowship, which aimed toward international ideals. (The Asahi Newspaper 6 August 1970) The furore over the Lucky Dragon incident continued to deepen the sense of victimization at the hands of the Americans. For the commemoration of the 1973 anniversary of the Hiroshima-bombing, The Asahi Newspaper carried the following editorial: We must not spend the anniversary day of the atomic bombing merely as a day of memorial and ceremony. The Japanese were made into victims of American nuclear [weapons] three times, including the Lucky Dragon exposure to the [hydrogen bomb test] in the Bikini atoll. Today must be the day to appeal to the entire world [to recognize] the cruelty of nuclear weapons and renew our commitment to keep working toward the abolition of these weapons in the name of humanity. (The Asahi Newspaper 6 August 1973) It was a fisherman’s death from radiation exposure and contaminated tuna that drove Japan’s pacifist awareness home. The total numbers of hibakusha in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 159,283 and 73,884, respectively.4 Of the total, the majority of foreign hibakusha were Koreans (numbering 50,000 in Hiroshima and 20,000 in Nagasaki). They had been conscripted to work at military supplies factories. Despite a series of lawsuits filed against the Tokyo government by the Korean hibakushas seeking medical relief, it was not until 1990 that the Japanese government finally took steps to assist them. A total of 4 billion yen was allocated as Humanitarian Medical Treatment Funds. The 1990 measures, however, did not settle issues involving foreign hibakushas who subsequently left Japan.5

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They are still denied benefits for all practical purposes. Despite their advancing years, they are required to travel to Japan to receive medical attention. Litigation continues at various local courts to this day.6 Amid the heightening sense of nuclear victimization in the aftermath of the Lucky Dragon incident, the Korean victims were still invisible. A Japanese hibakusha stated, “All the Japanese [A-bomb] victims were also aggressors towards the Korean victims. We did not care to consider them as one of us.”7 A former prefectural government official continues by saying that “The Japanese are self-absorbed people. We take our own pains and suffering the most seriously while being dismissive of others’ misery.”8 Sil Geun Lee, President of the Council of Atom-bombed Koreans in Hiroshima Prefecture, describes the double victimization of Koreans exposed to the atomic bombs: “Why do you think tens of thousands of Koreans had to suffer from the A-bombing of Japan, even though they did not start the war? Without Japanese colonial rule in the Korean peninsula and the fact that Koreans were brought forcefully to Japan, few Koreans would have suffered from the A-bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To put it plainly, Korean A-bomb victims were created by Japanese aggression and colonial rule in the Korean peninsula. Many Japanese people do not acknowledge this fact” (Hiroshima Peace Institute 2007: 2).

Post-war politics Japan’s Peace Constitution of 1946 was the product of imposition, not self-reflexive soul-searching. In the early 1950s Japan went through bitter in-fighting among bureaucrats and power elites on its future directions. The post-war Yoshida Cabinet (1949–1954) also tried to rebuild the army only to renounce the proposal later in the pursuit of economic benefits under US tutelage (Dower 1997: 208–41). Prime Ministers Hatoyama Ichiro (1954–1955) and Kishi Nobusuke (1957–1958) were purged after they failed to achieve rearmament. They tried to defy the Peace Constitution out of resentment towards the US and fear of expanding Communism in Asia. They were not the first who attempted to rearm the country. During the same period, Japan became surreptitiously involved in the Korean War (1950–1953). It dispatched thousands of transportation and logistics experts under US and UN command, and Japanese constituted two-thirds of the ship support crew at the port city of Incheon in South Korea (Katzenstein 1996: 197). The Japanese conglomerates also cashed in on the Korean War by providing UN forces with dual-use technology.9 The biggest loophole in Japan’s pacifist leadership, then, derives from the history of victimizing others. Its own provocation of war and the existence of foreign atomic bomb victims pose a dilemma to its moral authority. This dilemma is concretized in the Hiroshima Peace Museum.

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The Hiroshima Peace Museum: milieu, debates and compromises With victimhood defining Hiroshima’s place in Japan’s pacifism, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is the authoritative commemorative site (Nelson and Olin 2003: 3–4). Hiroshima tells its story to local, national and international audiences through exhibits seeking to help visitors “get in touch with history” (Barthel 1996: 9). Since its opening in August 1955,10 the museum has been a space of contention on what to present and how. Debate was most divisive during the period between 1985 and 1994. The thorniest issues were the proposals to include narratives about Hiroshima’s past and the installation of the “Kagaisha [Aggressor] Corner”. The milieu Japan in the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a sudden explosion of interest in the past and Asia (Orr 2002). Major domestic changes were the 1989 death of the Showa Emperor and the end of the Liberal Democratic Party’s 38 years of rule. The popular taboo on discussing war responsibility was eased accordingly. Salient changes in the international environment were also taking place. “Japan bashing” by the US was affecting bilateral relations. The emergence of Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) alerted Tokyo to Asia’s rising importance. The rising competition between the US and Japan, and the increasing status of Asia resulted in a series of policy and attitudinal changes.11 The Japanese memory terrain was no exception in this. When a public opinion survey, a most effective indicator of the presentist interpretation of the past, asked to assess Japan’s history from the Meiji period to 1945, 48 per cent of respondents answered that it was a “history of aggression” while 25 per cent disagreed. When asked whether Japan’s military expansion against other countries was “unavoidable”, the responses were almost evenly divided with 40 per cent agreeing and 42 per cent disagreeing.12 The Japanese were also showing a remarkable situational awareness of Asians’ perceptions of them. A Mainichi Newspaper survey of December 1988 asked why the Japanese were perceived as arrogant by other countries. A majority of 33 per cent attributed this to Japanese pride in their country’s economic successes followed by 30 per cent who pointed to Japan’s contemptuous attitude towards other Asians.13 Among the major policy changes at the time were extending apologies. Several Japanese prime ministers and the Emperor apologized to Asian countries for Japan’s past aggression. According to a Yomiuri Newspaper poll, 53 per cent of respondents approved and 25 per cent disapproved of Prime Minister Hosokawa’s apology in 1993.14 The scope of debates about the war was expanding, but within the context of political polarization. Leading conservative politicians and cabinet members continued to make offensive remarks about the war both on and off the record (Orr 2002: 178). Masayuki Fujio, the newly appointed Education Minister in the Nakasone Cabinet, remarked that “killing people in war is

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not murder in terms of international law” and that the Tokyo War Crimes Trial “cannot be considered just”. He also equated Japanese visiting the Yasukuni Shrine with Chinese visiting Confucian temples. Fujio, among others, further claimed that the Nanjing Massacre was a fabrication (Bungei Shunju 1986). Despite the noticeable changes in the milieu, the “true believers” such as Fujio resisted war responsibility. The situational context determines whose voice gets to be heard. Hiroshima’s museum renovation project was a telling case in point where competing voices of the war vied against each other. Given the variations in Japanese local politics, the Hiroshima experience cannot be generalized to other locales. The contention over the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was about how one traumatized city wished to be remembered. The Kagaisha Corner The museum was a popular tourist spot attracting more than 1 million visitors each year even before the 1985 renovation project started. Many schools, especially those in the Kansai and Tokyo areas, chose Hiroshima for their field trips. In 1985 the city announced a plan to expand the exhibit space of the museum and to augment its “fragile edificial structure”. As the plan was publicized, several citizens’ groups such as Hiroshima for World Peace and Anti-Nuclear Association for Peace Movement called for the exhibit inclusion of Hiroshima’s military role in Japan’s colonial past. Groups with progressive agendas wanted the city to amend the public understanding that Hiroshima was an innocent victim of the A-bomb. Amid growing public interest in the project, the director of the Mayor’s Office asked the Exhibit-Planning Committee members for their “advice for the new exhibit contents which were appropriate to convey the truth of the atomic bombing and appeal for world peace” (The Chugoku Newspaper 7 August 1985). The Committee consisted of opinion leaders from local universities, media and the Board of Education. In the spring of 1987, The Chugoku Newspaper, the local newspaper, reported the city’s accommodative attitude towards the four citizens groups requesting that the city exhibit Japan’s “history of aggression”. Because the current museum exhibit focused only on Hiroshima’s victimization, it failed to present an objective representation of the past to future generations. They insisted that the new museum include narratives on Hiroshima’s past as a major military base with crucial transportation logistics facilities and as a centre of arms production. As the debate over the contents of the exhibit became heated, the museum became the focus of a “memory war”. The progressives seemed to have prevailed. In July 1987, the Director of the Mayor’s Office announced a plan to include the city’s past as a military base in the museum renovation project. Developments took an unexpected turn in August 1987 when local Korean hibakusha support groups, including the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association of Hiroshima, made a request to the city to include narratives

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not only about Hiroshima’s past but also about the suffering of Korean hibakushas. The city agreed to consider the Korean petition. Such deliberation had two main objectives: to explore Japan’s war responsibility in Asia and to recognize the Korean hibakushas. When the local newspaper reported that the city had decided to install a “Kagaisha Corner” in the new museum (The Chugoku Newspaper 21 September 1987), conservative groups such as the Japanese Hibakusha Association and the Association of Bereaved Hibakusha Families reacted strongly. “The conspiracy” to classify “our fellow countrymen” as “victimizers”, argued one conservative city council member, “would leave a deep scar on Japanese children” (Record of Regular Council Meeting 19 May 1987). Others opposed the plan for its “politicization” of the museum, which was “supposed” to be a “sacred site” for the hibakusha and their families. The museum renovation project ignited a memory war along deeply bifurcated ideological lines. The conservatives tried to bury Hiroshima’s strategic importance during the war, while local peace activists and Korean hibakushas tried to shed light on the dark side of Hiroshima history. The city under mounting pressure from conservatives found itself forced to re-consider the installation plan. After a meeting with progressive citizens groups in November 1987, the city declined to hold further meetings because the officials were “scared of right-wing nationalists”. The council members also believed that holding further meetings with the progressive groups could hurt their own election prospects given the conservative citizenry. With the progressives thus losing ground, the city decided to withdraw the original plan to install the Kagaisha Corner at the expanded museum space. The following spring, the city, still faced with inquiries made by the conservative groups, stated that its political position on the war was congruent with that of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita who had remarked that “Whether the war in the Pacific was a war of aggression or not should be determined by historians of the future generation.” This statement prompted strong reactions from both sides. In April–May 1988, during a committee meeting, a city official briefed the Exhibit Committee on the pros and cons of having a Kagaisha Corner. He said: “The City of Hiroshima needs to take into consideration possible reactions from the visitors regarding the exhibition contents on Japanese aggression. What if they considered the atomic bombing as an inevitable outcome? That interpretation would contradict our intention to convey the Spirit of Hiroshima; moreover, we are afraid that such interpretation would disturb the souls of A-bomb victims.” One interviewee remarked that “the progressives’ arguments sounded as if all the innocent people died in vain. It was too much for the bereaved families to bear . . . we just could not insult the dead like that . . . they were the innocent victims” (Interview 25 November 2007). As the memory debate became more rancorous, the city conveniently adopted the evasive policy of

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the central government: historical judgement belongs to future generations, not contemporaries. Japan’s hollow centre permits this compromise because it promotes communal harmony. Conflict is better to be avoided than resolved. On the other hand, this same official conceded that “Hiroshima has a responsibility to convey the ‘truth of atomic bombing’; therefore, we plan to exhibit Hiroshima’s ‘historical facts,’ such as its role as a major military base and an education center, at the new museum” (minutes of the committee meeting, Hiroshima International Conference Hall 7 June 1993). But the committee officially dropped the idea of building a Kagaisha Corner. Continuing ideological divide Although the local government made a concession to conservatives regarding the Kagaisha Corner, it pressed on to accommodate the Korean victims. The progressive City Mayor and former journalist with The Chugoku Newspaper, Mr Takashi Hiraoka, acknowledged the existence and the suffering of foreign A-bomb victims in the 1990 Peace Declaration: We strongly appeal to the government of Japan to use the Survey of Atomic Bomb victims in promptly instituting a systematic program of support of the hibakusha grounded upon the principle of national indemnification. At the same time, we earnestly hope that positive efforts will be made to promote support for those hibakusha resident on the Korean Peninsula, in the United States, and elsewhere, and we rededicate ourselves to the cause of peace. (The City of Hiroshima 6 August 1990) The local newspaper continued to carry opinion pieces that informed the public of Japan’s past aggression and war responsibility. It also emphasized the unique role that Japan must play for the cause of world peace: Japan inflicted much suffering and grief upon the people of Asia and the South Pacific under its colonial rule, occupation, and battles during World War II. Bitter memories still live inside those people. Moreover, we must not forget that these acts were carried out in the name of “peace” and “justice.” Instead of dispatching the Self Defense Forces, Japan can contribute to the international community, for example, by providing medical treatment for victims of nuclear tests and waste, which has already been initiated by Hiroshima, but can be an undertaking of the atom-bombed state. (The Chugoku Newspaper 6 August 1991) After the Japanese government’s first public acknowledgement in 1991 of the existence of Korean hibakushas, the city again issued a call to address the suffering endured by foreign, especially Korean, A-bomb victims:15

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Japan inflicted great suffering and despair on the peoples of Asia and the Pacific during its reign of colonial domination and war. There can be no excuse for these actions. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Pacific War. Remembering all too well the horror of this war, starting with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ending with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are determined anew to work for world peace . . . we earnestly hope that forthright efforts will be made to promote support for those hibakusha resident on the Korean Peninsula, in the United States, and elsewhere. We call upon the government of Japan to do more in all of these areas. (The City of Hiroshima 6 August 1991)

The theme panel Five years after the city dropped the idea of installing a Kagaisha Corner, it convened a meeting of the Panel-Writing Committee in March 1993, which was in charge of supervising the rewriting of the East Building panels at the new museum. The committee mostly consisted of historians from the local universities. During the meeting, members argued that it was not Hiroshima’s place to bear all responsibility for Japan’s war-related wrongdoings. When it convened again three months later, the committee devoted itself solely to a debate on “how to combine the truths about the bombing” (that is, Hiroshima as a military base) and the “Hiroshima Spirit” (that is, Hiroshima as the leader of pacifism). While some advocated an “objective manner” in approaching the painful past, others expressed concerns about the implications that “the atomic bombs liberated Asia from Japan’s aggression.” The difficulty was how simultaneously to link Japan’s aggression to Hiroshima’s victimization. In the fall of the same year, September 1993, Mayor Hiraoka intervened in the committee proceeding, suggesting that the theme panel title be changed from “Hiroshima and the War” to “Hiroshima Before and After the Bombing”. This action reflected the change in Japanese public opinion away from a focus on Japan as victim to a greater consciousness of Japan’s pre-war and war-time aggression (minutes of the meeting, Hiroshima International Conference Hall 10 September 1993). A January 1994 Chugoku Newspaper article reported that the “Hiroshima Before and After the Bombing” section would be included in the new museum exhibition. Unlike in 1987, the article did not provoke public outrage. Due to the city’s continuing progressive efforts in the intervening years, the citizens became more aware of Japan’s acts of aggression during the war. Most importantly, the consensus on the panel re-writing resulted in a tacit compromise between the two ideological camps. Since the progressives had lost their cause to install Kagaisha Corner in 1988, the conservatives conceded on the panel writing in 1994.16 The East Hall of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, formerly the Peace Memorial Hall, “the Space for Learning”, was opened in June 1994 after

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ten years of planning. The new panel texts are much more explicit in acknowledging Japan’s past aggression and victimization of other peoples: In 1931, the Manchurian Incident led to the Japanese army’s engagement in armed conflict in China. By 1937, the incident had become a full-scale war between the two nations. In 1941, a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor hurtled Japan into the Pacific War (World War II), allied with the Axis powers. Following military orders, many Hiroshima factories shifted production from consumer to military goods. People’s lives grew increasingly austere, and many civilians were mobilized at the front or in military factories. Among them were tens of thousands of Korean and Chinese forced to work for the Japanese. (Panel A2201 “Hiroshima in the Showa Period and during War”) The National Mobilization Law of April 1938 led in July 1939 to an outright order to mobilize available workers. Workers in private corporations were forced to work in military factories, including Koreans and other ethnic minorities. Thousands of people throughout the prefecture were drafted to work at such locations as the electric power plant in northern Hiroshima Prefecture and military factories in the city. Many forced laborers survived extremely harsh working conditions only to die in the atomic bombing. (Panel A2203b “Forced Labor Program for Ethnic Minorities”) Activists engage in various tactical innovations after weighing the costs and benefits of making challenging actions (Jenkins 1985). The controversies regarding the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum make for a story of political compromise, a story hardly inspired by pacifist ideology. Its trajectory reflects the shifting milieu of municipal and national politics. Hiroshima memory, thus, interweaves culture, politics and morality. As the social contest shifts, memory and pacifism follow (Sasaki-Uemura 2002). As “empty centre pacifism” conforms to situational demands, it reflects the ethos and worldview of pragmatic Japanese aestheticism (Geertz 1973: 127). Memory, therefore, is a direct expression of the national mentalité. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum continues to attract many visitors from all over the world. In 1993, 1.39 million people visited the museum. In 1995, it reached 1.55 million, and 1.35 million in 2008.

Conclusion For a country of identity fragmentation and ruptured memories (Kim 2000), the act of sincere mourning and experiencing remorse could be too much of

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a strain on Japan’s empty centre (Conrad 2003: 85). The contemporary history of Japan thus escapes Connerton’s (1999: 6) observation that “It is not just that it is very difficult to begin with a whole new start, that too many old loyalties and habits inhibit the substitution of a novel enterprise for an old and established one.” Our inquiry into Japanese memory shows the need for contextual sensitivities. Consideration of situational appropriateness allows little room for universal objectivity as a code of conduct, sentiment and moral judgement (Chung 2006: 271). Hiroshima’s memories therefore fail to support the stringent criteria of universalized moral discourse (Margalit 2004). Debates over the Peace Memorial Museum renovation project demonstrate the interactive processes of recollection involving shifting socio-political milieus and actors of different dispositions. These controversies illuminate two dynamics in Hiroshima’s memory. One is the city’s ideational tension between a shameful past and moralistic present. Today’s banner of the “Hiroshima Spirit” contradicts its past acts of aggression, and the city’s museum displays had to strike a balance between these two contrasting identities. Another dynamic is political bifurcation and subsequent compromise. Political bifurcation originates from the passionate belief in an ideology, and that is a moral exercise. Making a compromise, on the other hand, is an act of strategic calculation for the sake of peaceful co-existence, and that is a utilitarian consideration. Had the discursive trajectory of the museum renovation been both moralistic and utilitarian, the foundational ethics of pacifist ideology would have been less confusing. As it is, Japan’s pacifism risks being reduced to a situational modus operandi rather than a strict moral principle.17 This chapter on Hiroshima memory argues, through analysis of museum planning and exhibits, that Japanese pacifism can be better defined as a “pacifist movement” which rides the tide of political opportunity rather than an ideology of foundational ethics. An ideology keeps its ethical foundations relatively free of strategic calculations, whereas a movement fluctuates with changes in the political opportunity structure (Jenkins and Klandermans 1995). What is constant, however, is the inconstancy of Japan’s cultural system, its continual adaptation to changing political situations, and its inflexible axial principal of moral flexibility.

Notes 1. For Margalit (2004), morality is universal; ethics, particular. He argues that memory has greater salience as an ethical construct than a moral category because of the psychological distance among the involved parties. 2. Japan’s pacifist movement before the 1945 bombings was mostly anti-war and anti-militarism. Four leading groups of pacifists were literary intellectuals (for example, Katai Tayama and Akiko Yoshino), liberals (for example, Sazuko Yoshino and Yukio Ozaki), Christian leaders (Gien Kashiwagi and Kiyoshi Kabe) and Socialists (for example, Shihiko Sakaito and Masen Kataya). For more details,

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4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

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see Hiroshima Peace Culture Center (1991) The Dictionary of Peace [Heiwajiten] (Tokyo: Keisoshobo). SCAP banned dissemination of all information about itself, the Tokyo Trials and Allied Powers to the public. On the domestic side, information about war propaganda, the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and feudalistic remnants such as the celebration of Samurai virtues were also banned (Dower 1999: 412–13). The total number killed due to the atomic bombings is difficult to estimate due to the circumstances of the events. Many of those who survived the bombing and radiation exposure have since died, and it is sometimes not possible to determine whether those deaths were the result of radiation exposure or of natural causes (The Cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Editorial Committee of Disaster History 1979: 27). About 15,000 victims from Hiroshima and 8000 from Nagasaki returned to Korea at the end of the war, but about 5000 and 2000 from the respective cities chose to remain in Japan (Nakamura 2006). Interview 16 March 2008. Interview 15 February 2007. Interview 11 November 2006. As for further evidence of Japan’s problematic approach to pacifist principles, recently declassified Japanese government documents show that Prime Minister Sato, a winner of the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize, asked the US to use nuclear weapons against China if a war breaks out between China and Japan (The Japan Times, http://japantimes.co.jp, accessed 22 December 2008). Construction of the original Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall began the year after the passage of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Reconstruction Law in 1949. Construction of the annex, the Hiroshima Memorial Museum, began in 1951. The Hall, “devoted to the issues of peace and culture”, was opened to the public in May 1955. Since its opening, the museum has had more than 53 million visitors (The Japan Times 10 June 2006). A Harris Poll taken in November 1989 shows that 57 per cent of the respondents agreed that the US was trying to bully Japan on trade issues, while 27 per cent disagreed (Index to International Public Opinion 1988–1989: 197, quoted in Fukuoka 2007: 133). Ibid. 168. Ibid. 172. Ibid. 172. The same message continued until the 1994 Declaration of Peace which stated: “We must obviously never forget Japan’s war against and colonial domination of other nations of Asia” (The City of Hiroshima 6 August 1994). Interview 29 November 2006. This statement is not to negate the pervasive anti-militaristic culture and antinuclear activism in Japan. The country has numerous peace museums and most of them are privately owned and operated (Hein and Takenaka 2007). Also visit http://www.npo-kyouiku.org/index.html for the list of such museums listed by prefecture.

References The Asahi Newspaper (1970) Editorial, 6 August. Barthel, D. L. (1996) Historical Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).

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Bellah, R. N. (1970) Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harpers & Row Publishers). Buruma, I. (1995) The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York: A Meridian Book). The Chugoku Newspaper (1946) Editorial, 6 August. ——— (1985) Editorial, 7 August. ——— (1987) Editorial, 28 May. ——— (1987) Editorial, 21 September. ——— (1991) Editorial, 3 January. Chung, C. (2006) “Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture”, Philosophy East & West, 56, 253–80. The City of Hiroshima (1991) Peace Declaration. The Cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Editorial Committee of Disaster History (1979) The Atomic Disaster in Hiroshima and Nagasaki [Hiroshima-Nagasaki’no Genbakusaigai] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten). Connerton, P. (1999) How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Conrad, S. (2003) “Entangled Memories: Visions of the Past in Germany and Japan, 1945–2001”, Journal of Contemporary History, 38(1), 85–99. Doi, T. (2001) The Anatomy of Self: The Individual Versus Society (Tokyo: Kodansha Bilingual Books). Dower, J. (1997) “Triumphal and Tragic Narratives of the War in Asia” in L. Hein and M. Selden (eds) Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe). Dower, J. (1999) Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton and Company). Downey, J. K. (2003) “Suffering as Common Ground” in M. Monshipouri, N. Englehart, A. J. Nathan and K. Philip (eds) Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization (Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe). Field, N. (1997) “War and Apology: Japan, Asia, the Fiftieth, and After”, Positions, 5(1), 2–49. Fukuoka, K. (2007) Collective Memory and External Others: Explaining Japan’s Ideational Shift on War Memories in the 1990s, Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, U.S.A. Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books). Gluck, C. (1993) “The Past in the Present” in A. Gordon (ed.) Postwar Japan as History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press). Hasegawa, T. (2005) Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Hasegawa, T. (2007) “Introduction” in T. Hasegawa (ed.) The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Hein, L. and Takenaka, A. (2007) “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States since 1995”, Pacific Historical Review, 76(1), 61–94. Hiroshima Peace Culture Center (1991) The Dictionary of Peace [Heiwajiten] (Tokyo: Keisoshobo). Hiroshima Peace Institute (2007) “Shabetsudewanaku Kyouseiwo [Leaving Discrimination Behind, Moving Toward Co-Existence]”, Hiroshima Research News, 9 (March), 2–3. Igarashi, Y. (2000) Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970 (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press).

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Ishida, T. (1984) “Conflict and Its Accommodation: Omote-Ura and Uchi-Soto Relations” in E. Krauss, T. P. Rohlen and P. G. Steinhoff (eds), Conflict in Japan (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press). Ishida, T. (2000) Remembering and Forgetting: The Homogenization Policy, War Responsibility and Collective Memory [Kioku’to Bokyaku’no Douka’seisaku• Sensou’ seikinin• Shugoteki Kioku] (Tokyo: Akaishishoten). The Japan Times (2006) “New A-bomb museum chief to revamp exhibits”, 10 June. The Japan Times (2008) “Sato Wanted U.S. Ready to Nuke China”, 22 December, http://japantimes.co.jp, accessed on 22 December 2008. Jenkins, C. (1985) The Politics of Insurgency: Farm Worker Movements of the 1960s (New York: Columbia University Press). Jenkins, C. and Klandermans, B. (1995) “Introduction” in C. Jenkins and B. Klandermans (eds) The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives on States and Social Movements (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Katzenstein, P. J. (1996) Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). Kawai, H. (1995) Dreams, Myths and Fairly Tales in Japan (Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon). Kawai, H. (2006) The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan (Greene, NY: Spring Publishing). Kim, J. S. (2000) “A Study on Post-War Japanese Historical Perception [Jeon’hu Ilbonin’eui Yoksa’insik’ae’kwanhan Kochal]”, Journal of Korean Political Science, 34(4), 259–77. Kim, S. J. (2005) “Kiouk’eui Jungchi’hak: Yasukuni vs. Hiroshima [Politics of Remembering: Yasukuni vs. Hiroshima]”, Journal of Korean Political Science, 39(5), 215–36. Kodansha Bilingual Books (2005) Keys to the Japanese Heart and Soul (Tokyo: Kodansha Bilingual Books). Kraft, R. N. (2002) Memory Perceived: Recalling the Holocaust (New York: Praeger). Kumakura, I. (2007) “The Culture of Ma”, Japan Echo (February), 56–60. Le Goff, J. (1992) History and Memory (Columbia, NY: Columbia University Press). Lifton, R. J. (1999) The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press). Margalit, A. (2004) The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Mizumoto, K. (2006) “Japanese Pacifism and Security [Nihon’no Heiwashugi’to Anppo]”, Society and Ethics, 20(3), 33–51. Nakamura, N. (2006) “Non-Japanese A-bomb Victims Do Not Exist [Zaigaihibakushawa Sonzai’shinai]”, a paper presented at Citizens’ Lecture, Hiroshima Peace Institute, 8 June 2006. Nakazawa, K. (1994) Barefoot Gen: Out of the Ashes, A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers). Nelson, R. S. and Olin, M. (2003) “Introduction” in R. S. Nelson and M. Olin (eds) Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Orr, J. (2002) The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press). Ricoeur, P. (2004) History, Memory and Forgetting (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Saaler, S. and Koschmann, J. V. (2007) “Introduction” in S. Saaler and J. V. Koschmann (eds) Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders (New York and London: Routledge). Sasaki-Uemura, W. (2002) “Competing Publics: Citizens’ Groups, Mass Media, and the State in the 1960s’ Positions”, East Asia Cultures Critique, 10(1), 39–51.

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Sono, A. (2005) “I Will Visit Yasukuni”, Japan Echo (December), 51–4. Sugiyama-Lebra, T. (1984) Japanese Patterns of Behavior (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press). Takaki, R. (1996) Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (New York: Back Bay Books). Treat, J. W. (1995) Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Ubuki, T. (1999) The List of Books and Magazines with A-bomb Victims’ Diaries [Genbaku Shukikeisaitosyo• Zasshisoumokuroku] (Tokyo: Nichigaia Research). Walker, S. (1997) Prompt and Utter Destruction: President Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press). Watanabe, T. (2006) “Who Bears What Blame?”, Japan Echo, 44–51. Yoneyama, L. (1999) Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

3 Responsibility, Regret and Nationalism in Japanese Memory Kazuya Fukuoka and Barry Schwartz

Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. —John Donne Meditations XVII The attribution of blame and its acceptance or denial is an inherent feature of international conflict. When one nation injures another, its representatives usually invoke excuses or justifications, apologies or challenges, according to their identification with or disdain for the victims. Northeast Asia’s “memory problem” is based on particularly bitter disagreement about blame and responsibility within as well as between nations. Common ideals of honour, dignity and nationalism intensify this disagreement and impede its resolution. Assertions of responsibility are difficult to defend when applied unconditionally. O. H. von Gablentz therefore specifies his claim about the National Socialist era: “Every member of the body politic is responsible according to his function, from the absolute ruler to the common voter” (Gablentz 1979: 497). But even Gablentz’s conception is problematic. It is one thing for a state and its agents to assume responsibility for historical wrongdoing; another, for an individual, to assume responsibility for state misdeeds, especially when these are committed independently of his or her will or even before birth. Gesine Schwan and Jurgen Habermas raise a similar problem. Guilt cannot transmit itself across generations, Schwan explains, but “the psychological 71

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and moral consequences of treating it with silence harm even the subsequent generation and the basic consensus of a democracy” (1997: 7–8). In this connection, Habermas used the image of history as a supermarket: we cannot pick out what is just convenient to us; on the contrary, democratic societies must deal with the negative aspects of their past, especially when victims of earlier atrocities are still alive and still citizens (1990: 149–56). But the meaning of atrocity depends on the way it is conceived, and the way it is conceived is always an empirical question; the answer, always variable. In Japan, literary critic Norihiro Kato (1997) calls for the re-establishment of a Japanese national self as an entity for collective apology. He suggests a two-step solution: first, let Japan mourn its 3 million war dead, then, through this self-induced grief, let it mourn Asia’s 20 million dead. The way may then be opened both to true apology and to a cleansing of Japan’s collective conscience (Morris-Suzuki 1998: 23). Criticizing Kato’s argument, Tetsuya Takahashi (1999, 2002) insists that apology, not mourning, should come first, emphasizing Japan’s debt to its Asian victims. Returning to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Takahashi demands a contemporary judgement based on moral justice: “[I]t might be more productive for the Japanese to remain vulnerable to the war memories embraced by Japanese army sex slaves and other Asian victims and to continue to be shamed by their gaze” because “such a course would ‘open up’ decisively more important ethical and also political possibilities for this country and for us, its citizens” (quoted in Koschmann 2000: 749). Takahashi is saying that the victim’s continuing gaze has a morally cleansing effect on the present generation. The question is whether that effect can be achieved on command.

Culture of regret: honour and dignity Two types of society may be distinguished. In rank-ordered societies based on ascribed claims and acknowledgements of worth, honour exists as a prominent trait. Honour societies are built on what Mary Douglas (1970) called “strong grid” and “strong group” foundations: its members are subject to strong group constraints and are imperatively differentiated on a hierarchical grid of status symbols.1 These honour societies assume many forms, from nomadic shepherd communities and feudal aristocracies to modern industrial societies. Because cultures of honour control behaviour by traditions centred in the family, community or state, shame is the primary source of behavioural control. The interests of the collective precede those of the individual because all values, rights and obligations originate within it. Such is the honour society’s organizing premise. In dignity societies, as opposed to societies of honour, all individuals, regardless of their ethnicity, class, vocation, race or religion, are entitled to a minimal level of deference based on their common humanity and common

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rights. The assumption under which these rights are institutionalized defines the major distinction between modern and pre-modern societies. In dignity societies, biological and historical distinctions are irrelevant and often deemed “unreal, while controls are reinforced by an internal censor, guilt”. (For detail on the distinctions between honour and dignity, see Berger et al. 1973: 83–96.) During the last third of the twentieth century, the concept of honour, already eroding, became even more illusory—attractive from afar but repulsive up close. This is because honour and dignity cannot readily coexist. “The age that saw the decline of honor also saw the rise of new moralities and of a new humanism” (Berger et al. 1973: 85; see also Taylor 1994). As these new moralities diffuse from the First World to the Third, from the core to the periphery of the global order and from West to East, a new posthonour world appears, one in which honour’s hallmarks—history, tradition and memory—occupy diminishing places. Yet, if the traits associated with honour had eroded as fully as is commonly thought, our understanding of history, commemoration and memory would require almost total revision. Honour and dignity bend history in distinctive ways. At the apex of honour culture are great men performing astounding feats on the people’s behalf; at the nadir reside defeat and failure. Wrongdoings are acknowledged, but within a grid-group context that defines victims as outsiders and therefore unworthy of sympathy and respect. Accordingly, honour society representatives compensate for the harm their nations cause in ways that fail to undo their victims’ humiliation and restore their self-respect. In contrast, dignity structures are composed of “weak grids” and “strong groups”—systems of compulsory equality. In dignity societies, rank ordering is imperatively minimized; symbols of status, muted. The “politically correct” rule of universal recognition and the penalties imposed for its violation plainly define the essence of humanity (Taylor 1994).2 Where dignity is hegemonic, memorable deeds are triumphs of human rights, and when dignity societies are subjugated, citizens’ reaction is not shame but indignation over the violation of their liberties and rights. As such societies exult in guilt over their own past subjugation of others, their historians devote unprecedented attention to past wrongdoings and exaggerate their effects (Lerner et al. 1995: 69–88, 125–50). Honor and dignity cultures, as just described, apply to no known reality; they are ideal types. As an ideal type, “each specific case is expected to be only a partial approximation,” but they provide useful reference points for comparative study (Collier and Mahon, Jr. 1993: 847; cf. Weber 1949 [1904]).3 To explore how the lineaments of honor and dignity blend, we conducted two investigations. In the first investigation we questioned university students in the United States and Japan about their views on historical responsibility. We also compared individual beliefs with comparable state policies. In this, second, investigation, we concentrated on one nation, Japan, and drew on

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two sources of data: primary data consisting of questionnaire and interview responses, and secondary data consisting of national surveys of nationalism, memory, and responsibility. Culture and responsibility In matters of the politics of regret, Jeffrey Olick and Brenda Coughlin declare, states take the lead and individuals follow (“[T]he confessional individual mimics the regretful state”) (2003: 56).4 The situation, in fact, turns out to be more complex. When philosophical assertions are situated within an empirical analysis of dignity, honour and responsibility, the interdependence of state and individual becomes evident. We asked more than 1500 students in three Japanese and American universities to identify historical events of which they are least proud, those of which they are most proud, and to explain their choices. We also asked students to indicate whether they consider themselves and/or their generations morally responsible for their forebears’ offenses. To assess cultural bias in judging offenses, we asked respondents in each country whether they considered young adults in other countries responsible for their forebears’ wrongdoing. From late 1999 through the months leading up to but not including 11 September 2001, American students were asked to name the “three events in American history of which you do not merely disapprove but which, in your opinion, degrade the United States and arouse in you as a citizen (rather than private individual) a sense of dishonor, disgrace, shame, and/or remorse.” Forty-one per cent named slavery; 34 per cent, the Vietnam War; 32 per cent, offenses against American Indians. The next four most commonly mentioned events, named by less than 16 per cent of the respondents, were racial segregation, civil war events, internment of Japanese-Americans and the use of the atomic bomb (Table 3.1).

Table 3.1 Frequently named sources of “Dishonour, Disgrace, Shame” in American history (N = 1109) Event Slavery Vietnam War Treatment of Native Americans Segregation Civil War Internment of Japanese-Americans Atomic bomb Watergate

Percentage (%) of respondents naming 41.2 34.0 32.1 17.4 12.7 11.9 9.1 7.3

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The Japanese’s “sense of dishonor, disgrace, shame, and/or remorse” is more concentrated in time. In 2006, we added 107 observations to the 423 we had collected in 2001, compared the two samples and found them sufficiently alike to be combined. Throughout our analysis, however, we tabulated the samples separately to ensure comparability. The events that students mention most frequently were part of World War II, namely, military aggression against China and Korea (54 per cent) and the “Pacific War” against the United States (26 per cent). Thus, more than half the respondents named events occurring between 1931 and ending in 1945—a period of less than 15 years (Table 3.2). The difference between American and Japanese students’ connection to their nation’s past offenses is remarkable. Nine per cent of American students agreed with the statement, “My generation is [or I personally feel] morally responsible for the enslavement of tens of millions of black people over more than one hundred and fifty years.”5 Nine per cent agreed with the statement “My generation is [or I personally feel] morally responsible for the forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.” When asked about moral responsibility for the “killing, forced expulsion, and other maltreatment of millions of Indians”, the number in agreement was 11 per cent. Beliefs about the responsibility of others, including the descendents of former enemies, were similar. Five per cent agreed with the statement asserting that Japan’s youth are responsible for their nation’s past wrongdoing. The universal quality of Americans’ attitudes is also shown in their response to the statement that German young people are responsible for the Holocaust. Three per cent agreed. In contrast, 42 per cent of the Japanese respondents agreed with the statement, “As a Japanese national, I consider myself [or my generation] responsible for the [1910–1945] Annexation of Korea.” The rate of agreement with the statement “As a Japanese national, I consider myself [or my Table 3.2 Frequently named sources of “Dishonour, Disgrace, Shame” in Japanese history (N = 530) Event Japan’s war in Asia6 World War II/Pacific War7 Politics/politicians8 Domestic discrimination (Koreans in Japan) War in general AUM Shinrikyo cult Japanese foreign policies Hideyoshi’s Korean invasions (sixteenth century) Teen crime

Percentage (%) of respondents naming 54.0 26.0 11.3 5.3 5.3 4.3 6.8 3.6 1.9

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generation] responsible for the 1937 ‘Nanking Incident’ ” (massacre of tens of thousands by the Japanese army) was also 42 per cent. For the “Comfort Woman” practice (inducting Korean women, then colonial subjects, as sex slaves during the war years), the same number, 42 per cent, accepted responsibility. Japanese students also ascribed more responsibility to Americans than they ascribed to themselves or that Americans ascribed to them: 51 per cent judged American young people to be morally accountable for slavery. In contrast, 30 per cent held German young people accountable for the Holocaust (Table 3.3). As our interview data show, respondents attributed more responsibility to Americans not because they deem slavery a greater atrocity than the Holocaust but because of continuing racial problems they saw in the American society. This finding also reflects the widely-accepted (although very simplified) notion that Germans have already overcome their Nazi past (cf. Awaya et al. 1994). The NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai; Japan’s public broadcasting agency) Survey (September 2000) on “responsibility for the national past wrongs” is based Table 3.3

Sense of moral responsibility for national misdeeds

(1) My generation is [or I personally feel] morally responsible for the Korean annexation and rule (1910–1945). (2) My generation is [or I personally feel] morally responsible for the so-called Nanking Incident (1937). (3) My generation is [or I personally feel] morally responsible for the so-called Comfort Women issue during the War years. (4) I believe that American young people are morally responsible today for the enslavement of tens of millions of African Americans over more than 150 years. (5) I believe the present generation of Germans is morally responsible for the Holocaust—Nazi Germany’s murder of 6 million Jews during the World War II.

Strongly disagree Disagree Somewhat disagree Neutral Somewhat agree Agree Strongly agree No response

(1) Korean annexation and rule (1910–1945) (%) (N = 318)

(2) The so-called Nanking Incident (1937) (%) (N = 430)

(3) Comfort Women issue during the war years (%) (N = 481)

(4) American younger generation’s responsibility (%) (N = 315)

(5) German younger generation’s responsibility (%) (N = 310)

14.1

12.7

13.3

8.3

15.8

15.0 11.9

15.1 12.3

12.5 11.9

9.5 9.8

15.2 16.1

15.4 21.0

15.5 20.2

17.7 18.7

17.1 21.6

18.4 14.5

14.7 6.6

14.1 8.1

13.7 9.6

18.4 11.1

9.7 6.1

0.9

1.6

2.7

4.1

4.2

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on a nationwide sample of Japanese adults but shows similar results: 50 per cent believed the Japanese must, personally, bear responsibility for historical offenses. The corresponding figures for the war-time, post-war and most recent generations are 37 per cent, 52 per cent and 60 per cent respectively. The Asahi Shimbun Survey (2000) asked respondents whether they should “reflect on Japan’s past wrongs”. Thirty-two per cent answered “To some extent”; 53 per cent, “To a great extent”. In the same year, the Asahi Survey asked “Do you think that Japan has apologized and compensated those victim countries and people in those countries enough for Japan’s invasion and colonial rules?” Thirty-six per cent answered “Enough”; 51 per cent, “Not Enough”. The relationship among history, commemoration and belief in Japan is opposite to that in the United States. Japanese textbook writers are committed to a policy of caution in what they say about the atrocities of World War II,9 but Japanese students know about these events and feel somehow connected to them. In contrast, American textbooks describe past transgressions in detail and American institutions routinely apologize for them; the students reading these textbooks and hearing these apologies, however, feel no connection to the events they describe. Historical consciousness, then, cannot be inferred from official history and commemoration. Whereas Japanese texts reflect the lineaments of Japan’s culture of honour, individual readers display affinity for a culture of dignity. In the United States, we find the opposite. Or so it seems.

What “feeling responsible” means The difference between Japan and the United States in attitudes towards the difficult past is considerable, but we are mainly concerned to know how Japanese differ among themselves. To this end, we added new items to the questionnaires, explored intercorrelations and factor structures and conducted lengthy interviews with 18 students. The first question we posed concerns the relationship between shame and guilt, but before discussing the answers, we must recognize Ruth Benedict’s assertion that the burden of Japanese morality falls on the former.10 In Benedict’s time, Japan’s was a shame-driven culture of honour. “Shame is a reaction to other people’s criticism. . . . Where shame is the major sanction, a man does not experience relief when he makes his fault public even to a confessor. So long as his bad behaviour does not ‘get into the world’ he need not be troubled and confession appears to him merely a way of courting trouble” (1946: 223). No wonder the massacre at Nanking and impressment of Korean “comfort women” are more frequently named as sources of shame than are military aggression leading to the Pacific War and brutal treatment of British and American prisoners. Because China and Korea mobilize to condemn Japan more often and more publicly than do Great Britain and the

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United States, the suffering of the Chinese and Korean people has become Japan’s primary burden. Questionnaire findings, however, warn against generalizing Benedict’s conclusions too far. If Japan were more a shame-driven honour culture than a guilt-driven dignity culture, fewer would endorse the statement “I feel devastated because what Japan did in Asia was evil and wrong” than the statement “I feel devastated because Japan’s and the Japanese people’s international reputation would be harmed [by full disclosure of World War II atrocities].” The latter statement is a classic articulation of shame: atrocities are easier to live with if neighbours know nothing about them. The former statement, with its emphasis on intrinsic wrongfulness, is the kind an innerdirected (Riesman et al. 1950) member of a “guilt culture” would endorse.11 On this item, we have no comparative information on Japan and Western countries, but among the Japanese themselves, 29 per cent express dismay over the possibility of sullied international reputation; 51 per cent, over the inherent evil of Japan’s atrocities. Asked whether the second statement about reputation or the first statement about wrongfulness is closest to one’s own sentiment, 23 per cent chose the second, shame, question; 57 per cent, the first, guilt, question. Assuming Benedict’s observations to be valid, the relative importance of guilt in Japan’s culture of shame is greater than it was 60 years ago—which conforms to Peter Berger’s (1973) observations on modernity and the diminished relevance of honour. For initial insight into the meaning of responsibility, we looked closely at the responses of interviewees who felt personally answerable for Japan’s atrocities. The most regretful of our respondents, Mitsuru, indicated that the Japanese need not necessarily make atonement for past atrocity, but “we should at least feel responsible for it.” This last clause, “we should at least feel responsible,” tells much about the forces binding obligation and sentiment. Because regret is obligatory, one rebukes oneself if one fails to express it. Regret itself comes into view as the result of a “feeling rule” (Hochschild 1979), much like that governing conduct at a funeral. Mitsuru may not feel grief but must act as if he does, and he must act authentically: “As a Japanese descendent, I even feel like vomiting, wondering [whether] I might do the same (atrocity).” But if he is about to purge himself, he explains that such feelings are unusual; “it is not that I always think about it.” When the situation requires attention to the past, he becomes emotional; but most of the time “they are things of the past” and therefore distant to him. At the same time—and here is a contradiction we must accept—Mitsuru insists that significant events occurring in the distant past are relevant to his own life and responsibility. Why so? “Because we were born as Japanese, we should not be indifferent to and irresponsible for the bad things Japanese people did in the past.” Such is Mitsuru’s moral dilemma. Tomoko is certain that Japan is guilty of war-time atrocity. Her feelings of regret, induced by television and newspapers, she adds, are real, even to

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the point of reducing her appetite, “Yet, it does not last long. The feeling disappears within a day and I would not cry.” Again, responsibility takes the form of “deep acting” according to an implicit “feeling rule”. Tomoko, like many other respondents, believes that no form or amount of compensation can undo Asia’s resentment towards Japan; nevertheless, Japan was wrong and she is answerable for what her country did. Her responsibility is to feel responsible. Miki is sceptical about some claims against Japan. The “Nanking Incident”, in particular, seems highly exaggerated, but if she cannot accept this atrocity intellectually, she is willing to accept the fact that others accept it. She sympathizes with the comfort women and atomic bomb victims, but the key part of Miki’s statement is her ability to imagine all atrocity stories true without feeling strongly about them. If this is the worst men can do to one another, “I would not cry for them.” “If I define my feeling of ‘sorryness’ in terms of color and put the ‘I am going to cry’ kind of sorrow as navy blue, the sense of ‘we should remember’ as blue, and the sense of ‘not a big deal’ sorry as lucid blue, my feeling is in-between navy blue and blue.” In other words, “I might cry” because “We should remember.” More concisely, Miki is saying, “We should remember to consider crying.” Kazuhiko is another student who doubts some of the purported facts, including those represented in the Independence Hall of Korea, which he has recently visited. He suspects that the story of the Comfort Woman is totally contrived. Yet, Kazuhiko concedes that Korea’s Independence Hall tells a story he does not want to hear and declares himself ready to make amends for any atrocity that has actually occurred. Here is a sceptical but honest man, unsure of what happened during World War II but ready to accept responsibility. The burden of that acceptance, however, is light; he often thinks about such matters, but he concedes he rarely thinks about them at length and is rarely bothered by them. All these cases are found in a culture in which apologies and their presumptions of responsibility are designed less to express remorse than to uphold the order and harmony of society. Where apologies are made expressly “for the sake of social harmony”, “the words of regret . . . will cancel the offense” (Field 1997: 6). Even more, expressions of forgiveness are usually assumed before they are offered.12 In contrast to the English word “apology”, which entails “justification, explanation or excuse, of an incident or course of action” (defined as wrongful in the Oxford English Dictionary), the Japanese verb wabiru (to apologize) means to “seek forgiveness . . . for an error/misfeasance . . . in a discomfited manner” (Field 1997: 9). The Japanese definition, based on the emotion of discomfiture, denotes embarrassment more than wrongdoing. Moreover, when offenders make apology, victims must accept it, for the question is not whether the offenders are sincere but whether they are willing to affirm the honour of their compatriots by humbling themselves before them. Indeed, “to place the highest importance on

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the sincerity of one’s heart and feelings is to make decisions situationally, not prescriptively. Values here become aspects of personal experience that exist only in response to persons, not as an absolute, objectively existent moral order” (Chung 2006: 268). To the American this is a peculiar way of thinking about apology. Americans require wholeheartedness, making public one’s inner state, placing one’s feelings on one’s sleeve, “meaning it”. The success or failure of the apology depends on how convincingly one aligns one’s inner state to one’s public words. But in Japan, where apologies are more likely to be taken at face value, challenging the apologizer’s sincerity only disturbs the harmony his or her apology is meant to restore (Lee 2006: 6; see also Wagatsuma and Rosett 1986). Between the meaning of apology and the meaning of responsibility there is close affinity. Respondents most alive to their historical responsibilities accept them from a sense of duty rather than remorse, but variation exists in the acknowledgement of responsibility, whether measured quantitatively or qualitatively. To explain these differences is our next concern. Nationalism If regret is a social duty rather than a sign of personal sorrow, then attachment to society must play a central role in explaining willingness to assume the burden of responsibility. That collective memory is an aspect of nationalism, most scholars, including Eric Hobsbawm (1983), John Bodnar (1992), John Gillis (1994), Pierre Nora (1996) and Anthony Smith (1999), would agree. Whether moderate, let alone ardent, nationalists would be more or less likely to hold themselves responsible for national sins, however, is an empirical question. In order to answer this question, we first assessed Japanese respondents’ sense of responsibility for three notorious events—the annexation of South Korea, the Nanking Massacre and Comfort Women. We found the responses to be so highly correlated with one another (and with responses to questions about responsibility for slavery and the Holocaust) that they formed a single “responsibility acceptance” variable. Secondly, we cross-tabulated this variable, derived from principal component analysis, with different aspects of nationalism. The first aspect we called hard nationalism because it is formed by the belief that Japan does everything in a better way than other nations, that Japan is above criticism and worthy of unconditional support. The second variable, soft nationalism, refers to nationalism as conventionally understood: love of country, the wish to improve it, identification with it, pride and loyalty. The third variable, patriotism advocacy, is an assessment and judgement of others’ patriotism. The last two scales, also formed by principal component analysis, consist of items tapping traditionalism— attachment to the national past as an end in itself—and its empirical and

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theoretical opposite-future orientation, measuring a disposition to think of society by looking to the future rather than the past. The remaining scales are unidentifiable (see Appendix A). Taken as separate variables or as one component (Factor 3), respondents’ willingness to accept responsibility for Japan’s past wrongdoing is uncorrelated with either hard or soft nationalism, patriotism advocacy, traditionalism or future orientation (Table 3.4). Our questionnaire sample, however, allows for another measure of nationalism. Almost a third (32.3 per cent) of the respondents could not name a single event that they could call a source of national honour, esteem or dignity. Almost two-thirds (62.3 per cent) mentioned only one event.13 Evidently, the major source of Japan’s honour, esteem and dignity is the nation, not the events constituting its history. Moreover, we find no correlation between the responsibility measures and the mentioning of sources of national pride. To assume personal responsibility for national crimes occurring before one’s birth is counter-intuitive and difficult to do within even a limited span of sincerity. But when a less difficult question, whether Japanese “should reflect on the past wrong to a great extent” or “to some extent”, is posed to the general public, there is no difference among those describing themselves as unpatriotic, patriotic or strongly patriotic: between 80 and 88 per cent answered in the affirmative; only among the non-patriotic (3 per cent of the sample) did a significantly lower percentage, 63 per cent, appear (Asahi Shimbun December 2006). Although nationalism, as commonly understood, fails to explain why some of our subjects accept responsibility for their forebears’ wrongdoing while others refuse, one of nationalism’s derivatives might put the matter in a different light. Nationalism entails a moral boundary between one’s own nation and others. “De-Asianization”, which involves Japan’s withdrawal of identification with Asia, denial of its dignity and to a certain extent its humanity, is a historically important dimension of the Japanese cognitive map.14 Failure to designate aggression against Korea or China as sources of shame is part of a broader and invidious distinction involving Japan’s relation to, or, rather, alienation from, Asia. To explore this distinction, we divided the sample into two groups: those naming aggression against one or more Asian countries among the events bringing shame to Japan (AsiaSensitive respondents) and those whose list of shameful events includes political corruption, crime and starting a war with America, but not atrocities against their Asian neighbours (Asia-Insensitive respondents). This comparison yields the first finding of nationalism, or, at least, one of its aspects, affecting willingness to assume responsibility. The Asia-Insensitive respondents, Table 3.5 shows, were least likely to take responsibility for Japan’s atrocities.

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Table 3.4 Factor correlations

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

0.320834

−0.02707 0.043014

0.227647 0.145316 −0.04608

0.403743 0.192781 −0.0148 0.055489

0.352968 0.439164 0.04681 0.054996 0.319687

−0.1478 0.025224 −0.02103 −0.05393 −0.18708 −0.17243

0.210968 0.227226 −0.14167 0.121233 −0.11661 −0.03144 0.224922

0.258863 0.174193 −0.03257 0.00248 0.060136 0.276048 −0.14042 0.040336

−0.07084 0.025628 0.048409 0.066363 −0.23689 −0.19028 0.104653 0.153201 0.040517

−0.0485 −0.06463 −0.01506 −0.08477 −0.06115 −0.11116 0.114001 0.016155 0.107793 0.170878

Principal component analysis (Promax with Kaiser normalization) Factor 1—Hard Nationalism Factor 2—Soft Nationalism Factor 3—Responsibility Acceptance Factor 4—Patriotism Advocacy Factor 6—Traditionalism Factor 8—Future Orientation

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Table 3.5 Mean difference (t-test): Asia sensitive dimension and moral responsibility (1) As a Japanese national, I consider myself morally responsible for the Korean annexation (1910–1945). (2) As a Japanese national, I consider myself morally responsible for the so-called Nanjing Incident (1937). (3) As a Japanese national, I consider myself morally responsible for the so-called Comfort Women issue during the War years.

(1) Korean Annexation (2) Nanjing Incident (3) Comfort Women

Asia sensitive

Asia insensitive

Sig. (2-tailed)

3.88 4.08 3.91

3.27 3.30 3.31

.008** .001** .010**

Despite their very small number, a clear pattern shows up among our 18 interview respondents. Among 13 Asia-sensitive respondents, nine considered themselves personally responsible for past atrocities; four did not; among the five respondents failing to name one or more Asian nations, two held themselves responsible for past atrocities; three did not. Japan’s post-war sentiment regarding Asia was built upon the notion that Japanese people were different from and superior to the people of Asia (Fukuoka 2006; cf. Wakamiya 1995). Although few publicly advocated deAsianism during the post-war years, this “superiority complex” remains tacit (Saito 1992: 16; cf. Tadokoro 1994: 10) and includes a sense of disdain, contempt or, at best, indifference (cf. Ogata 1965; Fukuoka 2006; cf. Tei 1995) among many Japanese towards their Asian neighbours. That Japan is part of the West was a widespread notion during the Cold War. Japan had to distance itself from Asia, many believed, in order to maintain friendly relations with the West. The post-war West German Soderweg (or peculiar course of German modern history) was a “long path towards the West” (Heinrich August Winkler in Conrad 2003: 93), but it did not require rejection of other central and Eastern European nations. Japan’s path to the West, in stark contrast, required a separation from its neighbours. At least Japan’s leaders and people believed as much. If Germany’s Soderweg made it part of Europe, Japan’s Soderweg maintained its alienation from Asia (Conrad 2003: 94). Given Japan’s place within America’s Cold War political framework, “Asia virtually disappeared not only in rhetorical but in real terms as well” (Gluck 1994: 5). 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). Conrad makes the point as follows: In Japan . . . in the absence of a movement towards political allegiance, Asia largely remained in a political and historiographical vacuum. . . . Under

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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” (2003: 94; emphasis added).15 Although exclusion of Asian victims from a list of national wrongs is not a direct indicator of respondents’ eagerness to separate themselves from Asia, Japan’s past repudiation of ties with other Asian nations easily warrants the assumption that “Asian insensitive” Japanese are most likely to oppose Asianization. The interaction of Asia-sensitivity and responsibility is exemplified by another one of our subjects, Juníchi. He finds reasons to be proud of Japanese history. He also finds reasons for shame: a foolish war against the United States, defeat in the World Soccer competition and the 1868 westernimposed Meiji Restoration. He finds no shame in any aspect of Japan’s war against Asia; indeed, “I question the historical credibility of the Nanking massacre and comfort women issues. Furthermore, how can later generations whose members were not born at the time of the atrocities condemn Japan? Sixty years have already passed. Let it go! I didn’t do it. Japan did good things to Asia, too.” Many nations, he adds, continue to criticize Japan. “We don’t have to listen to those criticisms. Japan’s left groups, Chinese, Korean, and the Dutch are trying to harm Japan. . . . [Yet], Asian countries achieved their independence thanks to Japan. Things are just even.” But to say that things are even is to concede that Japan’s so-called “liberation” of Asia from colonialism offsets the atrocity in which Juníchi refuses to believe. Juníchi suddenly expresses this realization in a second thought—but only a second thought: “One might say that I am trying to forget bad things and remember good things.”

Conclusion This volume’s introduction distinguished between presentist models, which focus on how collective memory embodies existing predicaments and concerns, and cultural models, which define collective memory as a force in its own right, one that transcends present conditions. In the Japanese case, as in others, collective memory reflects the merging of social experience, history and tradition. Yet, every chapter in this volume addresses what is missing in both models, namely, the symbolic formulations that connect culture, society and memory. On this matter the first two chapters on Japan are strong. The Yasukuni memorial rite and the construction of Hiroshima’s museum exhibits link Japan’s interests and problems to war memories. This chapter has added another mediating process: the attribution patterns shaping Japanese ideas of historical responsibility during the great economic and political realignments of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

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No one can think systematically about responsibility for state-sponsored atrocities without Karl Jaspers’s (1961 [1947]) typology of war guilt: the criminal guilt of those who carried out illegal or immoral actions; political guilt of those who planned and administered them; moral guilt resulting from individuals judging themselves; and metaphysical guilt felt by virtue of being human and having sympathetic understanding of human suffering. Jaspers’s statement on individual responsibility for historical events assumes clearest relevance in cultures of dignity where the individual is deemed the source of collective virtue and vice. Although he wrote his essay in a culture of guilt, not shame, and at a time when the men and women to be held accountable were still alive, Jaspers’s argument is generalizable, for no shame culture is free of guilt; no guilt culture free of honour and shame. Responsibility, according to Leszek Kolakowski, is a natural sentiment having nothing to do with one’s conduct or the timing of one’s birth. “Our primary relationship to the world”, he believes, “is that of responsibility voluntarily assumed. [To live is] to take on the debts of the world as our own” (Kolakowski in Schwan 1997: 11). Is Kolakowski saying that the sharing of responsibility is a universal disposition, applicable to everyone in all times? If so, his burden of proof is heavy indeed.16 Whether we read von Goblentz, Jaspers, Kolakowsky, Schwan, Kato or Takahashi, we find each taking for granted the conditions that make responsibility possible. In The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida takes a different and, from our standpoint, more realistic route. Beginning with Abraham’s act of obeying God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac, Derrida explores the dilemma of “absolute responsibility”. To murder at the command of God is to violate irresponsibly fundamental ethical standards. Also, when the duty of responsibility is absolute, engagement in one mission, like the demands of home or work, requires the neglecting of another. Thus, absolute responsibility requires a relation between oneself and another while contingent responsibility refers to the situational breaching of that one-to-one relationship (see also Gasche 2007). This logic applies to Japan. Between a demand for apology, on the one hand, and absolute responsibility, assumed unconditionally, on the other, is constant oscillation and tension, making decisive apology and forgiveness impossible. To apologize in the face of possible rejection is difficult for the Japanese. The result is a perpetually open-ended resentment in China and Korea which varies but never disappears completely. The case of Abraham, on the other hand, differs from that of Japan. Abraham had to decide between his God and his son, whereas the Japanese faced no such dilemma: they had to choose between their emperor and their enemy. Ironically, however, Derrida’s analysis resonates more strongly with the memory problem in Japan than does that of any other post-war philosopher. Imperial Japanese soldiers carried out their missions with a sense of absolute responsibility; they killed and died in the name of their Shint¯ o divinity, the emperor. The

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Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal broke this seemingly sacred bond when it found (or the United States made a strategic decision) that the emperor and the people were duped by their military leaders—and when the emperor denied his own divinity (cf. Dower 1999). What seemed to be an absolute responsibility turns out to have been contingent on faulty belief. To know this, however, tells us nothing about the meaning of Japanese responsibility. In the first stage of our research, we found a striking difference between Japanese and American students’ acceptance of responsibility for their nation’s offenses, but we could not determine how respondents interpreted the concept of responsibility, or what they meant by “I am sorry,” “I regret what happened” or “I have nothing to do with something that happened before I was born.” We were uncertain whether or not respondents in the two countries even shared the same meanings of the questions we asked them. To agree with the statement “I am responsible” might well have different connotations for blame, liability, guilt, shame, disgrace, legal, and moral obligation. In the second stage of our research, we found Japanese respondents discussing issues of responsibility in terms of their “vocabulary of regret”. As C. Wright Mills might have put it, the concept of regret is of “no value apart from the delimited societal situations” for which it is an appropriate vocabulary (1940: 913). If “motives are words” (Mills 1940: 905), we can study regret by attending to what respondents say when they convey it, that is, how Japanese individuals reason, feel, and moralize about responsibility. Willingness to accept responsibility for national wrongs is far more evident in Japan, supposedly an honour culture, than in the United States, supposedly a dignity culture. Japanese vocabulary of responsibility, however, is formulaic. It includes references to physical injury but not national honour. Regret is driven by a readiness to recognize, but not feel, in the suffering of outsiders an obligation to make ritual amends. Japan’s shifting memory, thus, corresponds to an increasingly tangled cultural web of honour and dignity. Karl Jaspers would find the metaphysical guilt of the Japanese difficult to pin down. Powerful social realities drive the transformation of Japanese memory. During the post-war decades, Japanese had thought of themselves as war victims (a viewpoint similar to that of the post-war Germans). During the 1990s, induced by the tremendous increase in Chinese and Korean economic power, the Japanese people began to feel China’s and Korea’s suffering and to grasp the reality of their own ancestors’ wrongdoings (Fukuoka 2006). Before we conclude that Japan’s newfound sensitivity merely rationalizes its decline in relative political and economic power, we must recognize another finding, and that is the weakening, after a decade of good feeling, in Japanese friendship with China and, to a lesser extent, Korea, during the first several

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years of the twenty-first century. Japanese backlash against anti-Japan activities abroad is an element in their collective memory. We asked one of our respondents whether these demonstrations dampened her sense of regret for Japan’s crimes. The answer was straightforward. “Recent anti-Japanese demonstrations in China discouraged me to believe them and what they claimed.” At question is whether the recent spate of bad feelings will lead the nations to live with one another less trustfully or whether Japan’s sensitivity revolution of the 1990s has become so deep as to make any return to earlier attitudes impossible. The question is important to this project because it raises the possibility that our two surveys, which showed exceptionally high levels of regret among Japanese respondents when compared to the Americans, might have been affected by a transient rather than permanent change. Michel-Rolphe Trouillot (2000) asserted that no formal apology or statement of official regret could be meaningful because it would be offered only by victims and perpetrators’ descendents—people who could never genuinely feel the pain originally incurred and inflicted. But Trouillot is wrong: what makes a ritual effective is not participants’ ability to experience the feelings of forebears but to experience the feelings of one another. This requirement limits the effect of Japanese apologies. “I am responsible for the past because I am part of the ongoing history of Japan—because I am Japanese.” This phrase means less than many Westerners think. That Japan’s official apologies are “insincere”, not “heartfelt”, “merely formal”, is a charge applying not only to the Japanese state and its successive governments but also to its citizens. Regret lightly felt and infrequently contemplated is precarious. Even those who express it most fervently in response to questionnaire questions really do not necessarily think or feel deeply about it. If China or Korea take hostile measures against Japan, or if some circumstance inflames tensions among the three nations, would the peace-keeping ritual formalities cease? At this point, we are forced to emphasize the main failing of our analysis: the absence of any information on how our informants’ responses would be received by Chinese and Koreans. Neither in the existing archive of official Japanese apologies nor in our respondents’ reactions do we find the slightest trace of what is important to the Chinese and Korean people: wounded honour (for example, Furuta 2004). Japan’s most concrete expressions of regret acknowledge physical injury and suffering, but there is no acknowledgement of the humiliation of conquest and subordination. Perhaps there is no mention of humiliation because there is no vocabulary of apology for wounding another’s honour. To say “We regret having humiliated you” would indeed deepen rather than soothe the resentment.17

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As noted, shame counts for more in honour cultures than in dignity cultures. Neither Jewish survivors of the Holocaust nor allied survivors of Japanese prison camps felt humiliation, shame or dishonour; they condemn their captors for causing them unjust suffering. The task of locating the Japanese case on the intersecting dimensions of dignity, honour, aggression and victimhood is simplified in the following graph, which places nations and communities along four dimensions and, in parentheses, names the sentiments of aggressor and victim. In dignity cultures, aggressors direct their apologies to the rights they have violated, and their victims define those apologies as compensation for physical and mental suffering. In honour cultures, compensation is more difficult. Suicides and duals are common means of penance; offenders can take upon themselves the burden of shame by publicly humiliating themselves, as did King Henry II after the death of Thomas Beckett, by walking in sackcloth and ashes and allowing himself to be flogged by monks. But if, within honour cultures, offenders apologize for physical suffering without acknowledging the resulting disgrace, their victims are deprived of the compensation that means most to them. When these same victims happen to be sensitive to every sign of insincerity, no matter how indirect, the memory problem becomes more intractable.

AGGRESSION

Germany (Guilt)

Japan (Affectively Restrained Apology)

DIGNITY

HONOUR

Jews and Conquered Nations of Europe

Korea/China (Shame)

(Indignation)

VICTIMHOOD Figure 3.1

Cultural differences in reaction to oppression

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In Japan, the urge to repent is limited by strong forces, the most important of which, perhaps, is the tendency for people prematurely to think they have apologized enough. Repentance can be comforting. When the full significance of a crime, no matter how distant, is recognized and discussed through the media and through history books, readers feel themselves partly relieved of its wrong. They unwittingly comfort one another by sharing shame, compliment one another for their willingness to confess and be answerable to their forebears’ transgressions. Not only do the direct descendents of the offenders make their repentance public, but the nation exercises a moral pressure upon all citizens to harmonize their sorrow. Under this circumstance, the severity of the citizen’s admission is out of all proportion to the profundity of his or her feeling. In Emile Durkheim’s words: “If he is sad it is primarily because he consents to being sad” (1976 [1912]: 400). One consents in order to affirm the bond uniting one to the group, to show oneself willing to participate in its shame as well as its honour. One finds oneself more closely to one’s countrymen who, in solidarity, create a sense of self-respect that compensates for past wrongdoing. As men and women regret together, they honour themselves, glory in their repentance even though no one takes it seriously. Such is the worst-case scenario—so called because Koreans and Chinese can see through it. But the best case might be equally plausible: as Japan modernizes in culture as well as technology, its citizens may well be moved by their own discourse of universal human dignity. What, then, is to be said of John Donne? Was he right? Does every death diminish me? Are we to believe that “affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it”? Those questions are difficult to answer. John Donne was a prophet of the culture of dignity; we can only wait and watch.

Appendix A: factor loadings The R technique (principal component analysis) converts a large number of correlated variables into a smaller number of uncorrelated variables (principle components). It analyses “interrelationships among variables in such a way that the variables can be described adequately and conveniently by a group of basic categories” (Zeller and Carmines 1980: 19). Eignenvalues indicate the relative percentage of data variability associated with each category. Initial eigenvalues of the 11 factors retained are shown below along with the percentage of the total variance associated with each. These 11 factors were rotated by using the Varimax method with Kaiser Normalization. Then, each factor was defined by selecting items with factor loading of at least (+/−) 0.50 to represent the specific factor. Also imposed, along with this criterion, was a requirement of a difference in factor loadings of at least 0.2.18

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Table 3A.1

Factor loadings Initial Eigenvalues

Component

Total

% of Variance

Cumulative %

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

6.368 3.208 2.812 1.708 1.519 1.466 1.205 1.162 1.105 1.059 1.041

17.689 8.911 7.810 4.744 4.219 4.072 3.349 3.229 3.071 2.941 2.891

17.689 26.600 34.410 39.155 43.374 47.446 50.795 54.024 57.095 60.035 62.926

Factor 1—Hard nationalism Q23—Generally, the more influence Japan has on other nations, the better off they are (0.691). Q27—I believe that Japanese policies are almost always the morally correct ones (0.615). Q29—There is too much criticism of Japan in the world, and we its citizens should not criticize it (0.527). Q31—Other countries should try to make their government as much like ours as possible (0.722). Q33—Foreign nations have done some very fine things but it takes Japan to do things in a big way (0.708). Q37—I support Japanese policies for the very reason that they are the policies of my country (0.565). Q39—It is un-Japanese to criticize this country (0.700). [Q34—When I see the Japanese national flag (hinomaru) flying I feel great (0.431).] [Q35—People who do not wholeheartedly support Japan should live somewhere else (0.418).]

Factor 2—Soft nationalism Q22—I love my country (0.729). Q28—(–) It is not constructive for one to develop an emotional attachment to his/her country (−0.655). Q30—I am proud to be Japanese (0.658).

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Q38—I oppose some Japanese policies because I care about my country and want to improve it (0.767). [Q17b—I think of myself as a citizen of Japan (0.466).] [Q24—Although at times I may not agree with the government, my commitment to Japan always remains strong (0.438).] [Q26—The fact I am Japanese is an important part of my identity (0.462).] [Q36—If you love Japan, you should notice its problems and work to correct them (0.481).] Factor 3—Responsibility Acceptance Q5—As a Japanese national, I consider myself morally responsible for the Korean annexation (1910–1945) (0.917). Q6—As a Japanese national, I consider myself morally responsible for the so-called Nanking Incident (1937) (0.932). Q7—As a Japanese national, I consider myself morally responsible for the so-called Comfort Women issue during the War years (0.915). Factor 4—Patriotism advocacy Q19—Most people in Japan are less patriotic than they should be (0.828). Q20—Do you think that we should foster patriotic feeling among the Japanese public? (0.645) Factor 5—Unidentifiable Q18—Japanese national or individual? (0.621) Q32—(–) It is not that important for me to serve my country (−0.647). [Q40—(Ideology) Many people use the concepts “liberal” and “conservative” to characterize different political opinions. Think about your opinions. How would you characterize yourself? (0.468)] Factor 6—Traditionalism Q16—Most traditions are worth preserving (0.819). Q21—The first duty of every young Japanese is to honour the national Japanese history and heritage (0.562). Factor 7—Unidentifiable Q17c—I think of myself as a citizen of my region (0.638). [Q24—Although at times I may not agree with the government, my commitment to Japan always remains strong (−0.426).] [Q25—It is important that Japan win in international sporting competition like the Olympics (0.483).]

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Factor 8—Future orientation Q3—On balance, the bad (immoral) parts of Japanese history outweigh the good (−0.694). Q15—Japanese people tend to think too much about the mistakes of the past. It is time to look more to the future (0.504). Factor 9—Unidentifiable Q14—Nothing can be done to offset effects of past mistakes (0.755). Q17d—I think of myself as an individual-self (0.628). Factor 10—Unidentifiable Q13—History must be continuously reinterpreted and re-evaluated (0.857). Factor 11—Unidentifiable Q4—I owe a debt of gratitude to the older generations of people who have brought us post-war economic prosperity (0.627). Q36—If you love Japan, you should notice its problems and work to correct them (0.491). Orphan Q17a—I think of myself as a citizen of the world.

Notes 1. More specifically, Douglas preferred the terms “high group”/”high grid”. 2. “Political correctness” refers to a set of practices designed to recognize and preserve the dignity of minorities. Radical multiculturalists seek to promote self-esteem by rejecting distinctions, including those based on merit. Moderate multiculturalists accept distinctions but seek to make everyone in society worthy of a respect they never received, and never expected to receive, in earlier times. 3. Furthermore, in Collier and Mahon, “. . . Weber’s use of ideal types grew out of his recognition that the most interesting concepts are not based on defining properties shared by all cases to which the concept refers. . . . Weber, therefore, embraced the use of ideal types in which key attributes associated with the concept were expected to be present to varying degrees” (1993: 853). 4. The recent rise of regret, in their view, is characteristic of our age, “an age of shattered time and shifting allegiances, indeed of scepticism toward allegiances at all” (Olick and Coughlin 2003: 56). 5. No difference appeared in responses to questions referring to “my generation” and “I personally feel” morally responsible. 6. “Japan’s War in Asia” includes items such as Japan’s military action throughout Asia, Korean Annexation and Occupation (1910–1945), the Manchurian Incident, Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945), the Comfort Women Issue, the Nanjing Incident/Massacre (1937), Unit 731 in China and the 21 Demands against China (1915).

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7. “Pacific War” includes the Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent struggles with the United States. 8. “Politics/Politicians” includes items such as politics in general (including political scandals) and former Prime Minister Mori (April 2000–April 2001). Prime Minister Mori was very unpopular during his tenure mainly because of his series of slips of the tongue and occasional inappropriate actions. 9. For Japanese history textbook writing, see, for example, Rose (1998), Hood (2001), Cave (2005) and Dierkes (2005). 10. On the critical reading of Benedict’s thesis, see, for example, Geertz (1988), Yoneyama (1999) and Lie (2001). All criticize Benedict’s implicitly “orientalist” treatment of Japanese culture, or, in Yoneyama’s phrase, “Benedict’s authorial gaze” (1999: 74). More concretely, Chrysanthemum and the Sword “problematically contraposes the US (us) with Japan (the other) to demonstrate how the Japanese difference, thus constructed, shapes the American readers’/listeners’ understandings about US culture and society” (Yoneyama 1999: 77). But real differences exist, and these have been documented by many empirical studies, including Kitayama and Markus’s comparison of the construction of the self in Japan and the United States (Markus and Kitayama 1991; Kitayama et al. 1997). This chapter takes such differences as an analytical point of departure. 11. Inner-direction, for Riesman et al. (1950) is a character trait locating the source of authority for individual conduct in the person rather than the group. (See pp. 17–53 for comparisons with other-direction, tradition-direction and autonomy.) 12. If one is not sure of forgiveness, then a sense of uncertainty (along with the fear of being vulnerable) would discourage apology (consider, in this regard, Japan’s present relationship with China and South Korea). George Simmel’s notion of sociation is implicative in this regard. Like gift-giving, the act of apology reveals one’s identity (as an apologizer) and transmits how one feels about his counterpart. This feeling, however, is affected by “the idea which the recipient evokes in the imagination of the giver” (Schwartz 1967: 2). The failure of Japan’s apologies is partly explained by this inconsistency. (1967: 7). 13. In contrast, those who could not name a single event of national shame was less than one-sixth (15.5 per cent) of the total Japanese sample (N = 530). 14. See, for example, Gluck (1994), Saito (1992), Conrad (2003) and Hein and Hammond (1995). The concept of de-Asianization (datsua) goes back to the literature titled De-Asianism (Datsua-ron) by Yukichi Fukuzawa (1885), an eminent and influential scholar in the Meiji era. According to him, Meiji Japan “had to get rid of Asia—de-Asianize itself, so to speak—in order to catch up with the Western countries” (Saito 1992: 15). In other words, Japan should “dissociate itself from its Asiatic neighbors, and . . . treat them in the same manner as the Western-nations were then doing” (Miwa 1968: 17). In Gluck, “Japan, because it was civilized in the manner of the West, should ‘escape from Asia.’ Korea and China were not able to function as peers in the realm of Western civilization; only Japan had taken that step, and so Japan must leave Asia. Japan, because it was civilized like the West, should therefore imperialize like the West in Asia” (1994: 4). 15. In this context, a literary critic Yoshimi Takeuchi and his Pan-Asianism during the 1960s was a rare exception. See, for example, Oguma (2002). 16. Friedrich Nietzsche characterized Christian norms of regret as a triumph of “slave morality” which subordinates noble achievement to the resentment of history’s losers. In contrast, Richard McKeon locates moral responsibility historically by defining it as an attribute of democratic, not Christian, culture. As the word

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“responsibility” appeared in English and French in 1787 in connection with new, reciprocal relations between individual and state, there arose the corresponding idea of a self-conscious “cultural” or “collective” responsibility. “The concept of responsibility relates actions to agents by a causal tie and applies a judgment of value to both . . . The agent may be an individual or a group acting in the context of a society or a political state, or an individual, group, or community acting in the looser association of free individuals or independent communities or states whose actions affect each other” (McKeon 1990: 82). 17. Accordingly, the Chinese and South Korean respondents do not believe that enough apologies were made by Japan. The Asahi Newspaper survey shows that many Chinese respondents (28 per cent in 1997 and 41 per cent in 2002) believe Japanese apologies for war-time wrongdoing are insincere. In contrast, Japanese respondents were optimistic. Sixty-one per cent of the Japanese respondents in 1997 and 67 per cent in 2002 thought that Japan could forge friendly relations by pursuing future-oriented diplomacy rather than apology, financial compensation or history education (Asahi Shimbun September 2002). But as the 2005 Asahi Shimbun survey suggests, there is a perception gap among Japanese, Chinese and South Korean respondents on the question of what should be done in order to resolve Japan’s Memory Problem. South Korean (43 per cent) and Chinese (48 per cent) respondents want sincere regrets, and this is by far the preponderant opinion. In Japan, the same item was endorsed by only 13 per cent of the respondents (Asahi Shimbun April 2005). 18. This chapter’s item retention criteria are akin to Schatz et al. in which “a factor loading of at least .4 and a difference in factor loadings of at least .2” were applied (1999: 158). In terms of minimum factor loading criterion (at least 0.5) this chapter is more conservative. Those items with factor loadings of lower than (+/−) 0.50 yet higher than 0.40 are bracketed.

References Awaya, K, Tanaka, H., Mishima, K., Hirowatari, S., Mochida, Y. and Yamaguchi, Y. (1994) Senso Sekinin/Sengo Sekinin [War Responsibility/Post-War Responsibility] (Tokyo: Asahi). Benedict, R. (1946) The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin). Berger, P., Berger, B. and Kellner, H. (1973) The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (New York: Random House). Bodnar, J. (1992) Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Cave, P. (2005) “Learning to Live with the Imperial Past? History Teaching, Empire, and War in Japan and England”, in E. Vickers and A. Jones (eds), History Education and National Identity in East Asia (London: Routledge), pp. 307–33. Chambers, J. W. (1999) The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press). Chung, C. (2006) “Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture”, Philosophy East & West, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 253–80. Collier, D. and Mahon, J. E., Jr. (1993) “Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis”, American Political Science Review, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 845–55.

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Conrad, S. (2003) “Entangled Memories: Versions of the Past in Germany and Japan 1945–2001”, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 85–99. Derrida, J. (1995) The Guilt of Death: Religion and Postmodernism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Dierkes, J. (2005) “The Stability of Postwar Japanese History Education Amid Global Changes”, in E. Vickers and A. Jones (eds), History Education and National Identity in East Asia (London: Routledge), pp. 255–74. Douglas, M. (1970) Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon). Dower, J. W. (1999) Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton & Company). Durkheim, E. (1976 [1912]) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by J. W. Swain (New York: HarperCollins). Field, N. (1997) “War and Apology: Japan, Asia, the Fiftieth, and After”, Positions, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 1–49. Furuta, H. (2004) “Higashiajia Bunka no Shiten Hitsuyo” [Necessary to Consider East Asian Culture], Asahi Shimbun, 13 August, p.11. Fukuoka, K. (2006) Collective Memory and External Others: Explaining Japan’s Ideational Shift on War Memories in the 1990s (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Georgia). Gablentz, O. H. von (1979 [1968]) “Responsibility”, in D. L. Sills (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 18 (New York: Macmillan). Gasche, R. (2007) “European Memories: Jan Patocka and Jacques Derrida on Responsibility”, Critical Inquiry, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 291–311. Geertz, C. (1988) “Us/Not-Us: Benedict’s Travels”, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press), pp. 102–28. Gillis, J. (ed.) (1994) Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University 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), pp. 3–6. Habermas, J. (1990) “Grenzen des Neohistorismus.” Interview with J. M. Ferry, in J. Habermas, Die Nachholende Revolution: Kleine Politische Schriften, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), pp. 149–56. Hein, L. and Hammond, E. H. (1995) “Homing in on Asia: Identity in Contemporary Japan”, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 3–17. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds) (1983) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hochschild, A. R. (1979) “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure”, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 85, no. 3, pp. 551–75. Hood, C. (2001) Japanese Education Reform: Nakasone’s Legacy (New York: Routledge). Jaspers, K. (1961 [1947]) The Question of German Guilt, translated by E. B. Ashton (New York: Capricorn Books). Johnson, C. (1986) “The Patterns of Japanese Relations with China, 1952–1982”, Pacific Affairs, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 402–28. Kato, N. (1997) Haisengoron [Thoughts on Post-defeat Japan] (Tokyo: Kodansha). Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., Matsumoto, H. and Norasakkunkit, V. (1997) “Individual and Collective Processes in the Construction of the Self: Self-Enhancement in the United States and Self-Criticism in Japan”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 72, no. 6, pp. 1245–67.

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Koschmann, J. V. (2000) “National Subjectivity and the Uses of Atonement in the Age of Recession”, The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 99, no. 4, pp. 741–61. Lee, I. (2006) “The Law and Culture of the Apology in Korean Dispute Settlement (with Japan and the U.S. in Mind)”, Michigan Journal of International Law, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 1–53. Lerner, R., Nagai, A. K. and Rothman, S. (1995) Molding the Good Citizen: The Politics of High School History Texts (Westport, CT: Praeger). Lie, J. (2001). “Ruth Benedict’s Legacy of Shame: Orientalism and Occidentalism in the Study of Japan”, Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 249–61. Markus, H. R. and Kitayama, S. (1991) “Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation”, Psychological Review, vol. 98, no. 2, pp. 224–53. McKeon, P. R. (1990) Freedom and History and Other Essays (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Mills, C. W. (1940) “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive”, American Sociological Review, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 904–13. Miwa, K. (1968) “Fukuzawa Yukichi’s ‘Departure from Asia’: A Prelude to the Sino-Japanese War”, in E. Skrzypczak (ed.), Japan’s Modern Century: Special Issue of Monumenta Nipponika (Tokyo: Sophia University in cooperation with Charles E. Tuttle, Press), pp. 1–26. Morris-Suzuki, T. (1998), “Unquiet Graves: Kato Norihiro and the Politics of Mourning”, Japanese Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 21–30. Nora, P. (1996) Realms of Memory. Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press). Ogata, S. (1965) “Japanese Attitude toward China”, Asian Survey, vol. 5, no. 8, pp. 389–98. Oguma, E. (2002). Minshu to Aikoku [Democracy and Patriotism] (Tokyo: Shin’yosha). Olick, J. K. and Coughlin, B. (2003) “The Politics of Regret: Analytical Frames”, in J. B. Torpey (ed.), The Politics of the Past (New York: Rowman and Littlefield), pp. 37–62. Riesman, D., Glazer, N. and Denney, R. (1950) The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Rose, C. (1998) Interpreting History in Sino-Japanese Relations: A Case Study in Political Decision-Making (New York: Routledge). Saito, S. (1992) “The Pitfalls of the New Asianism”, Japan Echo, vol. 19, special issue, pp. 14–19. Schatz, R. T., Staub, E. and Lavine, H. (1999) “On the Varieties of National Attachment: Blind versus Constructive Patriotism,” Political Psychology, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 151–74. Schwan, G. (1997) Politics and Guilt: The Destructive Power of Silence, translated by T. Dunlap (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press). Schwartz, B. (1967) “The Social Psychology of the Gift,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 73, no. 1, pp. 1–11. Schwartz, B., Fukuoka, K. and Takita-Ishii, S. (2005) “Collective Memory: Why Culture Matters”, in M. D. Jacobs and N. W. Hanrahan (eds), The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture (Oxford, UK: Blackwell), pp. 253–71. Smith, A. D. (1999) Myths and Memories of the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press). 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), pp. 9–12. Takahashi, T. (1999) Sengo Sekininron [Theory on Post-War Responsibility] (Tokyo: Kodansha).

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Takahashi, T. (ed.) (2002) Rekishininshiki Ronso [History and/or Memory] (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha). Taylor, C. (1994) “The Politics of Recognition”, in A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 25–73. Tei, T. (1995) Kankoku no Imêji [South Korea’s Image] (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha). Trouillot, M.-R. (2000) “Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era”, Interventions, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 171–86. Wagatsuma, H. and Rosett, A. (1986) “The implications of Apology: Law and Culture in Japan and the United States”, Law and Society Review, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 461–98. Wakamiya, Y. (1995) Sengohosho no Ajiakan [Post-War Conservative View of Asia] (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha). Weber, M. (1949 [1904]) “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy”, in E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch (eds/trans.), The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press), pp. 49–112. Yoneyama, L. (1999) “Habit of Knowing Cultural Differences: Chrysanthemum and the Sword in the U.S. Liberal Multiculturalism”, Topoi, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 71–80. Zeller, R. A. and Carmines, E. G. (1980) Measurement in the Social Sciences (London: Cambridge University Press).

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Section II China Studies

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4 Political Centres, Progressive Narratives and Cultural Trauma: Coming to Terms with the Nanjing Massacre in China, 1937–1979 Xiaohong Xu and Lyn Spillman

Introduction In December 1937, about two years before World War II broke out in Europe, the Imperial Japanese Army captured Nanjing, then capital of China. The conquering army turned the city into a hell. Over a period of six weeks, the Japanese carried out wanton killings, rapes and lootings on a large scale. Thousands of civilians and prisoners of war were killed by shooting, bayoneting, decapitating, burning, and burying alive. Thousands of women were raped, and most were later murdered as the Japanese perpetrators tried to destroy the evidence. Western media, like the Manchester Guardian and New York Times, covered the “barbarian” acts of the Japanese soldiers immediately, admonishing their readers about the evil of war, as another world war loomed in Europe.1 This historical event is what people now call “The Nanjing Massacre” or “The Rape of Nanking”. Sixty years later, the Reverend Desmond M. Tutu, renowned for his efforts to repair the injustice of apartheid, observed of the event that “there seems to be no end to the depths to which our inhumanity towards other human beings will sink” (Yin and Young 1997: x). Both war-time correspondents and Desmond Tutu tried to address the Nanjing Massacre with moral discourses prevalent in the West of their times: pacifist discourse in the 1930s and universalistic human rights discourse in the late twentieth century. In other words, a kind of “cultural work” was involved in this process of representation, through which awareness of the Massacre could be raised and a call for repair and redress could be advocated in front of a wider audience. Such cultural work keys the narrative of the traumatic event to an existing cultural framework prevalent in the audience to which advocates try to speak. 101

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On the other hand, victims and their political representatives or masters did not usually see their most urgent task as representing the Massacre to a wider audience. Above all, victims face the challenge of making sense of suffering, of what has happened to them and how their perpetrators behaved, in their own terms, with familiar, local symbols and stories. The way victims address their sufferings is often different from, and sometimes even incompatible with, the cultural framework of the wider audience. The political entity that represents them, the state, also has its own ideology and agenda that will influence the representation of the sufferings that the victimized group experienced. The state embodies society’s “political centre”, the realm of values, beliefs and institutions that govern society. The memory of the traumatic experience, therefore, might remain local and even, in some cases, be repressed or, when promoted by the political centre, be incorporated into collective identity on a national level. Often, the ideology of the political centre will exert its influence on the way that the memory of the victims is articulated. As the victims seek recognition and acknowledgement from the perpetrators of the atrocities inflicted upon them, the way the perpetrators address their own past wrongdoings may also have an impact upon the memory of the victimized group. Moreover, memories of historical sufferings and injustice in a community are also discursively related; how one injustice is addressed may serve as an example, either positive or negative, for addressing other injustices. Memories may also compete with each other for public attention. As the editors of this volume suggest, questions about which historical events and figures become established referents in later public discourse, and how the public understanding of such events and figures changes, have been the longstanding pre-occupation of scholars of collective memory (Olick and Robbins 1998). In the past, two sorts of answers to such questions have sometimes been thought to conflict (Spillman 2003). On one hand, some answers emphasized social organization, the institutional production of memory, sometimes in relation to shared contemporary concerns, sometimes more directly selective depending on contemporary differences in resources, power and interests. On the other hand, some answers emphasized the intrinsic meaning of remembered events and figures in terms of their social function, charisma and the power of continuous tradition. However, these two types of explanations of collective memories are not necessarily counter-posed; rather, many scholars analyse the ways organizational or political and cultural dynamics may jointly support, jointly undermine or interact in more complex ways to account for variation in the diffusion and persistence of particular collective memories. Here, as the editors suggest, we focus on symbolic processes “mediating cultural and social influences”. Like other collective memories, historical suffering and injustice become publicly remembered—or not—according to whether or not they attract

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organizational or political attention from social movements or political centres, which in turn depends on the terms in which they are understood and the horizons of meaning which might give them significance to external actors. The representation of traumatic experience has recently received increasing attention: investigations of cultural trauma have developed along the same lines as (though unfortunately sometimes independent of) social memory studies (Das et al. 2000; Alexander et al. 2004; Bell 2006). In this view, and as other collective memory scholars would also suggest, even widely shared sufferings and injustice are not collectively traumatic in themselves: “trauma is a socially mediated attribution” depending on claims-making by “carrier groups”, in various institutional arenas, about the nature of the pain, victims and perpetrators, to broader audiences in ways which symbolically extend the relevance of the experience through psychological identification (Alexander et al. 2004: 8). Collective memory scholarship generally, as well as recent theories of cultural trauma, tends to focus more on ultimately successful and powerful representations, rather than obscure events which may have become collective memories, but did not. Yet, the persuasiveness of such accounts ultimately depends on implied comparisons with the negative cases. As Alexander suggests, if “failures to recognize collective traumas . . . do not result from the intrinsic nature of the original suffering” we must examine why sometimes “carrier groups have not emerged with the resources, authority, or interpretive competence to powerfully disseminate these trauma claims [and] sufficiently persuasive narratives have not been created . . . [nor] . . . broadcast to wider audiences” (2004: 26–7). The Nanjing Massacre is perhaps the leading “negative case” for theories of collective trauma. From the beginning, knowledge of the nature and extent of the pain, the victims and the perpetrators involved was widely available in China and quite uncontroversial. Yet Nanjing was not recognized let alone dramatized as a significant cultural trauma. Here, we examine the Chinese representation of the Nanjing Massacre from its occurrence to the 1970s. In this period, the Massacre was known but not salient in Chinese discourse about Chinese national identity. Drawing on a variety of contemporary documents and memoirs, as well as existing scholarship, we show why the representation of the Nanjing Massacre failed to achieve symbolic extension and why wider audiences in China, and beyond, could not identify with it. Contemporary concerns of political centres figure importantly in our account of this negative case. Chinese public discourse in this period provided little space for claims-making carrier groups not associated with the political centre, if indeed they could have formed at all. More importantly, here, the political centre itself did not take up the role of claims-maker, nor define the event as traumatic for national or international audiences (He 2007). In large measure, contemporary concerns as understood by dominant

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groups account for the long exclusion of the Massacre from Chinese collective memory, challenging theoretical arguments that any intrinsic meaning of events can trump contemporary, “presentist” concerns.2 But presentist concerns of dominant groups are not in themselves enough to explain which memories become publicly established, and which do not, because the codes and narratives within which potentially powerful carrier groups and dominant actors understand the events are neither transparent nor obvious. It is easy to imagine a counterfactual scenario in which dominant groups in the PRC did indeed take up and disseminate trauma claims about Nanjing to both national and international audiences, quickly incorporating it into Chinese collective identity. The cultural question we pursue here is why this did not occur and what codes and narratives prevented it. We argue that the progressive and universalist narrative of Communism inhibited the construction of Nanjing as cultural trauma. More generally, this case adds to cumulating evidence from diverse contexts that narratives of collective progress are morally limited in their built-in tendency to neglect or underplay suffering and exclusion (Jones 1994: 151; Watson 1994: 12–3, 17; Torpey 2001; Alexander 2003: 48–51; Spillman 2003; cf. Oglesby 2007). We begin by contrasting the contemporaneous interpretation of the Massacre by political actors oriented to broader audiences with the local interpretation of ordinary Chinese. We go on to examine in detail the mobilization of the Massacre as a polluting symbol during the Civil War, and the formation of a Communist Party narrative which muted the significance of Nanjing suffering. In the third part of the chapter, we discuss the codes and narratives which dominated treatment of Nanjing after the formation of the People’s Republic, and we then attend to occasional attempts to rework or to recover Nanjing at the margins of the dominant discourse. Overall, the progressive narrative of communism, with its universalist understanding of “the people” and the resistance to “American imperialism”, prevented claims-making about Nanjing as cultural trauma until the 1970s, when Sino-Japanese relations were fundamentally re-oriented. Even then, however, Nanjing could not become a universal symbol, as did the Holocaust, because it became an element of nationalist claims.

Wartime narratives: “invaders” or “devils”? Immediately following the Nanjing Massacre, Western diplomats, missionaries and businessmen in Nanjing exposed the horrific events to the outside world through Western media, with the undertone of showing “what war means” to their Western audience. In the West, the Rape of Nanking soon became the main symbol of Japanese terror. In contrast, it was not singled out to function in that generalized way by the Chinese, for they were facing various kinds of Japanese atrocities on a daily basis.

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Internationally, in the four appeals that China made against Japanese aggression at the Council of the League of Nations in Geneva in 1938, the emphasis was put mainly on Japanese gas attacks and indiscriminate bombings, with the Nanking atrocities mentioned in passing. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek gave special instructions to Chinese diplomats in Europe, requesting that they emphasize “Japan’s inhumane methods [of] warfare particularly frequent use [of] poison gas”. This emphasis was believed to be a more powerful appeal in Europe since horrific gas attacks in World War I were still a haunting memory for many Europeans (Yoshida 2006: 28–30). Domestically, for both the Nationalists and the Communists, the Nanjing Massacre served as just another case of Japanese atrocity.3 Exposing such atrocity, though it betrayed the military debacle of the Chinese army in Nanking, was to prompt greater indignation and patriotism.4 Immediately after the Manchester Guardian correspondent Harold J. Timperley finished his manuscript What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China, the propaganda organ of the Nationalist Party managed to purchase it and was involved in its publication (Li and Wen 1998: 513–20). Guo Moruo, one of the most famous “Japan hands” in China at the time, who now worked for the war-time government, ended his preface to its Chinese edition in this way: Now the Chinese translation of the book has come to the fore. In front of such a portrait of a flesh-and-blood Great Wall, we believe, every son and daughter of the Chinese nation will necessarily feel infinitely indignant and take more efforts. We shall mourn for victimized compatriots, salute sympathetic international friends, and meanwhile shall doubly realize our responsibility and completely accomplish the mission of defending motherland, defending humanity and defending culture. We believe that we are coming to the "right to decide between right and wrong." While the War of Resistance is now approaching its first anniversary, the enemy is coming to bay. We always believe that there will be one day when the authoritativeness of human justice will be established. (Quoted in Hora 1982: 175) We see here, very early, a developing understanding that relativizes the Nanjing experience as a basis for greater effort towards, yet in contrast to, a heroic future. Such an optimistic view of the War of Resistance, however, served as no more than a distant vision for local Chinese in the Japanese-occupied regions. Their concern was to survive and grasp the meaning of the terror that the Japanese military action and occupation brought to them. The sufferings and bereavement that local Chinese endured made them coin a folklore phrase, “the Japanese devils” (riben guizi) or simply “devils”, to name the Japanese in their private conversations. By classifying the Japanese as devils within the framework of Chinese popular religions, local Chinese

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villagers managed to account for the behaviour of the occupying Japanese army, which they could hardly explain in human terms. The folklore symbol, which drew on a theological repertoire of Chinese popular religions to describe human behaviour, helped local Chinese come to terms with their traumatic experiences. In this way, they recognized the dominance of the evil. Such a perception of the Japanese soldiers as devils already appeared in Guo Qi’s Record of Blood and Tears of the Fallen Capital,5 the first published testimony of a Chinese survivor from the Nanjing Massacre, as he recounted that the Chinese called Japanese soldiers “devils” in their private conversations (Central Archive et al. 1995: 224–77).6 Though similar terms like “foreign devils”(yang guizi) had been in use since the Western dominance of China in the nineteenth century, it is notable that from the War of Resistance on, the single word “devils” (guizi), without any adjective, clearly signifies the Japanese militarists.7 Many former Japanese soldiers recollected scenes in which ordinary Chinese shouted out the phrase “Japanese devils” when they were tortured. Typically, the Chinese first begged the Japanese not to harm them or their loved ones. When they found that their pleas could not keep the Japanese soldiers from harming the people they wanted to protect, they cried “Japanese devil(s)” in a despairing curse. Shinobu Kitaoka provides a vivid example of these scenes from two Japanese veterans’ recollections of their experience in the military campaign against Communist guerrillas in North China (Sanko Sakusen, or, in Chinese, Sanguang Zhengce—“kill-all, burn-all, loot-all”). Shichiku, one of the veterans, recalled a scenario in which his squad captured a woman with her husband, a five- or six-year-old daughter, a three- or four-year-old son and a newborn baby. The woman kept begging them not to harm her family. Urged by his commander, Shichiku came up to kill the children. The woman was horrified and tried to protect them: “You want to revolt, you bitch?!” Shichiku fiercely hit her face with his gunstock. “Oh no.” The mother fell to the ground with blood all over her face. She cuddled her baby and continued to crawl towards her daughter. “My kid.” The mother cried. The daughter was bleeding from her mouth and was trying to crawl towards her mother. But Shichiku bayoneted her in her chest. The son buried his face in his hands and burst into wailing. Shichiku then bayoneted the boy. “Oh no.Wuwuwu . . . (sound of wailing) . . . Japanese devils! Japanese devils!” In grief and indignation, the mother burst out cursing. Floundering in blood, she firmly cuddled the bodies of her two kids.

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Shichiku was scared by her glare full of hatred . . . and killed her. (Kitaoka 2001: 32–4) This incident begins with the woman’s effort to deal with the Japanese soldiers in human terms through begging and communication. After realizing that her efforts could not stop the relentless violence of the soldiers, she acknowledged acceptance of the misfortune inflicted by the Japanese by cursing (thereby classifying) them into the rank of devils, who were morally inferior to her humanity but whose power was dominating her. This scenario demonstrates the association of the phrase “Japanese devils” with a pessimistic understanding of their own dealing with the Japanese. There was no resistance involved in this scenario. Although it is possible to imagine despairing curses which also invoked future retribution, this vernacular labelling—“devils”—gave full moral weight to the experience, without situating it in terms of any broader, more hopeful or progressive narrative. Such desperate labelling of Japanese soldiers as devils, drawing on folkloric symbols, was rather different from the optimistic official views of both the Nationalists and the Communists, which tried to sustain mass morale in free areas of China. Though constantly referring to the Japanese atrocities as “bestial behaviours” (shouxing), both the Nationalist and the Communist media used plain words such as “Japanese invaders” (rikou or wokou), “enemy invaders” (dikou), “Japanese army” (rijun), “Japanese soldiers“ (ribing), “enemy” (diren or wodi), “enemy army” (dijun) and “enemy soldiers” (dibing), except when quoting private conversations or eye-witness accounts of the Chinese rank and file. Such terms implied that the Japanese were invaders predestined to be driven out in the future. Contemporary Chinese newspaper reports of the Nanjing Massacre also followed such a pattern. In news reports, “Japanese invaders” (rikou) was the most frequently used term (Central Archive et al. 1995: 167–86; Alexander and Gao 2007: 270–3). For example, two of the Communist-sponsored newspapers, Jiuguo Shibao (Saving-the-Country Times) and Xinhua Ribao (New China Daily), titled their earlier reports of the Nanjing Massacre, respectively, “The Inhuman Killing and Raping of the Japanese Invaders” and “The Bestial Behaviours of the Japanese Invaders in Nanjing” (Central Archive et al. 1995: 174–6; Alexander and Gao 2007: 274, n. 8). The difference in naming the Japanese invading army is a difference between formal and informal languages, the informal “devils” contrasting with the more formal “invaders”. More important, here, the more formal and distant relation with the Japanese atrocities drew on a cultural framework which relativized the Nanjing experience as a horror which would be actively overcome, preventing universalist claims addressing wider audiences about the massacre. The formality of the term itself, as we have demonstrated above, stemmed from the formality of relations with the Japanese atrocities and the formality of cultural frameworks in interpreting

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these atrocities. As the experience became part of a progressive narrative— about the defeat of invaders—its potential significance as cultural trauma was reduced.

Traumatic past and turbulent present: the Nanjing Massacre in the Civil War Political negotiation to form a coalition government between the Nationalists and the Communists started immediately after Japan declared its unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945. It was temporarily consolidated into a truce on 10 October the same year. However, both parties disregarded the truce and, with help from their respective allies, prepared for the Civil War which eventually broke out in the spring of 1946 and ended with the victory of the Communists in mainland China and the foundation of the PRC on 1 October 1949. The Nationalist government fled to Taiwan. Against this historical background, the “official” memory of the Nanjing Massacre bifurcated by party, but both parties used it similarly to pollute civil war antagonists. As their political antagonism shifted from the Japanese to each other, the Nationalists and the Communists became more concerned with propagating the “atrocities” that their present antagonists inflicted upon the Chinese people.8 Often, such “atrocities” were measured against those of the Japanese, and sometimes were even depicted as overshadowing the latter: “The Chiang-lead Thieves Brazenly Employ the Methods Which the Japanese Invaders Used to Massacre the People”; “Shandong Province Continues to Suffer! The Loss Incurred by Eight Years of Japanese Occupation is Surpassed by the Damage the Communists Inflicted Within Three Months” (Central Daily News 13 December 1945: 3; People’s Daily 9 September 1947: 1). Since the Japanese atrocities still haunted personal memory, such propaganda could certainly be effective (though its credibility is unknown). Moreover, since the Japanese army’s withdrawal from China was still incomplete and its military strength still considerable, both sides accused each other of colluding with defeated Japanese army personnel to harm the Chinese nation.9 At the same time, Nanjing was not used by either side to demonize all Japanese. As Takashi Yoshida notes, both the Nationalists and the Communists continued to view the Japanese people as victims of their own military leaders, just as they had during the war-time. In his famous victory speech on 15 August 1945, Chiang Kai-shek stated that “we have . . . repeatedly declared that we were only opposed to the Japanese militarists and harbored no enmity for the Japanese people” and called on the Chinese to “sympathize [with] the plight” of innocent Japanese civilians who were “coerced and misled by their Fascist and Nazi leaders”, rather than seeking retaliation against them (Yoshida 2006: 62–3).10

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Such a policy went unchallenged by the Communists as it was in line with their internationalist orientation. However, the Communists held a much harsher view than that of the Nationalists on Japanese war criminals. The incumbent Nationalists, reliant on American aid, took a mild position when General MacArthur made moves to exonerate many Japanese wartime political and business leaders and rebuild Japanese industry, which were construed by many Chinese as moving towards remilitarizing Japan. The Nationalists’ inaction thus received severe criticism not only from the Communists, but also from independent critics.11 Public opinion opposing MacArthur’s policy in Japan also contributed to widespread anti-American feeling and dissatisfaction with Nationalists’ acquiescence.12 Public hostility to America’s Japan policy and Chiang’s inaction concerning this policy were consolidated in the summer of 1947 into the “Movement to Oppose US Support of Japan” (fandui meiguo fuzhi Riben yundong)—the broadest coalition of social groups of any of the protests of the Civil War period, which contributed greatly to the Communists’ success in gaining public support and later assuming leadership (Lutze 1998). This seems to be a rare instance in which anti-Japanese feeling outside the (conflicted) political centre influenced political outcomes at the centre. The Communists and independent Liberals were especially critical of MacArthur’s backing of Yoshida Shigeru, who was deemed to have a strong militaristic background (see Dower 1979). The Communist Party’s New Year’s message in 1947 charged that “in Japan [America] supports Yoshida [Shigeru as Prime Minister] and other reactionaries in oppressing the Japanese people, and helps them to revive the policy of aggression towards China” (People’s Daily 1 January 1947: 1). Similar critical comments on Yoshida were also widely presented in independent media such as L’Impartial (Ta Kung Pao). The most scandalous case for which the Nationalists were heavily criticized was their January 1949 acquittal in the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal of Okamura Yasutsugu, the commander-in-chief of China Expeditionary Army, whom the Communists accused of “redeeming himself” through serving as Chiang’s military advisor in the Civil War.13 In such a political context, it might be surprising that the only commemorative articles and reports about the Nanjing Massacre during the Civil War appeared in the Nationalist Central Daily News around the eighth and tenth anniversaries (13 December 1945 and 1947) and none appeared in the Communist People’s Daily and the Liberal L’Impartial.14 However, this becomes less surprising if we look at the context in which the Nanjing Massacre was singled out. Because the Massacre was internationally known as the primary symbol of Japanese military atrocities in China, it became a central focus in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The Nationalist government tried to make use of such symbolism to promote the political significance of punishing war criminals responsible for the Massacre in that Tribunal and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Therefore, the Nationalists

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not only pushed hard at the Tokyo trial to sentence to death Matsui Iwane, the commander of Central China forces at the time of the massacre, but they also had the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal condemn to public execution the four defendants, all Japanese officers who, in different ways and with varying justification, symbolized the Nanjing Massacre, even though the Tribunal acquitted 350 out of the 883 indicted Japanese (Yoshida 2006: 64–5). Nationalists thus claimed that they had meted out stern justice to the war criminals. Therefore, commemorative articles on the Massacre in the Nationalist Central Daily News were used to justify the status quo. Its article on the eighth anniversary mourned the victims by quoting a resident of Nanjing who said that “In those days, the lives of the Chinese were worth no more than chicks.” In its report on the commemorative activities of the tenth anniversary in Nanjing, during which the victims were mourned as “martyrs”, the Central Daily News paraphrased the keynote speech of a Nationalist official in the commemorative ceremony this way: On this day ten years ago, the enemy attacked Nanjing and committed their inhumane massacre and caused unprecedented misery and terror. So many compatriots sacrificed for the sake of justice and died gloriously because they refused to yield. All this we should never forget. Ten years ago, the fall of Nanjing did not undermine our resolution to confront the enemy and instead enhanced our faith to fight to the end. The martyrdom of hundreds of thousands of compatriots extended the moral integrity (zhengqi) of the five-thousand-year-old nation and prompted all the military personnel and civilians nationwide to confront the common enemy . . . Today, we can live on this free land. We should commemorate martyred compatriots all the more and appreciate the courage they gave us to win the victory.15 Chicks and martyrs are certainly two very different images of victims. But they were made consistent in this way: by dying as worth no more than chicks at the hands of the Japanese, the victims told the fate of the Chinese if they failed to defend themselves. By telling this, they were sublimated as martyrs. Indeed, as a war-time Communist-sponsored newspaper in Paris declared when it reported the Massacre: “those who do not want their own people to be wantonly murdered, who do not want their own sisters to be raped” must take action. Remembering the victims as chicks was by no means an end in itself. And for the Nationalists it served to underscore the fact that “today we can live on this free land.” To secure and extend this progress, as Central Daily News argued on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the Chinese should “quell the [Communist] rebellion in order to finish the job that the War of Resistance had not done completely.” In his speech on the same day, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek

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called people to “bring the spirit of the War of Resistance into play and sweep away the bane of our nation”, claiming that “the meaning of quelling the [Communist] rebellions today is not inconsistent with the War against Japanese Aggression.”16 In early Nationalist commemoration of Nanjing, then, the experience became a means to their Civil War ends in a narrative of progress to Nationalist victory. While the Nationalist government contended that they had penalized Japanese militaristic aggression enough, neither the Liberals nor the Communists were content with their efforts. But their dissatisfactions were grounded in different ideologies. The Liberals, the most nationalistic of the three political rivals, were disappointed to see that the post-war occupation of Japan did not actualize the blueprint of the Potsdam Declaration signed by the US, China and Britain on 26 July 1945. They were afraid of Japan’s reinvasion of China. They were especially worried that while Japan was rebuilding herself, China was squandering her victory and suffering from the Civil War. This soberer attitude towards post-war Japan explains why the independent Liberals distanced themselves from official commemorative activities held by the Nationalist government. They further questioned the victory discourse that underlay these commemorative activities. In early 1948, in a report on the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, L’Impartial already proclaimed, citing Mei Ru’ao (Mei Ju-ao), the judge from China, that “the Tokyo Trial has mostly lost its political significance.”17 Because Nanjing was occasionally used to ground a progressive narrative by the Nationalists, more pessimistic and critical Liberals could set the memory aside as irrelevant to their concerns. The Communists, while also discontented with the post-war Japanese situation, had different political and cultural logics to articulate their dissatisfaction compared to those of the independent Liberals. On the one hand, as part of the international Communist alliance, they were very attuned to the leftist movements in post-war Japan. Coverage of Japanese leftist social movements and their suppression by the Japanese government and the US occupation authority appeared almost daily on the front page of People’s Daily during the Civil War. Similar coverage was absent in the Central Daily News and rarely seen in L’Impartial. Such coverage, along with news of leftist movements in other nations around the globe, served to cultivate solidarity with the international communist movement that was very active at the time. This part of the story was intended to speak to the internal audience—the Communists themselves. Ironically, the universalizing worldview of Communism inhibited the different sort of generalization necessary to the construction of Nanjing memory as cultural trauma. On the other hand, Chiang Kai-shek’s inaction and compromise in the face of Japan’s gross pretexts for aggression against China—the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 193718 —and the time between, were now recalled in order to show that he was not a

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real patriot.19 This claim was in line with the accusation that Chiang was now selling China to American imperialism, helping American imperialists repress the Chinese people, and therefore dared not oppose the US government’s Japan policy. This part of the story was addressed to the Party’s external audience—the independent Liberals and the Chinese public in government-controlled regions. These two sides—roughly, communistic and nationalistic—merged and were reflected in the statement that the Communist Party issued in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937. In addition to 15 other clauses calling on the Chinese people to overthrow the Chiang regime, the statement called for the Chinese to “punish the Japanese war criminal Okamura Yasutsugu, punish all the Japanese war criminals and Chinese collaborators since the Manchurian Incident; prevent the Japanese aggression forces from reviving and democratize Japan, turn over Japanese reparations to the Chinese people for distribution and prevent Chiang from using the reparations for the Civil War.”20 In January 1949, on the eve of a Japanese election, as the Communists were approaching victory and stepping into power, the People’s Daily began to speak of the Communists’ Japan policy and speak to the “Japanese people” directly: The free New China will, according to the Potsdam Declaration, faithfully aid the democratic cause of Japan and prevent the Japanese reactionary forces from redeveloping themselves. The Chinese people not only cannot rely on the Japanese reactionary forces [that is, like the Nationalists] but also have no reason to pamper and aid those forces who suppress the Japanese people and imperil peace in the Far East as American Imperialism and the Nationalist government have done. The persons who are most entitled to lead Japan and establish true intimate friendship with New China are the Japanese democrats, those Japanese Communists and other democrats who don’t have blood stains of the Chinese people on their hands. This simple truth must be fully conveyed to all the Japanese people.21 Thus, “the blood stains of the Chinese people” were not forgotten. However, the real issue was the struggle of the people in the present. Certainly, the people should fight the Japanese reactionary forces, who had been responsible for the bloodshed and were now allies of American imperialism and Chiang Kai-shek. But the Japanese reactionary forces were no longer defined as the major external antagonists, rather as accomplices of American imperialism, just as Chiang Kai-shek was an accomplice at the domestic level. In sum, American imperialism had taken the place of German, Italian and Japanese fascism and become the primary external evil; Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, the primary domestic evil. The Japanese reactionary forces, as the primary evil in the past but now second to American imperialism, were

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somewhat remote. For the Communist Party, there was no inconsistency between its harsh policy towards the post-war Japanese establishment and its alliance with Japanese democrats, especially the Japanese Communist Party. Internally, the Communist party was fully engaged in a life-and-death struggle with its present enemies, focusing exclusively on representing their evils. Tightly organized and mobilized, its theme of “sufferings-struggleliberation” informed a presentist politics of memory: every atrocity relevant to its present political agenda would be publicized; those which were irrelevant would be brushed aside. In their efforts to unite independent liberals, a potential carrier group of traumatic memory committed to redressing Nanjing and other Japanese war-time atrocities, the Communists had promised to deliver the victims from further harm through universal revolution. But a tragic narrative of Nanjing was not only prohibited by the triumphalism of revolutionary ideology; the sufferings of Nanjing were also relativized alongside other sufferings of “the people”, which took precedence due to their expediency for the Party. This fact lends support to the “presentist perspective of collective memory”, as the editors of this volume put it. But the “cultural perspective” is also indispensable to understand the memory politics in the PRC, both in terms of the weight of the “Japan issue” in PRC foreign affairs and in terms of the cultural logic of war, sufferings and peace. This policy, and this ideology, which the Communists developed during the Civil War period to address the “Japan issue”, thus extended into the “New China”. In this process, the notion of “friendship among the people” figured importantly in framing the political discourse of memory and commemoration of World War II. Supposedly presentist “interests” in downplaying the memory of Nanjing were themselves shaped by broader cultural understandings.

Friendship among the people and universal revolution On 7 July 1950, the PRC’s first commemoration of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, People’s Daily issued an editorial titled “The Situation of the Japanese People’s Struggle”: Thirteen years ago, Japan was an imperialistic nation. At that time, Japan launched all-out aggression against China and zealously prepared to invade the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia and the U.S. Pacific territories. The Japanese peoples’ interest should be against this kind of invasion. Conscious organizations (zijue de zuzhi) that represented the interest of Japanese people at that time, however, were not powerful at all and, moreover, were severely destroyed. Now Japan, because of its defeat, is temporarily ruled by the American Imperialists, who, taking the opportunity that the forces of Japanese people have not yet been well organized,

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utilize Japanese reactionary forces, postpone and oppose a full-scale peace treaty, attempt to occupy Japan in the long term, and turn Japan into their own colony and military base to oppose the people in various Asian counties. The U.S. oppresses Japanese democratic forces, pampers Japanese war criminals and supports the revival of Japanese aggression forces in an attempt to use them as its tools for launching new wars. All these U.S. policies are against the Potsdam Declaration, against the policies of the two main nations which defeated Japan—the Soviet Union and China— and are against the interest of Japanese people and the people in various Asian countries.22 In this cultural framework, people in different nations tend to make friends with each other. Their interests induce such friendship. However, being deceived by ruling reactionary forces, they might not be conscious of their interest, and they may be driven into war with each other by ruling imperialists and militarists, contradicting their own interest. Therefore, they need to be educated and led by “conscious organizations” to realize their real interest, which will lead to their friendship with the people in other nations. Such an explanatory framework attributes “original innocence”, as opposed to “original sin”, to the people, but it is not necessarily an all-encompassing and armchair scholarly explanation. It leaves room for individual agency. While this framework explains the cause of war in terms of a social structure in which war-mongering militarists and imperialists could dominate and wage war for their own good, it leaves room for individual responsibility of the people, as they have not yet been conscious enough to oppose war—but could become so. With its combination of social structural explanation (which implies the peoples’ essential goodness) and taking into account of individual agency and individual responsibility (admonishing them to realize this goodness), the theory of universal revolution can serve as a powerful ideology for political mobilization. A telling example was the Communists’ reform of Japanese war criminals. From 1950 to 1956, 1108 Japanese were detained in a special prison in Fushun, China. They were first pushed to admit their atrocities against the Chinese people, and then asked to reflect on their own responsibility. When many of them contended that they just followed orders from their superiors, they were “persuaded” to admit their own responsibility. During this process, the prison authority collected evidence of their atrocities, let them meet their former victims, organized study sessions and groups among prisoners, showed them around to see what the Chinese people had achieved in post-liberation peacetime socialist reconstruction, while treating them extremely leniently in prison. In the end, all of these war criminals admitted their own responsibility and pledged to devote the rest of their lives to the cause of peace and the friendship between the Chinese people and the Japanese people. As only 45 detainees were indicted, the great

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majority of them were allowed to return to Japan without being prosecuted. The proceedings of the trials of the 45 indicted criminals were made public, often with former victims and their families being invited to the court. All of them, including army generals, admitted their atrocities and apologized to the Chinese people. Some of them even requested that the court impose the death penalty upon them for their crimes. In the end, very mild penalties were imposed, with all of them being repatriated by 1964. The policy was very successful. After their return, these Japanese organized the Group of Returnees from China (Chûgoku kikansha renrakukai) and fiercely engaged in publicizing their crimes in China. They became fervent anti-war activists and advocates of normalizing the diplomatic relationship with China. While being suspected in Japan of having been brainwashed by the Chinese Communists, most of the former prisoners kept lifelong friendships with their former warders.23 When war criminals invoked their oath to “follow orders” to justify their actions, a defence seemingly in line with the idea of “original innocence” of the people dominated by war-mongering imperialists, the Chinese Communists told them that they were no less responsible for the crimes than the imperialistic regime that ordered their commission; although they were ignorant of their true interests, they were capable of developing an awareness of what those true, shared, interests were. Politically condemned because of the crimes they committed, there were still chances for their salvation, since ontologically they were still “the people”. Living in this tension, these war criminals were strongly motivated to reform themselves by developing their revolutionary “consciousness” and devoting their lives to the cause of the people. The idea of friendship among the people strongly influenced the Party’s foreign policy in general and Japan policy in particular. On the one hand, the Party expressed a keen interest in establishing diplomatic relations with Japan. On the other, it often condemned the Japanese post-war government for subjecting itself to American imperialism and suppressing Japanese people. From the perspective of the Party, Japan was not an independent nation, even after the end of the US occupation, as significant numbers of US military forces were still stationed in Japan and Japan’s politics was strongly influenced by the US. Therefore, the Party’s Japan policy primarily focused on helping the Japanese people to struggle for “independence”, “peace” and “democracy”. It believed that “Japan’s attempt to achieve independence and autonomy not only conforms to the national interest of the Japanese people, but also is a necessary condition for Japan to shake off the U.S. invasive policy and warmongering plan and thus conforms to the interest of peace.”24 The Chinese government was thus deeply involved in Japanese politics, as it viewed Japanese leftist forces as its natural allies and often encouraged the latter by sharing the Chinese people’s successful experience in attaining independence. Delegates of Japanese leftist parties and organizations were invited to China one after the other.

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Against such a background, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were frequently mentioned and addressed as symbols of US aggression and the sufferings of Japanese people. As China itself was faced with nuclear threat from the US at the time, it strongly supported Japanese anti-nuclear movements. Not only did it send delegates to anti-nuclear events in Japan from 1955 to the 1960s, but it also often helped finance these events (Yoshida 2006: 69). The People’s Daily frequently published editorials and articles commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki and condemning American imperialism for still presenting a nuclear threat to world peace. “Don’t forget this catastrophic holocaust [literal translation of ‘haojie’]!” and “Never again, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki tragedies!” were common themes of these editorials and articles.25 In comparison, the Nanjing Massacre was almost entirely neglected. It was not until 1979 that there appeared a brief documentation of the Massacre in Chinese middle school textbooks.26 Alexander and Gao (2007) found only 15 articles in which the key words “Nanking Massacre” ever appeared in People’s Daily articles between 1946 and 1982. Even these articles were mostly not about the Massacre, but, rather, arose in response to international conflicts, with reference to the Massacre being made in the course of reporting about them. These articles did not refer to the Massacre in their titles and they took neither the Massacre nor its memorialization as a main theme. This does not mean, however, that Japanese war-time atrocities as a whole were neglected. Rather, the Chinese mentioned them on almost every occasion that was related to the so-called Japan issue, though on such occasions they were seldom elaborated, as the Party was more concerned with redressing them than focusing on commemorating them. Memories of the Anti-Japanese War did reappear vehemently in August and September of 1965, the twentieth anniversary of the end of World War II. According to China News Analysis, a contemporary weekly published in Hong Kong, “troops close to the battle fields of the Japanese war, or to the graves of resistance heroes, are brought there for commemoration services; people who served in the communist guerrillas are invited to speak, guerrillas who blew up trains or put mines on railways are honored. Civilians too who resisted the Japanese, as the press report says, ‘from the Great Wall in North China to the Pearl River in Canton’, are invited to recount their memories and talk to the troops, to the political cadres and to the militia.” For civilians, press reports, radio programmes, museum exhibitions, films and plays featuring the Anti-Japanese War were on show across the country. But while Japanese atrocities were an indispensable part of these representations, they were always the beginning rather than the end in itself. The main focus was on how the Chinese people fought Japanese imperialism, under the leadership of the Party and Chairman Mao, and won in the end. The phrase “Japanese devils” also gained a triumphant new connotation, as “Japanese devils” were depicted not only as atrocious but as

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silly and unable to match the wisdom and strength of the mobilized people.27 The progressive—sometimes comic—narrative deflated the traumatic experience. As the China News Analysis pointed out, the political context of this wave of commemoration was the US bombing of North Vietnam, which posed a threat to China and reminded the Party of the Anti-Japanese War. Such a concern was evident in the conclusion that the People’s Daily drew at the end of a chronology of the Japanese war published on 15 August 1965 (in which, remarkably, the Nanjing Massacre was missing): U.S. imperialism is similar to Japanese imperialism, it overestimates its own forces and underestimates the strength of the People. The Chinese people firmly believe that if U.S. imperialism should dare to extend further its aggressive war against Vietnam and force a war upon the Chinese people, it would lose more decisively than the Japanese fascists. It is especially notable that this wave of commemoration took place at the same time as several important events celebrating Sino-Japanese friendship, including a China-Japan Youth Friendship Festival, attended by hundreds of Japanese youth. And the People’s Daily acclaimed the festival as a sign for the youth of the two peoples to “strengthen our friendship and struggle together” against the US imperialists.28

Difficult memory: Nanjing in the shadow However, the memory of the Nanjing Massacre could not be entirely wiped out, especially at the local level and for those with direct experience of it. As we noted earlier, the pain, the victims and the perpetrators of this potential trauma were well known and quite uncontroversial, and as such the event remained lodged among the repertoire of symbols in Chinese public discourse. In dominant streams of discourse, as we have seen, it was taken as an origin point in a narrative of progress. If we look hard enough, of course, we can also find occasional discussion which detaches the event from this progressive framing, giving greater intrinsic weight to the suffering in narratives which could potentially frame Nanjing as cultural trauma. Even in these exceptional and peripheral treatments, however, the representation was reworked to fit with the overall ideology of the New China in ways that deflated any unique symbolic resonance. Often, concerns about US imperialism and Japanese re-militarization served as the point of potentially tragic narratives—a minor discursive stream which may have served as the basis of later nationalistic uses of the event. The very rare instances in which Nanjing was remembered in its own terms seem to have been fleeting, obscure and, where noticed, politically risky.

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New China Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party during the Anti-Japanese War, which was one of the few Chinese newspapers that first covered the Nanjing Massacre in early 1938 and which had become a local newspaper headquartered in Nanjing after 1949, published an article titled “Recollections of the Great Japanese Massacre in Nanjing” on 26 February 1951, in the midst of the Korean War. The anonymous reporter accused American missionaries in Nanjing of being more concerned with American property than saving Chinese lives. Moreover, the establishment of the Nanjing safety zone was described as a covert plot between American and Japanese imperialists to destroy Chinese resistance. And the casualties in the safety zone were charged against the US imperialists as much as the Japanese (Yoshida 2006: 68–9). Such reworking of the memory of the Nanjing Massacre clearly served to mobilize residents of the Nanjing area, for whom the memory of the Massacre was still close, to support the Party’s policy in the Korean War, which was seen as an important step of the re-militarization of Japan by US imperialism. Guo Moruo, the aforementioned Japan hand, who had been actively involved in publicizing the Nanjing Massacre during war-time and had become a significant figure promoting friendship between the Chinese and Japanese people after 1949, was no longer concerned with the historical specificity of the Massacre. Rather, in a journal article in October 1952 titled “Unite as One Heart, and Defend Peace” that addressed the atrocities of Japanese militarism, he did not mention Nanjing and placed Chinese casualties as a whole within the larger framework of Japanese atrocities in Asia, including the damage that Japanese militarists inflicted on the Japanese people, suggesting that people in Asia needed to oppose the re-militarization of Japan by US imperialism (Yoshida 2006: 69). The relativization of Japanese atrocities in China in general and Nanjing in particular was especially striking in an article in the People’s Daily on 7 August 1955, which was written by Mei Ru’ao in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Judge Mei Ru’ao had pushed hard to execute Matsui Iwane at the Tokyo Trial for the sake of justice for the Nanjing Massacre. In this article, Mei argued that, although Japan’s militarism had wrought damage in China in the past, dropping atomic bombs on civilians, most of whom were old people, women and children, outweighed these acts and was an unprecedented atrocity in world military history.29 Though the Nanjing Massacre had become a difficult memory in New China, there were efforts that tried to focus on it. For example, Guangming Daily (Guangming Ribao), a newspaper whose readers were mainly intellectuals and former independent Liberals, published an article on 3 September 1955 written by a certain Professor Xu Dunzhang. In the

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article, Professor Xu singled out the Nanjing Massacre in order to remind the Japanese government of its war-time aggression in China and its annihilation of more than 10 million lives in eight years.30 Also, in the early 1960s, historians at Nanjing University gathered a great amount of data, including photographs, new statistics and interviews with survivors, collected in 1962 into an eight-chapter manuscript. But the Communist government classified the manuscript instead of allowing it to be published. The manuscript was turned over to the city government in Nanjing, which only showed it to interested Japanese visitors (Yang 1990: 16–7; Eykholt 2000: 25–6). The reason why this special attention to the Nanjing Massacre was discouraged is unknown, but the story of Mei Ru’ao tells much about that mechanism.31 In 1962, the same year the manuscript of the Nanjing Massacre was collected, the aforementioned Judge Mei Ru’ao published an article titled “Concerning Tani Hisao, Matsui Iwane, and the Nanjing Massacre Incident”, in an academic history journal, in which he recollected his own experience at the Tokyo Trial. Noticing that Japanese scholars had done extensive research on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mei argued that In order to enrich history and educate the people, it seems that our history professionals should do more investigation and publicizing of world-shattering events such the Nanjing Massacre and other atrocities that invaders committed in our country. Although there was little response at the time the article was published, it became a target of accusations during the Cultural Revolution. Mei Ru’ao was accused of vilifying the Party as forgetful, making mischief between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, stirring up national hatred and retaliation and flattering Japanese scholars. Some even interpreted his writing about the Chinese defeat and misery in Nanjing as hidden praise for the might of the Japanese invaders.32

The unexpected return of the repressed The long-term struggle of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the Japanese government, which they always regarded as a residue of Japanese militarism and as a puppet government of US imperialism, finally ended in 1972, but in a way that was entirely unexpected for the Party. The struggle did not end with a revolution in Japan, which would create the social conditions for friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese people and would unite them against US imperialism. Instead, Japan moved to a proBeijing policy after China and the US approached each other in 1971. China

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and Japan normalized their diplomatic relationship in 1972 with the signing of the Zhou-Tanaka Communiqué, which stated: China and Japan are neighboring countries separated only by a strip of water, and there was a long history of traditional friendship between them. The two peoples ardently wish to end the abnormal state of affairs that has hitherto existed between the two countries . . . The Japanese side is keenly aware of Japan’s responsibility for causing enormous damage in the past to the Chinese people through war and deeply reproaches itself. (The China Quarterly 1972: 781–3) With the signing of the Communiqué, China finally recognized the existing government of Japan and gave up promoting a Japanese revolution. It now had an institutional tie with the Japanese government. The differentiation that the Party had made between the people and the handful of Japanese militarists thought to stand behind the Japanese government was not particularly necessary when China deemed the Japanese government to be adhering to the principle of self-reproach for war-time atrocities. On the other hand, it was not particularly easy to maintain when China saw the Japanese government as rejecting or evading responsibility, as in the 1982 textbook revision incident, which seemed to minimize Japan’s aggression. As the Chinese government embraced the whole nation of Japan through the normalization of diplomatic relations, it could no longer count on Japanese leftists to fight those incumbent militarists whose denial and cover-up of Japanese war-time atrocities had previously been seen as just one among other evils, including those they had inflicted on the Japanese people. As the Chinese Communists and Japanese leftists had no unambiguous common enemy now, the former were also no longer as sensitive to the political agenda of the latter as they had been. Denial and cover-up of Japanese war-time atrocities came to be deemed a primary evil for the Chinese government: and as their connection with Japanese opposition weakened, they attacked the revisionists directly. As a result, memories of the Nanjing Massacre, and disputes about them, now have a direct impact on Chinese identity. In these circumstances, the Chinese government moved from taking for granted the Japanese war-time atrocities and regarding rebuttal unnecessary (taking political action simply through supporting Japanese opposition) to refuting revisionists and proving that the Japanese atrocities were historically true. Not only had the political and ideological conditions that had inhibited the representation of the Nanjing Massacre gone, but its representation now became more politically necessary, since the Japanese revisionists specifically targeted Nanjing to whitewash past wrongdoings. This shift took several years: the Nanjing Massacre appeared in Chinese middle school textbooks in 1979

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(Lin 2000: 1). It was fully established by the time of the 1982 Japanese textbook revision incident. Of course, this was part of a broader process through which the Chinese government switched its legitimacy claim from worldwide revolution to national interests.33

Conclusion Overall, this account of why the Nanjing Massacre failed to achieve the symbolic extension and generalized psychological identification we might otherwise have expected adds to our growing understanding of trauma and collective memory by exploring in depth a leading “negative case”. As we see, the general point that traumatic memories are made not born is further supported as we come to understand why Nanjing played a limited role in Chinese public discourse until the late 1970s. More importantly, and beyond that, our findings here suggest two more general conclusions for scholars of collective memory. First, this study reminds us that attempts to extend analysis of collective memory comparatively, and especially beyond its Western origins, should give explicit comparative attention to the structure of the polity within which claimsmaking and institutionalization of collective memories occurs. This is not necessarily a matter of prioritizing theories which emphasize presentist concerns of dominant groups in the construction of collective memory, but of articulating similarities and differences in conditions and contexts of the production of collective memories in different countries. Nor is this simply a matter of distinguishing between democratic and authoritarian regimes, since both “generic” types of polity demonstrate great internal variation in the range and types of voice which enter public discussion, and in the relative legitimacy and power of those different voices. Collective memory scholars, we suggest, can best think of these variations in a nuanced way as variations in the constitution of, and in relations between, national “centres” and “peripheries” (Shils 1975: 3–16; Spillman 1997: 34–7).34 Second, and more substantively, we have argued that the fuller recognition of suffering produced by the construction of cultural trauma in collective identity may be inhibited by progressive narratives. Here, progressive narratives both in the Civil War and under the Peoples’ Republic told of Nanjing suffering as the beginning, or inspiration, of triumph. Narratives drawn from communism were, of course, particularly powerful; moreover, the universalist identification across national lines promoted by communism also discouraged an emphasis on war-time suffering, as we saw above. But this cultural dynamic seems to operate more generally. As Alexander shows, the Holocaust itself attained much greater symbolic weight as a unique evil after it was detached from progressive narratives of American redemption and told as a tragic narrative (2003: 48–51). In a less familiar and dramatic context, the suffering of native peoples in Australia’s anti-heroic founding only entered

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public discourse about national identity as nineteenth-century progressive narratives of nation-formation dissipated (Spillman 2003).35 As the editors of this volume have suggested, collective memories are not solely dependant on “present situations . . . political economic, psychological and ideological predicaments”. We need to examine not only the social locations of collective memory but the “cultural forces . . . which inspire them”. The missing cultural link in the disappearance and reappearance of Nanjing in Chinese collective memory is, we suggest, the decline of progressive narrative, including the universalizing notion of “friendship among the people”. While it is possible to miss such inspiration as these narratives may sometimes provide, we should also welcome the fuller recognition of others’ suffering that the weakening of progressive narrative allows.

Notes 1. For example, Harold John Timperley (1938), a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian stationed in Nanjing, compiled his own eye-witness report, along with other reports and evidence he obtained, into an investigative book titled What War Means. See also New York Times (18, 19, 26 and 27 December 1937; 9, 15, 25, 26 and 31 January and 8 February 1938) for how the Nanjing Massacre was framed by contemporary pacifist discourse in the West. 2. The structure of the polity and the nature of the public sphere it allows have too often been treated as a latent condition, rather than an explicit variable, affecting collective memory, in part because collective memory studies are not often comparative. As collective memory studies extend beyond Europe and the United States, differences in political structure and thus in “the public sphere”—if that notion is appropriate—should be treated more explicitly if studies are to cumulate. Generalizing across particular national and historical contexts about political structure and related public spheres, we speak here of “centres” and their related peripheries: see Spillman (1997: ch. 2). 3. In December 1936, the Communists successfully forced the Nationalist Government to cease its decade-long campaign against them and formed a united front with the Nationalists to confront Japanese aggression. 4. For contemporary Chinese media coverage of the Massacre, see Central Archive, China No. 2 Historical Archive and the Academy of Social Sciences of Jilin Province (1995: 167–86); Alexander and Gao (2007: 270–3). 5. For editorial reasons, we do not put the Chinese originals alongside their English translations. Readers who are interested in knowing the Chinese originals are welcome to contact the first author. 6. His testimony was published in a Chinese newspaper Ping Bao in August 1938 and served as one of the important testimonies for post-war trials of Japanese war criminals. 7. Readers interested in visual illustration can consult photographs taken by war-time Japanese journalist Murase Moriyasu (1987). 8. This preoccupation with Civil War opponents is illustrated in the titles of two articles that were respectively published in People’s Daily (Renmin Ribao), the official newspaper of the Communists, and Central Daily News (Zhongyang Ribao), that

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9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

of the Nationalists: “Complete Darkness wherever the Chiang Army Go as They Rape, Loot and Kill the People: Bloodshed along the Jia-Ji Railroad”, People’s Daily, 3 September 1946: 2; “Shandong Province Continues to Suffer! The Loss Incurred by 8 Years of Japanese Occupation Is Surpassed by the Damage the Communists Inflicted within 3 Months: Mr. He Siyuan Condemned Communist Disaster in Shandong”, Central Daily News, 13 December 1945: 3. These accusations are illustrated in the titles of two articles published respectively in People’s Daily and Central Daily News: “The Jiang-led Bandits in Jiangsu Province Employ Japanese Invaders”, People’s Daily, 4 November 1947; “The Communists Collude with the Japanese Army by Every Means, Draw on Japanese Navy in an Attempt to Lay Mines around Wusong Port, Employ Japanese Sappers to Destroy Railroads and Bridges, Incite the Japanese Military to Insurrect with Them in Various Names”, Central Daily News, 13 December 1945: 2. This policy was a reflection of a rather complicated relationship between modern China and Japan and was influenced by several enlightened Japan hands. For their ideas of and roles in the war, see Reinhold’s (2001) excellent study. See, for example, the criticisms from L’Impartial (Ta Kung Pao), a widely read independent newspaper: “Anniversary of Accepting Japanese Surrender: Quick to Save the Victory That We Are Going to Squander Completely” L’Impartial (Ta Kung Pao), 9 September 1946, editorial; “China’s Malignant Tumor”, L’Impartial, 8 July 1947, editorial. See “Analyzing Anti-American Emotions” (fanmei qingxu de fenxi), L’Impartial, 5 June 1948, editorial. For an example of independent critical comment on Yoshida see “Some Advice for the Japanese”, L’Impartial, 14 December 1948 (editorial). For Communist criticism of Okamura Yasutsugu’s acquittal, see “The Statement of the Central Committee of CCP Concerning the Release of Japanese War Criminals by the Quisling Nanjing Government”, 4 February 1949, abridged in Shijie Zhishishe (1955: 36). We are discussing here only commemorative articles and reports about the Nanjing Massacre, not its general media coverage. Of course, the Massacre was frequently mentioned in Chinese newspapers in the context of reports about the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and other War Crimes Tribunals. “Eight Years Ago, Today: The Nanjing Massacre, Commemoration of Blood”, Central Daily News, 13 December 1945: 2; “Commemorating the Holocaust [literal translation of Chinese phrase ‘haojie’] of the Capital: People of All Walks of Life in Nanjing Convened Public Memorial Service for Martyrs Yesterday; December 13 Declared as ‘the Day of Martyrs’ ”, Central Daily News, 14 December 1947: 2. The call to action from Paris is in Jiu Guo Shi Bao, 31 January 1938: 1, cited in Alexander and Gao (2007: 274); the Nationalist linking of their cause with the War of Resistance is in “Quell the [Communist] Rebellions in Order to Finish the Job That the War of Resistance Had Not Done Completely”, Central Daily News, 7 July 1947: 2; on the speech see the reports of Central Daily News and L’Impartial: “Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the War of Resistance: The President Calls On Compatriots to See Clearly the Betrayal Conspiracy of the [Communist] Bandits and to Stand Up Against the Domestic Rebellions Together”, Central Daily News, 7 July 1947: 2; “Commemorating the July 7 War of Resistance: President Chiang Delivers Speech to the Nation”, L’Impartial, 7 July 1947: 2. Liberal concern about Japanese reconstruction and Chinese weakness was already expressed as early as 5 July 1946 (see “Whither Japan?”, L’Impartial, 5 July

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18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

China Studies 1946: 1 [editorial]) and appeared repeatedly in every editorial commemorating the Manchurian Incident (18 September), the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (7 July), the declaration of Japanese surrender (15 August), the signing of Japanese Instrument of Surrender at Tokyo Bay (3 September) and the act of surrender in the China Theatre (9 September). A telling example of liberal distance from official commemoration is the contrast between the editorial of Central Daily News and that of L’Impartial on 7 July 1946, both commemorating the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of nine years earlier. While Central Daily News was bragging about the greatness of the Anti-Japanese war, discussing the reasons for China’s victory and claiming that the situation was much better than nine years previously, L’Impartial painted a much dimmer picture of the status quo and called people to hold on to the “spirit of July 7”: struggle, sacrifice, commitment, confidence and solidarity. See “Commemorating National Martyrs on July 7”, Central Daily News, 7 July 1946: 2 (editorial); “Holding on to the Spirit of July 7”, L’Impartial, 7 July 1946: 1 (editorial). Liberal questioning of victory claims is illustrated in a long article in L’Impartial commemorating the first anniversary of Japanese surrender, which even lamented that “on this day of last year, Japan surrendered while China frantically celebrated her victory; today this year, I think it is not China but Japan who should celebrate victory because during this year, the defeated Japan has won eight great victories (Tokyo Trial decisions) which have overshadowed victorious China”; see Chun Qing, “The First Anniversary of Japanese Surrender”, L’Impartial, 3 September: 2. For the dismissal of the Tokyo Trial see “Judge Mei Ju-ao Said the Protracted Tokyo Trial Has Mostly Lost Its Political Significance”, L’Impartial, 3 May 1948: 3. Both the 1931 Manchurian Incident and the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident are widely believed to have been Japanese schemes to justify invasion and war. The Manchurian Incident was an alleged Japanese plot to destroy a section of its own South Manchurian Railway and then blame the Chinese as justification for its invasion. Six years later, with a large Japanese presence already in China, a Japanese soldier believed to have been captured by the Chinese precipitated the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Both sides engaged in an intense battle at the bridge, a pivotal site providing passage to Beijing. Shortly after the Japanese captured and secured the bridge, Tianjin and Beijing fell into their hands. The soldier whose absence precipitated the fighting turned up unharmed soon after being reported missing. Yu Yifu, “Miserable Memory of the Past Fifteen Years—Commemorating the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Manchurian Incident”, People’s Daily, 18 September 1946: 1. “The Slogans Concerned with the Current Political Situation Issued by the Central Committee of the CCP in Commemoration of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident”, People’s Daily, 7 July 1947: 1. “Japan’s Election and China”, Xinhua News Agency editorial, 21 January 1949, in Shijie Zhishishe (1955: 34–5). “The Situation of Japanese Peoples’ Struggle”, People’s Daily, 7 July 1950 (editorial). As Takashi Yoshida (2006: 68) has noticed, none of these 45 Japanese war criminals were charged with the atrocities in Nanjing. This was mainly due to the fact that they were either captured in Communist-occupied regions, captured by the Soviet army in Manchuria, or had little direct connection with the Nanjing Massacre. More in-depth research is needed to answer the question of whether or not

Xiaohong Xu and Lyn Spillman 125

24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

Nanjing was intentionally de-emphasized at these trials and, if so, why. For the later story of the Group of Returnees, see Takashi Yoshida (2006: 56–7, 69–70). For an in-depth firsthand account, see the book by Shimamura Saburô, who was charged with responsibility for the deaths of some 500 Chinese: Shimamura (1985 [1975]). See also other publications authored by these Japanese war criminals: Kanki (1957); Chûgoku Kikansha Renrakukai (1958; 1984). Notably, this historical episode was largely unnoticed in China until the 1980s, after the Japanese textbook revision came to the light. Subsequently, monographs addressing the episode, some translated from Japanese, emerged one after another, seeming to underscore the humanitarian aspect of “the Chinese people” as opposed to the inhumanity of Japanese soldiers, and Japanese conservatives’ denial of these atrocities. This nationalistic undertone, however, was insignificant, if not totally absent, in the Party’s original documents of the time concerning the trials (see Shijie Zhishishe 1958: 123–59). “Japanese People Faced with Two Paths”, People’s Daily, 26 February 1955 (editorial). For example, “Never Again, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Tragedies!”, People’s Daily, 7 August 1956 (editorial); “Human Conscience Will Inevitably Win”, People’s Daily, 6 August 1957, (editorial). In four out of five volumes of the Collected Documents of the Japan Issue, a special section was given to documents, newspaper reports, editorials and articles related to the anti-nuclear movement. See Siyun Lin, “Nanjing Defense Campaign and Nanjing Massacre”, electronic source, 2000, p. 1. http://www.china-week.com/html/00548.htm (accessed 15 March 2007). China News Analysis, 10 September 1965 (No. 580): 2. See the entire issue for a more detailed examination of the anniversary. For an overview of the public commemorative activities, see “Culture and Recreation: Commemorating the Defeat of Japanese Invasion”, Peking Review, 20 August 1965: 24–5. Although Japanese atrocities introduced the progressive narrative of the Anti-Japanese War, the narrative itself was less than triumphant: the China News Analysis observed that “now memories of the past have lost their triumphant note and contain instead a warning that hard times may come again.” For further evidence that the Communist progressive narrative was in crisis and memories of the past played a more direct role in political life on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, see Xu 2005. People’s Daily, 15 August 1965: 2, cited in China News Analysis, 10 September 1965 (No. 580): 3; “Strengthen Our Friendship and Struggle Together”, People’s Daily, 24 August 1965 (editorial), cited in Peking Review, 27 August 1965: 25. The wave of events celebrating Sino-Japanese relations is evident in the Survey of China Mainland Press, compiled by the American Consulate General in Hong Kong, from 23 August 1965 through 21 September 1965. Between 1949 and 1972 Japan possessed a special position in Chinese media, unmatched by any other nation. Mei Ru’ao, “The Use of Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs: Never Again”, People’s Daily, 7 August 1955: 3, cited in Yoshida (2006: 69). Notably this episode is totally neglected in contemporary China, as Chinese media portrays Mei Ru’ao as a personalization of justice for the Nanjing Massacre. The judge’s position was a complex one, however, as we note later. Yoshida (2006: 69). The date of this article was the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. Without direct access to this article, it is hard to determine whether or not it is commemorative, but “the original title

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35.

China Studies of the article, “Concerning Japanese Immigrants and War Criminals” (guanyu riben qiaomin he riben zhanfan wenti), seems to suggest that it is not. Neither do we know how the author managed to reconcile this singling out of the Nanjing Massacre with the Party’s antagonism to anti-Japanese nationalism at the time”. The manuscript was first published for “internal circulation” in 1979 under the title of Japanese Militarism and the Nanjing Massacre. Mei Xiao’ao (1998: 452–3). Unfortunately, we have no sources on this episode other than the one provided by Mei Ru’ao’s son, Mei Xiao’ao. See He (2007) for a comprehensive analysis of the textbook controversy and China–Japan memory politics, focusing on changing elite interests. See Jordan (2006: 23–58) for a subtle and pertinent comparison of post-World War II memorial culture, and the different influences on its production, in East and West Berlin. Progressive narratives of Communism do, of course, recognize the suffering of the workers and peasants. In the Peoples’ Republic, though, these too had become the origin point of a heroic process of improvement, rather than being singled out in their own terms as cultural trauma. To the extent that the sufferings of “the people” remained problematic, the Communist worldview extended psychological identification to the Japanese, as we show above.

References Alexander, J. C. (2003) “On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime to Trauma Drama”, The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press). ———, Eyerman, R., Giesen, B., Smesler, N. J. and Sztompka, P. (eds) (2004) Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press). Alexander, J. C. and Gao, R. (2007) “Remembrance of Things Past: Cultural Trauma, the ‘Nanking Massacre’ and Chinese Identity”, Tradition and Modernity: Comparative Perspectives (Beijing: Peking University Press). Bell, D. S. A. (ed.) (2006) Memory, Trauma, and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship between Past and Present (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Central Archive, China No. 2 Historical Archive and the Academy of Social Sciences of Jilin Province (eds) (1995) Riben Diguo Zhuyi Qin-Hua Dang’an Ziliao Xuanbian: Nanjing Datusha [Selections of Archives of Japanese Imperialistic Aggression in China: The Nanjing Massacre]. (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju). Central Daily News 13 December 1945; 7 July 1946; 14 December 1947. China News Analysis (1965) 10 September (No. 580). The China Quarterly (1972) “Quarterly Chronicle and Documentation”, 52, 781–3. Chûgoku Kikansha Renrakukai [The Group of Returnees from China] (eds) (1958) Shinryaku: Chûgoku ni okeru Nihon senhan no kokuhaku [Invasion: Confessions of Japanese War Crimes in China] (Tokyo: Shindokushosha). ——— (eds) (1984) Sankô: Nihonjin no Chûgoku ni okeru sensô hanzai no kokuhaku [Three Alls: Confession of War Crimes by Japanese in China] (Tokyo: Banseisha). Das, V., Kleinman, A., Ramphele, M. and Reynolds, P. (eds) (2000) Violence and Subjectivity (Berkeley: University of California Press). Dower, J. W. (1979) Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Eykholt, M. (2000) “Aggression, Victimization, and Chinese historiography on the Nanjing Massacre”, The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Xiaohong Xu and Lyn Spillman 127 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. Hora, T. (1982) Ketteiban: Nankin daigyakusatsu [Authoritative Edition: The Great Nanjing Massacre] (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten). Jones, S. F. (1994) “Old Ghosts and New Chains: Ethnicity and Memory in the Georgian Republic”, in R. S. Watson (ed.) Memory, History and Opposition under State Socialism (Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press). Jordan, J. A. (2006) Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Kanki, H. (ed.) (1957) Riben Zhanfan de zibai [Confessions of Japanese War Criminals]. Y. Bai, trans. (Hong Kong: Xinxue shudian). ——— (ed.) (1963) Sankô: Nihonjin no Chûgoku ni okeru sensô hanzai no kokuhaku [Three Alls: Confession of War Crimes by Japanese in China] (T¯ oky¯ o: K¯ obunsha). Kitaoka, S. (2001) Yongyuan de qidao [Everlasting Prayer]. Translated into Chinese by Bao Rong (Beijing: People’s Literature Publishing House). Li, Z. and Wen, J. (1998) “Tianbolie ‘wairen mudu zhong zhi rijun baoxing’ chuban qianhou” [About the Publication of Timperley’s What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China], in C. Anji (ed.) Qin-Hua Rijun Nanjing datusha shi guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji [Collected Papers of the International Symposium on the Nanjing Massacre] (Hefei: Anhui daxue chubanshe). L’Impartial (Ta Kung Pao), 5 July 1946; 7 July 1946; 9 September 1946; 8 July 1947; 3 May 1948; 5 June 1948; 14 December 1948. Lin, S. (2000) “Nanjing Defense Campaign and Nanjing Massacre (nanjing baoweizhan yu nanjing datushu)”. China Weekly. http://www.china-week.com/ html/00548.htm (last accessed: 15 March, 2007). Lutze, T. D. (1998) “America’s Japan Policy and the Defection of Chinese Liberals, 1947–1948”, in L. I. Bland (ed.) George C. Marshall’s Mediation Mission to China, December 1945–January 1947 (Lexington, VA: George C. Marshall Foundation). Mei, X. (1998) “The Nanjing Massacre and So On: Some Views of My Late Father Mei Ru’ao (nanjing datusha ji qita: xianfu meiruao de yixie kanfa)”, in C. Anji (ed.) Qin-Hua Rijun Nanjing datusha shi guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji [Collected Papers of the International Symposium on the Nanjing Massacre] (Hefei: Anhui daxue chubanshe). Murase, M. (1987) Watakushi no jûgun Chûgoku sensen: ichiheishi ga utsushita senjô no kiroku: Murase Moriyasu shashinshû [My Military Life in China: The Photography of MURASE Moriyas]. (Ôsaka: Nihon Kikanshi Shuppan Sentâ). New York Times, 18, 19, 26 and 27 December 1937; 9, 15, 25, 26, 31 January, and 8 February 1938. Oglesby, E. (2007) “Historical Memory and the Limits of Peace Education: Examining Guatemala’s Memory of Silence and the Politics of Curriculum Design”, in E. A. Cole (ed.) Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield). Olick, J. and Robbins, J. (1998) “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices”, Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 105–40. Peking Review, 27 August 1965. People’s Daily, 3 September 1946; 7 July 1947; 9 September 1947; 4 November 1947; 7 July 1950; 26 February 1955. Qing, C. (1946) “The First Anniversary of Japanese Surrender (Riben touxiang yizhounian)”, L’Impartial September 3, 2.

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Reinhold, C. I. (2001) Studying the Enemy: Japan Hands in Republican China and Their Quest for National Identity, 1925–1945 (New York and London: Routledge). Shijie, Z. (ed.) (1955) Collected Documents of the Japan Issue [Riben wenti wenjian huibian], Vol. 1 (Beijing: Shijie zhishishe). ——— (ed.) (1958) Collected Documents of the Japan Issue [Riben wenti wenjian huibian], Vol. 2 (Beijing: Shijie zhishishe). Shils, E. (1975) Centre and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Shimamura, S. (1975) Chûgoku kara kaetta senpan [A War Criminal Back From China]. T¯ oky¯ o: Nitchu¯ u Shuppan. ——— (1985). Zhongguo guilai de zhanfan, trans. J.Yuan (Beijing: qunhong chubanshe). Spillman, L. (1997) Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). ——— (2003) “When do Collective Memories Last? Founding Moments in the United States and Australia”, in J. Olick (ed.) States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Survey of China Mainland Press, compiled by the American Consulate General in Hong Kong, from 23 August 1965 through 21 September 1965. Timperley, H. J. (1938) What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China A Documentary Record (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd.). Torpey, J. (2001) “ ‘Making Whole What Has Been Smashed’: Reflections on Reparations”, Journal of Modern History, 73(2), 333–58. Watson, R. S. (1994) “Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism: An Introduction”, in Memory, History, and Opposition Under State Socialism (Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press). Xu, X. (2005) “Memory, Identity and the Dynamics of Communism: The Historical Origins of Red Guards’ Radical Heroism”. MA thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame. Yang, D. (1990) “A Sino-Japanese Controversy: The Nanjing Atrocity as History”, SinoJapanese Studies, 3(1), 14–35. Yin, J. and Young, S. (1997) The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs, foreword by the Most Rev. Desmond M. Tutu and preface by Prof. Ying-shih Yü (Chicago: Innovative Publishing Group). Yoshida, T. (2006) The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States (New York: Oxford University Press). Yu, Y. (1946) “Shiwu nianlai beican de huiyi—wei jinian jiuyiba shiwu nian erzuo” [Miserable Memory of the Past Fifteen Years—Commemorating the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Manchurian Incident], People’s Daily, 18 September.

5 Alternative Genres, New Media and Counter Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution Guobin Yang

In the years following Mao’s death in 1976, an official master narrative of the Chinese Cultural Revolution crystallized. This narrative characterizes the Cultural Revolution as a “ten-year disaster” perpetuated by the “Gang of Four”, the allegedly “bad guys” in the highest echelons of the CCP. This was a victors’ version of history. Deng Xiaoping and other leaders in the new regime were purged in the Cultural Revolution. Emerging triumphant from it, they denounced the Cultural Revolution and blamed it on the Gang of Four.1 Alternative narratives were suppressed and the government instructed its people to move on and instead of fighting history wars, focus on economic development. Yet, despite state control, alternative memory narratives never ceased to appear, and they began to proliferate in the twenty-first century. These alternative narratives present a picture of the Cultural Revolution that is much more complicated and layered than official history contends. Many recent studies have helped to reveal the main features of these narratives by analysing films, novels, urban consumer culture and even cultural repertoires used in social activism (for example, see Wang 2004; Lee 2007). Little attention, however, has been paid to the cultural tools or resources of memory work. And yet to the extent that memory becomes collective or social, it relies on cultural mediation (Wertsch 2002), narrative expression (Fentress and Wickham 1992) and rituals and social practices (Olick and Robbins 1998). This chapter clarifies the dynamics of memory work by focusing on the genres and media of mnemonic narratives. I consider mnemonic genres as types of speech genres, which Bakhtin (1986: 60) views as “relatively stable types” of utterances. Bakhtin notes the great heterogeneity of speech genres. Mnemonic genres are similarly diverse. A few common types come to mind—memoirs, monuments, memorials, museums, oral histories, photographs, family heirlooms and so on. It is immediately clear that these 129

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different genres are associated with different media forms. Monuments are likely to be made in stone, memoirs printed on paper, whereas nowadays photographs may simply be stored on digital media. The diversity of the genres and media of memory discourse means that all genres and media are not equal (Yang 2007). Some are more “mainstream” and influential than others and thus become the embodiment of hegemonic narratives. I argue that the formation of hegemonic narratives of history and memory often relies on hegemonic genres and media, whereas alternative genres and new media are the cultural resources for expressing counter memories in the information age. The genres and media of remembering the past are central arenas for memory wars.

Genre, media and memory In their introduction to this volume, Barry Schwartz and Mikyoung Kim lay out two models in the sociology of collective memory. In the presentist model, what is remembered of the past and how it is remembered depend on the present circumstances. In the cultural model, “the present is rooted in the past.” As Schudson argues, the past “is in some respects, and under some conditions, highly resistant to efforts to make it over” (Schudson 1989). Schwartz and Kim suggest in their Introduction that “some aspects of reality conform to both models” and that each model alone provides only a partial explanation of memory practices. So, how to bridge these two models? Focusing on the genres of memory, scholars have argued that meaning emerges from the interaction between the contents of historical events and the forms of commemorative expression (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991; Wagner-Pacifici 1996). The study of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial by Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz (1991) shows how commemorative genres define the meaning of the past. Ambivalence towards the controversial Vietnam War, for example, can be expressed only through a genre-breaking monument, a monument that is an anomaly of the genre. Accordingly, Wagner-Pacifici (1996) asks whether certain events must be carried in corresponding genres, whether, for example, tragic events must depend on tragic genres. Olick (1999) similarly stresses the interactions between the past and the present. His study of genre memories shows that commemorative practices may be path-dependent. Earlier commemorations, independently of historical reality, may shape subsequent practices, thus manifesting a genre effect. These works suggest that genre is an important analytic category for bridging the gaps between the presentist and the cultural models. When memories are seen from the perspective of genres, there is always a degree of continuity between past and present due to the “relative stable” feature of genres (Bakhtin 1986: 60). In this chapter, I extend this line of research in two ways. First, instead of focusing on one genre, I explore the relationship

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among different genres. Major historical events are often represented in multiple genres, all genres are not equal. Which genres, then, become dominant and why? What are the possibilities for subversion and resistance? Second, I link mnemonic genres to media. Many genres are media-specific. A monument is a commemorative genre with a specific media form. So are photographs, historical relics and biographies. Indeed, collective memory would not be collective if it were not publicly mediated.2 In the age of information, it becomes all the more important to examine the role of media in “mnemonic practices” (Olick and Robbins 1998). I follow recent sociological scholarship on collective memory in emphasizing the mutual constitution of the past and the present. As Schwartz and Kim argue in their chapter in this volume, people’s relationship with the past and the present is culturally specific. Yet despite cultural differences, I argue that such relations are problematic. Conflict and contestation are common. I examine how dominant groups mobilize specific genres and media to produce hegemonic memory discourses and how such discourses are challenged through the use of alternative genres and media. Where there is collective memory, there is domination and resistance.3 My case concerns the Chinese Cultural Revolution. First, I will examine the emergence of two “master frames” of the Cultural Revolution and the genres and media associated with them. Then I will analyse how alternative genres and new media are mobilized for articulating counter memories.

Official genres and official narratives Mnemonic genres create a more or less open attitude about the past. Some aim to commemorate and remember—to keep the past alive. Memorials and monuments are notable examples. Other genres purport to bring closure to an unsettling and unsettled past while pointing to a new life or beginning. In earlier times, rituals of exorcism served this purpose. In recent times, proclamations, resolutions and declarations of national independence perform this function. The American Declaration of Independence is perhaps a notable example of this genre (Armitage 2007). So are the rituals and constitution-making of the transition to democracy in post-Franco Spain (Edles 1998). After Mao’s death in 1976, China faced a critical turning point. It could continue on the path set by Mao or it could take a new direction. This question became the centre of political struggle in the years immediately following Mao’s death. A key issue centred on the assessment of the Cultural Revolution. The victors in the struggles over the Revolution’s significance, led by Deng Xiaoping, put the Gang of Four, the radicals of the Cultural Revolution, on trial in early 1981. On 27 June that year, a national congress of the CCP adopted the historic “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the PRC”. The “Resolution” officially

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labelled the Cultural Revolution as a “ten-year internal turmoil” and blamed it on the Gang of Four, claiming that Mao’s merits were primary; his errors, secondary (CCP Central Committee 1981). This resolution was meant to bring closure to issues of controversy in the post-1949 history of the CCP. As a genre of political discourse, its predecessor was the “Resolution on Certain Historical Questions” approved by the Seventh Plenary session of the Sixth Congress of the CCP on 20 April 1945. Both “resolutions” are pivotal policy documents aimed at resolving historical issues and charting blueprints for the future. Both are “hegemonic” in the sense that they lay out the basic party line for all subsequent narratives about the historical issues in question, admitting of no alternative interpretations. Reminiscent of Olick’s (1999) concept of genre memories, both resolutions become objects of official commemoration and are regularly celebrated on anniversary occasions. Ironically, the earlier resolution established Mao as the supreme leader of the CCP while the second resolution was the strongest attempt to assess critically Mao’s role in the Chinese revolution by rejecting his own pet campaign of the Cultural Revolution. Evidently, the 1981 resolution met with resistance, because not long afterwards, in 1983, an inner-party rectification campaign was launched to remove former rebel Red Guards from positions of authority.4 A nation-wide campaign followed in 1984 to “totally negate the Cultural Revolution”. This campaign led to the suppression of its public memory. The official approach to the Cultural Revolution rests on present needs. The master narrative, defining the revolution as a “ten-year disaster”, conveniently provided moral legitimacy to the new Dengist regime in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The campaign to fix the Cultural Revolution’s history was based on a progressive rhetoric: the past should be left behind in order that the nation could move forward. In the name of national unity, the official discourse prescribed “total negation” of the revolution’s meaning. Public discussion was forbidden. The political goal of the campaign was to prevent Cultural Revolution-style factionalism from continuing to interfere with current concerns of economic development. However, in factories, government bureaus, schools and universities, factional feuds remained an element of instability (Foster 1986). The dominant genres of this official narrative were thus party resolutions, policy pronouncements, editorials and top-down campaigns. These official forms assumed the status of an official institution of Cultural Revolution history and memory. It consists not only of these discourses, but also of a bureaucratic apparatus which both produces them and controls their distribution. This institution, which remains dominant up to the present day, undergirds the official narrative and sustains it through a variety of practices, especially the control of the channels of publication. Thus, in the 1980s and 1990s, party authorities issued several directives concerning

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the publication of Cultural Revolution-related materials. A 1988 regulation states that “From now on and for quite some time, publishing firms should not plan the publication of dictionaries or other handbooks about the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ ” and that “Under normal circumstances, one should not plan to publish titles specifically researching the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ or specifically telling the history of the ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ ” (Schoenhals 1996: 310). A 1992 party circular about the commemoration of Mao’s centenary required that publications associated with the centenary “be strictly reviewed and approved according to the stipulations and guidelines that have been set out” (Barmé 1996: 237). In 1997, the government issued more regulations to Chinese publishers about the reporting of publication projects involving major historical events, including projects related to the Cultural Revolution. The point was still to negate the past and suppress alternative memories. Yet, as I will show later, this effort was only partially successful.

“Memoirs of exile”: the hegemonic stance of an alternative genre One way in which memory wars are waged is through genre conflict. As a mnemonic genre, official resolutions and pronouncements differ from memoirs. Memoirs are personal and subjective, whereas official pronouncements lay claim to objectivity. Memoirs are good at creating a sense of intimacy and authenticity through detailed description, imagery and other narrative techniques. Official pronouncements use prescriptive language. These genre features—memoirs and pronouncements—shape the structure, style and even contents of memory narratives. This is evident in the numerous English-language memoirs about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Written by emigrant authors who experienced the Cultural Revolution in China, these works have sometimes been called “memoirs of exile” (Zarrow 1999). Below is a sample of the popular titles: • • • • • • • • • •

Son of the Revolution (Liang and Shapiro 1983) Life and Death in Shanghai (Cheng 1986) Born Red (Gao 1987) Morning Breeze (Lo 1989) A Generation Lost (Luo 1990) Wild Swans (Chang 1991) Red Flower of China (Zhai 1992) A Single Tear (Wu 1993) Red Azalea (Min 1994) The Private Life of Chairman Mao (Li 1996)

These stories about the Cultural Revolution differ from official pronouncements. In contrast to the abstractness of official discourse, personal memoirs

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are full of graphic horrors of destruction, dark tales of secrecy and conspiracy, and scintillating details of sex and eroticism. In the thickness of such details, memoirs, however, often break the genre, so to speak, and become more like fiction. Indeed, on the back cover of my copy of Red Azalea, a reviewer hails the book as “an autobiography that reads like a novel”. The novelistic elements are evident in the following graphic description of the author’s lesbian and erotic feelings for her roommate: She grabbed my hand and pressed it to her chest. She asked me to feel her heart. I wished I was the blood in that chamber. In the hammering of her heartbeat, the rising and falling of her chest, I saw a city of chaos. A mythical force drew me toward her. I felt the blazing of a fire rise inside me. Yan was wearing a thin shirt with a bra under it. The shirt was the color of roots. The bra was plain white. Her bright red underwear added fuel to the fire. As she lazily stretched her body, my heart raged. . . . I could not bear it, the way she looked at me, like water penetrating rocks. Passion overflowed in her eyes. (Min 1994: 130) The same reviewer that hails the book as “an autobiography that reads like a novel” goes on to praise it for its “candor and simple beauty . . . reminiscent of The Diary of Anne Frank”. Whether it is because of the seeming authenticity of the diary form or the vividness of novelistic descriptions, the truth is that these memoirs have become so popular and influential that they have assumed the status of a new master narrative about the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the popular press of the West. Certainly, they are among the most prominent books on display on the “China” shelves in the major bookstores around the US.5 This new master narrative shares three common elements. Most authors come from elite intellectual or cadre families, which were more likely to be victims of the Cultural Revolution. They do not represent the voices of the largest segments of the Chinese population—workers and peasants. Second, although some authors were Red Guards, they were in the periphery, not the centre, of the Red Guard movement. None of the authors played any significant leadership role in the movement. Third, and more importantly for our purposes, the content of these memoirs reflects the genre’s capacities and constraints. Although book-length memoirs are personal stories, they are also supposed to be stories with a beginning, middle and end. Thus, despite differences in individual stories, they share a similar plot line and chronology: from a peaceful childhood in the 1950s to the Red Guard movement in 1966–1968, from rustication in the villages in the late 1960s and the 1970s to the eventual return to cities, “culminating in the obligatory happy ending in America or Europe” (Chen 1999: 102). The moral and emotional contents of this chronology run from childhood peace to violence, fear and suffering,

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and finally individual triumph and freedom in the Western world. As Zarrow (1999: 172) puts it, “The ideological dichotomies of the Cold War—Western freedom, rationalism, individualism, and order versus Chinese despotism, irrationality, group-think, and chaos—‘defines’ the experiences of the memoirists in a way that precludes full consideration of such things as Red Guard freedoms or Maoist rationalism.” Ironically, many English-language memoirs resemble the official Chinese discourse. They follow the official narrative in the periodization of the Cultural Revolution, taking it for granted that the Cultural Revolution spanned ten years (1966–1976).6 Similarly, they follow the official narrative in depicting the entire period as a dark age, ignoring regional and temporal differences. Their production and consumption are closely tied to the marketing strategies of publishers, editors and reviewers (Gao 2008). As a result, it is not surprising that like the official narrative, this English-language discourse homogenizes differences.

Genres in conflict: counter narratives East and West To this point, we have seen that two master frames of the Chinese Cultural Revolution have appeared since Mao’s death—one in China, the other in the West. In the political struggles over collective memory, the formation of dominant discourses provokes counter narratives. In the matter of the Cultural Revolution, as of the Vietnam War, contestation is particularly strong where morally ambiguous and controversial events are concerned (Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz 1991). The two master narratives are challenged both in and outside of China. The challenges come through alternative speech genres and media forms. Two dominant discourses are associated mainly with two genres—Chinese official pronouncements and English-language memoirs.7 Thus, one challenge against the dominant discourses is the sheer pluralization of speech genres that articulate memories. Beyond the official discourse, Chineselanguage narratives include diaries, letters and literary works which were written during the Cultural Revolution but published in the reform period. There are also personal reminiscences in the form of short essays, documentary films, collections and exhibitions of photographs, and websites (more on these later). Among these multiple genres, three types effectively undermine the two master narratives: (1) alternative English-language narratives; (2) Chinese-language narratives published in China, mainly about the sentdown experiences (removal from cities to rural areas); and (3) memoirs by rebel leaders published outside China, mainly in Hong Kong. Beyond memoirs of exile Examples of alternative English narratives include Mao’s Children in the New China (Jiang and Ashley 2000), Some of Us (Zhong et al. 2001) and Growing up

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in the People’s Republic (Ye and Ma 2007). None of these books strictly follows the memoir genre. It seems that in order to break out of the bind of the “memoirs of exile” the authors intentionally adopt different genres. Of these three books, Mao’s Children in the New China is a collection of 25 interviews with former Red Guards in China. Some of Us contains nine informal essays written by Chinese women who grew up in China in the Mao era and now teach in American universities, and Growing up in the People’s Republic is two women’s conversations about their coming-of-age stories. A common feature of these three books is the tentative, exploratory and conversational nature of the narratives. Interviews and conversations are necessarily informal and may even be hesitant. They go in all possible and unexpected directions. Unlike the carefully crafted English-language memoirs and their underlying teleology and linear narrative, the essay is an episodic and informal genre. It rarely tells complete stories with a clear beginning, middle and end. All three genres—interviews, conversations and essays—defy teleology. They are uniquely suited to exploring nuances, contradictions and paradoxes from diverse perspectives. Their informal and essayistic style conveys a degree of authenticity that surpasses the wellcrafted memoirs of exile. They also represent the voices of people whose experiences have been marginalized in the conventional Cultural Revolution narratives. In Mao’s Children in the New China, for example, the interviewees include a factory technician, two unemployed workers, several college professors and private business entrepreneurs. In the words of Geremie Barmé on the back cover of the book, “These are not the pre-digested and well-rehearsed words of generic Cultural Revolution victimhood or the glib product of savvy editorial packaging. These witness-participants speak in many voices, glossolalia from China today: fragmented and contradictory, in turns haughty and hopeful, frustrated and nihilistic, enlightening and sobering.” Critical of the “dark age” narrative presented in such best-selling memoirs as Wild Swans, the authors of Some of Us set out to write their own stories. Some of the nine stories are about happy childhoods in the China, others about friendship and still others about how their revolutionary zeal cooled and converted to dreams of going to college. These stories reveal the richness and complexities of human experience in the Cultural Revolution, including youthful idealism and genuine efforts for social change. Narratives of nostalgia Alternative discourse about the Cultural Revolution published in China consists mainly of narratives of nostalgia among former sent-down youth. The sent-down campaign, also known as the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside” campaign, lasted from 1967 to about 1980. During this period about 16 million urban middle and high school graduates were sent to rural areas of China to live and work as farmers (Pan 2003). The policy was

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a huge failure; the sent-down youth, filled with discontent. The vast majority of them had eventually made their way back to the city by the early 1980s. In the 1990s, however, a wave of nostalgia hit the generation. Television dramas and documentaries about the lives of former sent-down youth became popular. Songs of the Cultural Revolution became fashionable in the 1990s (Bryant 2005). Nostalgic narratives about the sent-down movement flourished. In 1998, memoirs, letters and diaries were published to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the official launching of the sent-down campaign. These works represent the campaign as a period of meaning, purpose, as well as hardships (Yang 2003), thus implicitly challenging the official narrative of the Cultural Revolution as a total disaster. The political constraints on memory narratives in China mean that activists must negotiate the political context. Davies’s (2007) ethnographic study of an exhibition of Cultural Revolution photos in Shanghai illustrates the politics of nostalgia. In this case, the absence of written genres added force to the pictorial media. The exhibition studied by Davies took place in December 1998. The main exhibits were old photographs of sent-down youth, which showed smiling faces of revolutionary optimism. Although lacking information about the location, date or subjects of the photographs on display, there was an abundance of exhibition space, which invited viewers to engage in pleasant conversations about the display. This representational strategy of ambivalence thus avoided the political risks of providing a narrative history of the sent-down movement, which might have contradicted the official discourse. At the same time, it produced oral narratives, in the form of on-site interactions among viewers, which, nevertheless, went beyond the limits of the official discourse. Voices of the rebels The third type of alternative discourse is produced by former rebel Red Guards (zaofan pai). As mentioned earlier, the official master narrative blames the Cultural Revolution on the Gang of Four and their rebel followers. As a result, former rebels are demonized in official documents, the mass media and victims’ memoirs. Atrocities committed by conservative Red Guards are blamed on rebels. In response, former rebels such as Lu Li’an (Lu 2005), Nie Yuanzi (Nie 2005) and Zhou Lunzuo (Zhou 2006) have written stories of their own lives, where they attempt to distinguish the different types of Red Guards and rebels and situate the social conflicts in historical context. Their works directly challenge the demonization of rebel Red Guards in the official narrative. For that very reason, however, their works are published only outside China or on the internet. Lu Li’an’s Outcry from a Red Guard Imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution (Lu 2005) differs markedly from the English-language memoirs of exile. For one thing, Lu was a rebel Red Guard leader in the city of Wuhan during the Red Guard movement and was more directly and intimately involved in the

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factional struggles of the day than authors like Jung Chang were. Because of his important historical role, many of his key activities involved other historical figures and are therefore verifiable to some extent. Most importantly, Lu’s book goes beyond the typical English-language memoir by painting a complicated image of the Cultural Revolution. Lu was more a victim than a victimizer, whereas the official narrative almost always paints rebels as victimizers if not criminals. Yet, he differed from the typical Red Guard rebel in a crucial way. He was among a small handful who took the Cultural Revolution so seriously that they sought theoretical foundations and practical means to transform it into a real revolution—a fundamental change in the nation’s power and social structures. In July 1967, Lu started a study association in order to make preparations for such a revolution. For this activity, he was arrested in 1968 and imprisoned for 11 years without formal charge. His memoir, published in Hong Kong, tells the story of his revolutionary activities and life in prison. As the title indicates, Lu’s book is a former Red Guard’s “outcry” against the amnesia prescribed by the official discourse. These three types of memory discourse thus offer narratives of the Cultural Revolution which differ from the official narrative and the English-language memoirs of exile. Expressed in genres different from those used in the dominant discourses, they embody genre conflict.

New media, digital genres and counter memories The media of memory narratives are weapons for struggle. Media affect the articulation of memories in several ways. First, there is a political effect through the direct and indirect control of media institutions. Just as there are dominant memory discourses and alternative narratives, there are dominant media and alternative memory forms. Between the hierarchy of media and the hierarchy of social memory there is a homologous relationship (Yang 2007). Mainstream media are open to dominant forms of memory, but seldom to alternative memories. Indeed, mainstream media are more likely to be complicit in the marginalization of alternative memories. Alternative memories tend to depend on alternative media for their articulation. The logic is the same as that in the use of alternative media for indigenous cultural activism (Ginsburg 1997). When alternative voices are excluded from mainstream media, they seek alternative channels. Second, media shape the contents and style of memory discourse. Monuments made of marble are suitable for short inscriptions and last a long time. Photographs capture snapshots of real-life scenes and yet may be destroyed easily. On the other hand, monuments are more difficult to build. Because of their different forms, moreover, monuments and photographs, as well as many other mnemonic genres, produce different emotional effects. Third, media have a peculiar relationship with genres of expression. Some genres, such as monuments, are media-specific. The media form constitutes

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the genre. Because of this close relationship, developments in media technologies may lead to genre innovations. The internet is perhaps among the most consequential developments in human relations with the past. Not only does it retain numerous traces of what is happening now, but it has also become a huge archive of things from more distant times. Its unparalleled capacity reflects the power of new technology, but this power is also a social power. The internet enables the average people to become producers rather than mere consumers of information. It is mass participation, more so than business strategies or political initiatives, that creates internet cultures. China established internet connectivity in 1994. Since then, the internet has developed rapidly. In December 1998, there were a little over 2 million internet users in China. By December 2008, this number had reached 298 million. With the rapid diffusion of the internet, a vibrant internet culture has appeared (Zheng 2008; Yang 2009). From the very beginning, Chinese users were attracted to the internet’s ability to store and retrieve information, as well as to communicate and interact. Communities of memory appeared in bulletin board systems (BBS), for example, among former members of the sent-down generation. Many websites devoted to the Chinese Cultural Revolution appeared (Yang 2007). The development of new media technologies has profound implications for memory projects (Huyssen 2000; Mikula 2003; Misztal 2003; Cohen 2004; Bach 2005; Richardson and Hessey 2009). One consequence is the appearance of new digital mnemonic forms such as digital museums, digital libraries and archives, virtual memorials and online exhibitions. In the memory of the Cultural Revolution the internet has enabled broader participation and transformed some conventional mnemonic genres into new forms, creating what Wagner-Pacifici (1996: 310) might have called “genre-vibrating”, and “anomalous forms of commemoration”. Public participation in the online production and consumption of Cultural Revolution memories takes place in two types of websites. One type consists of left-leaning websites, such as Utopia (wuyou zhixiang) (Hu 2007). These cover a broad range of topics but often feature Mao and the Cultural Revolution as well. Because they are often critical of state policies, engage in debates about current affairs, advocate the resuscitation of socialist values and organize offline activities, they come close to “social movement websites”. The other type is devoted to topics related to the Cultural Revolution. Examples are maoflag.net (about Mao), the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution (www.cnd.org/cr) and the Chinese Cultural Revolution Research Net (wengewang.org). New digital genres, especially virtual museums and digital archives, feature in both types of websites. A few examples will illustrate the significance of these new genres. The first is Utopia. Established in 2003 and now operated by the Utopia Cultural Communication Co. Ltd., Utopia is both an online community and the virtual platform of an offline community, with

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a bookstore in Beijing’s university area, an electronic magazine, BBS forums and an “article central” which archives about 50,000 articles as of April 2009. As stated in a brief introduction to the website published on 24 July 2003, Utopia aims to gather together “idealists” (lixiang zhuyi zhe) who will “show care for the powerless and contempt for the powerful”.8 It publishes many articles with positive reassessments of Mao and the Cultural Revolution, a position that is at odds with the state discourse on the Cultural Revolution. It is not entirely clear how this website has maintained an active presence in China given its radical left-leaning political positions. It is reportedly hacked often. In 2005, government authorities shut it down because it distributed an online petition concerning a rural migrant worker, but then it was reopened at a different web address and has remained active since then (Hu 2007: 238). One reason for its survival is perhaps its advocacy of social justice and equality, which coincide with the policy priorities of the populist faction among top Chinese leadership (Li 2005). Two other cases, the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution Research Net, are in North America. In the 1980s, the well-known Chinese writer Ba Jin called for the building of a Chinese Cultural Revolution museum (Ba Jin). The proposal never materialized in China because it went against the official position. In the 1990s, websites devoted to the Cultural Revolution appeared. Most such sites in China are small projects. In 1996, however, the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution was launched by a group of Chinese students and scholars in Canada and the US. Run by volunteers in different parts of the world, this virtual museum has grown rapidly. By 7 April 2009, cnd.org, the non-profit website that runs the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution, had published 529 special issues on the Cultural Revolution, which are archived in the Virtual Museum. Virtual museums are a new form that derives from a conventional genre. In name and structure, the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution resembles a conventional museum, with its own “exhibition halls” and “special exhibits”. In other ways, it is like a library holding collections and archives related to the Cultural Revolution. It differs from the traditional museum, however, because it is much less subject to temporal and spatial constraints. As long as its “exhibits” remain open and free to the public, they are “viewable” at all times from different locations.9 While the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution is self-identified as a museum, many comparable websites defy any traditional nomenclature. They are new commemorative forms. The Chinese Cultural Revolution Research Net is a case in point. This website was launched on 29 July 2005. When I visited it on 30 November 2005, it had 340 subscribers. On 11 April 2009, when I visited it again, the website had 1423 subscribers, indicating notable growth. The website is arranged into columns (lanmu), which include BBS discussion forums and digital archives such as Cultural

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Revolution Pictures, Revolutionary Arts and Literature, Cultural Revolution Documents and Electronic Books. In some ways, it resembles a library or historical archive, but the combination of digital archives with discussion forums distinguishes it from traditional archives and gives it a hybrid character with multiple functions, including the hosting of multiple media and genres. Both the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution and the Cultural Revolution Research Net publish alternative narratives. The goal of the Virtual Museum is to collect all “truthful materials and records” (zhenshi de ziliao he jizai) in addition to relevant works of art and literature.10 The collections evoke reminiscences of tragedies, horrors and cruelties. There are also many oral histories about little-known events. The authors are diverse, including former rebels whose voices are suppressed in China. Compared with the Virtual Museum, the Research Net has a much more radically leftist orientation. Its supporters apparently consider the Cultural Revolution as a distorted historical event to be rehabilitated. In this, it evinces the same social movement tendency as in the case of the Beijingbased website Utopia. The numerous historical documents and images archived on the website are meant to vindicate the Revolution’s achievements. Publications and discussions on this website routinely consider the Gang of Four as “heroes”, which flies in the face of the China’s official characterization. One strategy for creating counter narratives in these online projects is to reveal elements of the past that are obscured or suppressed in the dominant discourse. This strategy adds to the authenticity claims of personal recollections with a different source of evidence—that contained in historical documents. Both the Virtual Museum and the Research Net have large digital archives of historical documents. The Research Net, for example, contains large volumes of downloadable documents about the “Daqing spirit”, “the Dazhai spirit”, revolutionary model operas, socialist films and literature, the Red Guard movement and the sent-down movement. At various points in the past few years, I found on the website digitized copies of valuable historical documents about the Cultural Revolution not easily available elsewhere.11 This practice of using historical documents to vindicate the past is consistent with Michael Schudson’s (1989, 1994) argument about the past’s resistance to efforts to revise and make it over.

Conclusion Since Mao’s death in 1976, memories of the Cultural Revolution have varied a great deal in content. The dominant official narrative in China emphasizes total negation. Although the proliferation of an English discourse of personal memoirs undermines this official narrative, it reveals its own totalizing tendency in producing an image of the Cultural Revolution as an age

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of uniform darkness, an image that sometimes serves as a synecdoche for the darkness of the Chinese nation. In struggles over memories of the past, alternative genres and new media are crucial cultural resources. It is through alternative genres that different narratives are expressed and publicized. “Memoirs of exile” challenge the official discourse partly because memoirs, as a genre, have a stronger claim to authenticity than official pronouncements have. Yet the publication of familiar essays, interviews, “conversations” and various types of Chinese-language mnemonic literature undermines the uniform image of the Cultural Revolution in these English memoirs by revealing a broader range of human experiences with all their nuances, contradictions and paradoxes. In contrast with the underlying teleology in most memoirs of exile, the narratives in the alternative genres are characterized by tentativeness, incompleteness and a lack of closure. In memory wars, therefore, alternative genres are a means of deconstructing master narratives. The diversification of memory discourse is also associated with the developments of new media. Nowadays, the Chinese Cultural Revolution’s most dynamic memory work is on the internet. Debates about the revolution fill many websites. New and hybrid mnemonic forms such as virtual museums and online communities have appeared to fill the gaps left by standard official and popular English-language accounts. As a result, a veritable grassroots movement to reassess China’s Cultural Revolution is under way. With all the contestation over the history and memory of the Cultural Revolution, what does that historical event mean to people in China today? Although my analysis shows that there is no single, uniform meaning, it is possible to discern a larger pattern. The turn towards more positive memories about the Cultural Revolution in the recent decade, while being achieved through the mobilization of alternative genres and media, reflects broader changes in Chinese society. The post-socialist reality of market transformation, with growing social inequality, provides the larger historical context for the revival of Cultural Revolution discourse. As is often the case in China, such selective uses of the past are a means of critiquing the present (Unger 1993; Zhang and Schwartz 1997). In this sense, the past is never a foreign country. It could be dangerously close to home—the home of contemporary politics.

Notes 1. The Gang of Four includes vice-president of the CCP Wang Hongwen, vice premier Zhang Chunqiao, Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, and Yao Wenyuan. They were arrested in October 1976 and tried and sentenced publicly in January 1981. 2. It is in this sense that some scholars have argued that “remembering is a form of mediated action” (Wertsch 2002: 13). 3. For reasons I cannot explore here, this dialectic seems to be particularly salient in the age of globalization. After all, the rise of the worldwide memory boom is coincidental with the advent of the age of globalization (Winter 2000).

Guobin Yang 143 4. The campaign specifically targeted “three types of people”. They were identified as “followers of Lin Biao and Gang of Four, those seriously affected by factional ideas, and the ‘smashers and grabbers’ of the Cultural Revolution”. See Foster (1986: 6). 5. On the sociology of book classifications and displays in bookstores, see Blau (1999). 6. On debates about the periodization of the Cultural Revolution, see Chan (1992). 7. There are of course other genres as well. In China, for example, at the time when the “Resolution” was being formulated, many films and works of literature were produced in line with the official discourse about the Cultural Revolution. The “Resolution” functioned as a hub around which radiated various “spokes” of memory narratives about the Cultural Revolution. 8. http://www.wyzxsx.com/Article/Class1/200307/1.html, accessed 11 April 2009. 9. Because the narratives on this website contradict official Chinese discourse, the website is routinely blocked. On the technicalities of internet censorship and avoidance strategies, see MacKinnon (2009). 10. CND Editorial Office, “Rang wo men xieshou zai wangshang gongjian yizuo wenge bowuguan” [Let’s join hands to build a cultural revolution museum on the web]. Hua Xia Wen Zhai Zeng Kan, No. 77, 10 February 1996. http://www.cnd. org/HXWZ/ZK96/zk77.hz8.html#1, accessed 22 July 2004. 11. It is not clear how the editors of the website obtain the archived materials. However, the depth of knowledge among some participants in the discussions on this website indicates that online community members contribute a disproportionate amount of material.

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Winter, J. (2000) “The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the ‘Memory Boom’ in Contemporary Historical Studies”, German Historical Institute Bulletin Issue 27. http://www.ghi-dc.org/bulletin27F00/b27winterframe.html, accessed 15 December 2005. Wu, N. (1993) A Single Tear: A Family’s Persecution, Love and Endurance in Communist China (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press). Yang, G. (2003) “China’s Zhiqing Generation: Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural Resistance in the 1990s”, Modern China, 29(3), 267–96. Yang, G. (2005) “Days of Old Are Not Puffs of Smoke: Three Hypotheses on Collective Memories of the Cultural Revolution”, The China Review, 5(2), 13–41. Yang, G. (2007) “‘A Portrait of Martyr Jiang Qing’: The Chinese Cultural Revolution on the Internet”, in C. K. Lee and G. Yang (eds) Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China (Stanford, CA: Woodrow Wilson Press and Stanford University Press). Yang, G. (2009) The Power of the Internet in China (New York: Columbia University Press). Ye, W. and Ma, X. (2005) Growing Up in the People’s Republic: Conversations between Two Daughters of China’s Revolution (New York: Palgrave). Zarrow, P. (1999) “Meanings of China’s Cultural Revolution: Memoirs of Exile”, Positions, 7(1), 165–91. Zhai, Z. (1992) Red Flower of China (New York: Soho Press, Inc.). Zhang, T. and Schwartz, B. (1997), “Confucius in the Cultural Revolution: A Study in Collective Memory”, Politics, Culture, and Society, 11, 189–212. Zheng, Y. (2008) Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Zhong, X., Zheng, W. and Di, B. (2001) Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). Zhou, L. (2006) Wenge zaofan pai zhenxiang [The Historical Truth about Rebels during the Cultural Revolution] (Hong Kong: Tianyuan shuwu).

6 The Changing Fate of the Chinese National Anthem Tim F. Liao, Gehui Zhang and Libin Zhang

Give me the making of the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its law. —Andrew Fletcher, An Account of a Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind (1703) A national anthem, arguably the most representative song of a nation, serves more than ceremonial purposes. National symbols, rituals and traditions are important for political and social order, for these define a nation’s identity. Cerulo (1993, 1995), as an example, studied the function of national anthems as a crucial component of national identity construction by aligning the syntactic structure of the musical pieces with larger socio-political contexts. However, the function of a national anthem goes far beyond defining a nation’s identity; it can have a much more direct bearing on collective memory because most anthems have lyrics. If the rhythm of an anthem shapes the syntactic structure, its lyrics define its message. As Wagner-Pacifici (1996: 303) stated, “The necessity of ‘words’ is what gives the forms of collective memory such importance.” This chapter addresses the relation between collective memory and the origin and trajectory of the lyrics of the national anthem of the PRC. Special attention will be invested in the post-World War II context and its importance for China’s domestic realities and foreign relations. In April 2005, Japan lodged formal protest against Bejing after a series of anti-Japan protests took place in various Chinese cities (Onishi 2005). The protesters expressed anger over the representation of World War II history in textbooks recently approved by the Japanese government.1 At these protests, marchers waved national flags and sang the Chinese anthem to show their national pride. However, the song they sang did more than serve as a vehicle for their national pride; more importantly, it carried part of Chinese national memory. In this research we study the changing fate of the Chinese national anthem as an instrument of collective memory. We do so by analysing its 147

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production and consumption through two changing texts—the lyrics and key political documents in 1949–2005. As the reader will see, the evolution of the Chinese national anthem reflects the Northeast Asian Memory Problem discussed in the Introduction by Schwartz and Kim. The current national anthem, a battle song released in 1935 on the brink of the Anti-Japanese War, was adopted in 1949 when the People’s Republic was established but became forbidden during the Cultural Revolution. It was later restored, albeit with new lyrics, in 1978. The original lyrics were not restored until 1982. It is fair to say that no other national anthem in the world has changed so often in a comparable period of time. The fate of the Chinese anthem gives us a rare opportunity to theorize and explore the relation of a national experience to the production and the consumption of a national identity.

National anthems and collective memory As a form of national identity, national anthems relate memories of the past to present reality. The widely accepted presentist perspective on collective memory views the past as a social construction shaped by the needs and desires of the present (Mead 1929; Halbwachs 1941; Maines et al. 1983). The changing lyrics of the Chinese national anthem confirm this perspective; but there is another side to the story. As Michael Schudson (1989a: 113) observed: “The present shapes our understanding of the past, yes. But this is half the truth, at best, and a particularly cynical half-truth, at that.” Emile Durkheim (1912 [1965]) believed that the past is cultivated by rituals that both shape it to serve the present and secure its memory for the future. It is the past, in his view, that defines how we understand and see the present. Can a national anthem, which bears the direct imprint of the past, affect our view of and behaviour in the present? Schwartz’s (1989) study of social change and collective memory, as embodied in the democratization of George Washington, showed support for both strands of theoretical thinking: present needs and past events affect one another reciprocally. We find the presentist and cultural perspectives to be interdependent in this analysis of the Chinese national anthem’s vicissitudes. As an extension of the first strand of theoretical thinking—present problems determining our understanding of the past—national anthems are useful specimens. Anthems also exemplify a second strand of theoretical thinking, that the past energizes action in the present. The national anthem, a traditional symbol of the national present, may simultaneously unify individuals and rally them around a common goal. To this extent, national anthems have cultural power. Schudson’s (1989b) analysis of “How Culture Works” examines five dimensions of political power: retrievability, rhetorical force, resonance, institutional retention and resolution. Retrievability refers to the dimension of power which makes cultural objects, including anthems, available and

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easily accessible to the general audience. A cultural object must be accessible to its audience in order to affect its thoughts and actions. Compared to those which are less rhetorically effective, a cultural symbol with stronger rhetorical force is likely be able to attract and maintain people’s attention, create a deeper impression and thus become more memorable. Resonance concerns the sense in which a cultural object is “relevant to and resonant with the life of the audience” (Schudson 1989b: 167). It measures connections between the object’s form and/or content and the people’s interests. However, wide retrievability, great rhetorical force and strong resonance do not necessarily guarantee that a cultural object will manifest power. That object requires institutional retention to sustain its recognition, acceptance and practice among the people. Finally, some cultural objects not only carry the symbolic meanings widely shared or remembered by individuals; they also stir and guide future actions. In this sense, a cultural object with considerable capacity of resolution makes people “actors” as well as “viewers and listeners”. Judged by Schudson’s criteria, national anthems can possess significant power. It goes without saying that an anthem is retrievable because everyone in the nation knows how to sing it, perhaps as a citizenship requirement. An anthem is also likely to have great rhetorical force. A national anthem must resonate with the popular values and tastes; if not, a new melody and new lyrics would be required. Unlike other cultural objects, a national anthem is institutionalized by its very existence, and its institutional retention makes it work more effectively as a vehicle of collective memory. Finally, a national anthem must have considerable resolution if it is to serve as an effective national symbol. We will show later that while all anthems may not bring resolution by focusing citizen actions, the Chinese anthem has done so. This anthem resolution also illustrates how memory, as described in the Introduction’s cultural model, shapes present conduct. As a carrier of collective memory, the Chinese anthem provides models for and models (reflections) of society and its concerns (Schwartz 1998). As a model of the political and social realities of a historical moment, a national anthem, both its lyrics and music (but in particular its lyrics), is conditioned by present realities to generate moods for the purpose of reinforcing national identity and unity. As a model for political and social actions, the national anthem motivates behaviour in current and future circumstances. In this connection, “moods” and “motivations” perform essential functions. Moods set the tone of a cultural symbol and can be “solemn”, “majestic” or “patriotic”, while a motivation refers to goal-oriented feelings and actions. Moods, then, are scalar in the sense that they serve as an ambience while motivations are directional in the sense that they describe a course of action leading towards certain consummations (Geertz 1974). These scalar qualities of moods and vectorial qualities of motivations can be viewed as models of and models for society: moods evoked by a song

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express the emotional attachment of the individual to society. Lyrics’ vectorial power motivates people to voluntary or involuntary action. The power of a national anthem as a cultural symbol depends on its ability to meet the criteria we discussed earlier: resonance, resolution and rhetorical force. An anthem with rhetorical force, resolution and resonance possesses the most cultural power.

Methods A national anthem directs public attention, unites citizens and motivates public action by political leaders (Cerulo 1989). As a condensed and impersonal symbol, the national anthem kindles national pride and articulates beliefs, feelings, moral judgements and historical knowledge. The changing Chinese national anthem, however, also reflects the country’s changing history and social realities. To capture such changes, we align the lyrics of the Chinese anthem to the social conditions recorded in official documents and reported by the media. In doing so, we describe the context in which the Chinese national anthem was transformed. This context consists of (1) domestic social-economic realities; (2) foreign relations between China and its neighbours; and (3) the discourse employed by the central government. Data are drawn from the following two sources. First, we culled and studied government documents, including the resolutions of the National People’s Congress (NPC), governmental reports on domestic situations of each year and official discourses on foreign affairs from 1949 to 2006. These documents are well preserved in governmental archives. Second, we studied reports in the most influential party organ newspaper, People’s Daily, from 1976 to 1983, to gain some insight into the period during which the music and lyrics were restored. To make sense of how the anthem as a cultural symbol has been institutionalized, we emphasize how the public connected the events of the anthem to its present predicaments. In addition, we use two examples— the bombing by US-led NATO forces of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the debate between China and Japan over the content of Japanese history textbooks to examine further the anthem’s function as a model of and for society.

Trajectory of the Chinese national anthem: 1949–2005 The Chinese national anthem, a site of collective memory, presents an intriguing case for memory studies. Different versions of the anthem have been generated by different domestic elites, but not one has been permanent. Successive anthems mirror domestic politics and foreign relations over time. The choice of music and lyrics for the national anthem is more political than aesthetic. Linking the Chinese national anthem to events as ordinary

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as mundane ceremonies and to events as extraordinary as galvanization of national unity during political crises reflects a dynamic society caught in the web of the Northeast Asian Memory Problem. The origin of the Chinese national anthem The first (and the current) national anthem of the PRC was titled “March of the Volunteers”. Originally written in 1934 for a play by Tian Han, with music composed by Nie Er, the song was the theme tune of the film Sons and Daughters in a Time of Storm in 1935. Both the song and the movie spread in China as part of the anti-Japanese resistance, lauding those Chinese patriots who would rather choose a noble death than an ignoble life. The battle song exemplified their determination to fight for independence (see Table 6A.1 in the Appendix for the lyrics). The anthem’s rhetoric force swiftly impressed the nation, rousing the Chinese people with fresh courage and determination. It motivated the people, galvanized their spirit, elevated their patriotic mood and invoked their national dignity as part of the anti-Japanese resistance effort. Four years after the end of World War II, the Chinese Communists were on their way to defeat the Nationalists to gain control of China. The first time it was used as the unofficial People’s Republic anthem was in February 1949 at an international conference in Prague, Czechoslovakia, just before the declaration of the establishment of the People’s Republic later that year. Adoption of the Chinese national anthem in 1949 The deliberation on the national anthem attracted much popular attention when People’s Daily, in July 1949, called for new symbols for the new nation. The National Symbols Committee (NSC) was deluged by 632 proposals, which included 6,926 songs and lyrics. A nationally renowned painter, Xu Beihong, suggested the committee choose the “March of the Volunteers”. On 2 September 1949, about one month before the establishment of the PRC, NSC held a meeting, attended by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.2 An unofficial consensus was reached: “March of the Volunteers” was the right choice for the national anthem because it embodied national pride. In China, such pride could only come from the struggle for national sovereignty. Other songs, though beautifully written perhaps, were weaker in expressing such pride and articulating the ultimate meaning of the nation’s great struggles. However, Zhou argued for “keep[ing] an alert mind” to present perils: imperialism, as the enemy of China, posed a growing threat against nation building. The further China progressed in development, the more the imperialists would hate, undermine and attack it. Therefore, the words “as the Chinese nation faces its greatest peril”, to be included in the lyrics, would warn the people against possible attacks not only by the Japanese but by all enemies. Mao supported Zhou’s opinion. On 25 September 1949, Mao and

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Zhou convened another meeting on national symbols with various political, social and cultural elites present, and a decision was reached. The NSC drafted a resolution for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference ([CPPCC], replaced by the National People’s Congress after 1949), recommending the adoption of “March of the Volunteers” as the Chinese national anthem. The NPC archives show that on 27 September 1949, the government seemed to back off from its original decision. On the eve of the founding moment of the new republic, the CPPCC passed a draft resolution that “before further official decisions about the national anthem are made, ‘March of the Volunteers’ will serve as the Chinese national anthem” (Summary of the Fifth Session of the Fifth NPC: 235). This clearly means “March of the Volunteers” might be a temporary anthem until replaced by another. No official document explained why the Committee reduced “March of the Volunteers” to a temporary anthem; however, the media provided one clue. On 15 November 1949, People’s Daily explained in its influential column, “Messages from New China”, the purposes for adopting “March of the Volunteers” as the national anthem: “March of the Volunteers” is the best-received song among Chinese people of their revolutionary fights in the past decades, and carries a piece of significant history. We decide to take this song as the national anthem without changing its lyrics for these reasons: the original lyrics remind our people of the difficulties and dangers accompanying our building of a new nation; the original lyrics inspire our patriotic hearts to fight against imperialistic invasions; the original lyrics encourage our people to bring the revolution home. If we understand that the Russian people took pride in using “the Internationale” as their national anthem for a long time and that the French people still take pride in “La Marseillaise” as their national anthem even today, we will have no doubt at all in our decision. This temporary decision paralleled the choices of the red flag with five stars as the national flag and Beijing as the national capital. But if the lyrics were so inspiring, why were they not made permanent? Since 1949, “March of the Volunteers”, the interim national anthem, had been sung on various occasions, from grand ceremonies to local gatherings—until the Great Cultural Revolution.3 No official resolution was made to replace the original interim anthem until 1978. The de facto national anthem during the Cultural Revolution: 1966–1976 Unlike the early 1950s when the protection of China from foreign influences was the major concern of the CCP, the Cultural Revolution (1966– 1976) brought about an era when internal conflicts and crises erupted

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and minimized external threats. Since the mid-1960s, discourses about the “greatness” of the Cultural Revolution and about the god-like status of Chairman Mao had proliferated nationally. Mao reached his zenith, and countless cultural objects representing the feudalistic past were discarded and destroyed. During this era, Chinese intellectuals were treated with special harshness. “March of the Volunteers” was no exception to the Cultural Revolution’s attack against tradition. Tian Han, the author of the anthem lyrics, was falsely accused of betraying the CCP and was imprisoned until his death in 1968. Although the melody of “March of the Volunteers” was still played on diplomatic occasions, the lyrics were disregarded. The similarity between Tian Han’s fate and that of his lyrics is no coincidence, for a de facto national anthem emerged during those revolutionary years. Although without official approval, “The East Is Red”, a song glorifying the leadership of Chairman Mao and the CCP, largely replaced “March of the Volunteers” as a statement of Chinese pride (see the lyrics of “The East is Red” in Table 6A.2 in the Appendix). In April 1970, China successfully launched its first space satellite “China 1”. It was “The East is Red”, not “March of the Volunteers”, that the satellite radio broadcasted and people sang the song in grand celebrations.

A variation of the “New Long March”: 1978–1982 Despite its popularity during the Cultural Revolution, “The East is Red” did not become the official national anthem. Indeed, “March of the Volunteers” remained the official, albeit temporary, anthem. In 1976, the Cultural Revolution ended with the arrest of the members of the “Gang of Four”. The Party launched a top-down re-examination of the Revolution, but Mao Zedong’s sacred image did not completely fade. Mao’s discourse retained its impact and was preserved by Mao’s chosen successor, Hua Guodfeng. The anthem, however, remained in limbo. In the late 1970s, economic development and modernization rose to the top of the Party agenda. Under these post-Cultural Revolution circumstances, a variation of the national anthem appeared. In February 1978, the first Plenary Session of the fifth NPC officially approved new lyrics and renounced the original lyrics of “March of the Volunteers”. On 3 March 1978 the first Plenary issued a resolution for new lyrics for the official anthem, but with the melody unchanged (see Table 6A.3 in the Appendix). Although Mao’s god-like status had begun to wane, the new lyrics emphasized the leadership of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party. The political tone clearly usurped the old version’s focus on nationhood. On 6 March 1978, People’s Daily published the new national anthem with an ardent editorial titled “the New March for Eight Hundred Million People”. The editor defined the new anthem as official and attributed the new lyrics to China’s “collective wisdom”. Evidently, the original lyrics of “March of

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the Volunteers” no longer matched the realties of China in reconstruction. The editorial declared: “March on! People of all heroic nationalities! The great Communist Party leads us in continuing the Long March.” . . . Such grand lyrics of our new national anthem resound in people’s hearts, in our fond memory of the past and our confidence in the construction of socialism. At such a critical point of history, we could not help taking our minds back to the 1930s, when the greatest leader and mentor Chairman Mao guided the Red Army in the world-famous Long March. This glorious piece of history, like the ancient Great Wall, has become the symbol of the Chinese people’s spirit that we cherish so much. The new long march in the new era, namely to build China into a modernized socialist country, is an unprecedentedly more difficult and complicated yet more glorious and meritorious task. It is a grand long march of eight hundred million people. The new lyrics never became popular. The original “March of the Volunteers” had kept its place in people’s minds. Therefore, at spontaneous gatherings to show national pride, confusion often resulted. In March 1981, for example, the China Women’s and Men’s National Volleyball Teams both won the Asian Regional Championships of the Volleyball World Cup. To celebrate, different groups of college students in Beijing paraded through the streets and sang both the old and the new Chinese national anthems (Liu 2010). The confusion nicely demonstrated the need for a single anthem and contributed to the restoration of the favoured original. Restoration In 1982, the lyrics of “March of the Volunteers” by Tian Han were officially restored. The song, after almost 50 years, finally became the official national anthem. In the resolution, the official explanation of the decision was as follows (Summary of the Fifth Session of the Fifth NPC: 239–40): “March of the Volunteers” reflects the glorious revolutionary tradition of our people, symbolizes the mental preparation for danger in times of peace, inspires constant vigilance, and galvanizes the patriotic passions of our people. Over the decades, it has been deeply rooted in people’s hearts. Although the lyrics of the national anthem were approved to be changed in 1978 during the First Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress, we have been receiving comments from various sides. Many delegates of the NPC, many members of the Committee for Revision of the Constitution, and people of all circles suggest that the original lyrics should be restored. Hence, “The Congress Dais” suggests passing a resolution in order to restore “March of the Volunteers” as the Chinese

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national anthem and withdraw the earlier resolution on the National Anthem issued by the First Session of the 5th NPC. The Communist Party of China or Chairman Mao was not part of the lyrics in the restored Chinese national anthem. From sociological and historical points of view, there are four factors which may explain the change. The most direct reason was due to the unpopularity of the new lyrics, as represented by the statement that “we have been receiving different comments from various sides” (Summary of the fifth Plenary Session of the fifth NPC: 239). These comments include the criticism of putting simplistic slogans in the lyrics and obvious deficiencies in rhythmic and artistic conception. This means the lyrics of 1978 possessed insufficient rhetorical power. However, the underlying cause was likely due to the waning of the rampant personality cult of Chairman Mao with the end of Chairman Hua Guofeng’s tenure in June 1981, roughly one year before the official restoration of the original lyrics. Instead, a new reform era was ushered in with the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping. Furthermore, with Tian Han rehabilitated from unfair treatment in 1979, the previous ban on the original lyrics was no longer relevant. Last but not least, the December resolution accompanied the rise of an East Asian diplomatic conflict and memory war. In June 1982, Asahi Shimbun, one of the three big newspapers in Japan, reported that the Japanese Ministry of Education demanded replacement of the phrase “the Japanese army ‘invaded’ Northern China” with “the Japanese army ‘advanced into’ Northern China” in a history textbook. Since 1982, the Chinese national anthem has become permanent, with no further changes envisioned. Like other national anthems, “March of the Volunteers” has constantly evoked patriotic sentiment, integrated Chinese citizens and motivated public action on many political occasions. In 2004, the second Plenary Session of the tenth NPC passed a new amendment to the Constitution, which legitimized “March of the Volunteers” as the official Chinese national anthem. Hence, compared to the “Amendment to the Constitution of 1982” which merely legitimated the national flag and the national emblem in the Constitution, this amendment gave constitutional legitimacy to the national anthem as a formal national symbol.

Moods, motivations, and the politics of memory In the previous section, we outlined the trajectory of the Chinese national anthem by examining relevant official documents and newspaper archives. The unique twists and turns of the anthem since the birth of the PRC result from the politics surrounding it as a site of memory and shed light on the long-lasting debates between the presentist and cultural models described in the Introduction.

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From a widely held standpoint in cultural sociology, culture is not a power in its own right but a context for action. Just as it is problematic to argue for causality in cultural phenomena in general, it would be questionable to regard collective memory as the deliberate product of a power elite. Instead, collective memory is formed within certain atmospheres of national mood. To be successful, a national anthem must match the moods it generates to the prevailing moods of the social world it represents. It must intensify those moods (and their relation to the past) and in turn facilitate motivations that energize patriotic behaviour. When an anthem is imbued such societal moods, it becomes a model of social reality. The anthem formulates collective memory by its rhetorical force; it intensifies collective moods through its resonance with the general public and capacity to inspire commitment to relevant social issues. In this sense, the anthem becomes a source of motivation. The history of the Chinese national anthem thus suggests how rhetorical force and resonance set shared tones (moods) and evoked motivation-sustaining memories. Moods and choice Symbolic meaning, as noted, is a primary quality of cultural objects. In the case of national anthems, well-chosen melody and lyrics can establish common moods and feeling and heighten national identity, unity, and patriotism. In 1949, although the CCP assumed power, peace was not yet a reality. Outside the national borders, a complicated international environment was generally hostile to communist sovereignty; inside, battles to stamp out the Nationalists were still being waged in the South. Zhou’s comments highlighting existing dangers suggest the central government’s concern in singling the collective memory to frame the nation’s security needs. Suggestions from Xu Beihong and others imply a consensus among social elites to portray the outside world as hostile. The purpose: to keep the revolutionary memory fresh. Such common beliefs set the limits to the choice of the lyrics and the memories associated with them. When the NSC had to screen 6,926 sets of lyrics, some political and social elites intervened, expressing their own ideas as to what type of lyrics could best establish powerful, pervasive and patriotic moods among the people and across generations. A common concern was for the chosen lyrics to represent people’s determination to defend national unity when in peril. Taking this consideration into account, “March of the Volunteers”, better than any other lyrics, captured the experience of the nation and stirred the patriotic mood of the people. These lyrics, originating during the struggle against Japan, resonated with the people’s awareness of any enemy. “The Chinese nation faces its greatest peril” sounded an alarm to all Chinese at the time of the nation’s new birth. Phrases about flesh, blood and “our new Great Wall” inspired people’s sense of national solidarity and encouraged them

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to fight and sacrifice for the nation. In addition to its rhetorical force, this battle song extensively resonated with many people who had lived through the eight years of the war against the Japanese invaders. Such moods, stirred by the anthem, predisposed the people to defend the new nation against all successor enemies. The choice of “March of the Volunteers” was to reinforce people’s collective memory of the Japanese invasion, either as individual trauma or as the “greatest peril” the country had ever faced. Once the desired moods became shared, the anthem resonated with the people and gained legitimacy. When the “March of the Volunteers” was sung, the indirect reference to World War II would be more than obvious to the singer, creating a mood that would be in line with the desired mood of political leaders. Hence, the elite’s choice of anthem became relevant to the people. A similar symbiotic relation between the choice of the anthem and that of social reality describes the fate of “March of the Volunteers” during the Cultural Revolution and afterwards. The de facto national anthem and the short-lived variation of the 1978 anthem, though very different in their lyrical contents, were chosen according to the same criteria. The difference in the durability of the lyrics between “March of the Volunteers” and the two later choices can be explained in terms of the former’s cultural power. Moods during the chaotic period: “The East is Red” and Mao’s sacralized image “The East is Red” as a de facto anthem represents an invented tradition and an attempt to rewrite the collective memory of the creation of the PRC. The song was a monument to Mao’s personality cult, and it served the needs of the moment. Specifically, the symbolic reconstruction of the past redefined the meaning of the anti-Japanese War in such a way that it had meaning in and utility for the Maoist present (Maines et al. 1983: 163). The ascendancy and sacralization of Mao’s image was a crucial factor in the change of lyrics of the Chinese national anthem during the Cultural Revolution. Mao’s image ascended with the growth of the PRC, reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution and endured until the early 1980s. In parallel, “The East is Red” became a de facto national anthem with new lyrics in 1978. At this time, “The East is Red” expressed the popular mood. For example, the lyrics described Chairman Mao as the “people’s saving star”, the “guide” who “leads us forward”. The rhetorical force of “The East is Red” reinforced a dual purpose of reinforcing Mao-worship and motivating the people to participate enthusiastically in the Cultural Revolution. The memory of past invasions faded and was replaced by a personality cult. The change can be better understood when the social and political realities of the time are brought into focus. In the second half of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government made significant progress in its bilateral diplomatic relations, including the normalization of diplomatic ties with

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the US and Japan. Sino-US relationship began to normalize with the visit of Kissinger and Nixon. In 1971, China resumed its position in the United Nations. On 29 September 1972, China and Japan signed the “Joint Communiqué of the Government of the PRC and the Government of Japan” and established official diplomatic relations after a long period of animosity. During this time, China viewed “foreign devils” through a less hostile lens. All this progress in diplomatic relations was considered as one of the many exploits of Mao, whose renown had reached its zenith. New Long March, new moods, same Mao: 1978–1982 The ending of the Cultural Revolution did not destroy Mao’s image, but changing moods in the nation were reflected in the choice of a new anthem. Despite going back to the melody of “March of the Volunteers” of 1949, the original lyrics that contained the memory of national pride and the struggle against foreign invasion were considered less relevant, perhaps even undesirable, or at least inappropriate for the tempo of a post-Cultural Revolutionary era. While old shrines had been destroyed, there was an urgent need for China’s leader to galvanize the people into working for “Socialist Modernization Construction” (Summary of the first Plenary Session of the fifth NPC: 1–70). Therefore, “the CCP’s guidance” became the highlighted propaganda at that time and “Mao Zedong’s banner” continually sustained Mao’s charismatic authority. Such an emphasis echoed with the top-down discourse of pulling the nation out of its post-Cultural Revolution chaos. Correspondingly, the replacing of “the Great Wall” with “the New Long March” in the new lyrics gave the post-Cultural Revolution anthem a less bellicose aura for a more peaceful time. To understand the significance implied by the different lyrics, the difference between the Great Wall and the (new) Long March is crucial. In the early twentieth century, the Great Wall symbolized Chinese national identity, national integrity and danger of foreign invasion (Gao 2004) and reminded the Chinese people of their glorious and heroic history. The anthem, like the Great Wall, represented the power of the entire nation. The Long March, on the other hand, represents an episode in the history of the Communist Party of China, and Mao’s ascent to power. It is more relevant for the legitimacy of the CCP than the glory of the nation. Present interests thus trump tradition. In the post-Cultural Revolution years, China’s domestic unity and national stability were the main concern of the political elite. The reaffirmation of state power prevailed as a theme in governmental reports of 1978. “Holding high Mao Zedong’s banner” and “the centralized leadership of the Party”, highly encouraged by Chairman Hua Guofeng, had become the prevailing discourse in these documents during his October 1976–June 1981 tenure in office. Although the adoption of the new lyrics was comprehensible given the social context, it proved to be ineffective and short-lived.

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The continuous glorification of Mao and the still worshipful mood in the anthem no longer resonated with the rapidly changing political climate. A re-evaluation of the Culture Revolution and of Mao reflected this new mood. The political discourse at the time, to “build China into a modernized socialist country”, was “keyed” (Schwartz 2000) to “the New Long March in the new era”, a course more glorious and meritorious than ever, but in this new era, the New Long March assumed new meaning. The newly adopted lyrics indicate that national memories of the fight against foreign invasion gave way to the realization of the grandness of the Party as a “model for society”, normative standards which guide current and future development (Schwartz 1996: 910). Mao’s importance endured, but the anthem’s rhetorical force weakened because of the simple line-up of political slogans, lack of resonance with the concerns of the rank and file and limited effect on them. These factors defined the anthem’s inability to generate powerful moods and motivate patriotic action. Indeed, the moods and motives induced by the anthem became so far out of kilter with the prevalent concerns of the society that the restoration of the old lyrics of “March of the Volunteers” seemed more necessary than ever. New trend The international environments of the Chinese “Socialist Construction” era are too complicated to summarize briefly. NPC documents, especially the annual government reports since 1982, have emphasized the coexistence of opportunities and perils. The Reformation Age from 1982 to the present is the most peaceful period in the history of the PRC. Time and again, however, perils from the outside stirred national fear and once again, powerful, pervasive and long-lasting sentiments generated by the “March of the Volunteers” refreshed people’s memory of valour, national consciousness and national pride. The anthem’s lyrics generalized anti-Japanese memories to a wide array of present predicaments. Two examples below illustrate this point. On 8 May 1999, the US-led NATO air force dropped three Tomahawk missiles on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and caused three deaths and over 20 injuries. On 9 May 1999, over 1000 students and local residents demonstrated in front of the US Embassy in Beijing to condemn the attack. According to People’s Daily, the bombing also aroused strong indignation among students in other Chinese cities. It was reported that agitated students sang the national anthem and chanted slogans “strongly condemning U.S.-led NATO’s act of aggression” (People’s Daily 9 May 1999). Embodied in anthem lyrics, the memories of national peril over half a century earlier motivated people to join spontaneously in the protest. Similarly, on 5 April 2005, protesters crowded in front of the Japanese embassy and consulate generals across China, waving the flag of the PRC and singing the national anthem, “March of the Volunteers”, to show their indignation in the wake of a new series of Japanese history texts that still

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glossed over Japan’s invasion of its neighbours during World War II. Immediately ignited, the Chinese contended that the revision of the textbooks was designed to whitewash Japan’s militaristic past and to distort further the history of World War II. The Chinese government lodged a protest with Japan’s Foreign Minister, arguing against the Japanese government’s “irresponsible attitude” towards war-time atrocities. This “textbook incident”, the first of many, occurred in June 1982, when the two governments were still in their “honeymoon” period of bilateral relationship. By 2005, the Chinese expressed their discontent and anger over textbook content more radically, still guided by an anthem with battle song lyrics.

Conclusions The Chinese national anthem is at once a cultural object and a collective memory site. That the past encapsulated in the song can be generalized to conditions relevant to the present (or the future) was the merit Zhou Enlai saw in “March of the Volunteers”. Thus, “the greatest peril” and “enemy’s gunfire”, once referencing Japan, can apply to any current or future conflict situations, such as US-led NATO bombing of the Chinese in Belgrade and the dispute over Japanese textbooks. As Zhou correctly foresaw, the anthem would indeed be relevant to all kinds of threats to China. The changing fate of the Chinese national anthem tells an interesting story about Chinese history. The relative continuity of the anthem from 1949 to 1966 and then from 1982 to the present reveals the merit of the cultural model of collective memory: the past continues to define and affect the present. On the other hand, the sidelining of the anthem during the Cultural Revolution, the new lyrics between 1978 and 1982 and the restoration of the original lyrics in 1982 all indicate the power of the presentist model. During the Cultural Revolution, historians glorified Mao and the Communist Party in their role of saving the nation. In the four years immediately following the Cultural Revolution, external threats and conflicts became less important, perhaps even irrelevant, and were erased from the symbolic frame that was the national anthem. All history was condensed into a symbolic long march, and people were rallied to its perpetuation. The “Star-Spangled Banner”, “La Marseillaise” and other national anthems4 are similar to the “March of the Volunteers”: all are about the past, all are well-known and easily retrievable, all have rhetorical power, all have tremendous resonance, all three have long-lasting institutional retention and all possess high resolution, that is, are inspirational, capable of motivating people to pursue national as well as personal interests (Schudson 1989b). Still, the “March of the Volunteers” is unique in that, as a national anthem, it is not only constructed by the state but also reflects the state’s changing demands. Because the national anthem sustains Chinese memory so well, it strengthens the hand of the past and contributes to the great memory problem of Northeast Asia.

Appendix

Table 6A.1 Traditional

Lyrics (current and original), “March of the Volunteers” Simplified

English translation∗ Arise! All who refuse to be slaves! Let our flesh and blood become our new Great Wall! As the Chinese nation faces its greatest peril, All forcefully expend their last cries. Arise! Arise! Arise! Our million hearts beat as one, Brave the enemy’s fire, March on! Brave the enemy’s fire, March on!

∗

English translation of the PRC anthem from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_the_Volunteers, retrieved on 2 February 2010).

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Table 6A.2 Traditional

Lyrics (1966–1978), “The East is Red” Simplified

English translation∗ The east is red, the sun is rising. China has brought forth a Mao Zedong. He works for the people’s welfare. Hurrah, He is the people’s great savior. Chairman Mao loves the people. He is our guide. To build a new China. Hurrah, he leads us forward! The Communist Party is like the sun. Wherever it shines, it is bright. Wherever there is a Communist Party, Hurrah, there the people are liberated!

∗ English

translation of the PRC anthem from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_Is_Red_(song), retrieved on 2 February 2010).

Table 6A.3 Traditional

Lyrics (1978–1982), “March of the Volunteers” Simplified

English Translation∗ March on! People of all heroic nationalities! The great Communist Party leads us in continuing the Long March, Millions with but one heart toward a communist tomorrow, Develop and protect the country in a brave struggle. March on, march on, march on! We will for generations, Raise high Mao Zedong’s banner, march on! Raise high Mao Zedong’s banner, march on! March on! March on! On!

∗ English

translation of the PRC anthem from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_the_Volunteers, retrieved on 2 February 2010).

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Notes ∗

We thank Anna-Maria Marshall and several other colleagues for their helpful and insightful comments.

1. The Japanese government does not publish textbooks. Private companies commission textbook writing by the experts. The Ministry of Education, however, issues guidelines for the publishing companies and must approve the commissioned textbooks. Once approved, several kinds of textbooks are up for screening by the local Textbook Selection Committee, which consists of Board of Education representatives, teachers, parents and ordinary citizens. The 1982 Textbook Incident concerned the ministry’s approval of the New History Textbook, published by Fushosha, which was perceived as having whitewashed Japan’s past atrocities by omitting reference to comfort women, Unit 731 and the Nanjing Massacre. But the book was adopted by less than 1 per cent of the schools. 2. http://www.people.com.cn/GB/33831/33842/33845/34510/2575419.html records the anecdote for initial arguments accessed on 15 January, 2007. The website is no longer accessible though similar information can be found at http://zhidao.baidu. com/question/19995636.html?fr=qrl&cid=99&index=1, accessed on 1 February, 2010. 3. An example of a song unwittingly taken from a former enemy was a popular antigovernment expression during the 1970s to the 1990s. This exemplary protest song was actually a battle song of the Japanese Army during the Asia-Pacific War, and the lyrics are very powerful in determination: “March on, march on over the dead bodies of fellow soldiers . . . we will fight until the very last death.” This song, like certain versions of the Chinese anthem, indicates that a powerful cultural symbol does not have to score high in all of Schudson’s five dimensions. 4. Japan’s national anthem “Kimigayo”, a powerful symbol of Emperor-worship, has been criticized for its association with militarism, but it was only approved by the government as the official national anthem in 1999. Lawsuits against the government’s unilateral imposition of the amended anthem bill are still being pressed by progressive factions, including the Teacher’s Union (Nikkyoso).

References Cerulo, K. A. (1989) “Sociopolitical Control and the Structure of National Symbols: An Empirical Analysis of National Anthems”, Social Forces, 68 (1), 76–99. Cerulo, K. A. (1993) “Symbols and the World System: National Anthems and Flags”, Social Forum, 8 (2), 243–71. Cerulo, K. A. (1995) Identity Designs: The Sights and Sounds of a Nation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). Durkheim, E. (1912 [1965]) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Free Press). Gao, M. (2004) “The Great Wall in Chinese Contemporary Art”, East Asia Cultures Critique, 12 (3), 773–86. Geertz, C. (1974) The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books). Halbwachs, M. (1941) La Topographie Légendaire des Évangiles [The Legendary Topography of the Gospels] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France).

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(Thoughts on National SymLiu, D. (2010) “ bol Reforms in a Unified China)”, retrieved from http://www.gongfa.com/ liudashengguojiabiaozhigaige.htm on 2 February 2010. Maines, D. R., Sugrue, N. M. and Katovich, M. A. (1983) “The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead’s Theory of the Past”, American Sociological Review, 48 (2), 161–73. Mead, G. H. (1929) “The Nature of the Past”, in J. Coss (ed.) Essays in Honor of John Dewey (New York: Henry Holt). Onishi, N. (2005) “Tokyo Protests Anti-Japan Rallies in China”, International Section, New York Times, 11 April 2005. Schudson, M. (1989a) “The Present in the Past versus the Past in the Present”, Communication, 11 (2), 105–13. Schudson, M. (1989b) “How Culture Works: Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy of Symbols”, Theory and Society, 18 (2), 153–80. Schwartz, B. (1989) “Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington”, American Sociological Review, 56 (2), 221–36. Schwartz, B. (1996) “Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II”, American Sociological Review, 61 (5), 908–27. Schwartz, B. (2000) Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Wagner-Pacifici, R. (1996) “Memories in the Making: The Shapes of Things That Went”, Qualitative Sociology, 19 (3), 301–21.

7 Memory Movement and State–Society Relationship in Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement Against Japan Bin Xu and Gary Alan Fine

The relationship between memory and the state is fundamental to collective memory study (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Smith 1987; Gillis 1994; Spillman 1997; Olick 2003). The dominant approach to this relationship has been “instrumentalism” which regards memory as an ideological tool for the nation-state to legitimize itself, especially when an old ideology is fading or when a new nation-state is being built (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Zerubavel 1995). When applied to totalitarian and authoritarian societies in the twentieth century, this view is incarnated in two theoretical approaches. The first approach, which we term the Orwellian approach, has been most vividly illustrated in the slogan in George Orwell’s novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell 1949: 199). This Orwellian slogan, which is comparable to the presentist perspective described in this volume’s Introduction, is consciously or unconsciously adopted by many researchers and public intellectuals in describing forced forgetting and remembering in the context of state socialism (Kundera 1980). In contrast to this approach, an alternate view, more but not perfectly consistent with the cultural perspective, suggests that civil society and social movements critically concerned with the past can emerge to challenge the leviathan state by disputing the official narratives as well as by presenting alternative stories. In this view, collective memory becomes a weapon for a “rebellious civil society” to narrate accounts of the “true” or “authentic” past suppressed by the totalitarian state, and then enlighten and mobilize people to overthrow the oppressive regime or to demand redress (Watson 1994; Ekiert and Kubik 1999). This view has its counterpart in political theory: “transitology” or “transitional justice”, which explains the rise of 166

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reparations as a result of the transition from totalitarianism to democracy, such as the collapse of Communism, Latin American dictatorship and racial apartheid. Both approaches provide a picture in which the politics of memory is reduced to a zero-sum memory game. Where the state dominates, the civil society loses and vice versa. However, this dichotomous battlefield image is too simplistic for researchers to explore memory under authoritarian regimes. Given that recent studies in sociology of memory have gone beyond instrumentalism by treating memory as both a state-sponsored cultural hegemony and an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983; Bodnar 1992; Spillman 1997; Winter and Sivan 1999), this simplistic dichotomy is surprising. Moreover, both images are too ideologically-loaded to be useful. They are embraced by dissidents to reveal the chilly past of totalitarianism, and in the process affirm their determination to overcome heavy odds. The Manichean drama suggested by each view is misleading in that it assumes a greater totalism than is true in most regimes. Our purpose is to propose a nuanced view of state–society relationship in which social movements based on collective memories are constrained and enabled by the political opportunity structure. By the term “political opportunity structure” we refer to state-controlled resources that empower those able to obtain them. Access to such resources is always limited to those proposing projects that will enhance state power and legitimacy. We specify the state–society relationship empirically in a contemporary memory movement that strives for justice and redress: the Chinese World War II victims’ reparations movement against Japan (CWRM hereafter), in which the victims and the activists ask for compensation from Japan for their sufferings during the Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945). We examine the configuration of the political opportunity structure in China in the 1990s and 2000s, on one hand, and the activists’ framing and mobilizing strategies on the other. By this empirical investigation, we explain how the movement developed over time and to what extent the state–society relationship shaped its trajectory on both the meso- and the macro-levels. We argue that the unsuccessful development of CWRM before 1995 was due to the discrepancy between the discursive and organizational opportunity structure. While the state did intend to exploit the ideological claims of the movement, the movement posed a challenge to the state by attempting to change the foreign policy towards Japan and set up unapproved NGOs. After 1995, the movement activists launched legal actions against Japan. At the same time, the movement found support in the peripheral part of the political opportunity structure. The most successful movements adopted a frame based on moral universalism. Inducing activists to conform to the state’s opportunity structure, these changes reduced the risk of offending the state and led to social movement development after 1995.

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Organizational and discursive dimensions of the political opportunity structure Whereas the phrase “politics of memory” is becoming a cliché, few collective memory scholars theorize memory movements as a major form of politics. Fewer pay enough attention to the burgeoning literature on social movements. By “memory movements” we mean movements that are aimed at creating or reconstructing narratives of the distant past and, based on the new narrative, demand redress for past sufferings. We propose a dialogue between the literature on social movements and collective memory, explaining why memory movements occur and develop in particular state–society relationships. Recently there have been three dominant sociological approaches in the field of social movements. The first, resource mobilization, emphasizes the role of groups, organizations and social networks in mobilizing movement resources. The second approach, “political opportunity structure”, focuses on access to the political system, the division between elites, availability of elite allies and diminishing state repression (Kriesi 2004). A third approach, framing, focuses on identifying the issue, diagnosing the grievances, prognosticating the solution and motivating participants by creating discourses and narratives (Benford and Snow 2000). In the last decade, major figures in the field of social movements have attempted to integrate the three approaches (McAdam et al. 1996), or two of them (Diani 1996; McCammon et al. 2007). We follow this trend and try to combine political opportunity structure, framing approaches and action strategies by examining how the politics of memory works as both a discourse and a collective process.

Political opportunity structures: organizational and discursive We argue that a political opportunity structure comprises two dimensions: organizational/institutional and ideological/discursive. The organizational/ institutional dimension includes various institutions and organizations: the legislature, the government at central and local levels, the party system, the judiciary and peripheral governmental bureaus. The ideological/ discursive dimension includes the political ideologies adopted, utilized and tolerated by the state. The two dimensions are interdependent. An organizational structure is not possible without a sustaining ideological structure. Moreover, the distinction has a methodological advantage: it connects to framing processes by indicating what ideological tools are available, accessible and usable by activists. One successful social movement framing strategy is to raise a set of issues, or agenda, that have elective affinity with the discursive political opportunity structure, although their ultimate purpose is either to challenge the existing regime or at least to remedy problems in

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which the regime has interest (Pfaff and Yang 2001; Straughn 2005; O’Brien and Li 2006). On both dimensions, accessibility and openness also vary (McAdam et al. 1996): we therefore distinguish between core and peripheral components of political opportunity structures. By core, we mean the fundamental aspects of institution and ideology on which the state relies. Attacks on core ideology will either not be allowed, as in state socialism, or incur strong defensive responses, as in democratic society. The accessibility of the core state organizations is low unless activists can find elite allies. In contrast, the peripheral part of the structure is more flexible, accessible and exploitable than the core. Peripheral organizations, such as marginal state bureaus, local governments and state-sponsored organizations, are more likely to support and even participate in memory movements. In most cases, peripheral organizations have their own agenda and interests, which might not be identical to those of the core institutions. In an authoritarian state, the line between core and periphery is clear and can hardly be crossed; in a democratic regime, the line is vague but still exists. By analytically distinguishing the two dimensions, we can construct four quadrants of the political opportunity structure (see Figure 7A.1 in the Appendix). Area A. Movements in this area seek support from core organizations by aligning with elites or changing the institutional structure of core organizations. The movement also exploits or challenges core ideologies, defining the state as the main perpetrator or at least the responsible party for the past wrongs. Whether they succeed is a historically contingent question, but their risk of failing is no doubt higher than in any other area. In order to succeed, the movements of memory must take greater risks and deal with more obstacles—sometimes, a zero-sum game is inevitable. Area D. This area is most benignly treated by the state because both ideological and organizational dimensions of it are flexible and accessible. Memory movements in this area do not directly challenge the state or blame the state for the past. Moreover, these movements depend on local communities, NGOs, local elites and, sometimes, local governments. Areas B and C. Both are grey zones. In area B, some movements target institutional change by using peripheral yet legitimate ideologies—as Straughn (2005) vividly calls it, “taking the state at its word”; other movements seek support from the core organizations by lobbying, allying with elites and legal actions. In area C, there are possible ideological challenges from peripheral organizations; some movements in this area can justify the goal of reforming peripheral organizations by adopting core ideologies. Such movements are rooted in peripheral political opportunity structures. A classic example of area C is O’Brien and Li’s “rightful resistance”, a term that

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refers to subordinates utilizing dominant ideologies to justify their protest against local governments (O’Brien and Li 2006). In sum, the origin and development of a memory movement can be explained by the discursive and organizational political opportunity structure that the movement faces, and the strategies the movement employs. Given the political opportunity structure in an authoritarian society, movement activists must frame their ideals and narratives skilfully in order to fit in the discursive opportunity structure. A narrative of the past in which the current state is depicted as one of the major responsible parties, but not always the perpetrator, will produce more difficulties for the memory movement. On the organizational side, the core part of the less accessible state cannot provide enough support for and does not allow challenge from a memory movement. The success or failure of a memory movement therefore hinges on how many resources can be mobilized through local government and other peripheral institutions, organizations and social spaces. In order to illustrate our theoretical model, we analyse the CWRM. Before turning to our empirical analysis, the movement’s historical trajectory must be introduced. Case, data and methods In 1972, when normalizing its diplomatic relationship with Japan, the PRC gave up official claims for war reparations. But the joint-communiqué about the normalization did not include any article about whether Chinese citizens as individuals can demand reparations from the Japanese government. That ambiguity led to subsequent claims of redress raised by Chinese activists in the early 1990s, asserting that Chinese citizens’ rights to demand compensation from Japan were not constrained by the international treaty. The development of the Chinese war reparations movement can be divided into two strategic stages. During the first stage, 1991–1995, the movement was characterized by petitioning, lobbying and unsuccessful attempts to stage demonstrations. Few legal cases were filed. The most prominent figure was Tong Zeng, an activist who lobbied representatives to the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature, pressing the government to affirm the demand for compensation. The movement was not successful until the second stage, from 1995 to the present, when a large number of cases were filed and publicized.1 Most cases were initiated by leftist Japanese lawyers affiliated with the Japanese Peace Movement. Among the cases filed at the second stage, several were particularly influential: the bacterial weapon victims’ case (victims located in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, and Changde, Hunan Province), the forced labourers’ cases (victims located in North China), the “Comfort Women” case, the Chongqing indiscriminate bombing case and the chemical weapon victims’ case (victims located in Heilongjiang). The movement declined dramatically after April 2007, when the Japanese Supreme Court refused all the reparations claims from China.

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This decade-long movement involved many activists, victims, institutions and organizations from both China and Japan. Yet, it has been rarely studied by scholars interested in East Asian collective memory. The dominant approach to the study of the politics of memory focuses on the Chinese state’s strategic use of war memories as a legitimizing ideology or a diplomatic bargaining chip (Christensen 1996; Mitter 2000, 2003; He 2007; Jager and Mitter 2007). This argument is no doubt valid because of the strength of the Chinese state in propagating ideology and controlling the society. It also echoes popular discourses about Chinese war experience, especially public commentaries in the media outside mainland China. If stretched too far, however, it overemphasizes the state’s role and capacity in launching and sustaining a large-scale memory-based movement; it underestimates the complexity of state–society interactions on the issues of memory and tends to strengthen the existing Orwellian picture of authoritarian states and their ideological manipulation. Empirically, this approach cannot explain why the movement had different trajectories before and after 1995, when CWRM was initiated by transnational activism and local mobilization. The state certainly had a role in the movement but not in the way expected by the state-domination approach. To explain CWRM’s development, we must examine the particular opportunity structure on one hand and the movement’s framing and strategies on the other. Another shortcoming of the previous studies is that almost all of them rely on discourses (usually official discourses) embodied in media reports and commemorative sites, such as memorials and museums. Textual data are more a valid source for examining discourses than collective actions at local level, especially when many of these actions are not covered by Chinese media due to the state’s notorious restrictions. The mobilization processes, framing strategies and narratives of the development of the movement sometimes can only be obtained from interviews and observations. Therefore, only with textual and ethnographic data can we adequately investigate opportunity structures and state–society interaction. We collected and analysed several types of data. First, we examined reports about the CWRM since the beginning of the movement in the early 1990s from various newspapers, including state media and state-sponsored media in mainland China, Chinese-language newspapers in Hong Kong and Taiwan and English-language media. We also collected data from online forums. As in other Chinese social movements in the 1990s, online forums played a critical role in mobilizing participants and in framing the movement (see Guobin Yang, Chapter 5). Managers of these forums are usually the most active members of the movement. They post testimonies, documents, pictures and reports. The second type of data was collected by the first author’s interviewbased ethnographic research from June to July 2007, in several locations in China where the movement is based. He conducted 24 formal (recorded)

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interviews and numerous informal (unrecorded) interviews. The duration of interviews ranged from five minutes to eight hours. He also conducted two focus group interviews with victims and activists in two locations2 as well as participant observations of several events.3 During his fieldwork, he also collected many unpublished documents, such as pamphlets, flyers, selfprinted texts, copies of petitioning letters, lists of members, investigation working-manuals, meeting minutes, pictures and so on. He cross-checked published and unpublished texts, Chinese sources, non-Chinese sources and, most importantly, field study data and textual data to present a systematic account of the movement.

Political opportunity structure and the rise of CWRM: pre-1995 Using the theoretical model discussed above (Figure 7A.1), we analyse the ideological and organizational structures of China’s political opportunity apparatus before and after 1995 (see Figure 7A.2 in the Appendix). As presented in Figure 7A.2, the core ideologies in the 1990s are expressed through the discourses of “stability” and the “Four Principles” (leadership of the Community Party, leadership of proletariats, Socialism and Leninism-Marxism-Maoism). The core institutions are the one-party system, central government, legal system and the NPC. Any challenges to these two realms are forbidden or at least strictly restricted. In contrast, various peripheral ideologies (nationalism, universal morals and the idea of human rights) are allowed to exist and even encouraged by the state if they have discursive functions of legitimizing it. The peripheral institutions and organizations, such as local governments, government-sponsored organizations and peripheral governmental bureaus, are more accessible, and some of them are closely intertwined with local communities and informal networks. According to the theoretical model we raise, if a memory movement in an authoritarian context challenges or attempts to influence the core institutions or ideology, its chance of being successful is lower than those which do not. The CWRM’s trajectory supports this argument. The CWRM was initiated and publicized in the early 1990s by a handful of activists. Tong Zeng was one of the earliest and most prominent. The master frame at this stage is expressed thoroughly in his very influential petitioning letter “On Regulations of War Reparations and Victim Reparations in International Law” (1991).4 This document is an example of how the early activists identified the issue, diagnosed the grievances, predicted the solution and motivated participants (Benford and Snow 2000). He recognized that the government had renounced reparations, but Chinese citizens as individuals still have the right to ask for compensations from the Japanese government. This idea became the master frame of the CWRM. The whole document is an amalgam of a discussion of international laws and a narrative

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of Japanese war atrocities. This mixture of nationalistic sentiments and legal universalism matched the discursive political opportunity structure in the early 1990s. Both had the potential ideological value the state desired. In contrast to the successful emotional affective and legal justification, the prognostication Tong raised in the document was less acceptable to the Chinese government. Tong urged the government and its legislature to provide a long overdue official interpretation of the 1972 communiqué so that victims have an adequate legal base to make their claims. Those appeals implied a claim that made the Chinese government uncomfortable: although Japan was the primary perpetrator, the Chinese government had to share the responsibility of neglecting the victims in the post-war years. Those appeals and Tong’s activism threatened the core institutions of the political opportunity structure. Tong urged the government to permit Chinese citizens to organize formal organizations to demand compensation. Any unapproved collective action and civil association aggravate the Chinese state, which, as do other authoritarian states, imposes strict restrictions on civil associations and movements in order to keep individual citizens in an unorganized, atomistic condition. Moreover, from 1991 to 1994, Tong lobbied representatives to the NPC, some of whom expressed sympathy for him and proposed motions to legitimate his claims. In the motions, the representatives urged the government to claim 180 billion dollars from Japan (Japan Economic Newswire 1992). By the first half of 1992, some high-ranking officials made it clear that they did not intend to curtail the movement severely because it legitimated the government by establishing a traumatic past (British Broadcasting Corporation 1992; Agence France Presse 1992). On the other hand, the China–Japan relationship was crucial to China in the early 1990s. When Western countries imposed the “Tiananmen embargo” on China, Japan was the first country that resumed trade. The government, thus, kept a close eye on every move the activists made to prevent them from disturbing the China–Japan relationship. In addition to these diplomatic reasons, the lobbying process was interpreted by the state as an unwelcome political action. The proposal to the NPC was repeatedly turned down. Despite the unsuccessful lobbying, Tong went on to set up a nongovernmental organization called “the Preparatory Chinese Popular Committee for Compensation”, collecting signatures of support from 300,000 people (Reid and Sun 1992). As a result, his actions impelled the government to add him to the list of “sensitive people” (minggan renwu), a term that refers to those people who could potentially disturb the official agenda. Every year Tong and other activists mobilized people to sign petitions and lobby legislators to propose motions to the Congress. But every year the motions were rejected. The organization that Tong set up was not allowed to register with the Civil Affairs Bureau and hence could not obtain official status. The attempts to stage protests were suppressed before important diplomatic

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events between China and Japan, such as Japanese Emperor Akihito’s visit in 1992 and Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa’s visit to China in 1994 (Japan Economic Newswire 1993). The failure can be explained by China’s political opportunity structure (Figure 7A.2). Attempts to influence the NPC (a core institution) to change foreign and domestic policies and establish unapproved organizations were seen as a threat that might disturb the institutional opportunity structure. Although CWRM’s claims contained ideological elements that the state tolerated and even encouraged, Tong’s attempts to change state policies posed a threat to the political opportunity structure’s core institutions. Thus, CWRM before 1995 was located in cell B in Figure 7A.2. It existed in the crevice between the ideological and institutional dimensions of the political opportunity structure but was far from being successful.

Moving away from the core: CWRM after 1995 The year 1995 was the turning point of CWRM. At this time, a group of Japanese lawyers visited China, searching for World War II victims, offering free legal assistance to help victims claim compensation from the Japanese government. In doing this, they supported pacifism and sought to change the right-wing atmosphere in Japan (Seraphim 2006). The lawyers set up an association for helping Chinese victims claim compensation (United Press International 1995). Finally, in July, 12 victims filed a case in Tokyo District Court. Soon after, other activists and lawyers filed more cases against the Japanese government (Shenzheng Legal Times 2005). More than 26 reparation lawsuits have been filed so far. The movement consists of sub-movements based on some well-known cases, such as the bacterial weapon victims’ litigation against Japan in both Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, and Changde, Hunan Province, the forced labourers’ lawsuit, the indiscriminate bombing victims’ lawsuit in Chongqing, the “comfort women” lawsuits and the chemical weapon victims’ lawsuits. Thus, since 1995, CWRM became one of the most influential and persistent social movements of the late 1990s and 2000s. It attracted international and domestic attention and mobilized a large number of activists. What can account for its trajectory—from the unsuccessful pre-1995 stage to the influential post-1995 development? The state-domination approach answers part of this question. Japan decided to participate in the Theater Missile Defense in 1996, a decision that triggered China’s strong reaction. Popular nationalism against Japan correspondingly rose within China. This trend changed the configuration of the political opportunity structure. Any political and social activities that were perceived by the government to be related to nationalism, including CWRM, acquired at least partial legitimacy.

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However, the state’s encouragement and manipulation cannot adequately explain such a large-scale and complex movement. State manipulation of memory discourses and nationalistic sentiments cannot lead to a social movement without favourable social conditions and intelligent movement strategies. In other words, the state’s reactions to international relations shaped the political opportunity structure by increasing the status of nationalism on the discursive dimension and tolerance of the movement organizations. But the movement also changed its action and framing strategies to fit the new political opportunity structure. Without this interaction, we argue, the CWRM would not have grown so fast and so widely. Two common features of CWRM’s activity after 1995 exemplify this process. First, the whole CWRM took legal actions against the Japanese state rather than lobbying the Chinese state. Thus, the major target—the Japanese state—was clearly redefined. Threat to the core Chinese institutions was significantly diminished. Second, instead of “taking the upper-level route” most sectors of the movement sought support from the peripheral part of the political opportunity structure. Consequently, the strategies enabled the movement to develop rapidly in various areas in China. In the sections that follow, we analyse two highly influential sectors: the bacterial warfare victims’ reparations movement in Yiwu and Changde. The activists in both places collected reliable and systematic testimonies from a large number of victims. Each locale has its own plaintiffs’ organizations rooted in the local community, its institutions and social networks. But they differ from each other in terms of their relations to the government, especially the local government. We focus on two aspects: how the constraining and enabling components of the organizational side of the political opportunity structure interact with the activists’ mobilization strategies, and how framing strategies interact with discursive strategies. We demonstrate, contrary to the prevailing and commonsense views, a dynamic and wellmaintained negotiated order, both discursive and organizational, between the civil society and the state, which, with efforts from both sides, explains the development of the two cases. Rooted in the local: organization and mobilization Yiwu The bacterial weapon case in Yiwu was initiated in the mid-1990s by Japanese Peace Movement activists, who wanted to clear Japan’s “historical debt” by searching and compensating Chinese victims.5 Their visits to Yiwu, especially to a village called Congshan, evoked the shared memory of the atrocities in the local community. Congshan was severely attacked by the bubonic plague that was spread by the Japanese Army as a biological weapon in the Sino-Japanese War. Most villagers share a common surname,

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Wang, and the family of the most prominent figure in the whole CWRM, Wang Xuan, originated in this village. Since the Japanese lawyers’ visit, the residents have been enthusiastically participating in the investigation and other movement activities. They set up a memorial for the victims in a small ancestry worship hall in the village. In this sense, the bacterial warfare reparations movement is a transnational movement deeply rooted in local community and local memory. Originating from Congshan Village, the Yiwu sector of CWRM grew in a situation where the local government adopted a hands-off policy. The movement activists received little support from the local government except for some minor and ad hoc financial aid, such as providing an interpreter for the Japanese lawyers and reimbursing copying fees. On the other hand, according to the activists, the local government never sent National Security agents to the meetings held in Yiwu. When the first author asked Chen,6 one of the most important activists for the case, whether this style and policy can be interpreted as a form of support, she took pains to explain: In Chinese society, it is incorrect to say there’s no influence of government. . . . So we always inform the government what we are doing. But the reparations case is our own business . . . there’s no way for the government to interfere in our activities. But it doesn’t mean the government has nothing to do with it. Well, it’s hard to explain this to the Western audience. The English word “support” is sort of vague. Yes, they (the government) do support us, but not in the way Western media imagines. You know, in Zhejiang province, private-owned business is really strong. People are richer than other provinces. People enjoy a relatively greater degree of freedom in organizing their own activities. The (local) government, well, they don’t even have time to control you. Seriously, they are busy developing the economy. Every time when we have a meeting, it was we that came to the local government to invite officials to attend the meeting, not them that voluntarily came to the meeting to supervise us. Sometimes they didn’t bother to attend. (Interview 13 June 2007) Chen’s difficulty in elaborating on the word “support” reveals the subtlety in local government–movement interactions. This subtlety is also revealed in the role and practice of a leading local activist, P. G. Chen, a retired government official. Called “Secretary Chen” by Yiwu people, he used his extensive connections and influence in the local community to help the movement mobilize resources from various sectors of the local society, including the governmental bureaus. In his and other participants’ words, P. G. Chen’s guanxi (connections) and mianzi (face) enabled him to get support that otherwise might not be obtainable. For example, in the very beginning of

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the Yiwu CWRM, the activists could not even afford copying and printing fees. Then P. G. Chen talked to a city official with whom he was acquainted to ask for financial support. The official told him to copy and print materials in a local printing store and that the city government would pay the bill afterwards. When the Plaintiffs’ Organization was founded, P. G. Chen was unanimously elected chair because, according to P. G. Chen himself, he “could do something that other people were not able to do” (Interview 11 July 2007). His practices echoed the sociological literature on guanxi (Gold et al. 2002) and “face-work” (Goffman 1967), demonstrating the nuanced configuration of state–society relationship on the local level. As more victims and activists from other places in Zhejiang joined the movement, the Yiwu activists and victims decided to formalize their group into a province-wide social movement, “the Bacterial Warfare Plaintiffs’ Organization”. As is true of many other grassroots organizations in China, the organization has never been registered with the Civil Affairs Bureau and therefore does not have a legal status. Yet, they are not banned as long as they do not hurt the core organizational and ideological structure of the state. Although some representatives to the NPC discussed the bacterial warfare victims, the activists in Yiwu were not enthusiastic about that and did not launch collective actions to push the state. The line between the core and peripheral parts of the political opportunity structure is based on an “unstated consensus”, as one of our informants explained. The Plaintiffs’ Organization grew into a province-wide association with branches in various regions throughout Zhejiang. When the Plaintiffs’ Organization prepared for the lawsuits, each branch conducted an investigation on bacterial weapon victims in its own region. Participants were mostly victims, decendents of victims and volunteers. After the bacterial warfare became widely known, the organization managed to find a small amount of funding to recruit college students to conduct the investigations. Each branch of the organization must also raise funds to cover expenses related to the movement. The largest expense is the trip to Japan, which amounts to almost 10,000 yuan ($1,250 then), a significant amount to most Chinese families. However, finances were not a significant problem for Yiwu participants. Yiwu is one of the most affluent county towns in China, famous for manufacturing toys and socks. Yiwu participants usually obtained support from their children, relatives and local entrepreneurs. Some of the victims’ families that the first author visited run small trading and shipping companies. One of the most devoted activists in Yiwu, who does not have a full-time job, identifies himself as a “freelance writer” for local media as well as the spokesman for Yiwu CWRM. His wife runs an Islamic restaurant to support the family so that his unstable income will not cause financial problems.

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Unlike the early pioneers, the Yiwu activists developed their movement in their local civil society and networks. They rarely petitioned the NPC, did not urge the state to change foreign policy and, hence, distanced themselves from the core part of the institutional opportunity structure. As a result, the Yiwu sector developed in a relatively independent manner and mobilized resources from the local community. Contrary to the state-domination approach, this independent sector became the most successful one at the second stage of CWRM. Changde As mentioned earlier, the most salient feature of the Changde CWRM is the participation of local government officials and social elites. If examined more closely, however, the state–society relationship in this movement sector is best characterized as “complex cooperation”, by which the local government, different types of activists and other institutions used the movement to pursue their own interests. The local government’s support is visible, but the cooperation between the movement and the government is not as simple as previous studies assume. The Changde activists were consciously dependent on governmental support. Yu, an important activist and local foreign affairs official, explained why officials in Changde participated in the movement: “My circle (quanzi in Chinese) consists of my friends who happen to be officials and other professionals working in state-sponsored institutions. So if I want to do something, who else can I count on?” (Interview 22 July 2007). When the first author visited Changde, Yu introduced him to the people in her “circle”. The most visible ones were former high-ranking officials. There were journalists who have upper-level positions in local newspapers and the TV station, helping to publicize the movement. There were several professors in a local college who set up a research institute on bacterial war and hosted two international conferences on bacterial war atrocities. Also part of the circle was a local entrepreneur whose business largely relied on the government’s policy and connections. He was the major donor to the movement, and he paid for their planning meetings. The former and current high-ranking officials knew that their position and their institutional resources helped the movement. Yu described more than once how they mobilized thousands of people to attend commemorative rituals. Xu, a former vice-secretary-general of the Party in the city (a topranking local position), currently the secretary-general of a local college, bragged about how many people he recruited to endorse the legal actions. The large scale of the movement, he said, was due to the “capacity” of its supporting government officials. Through their efforts, Changde CWRM obtained more support from the local government than did the CWRM in Yiwu. Every time they travelled

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to Japan on victim lawsuit business, the government and state-sponsored institutions (the media and the college) reimbursed the officials’ expenses (but not the victims’). They also provided venues for meetings and other activities without charge. In this circle of elites, however, there were no top-ranking officials with “substantive power”. Some participants had retired from powerful positions, while others worked in non-administrative sectors, such as the local Consultative, a rubber-stamp institution composed of representatives from different sectors of local society. The movement sometimes caused trouble for officials working in critical sectors. For example, Yu got into trouble due to her leading role in the movement. When asked about the difficulties, she vaguely answered her “career” but refused to specify. Victims explained that Yu’s promotion was delayed because of her work for the movement. This fact adds complexity to the government–movement cooperation. If she were promoted because of her participation, the government might run the risk of being blamed for openly supporting the movement. That the opportunity cost of participation is another critical factor is evident in the fact that there is no official in the circle younger than 50 years old. Younger officials could find better ways to advance their career than participating in this uncertain movement. Other participants include victims, young volunteers and low-ranking officials in marginal bureaus (such as the Local History/Party History Office). These are the people who actually collect evidence. During interviews, the victims and volunteers highlight the difficulties they experienced when they travelled to the countryside to conduct interviews. Not only were they unpaid, they had to invest their own money, time and energy. One of the volunteers said that he rode a bike to the countryside in the summer with only light snacks and water. Other volunteers told similar stories. Because most of them are retired lower-middle-class people, even small expenses are a burden. When they had financial difficulties, they had to talk to Yu, who managed to find small grants to cover their expenses (focus group interview 21 July 2007). Low-ranking officials in this network serve in the Local History Office (difangzhi ban)/Party History Office (dangshi ban) or the Bureau of Archives (dang’an ju), which are usually seen as marginal and powerless sectors in the administrative system. Their routine work is not very different from professional local historians, although they are governmental officials. Even before Changde officially joined the movement, the historians in those bureaus had already compiled a book of oral histories and archival data. When the Japanese lawyers came to town, the historians were invited by the Foreign Affairs Office to accompany the Japanese and Wang Xuan. Once the large-scale evidence-collecting project began, they provided expert advice and sometimes used their limited power to help the investigative work financially.

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Do the local government and the state-sponsored institutions in Changde support the movement? Does the local elites’ participation reflect local government’s intention to control and support the case? The answer is yes, but the endorsement and support are provided for different purposes. Victims, volunteers and even the officials and professors in the state-sponsored college admitted that the Changde CWRM was used as a chance to expand the influence of the city as well as the college. The local college, the Arts and Sciences College of Hunan, set up a research institute on bacterial warfare. The director candidly confessed that the purpose of the research centre is to “enhance the reputation of the college” which was otherwise unknown outside Hunan Province. During the interviews, the professors in the college proudly stressed that two “international conferences” on bacterial warfare had been held in their college. The director also revealed one of the reasons the city government supported this movement: “Since Changde is a small city, hardly known outside Hunan Province, it is an intention of the city government to use this thing (CWRM) to publicize the city’s image . . . so that more people will come and visit” (Interview 22 July 2007). During another casual conversation, a governmental official describes the CWRM as a “business card of the city”, an expression widely used in Chinese official discourses to refer to the image of the city. Victims and activists outside Changde already knew the ulterior motives of these officials’ participation. The first author was told several times by Zhejiang activists and victims that when they went to Japan, the Changde delegation was composed of more officials and elites than plaintiffs. Sometimes there were only two or three plaintiffs from Changde along with a group of officials. This was confirmed by a list of Changde delegates to Japan obtained from the Changde plaintiffs’ organization. In talking to several Zhejiang activists, one of them angrily declared that Changde officials just “wanted to exploit the case to go sightseeing in Japan”. Another activist responded in a mild way, “If they were not allowed to tour, how could they come? After all, we need more people. Why should we care so much about their intentions?” (focus group interview 12 July 2007). Thus, we can conclude that the major basis for the Changde CWRM is Yu’s elite network, which consists of officials and local elites. They manage to mobilize institutional resources to help the movement. The local government’s support is explicit but non-institutional, although stronger than in Yiwu. The purpose of the support is to enhance the reputation of the city of Changde and the local college. Yet, the absence of young officials and officials with influence in Yu’s circle, combined with Yu’s precarious career, reveals the tension that accompanies the local government’s involvement. It is tempting to explain both sectors’ development by emphasizing the government’s more sophisticated strategies after 1995—for example, its

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strategic absence in Yiwu and the city government’s direct involvement in Changde. This observation, whatever its merit, cannot invalidate our argument. The state’s absence or involvement sent signals to the movement about the political opportunity structure, but the signals would not turn into a collective memory movement until received, decoded and properly reacted to. Successful movement strategy must fit into the existing opportunity structure. Such has been our argument. Moreover, the new generation of CWRM activists initiated their participation at the local level instead of acting on core institutions. With fewer risks and wider support from the local community, CWRM thrived at the second stage. Publicized to the world: framing Our political opportunity structure model suggests that a memory movement will not succeed unless both the organizational base and the discursive strategy of the movement have elective affinity with the current political opportunity structure. We have already shown that the bacterial war victims rely more on local communities and networks than on the central government. The framing strategy of the bacterial war victims’ claims after 1995 also matches its organizational base and helps the movement distance itself from the core discursive opportunity structure. In contrast to the CWRM before 1995, the most salient feature of the bacterial war victims’ claims is its discourse of moral universalism. Articulate activists state that the goal of the movement is to reveal the “anti-human” nature of the bacterial weapon, “recover” the dignity of the victims and ask for apology and compensation (Wang 2006). In an influential article, “Pursuing Historical Truth and the Dignity of the Human”, Wang Xuan, the leading activist, identifies the issue, constructing the meaning in a more explicit way: The investigation of victims of the bacterial war is conducted through international dialogue and cooperation. It is necessary to position itself in (the pursuit of) universal values of human society which can be accepted by social forces from various ethnic, historical, and cultural backgrounds. To protect “historical truth” and “dignity of humans” is this universal value. It can guide and integrate the forces from different backgrounds as well as transcend the limitations due to the diverse backgrounds. (Wang 2002 [2009]) Even before domestic audiences, Wang rarely resorts to anti-Japanese nationalism. In a public talk at a university, she stressed that demanding compensation is “not seeking revenge, but overcoming the past” and “reflecting on history” together with the Japanese people (Southern Metropolitan Daily 2007).

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“Human rights” is a sensitive political term in contemporary China because of the international critiques of China’s human rights policy. Domestic activists on other issues, such as the rights of migrant workers or HIV/AIDS, tend to link the discourse to government conduct. The government’s response to the critique is dramaturgical, allowing extensive use of the phrase “human rights”, but no substantive discussions about human rights. The purpose of this strategy is to demonstrate publicly that the state respects universal morals while reducing any risks that such discourse might bring to the state itself. Therefore, the government encourages claims about other regimes’ human rights failures. Not every universal claim is encouraged, but the one that the CWRM embraces is welcomed by the Chinese state because it blames Japan for its violation of human rights during the war. Not all the movement’s claims are universalistic. In private conversations, the activists from Yiwu also expressed strong nationalistic sentiments against Japan. In Changde, due to the participants’ institutional affiliation with the local government and the state-sponsored college, their framing strategy follows the line of official “patriotism” which stresses the “rational love of the nation”, instead of emotional catharsis. As a result, their framing is welcomed by the local government but lacks international influence. Moreover, the Changde participants were not as skilful as Yiwu activists were in publicizing and promoting the movement. Activists from Wang Xuan’s camp were more vocal and articulate. In both cases, the framing is defined by the state as “harmless”. Some of the activists recounted their discussion with local government officials, who usually stated their opinion as follows: “Personally I support this righteous and patriotic action, but the central government’s foreign policy is not my business . . . You know what I mean?” (Interview with P. G. Chen 12 July 2007). Usually the conversation ended with a hint from the official that activists should feel free to go ahead with their activities unless they undermine social “stability”. In conclusion, the framing process in the bacterial weapon case distances itself from nationalistic sentiments to embrace more universal values about individuals and justice. It is more acceptable to the international community due to its more general moral power. For the state, the framing is also beneficial because of its distance from nationalistic emotions that might undercut social stability. As a result, the government takes a hands-off stance, reinforcing the grassroots basis for the Plaintiffs’ Organization.

Conclusions Our analysis has demonstrated that the emergence and development of the CWRM is a product of the subtle and complex relationship between a rising

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civil society and a socialist state. This relationship is represented in the particular political opportunity structure that CWRM and other movements faced in the 1990s. CWRM before 1995 invited monitoring and even control and suppression by the state because it challenged core institutions, such as the legislature and the foreign affairs office. Our analysis of the bacterial warfare cases shows that the cases have been successful because a new group of activists adopted mobilization and framing strategies that had elective affinity with the political opportunity structure of the late 1990s. We borrow insights from the social movement literature to enrich our understanding of memory politics. In some sense, a memory movement is a form of interest group politics that aims to address the issues of the past and link them to contemporary problems. Memory movements can be divided into two broad categories in terms of their targets: those that appeal to their own state for acknowledgement of the past and/or for redress, and movements that appeal to a foreign state for reparations. The two types of memory movements differ in their framing and mobilization, but neither is possible or could flourish if the relationship between the state and the civil society is not favourable. Memory movements that challenge the domestic state require stronger support from civil society. In a context where civil society is mature and the political opportunity structure is more accessible for different interests groups, claims for redress are more easily expressed and more effective. The example of the Japanese–American internment reparations movement in the United States and Canada illustrates the point (Murray 2007). If civil society is not sufficiently strong, then direct and usually unsuccessful confrontation with the state is necessary. Memory movements against another state are not directly dangerous to their home state in most contexts but their development still requires a vibrant civil society. Specifically, memory movements require social space, accessibility to the political opportunity structure, support from the local community, social movement organizations and effective discourse about responsibility for the past. This is possible even when the state is still strong and the political system is undemocratic, as in the case of China. Yet, it does not mean that the movements will develop more easily than they would in local contexts. The latter movements usually involve transnational activism and international political relationships between states. International politics will be translated into domestic, local-level mobilization and discourses. Without a domestic-level civil society, transnational activism can hardly lead to significant impacts. Thus, activists need more careful strategies and more cosmopolitan discourses to cultivate domestic and international supports to pursue their goals. Other international memory movements provide support for this argument. The case of the Korean “comfort women” reparations movement did not mature until

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the 1987 student protest movement expanded civil society’s influence (Soh 2000). In addition to this structural analysis, our claims about framing and discourses suggest future research on other memory movements. Collective memory scholars emphasize the effectiveness of moral universalism discourses in memory movements (Alexander 2004; Torpey 2006). Our case supports this argument, but our claims are distinctive in demonstrating that moral universalism must fit the discursive political opportunity structure at both the national and the local level. This is not only true in a society under an authoritarian regime but is also valid in democratic contexts where access to the discursive opportunity structure can be taken for granted. In other words, moral universalism is inherent in discursive opportunity structures in democratic society, and every interest group needs to conform to the configuration by using universalistic discourses instead of interestgroup-based political discourses. Asserting group interests without resorting to universal morality will turn memory politics ugly and lead to low credibility. Our research suggests some possible lines of future research in terms of social movements, the state and collective memory. One important factor in CWRM, although not the focus of this study due to limited space, is the participation of Japanese lawyers and peace movement activists, as well as overseas Chinese organizations. As Levy and Sznaider (2002) suggest, collective memory studies should transcend the nation-state and examine the effects of globalization. In fact, when collective memory emerged as a form of politics after World War II, it was globalized at the very beginning. The prototypical object of collective memory, the Holocaust, has been intertwined with international relations, international non-governmental politics and cultural discourses at a global level. So, too, are East Asian collective memories. Another issue we cannot discuss in detail is the sustainability of a harmonious relationship between state and society. This relationship accounts for the rise and development of CWRM in the last decade, but will it last? Our experience suggests we recognize the fragility of the social order. In April 2007, two months before the first author entered the field, the Japanese Supreme Court denied all Chinese World War II victims’ rights to compensation, especially when the victims’ government has rejected the state’s right to ask for reparations. The activists asked themselves: Will the movement fade or persist? In a conference in July in Shanghai, some bacterial warfare activists appealed for the state’s official clarification of the reparations issue. They wanted the Chinese government to clarify whether the citizens of the PRC do or do not have the rights to ask for reparations. Another appeal is to legitimate the NGOs seeking reparations. Without official status, according to some activists, the movement cannot be propagated

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internationally. But other activists are pessimistic and suggest that they must do more “grounded” work on collecting evidence and preserving history. The conference ended without a consensus. The movement slowed significantly. Other developments, however, suggest potential policy changes in this respect. One year later, in June 2008, the first author revisited some leading activists. The litigations ceased and they were more interested in conducting investigations and accumulating evidence. The first author also accompanied Wang Xuan to the Civil Affairs Bureau of Zhejiang Province to discuss a programme to allocate a government fund to subsidize World War II victims in Yiwu and other places in Zhejiang. The programme was launched and implemented fairly quickly (four weeks after our meeting). While we were preparing the final draft for this publication (February–March 2009), the first author received two messages from Wang Xuan. One message is about the fund: the victims are still waiting for the promised subsidies from the government. The other message is more promising: the victims’ association in Yiwu is successfully registered as an organization under the supervision of the Yiwu Local History Office. This good news is partly due to the government’s loosening of the restriction on NGOs after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, in which NGOs played an active role in rescuing victims and rebuilding the affected areas. But no other provinces have launched or considered similar financial and institutional plans to aid the victims. Since 2007, the central government and the Foreign Affairs Office have not issued a formal statement about legislative interpretations of the 1972 communiqué. These events do not allow us to predict the future development of the movement. Whether the issue will be solved peacefully and creatively, forgotten or combined into other social movements in today’s China is a question for the future. In either case, the question itself has widened our general understandings of collective memory. In the opening pages of this chapter, we adapted the presentist and cultural perspectives on collective memory to one Chinese case. The “Orwellian” and rebellious civil society approaches apply to this case to some degree, but their simplistic frame cannot explain the dynamics and trajectory of memory movements. This is because they seek to account for collective memory phenomena from one standpoint alone—the presentist—and ignore the power of cultural forces that transcend present dilemmas. Even if the movement to compensate victims of Japanese war crimes never succeeds, history and memory, at all local levels, will continue to explain why, regardless of the actions of the Chinese state and Japanese courts, the war-time suffering of the people will be remembered. In this chapter, as in the others that make up this volume’s China section, we find the resistance of history and memory prevailing against a powerful state.

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Appendix

Ideological/Discursive Structure Periphery

Core Organizational structure

B

A Core

Contingent area

High risk area

D

C Periphery

Low risk area

Contingent area

Figure 7A.1 Core and periphery of political opportunity structure

Ideological/Discursive Core

Universal Humanism

Social Justice

Central Government Legal System

Nationalism

A

Stability

Four Principles

Core

Structural/Organizational

One-party System

Periphery

B

CWRM before 1995

NPC Consultative Peripheral

Local Government and NPC

C

D CWRM after 1995

State-sponsored Organizations

Figure 7A.2 China’s political opportunity structure in the 1990s

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Notes 1. Before 1995, there were some individual cases filed against Japan but there were no large-scale social movements around the lawsuits. By social movement, we follow a conventional definition and mean “collective actions, change-oriented goals, organizations, temporal continuity, and extra-institutional actions” (McAdam and Snow 1997: xviii). 2. Changde, June 2007, and Yiwu, June 2007. 3. These observations include one commemoration ritual held by Chongqing victims and activists, 5 June 2007; one meeting of a social movement organization in Beijing, 24 June 2007; a conference held by bacterial weapon victims and activists in Shanghai, 6–8 July 2007; and an exhibition about “comfort women” in a university in Shanghai, 6 July 2007. The first author also observed various informal activities, such as dinners, encounters and casual talks. 4. This document was widely circulated and can be found on many even now: http://news.sohu.com/97/45/news146314597.shtml. 5. For the purpose of parsimony, we use Yiwu as an exemplar of all the bacterial weapon cases in Zhejiang. That does not mean the efforts of other people in other places in Zhejiang Province are less important. Changde, however, is the only place in Hunan where victims filed lawsuits. 6. Pseudonyms are assigned to the informants presented in this chapter.

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Section III Korea Studies

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8 Exacerbated Politics: The Legacy of Political Trauma in South Korea Don Baker

The theme tying together the various chapters in this book is collective memory. Memory can inflame relations between two nations when they disagree on how to remember their encounters in years past. Such is the case in competing Korean and Japanese memories about the impact of Japan’s colonial rule and in competing Japanese and Chinese memories of what happened in Nanjing in 1937. These memory wars are well worth our examination. In this chapter, however, I will focus on how one people, the Korean people, remember and represent their own past. The juxtaposition of a social nature with an individual being complicates the study of the relationship between memory and history. Individuals, by definition, are unique; they are convinced, and rightfully so, that there is no one else exactly like them on the face of the earth. Among their many singular characteristics are their memories. Personal memories are formed by personal experiences. Because everyone experiences the world from one’s own distinct perspective, everyone’s memories differ from those of others. In fact, our memories are a major component of our separate and distinct identities. We define ourselves according to our memories of what we have been, what we have thought and what we have done. Yet we are also defined by our social relationships, and it is through our interactions with others that we distinguish ourselves. Part of our selfidentity comes from distinguishing the groups to which we belong from other groups of which we are not a part, such as different families, different communities or even different countries. We not only define ourselves as members of various groups but also define ourselves as players of certain roles in them. For example, we may define ourselves as a child of our father, a colleague of someone with whom we work and a citizen of our city and our nation. Just as our roles in society are so important in defining who we are, they influence our self-defining memories. Psychologists have found in their laboratories that peoples’ personal memories can be changed by what peers and elders tell them about the past (Huygen 2003). In fact, memory can be altered by a number of external 193

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factors, sometimes in ways that betray personal experience. Individuals “incorporate misleading information from external sources—other people, written materials or pictures, even the media—into personal recollections” (Schacter 2001: 112–37). Collective memories develop in the same way. Collective memories are beliefs about the past that group members have come to share. But we need to know why individuals abdicate responsibility by aligning many of their own memories to those around them. There are at least two reasons. First, if we want to identify with a group, we need to share some of its identifying characteristics, such as its worldview, ethos and memories of events that have helped to shape its collective identity. Second, memories often reflect value judgements. We like to remember our thoughts and behaviour in the past in the best light possible. We also like to be seen by those around us as good people. We therefore tend to adopt the value judgements of the groups we belong to so that their members will accept us, and we then modify our personal memories of ourselves as having acted in the past in accordance with values we may have adopted from a group we later joined. In short, we unconsciously modify our own memories in order to fit in better with the various groups with which we identify. Collective memories promote social cohesion, but because it is common for different groups within the same society to coalesce around different memories, the same past can also give rise to conflicts. Because our memories, including shared memories, define who we are, disputes over how some event is remembered can become heated. The various sides in a memory war are arguing not just over how to interpret the past but also over how they should be defined. These are not trivial disputes, and they cannot be easily resolved. South Korean society has been rent for decades by competing memories. The twentieth century was a traumatic time for Koreans, and they have not yet been able to reach a consensus on how to remember, let alone come to terms with, the major events that stunned the century. Instead, battles over how to remember what they and their immediate ancestors did, and what they endured, break out regularly, especially when the memory of those events has political implications in the present. There are four particularly traumatic twentieth-century events that are still being debated today: Japanese colonial rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945, the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, the period of authoritarian rule under Park Chung Hee from 1972 to 1979 and the Kwangju Incident of May 1980. There is a clear left–right divide over how to interpret those events and their impact on Korea, and how to evaluate and remember the actions of Koreans caught up in them. This chapter will identify those opposing interpretations and offer explanations for the inability of Koreans to agree on how they should be remembered. Successive governments in the Republic of Korea (ROK), both authoritarian and democratic, have tried to make memories of these four events

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compatible with their ideological orientations. Authoritarian governments of both Syngman Rhee (1948–1960) and Park Chung Hee (1963–1979) tried to suppress memories that conflicted with those which 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. To this end, they relied on censorship, controlling what could be said about the past in what was published and what was shown on the movie screen. Democratic governments, such as those led by Kim Dae Jung (1998–2003) and Roh Moo Hyun (2003–2008), have been subtler. Like authoritarian governments, 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 recent movement to “sweep away the vestiges of the past” by publicizing the historical “truth” is one example.1 This movement was intended to restore honour to pro-democracy activists who were believed to have been denied proper recognition for the positive historical role they played, or for having been unjustly imprisoned, tortured or even executed by past governments.2 This “cleansing of the past” movement was also designed to ensure that those who acted against what Korea’s progressives perceived as the country’s national interest be identified and appropriately scorned. The movement was led by members of the “386” generation, so-called because they had been born in the 1960s, had gone to university in the 1980s and, in the 1990s (when this term was coined), were in their thirties. In other words, their formative experience was not the colonial period or the Korean War but the struggle for democracy. When they gained political power during the Roh Moo Hyun administration, they used that power to reverse what had been the official verdict on the democratization movement. Government officials are not alone in efforts to control memories of the recent past. Many contemporary scholars, especially historians, imitate the role of court historians during the Chos˘ on (1392–1910) dynasty. They write as though their primary reason to talk about the past is to draw lessons for the present and future. Under the staunchly Confucian Chos˘ on dynasty, the official purpose of education was the cultivation of moral character. The better educated were therefore assumed to be the most virtuous people in society. As the best educated, and the most virtuous, scholars were expected to advise others on proper behaviour, including political behaviour. Scholars in contemporary Korea continue to be influenced by the moralistic Confucian mindset of their Chos˘ on dynasty predecessors. Korean historians are often preachers, pointing out moral lessons to both governments and the governed alike. Two examples of such academic activism are Shin Yong-ha and Kang Man-gil. Shin, a well-respected professor from Seoul National University known for his research on early modern Korean history, calls for principled

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resistance against any Japanese slights to Korea’s national dignity. In the 1990s, he was one of the louder voices demanding successfully the destruction of the old Korean National Museum building (because it had once served as the headquarters of the Japanese colonial government). He argued that all physical signs of Japanese imperialism should be erased from Korea’s capital city. Kang is a respected professor from Korea University known for his research on the late Chos˘ on dynasty’s economic and modern history. He is also recognized for his strong and articulate calls for reduced tensions with North Korea. In his words, “historians of today . . . have the duty to contribute to the overcoming of the national division” (Kang 2005). One way to do that, he argues, is to explain how that division came about. Shin and Kang are two examples of scholars arguing over appropriate ways to assess history’s traumatic events.

Korea’s colonial experience The first traumatic event Korean historians have to deal with is the 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. 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 35 years they were under direct Japanese rule, and that Japanese rule did not benefit Korea in any way.3 The standard line is that any modernization that occurred would have occurred anyway, and probably at a faster pace, if the Korean people had been left alone to do what they thought was best for Korea (Shin 2003). Until recently, to even admit that much modernization occurred under Japanese rule was to risk being labelled anti-Korean. Scholars on both the left and the right have tended to agree that the colonial period left no positive legacy for liberated Korea. One popular university textbook by the middleof-the-road historian Han Y˘ ong-u (Han 2002) discusses the colonial period with chapter headings like “The plunder of our land, economic resources and industry” and “The plan by the Japanese imperialists to eliminate the Korean race”. The well-known progressive historian Kang Man-gil has similar chapter titles (such as “Colonial agricultural policies and the ruin of the peasant economy” and “The plunder of resources and control over traffic, communication and trade”) in his A History of Contemporary Korea. Almost 30 years ago, Sang Chul Suh published his Harvard doctoral dissertation in which he pointed out various areas in which Korea underwent economic development under Japanese rule (Suh 1978). However, Suh published that book in English only and therefore it had little impact on the way other Koreans in Korea in the 1970s and 1980s viewed their colonial past. That widespread refusal to see anything positive resulting from Japanese rule has continued into the twenty-first century. For example, in his argument against the notion that Japan contributed to Korea’s modernization, Shin Yong-ha identifies those willing to give Japan some credit

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for Korea’s twentieth-century modernization as non-Korean scholars (Shin 2003: 440–1). He is either unaware of or chooses to ignore the many ethnic Korean contributors to a recent book from Harvard University’s Asia Center which details Korea’s 1910–1945 modernization (Shin and Robinson 1999). Memory of progressive changes in Korea under colonial rule, from the expansion of public education to the creation of a nationwide transportation and communication network, has been by and large erased from Korean memory, with only a few brave souls daring to discuss any possible benefits Koreans derived from Japan’s brutal occupation. The same is true of the question of collaboration. Because of the widespread assumption that Korea did not benefit from Japanese colonial rule, it is also widely assumed that few Koreans would have willingly cooperated with the Japanese exploitation of Korea and Koreans. History textbooks, including those by Han Y˘ ong-u and Kang Man-gil mentioned above, 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 behaviour from 1910 to 1945 is an ambiguous one, as anyone would realize if he or she had read and reflected on T’aep’y˘ong ch’˘onha [Peace Under Heaven], a comic novel first published in Korea in 1938 by Ch’ae Manshik.4 Though T’aep’y˘ong ch’˘onha 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. The assumption that Japanese rule was an unmitigated evil, and that few Koreans worked with the Japanese, has led to the further assumption that those few who did collaborate were as evil as their Japanese overlords. Over the last two decades, there has been an upsurge of interest in identifying those “evil” collaborators (De Ceuster 2001). A biographical dictionary of almost 5000 names of collaborators is planned (Chung 2002; OhmyNews 2008). On another front, Kang Man-gil was named the first chairman of a national commission to find out the truth about “pro-Japanese anti-Korean elements in Korean society”.5 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. That some Koreans “collaborated”, in this sense, with the Japanese is undeniable. The dominant object of collective forgetting is how many Koreans collaborated with their Japanese occupiers. Given the broad brush with which Koreans paint the image of collaboration, there must have been many more than the 5000 who will be listed in the collaborators’ biographical dictionary. Hildi Kang’s collection of first-person accounts of life during the colonial period presents a more nuanced range of reactions to Japanese rule in the words of Koreans 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 Kang’s challenge to the hegemonic discourse. Moreover, when Carter Eckert, an

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American scholar, revealed that a well-respected businessman and politician, Kim S˘ ongsu (1891–1951), had worked closely with the Japanese before 1945, he was harshly criticized for daring to suggest that a pillar of the post1945 nationalist establishment may have been a “collaborator”. It is perhaps telling that this scholar (Eckert 1991) never used the term “collaboration”. Among the attacks on Eckert’s attempt to assess the extent of anti-Japanese resistance was Choong Soon Kim’s A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History of Kim S˘ongsu, 1891–1955 (1998). Kim’s book embodies 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 every minute of the day with resisting Japanese oppression. It is important to note that much of the recent peak in interest in identifying a few conspicuous collaborators was motivated by the politics that prevailed during the recent Roh Moo Hyun administration. One way to attack the popularity of Park Geun-hye, the leader of the main opposition party during much of Roh’s time in office, was to repeatedly point out that her father, the assassinated conservative authoritarian president Park Chung Hee (1917–1979), was a collaborator.6 Also, early in the twenty-first century a new group of left-leaning politicians emerged who wanted to burnish their own nationalist credentials by shaming those who profited from collaborationist activities while at the same time repairing the reputations of their predecessors on the left by demanding that those who had been denied recognition as leading anti-Japanese activists because of their leftist orientation be awarded the same official honours that rightist nationalists have long enjoyed.7 Ironically, as finger-pointing at collaborators has grown more intense, scholarship on the impact of Japanese rule itself has grown more balanced. As Koreans with personal memories of the colonial period have faded from the scene, it has become possible to evaluate Japanese rule with a more dispassionate eye. When Shin Gi-Wook and Michael Robinson’s edited volume on colonial modernity in Korea first appeared in 1999, it was widely criticized.8 However, in 2006, the entire work was translated into Korean and published in Seoul (Shin and Robinson 2006). In 2008, a mainstream English-language journal printed in Seoul published a special issue on what until recently would have been a provocative theme: “Colonial modernity and the Making of Modern Korean Cities” (Korea Journal 2008). More than 60 years after the Japanese were forced out of Korea, a debate among Koreans over the constructive and destructive consequences of the occupation may finally have begun.

The Korean War There is already an active debate over the Korean War. Not surprisingly, that debate has brought the left–right split in Korean memories into sharper

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focus. After all, not only was the Korean War the first major military conflict 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.9 Korea already had a sharp left–right divide before 1945, with Communists favouring armed resistance in one camp and, in the other camp, non-Communists, ranging from those who also favoured 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 outside forces defeated Japan in 1945. After 1945, Korea split in two. The Soviet Union and their Korean Communist allies controlled the North; the US and its anti-Communist allies controlled the South. 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 a war growing out of the competition between the US and the USSR for hegemony in East Asia.10 Until recently, the official and therefore dominant narrative in South Korea has been that North Korea launched a sudden unprovoked attack on 25 June 1950, and that South Koreans were almost unanimously opposed to Communism.11 The existence of a significant leftist movement in the southern part of the peninsula before 1950 had been ignored or denied. 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.12 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 “partisan” [the south Korean term for leftist guerrillas] activities (Lee 2003: 68). The first signs of change came, however, in 1994 when the movie Taebaek sanmaek (“The Taebaek Mountain Range”), by the renowned director Im Kwontaek, hit Korean movie screens (Kim 2004). That movie, which showed bad guys and good guys in both the communist and the anti-communist camps, and made clear that both sides were South Koreans, attracted much criticism from those who do not want to be reminded that South Korea was not totally anti-Communist 50 years ago, and that not all the atrociong-nae, the author ties were committed by Communists.13 In 2005 Cho Ch˘ of the novel on which that movie was based, was finally cleared of the legal charge that the movie had violated South Korea’s National Security Law.14 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 re-unify a divided country (which seems a fairly obvious conclusion) can

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expect to be condemned as a leftist subversive and possibly even face legal action.15 However, some dare to do so anyway, and debates over the Korean War are beginning to break out on Korean university campuses and in the media. There was even a popular movie released in 2004, Taeg˘ uggi (known in English as The Brotherhood of War), which 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 which opened beside the US Eighth Army Headquarters in Seoul in the 1990s. Though that museum does not 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 intra-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 grey. 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). Even though recently there has been a slight loosening of control over memories of the Korean War, there is an incident from pre-war South Korea that is still barely remembered: the Cheju uprising in 1948 against South Korea’s unilateral declaration of independent statehood (popularly known as the 4.3 Incident, for the date, 3 April 1948, on which the uprising began). Cheju Island, off Korea’s southern coast, is about as far as it can be from North Korea and still be in Korea, so it is difficult to see that uprising as North Korean aggression. Instead, it was a protest by local leftists against what they saw as a plot to split their homeland in two (Merrill 1989; Hyun 2007). After five decades of imposed silence, that violent episode in South Korea’s history can now be discussed openly. However, the violence with which that popular uprising was suppressed (at least 30,000 islanders, 10 per cent of the population, were killed), combined with the fact that there is no evidence that North Korea, in any way, aided that uprising off Korea’s southern coast, makes talking or even just hearing about it uncomfortable for those who prefer a past with clear lines dividing the good from the bad. Though even the victims of the 1980 government assault on the civilian population of the city of Kwangju were honoured in a government-sponsored memorial cemetery less than two decades after that event, the people of Cheju had to wait 60 years for a memorial to the thousands more who died on their

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island in 1948. Some memories are too painful to be recalled while they are still fresh. Such were the memories of Cheju Island in 1948. It was not until 2008 that Cheju finally got the memorial it needed to represent its painful past (Saunders 2008). However, even the name of that memorial was designed to soften the blow of its being a prelude to the Korean War. The official name of the building is the Cheju 4.3 Peace Memorial Hall (Cheju 4.3 P’y˘ onghwa Kiny˘ omgwan) (Jeju Sori 2009).

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 under the guidance of a former general who had seized control of the government in a 1961 military coup. That general, Park Chung Hee, ruled South Korea for 18 years, 1961–1979. Under his regime, Korea went from being a poverty-stricken nation to a nation on the verge of middle-class status. That had been Park’s goal. He wanted South Korea to defeat North Korea in the race to see which would be the first to develop a fully industrialized economy and to be recognized as a major player in world markets. However, he did not expect that, as the economy developed under his direction, civil society would become stronger, making it increasingly difficult for the government to impose an official interpretation on more recent events. Korea’s newly empowered civil society in fact challenged the collective memory Park and his immediate successors tried to impose. No one has forgotten the rapid economic development under Park’s rule. Over his 18 years in power, per capita annual GNP rose from $82 in 1961, the year he seized power, to $1,662 in 1979 (Song 1990: 80). However, even when Park had Korea under his thumb in the 1970s, there were small groups of activists, drawn primarily from labour groups, university student bodies and Christian organizations, protesting the price that workers, farmers and dissident intellectuals had to pay for Park’s single-minded focus on achieving a rapid rise in Korea’s GNP. Workers were denied the right to form labour unions and, as a result, were unable to fight for liveable wages and decent working conditions. Farmers suffered from an economy that depended on cheap food to feed a growing urban labour force: students and intellectuals faced arrest, torture and jail if they spoke out against Park’s authoritarian rule, especially after 1972, when he eliminated direct presidential elections and outlawed all criticism of his policies (Robinson 2007: 127–39; 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. The Park years were anomalous. He is accurately given credit for putting the Korean economy on the path to prosperity, though he was a dictator who had innocent people executed. Most Koreans who lived through that

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time, however, remember him primarily for the economic growth he promoted. Those who fought against his dictatorship, and suffered for doing so, remember his brutal dictatorial ways. In the immediate aftermath of Park’s assassination, his opponents were forced to remain silent by the dictatorial regime that followed his. Even then, however, there were attempts to promote counter-memories. Finally, almost 30 years after Park was shot by Kim Jae-kyu, the head of his own Central Intelligence Agency, Park’s legacy can be debated openly. In fact, the presence of Park Geun-hye, Park’s daughter, intensifies the need to come to some kind of definitive judgement of Park Chung Hee, to declare once and for all whether, in the long run, his rule was good or bad for Korea. One question now being asked is, “Was his dictatorship necessary?” The answer to that question usually varies according to respondents’ political orientation. 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, for those who were tortured under Park, or had friends or family members tortured, memories of personal pain outweigh any consideration of growth in GNP.16 No one denies that the economy grew substantially under Park. 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 fundamental questions such as, Was the economic development that occurred under dictatorship good for the country? Or should the benefits of that growth have been distributed more broadly and justly? 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 evident in bookstores, movie theatres, history classrooms and the halls of the national assembly, where the Roh Moo Hyun administration re-examined the cases of those Park had jailed, and even executed, to determine if they were really guilty as charged.17 In 2006, I noticed a biography of Park Chung Hee on the shelves of Seoul bookstores containing as many drawings as words. What caught my eye about that biography was the picture on the cover of one of the two volumes: it was a drawing of Park Chung Hee in the Japanese army uniform he wore in the early 1940s (Paek and Park 2005; Moon 2009). Because 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 compete openly, Park’s historical role is problematic. A dramatic sign of the change in how the Park years are represented is a 2005 movie about his assassination. That movie, called in English The President’s Last Bang (K˘ uddae k˘ usaramd˘ ul, in Korean) shows Park as more obsessed with power and sex than with building the economy of his country or improving the lives of his countrymen. However, those with a more favourable

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impression of Park and his administration have not disappeared. In the 2008 parliamentary elections, Park Geun-hye, Park Chung Hee’s daughter who has recently served as chairwoman of the Grand National Party (the leading conservative party), had been denied the presidential nomination of that party. Also, many of her supporters had been denied that party’s nomination for a parliamentary seat. Park and her supporters formed a separate political group to field its own candidates. Running under the banner “Pro-Park Alliance” (ch’inpak y˘ondae), that group managed to win 14 seats in the parliament.18 At the present time, there is as yet no dominant South Korean memory of the 1970s. Many books and articles published in both Korean and English laud the economic development that took place when Park was president;19 many books dwell on the human price paid for that development.20 Because of his mixed legacy, Park is variously viewed as a resolute, hard-working, revolutionary leader; a nationalist hero with a passion for independence and self-reliance; and a man who lived a thrifty, modest and incorruptible life. He is also remembered as being an anti-national, pro-Japanese traitor, an immoral opportunist, a brutal dictator and destroyer of democracy (Moon 2009). No memorial has yet been erected to the man few would dispute was the most important president in South Korea’s history. Even though former President Kim Dae Jung, whom Park had tried more than once to kill, proposed building such a memorial, it was impossible to reach agreement on how it should represent the Park regime. The closest thing to a Park Chung Hee memorial hall we have today is a website maintained by the city of Gumi, the city in which he was born and spent his childhood years.21 There is not yet even a Park Chung Hee library open to the public (other than the digital library on the website) to make historical documents available to scholars and others interested in Park’s life and accomplishments, though a Kim Dae Jung Presidential library has opened in Seoul near the Yonsei University campus and a campaign has been launched to raise the funds needed to build one also for Park.22

The Kwangju tragedy 18–27 May 198023 The last of the four contested traumatic events discussed in this chapter is one to which I have a personal connection. I was in Korea in May 1980, when the provincial capital of Kwangju was attacked by special forces as part of a military seizure of the South Korean government. Kwangju is my Korean “hometown” in that it was the first city in which I lived in Korea (1971–1974) and is therefore the city that drew me to a career in Korean Studies. Kwangju means a lot to me, and therefore I have been particularly interested in how its trauma is remembered. Kwangju was attacked on 18 May 1980 in order to suppress demonstrations by supporters of Kim Dae Jung, a popular politician the generals knew would pose the greatest challenge to their coup d’etat. Kwangju was

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the capital of his home province and one of his supporters’ strongholds. When Kim’s supporters resisted the initial assaults on 18 May, the military responded even more brutally. The citizens of Kwangju united against those attacks and pushed the troops out of the city on 21 May, only to be overwhelmed on the morning of 27 May when the military returned with greater numbers and deadlier weaponry.24 In the immediate aftermath of the 18–27 May attacks on Kwangju, state officials declared that Kwangju had been taken over by rioters and the government had no choice but to use force to restore order. That was never the way the people in Kwangju 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 that Kwangju had been taken over by rioters (Wickham and Holbrooke 2000). 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 the time and in later conversations. Starting in 1987, the government-imposed narrative, which had never taken hold in Kwangju itself, faced nationwide challenge. As Korea began moving away from authoritarian rule, it became possible to discuss what happened in Kwangju and even to debate what to call it. Koreans began to discuss several key issues. Should they focus on the 1000–2000 who were killed (few scholars limit the number of dead to the official figure of a little more than 200) and call it the Kwangju Massacre?25 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”? (In the mid-1990s, that became the official name of that incident.) Or should they do as many activists do and focus on the few who seized weapons and fought back against the government troops who had invaded their city and killed their fellow Kwangjuites? If they did the latter, then the preferred term becomes “The Kwangju People’s Righteous Uprising”. The last label is preferred both by many active participants in the resistance in Kwangju and by those who were not in Kwangju in 1980 but want to convert the event into a symbol of popular resistance to oppression and injustice.26 What we call the Kwangju Incident reflects what we want that incident to mean 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 street battles between the troops and the citizen’s militia. If we are progressive activists and want to feel a connection

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with a revolutionary movement, then we will think more about the citizen’s militia and less about the city’s average inhabitants. I recall most vividly people weeping over their dead, therefore “Kwangju massacre” is the term that best reflects my memories. In Kwangju today, almost 30 years after the 1980 tragedy, an annual 18 May “democracy festival” takes place (Lewis 2002: 99–104). However, many of my friends who were in Kwangju in 1980 refuse to participate in that festival because a costumed mascot (the “spirit of democracy”) dancing down the streets on which blood once flowed offends 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 memory of the Kwangju Incident, 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 memories of those terrible days. There are Kwangjuites who felt in 1980, and still feel today, that resistance to the brutal attacks on 18 May aggravated the soldiers and is the reason the special forces were even more brutal on 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 Kwangju’s people were willing to fight for democracy (Kim 1999). How the Kwangju tragedy should be remembered is therefore still being contested. Festivals promoting happier memories compete with books and other media products with titles like “The May 18th movement remains unfinished” produced by progressives who continue to represent Kwangju as a source of revolutionary inspiration (Baker 2003). The popularity of the 2007 movie May 18 (Hwary˘ohan hyuga, in Korean), which focused on the armed resistance by Kwangju citizens against the imposition of military rule, could not erase the belief that Kwangju’s citizens were primarily peaceful advocates of democracy.

Conclusion The four events discussed in this chapter, Japanese colonial rule, the Korea War, the years under the presidency of Park Chung Hee and the Kwangju tragedy, all can be labelled traumatic because of their impact not only on the course of modern Korean history but also on the way Koreans define themselves. Jeffrey Alexander has written that “cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways” (Alexander 2004). That is precisely what happened to Koreans when they were ruled by Japan, engaged in the Korean War, lived under the Park Chung Hee regime and attacked by their own army in Kwangju.

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The people of Korea are in broad agreement about the basic contours of the four events discussed here. Koreans generally agree that Japan ruled Korea in a heartless manner, showing disdain for the Korean people, their culture and their intelligence. They also agree that the Korean War led to unprecedented grief, tore families apart and left a lasting scar on the Korean peninsula. They agree that Park Chung Hee was an authoritarian leader who initiated the industrialization of the South Korean economy. And they agree that the deaths that occurred in Kwangju in May 1980 were tragic. They disagree, however, on what those events say about the identity of the Korean people. One group, usually labelled right wing in South Korea, argues that the Korean people are identified by their shared commitment to the Korean nation, which most conservatives identify with the post-1945 South Korean state. In their memories of the twentieth century, Koreans were united in their opposition to Japanese rule. Koreans were united in their opposition to Communism (which these Koreans identify as alien to Korean identity) and its interference in Korea’s internal affairs. (Anyone who supported the Communists in the Korean War was, by definition, not a real Korean but the puppet of foreign communist influence.) Koreans were united by their pride in the “miracle on the Han”, the march from poverty to prosperity led by Park Chung Hee. Koreans were also united by a shared devotion to democracy, exemplified by the democratization movement in Kwangju. The right wing remembers the Korean people as a unified people, forgetting that Koreans have often disagreed over the best path for their nation to follow. The left wing argues instead that only those who have consistently stood by the side of the minjung (a value-laden Korea term for the oppressed masses) are real Koreans. According to the way it remembers the twentieth century, many who call themselves Koreans have actually acted against the best interests of the majority of the Korean population and therefore are not authentic Koreans. Among those whom they would deny membership in the Korean national community are the many who helped the Japanese rule Korea, those who supported the division of the Korean peninsula into separate northern and southern regimes after 1945, those who grew wealthy at the expense of peasants and workers, those who placed growth in national income above growth in the incomes of the workers who made that growth possible and those who failed to resist the coup d’etat, passively acquiescing in the establishment of another oppressive regime. But the left wing, too, remembers only one part of the story, forgetting that Koreans have often put their divisions aside to work for common national goals. Both sides, right and left, rely on their own sets of memories to define themselves and stigmatize their opponents. Both find in their collective memories reasons for group pride. The right wing is proud of its efforts to preserve a unified national community. The left wing is proud of its efforts

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to support the less fortunate in society. Both groups also find in their collective memories reasons for condemning their opponents, with the right wing claiming that the left has introduced dangerous divisions into a community that needs to be united in the face of the many challenges Korea faces, and the left wing claiming that the right has shown more concern for the privileges of a minority than for the rights of the majority. I am a historian who has had to wrestle personally with different group memories of something I personally witnessed. Moreover, as a historian who teaches modern Korean history to university students, many of whose parents and grandparents have relayed to them their own memories of the events I discuss in my lectures, I have had to grapple with the relationship between collective memory and history. That grappling is made more difficult when there is no shared memory of the event or time period I am trying to understand. Pinning down history is difficult when there is clear evidence that at least one of the competing memories of an event or time has been politically imposed rather than objectively exposed. What has become clear to me in examining how traumatic events in Korea’s twentieth-century history have been remembered is that to understand those memories, we need to understand how they are produced. 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 nation’s dominant 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 interpret what happened. However memories are produced, it is clear to me that they change over time. Our emotional reactions to the past, as well as exposure to the memories of others, change what we think we remember. As a historian, it is this malleability of beliefs about the past that I need always to keep in mind when evaluating not only second-hand but also first-hand accounts of important events in the past that I study. I also try to make my students aware of how history textbooks, film and TV dramas and even government “fact-finding” committees are wielded as weapons in memory wars over specific traumatic events. We teachers are told these days that we should cultivate analytical thinking skills in our students. One way for historians to do so, to help students reflect critically about what they read about the past rather than accepting everything at face value, is to encourage them to keep in mind that history is not just a set of “facts” connected by a chain of narratives. As they read about, and contemplate, history, they should keep in mind that history is an interpretation of the past. History does not tell us what happened. Instead, it provides data for us to use to deduce what happened. They should also note that some interpretations of the past are more contested than others, and should analyse why that is so.

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It is often said that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We should add the additional warning that those who don’t learn how interpretations of the past arise are doomed to be trapped in them.

Notes 1. For example, see the special issue of Korea Journal (2002) on “The Issue of Settling the Past in Modern Korean History” and the special issue of the Review of Korean Studies (2003) on “Redressing the Past Injustices: The Complex and Contested Dynamics of the Movement”. Both journals were published by organizations with ties to the Roh Moo Hyun government. 2. In one such example of exoneration, a 2007 court in Seoul, after reviewing the evidence, declared that the 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. See OhmyNews (2007). 3. For an example of such an interpretation of Korea under Japanese rule, see a recent survey history produced by the government-run Academy of Korean Studies. Lee et al. (2005), especially pp. 533–80. 4. Ch’ae Man-shik, Peace Under Heaven, is available in an English translation by Chun Kyung-ja (1992). 5. For more on the “Presidential Commission for the Inspection of Collaborations for Japanese Imperialism” go to http://www.pcic.go.kr:8088/pcic/english.htm. 6. 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). 7. For a conservative view of this attempt by the Roh government to change the way recent Korean history had been written, see Kim (2007), pp. 369–70. 8. See note 9. 9. 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). 10. For accounts of the two contrasting approaches to explaining the Korean War, see Stueck (2004) and Holliday and Cumings (1988). 11. Two English-language examples of this approach are Paik (1992) and Kim (1973). 12. Cumings (1981, 1990). A challenge to Cuming’s view of the Korean War’s origins 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 South Korean right; Cumings’ book has been favoured by those on the left. 13. For more on the difficulties Koreans have in remembering the Korean War as it actually was, with atrocities committed by both sides, see Kim (2002). 14. “11 Years of Torture for Novel Taebaek Sanmaek”, The Hankyoreh English, 30 March 2005. http://www.hani.co.kr, accessed 17 May 2009. 15. See, for example, the case of the sociology Professor Kang Jeong-koo from Seoul’s Buddhist Dongguk University. Cho Chung-in, “Kang Case Rekindles Debate on National Security Law”, Korea Herald, 17 October 2005. http:// www.asiamedia.ucla.edu, accessed 17 May 2009. Professor Kang would have been safe from legal action if he had said that Kim Il Sung intended to conquer South

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16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

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Korea rather than saying that Kim wanted to re-unify South and North Korea. In Korea, re-unification is viewed as a laudable goal. Therefore it is not supposed to be ascribed to Communists. A recent attempt to provide a balanced evaluation of Park’s regime, with both its economic pluses and its political minuses, is Lee (2003). Hong (2002) and Cho (2002). For a detailed report on suspicious deaths under both the Park regime and the Chun Doo-hwan successor regime, see Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths (ed.) (2004). For more information on that pro-Park alliance, see their website: http://www.gokorea.org/. For two examples, see Lee (1996) and Song (1990). Both books focus on how much more productive the Korean economy was at the end of Park’s time as president than it was when he first seized power. One good example is Lee (2003). First-person accounts from the underside of Park’s “economic miracle” include Park (2005) and Suh Sung (2001). Cyber Park Chung Hee http://www.presidentpark.or.kr, accessed 17 May 2009. http://www.parkch.com, accessed 17 May 2009. I use the neutral term “tragedy” even though what transpired in Kwangju from 18 May through 27 May 1980 is usually called a “massacre”, “democratization movement” or “people’s righteous uprising” and originally labelled by the South Korean government a riot or just an “incident”. For more on what happened in Kwangju in May 1980, see Scott-Stokes and Lee (2000). The official website of the May 18 Memorial Foundation (http://www.May10.org) gives a number of 207 confirmed deaths. 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). Two books promoting the “righteous uprising” interpretation of the Kwangju incident are Choi (1999) and Chung and Rhyu (2003).

References Alexander, J. C. (2004) “Towards a Theory of Cultural Trauma”, in J. C. Alexander, R. Eyerman, B. Giesen, N. J. Smelser and P. Sztompka (eds), Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 1–30. Baker, D. (2003) “Victims and Heroes: Competing Visions of May 18”, in G. W. Shin and K.M. 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, 8 September 2004. http://www.nytimes.com, accessed 17 May 2009. Ch’ae, M. (1992) Peace Under Heaven trans. by K. J. Chun (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe). Cho, C. (2005) “Kang Case Rekindles Debate on National Security Law”, Korea Herald, 17 October 2005. http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu, accessed 17 May 2009. Cho, H. (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. Ch’oe, Y. P., Lee, P. and de Bary, W. (eds) (2000) Sources of Korean Tradition, Volume II (New York: Columbia University Press).

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Choi, J. (1999) The Gwangju Uprising: The Pivotal Democratic Movement That Changed the History of Modern Korea, trans. by Yu Y. (Paramus, NJ: Homa and Sekey Books). Chung, S. and Rhyu, S. (2003) Memories of May 1980: A Documentary History of the Kwangju Uprising in Korea (Seoul: Korea Democracy Foundation). Chung, Y. (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). Cumings, B. (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). Han, Y. (2002) Uri Y˘oksa [Our History] (Seoul: Ky˘ ongsew˘ on). Hankyoreh English (ed) (2005) “11 Years of Torture for Novel Taebaek Sanmaek”, 30 March 2005. http://www.hani.co.kr, accessed 17 May 2009. Holliday, J. and Cumings, B. (1988) Korea: The Unknown War (New York: Pantheon Books). Hong, S. (2002) “Finding the Truth on the Suspicious Deaths under South Korea’s Military Dictatorship”, Korea Journal, 42:3, 139–62. Huygen, C. (2003) “Group Identification and the Formation of Collective Memories”, doctoral dissertation, New School University. Hyun, K. (2007) Dead Silence and Other Stories of the Jeju Massacre (Norwalk, CT: EastBridge). Gleysteen, W. H. (1999) Massive Entanglement, Marginal Influence: Carter and Korea in Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute Press). Jager, S. M. and Kim, J. (2007) “The Korean War after the Cold War: Commemorating the Armistice Agreement in South Korea”, in S. M. Jager and R. Mitter (eds) Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 233–65. Jeju Sori [The Voice of Cheju] (2009) “Cheju 4.3 60ny˘ on mach’imnae k˘ u mos˘ up˘ ul t˘ ul˘ onaettda” [Finally, after 60 years, what happened on 3 April 1948 is revealed] http://www.jejusori.net/, accessed 17 May 2009. Kang, H. (2001) Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Kang, M. (2005) A History of Contemporary Korea, trans. John B. Duncan (Kent, UK: Global Oriental). Kim, C. K. (1973) The Korean War, 1950–53 (Seoul: Kwangmyong Publishing). Kim, C. N. (2007) The Korean Presidents: Leadership for Nation Building (Nowwalk, CT: East Bridge). Kim, C. S. (1998) A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History of Kim S˘ongsu, 1891–1955 (Albany: State University of New York Press). Kim, D. C. (2002) “Beneath the Tip of the Iceberg: Problems in Historical Clarification of the Korean War”, Korea Journal, 42:3, 60–86. Kim, D. S. (1999) “Meaning Construction of the Kwangju Pro-democracy Movement and Futuristic Frame”, Korea Journal, 39:2, 205–37. Kim, K. H. (2004) The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).

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Korea Journal (2002) Special issue on “The Issue of Settling the Past in Modern Korean History”, 42:3. ——— (2008) Special issue on “Colonial Modernity and the Making of Modern Korean Cities”, 48:3. 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 Books). Lee, H. K. (1996) The Korean Economy: Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press). Lee, H. Y. (2003) “South Korea in 2002: Multiple Political Dramas”, Asian Survey, 43:1, 64–77. Lee, H. H., Park, S. S. and Yoon, N. H. (2005) New History of Korea (Seoul: Jimoondang). 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, J. (1989) Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War (Newark: University of Delaware Press. Moon, S. (2009) “The Cultural Politics of Remembering Park Chung Hee”, The AsiaPacific Journal, Vol. 19 (May, 2009) http://japanfocus.org/Seungsook-Moon/3140, accessed 26 Feb. 2010. OhmyNews (2007) “Mujoe, mujoe, mujoe: id˘ ul-˘ ui o uisaeng˘ un o ˘ gulhan h˘ ˘ jjihana” [Innocent, innocent, innocent: How could the fact that they were innocent victims have been kept hidden for so long], OhmyNews, 24 July 2007, http://www. ohmynews.com, accessed 16 May 2009. Ohmy News (2008) “An Ikt’ae, Cho Tunam, Yi W˘ onsu, Ch’oe S˘ unghi my˘ ongdan ch’uga. Ch’inil inmy˘ ong inmy˘ ongp’y˘ on ch’ulgan˘ un sijak-e pulgwa” [The names An Ikt’ae, Cho Tunam, Yi W˘ onsu, and Ch’oe S˘ unghi have been added to the list of collaborators. The work of publishing the biographical dictionary of collaborators has only just begun], 29 April 2008, http://www.ohmynews.com, accessed 16 May 2009. Paek, M. and Park S. (2005) Manhwa Park Chung Hee [A graphic biography of Park Chung Hee] (Seoul: Sidae u ˘ i ch’ang). Paik, S. Y. (1992) From Pusan to Panmunjon (New York: Macmillan Publishing). Park, M. (2005) Birth of Resistance, trans. by S. E. Chee (Seoul: Korea Democracy Foundation). Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths (ed.) (2004) A Hard Journey to Justice (Seoul: Samin). Review of Korean Studies (2003) Special issue on “Redressing the Past Injustices: The Complex and Contested Dynamics of the Movement”, 6:1. Robinson, M. (2007) Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). Saunders, J. (2008) “April 3rd Jeju Massacre Museum”, Jeju Life, 20 June 2008 http://jejulife.net/2008/06/20/jejumemorialhall/, accessed 17 May 2009. Schacter, D. L. (2001) The Seven Sins of Memory (New York: Houghton Mifflin). Scott-Stokes, H. and Lee, J. E. (eds). (2000). The Kwangju Uprising: Eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea’s Tianamen (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe). Shin, G. W. and Robinson, M. (eds) (1999) Colonial Modernity in Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center). Shin, G. W. and Robinson, M. (eds) (2006) Han’guk u undaes˘ong: ˘i singminji k˘ Naejaej˘ok palj˘onnon kwa signminji k˘ undaehwanon˘ ul n˘om˘os˘o [Korea’s colonial

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modernity: Moving past the debate between advocates of internal development and advocates of modernization under colonial direction] (Seoul: Samin). Shin, Y. H. (2003) “‘Modernization’ Theme During the Colonial Period: A Criticism of the Argument That Japanese Colonial Rule Modernized Korea”, Essays in Korean Social History (Seoul: Jisik-sanup Publishing), 440–50. Sohn, J. I. (2007) trans. by J. Seo Contemporary History of South Korea—60 years (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). Stueck, W. (2004) The Korean War in World History (Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press). Suh, S. (2001) Unbroken Spirits: Nineteen Years in South Korea’s Gulag, trans. by J. Inglis (New York: Rowman and Littlefield). Suh, S. C. (1978) Growth and Structural Changes in the Korean Economy, 1910–1940 (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University). Wichham, J. A. (1999) Korea on the Brink: From the “12/12 incident” to the Kwangju Uprising, 1979–80 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press). Wickham, J. A. and Holbrooke, R. (2000) Korea on the Brink: A Memoir of Political Intrigue and Military Crisis (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books Inc.).

9 The Chos˘ on Monarchy in Republican Korea, 1945–1965 Christine Kim

˘ heir to a throne that had ceased to function at the In November 1963 Yi Un, turn of the century, returned to Korea to die on his native soil. Nominally the head of the defunct Chos˘ on (1392–1910) dynastic line, Yi had been taken to Tokyo as a child and given a modern education by colonial authorities, but had not been allowed to set foot on the peninsula since his anointment by the Japanese government in 1926. By the time of his final return, almost two decades had passed since Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. Yet despite the terminal fate of the dynasty and his long absence, Yi, in his lifetime, continued to be referred to publicly by his formal title, Prince Y˘ ong (Y˘ong ch’inwang). His long-delayed homecoming in 1963 had the aura of a state function that included a motorcade and welcoming crowds who lined the procession from the airport to the hospital. Whether it was curiosity or nostalgic sentiment that had brought out the public, the appearance of several thousand spectators on the roadside wildly waving the t’aeg˘ ukki, the national flag, suggests, if not a lingering sense of loyalty to the ancien regime, at least an identification of the throne as a symbol of Korean identity. Many today might find surprising the palpable enthusiasm for Yi’s return and the throne’s apparent resonance within Korean society during the 1960s. South Koreans are fully surrounded by physical and discursive reminders of their dynastic history in various dimensions—for example, many of the country’s prominent historical landmarks, several of which have been designated UNESCO Heritage Sites, are either former palace compounds or are otherwise associated with the monarchical institution, and the history curricula in primary and secondary schools devote great attention to the “golden age” of Korea’s past; popularized versions of the Chos˘ on dynasty’s annals, in particular, are consistent bestsellers. However, the general perception regarding the monarchy is as one of an anachronism, a relic of the distant past. Recent exhibitions at the Hanmi Museum of Photography (2009) and the Seoul National University Museum (2006) feature images of the everyday lives of royal figures from the 1900s into the early 1940s. While piquing audience curiosity, these events have been less successful in revising 213

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the public’s views on the monarchy or its place in Korea’s twentieth-century colonial history. Public interest in the quaint photos notwithstanding, it remains the case that most Koreans continue to remember the dynastic past as having expired with the Chos˘ on kingdom’s sovereignty in 1910. The fall of Korean monarchy is a special case of a widespread phenomenon: the transformation of monarchical governments into democracies. As Walter Bagehot ([1872] 1978) noted of Queen Victoria in his writings on the symbolic function of the monarchy in British politics: “Most do indeed vaguely know that there are some other institutions besides the Queen, and some rules by which she governs. But a vast number . . . dwell more upon her than upon anything else, and therefore she is inestimable” (p. 37). Less than 100 years later, the symbolic power of the monarchy and its role in collective memory diminished in Korea no less than England and elsewhere. This much is known, but we also need to know how the role of the monarchy diminishes, whether there are limits to this diminution and how residual memories of monarchy are exploited in post-monarchical governments. Such is the purpose of the present chapter. Relegating the dynasty to the margins of modern history allows standard historical narratives of (South) Korea’s transition to political modernity to chart a neat chronology of dynastic demise, colonial conquest, liberation and republican democracy. Rarely, however, do historical processes unfold in an orderly fashion, and for much of Korea’s long twentieth century, state and society were divided into several camps of thinking about Korea’s polity and the monarchy’s role therein. To appropriate Raymond Williams’s conception of cultural forms (1977), one can point to three different levels of attitudes towards monarchy: the residual level, for whom the monarchical idea shaped the thinking of those who remained committed to it (and later wished to restore it); the dominant level, consisting of a majority who were respectful of the memory of the monarchy but did not regard it as a viable political force; and finally the emergent level, comprised of those who wished to move away from the idea of monarchy altogether and replace it with a new symbol system. In this chapter I seek to illuminate how these three levels continued to interact and contest the meanings and uses of the monarchical institution after 1945. Following a brief overview that describes how the royal house fared under Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), it will focus on the deposed crown’s post-colonial life, specifically the ways in which the dominant and emergent levels, as embodied by a host of actors, including conservative groups, the Syngman Rhee (1948–1960) administration, US occupation authorities and the Japanese government, interacted during the years of South Korea’s first republic. In the end the South Korean government, by laying claim to practices of the dynastic institution, was able to assume the monarchy’s symbolic centre while forging a new, republican political identity.

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A colonial monarchy Although ultimately unable to stand up to the force of Japan’s imperial ambitions, the Chos˘ on dynasty, until its end in 1910, had persevered as one of the longest and most stable regimes in Northeast Asian history. Geopolitical realities and Neo-Confucian ideology alike placed severe limitations on the monarch’s authority, creating instead a system by which the ruling house maintained an equilibrium with the official bureaucracy that at its finest point of balance represented a kind of constitutional monarchy (Wagner 1974). Over the course of five centuries the throne was subjected to the vicissitudes of political life, yet it remained the apex of elite culture and at the centre of privilege and social status. When Japan formalized its control over Korea in 1910, it chose as its instrument of conquest a treaty of annexation that depicted the process as a transaction mutually agreed upon by the two countries’ monarchs. Never mind that since 1905, the year of Japan’s victory over the Russian empire, Japan’s “paramount interests” in the peninsula had been recognized by the great powers, paving the way for a protectorate administration (Ko. T’onggambu) and, subsequently, a puppet emperor. In the eyes of the world Japan’s control of Korea was not only legal (Dudden 2005), but also a reasonably logical outcome by two consenting parties. This impression was shaped in no small part by the carefully scripted text of the annexation treaty and the accompanying edicts of the Korean Emperor Sunjong (r. 1907–1910) and his Japanese counterpart. In his parting words as a sovereign ruler, Sunjong exhorted his subjects not to “give [themselves] up to commotion”, but to obey “the enlightened new administration of the Empire of Japan” (Tewksbury 1950: 39–40). From Tokyo, the Meiji emperor (r. 1868–1912) reiterated his commitment to uphold “permanent peace in the Orient” while assuring the Korean people of the “due and appropriate treatment” of the Korean emperor and members of the imperial house (Ibid.: 40–1). Contemporary sources point to the paramount importance given to protocol relating to the Korean royalty’s “appropriate treatment” within the expanding Japanese imperium, pushing negotiators on both sides to argue into the eleventh hour of the treaty’s release (Shinj¯ o 2006: 327). The treaty’s careful consideration of the crown’s place within the Japanese imperial system proved to be a canny face-saving measure that succeeded in mollifying the Korean public while at the same time boosting imperial prestige in Japan. In a tacit acknowledgement of the enduring importance of status (as well as the perpetuation of patriarchal values) in Korean society, the empire awarded to five direct male descendants of the dynastic line titles of nobility and generous pensions, thereby guaranteeing the continuation of their lives of material comfort and high-ranking privileges. Although forced to enter the Japanese imperial hierarchy at the commensurate ranks of “prince” (wang) and “marquis” (kong), this co-optative approach prevented members

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of the royal house from being transformed into political martyrs. Indeed, few Koreans seemed to care that within Japan’s arcane imperial institution all aristocratic titles denoted subordination to the Meiji emperor. The five lines of Korean nobility’s passive acquiescence also helped pave the way for the creation of a colonial Korean aristocratic order (Chos˘on kwijok), comprised of several dozen high officials from the pre-1910 dynastic regime. Kim Yunsik, a high official with a decades-long career in the Chosôn bureaucracy, rationalized his acceptance of the noble title with a nod to the Confucian virtue of loyalty, claiming that “even a former monarch [Sunjong] requires his courtiers” (Y. Kim 1960). In practice, the Korean royal house occupied an ambiguously defined space described by one legal scholar as “situated between the Japanese imperial lineage and ordinary subjects” (Miyazawa 1944: 114). Members such as the former emperors Kojong (r. 1863–1907) and Sunjong who were regarded by the Japanese government as having outlived their political usefulness were able to perpetuate their pre-annexation existence—that is, retreat into a private sanctum of palaces while maintaining materially comfortable but personally restricted daily lives. The empire had uses for the younger generation, however, and ensconced them in Tokyo. There, Prince Y˘ ong, along with his elder brother, Prince Ûi, was placed on the career trajectory of a Japanese aristocrat—early education at the Peers School (Ja. Gakushuin), followed by military officership and a politically arranged marriage (Lebra 1993). Prince Y˘ ong’s engagement to a scion of the Japanese imperial line forced the Taish¯ o (1912–1926) government to re-evaluate its commitment to accepting the Korean monarchy into its fold. Originally conceived by the Government-General as a showcase for promoting the cause of imperial assimilation, the interracial betrothal met with unexpected resistance from within the highest ranks of the Japanese government itself. The rebuke was articulated by a conservative faction within the bureaucracy who regarded the notion of a Japanese–Korean union antithetical to Japan’s self-image as a racially “pure”, homogenous nation. That this opposition surfaced in tandem with the emergence of a nationalist scholarly discourse promoting a view of common origins between the peoples of Japan and the peninsula illustrates in no small measure the ad hoc nature of Japan’s imperial myth (Oguma 1995; Kang 1997). Only after an extraordinary provision yielded by protracted legal wrangling at the level of the Japanese Privy Council (Ja. Sumitsuin) was the proposed union allowed to move forward, thereby bringing the two dynastic houses together.1 According to the Imperial Household Law of 1889, marriages of members of the Imperial Family were restricted within the circle of the Imperial Family, or to certain noble families specially approved by Imperial Order (Article 40). The 1918 Privy Council discussions concluded that an exception would be made to allow members of the Korean princely houses as marriage partners, but not to admit them into the “circle of the Imperial Family”.

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In 1926, following the death of Korea’s “last emperor” Sunjong, the Japanese government severed the surviving Korean royals’ remaining ties to the peninsula by removing them from the Korean household registry system (Chos˘on hoj˘ok), rendering them de jure Japanese (Kanp¯o 16 June 1927: 4–5). When the aforementioned Prince Y˘ ong and his wife Princess Masako embarked on a grand tour of Europe in 1927, for example, they travelled as “the Prince and Princess of Korea” on a Japanese passport. Whether the colonial administration’s hopes of encouraging intermarriage through the presentation of an imperial fairy tale were realized remains an area for future research. While it may be the case that Korean census registrar records compiled five years after the royal wedding reflect a mere 404 unions (Kang 1997: 58), these official numbers tend to overlook the far more prevalent common-law marriages that materialized as the colonial period extended, and the perhaps greater number of unions involving Korean immigrants that took place in Japan. The preponderance of these undocumented couplings would help explain a trend in the late 1930s, when the colonial administration applied renewed vigour to promoting intermarriages as a cornerstone of its war-time assimilation policies. The push helped create a cultural climate in which popular magazines and literary journals embraced the theme of “Japanese–Korean romance” (naesˇon yˇonae) (Ooya 2006: 271–2). The prince’s union illustrates just one of the many ways in which the Korean monarchy was deployed as a propaganda tool for the purpose of coaxing behaviour among his erstwhile subjects in Korea. Despite the blatant uses of the royal house as an instrument of imperializing policy by Japan, many Koreans during the colonial period seemed reluctant to pass harsh judgement on the monarchy’s passive capitulation, preferring, instead, to regard its various members as tragic victims of empire. This sentiment was widely shared among guerrilla fighters that formed the “righteous armies” (˘ uiby˘ong) and soldiered on in vain hopes of obtaining Korean freedom after 1910. Even among the small groups of nationalist leaders operating in exile, some of whom had questioned the appropriateness of Chos˘ on Korea’s monarchical system during the enlightenment period, open criticism of the throne was forbidden (Hwang 2000: 11). Especially during the first decade of colonial rule, as the monarchy’s compromises at the hands of the Japanese empire became increasingly evident, Korean independence activists sought to reclaim the monarchy for its own nationalist agenda. Hoping to exploit the monarchy’s popularity—based more on symbolic capital than on an abiding sense of personal affinity—movements of various political orientations pinned their hopes on other members of the family, thereby perpetuating a traditional notion of polity as defined by monarchical sovereignty. During the first decade of occupation, independence movement activities were thus often interchangeable with restoration movements.

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After 1919, however, such monarch-centred notions of sovereignty were undermined by the death of Kojong, perceived by many Koreans as the country’s last independent ruler. The passing of the former emperor coincided with a wave of optimism for self-determination inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s famous proposal, ultimately bringing together nationalist leaders and the public in an unprecedented display of colonial resistance that became known as the March First Movement. Yet despite the widespread participation of Koreans—many estimates place the total number of participants at 2 million (out of a population of 20 million) over a period of 18 months—the movement failed to turn the Japanese colonial authorities. The Government-General eventually switched tactics, ushering in a decade of persuasive measures during the 1920s that won over Korea’s cultural nationalists (Robinson 1988). For those who were resigned to the long-term Japanese presence, everyday life in colonial Korea became far less oppressive and, for some, seductively bourgeois. Deprived of a figure of “central authority”, freedom fighters cast about for a new symbolic figurehead to helm various nationalist efforts, yet they came up short. Attention was given at various times to Prince Y˘ ong, and ˘ ch’inwang, 1877–1955); yet their lives, ˘ (Ui to his half-brother Prince Ui always under careful surveillance, provided few opportunities for meaningful contact. Sunjong’s death in 1926 resulted in scattered protests that are collectively known as the June 10 Movement, but both in scope and in scale it was a far cry from the previous decade’s demonstration. By the time the Pacific War had mobilized millions of Koreans into supporting Japan’s total war effort, the only royal figure persistently weighing down upon the imperial subjects was none other than the Japanese Emperor Hirohito (Chao 1996).

The post-war monarchy Despite its numerous compromises under the Japanese regime, the monarchy appears to have retained a measure of residual support throughout the colonial period. Amid the tide of revolution that spread through the Korean peninsula immediately upon liberation, proponents mobilized to pursue the restoration option. Within a week of the American armed forces’ arrival in Seoul in September 1945, occupation authorities were alerted to the existence of a royalist group known as the “Pok Wan Dong” [Pogw˘ondang], or the Restoration Party. Conservative Korean advisors characterized the entity as little more than a political distraction “developed for the purpose of stirring up trouble” and urged US occupation authorities to dismiss it (G-2 Periodic Report 16 September 1945: 37). Yet royalist sympathy appears to have persisted in some circles. In the following year US intelligence discovered activities relating an organization that called itself the “Public Opinion Society” (Min˘ uisa). Directing its attention to various schools,

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society leaders, newspapers, religious organizations and foreign journalists, the group launched an extensive letter-writing campaign in which it presented restoration as the antidote to the political fractiousness of postliberation Korea. A typical correspondence—one of more than 60 intercepted by the occupation authorities—revealed a political conservatism, based on a loose application of Confucian principles, that echoed writings of the Korean enlightenment period of the early 1900s. Laying the blame of national division at the foot of political factions (masquerading, according to the letter writers, in the guise of “democracy”) rather than the emerging geopolitical realities of post-war Asia, the organization offered a romanticized vision of Korea’s dynastic history that regarded the monarchy as the key to achieving democracy and national sovereignty: It is regrettable that we have not made any real progress since the establishment of our new Korea on 15 Aug 45. Reckless decisions have been made with little thought or judgment. Our political parties are all engaged in a bitter feud, each seeking to gain only their own selfish interests, and each party using the slogan of “democracy.” This has led us into Trusteeship because of our inability to establish national unity in our country. The political idea of democracy originated in the Orient. Sovereign and subjects were inseparably united as one people and nation. The King was recognized as the inviolable symbol of the government. This was the acme of perfection for the people. Now the masses are deluded under the guise of Democracy, which in reality is only selfish party strife for power, and it must lead to national ruin. What shall we do to secure real Democracy? We dare to suggest and urge the Restoration of a Monarchy, not only because of our loyalty to our country, and in gratitude to our former king, but also for the establishment of an independent KOREA. (G-2 Periodic Report 1 February 1946: 626–7) These fragmentary pieces of empirical evidence are useful reminders of a lingering sense of royalist sentiment that persisted after 1945. Literary sources offer another indication of the monarchy’s residual symbolic capital within Korea’s post-colonial society, perhaps none more so than the period’s representative author, Yi T’aejun.2 In his well-known short story “Before and After Liberation” (“Haebang chˇonhu”), written in 1946, Yi gave voice to this sentiment through the character of an elderly Master Kim (Kim chigwˇon), who welcomes liberation as a return to the ways of the “old world”—to his beloved Confucian texts, an orderly hierarchical society and the system of monarchical rule (T. Yi 1992).3 His younger friend, Hyôn, who represents man’s capacity of accommodating to political change, be it colonial or revolutionary, tries to disabuse him of the notion that things might return “to the way they were” but to no avail. Yet, over the course of that fall, Master Kim is discomfited by the actual turn of events that accompany

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his country’s long-awaited independence—the UN-sanctioned division of Korea, the emergence of people’s committees and especially the left-leaning views of his friend. Unable to reconcile the vast discrepancy between his imaginings and reality, he decides to take leave of Seoul once again, filled with a sense of regret and resignation that his brand of loyalist nationalism mired in the past has no place in the newly liberated Korea. Even those who advocated a complete return to the past were nevertheless forced to contend with the royal house’s visible compromises during the colonial period. The prince’s marriage to a Japanese woman, to take the most obvious example, or the pensions, titles and privileges—all of these conditions set them apart from the masses. Criticism sometimes came from exiled nationalist groups such as the Sino-Korean Peoples League, a Hawaiibased organization claiming to represent the interests of the Koreans and their far-flung diaspora in the United States and China, who at the height of the war sought to point out to Washington policymakers the in-authenticity of any lingering royalist support they might find in Korea. “[Our] agents in the Far East say that the Japanese government has approached a number of Korean leaders in Japan, Korea, and Manchuria with the proposal to restore the Korean monarchy, patterned after Manchukuo under Pu Yi and Nanking government under Wang Ching Wei, both puppet governments erected by Japan.”4 Lest the war-time leadership think support for the old dynasty was genuine, the statement explained that the strategy was an imperial attempt “to buy out Koreans by restoring the Korean monarchy”. Efforts to undermine the popularity of the royal house, essentially by casting it and its supporters as imperial stooges, were linked to post-liberation representations of colonial Korean nobility as collaborators. Working under euphemistic covers such as “the Iron and Blood Group, Nansancho [sic]”, the formerly oppressed seemed to relish the opportunity to wave a moralizing finger at one Ri Ki Yo [sic], “a traitor who obtained the peerage of a viscount by betraying our Korea to the Japanese and [living] on an annuity in a manner superior to the people” (G-2 Periodic Report 22 November 1945: 319). The very same charge might have also been applied to the monarchy, and in one stand-out moment it was. In September 1948, at a session of the newly established national assembly convened to define “anti-national collaboration” (panmin p˘oban), one muckraking legislator with a flair for the dramatic stirred up controversy by pronouncing that “a traitor such as Prince Y˘ ong should have killed himself at the end of the war.” Assemblyman Pak Kˇ onung’s statement garnered much press coverage, becoming known even to the object of his scorn in Japan, but was widely considered to have over˘ Kim 1971). In the end the Syngman stepped the bounds of decency (U. Rhee administration, which itself was supported by members of the colonial bourgeoisie, chose not to dwell on the issue of collaboration. The very fact that royal figures, including those perceived as morally compromised by their passive participation in Japan’s imperial project,

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continued to attract attention in one sense points to the persistence of the dynasty’s significance within Korean popular consciousness. Benedict Anderson’s observation that prior to 1914 “for most people, monarchies represented the only imaginable form of government” might also be applied to the wider Korean post-World War II population (1991: 19). Although the Shanghai-based Provisional Government in 1919 had adapted republicanism as its system, to a people legitimately governed solely by a monarch the notion of a republic remained for most an abstraction. None other than South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, recognizing the enduring appeal of the monarchy, gave voice to this political conundrum when he acknowledged that “[m]any of the Korean people are used to the monarchical form of government and do not know fully yet how they should rule their nation, now that it is a republic” (Oliver 1955: 284).5 Indeed, far more familiar was the notion of a family-state as embodied by the emperor system of Japan, an ideology that had been reinforced with a vengeance upon the peninsula’s “imperial subjects” (hwangmin) during the years of the Pacific War. Looking north of the thirty-eighth parallel in a study focusing on the early state formation of North Korea, Charles Armstrong has persuasively argued that the cult of personality surrounding Kim Il Sung built upon a foundation of Confucian values and the Japanese emperor system (2004).

Identity politics During the three-year occupation of Korea by the US military, the status of the royals remained ambiguous. Prince Y˘ ong and his family continued to live in Tokyo after Japan’s surrender, apparently without contact with the subsequent political regimes in Seoul. For the prince—who had been brought to Tokyo in 1907 and allowed to return to Korea on merely a handful of occasions—it is even questionable that Korea represented a “home” that beckoned him. There is little evidence suggesting that he and his family contemplated returning to Korea amidst the political chaos that defined the immediate post-liberation years; the South Korean republic, established after the US military occupation ended in 1948, similarly made no efforts to reach out to the family. Anecdotal evidence suggests that officials within the military government—working with close to no background knowledge of the country they were occupying—merely assumed that they would be returning Korea’s political system to its status quo ante, so long as it meshed with the larger designs of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), the American occupation authorities in Tokyo. Yamashita Heiichi, a Japanese official involved in the post-liberation administrative transition in Korea, noted “a strong sense of goodwill” of the US Pacific military authorities towards the Korean royal house. This was evident in their acknowledging the status of the royal family and promising to protect and manage their properties. So encouraged

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by the Americans’ deferential treatment was Yamashita that he expressed hope that one day “the royal family might rightfully return to the palace”.6 In the absence of their rightful residents, the palaces of Seoul were frequently utilized by the US military occupation to host festive public events. The 1946 reopening of the National Museum on the grounds of Ky˘ ongbok Palace, which had been shuttered to guard against the public disorder in the capital following liberation, was much celebrated;7 so, too, was a concert performance featuring pieces by Brahms and Strauss by students from the ok elite Ewha Girls School later that spring.8 The public gardens of Ch’angd˘ Palace, which during the colonial period had functioned as a royal residence, similarly provided the backdrop for a festival of Korean music and dance sponsored by the National Music Academy in May 1946.9 Yamashita’s sanguine outlook regarding the return of the king was, however, misplaced. After Syngman Rhee took the oath of president of the Republic of Korea in August 1948, the administration’s treatment of the former royal house shifted from a policy of coexistence to one of absorption. The process, likewise, changed from a series of ad hoc decisions to a set of official legislative measures which were aimed at preserving the material culture of the royal institution on the one hand, while quietly diminishing the public significance of the individuals on the other. Far from the spotlight was an emerging contest over laying claim to the nation’s past. At the heart of the issue was an attempt, led by an extremely rarefied group of art historians, curators and what might be termed cultural nationalists, to preserve the nation’s cultural heritage, including its powerful monarchical lineaments. Their collective concerns led to the creation in April 1946 (C. Kim 1991) of a government-funded committee to oversee the preservation of lieux de mémoire—as Pierre Nora (1996) would call them: treasures, relics, historic sites and natural places.10 Public curiosity about lieux de mémoire, according to Nora, is symptomatic of their erosion and declining relevance in the people’s consciousness. The preservation of the monarchy’s symbols in a post-monarchical world reflects its status as a dying tradition for the living rather than a vital symbol of the past. In 1954, after the turmoil of the Korean War had ended, the Rhee administration passed new legislation that, while upholding the basic mission of cultural preservation, recast the properties of the former royal house as “historical cultural properties” (munhwajae) that now fell within the responsibility of the state.11 Declaring, unequivocally, that “the former assets of the former imperial household are hereby the property of the state”, the law claimed for the government authority in perpetuity over real estate with any dynastic association (for example, important altars, shrines, public gardens, halls, palaces, tombs, enclosed gardens, buildings), objects of art and dynastic archives in the collection of the royal museum, archaeological sites and nature preserves. In exchange the government pledged to award pensions to “the direct descendants of the former royal house and their

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spouses”—a condition which in practice was limited to those residing in Korea (all of four palace women) and whose outlay amounted to a total of 1 million hwan (the equivalent of less than $6,000) per annum. In this manner the royal house, which had managed to retain its wealth throughout the colonial period, was overnight reduced to receiving government handouts, further depleting the near bankrupt symbolic capital of the institution. The venerable Korean monarchy, supported by the Japanese, had become a threat to Rhee’s pretension of establishing a democratic government. The US occupation government in Japan further compounded the Korean royal house’s decline by initiating a process of rapid decline in the princely family’s privileges and status that first stripped members of their noble titles, drove them to impecunious conditions and eventually rendered them stateless citizens of ambiguous nationality. In contrast to the Syngman Rhee administration’s efforts to reclaim the material objects of the royal patrimony for the newly established South Korean republic, the changes to the prince’s stature were the cumulative results of broad legal decisions that emerged in post-war decisions to sustain Japan’s emperor but to abandon Korea’s. The first phase of the Korean royal house’s downward spiral was the SCAP decision to dismantle the prestige and authority of Japan’s chrysanthemum throne. As with other members of the extended collateral branches of the Japanese imperial line, Prince Y˘ ong and Princess Masako found their lives profoundly affected by the new regime. Following the emperor’s renunciation of divinity in 1946, SCAP authorities pushed through a new set of regulations pertaining to the imperial house in the following year, divesting all but the emperor’s immediate family members of their aristocratic rank and privileges (Imperial Household Law 1947: Article 5). Following this new definition, of the 14 imperial households, only three—those of the emperor’s three brothers—remained in the imperial family. The rest, 11 families comprised of 51 persons, were to lose their imperial status (Downer 1994: 101). The Korean families, while not part of the Japanese imperial line proper, were also subjected to this imperial housecleaning. Members of the Korean princely lines joined their Japanese peers at one last imperial luncheon on 18 October 1947, before being demoted to commoner status (P. Yi 1973: 159). Beyond the loss of status, the social downgrade carried with it devastating financial implications. The abolition of preferences eliminated the family’s right to land and servants provided by the state, reduced the family’s once generous allowance to a mere pittance and removed the right of freedom from taxation. As commoners, the family of Prince Y˘ ong was subject to an exorbitant property tax in the range of 70–80 per cent.12 With no professional skills and facing the prospect of bankruptcy, the household was forced to take drastic measures such as selling off one by one the family’s extensive real estate holdings (a collection of mansions and villas scattered throughout Tokyo and the countryside) and personal belongings in order to make ends

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meet; when even those drastic accounting measures proved inadequate, the family leased its only remaining Tokyo residence to Diet members, dismissed its household staff and crammed into a room formerly assigned to a servant (ibid.: 153).13 Only a timely intervention by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru (1948–1954), who offered a government pension with the expectation that the Korean government would soon assume the responsibility, prevented the family from declaring bankruptcy. The psychological and economic stress occasioned by this measure was further compounded by the family’s Korean ethnicity. In 1952 the San Francisco Peace Treaty restored Japanese sovereignty. South Korea, whose government was seeking reparations and claims against the colonial empire, became one of a handful of countries that refused to sign the agreement. The lack of a bilateral treaty had a direct impact upon the community of Korean residents in Japan, and Prince Y˘ ong and his kinsmen, like everyone else, found themselves without voting rights and required to register as foreign residents because of the family head’s nationality (Sakamoto 1999: 189–91). This legal requirement affected even the prince’s Japanese-born wife Princess Masako, who noted bitterly that the regulation allowed her to “realize for the first time that we were not citizens of Japan. Instead of feeling pride in becoming citizens of a newly independent nation, Korea, we felt rather that we had been rejected by Japan” (P. Yi 1973: 158). In fact, as resident aliens (zainichi) in Japan, the family was once again thrust into a zone of legal ambiguity in which they hovered stateless for well over a decade. The ensuing confusion and bureaucratic obstacles ultimately forced the family to renounce its nominal Korean citizenship, only to reclaim it in time for the prince’s last journey home. Even without official governmental sanction, the royal house’s post-war existence remained beholden to the political authority of South Korea in general, and to the president, Syngman Rhee, in particular. It may be that Rhee, who was also descended from the dynastic line and said to have passed himself off as a “prince” during his many years of exile in the United States, found it impossible to countenance the prospect of sharing even the symbolic authority as head of the new republic. In any event, as a result of his administration’s policies Prince Y˘ ong and his kinsmen found little reason to return to Korea, in spite of the economic hardships and legal challenges they experienced in Tokyo. Thus it was not until 1963, several years after Rhee’s ouster, that the door was opened for Prince Y˘ ong’s final return to Korea. The country’s newly elected president, Park Chung Hee, had his own reasons for welcoming the dying man to live out his days on native soil, namely, that of seeking legitimacy. By then neither the prince, who was immobilized by a stroke, nor his legacy, which had ceased to hold any significance within the political context of the South Korean republic, was regarded as posing even a remote challenge to Park’s authority, but this prince and this legacy, embodying the

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past glory of the monarchy and the nation, lent the present regime an aura of legitimacy and connection to a sacred tradition with which it would not be otherwise associated.

Conclusion In the span of little more than one generation, from the time of Prince Y˘ ong’s repatriation to the present, Korea’s monarchy has been gradually erased from public memory. Whereas in the 1940s and 1950s one sees evidence of several levels of support and opposition to the institution, by the 1960s there is little connection between the politics of South Korea and the Chos˘ on dynasty. In the contest of wills between post-colonial Korea’s dominant and emergent forms, the latter had prevailed as a republican government and assumed control over the symbolic and political functions of the traditional authority. Today, representations of the Korean throne remain a vibrant force in the realm of education, tourism and even popular culture. In contrast to much of the twentieth century, during which Koreans were instructed by colonial discourse to lay the blame of the peninsula’s collapsed sovereignty at the foot of the throne, many today take great pride in their dynastic heritage and its myriad forms—through lessons in the classroom, the material culture evidenced in the palaces designated as UNESCO heritage sites, in countless films and TV dramas that take artistic license to present the kings and courtiers as heroic figures in fanciful, wishful ways, and in state ceremony. Presidents Choi Kyu-ha and Roh Moo-hyun’s funerals, for example, were held at the Ky˘ ongbok Palace, built for the royal family in the late 1400s. Yet, the failure to contextualize the monarchy’s twentieth-century history—with all its moral compromises that make it representative of the Korean colonial experience—has enabled the obfuscation or distortion of the connections between past and present. In one sense, this collective amnesia has served the memory of the monarchical institution well. While South Korean society and governments in recent years have taken on the issue of colonial collaboration as a nationalist project aiming to “settle the past”, public scrutiny and excoriation has largely spared Korean society’s uppermost stratum of the royal house. Recent public and private efforts alike have in fact elided the symbolic and cooptative role and experience of the Korean house during the colonial period, choosing instead to romanticize the lives of its individual members in a manner that essentializes their role as victims (or heroic resisters) of empire, but never as that of colonial collaborator. Korea’s post-colonial monarchy, if one may apply that anachronistic label to the institution after 1945, serves as a site of contested memory. Providing a backdrop against which unresolved tensions concerning Korean memory would play out over two decades, Koreans’ conception of the monarchy was shaped by successive governments’ claims of legitimacy. In this manner the

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institution has persisted as an ideological project, an exercise in the politics of memory, one in which the past is “a foreign country” largely because of its flattering makeover, but not quite a good exercise in history.

Notes ¯ oke kihan 1. S¯ umitsuin hish¯ oka [Records department of the Privy Council], “O-k¯ shinsa iinkai hikki” [Notes of the committee to evaluate the regulations of the [Korean] kingly and princely houses], 20 May, 4 June and 10 June 1918. 2. Other examples include M. Kim (1989) “T’apkol kongw˘ on kog˘ um [Pagoda Park then and now]”, Ch’angjak kwa pip’y˘ong 80 (Summer), 125–43; and H. Kim (1989) “An Unknown Soldier (Mumy˘ ong sojol)”, Ch’angjak kwa pip’y˘ong 66, 412–33 (both stories reprints, original date of publication unknown). 3. Yi T’aejun’s novella appeared in the literary journal Munhak [Literature] in August 1946, and was awarded the inaugural Liberation Literary Prize (haebang munhak sang) of that year. 4. “Japan Up to Her Old Trick Again”, Press release by Kilsoo K. Haan on behalf of the Sino-Korean Peoples League (Washington) 20 July 1944; reprinted in Miguk kungmus˘ong Han’guk kwan’gye muns˘o (US Department of State, Internal Affairs of Korea, 1940–1944, vol. 4) (1993) (Seoul: W˘ onju munhwasa), 309. I am grateful to Mark Caprio for bringing this document to my attention. On the activities of the Sino-Korean Peoples League, see Lee, R. G. (1996) “The Hidden World of Asian Immigrant Radicalism”, in P. Buhle and D. Georgakas (eds) The Immigrant Left (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), 269; also R. Kim (2006) “Managing the ‘Foreign’ and ‘Domestic’: Kilsoo Haan, Korean Diasporic Nationalism and the U.S. Liberal State, 1931–1945”, Seoul Journal of Korean Studies, 19(1): 15–60; and W. Patterson (2000) The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903–1973 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press), 185–90. 5. Oliver cites the speech from a press conference given by Rhee on 2 March 1952. 6. H. Yamashita (1946) “Private Thoughts about the Status of the [Korean] Royal ¯ ozoku yugu horei House (November 1946)”, in Irie Toshio monsh¯ o, 82: “O-k¯ haishigo no Ri o ¯ ke mondai” [Question concerning the Korean royal house in the aftermath of the abolition of the Preferential Treatment Law], Constitutional Sources Room, National Diet Library, Tokyo. 7. Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Headquarters (February 1946) Summation of Non-Military Activities in Japan and Korea, 1945–1948, Box 847, No. 5:21, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. 8. Ibid., Box 852, 1946. 9. Ibid., Box 847, No. 8:86, May 1946. 10. Ibid., Box 847, No. 7, April 1946. 11. “Ku hwangsil chaesan ch’˘ orip˘ op” [Law pertaining to the disposition of properties belonging to the former imperial household], 23 September 1954. ¯ ozoku yugu horei haishigo no Ri o 12. “O-k¯ ¯ ke mondai” [Question concerning the Yi princely houses in the aftermath of the abolition of the nobilities preferential treatment law], Irie Toshio monsh¯ o, 82. According to an estimate made in October 1946, Prince Y˘ ong’s household assets were 9,627,000 yen, with a 5,000,000 yen tax shortage. The author proposed that the difference be made up by selling properties in Korea.

Christine Kim 227 13. The royal residence was subsequently purchased by the Seibu Corporation and rechristened as the Akasaka Prince Hotel, the international flagship property of the Prince Hotel chain (Havens 1994: 46–7).

References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso). Armstrong, C. K. (2004) The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). Bagehot, W. ([1872] 1978) The English Constitution (New York: Garland). Centre News Letter, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. Chao, W. (1996) “The K¯ ominka Movement in Taiwan and Korea”, in P. Duus, R. H. Myers and M. R. Peattie (eds) The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Cumings, B. (1980) Origins of the Korean War, vol 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Downer, L. (1994) The Brothers: The Hidden World of Japan’s Richest Family (New York: Random House). Dudden, A. (2005) Japan’s Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). Havens, T. R. H. (1994) Architects of Affluence: The Tsutsumi Family and the Seibu-Saison Enterprises in Twentieth Century Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Headquarters of the United States Armed Forces in Korea (HQ USAFIK) (1988) G-2 Periodic Report, v. 1 (Seoul: Hallim taehakkyo). Hwang, K. M. (2000) “Country or State? Reconceptualizing Kukka in the Korean Enlightenment Period, 1896–1910”, Korean Studies, 24, 1–24. Imperial Household Law (1947), Government of Japan, Tokyo. Irie Toshio monsh¯ o [Papers of Irie Toshio], Constitutional Sources Room, National Diet Library. Tokyo. Kang, E. H. (1997) “Kita Sadakichi (1871–1939) on Korea: A Japanese Ethno-Historian and the Annexation of Korea in 1910”, Asian Studies Review, 21(1), 41–60. Kang, Y. (1988) “SinHan hy˘ ongmy˘ ongdang u ols˘ ong kwa hwaltong” [Formation ˘ i ky˘ and activities of the New Korea Revolutionary Party], Han’guk tongnip undongsa y˘on’gu, (2), 105–37. Kanp¯ o [Official gazette], Tokyo. Kim, C. (1991) Ky˘ongbokkung yahwa [Unofficial history of Ky˘ ongbok Palace] (Seoul: T’amgudang). Kim, R. (2006) “Managing the ‘Foreign’ and ‘Domestic’: Kilsoo Haan, Korean Diasporic Nationalism and the U.S. Liberal State, 1931–1945”, Seoul Journal of Korean Studies, 19(1), 15–60. ˘ haebang es˘o hwan’guk kkaji [Yi Un: ˘ (1971) In’gan Yi Un: ˘ Kim, U. from liberation to repatriation] (Seoul: Han’guk ilbosa). onch’an Kim, Y. (1960) Sok u ˘mch’˘ongsa [Diary of Kim Yunsik] (Seoul: Kuksa p’y˘ wiw˘ onhoe). Komatsu, M. (2005) Ch¯osen heig¯o no rimen [Inside the Korean annexation] (Tokyo: Ry¯ ukei shosha). Ku hwangsil chaesan ch’˘ orip˘ op [Law pertaining to the disposition of properties belonging to the former imperial household] (1954), Government of the Republic of Korea, Seoul.

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Lebra, T. S. (1993) Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility (Berkeley: University of California Press). Lee, R. G. (1996) “The Hidden World of Asian Immigrant Radicalism”, in P. Buhle and D. Georgakas (eds) The Immigrant Left (New York: SUNY Press). MIT. Office of the President, 1930–1959 (Compton-Killian) ‘Lee, Kyu’, Box 133, Folder 5. AC 4, Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Miguk kungmusông Han’guk kwan’gye munsô [US Department of State, Internal Affairs of Korea, 1940–1944] (1993), vol. 4 (Seoul: W˘ onju munhwasa). Miyazawa, T. (1944) Kindae Nihon bunmeishi [History of modern Japanese culture], vol. 5. (Tokyo: Tokyo keizai shinboshi shuppanbu). Nora, P. (1996) Realms of Memory, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press). Oguma, E. (1995) Tanitsu minzoku shinwa no kigen [Origins of the myth of the homogeneous nation] (Tokyo: Shiny¯ osha). Oliver, R. T. (1955) Syngman Rhee: The Man Behind the Myth (London: Robert Hale Limited). Ooya, C. (2006) “Chapchi ‘Naes˘ on ilch’e’ e nat’anan naes˘ on ky˘ orhon u ˘ i yangsang y˘ on’gu” [Study on the state of Japanese-Korean marriages as reflected in the magazine “Naes˘ on ilch’e”], Sai, 1, 271–99. Patterson, W. (2000) The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903–1973 (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press). Robinson, M. E. (1988) Cultural Nationalism in Korea, 1920–1935 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press). Sakamoto, S. (1999) “Chos˘ on wangsil chasond˘ ul kwa k˘ u Taehan Min’guk kukch˘ ok” [sic] (Descendants of the Korean royal house and their South Korean citizenship), S˘oul kukchep˘op y˘on’gu, 6.1, 161–204. ˘ (Y˘ Shinj¯ o, M. (2006) “Yi Un ong ch’inwang) – Nashimoto no miya Masako u orhon ˘ i ky˘ munje wa wangjok u onsông” [Issues in the union of Prince Y˘ ong and ˘ i yangmy˘ Princess Masako, and the two sides of the Korean princely house], Y˘oksa pip’y˘ong, 75, 312–43. S¯ umitsuin kaigi kijiroku [Records of the Privy Council meetings] (1984) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigakku shuppankai). Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, General Headquarters, Summation of NonMilitary Activities in Japan and Korea, 1945–1948, Box 847, No. 5:21, February 1946, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. Tewksbury, D. G. (1950) Source Materials on Korean Politics and Ideologies (New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations). Wagner, E. W (1974) The Literati Purges: Political Conflict in Early Yi Korea (Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University Press). Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Yi, P. (1973) The World Is One (Seoul and Los Angeles: Taewon Publishing Company). Yi, T. (1992) “Haebang ch˘ onhu” [Before and after liberation] in Yi T’aejun tanp’y˘ons˘on [Selected short stories of Yi T’aejun] (Seoul: Ch’angjak kwa pip’y˘ ongsa).

10 Parallax Visions in the Dokdo/Takeshima Disputes Heonik Kwon

The “memory problem” of Northeast Asia is manifested in diverse material forms, including the organization of religious shrines, the content of school textbooks and war ruins. Most of these material forms originate in competing remembrances. Each is charged with diverging interpretations of historical causes and moral meanings; together, they constitute objects of what some historians call “history wars” (Linenthal and Englehardt 1996). The weapons of these wars are the symbols that continue to shape and distort the contours of international and inter-communal relations. Between Korea and Japan, a group of rocks have recently resurfaced from the obscurity of history into the history war’s spotlight. The controversy between Japan and Korea concerning the status of Dokdo or Takeshima— two different references for the cluster of rocky islets in Korea’s East Sea or Japan’s Sea of Japan—has been explosive in recent years. The rocks are now among the sites of historical dispute between the two countries, playing a major role in aggravating their diplomatic relations within the broader international community of East Asia and damaging the social and cultural relations between civil society in Japan and South Korea alike. Korea calls its rock Dokdo1 and claims that these small rock-strewn and uninhabited islets have historically been Korea’s territory and indisputably so; Japan calls them Takeshima and insists that Korea’s claims are disputable, and that it also has irrefutable historical rights to these rocks. Such conflicting claims have generated a plethora of disputes and mutual distrust between the two countries, particularly since 2005. The disputes over the rocks should never have arisen, and the way they unfolded is lamentable, although it is true that the controversy speaks of the regrettable fact that unresolved historical issues and historical misunderstandings continue to exist between Korea and Japan despite the prolific economic and cultural exchanges taking place between the two societies. In both countries, the governments refer to the Takeshima or Dokdo problem as a “territorial problem” rather than necessarily a “history problem”, unlike other issues discussed in this volume. However, this supposedly 229

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territorial problem is, in fact, a problem of historical understanding, inseparable from how Korea and Japan position their respective identities and mutual relationship in the progression of the region’s modern history. Specifically, history has multiple dimensions—national, regional and global—and I argue in this chapter that the controversy over the islets’ status should be viewed in the perspective of the global Cold War and the two nations’ places in it. The Dokdo/Takeshima dispute therefore constitutes a history problem; it is embedded in Japan’s and Korea’s contrasting experience of the transition from the end of World War II to the onset of the early Cold War. The dispute also constitutes a memory problem, in the sense that its origin tends to be relegated to oblivion by both Japan and Korea, particularly in Japan. Both nations are intent on highlighting the place of Dokdo and Takeshima in their respective national histories. Forgetting the horizon of global history parallels the remembering of the milieu of national history, and this is how the humble, weather-beaten rocks called Dokdo or Takeshima came to take on their current pre-eminence in Northeast Asia as a major site of international conflict. The Dokdo/Takeshima disputes involved an upsurge of indignant nationalist sentiment in South Korea and, in Japan, a revival of imperial nostalgia. The latter was evident when I went to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo in 2005. The shrine complex consisted mainly of traditional buildings, beautifully laid out according to the Shinto cosmology, but it also had one recently built structure of a distinctly hypermodern style, which was the shrine’s public exhibition hall. At the time of my visit the exhibition hall held a commemorative event for the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), showing a collection of memorabilia dedicated to the heroic fallen soldiers of that victorious war. The Russo-Japanese War was a decisive event in the history of modern Japan, and the museum emphasizes that Japan emerged from this war as a self-consciously imperial power worthy of the name (Shimazu 2009), for victory in this war proved that Japan was able to compete with the Western imperial powers. The year 2005 was the 100-year anniversary of the end of the Russo-Japanese War and, as we will see shortly, it was no coincidence that the claims on Takeshima were reinvigorated in Japan in this year. The fate of the disputed rocks in Korea’s East Sea is thus interlocked with the history of the Russo-Japanese War, the outcome of which meant imperial pride for Japan (the single modern power of Asia) and the shame of colonial subjugation for Korea. On the Korean side, the disputes over the rocks triggered an outpouring of nationalist sentiment and anti-Japanese slogans. On 16 February 2005, when the local assembly of Shimane Prefecture passed an ordinance to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of Japan’s assumption of control over Takeshima Island, followed days later by the declaration of “Takeshima Day”, the South Korean administration moved quickly to denounce it, subsequently making an official protest to Tokyo against both the declaration

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and the description of the islets as Japanese territory in many Japanese high school textbooks. Japanese claims on the islands, while initially confined to administrative rights on Takeshima and fishing rights over the nearby maritime environment by a local council, were promptly brought into a wider public sphere as a question of national interest by Japan’s politicians and national media.2 The claims then quickly developed to Japan’s official position, now featured on the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s website as “Japan’s Inalterable Position on the Status of Takeshima”, presented in ten languages, which states: In the light of historical facts and based upon international law, it is apparent that Takeshima is an inherent part of the territory of Japan. The occupation of Takeshima by the Republic of Korea is an illegal occupation undertaken on absolutely no basis in international law. Any measures taken with regard to Takeshima by the Republic of Korea based on such an illegal occupation have no legal justification.3 The above development prompted angry reactions from Pyongyang as well as Seoul and, in South Korea, the public responded with loud street demonstrations (including the burning of Japan’s national flag), “Save Dokdo” campaigns were organized by diverse nationalist groupings and civil associations while Korean youths engaged in “Love Dokdo” online assemblies. The unfolding of the subsequent controversy was widely reported internationally and in the Japanese and Korean newspapers. Japan’s claim on the islands in 2005 provoked especially strong reactions in Korea, not only from the administration but also from the public at large. Elsewhere, The New York Times featured an article about the city’s new plastic covers for laundry. Prepared and distributed by New York City’s Korean-American Dry Cleaners Association, according to the article, the plastic bags show a picture of a rock in a blue ocean, a place most New Yorkers have never heard of, on which is written, “Dokdo Island is Korean territory.”4 The relevance of the islet dispute for the general problem of collective memory is to be found in the Simane declaration’s timing. The year 2005 was supposed to be the year of Korea–Japan Friendship; it was also the 60-year anniversary of Korea’s 1945 liberation from Japan’s colonial rule. In Korea, as elsewhere in East Asia, the time span of 60 years signifies the end of a historical cycle and the beginning of a new spirit and a new historical era. In addition, 2005 was the hundredth year of what Koreans remember as the beginning of their “National Shame”—the loss of national sovereignty to Japan’s colonial power in 1905–1910 and the subsequent era of formal colonial rule that lasted until the end of World War II. This shameful historical epoch began with Japan’s annexation of Dokdo for military purposes in 1905 amidst its naval campaigns against the Russian imperial fleet.

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The loss of Dokdo was a painful memory for Koreans because it was emblematic of Japan’s 35-year colonization. According to a statement from South Korea’s National Security Council (March 2005), Dokdo was forcefully taken from us in the course of the colonial invasion and was restored to us with national liberation. This is not simply a territorial issue. It is nothing short of a denial of the history of our national liberation as well as a justification of aggression.5 This view was not merely an official statement, but rather one that represented broad public opinion in South Korea, across generational and political differences. For many South Koreans, Japan’s claims to the islands were nothing short of a blatant denial of colonial history. The eminent Japanese Korea scholar, Wada Haruki, grasped the situation succinctly when he said, “The Takeshima/Dokdo problem is not a territorial dispute between sovereign states but a problem rooted in the historical relationship between the two countries.”6

The Russo-Japanese War and the colonization of Korea In South Korea, much of the subsequent public attention to the Dokdo/Takeshima controversy focused on the 1905–2005 temporal nexus and the perceived return of the historical nightmare of Japan’s colonial domination. In this milieu, the fate of Dokdo was understood to embody Korea’s sovereignty, and the controversy over its status testified to the unresolved historical legacy of colonialism in the region. In this sense, we may say that the problem of Dokdo is an exemplary post-colonial question—the enduring, haunting effect of colonial politics on present history. As several astute observers have noted, however, the history problem of Dokdo is as much a critical question of Cold War history as of colonial history. In fact, it is in the conjuncture between regional post-colonial history and global bipolar political history that these small, rocky, weather-beaten, uninhabited islands in Korea’s East Sea have gained their current status as a site of conflicting claims of national sovereignty. It is in this conjuncture between regional colonialism and the global Cold War that I believe we need to place the historical status of Dokdo. The islet dispute exemplifies two important aspects of collective memory. First, the fact that the islets have little practical value makes them pure symbols or, in Pierre Nora’s (1996) words, lieux de mémoire: their function is to condense and perpetuate memories that might otherwise diffuse and fade. In Japan, these memories centre on legal proceedings; for Koreans they refer to the trauma and shame of 35 years of Japanese occupation. Second, the dispute brings Asian realities to Maurice Halbwachs’s pioneering work, The Social Frames of Memory (1925). Prominent among Halbwachs’s

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frames are classification systems, including the calendar. Anniversaries, which include Korea’s 60-year commemorative generation and the 100-year anniversary of Korea’s loss of independence to Japan, intensify the relevance and meaning of national integrity. The ultimate source of this intensification, as presently felt, resides in the convergence of colonial memories and Cold War realities. In order to address this convergence, I must bring into discussion the idea of “parallax visions”, which I believe is useful for grasping the epochal shift of global power after World War II from a colonial to a Cold War bipolar formation. In his seminal work Parallax Visions, historian Bruce Cumings raises an important question about Cold War history—how large-scale human tragedies may arise from perceptual distortion (Cumings 1999; also Kwon 2006: 156–61). Cumings argues that the origin of the Cold War in Asia is found at its geopolitical centre, not at its peripheral battlefields. During the decade after the end of World War II, radical political movements in Asia and elsewhere in the Third World became part of the Soviet conspiracy of global communist expansion. Cumings argues that this development did not reflect change in the political reality of the Third World. That anti-colonialism came to look identical to pro-communism was instead a parallax effect of the US shifting from participation in an anti-fascist alliance to undertaking a crusade against communism. The British historian Mary Kaldor writes in a similar light about the geopolitical conditions in Europe at mid-century: “Perceptions about external threats, while real enough as to their effect on action, are shaped as much by the situation of the perceiver as by the situation perceived” (Kaldor 1979: 9). Parallax vision entails a change in the appearance of an object resulting from a change in the position of the viewer. It is a key concept in astronomy, where it is employed to explain such situations as that of a star apparently changing in form or disappearing because the Earth (hence the observer) changes position in its orbit. Drawing an analogy, Cumings explores the origins of the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, arguing that they are partly a product of geopolitical parallax. The post-World War II shift in US foreign policy, which Cumings tries to depict with the idea of parallax visions, had a huge impact on the developmental process of many post-colonial nations, including those in East Asia. The same idea applies to the enduring conflicts between Japan and Korea and their effect on colonial legacies, of which the Dokdo/Takeshima disputes are a part. These conflicts embody the parallex vision. Kim YoungSoo, a political scientist at South Korea’s Yeungnam University, argues (Kim 2009: 87–8): The conflict between the two ideals [anti-fascism and anti-communism] had a direct bearing on Korea’s post-war position. As the United States turned from punishment of Japan to friendship with the former enemy

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and established its Cold War policies for Northeast Asia, Korea was confused about its approach toward Japan, clouding its normalization talks with Japan. Debate on their shared history and the territorial rights over Dokdo actually revolved around the conflicting interpretations of the anti-fascist Cairo and Potsdam declarations on one hand and the anticommunist San Francisco Treaty on the other. Korea faced the dilemma of being anti-communist for the sake of its alliance with the United States and being anti-Japanese because of its complex historical relationship with Japan.

The Korean War and the Treaty of San Francisco It is a well-known historical fact that the MacArthur administration in postwar Japan excluded what Japan now calls Takeshima from the sphere of Japanese sovereignty. This was clearly stated in MacArthur’s 1946 edict, the so-called MacArthur Line, whereas in the subsequent documents issued by his administration the status of Takeshima/Dokdo was left ambiguous. A similar move is apparent in the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, which, in turn, significantly affected the future of Northeast Asia. Historians question why the treaty left the territorial question of Dokdo/Takeshima unclear. In particular, why did the US administration take measures to keep the islands’ status ambivalent despite protests from other allied powers, particularly Great Britain, and against the Cairo and Potsdam agreements, which stated clearly that Japan’s colonial rule of Korea, including its territorial takeovers, was unjustifiable?7 Kimie Hara describes in detail how the final draft of the San Francisco agreement, by negating the several earlier drafts that defined the islets as Korean territory, avoided a conclusive stand on their legal status and thereby planted the seeds for future disputes such as those that we witness today. According to Hara, The equivocal wording of the treaty was neither coincidence nor error; it followed careful deliberation and multiple revisions. Various issues were deliberately left unresolved due to the regional Cold War. Earlier drafts were, as a whole, based on U.S. wartime studies and were consistent with the “punitive peace” plan and the Yalta spirit of inter-Allied cooperation. However, with the emergence of the Cold War in the immediate postwar years, Japan was given central status in the U.S. Asia strategy, and the peace terms changed from punitive to generous as U.S. strategic thinking focused on securing Japan within the Western bloc and assuring a longterm U.S. military presence in Japan, particularly in Okinawa.8 Alexis Dudden, the author of Trouble Apologies Among Japan, Korea and the United States (2008), similarly observes how the treaty made Dokdo/ Takeshima “dangerous islands”:

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The American drafters of the San Francisco Treaty—and especially John Foster Dulles—exercised enormous power when they geographically redefined what “Japan” meant, and the detritus of those decisions exists today in the form of the island disputes Japan has not only with Korea but also with China and Russia. The treaty effected Japan’s loss of the big obvious parts of the Asian mainland as well as the Kuriles, Taiwan, and Jeju, among other islands. At the same time, its authors granted America sole possession of the Bonin islands and Okinawa, which the United States has subsequently “given back,” although the sheer magnitude of U.S. military presence on Okinawa today continues to make many there wonder what sovereignty means.9 Korea protested the US administration’s indecision over its East Sea islets, as did Britain, Australia and New Zealand. However, there was not much Korea could do apart from voicing opposition in bilateral diplomatic communiqués. The San Francisco meeting, as we know, was held while South Korea was engaged with the US in war against North Korea. The Korean War was one of the first violent manifestations, as well as one of the most formative events, of the epochal shift in global power involving the parallax effects mentioned above. According to Hara, the unfolding of the Korean War had major implications on the decisions made in San Francisco, which answered Japan’s territorial questions in terms of the regional Cold War frontiers of the so-called Acheson Line or Containment Line (Hara 2006: 1–13). In the view of the US, it was more rational to relegate the Dokdo or Takeshima islands to Japan, which, during military occupation, was transforming into a safe ally in the liberal world, than to alienate Japan and risk the possibility of the Korean peninsula falling into the hands of North Korea and China, against which American forces were then fighting.

Parallax visions The question of Dokdo, therefore, ought to be seen in light of the progression of modern history, both at the regional and at the global level, from colonial to bipolar formation. In chronological terms, 1905 and 1951 stand out with particular importance in this historical trajectory. The year 1905 was the end of the Russo-Japanese War, epitomized in the broad international sphere by the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905, and the Taft-Katsura Agreement in July 1905, in which the US and Imperial Japan mutually justified each other’s colonial ventures into the Philippines and Korea respectively (Jukes 2002: 86–91). Dokdo was the first Korean territory annexed by Imperial Japan, an event that took place discreetly while the desperate feudal state of old Korea lost its diplomatic rights under the 1905 Japan–Korea Protectorate Treaty and was thereby practically stripped of its status as a sovereign entity (Kim 2007: 177–200).10 The year

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was the actual beginning of Japan’s colonial rule over Korea, and the public in Korea remember it as such. If the year 1905 marked the beginning of the gloomy era of Japan’s colonial expansion and militaristic adventure, which turned out to have a devastating human and societal impact both within Japan and beyond, the year 1951 was supposed to mark the international will to end Japan’s colonial rule in Asia and to open up a hopeful new era. But this project was marred by the onset of the militancy of the global Cold War and the accompanying collusion between the US and Japan on the question of containing international communism in East Asia, and Japan’s increasingly important role, in the perception of the US, in defending international liberal ideals and its own national interests within the region. In this confusing field of parallax visions—confusing to the new postcolonial nations, not necessarily to the old imperial powers—the small, uninhabited, obscure islets in the East Sea became a small price for the US to pay to make its former enemy into a dependable ally in a new regional order in the making. In short, the ambiguity of Dokdo was, in fact, a gift to the new Japan after the end of colonialism, made in exchange for Japan’s new role as an economic power in the region and in the politics of the Cold War. The gift of ambiguity turned a blind eye to the historical fact that the islets already had a previous history of having been a gift— when the islands of Dokdo became the first gift from Korea to the empire of Japan, acquired and given by no one but the empire itself. The gifttaking in 1905 was, of course, an unjust act of a classical colonial nature. The gift of ambiguity in 1951 was a less blatant but equally self-interested American act.

A site of memory for northeast Asia’s postcolonial Cold War The year 2005 was the 100-year anniversary of the 1905 tragedy; it was also the 60-year anniversary of the liberation of Korea from colonialism in 1945, as well as the 40-year anniversary of the normalization of Korea–Japan relations in 1965. The year was also supposed to be the Year of Friendship between the people of Japan and the people of Korea. In traditional Korean observance, the 60-year anniversary is an occasion of considerable cultural and moral importance. It is when the community celebrates longevity, retraces the past years of intimate relationship and gives blessings to prosperous future relations. It goes without saying that when someone celebrates his or her 60-year anniversary, it is the norm that the family’s neighbours join the celebration and contribute to it with a good round of heart-felt singing and dancing. The Dokdo/Takeshima controversy broke the celebratory spirit of a full 60-year cycle away from colonial history. It spoiled the neighbourhood and its neighbourly spirit. It is also clear that modern Japan has a lot of homework to do to learn about its neighbour’s culture and history. The last

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includes the recognition that the years 1904–1905, which Japan remembers as a shining victory against an imperial power, are remembered by its closest neighbouring nation with an utterly different meaning, as shameful subjugation to colonial power. It is also the case that Korea has to learn more about Japan’s history, expanding its interest in questions such as why this great nation is finding it so hard to come to terms with its past, particularly with the unpleasant aspects of the past, including its history of colonialism. This includes the recognition that the Korean War, which Koreans remember as the nation’s tragic civil war, had a different meaning to Japan, a country approaching the end of its political isolation in the international sphere, the beginning of a post-war economic recovery and eventual prosperity. The two nations have come very far from the destruction of war that each suffered, but they have not come far in getting to know each other’s war experiences. In pursuing this mutual understanding, it is important to recognize that there is a field of geopolitical parallax that complicates the two nations’ reciprocal relations. In order to strengthen the clarity of this mutual recognition, it is important to see that the relations between Japan and Korea are hampered by the enduring legacies of their Cold War history as well as those of their colonial history. They need to be able to see the historical traces of American power existing in the turbulent waters of neighbourly relations across the Sea of Japan, but this vision must be clear-sighted and based on a mutual recognition of historical differences. This vision must cultivate a shared sense of morality and commitment to historical knowledge rather than one that continues to be swayed by parallax illusions. On a closing note, I reflect briefly on the circumstances under which I came to think about this subject in the first place, despite the fact that diplomatic disputes are not a usual topical area for an anthropologist. This chapter is based on talks I made on two separate occasions and to two rather different audiences. The first was at a seminar organized by the Daiwa AngloJapanese Society in London at the beginning of 2009. There I was supposed to deliver a speech that represented, according to my hosts, the Korean view of the thorny territorial issue between Japan and Korea. I accepted the invitation with reservation, partly because I am far from a specialist in international law or the history of Japan–Korea relations, but also because I was not sure whether I could, as an anthropologist whose vocational commitment is to comparative understanding of human culture and history, speak for Korea only. I noticed later, when I was preparing the text, that it was practically impossible to play that requested role. My anthropological training includes practising a refined form of cultural relativism, and although I do not adhere to the doctrine of purely objective, universal knowledge, it was equally difficult to adhere to the notion that I could speak for the Korean perspective just because I was born and grew up in that place. Joining the event, furthermore, I was somewhat surprised to discover that I did not have

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a counterpart who could speak for the Japanese perspective on the territorial controversy. My interlocutor in the seminar was Professor Reinhard Drifte, the German-born academic from Newcastle University and eminent expert on Japan’s foreign policy. It was nearly impossible to imagine that Drifte, a specialist in international relations and law, would be able to play a role equivalent to mine on the side of Japan, and in any case his talk was a broad overview of territorial disputes existing in Northeast Asia, partly focusing on those between China and Japan. His view was based on the canon of international law and the related virtue of rational and judiciary deliberation, not anchored in any specific national claims or perspectives. The seminar at Daiwa Foundation went amicably. I received good, engaging questions from the mixed Japanese and non-Japanese participants, although mainly from the non-Japanese. I disagreed with Drifte, who argued that the best and possibly only solution for the impasse over the status of Dokdo/Takeshima would be through a process of deliberation and arbitration at an international legal body. I disagreed on the grounds that the relations between Korea and Japan are far broader and deeper than can be reduced to the status of these obscure islands in the East Sea, and that whatever the outcome might be from the deliberation at an international judiciary institution, it would break future neighbourly relations between these two Northeast Asian nations, perhaps irrevocably. Reflecting on this disagreement and also looking back on the organization of the seminar as a whole, it later occurred to me that in the end I had performed at the seminar what had been expected of me in the first place, and that Drifte and I each stood partly on the standpoint of Japan and Korea respectively: Japan’s current approach to the Takeshima problem focuses on the records of international treaties (that is, that of the San Francisco Peace Treaty) and, as shown in “Japan’s Inalterable Position on the Status of Takeshima” mentioned earlier, on the merit of international legal frameworks in providing arbitration for international disputes; Korea’s approach to the Dokdo problem is hinged on historical claims and the moral questions relating to Japan’s colonial takeover of Korea. I adopted a historical approach to the Dokdo/Takeshima problem, and this brought me, in my impression, to a position close to that of a representative of the Korean perspective, in contrast to my counterpart’s legal approach. However, this impression proved to be wrong. A few months after the Daiwa meeting, I joined a conference held at South Korea’s Yeungnam University, which is located in the province that includes the island of Dokdo administratively. The area was where I spent my childhood and my school years, and so I was glad to be invited there and to have the opportunity to visit my hometown. Drifte joined this event too, along with several other overseas scholars from Canada and the US and a number of prominent Korean researchers engaged in the Dokdo sovereignty question. On this occasion, I had no opportunity to debate with Drifte on legal or

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historical approaches to the territorial disputes. Instead, I found myself busy defending the position taken by one of the non-Korean scholars, Kimie Hara, with whom I shared the view that the contemporary Dokdo/Takeshima controversy had a Cold War origin. Hara is based in Canada, but is originally from Japan. During the panel meeting of the conference’s last day, the discussion was heated up and a series of aggressive questions were thrown to Hara. For a while I was not sure what was going on and simply stayed vigilant and concentrated while Hara was struggling with the questions (and lectures) coming from the floor. I had the impression that some of these questions were intended to force from her an unequivocal statement that she shared the belief (or the truth) that Dokdo was a Korean territory. Hara did not give in; she confronted the heated, polemical questions graciously. The panel’s chair was disturbed, however, and she invited me to speak, as she later told me, in the hope of diverting the mounting tension. Unfortunately, I ended up escalating the tension. I said I shared Hara’s view, and with this I meant her emphasis on the role of the San Francisco Treaty in 1951 in muddling up the relationship between post-World War II Japan and her neighbours and laying the seeds for future conflicts amongst them. As soon as I said this, one Korean historian came up to me and said in a heightened voice, “Tell me. What is your nationality?” I am still struggling to understand what was really happening in that meeting and why I deserved the unpleasant interrogation into my national identity. When I heard the question, I felt that the man was calling me a traitor. One thoughtful observer of the conference later told me that, throughout the conference, he had felt a tension between what he called a national history approach and a political history approach. According to another observer, the real tension was not between national history and political history but rather between different interpretations of American power in the early Cold War. The political history approach tended to be critical of the role of American power in the Cold War formation; the national history approach focused its critical gaze singularly on Japan’s imperial past and contemporary ambitions. I was confused and still feel uneasy about this spectrum of tensions. In retrospect, however, I now see one thing in a clear sight: parallax visions exist not only in the geopolitical terrain of international relations but also among different observers and interpretive communities. Another thing that became clear to me from my experience at the conference in Korea is that after all I was not properly representing the Korean perspective on the earlier occasion at the Daiwa Foundation. For what I said on both occasions was basically the same and, as it turned out, deviated from the so-called Korean national perspective. In the end, I appreciated my experience in both places. It showed that there really is a field of illusion called parallax visions and that this parallax exists within communities as well as between them. I believe that we need to

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overcome this illusion, and that this is necessary for better communal relations as well as for better international ties. Yet, the problem is that in order to overcome the illusion, we need to know what it is, and if we see what it is, we may risk being estranged from our own national identity. Nevertheless, seeing it is surely better than ignoring it, not least for finding a solution for the future of the rocks that threaten to undermine the neighbourly relations between Japan and Korea. My final concern is the relationship between the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute and the theoretical models, presentist and cultural, which inform the chapters in this volume. Each case study adds to our understanding of the tension between the past as presently known, felt and judged, and the past as it was. The chapter at hand shows that Korea’s memory of its occupation by Japan is no “construction” based entirely on present interests but on the resistance of the real past to efforts to redefine it. Nevertheless, a parallax vision of the island dispute results from the viewpoints of observers located in different historically constituted places attending to the same reality. The reality has a depth of history which is both regional and global in scale; the solution for the controversy, likewise, requires a clear historical understanding of both the region’s colonial past and its experience of the global Cold War. Dokdo/Takeshima islands are a site of memory for northeast Asia’s postcolonial Cold War, and the disputes over them testify to the fact that this war is not over yet.

Acknowledgements An earlier version of this essay was presented to a seminar at the Daiwa Foundation in London in March 2009 and then to a conference on Japan–Korean territorial disputes held at Yeungnam University, South Korea, in May 2009. I thank Professor Marie Comte-Herm of the Daiwa Foundation and Professor Park Seong-Yong of the Museum of Ethnology, Yeungnam University, for their kind invitations. Special thanks to Professor Park, who prompted me to take an interest in the subject in the first place. I thank also Reinhard Drifte, James Hoare, Kimie Hara, Kim Yeong-Soo and Mark Selden for their comments and thoughts.

Notes 1. Dokdo is often translated to “solitary island”. However, there is credible evidence that the name originates from an old dialect of the Ulleungdo inhabitants, in which “dok” means “rock”. If this is the case, the reference “solitary island” probably results from the confusion caused by the Chinese character meaning “solitary” imposed on the indigenous word “dok”. “Rocky island” is a common place name in Korea’s coastal regions. 2. The islets under dispute are 157 kilometres north west of Japan’s Oki Islands. They are 74 kilometres off Korea’s Ulleungdo, an inhabited island west of Dokdo

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3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

that administratively incorporates the latter. The Oki Islands are part of Shimane Prefecture, which also claims to have jurisdiction over the currently South Koreacontrolled islets. This information is available online at http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/ takeshima/index.html. The New York Times, 21 March 2009. Cited from Charles Scanlon, “South Koreans Vent Fury at Japan”, BBC News, 18 March 2005, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4361343.stm. Other relevant documents are available in the online archive of the Dokdo Museum in Ulleungdo. See http://dokdomu.dokdomuseum.go.kr/board/gongi4/ list.php. Wada Haruki, “Takeshima/Tokdo: A Plea to Resolve a Worsening Japan-Korea Dispute”, Japan Focus, 28 March 2005. The 1943 Cairo Declaration provides that “Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed. The aforesaid three great powers (the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union), mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea, are determined that in due course Korea shall become free and independent.” Cited from the Yale Law School’s The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/cairo.asp. The quote is from Kimie Hara, “Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: The Troubling Legacy of the San Francisco Treaty”, Japan Focus, 4 September 2006. See also Kimie Hara, Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 14–49. Alexis Dudden, “Dangerous Islands: Japan, Korea and the United States”, Japan Focus, 11 August 2008. The Protectorate Treaty and the subsequent unequal treaties between Japan and Korea were mutually declared void when the two countries normalized their diplomatic relations through the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. In 2005, amidst the escalating controversy over Dokdo/Takeshima, South Korean officials and their counterparts in North Korea made a joint statement, on 23 June, reiterating their common conclusion that the treaty of protectorate, given the coercion of the Japanese, be made null and void.

References Cumings, B. (1999). Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American East-Asian Relations. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Dudden, A. (2008a). Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea and the United States (New York: Columbia University Press). Dudden, A. (2008b). “Dangerous Islands: Japan, Korea and the United States”, Japan Focus, 11 August 2008. Available online at http://www.japanfocus.org/-AlexisDudden/2852. Halbwachs, M. ([1925] 1952). Les Cadres Sociaux de la Mémoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Hara, K. (2006a). “Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: The Troubling Legacy of the San Francisco Treaty”, Japan Focus, 4 September 2006. Available online at http:// www.japanfocus.org/-Kimie-HARA/2211. Hara, K. (2006b). Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific: Divided Territories in the San Francisco System (New York: Routledge).

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Haruki, W. (2005). “Takeshima/Tokdo: A Plea to Resolve a Worsening Japan-Korea Dispute”, Japan Focus, 28 March 2005. Available online at: http://www.japanfocus.org/ products/topdf/1547. Jukes, G. (2002). The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905 (Oxford: Osprey). Kaldor, M. (1979). The Disintegrating West (New York: Pelican). Kim, H.-D. (2007). History of Dokdo and Ulleungdo. Seoul: Kyungin Munhwasa (in Korean). Kim, Y.-S. (2009). “Dokdo and the Korea-Japan Normalization Talks: A Study on the ‘Treaty on Basic Relations’ and the San Francisco Peace Treaty”, Korea Focus, vol. 17, no. 1: 86–95. Also available online at www.koreafocus.or.kr/design2/layout/ content_print.asp?group_id=102397. Kwon, H. (2006). After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai (Berkeley: University of California Press). Linenthal, T. and Englehardt, T. (eds) (1996). History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Holt). Nora, P. (1996). Realms of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press). Shimazu, N. (2009). Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory and the Russo- Japanese War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Epilogue: Caught between Contentions and Dialogues: Historical Memories in Northeast Asia Jae-Jung Suh

Historical contentions in Northeast Asia are interdependent. An interpretation of historical facts in one country triggers outrage in another country, which then asserts its own interpretation. The latter action, in turn, generates an outpouring of emotional responses from the first country. Recent spats between Japan and Korea exemplify such dialectic. In the latest round (2008) of contentions, Japanese Ministry of Education officials designated the Takeshima/Dokdo islets Japanese territory in a signal to domestic constituencies whose support the government needed. But the designation immediately produced an intense reaction by the Koreans, who saw it as another incidence of Japanese aggression. The Korean government dispatched marines to the area in a show of force, and Korean civilians staged emotional protests. The Japanese response to Korea’s actions escalated tension over the issue. This process, however, is not always or necessarily the kind that intensifies dispute. Most disputes stop before they turn into more serious conflict. Sometimes they even lead to a dampening of emotional exchange and better mutual understanding. In this instance, one side raises an issue and the other listens and offers a considered response, creating an interaction which contributes to a deepened mutual understanding of the original issue. Two nations are thus caught in a process of dialogue. This chapter demonstrates that the three major countries of Northeast Asia have lived in positive, not negative, interdependence over a number of major historical issues, including the Yasukuni shrine and history textbook controversies. That which appears to be a history war turns out, on closer examination, to be a normal process of disagreement that binds rather than alienates nations. Put differently, the outcome of historical contentions is not determined a priori. The history of Northeast Asia’s “history problem” shows that regional actors have at times sparred with each other over the past and at other times attempted to develop a common understanding. It is critical to understanding the causal process of regional conflicts to recognize this distinction, for any explanation of the conflicts would also have to account for the 243

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existence of the dialogues on which they are based. This chapter consists of three overlapping themes, beginning with general tendencies applying to all international disputes over memory. Its first section claims that nations differ in their social, political and economic interdependence. Second, the chapter argues that Northeast Asia meets the criterion of interdependence. Third, it offers a process-oriented explanation of historical contentions and their resolutions. The chapter then draws out the theoretical and political implications for East Asian and international “memory wars”.

Interdependency of historical contentions There are many who explain Northeast Asia’s historical contentions in terms of the attributes of its constituent nations. One group of scholars points to domestic politics as a factor motivating the use of historical disputes. The object is to pander to a domestic constituency or to rally domestic support. Some scholars point to particularistic interests or agendas as conditions maximizing historical contentions (Shibuichi 2005). Many put a finger on politicians or elites seeking political gain (Choi 2005; Yeo 2006; Shinoda 2007; Kim 2008). The scholars in this group share a presentist perspective: nations pursue policies that maximize gains in the here and now, even if those policies may in the long run undermine both national interests and constructive relations with neighbouring countries. Another group replaces presentist views with cultural arguments, including the assertion that nationalism and memory are highly interdependent. Many scholars writing about Yasukuni and history textbook revisions link them to Japan’s consciousness of itself as a nation (Suh 2005; Takahashi 2006; Hein 2008; Jin 2008; Mochizuki in this volume). China experts often attribute China’s more assertive stances to rising nationalism (Gries 2004; Seo 2005; Callahan 2006; Liu 2006; Shen and Cheung 2007; Wu 2008; Yuan 2008). Korea scholars also point to nationalism as a driving motif of the nation’s dealings with neighbouring countries (Baker in this volume; Jager 2003; Schmid 2002; Shin 2006; Park 2008). While these scholars differ in their assessments of the source of historical contentions in Northeast Asia, they share one assumption, namely that the source of dispute is to be found in particular countries. In every case of conflict they see one initiator and other reactors. They may disagree on whether the source can be found in the state or civil society, but they nonetheless agree that one country carries most or all the driving force that fuels contentions over the past. However, this single-country approach, which characterizes the chapters in this collective memory collection, is incomplete and can be misleading. First, it leaves out of scrutiny the structural condition that makes historical contentions possible. In order for contentions to arise, there must be a claim that the contending parties share and about which they care. Their commonality is a structural a priori that makes contentions

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possible in the first place. Without an overlap of the historical experience, imagined and real, there is no possibility of contentions. This “overlap” is not a property that exists within a single country but an attribute shared by two or more countries. Thus, the single-country approach to memory war fails to recognize national networks and their effect on memory. Network perspectives show that social conflicts in the past do not automatically result in memory war in the present. While the remembrance of past conflicts can certainly lead to friction, it may also help constitute a community, real or “imagined”, when its meanings are understood within similar frameworks and when its members are recognized as legitimate participants. A nation is forged out of such understandings (Anderson 1991). The single-country approach misses the possibility that a shared past may lead to the constitution of a community of shared meanings and a common identity. Third, while mutual encounters may help constitute an imagined community, they lead to contentions and even conflicts under some circumstances. The problem is to identify the factors and processes that cause encounters between countries to be contentious. The single-country approach may capture a factor that is part of a larger process at work, but it cannot, by definition, identify the structural process itself. Historical contentions must be seen as an interactive phenomenon produced by the countries affected by them (Gong 2001; Zhu 2008). The interdependence of the historical conflicts is thus complicated by the ways in which actors regard each other. And this complication holds the key to explaining under what circumstances the structure of an event leads to an “imagined community” and under what circumstances it ends up in contentions and conflicts. The interdependency of historical contentions is empirically observable and falsifiable. If a country-specific factor is a cause, as many studies suggest, one would expect to observe a rise in that country of concerns that are independent of the kind other countries have. No correlation among levels of concern is expected among these countries. But if historical contentions are relational, one would expect to see a near simultaneous movement of historical contentions in the countries tangled in disputes, although the level and kind of historical concerns are likely to vary, reflecting the differences in state–society relationships among countries (see Xu and Spillman in this volume). A lull in history issues in one country is expected to be matched by a similar calm in another; but an increase in activities related to history in one country is likely to be associated with an increase in activities in a similar issue area in another country (see Xu and Fine in this volume). Furthermore, historical contentions are interdependent. A rise in concerns about one historical issue most of the time coincides with an increase in contentions over another historical issue. The level of disputes over history textbooks, as measured by the number of newspaper articles, fluctuates together with that of

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concerns about the Japanese Prime Minister’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. Their pattern of fluctuation is also matched by a changing level of concern about history (Suh 2007). This chapter argues that such correspondence is not a mere accident but has a compelling logic. First, the high degree of interdependency is made possible by the permissive condition that regional actors share a common historical and contemporary space and yet approach it from different angles. Second, the nature of a particular historical dispute depends on the degree to which the actors in that dispute share a common framework of meaning and accept the legitimacy of the other side. Where there is no common framework and a breakdown of legitimacy, factual disputes feed into an escalating cycle of historical contentions where the claimants’ reactions become stronger, more negative, and more emotional. Where the claimants develop a common framework of meaning and accept one another’s legitimacy, factual disputes start a modulating cycle of historical contentions where the claimants attenuate their reactions and deepen their mutual understandings.

Necessary structural conditions of historical contentions For a historical contention to arise, coexisting nation-states must confront one another with incompatible interests. So long as these states exist in different times and occupy distant geographical regions, there arises little possibility of conflict, for there is no possibility of incompatible interests. But when contiguous states share common interests, a possibility of a history war exists because their respective narratives may diverge. Divergence in narratives about an event is common. Different individuals and groups experience the same historical event in different ways because they bring different backgrounds, positions and perspectives to bear upon it when they narrate their experience. Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Rashomon, presents such divergence in an artistic montage of differing, and at times conflicting, narratives of a common time in an overlapping space. It is perhaps unavoidable that such divergence exists in narratives and memories, given the multiplicity of narrators and audience. Here it is critical to note that the divergent narratives sometimes escalate into conflict but do not always do so. The divergence may very easily slide into what Harootunian (2000) called the “ruse of history”, which tends to create disputes about whose narrative is correct and true, and escalate differences into conflicts. But the divergence can also start a heated yet healthy debate that creates a discursive space where the participants deepen their understanding of each other and the issue at stake. A better communication and deeper understanding, facilitated by the divergence, may constitute a dialogical foundation on which the participants build a future characterized by convergent orientations. In a similar spirit, Shen and Cheung (2007)

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argue that a destabilizing Chinese nationalism may produce the unexpected effect of making China a stabilizing force. The analysis of divergent narratives can thus create a dilemma, which Lind (2008) captures well. Apology for a past wrong-doing committed in a neighbouring country may help heal wounds and build a peaceful relationship. At the same time, it runs the risk of triggering domestic backlash, which in turn may exacerbate the relationship with a neighbour. What, then, explains why narratives can have opposite effects on the relations between two or more nations?

From divergence to contentions or dialogues The answer to this question of contradictory narrative effects is twofold. First, it depends on the degree to which one side of the divergent narratives acknowledges the other’s legitimacy to participate in its deliberations over the past. Secondly, it depends on the degree to which the divergent narratives are framed in similar ways. Divergent narratives exacerbate international conflict and degenerate into diatribe when two conditions are met: the narratives are exchanged in a way that denies each other’s legitimacy to participate in deliberations over the past (see Mochizuki in this volume), and when the divergence is embedded in the frameworks of meaning that contradict one another (see Mikyoung Kim in this volume). When these two conditions are met, divergent historical narratives feed into an escalating cycle of contentions. But divergent narratives may also develop into dialogues that help narrow gaps in communication and enhance mutual understanding if each party to the memory war is recognized by the others as a legitimate participant and they discuss their divergent narratives within overlapping meaning structures. Escalating cycle of historical contentions For those who differ in their narratives within an oppositional worldview and ethos, their divergent narratives are likely to degenerate into disputes about the veracity of each other’s claim. If they do not recognize each other’s legitimacy, then their divergence is likely to expand to doubts about the sincerity of the other side. When nations deny legitimacy and common meaning—especially empathy and belief in common humanity, dispute will only deepen mutual doubts about sincerity, which in turn will exacerbate the disputes, making them all the more difficult to resolve. Disputes quickly degenerate into ad hominem attacks on the national level. This vicious cycle is common to historical contentions in Northeast Asia where one nation’s assertion of its own version of the past triggers a reaction by others who up the ante by levelling charges of an underlying sinister intention. This reaction in turn upsets the original nation which views its respondent as incapable of serious deliberation, showing no understanding

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of the meaning it attaches to its own assertion. So it reacts more vociferously than before. And the vicious cycle goes on ad infinitum. This escalation is characteristic of many conflicts in Northeast Asia. At the heart of the tension caused by Prime Minister Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni shrine, for example, was his persistent refusal to recognize Koreans and Chinese, as well as those Japanese who were concerned about his visits, as legitimate participants who had something meaningful to say about the shrine visits. He also held fast to his conviction that he was visiting the shrine to keep his campaign pledge and that it was his personal tribute, thus denying any possibility of finding a common ground with concerns presented by others that saw in his visits a denial of the injuries Japan had visited upon Asia and desire to “show the flag” of Japan. His flagrant rejection of the legitimate reactions and feelings of Koreans and Chinese triggered strong reactions which reciprocated his action by rejecting his legitimacy and the meanings he attributed to his visits. Korean and Chinese reactions in turn consolidated Koizumi’s position, for he feared any concession would delegitimize his position and weaken his standing among his supporters. Similar processes are at work in the rise of nationalistic historical narratives in the three major countries in Northeast Asia. Some politicians began to openly question the legitimacy of foreigners to intervene in what they consider domestic deliberations of their own history. Japanese insistence that non-Japanese criticism of Japanese historiography infringes on Japanese sovereignty goes against the spirit of a regional public sphere. News media reports and the public’s discussion of history issues also show diverging frameworks that are tinged with nationalist sentiments. Fujioka and his group, Society for the Making of New School Textbooks in History, maintain that the gap between Japan and its neighbour countries over history and memory is unbridgeable, that the depth of anti-Japanese sentiment on the part of countries such as China and Korea is so great that “if we were to try to get a mutual historical sense with our Asian neighbors it would be bound to lead to surrender on our part.”1 Fujioka adds: “Because we are Japanese, it is only natural that we should think of things first from the perspective of Japan and its national interests” (Vachon 1996). The problem is that perspectives and facts often differ. In China and South Korea, too, nationalist responses to foreign historiographic criticism have increased (Gries 2004; Shin 2006). They frame the issue of history in terms that reduce the area of intellectual overlap and reinforce conflictual understandings of the past. They tend to pick up on a Japanese politician’s or activist’s remark intended for domestic consumption and present it as evidence that Japan is on an irreversible path to nationalistic remilitarization. Their narrative strategy is inextricably tied to the discourses intended to promote nationalist understandings of the past and thus garner more support for their own political perspectives.

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A vicious cycle is, thus, set into motion. The publication of Kenkanryu (Hating Korean Wave), a Korea-bashing comic book, for example, has been quickly and widely reciprocated by the publication of its Korean and Chinese counterparts: Hy˘omillyu (Hating Japan Wave) and Lun Riben (Discussing Japan).

Modulating the cycle of historical contention Divergent historical narratives may set off debates that help deepen an understanding of mutual concerns and even create out of what seem incompatible views a new framework that can accommodate differences with minimum tension. The latter is possible if producers of the narratives recognize each other as legitimate discussants and if they confront their differences within an overlapping framework of worldviews and moral values. This kind of dialogue may transpire between individuals or groups of individuals within a national boundary; and it may also happen between individuals, groups and governments across national boundaries. The former creates the possibility of a national “public sphere”; the latter, a regional “public sphere”. The significance of public sphere formation is not limited to the process of national identity construction; it is also crucial for the development of democracy, as Jürgen Habermas (1989) argues. Habermas developed the concept of the public sphere not simply to understand empirical communication flows but to contribute to a normative political theory of democracy. In his theory, a public sphere is conceived as a space for the communicative generation of public opinion in ways that assure a degree of moral-political legitimacy. In addition, a public sphere is supposed to be a vehicle for mobilizing public opinion as a political force. It should empower the citizenry vis-à-vis private powers and also permit it to exercise influence over the state. Although the public sphere constituted by mass media institutions and narratives is conventionally seen as a national space, it is not necessarily restricted to the nation-state, as Fraser (2007) convincingly argues. It may as well be a transnational space that, under propitious technological and geopolitical circumstances, helps engender transnational political identities or communities. Some scholars have pointed to the existence of a regional public sphere (for a Middle East example, see Lynch 1999; Barnett 1998) while others suggested the possibility even of a global public sphere (Bohman 1998, 1999; Buck-Morss 2002; Calhoun 2002). The regional public space, which is critical to regional community, is well illustrated by European experience. While the European Union (EU) is commonly presented as the leading example of regional integration, it is also commonly said that its system integration has outpaced social integration, that it is hampered by a “democratic deficit” and the absence of a common European identity. One way in which this democratic deficit might be

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addressed, it is claimed, is if media institutions could play a role in the development of the EU similar to the one they played in the development of its constituent nation-states (Kevin 2003). The creation of a European public sphere, in any case, is deemed essential to a true European community. Even if we acknowledge that a regional public sphere is possible and necessary, realizing one is a difficult task because it faces potential resistance from national public spheres and lacks the requisite structures to overcome that resistance (Koopmans and Statham 1999; Ferree et al. 2002). For a long time, it has been argued that a common public sphere presupposes a preceding institutional setup (Anderson 1991), and this presupposition is even more crucial when the matter of public spheres arise at the international level (Downey and Koenig 2004). Let us start by asking how a Northeast Asian regional public sphere is possible. Divergent narratives about the past in Northeast Asia hold a key to a regional public sphere to the extent that they are discussed within an overlapping framework of meanings by regional actors who accept each other as legitimate participants in their discussions. Transnational public debates about history textbooks provide a window into such a possibility. In Japan, history textbooks had long been implicated in domestic politics. At least since 1955 when conservative politicians called then-existing history textbooks “deplorable” for their alleged anti-Japanese and pro-Chinese bias, textbooks had at various points been the object of heated debates between the conservative establishment (the governing Liberal Democratic Party [LDP] and its predecessors) and progressive forces, composed mainly of left-leaning intellectuals, academics and schoolteachers supported by the formerly influential Japan Teachers’ Union. The heated debates triggered by conservative politicians turned even more intense as the progressive historian Saburo Ienaga waged his long fight against the Ministry of Education and the Japanese government over what he believed was the censorship he encountered as a textbook author (Hein and Selden 2000). What changed in the 1980s was that the debate over history textbooks, formerly contained within Japan’s domestic sphere, began to spill over national boundaries. As China and Korea, prompted by their concerns about textbooks’ description of World War II, started to participate in Japan’s internal deliberations, a conversation about the past was launched. Chinese and Korean concerns were initially triggered by 1982 media reports that the Ministry of Education ordered history textbook authors to make various revisions, most notoriously changing the term shinryaku (aggression) to shinshutsu (advancement) in its description of Japan’s actions in Manchuria in 1931. This news item was a canard: there had been no such request during that round of state textbook approvals. However, the book that substituted “advancement” for “aggression”, although rarely chosen, was approved, and a general disposition to whitewash history did exist. Textbooks were therefore closely watched and duly reported by Japanese newspapers; but

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the textbook issue had not, until 1982, spilled across the country’s borders. Japan’s neighbours, up until then refraining from complaint, now became vocal: not only was textbook coverage of Japanese military action evasive, the dominant consciousness in Japan was not primarily that of having been an aggressor towards Asian countries but rather of having been a victim—principally of American (atomic) bombing. Critical to the emergence of a regional dialogue over the past was the Japanese government’s positive response to Chinese and Korean expressions of concern. The education ministry added to the criteria for textbook authorization what came to be called the “Neighbouring Countries Clause”, which stipulated that consideration should be given to neighbouring countries’ perspectives, legitimizing the inclusion of Chinese and Korean views in textbooks. By adopting “international understanding and cooperation” as one of the criteria for textbook adoption, the Ministry of Education sent a clear signal that Japan considered China and Korea legitimate actors in its deliberations about the past and that the validity of claims about the past could be civilly debated. But the clause became a source of discontent in Japan for conservative right-wing forces; believing that the Neighbouring Countries Clause was a sign that the Japanese were succumbing to diplomatic pressure on genuinely internal affairs, they pressed for its deletion (Rose 2005: 59). Their discontent later found an expression in an effort to publish a “new” history textbook that would, in their view, present a compelling nationalist account. Fujioka’s Society for the Making of New School Textbooks in History played a significant role in producing a new history book that would allay nationalists’ concerns. This development had the potential to turn back the nascent regional dialogue that began on an intergovernmental level in the previous decade. Conservative historians denied Chinese and Korean interpretation of historical events and deemed their participation in deliberations over Japanese history to be illegitimate. The backlash, however, did not last long, for the new conservative-leaning history textbooks, despite gaining the Ministry of Education’s approval, failed to attract adopters. Instead, these books prompted vigorous domestic opposition and international uproar, which, in turn, reinforced the refusal of most schools to adopt them. Yet, the very fact that the conservative textbooks were approved in the first place was enough to provoke serious protest. Korean civil society organizations formed the Movement Headquarters to Stop Worse Revision of Japanese History Textbooks in March 2001. After a quick transition to the Movement Headquarters to Correct Japan’s Textbooks one month later, it gradually grew to a transnational network by March 2002: Solidarity for Asia Peace and History Education. Regional dialogue is usually mediated by news media which rapidly translate official statements, officials’ non-official remarks and relay neighbours’ reactions. The conventional mode of dialogue is not only widened but also deepened with increasing use of the internet. The process is being further consolidated by the building of transnational

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networks capable of promoting a more common understanding of history. Solidarity for Asia Peace and History Education, for example, was formed by cooperating historians and educators in three countries. The fact that a common history textbook has been written and published by them represents an important breakthrough in developing shared historical understandings (Mitani 2008). It is worthwhile to note that participants in the common history textbook project resorted to two narrative strategies to overcome differences among themselves and create a new, overlapping, perspective on history. On the one hand, they deliberately moved beyond a national framework of history, to which all three countries were beholden, and towards a regional framework that highlights larger forces affecting them all. One of the themes that held the participants together was their shared understanding that divisive historical narratives remained a stumbling block to a peaceful future of the region. That they are seeing the past as a possible path to such a future is reflected in their slogan: “No to Historical Distortions; Yes to East Asia Peace.” Even when these participants failed to agree on the meaning of some aspect of history, they defaulted to an individual level to tell personal stories of how a particular person—man or woman; boy or girl—experienced traumatic events like war.2 Concrete points could thus be made and accepted in place of regional generalizations. Regional public spheres grow out of the confluence of their local counterparts and “counter-publics” (“special issue” interest and reform groups) that nurture each other through their mutually reinforcing interdependence.3 The Northeast Asian counter-public sphere, carved out by progressive activists, educators and scholars concerned about history textbooks, gradually expanded its interface with the official sphere, monopolized by the state, producing semi-autonomous entities including the Northeast Asia History Foundation, which allows flexible overlap between counter-publics and the state within Korea while supporting transnational dialogues about past. Korea’s counter-public spheres and state together thus contributed to deepening regional dialogue and a strengthening of the regional public sphere. The regional public sphere is rooted more firmly in Japan’s local counterpublic spheres. For example, many scholars have displayed dedication, resourcefulness and courage researching Japanese war crimes and challenging nationalistic narratives. Their research has made it possible to mount effective critiques of atrocities, including the Nanjing Massacre and the exploitation of “comfort women”, and to question fundamental premises of Yasukuni commemorative practices. Indeed, many Japanese citizens, deeply influenced by the lessons of the Pacific War and Japan’s crushing defeat, countered militarizing trends with pacifist perspectives. Japanese pacifism and activism have been sustained in many ways, including anti-nuclear movements. The number of privately founded peace museums, perhaps

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more than in the rest of the world combined, provides one measure of this mentality (Hein and Takenaka 2007). The 50-year effort by Chukiren veterans (China Returnees), captured and “re-educated” in China, publicly criticizing their own atrocities and those committed by other members of the Japanese military, is another indicator of Japan’s cultural revolution (McNeill 2007). While counter-public spheres in Korea and China have different origins and political overtones, they have forged ties with their counterparts in Japan to contribute to the emergence of a regional public sphere. In some cases, counter-publics become appropriated by the state or work with public spheres in other countries. Thus, relationships between coutner-publics and the state vary, as do the strategies adopted by them.

Conclusion Thomas Risse and Marianne van de Steeg make the counterintuitive observation that “contestation is a crucial pre-condition for the emergence of a European public sphere rather than an indicator for its absence” (2003: 15). While they made the observation in the context of European politics, their insight is equally applicable to Northeast Asia. The more contentious a regional issue becomes and the more social mobilization it promotes, the greater the opportunity for international harmony. In order for a Northeast Asia public sphere to emerge, however, there must be an issue that all the regional actors deeply care about. The “memory problem” is it. Even if such a condition is met, a region’s social order may take on different characteristics, depending on the degree to which regional issues are discussed within similar frames of reference and meaning across national public spheres; and the degree to which regional actors recognize each other as legitimate participants in a transnational space (Risse and van de Steeg 2003: 16). Put differently, a regional public sphere emerges when speakers and listeners, regardless of their national backgrounds, recognize each other as legitimate participants in a common discourse that frames particular issues as common regional concerns. Otherwise, the regional order fragments into a collection of nationalist spheres. Regional order does not require an agreement on all issues. It allows disagreements, or even disputes, to the extent that the issues are framed in similar ways so that national communities engage each other in a meaningful dialogue. If regional actors share a concern about regional issues of a high saliency but treat others as illegitimate outsiders while they frame their debates in incompatible, if not irreconcilable, terms, international conflict is most likely to result. Northeast Asia is currently caught in crosscurrents. On the one hand, it is being pulled apart by nationalist forces that deny the dignity and ignore the experiences of other nations; on the other hand, it is being held together by forces that facilitate regional dialogues about their shared pasts and common

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future. The future of the region hangs in the balance between these opposing forces. The “memory problem” is caught in the crosscurrent.

Acknowledgements This research was supported by WCU (World Class University) program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Grant Number: R32–20077).

Notes 1. Foundation statement of the Society for the Making of New School Textbooks in History, 2 December 1996. 2. Based on personal interviews with Chinese, Japanese and Korean participants in the common history textbook project. 3. Nancy Fraser (1990) developed the concept of counter-publics or a subaltern counter-public.

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Index Note: letter ‘n’ followed by locators denotes note numbers. Abe, Shintar¯ o, 39 Abe, Shinz¯ o, 46–7 absolute responsibility, 85 Acheson Line, 235 Akazawa, S., 37 Akihito, Emperor, 43, 174 Alexander, J. C., 103, 104, 107, 116, 121, 184, 205 American Declaration of Independence, 131 Anderson, B., 167, 221, 245, 250 annexation of Korea by Japan, 80, 92n6, 215 Anti-Japanese War, 15, 110, 116–17 Arendt, H., Eichmann in Jerusalem, 72 Arlington National Cemetery, 11 Armitage, D., 131 Armstrong, C., 221 Asahi Newspaper, 55, 58n17 Asahi Shimbun, 44–5, 48, 77n17, 155 Asian memory compared to Western memory, 21–3 see also Northeast Asia memory problem Asia-Pacific War effect of memory on relations among China, Japan, and US, 3 enshrinement of Japanese war dead, 34, 38 Asia-sensitive attitudes, 81, 83 As¯ o, T., 48 Assmann, A., 5 Association of Bereaved Hibakusha Families, 62 Association of Shint¯ o Shrines (Jinja Honch¯ o), 36 authoritarian rule and memory movements, 22, 166–7, 172 official histories vs. popular narratives, 3

under Park Chung Hee, 194, 195, 201, 206 and political opportunity structure, 169, 170, 171, 173 under Syngman Rhee, 194, 195 axial dichotomies, 8 axial principle of Japanese culture, 12, 54, 66 Bach, J., 139 “Bacterial Warfare Plaintiffs’ Organization”, 177 bacterial weapon victims’ case, 170, 174, 181 framing strategy, 182, 183 Bagehot, W., 214 Bahktin, M., 130 Ba, J., 140 Baker, D., 17, 205, 244 Baltzell, D., 8 Barmé, G., 133, 136 Barnett, M. N., 249 Barthel, D. L., 7, 60 Becker, C., 5 Beckett, T., 88 “Before and After Liberation” (Yi T’aejun), 219–20 Belgrade, US-led NATO bombing of Chinese embassy, 150, 159 Bell, D., 8 Bell, D. S. A., 103 Bellah, R., 1, 8, 21 Benedict, R., 8, 77, 78n10 Benford, R. D., 168, 172 Berger, P. L., 6, 73, 78 Bikini Incident, 57–8 Bitburg, 12 blame attribution in international conflict, 71 and meaning of responsibility, 86 and memory movements, 169 257

258

Index

Bodnar, J. E., 7, 80, 167 Bohman, J., 9, 249 Born Red (Gao), 133 Breen, J., 38, 40, 48 A Bright Society (Shuppan), 57 Bryant, L. O., 137 bubonic plague, spread by Japanese Army in Sino-Japanese War, 175 Buck-Morss, S., 249 Bultmann, R., 4 Buruma, I., 56 Cairo Declaration, 241n7 Calhoun, C. J., 249 Callahan, W., 244 Carmines, E. G., 89 Central Daily News, 111, 122n8, 123n9, 123n17 commemorative articles and reports about Nanjing Massacre, 109, 110 Cerulo, K. A., 150 Chambers, J. W., 6 Chang, J., 10 Changde reparations movement, 178–81 dependence on governmental support, 178 framing strategy, 182 support from local government, 178–9 used to enhance prestige of city and College of Hunan, 180 Ch’angd˘ ok Palace, 222 Cheju 4.3 Peace Memorial Hall, 201 Cheju uprising (4.3 Incident), 200–1 chemical weapons victims’ case, 170, 174 Chen, P. G., 176, 182 Chen, X., 134 Cheung, M., 244, 246 Chiang, K., 9, 15, 105, 110 accusations of collaboration with American imperialism, 112 inaction in face of Japanese aggression against China, 111–12 view of Japanese people as victims of their military leaders, 108 Chidorigafuchi, “tomb of the unknown soldier”, 49 China “century of humiliation”, 5 growth in nationalism, 3

harmony (he) and moderation (zhongyong), 20 Liberals’ distancing from commemorative activities by Nationalist government, 111 nationalistic responses to foreign historiographic criticism, 248 pragmatic honour, 20 Reformation Age, 159 “Socialist Construction” era, 159 see also Kuomintang (Nationalists) China News Analysis, 116, 117n27 Chinese Communist Party American imperialism as primary external evil, 112 call to punish Japanese war criminals, 112, 113 exclusion of Nanjing as cultural trauma, 15, 104, 108, 113 as “greedy institution”, 16 influence of “friendship among the people” idea on foreign policy, 115 interest in establishing diplomatic relations with Japan, 115 internationalist orientation, 109, 111 official view of Japanese atrocities and war criminals, 107, 109 presentist politics of memory, 113 recognition of existing Japanese government, 119–20 reform of Japanese war criminals, 114–15 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China”, 131–2, 143n7 united front with Nationalists against Japan in 1936, 122n3 use of Nanjing to measure atrocities of antagonists in Civil War, 108 Chinese Cultural Revolution, narratives of alternative English-language narratives, 135–6 constraints on alternative narratives, 22, 137 as contested rather than controlling memory, 15 counter narratives, 16, 135–8

Index 259 “dark age” narrative, 136, 141–2 memoirs of exile, 133–5, 141–2 narratives of former rebel Red Guards, 137–8 narratives of nostalgia, 136–7 official genres and narratives, 129, 131–3, 141 progressive rhetoric, 132 re-evaluation of, 159 role of internet in enlarging community of memory, 15 sent-down campaign, 136–7 songs of, 137 web sites, 139 Chinese Cultural Revolution Research Net, 139, 140–1 Chinese-Japanese relations anti-Japanese demonstrations, 42, 45 debate over content of Japanese history textbooks, 147, 150, 155, 159–60, 164n1, 250–1 diplomatic protest of Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni, 45 importance of relationship with Japan in early 1990s, 173 liberals’ fear of Japanese reinvasion of China, 111, 123n17 “Movement to Oppose US Support of Japan”, 109 and official claims for war reparations, 170 official diplomatic relations with Japan, 158 refusal to accept Japanese declarations of regret, 2, 22n17 support for Japanese anti-nuclear movements, 116 view of Japan’s offense against honour, 6 see also Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement (CWRM) Chinese memory problem, 14–17 and construction of Nanjing as cultural trauma, 15, 104, 108, 113, 116, 121 expanding consciousness of World War II losses, 3 first commemoration of Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 113–14

and human rights failures in other regimes, 182 new connotation for “Japanese devils”, 116–17 politically framed official memory, 14, 137 presentist models, 14 recognition of Nanjing Massacre after 1972, 120–1 unofficial memory, 14 see also Chinese Cultural Revolution, narratives of Chinese memory studies, limited by state controls, 10 Chinese national anthem adoption of in 1949, 151–2 forbidden during Cultural Revolution, 16, 148 “March of the Volunteers”, 151, 152, 153, 155 models for and models of society, 149 moods during the chaotic period, 157–8 National Symbols Committee (NSC), 151, 156 origin of, 16, 151 reflection of country’s changing history, 16, 150 restoration of lyrics of “March of the Volunteers”, 154–5 trajectory of, 1949–2005, 150–6 variation of the “New March”, 1978–1982, 153–4 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), 152 Chinese War of Resistance, 105, 111 Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement (CWRM), 16–17, 167 after 1995, 174–82 bacterial weapon victims’ case, 170, 174, 175–8, 181, 182, 183 chemical weapons victims’ case, 170 discourse of moral universalism, 181 forced labourers’ cases, 170 framing strategies, 172–3, 175, 181–2 initiation by transnational activism and local mobilization, 171 most influential social movement of late 1990s and 2000s, 174

260

Index

Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement – continued participation of Japanese lawyers and peace movement activists, 184 political opportunity structure and the rise of, pre-1995, 172–4 “the Preparatory Chinese Popular Committee for Compensation”, 173 role of online forums in, 171 Yiwu sector, 175–81 see also Changde reparations movement Ching, L. T. S., 9 Chinreisha (Spirit Pacification Shrine), 38 Cho, C., 199 Choi, K., 225 Choi, S. J., 244 Chongqing bombing case, 170, 174 Chonju restoration movement, 18 Choong Soon, K., 198 Chos˘ on dynasty, 1392–1910, 213 Chos˘ on monarchy, 18, 213–26 erasure from Korean public memory, 225 under Japanese colonial government, 215–18 Korean pensions for descendants of, 222–3 in Republican Korea, 1945–1965, 218–21, 222–3 under US military occupation, 221–5 Christensen, T. J., 171 The Chugoku Newspaper, 61 Chung, C., 66, 80 Cohen, E. L., 139 Cold War in Asia, 233 collusion between US and Japan on containment of communism in East Asia, 236 and Korean War, 199 and relations between Korea and Japan, 237 and Takeshima/Dokdo problem, 232, 239 view of Japan as part of West, 83

collaboration Chiang Kai-shek with American imperialism, 112 Koreans with Japanese occupiers, 17, 20, 197–8, 220, 225 collective memory alteration by external factors, 193–4 challenge of hegemonic discourses by alternative genres and media, 131 commemoration as vehicle of, 7 and conflicts, 194 constructionist model of, 7 cultural perspective, 7–8, 84 as cultural system, 8 defined, 7 as general form of knowledge, 4 genres as bridges between models of, 130 history as vehicle of, 7 informal historical and commemorative activity, 14 limits of Western approaches to, 4 and national anthems, 147–64 and nationalism, 80–4 and national mood, 156 Northeast Asia memory problem, 7 perspectives on, 7–8 presentist mode of, 7, 84, 113, 130, 148, 160, 166, 185 and rebellious civil society, 166, 185 as relationship between history and commemoration, 7 as source of moral direction, 8 as stable objective entity, 8 and the state, 166 symbolic processes, 102 traditionalist model of, 7 see also Northeast Asia memory problem “collective memory and the negotiation of postwar relations among state, civil society, and social movements in China”, 16–17 collective memory scholarship, 103, 122n2 effort to systematize post-WWI disillusionment, 4–5 and moral universalism discourses, 184

Index 261 Collier, D., 73, 92n3 colonial rule and Asian modernization, 5 by Japanese over Korea, 17, 194, 215–18 commemoration “genre-vibrating” and “anomalous forms of”, 139 of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 112, 113 mediation of relation between history and individual belief, 15 of Nanjing Massacre, 15–16, 111 as path-dependent, 130 and regret, 22 relationship with history and belief in Japan, 77 symbolism, 1 as vehicle of collective memory, 7 Yasukuni as a site of, 11–12 commemorative genres, 130 community of memory, 1, 5, 16 Confucian practices, 6, 20, 195, 219, 221 Congshan, 175–6 Connerton, P., 66 Conrad, S., 66, 83–4 constructionist models of memory, 7 Containment Line, 235 contingent responsibility, 85 Coser, L. A., 7, 16 Coughlin, B., 74, 92n4 Council of Atom-bombed Koreans in Hiroshima Prefecture, 59 Council of the League of Nations, 1938, 105 counter-public spheres, 252–3 criminal guilt, 85 cultural memory, 5, 8, 16, 130 interdependence with presentist mode, 148 as metaphysical entity, 7 tension with presentist memory, 21 cultural object, 148–9, 153, 156, 160 cultural trauma, 205 dependence on claims-making by carrier groups, 103 impact of attention from political centers on memory of victims, 102–3

impact of perpetrator’s view of wrongdoing on memory of victims, 102 inhibited by progressive narratives, 121 cultural work, 101 cultures and apology, 22, 88 Asian tradition, 20 axial dichotomies, 8 as context for action, 156 dignity culture, 6, 21–2, 72–3, 88 honor and shame, 6, 20, 21–2, 72, 73, 88 and inherent rights, 6, 22, 72–3 patterns of, 8 and regret, 72–4 variation within and between, 8 Western tradition, 2, 21, 22 Cumings, B., 10, 199 Parallax Visions, 233 Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Society, 237 Das, V., 103 de-Asianization, 81, 83n14 de Bary, W. T., 5 De Ceuster, K., 197 Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), 49 Deng, X., 5, 129, 131, 155 Dent, C. M., 9 Derrida, J., The Gift of Death, 85 “devils” (guizi), 105–6 Diani, M., 168 diaries, 135 digital archives, 139–40 digital media, 130 digital mnemonic forms, 139 digital museums, 139 dignity and guilt cultures, 6 apologies as compensation for suffering, 88 deference entitlement, 72–3 differences from honour and shame cultures, 21–2 divergent narratives, 246–7 diversity, celebration and denial of, 4 documentary films, 135 Doi, T., 55

262

Index

Dokdo, 240n1 first Korean territory annexed by Imperial Japan, 235 gift to Japan after end of colonialism, 236 see also Dokdo/Takeshima Island controversy Dokdo/Takeshima Island controversy, 18–19, 229–41 annexation of Dokdo island for military purposes in 1905, 231 conjunction between regional colonialism and global Cold War, 232, 237 and history of Russo-Japanese War, 230 and imperial nostalgia in Japan, 230 as memory problem, 230 and nationalist sentiment in Korea, 230–1 as post-colonial question, 232 as problem of historical understanding, 229–30 dominant attitudes toward monarchy, 214 Donne, J., 71, 89 Douglas, M., 72 Dower, J. W., 9, 55, 57, 59, 86, 109 Downer, L., 223 Downey, J. K., 55, 250 Drifte, R., 238 Dudden, A., 215 Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea and the United States, 234–5 Dulles, J. F., 235 Durkheim, E., 8, 89, 148 East Asian regionalism, 9 “The East is Red”, 153, 157–8 lyrics, 1966–1978, 162 East-West divide, 2 Eckert, C., 197–8 Eirei ni Kotaeru Kai (Association to Answer the Heroic Spirits [of the War Dead]), 39 Ekiert, G., 166 elective affinity, 168 emergent attitudes toward monarchy, 214 Englehardt, T., 229

Er, N., 151 Eskildsen, R., 9 European Union (EU), 249–50 Eykholt, M., 119 factor analysis, 82, 89–92 Fairbank, J. K., 5 “feeling rule”, 78, 79 Feng, J., 10 Fentress, J., 129 Field, N., 79 Fine, G., 7, 16–17 Fletcher, A., 147 forced labourers’ cases, 170, 174 Four Chaplains, 3 4.3 Incident, 200–1 framing strategies of Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement (CWRM), 171, 175, 181–3 strategies of social movements, 168 Fraser, N., 249 “friendship among the people”, and universal revolution, 113–14, 122 Fujio, M., 60–1 Fujioka, N., 248, 251 Fujitani, T., 3 Fukuda, Y., 40, 49 Fukuoka, K., 12, 13, 54, 55, 83, 86 Fundamental Law of Education, 2007 revision of, 55 Furuta, H., 87 future orientation, 81, 92 Gablentz, O. H. von, 71 Gallicchio, M., 3 Gang of Four, 10, 129, 131, 132, 141n1, 143n4, 153 Gao, M., 135, 158 Gao, R., 107, 116, 125 Gao, Y., 10, 133 Gasche, R., 85 Geertz, C., 8, 65n10, 149 A Generation Lost (Luo), 133 genres alternative, 130 association with different media forms, 130

Index 263 and bridging of gaps between presentist and cultural models of collective memory, 130 genre conflict, 133 of memory, 130, 132 Germany, admission of war guilt, 10 Gillis, J. R., 7, 80, 166 Ginsburg, F. D., 138 Gleysteen, W. H., 204 Gluck, C., 5, 9, 57, 83n14 Goffman, E., 177 Gong, G. W., 3, 245 Gordon, A., 9 The Great Contradiction, 4 Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 67n3 Great Wall of China, 158 grid and group foundations, in honour and shame cultures, 72 Gries, P. H., 244, 248 Griswold, W., 8 Group of Returnees from China, 115, 124n23 Growing up in the People’s Republic (Ye and Ma), 135–6 Guangming Daily, 118 guanxi (connections), 176, 177 guilt and shame, 6 and silence, 71–2 types of, 85, 86 see also dignity and guilt cultures Guo, M., 105, 118 Guo, Q., 106 Gwangju Uprising, 10 Habermas, J., 9, 71–2, 249 Halbwachs, M., 1, 4, 7, 148 The Social Frames of Memory, 232–3 Hanmi Museum of Photography, 213 Han, Y., 196, 197 Hara, K., 234, 235, 239n8 hard nationalism, 80, 90 Harootunian, H., 246 Harrison, L., 8 Haruki, W., 232 Hasegawa, T., 54, 56 Hashimoto, R., 4, 44

Hatoyama, Y., 49 Hau, G., 153 He, Y., 171 Heelas, P., 23 hegemonic narratives, 8 Hein, L., 9, 244, 250, 253 Henry II, King, 88 Hersey, J., 9 Hessey, S., 139 hibakushas in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 58, 59 Korean, 58–9, 61–2, 67n5 Hiraizumi, K., 38 Hiranuma, K., 51n4 Hirohito, Emperor, 218 death in 1989, 9 visits to Yasukuni, 48, 51n5 Hiroshima, 53, 56–8 blunting of criticism of Japan’s war-time atrocities, 9 symbol of victimization of Japanese people, 9, 116 tool for exempting Japan from war responsibility, 56 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 12, 13, 59, 60–6, 67n10 focus of memory war, 61, 62–3 ideological tension between shameful past and moralistic present, 66 Kagaisha (Aggressor) Corner controversy, 60, 61–3 milieu, 60–1 theme panel acknowledging Japan’s past aggression, 64–5 Hiroshima Spirit, 62, 64, 66 Hiroshima for World Peace, 61 historiography, 83, 195, 248 history multiple dimensions, 230 replacement of tradition, 1 tension between official and popular, 3 as vehicle of collective memory, 7 A History of Contemporary Korea (Kang Man-gil), 196 The “History Problem”, 2, 19 Hobsbawm, E., 7, 80, 166 Hochschild, A. R., 78 Hogan, M. J., 9 Holbrooke, R., 204

264

Index

Holocaust, 184 as frame for violations of human rights across cultural contexts, 5 morality discourse of, 17 survivors: humiliation vs. indignation, 6, 88 honour and apology, for Japanese, 13 and Chinese memory, 14 concepts of separating China and Korea from Japan, 20–1 modernity and diminished relevance of, 78 pragmatic, 20 view of violation of by Chinese and Korean victims, 6 honour and shame cultures, 6, 88 apologies and victim self-respect, 73, 88 differences between dignity and guilt societies, 21–2 grid and group foundations, 72 Hu, A. Y., 20, 139, 140 Hu, Y., 42, 43 Hua, G., 155, 158 Huang, D. W. F., 9 Humanitarian Medical Treatment Funds, 58 human rights and China, 6, 182 and community of memory, 5 Huntington, S., 8 Huyssen, A., 139 Hwang, K. M., 217 Hy˘omillyu (Hating Japan Wave), 249 Hyun, K., 200 Ichiro, H., 59 ideological divide, between left and right in Japan, 55, 63–4 Igarashi, Y., 9, 56 “imagined community”, 245 Imperial Household Law of 1889, 216 Independence Hall of Korea, 79 inner-direction, 93n11 institutional retention, 148, 149 instrumentalism, 166–7, 167 interest models of memory, 7

International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial), 42, 61n3, 86, 109, 111, 118 internet, 142 bulletin-board systems (BBS), 139 censorship of in China, 143n9 development of in China, 139 social power of, 15, 139 Ishida, T., 54, 56 Itagaki, S., 42, 43 Itagaki, T., 42–3 Iwanami Publisher, 55 Izokukai, 43, 44, 48 membership decline, 50 opposition to secular memorial for war dead, 47, 49 Izokukai-Liberal Democratic Party partnership, 36–7, 42–3 Jager, S. M., 3, 171, 200, 244 Jameson, F., 1 Japan annexation of Dokdo island for military purposes, 231 anti-nuclear movements, 252 attempt to instill pride into youth, 14 August 15 secular ceremony at Bud¯ okan, 49 colonial rule over Korea, 17, 194, 215–18 conglomerates, 59 Declaration of Peace of 1994, 67n15 end of rule of Liberal Democratic Party, 60 Ienaga history textbook trials, 22, 250 involvement in Korean War, 59 Liberal Democratic Party, 250 Lucky Dragon incident, 57–8 Military Pension Law, 37 move to pro-Beijing policy, 119–20 national anthem, “Kimigayo”, 164n4 nationalistic responses to foreign historiographic criticism, 248 official diplomatic relations with China, 158 pariah of Northeast Asia, 6 participation in Theater Missile Defense, 174 Peace Constitution of 1946, 56, 58, 59 Peace Declaration of 1990, 63

Index 265 peace museums, 252–3 position on status of Takeshima island, 230 post-war adaptability, 56 post-war alienation from Asia, 81, 83–4 protest against Chinese anti-Japan protests, 147 rapid ascension as world power, 9 reactionary forces, 112 relations with Korea hampered by Cold War, 237 San Francisco Treaty, 18 territorial expansion, 56 treaty of annexation of Korea, 215 US occupation of, 56–7, 115, 223 victory over Russian empire, 215 view of as part of West during Cold War, 83 Yoshida Cabinet, 59 see also Japanese culture; Japanese memory problem Japanese-American internment reparations movement, 3, 183 Japanese culture aesthetic principles vs. moral aspirations, 54 concept of honour, 21 “empty centre” and communal harmony, 54–6, 63, 65, 66 importance of guilt greater at present than in past, 78 interpretations of war and ideology, 54–5 meaning of responsibility, 77–80 moral relativism, 12, 54, 66 pacifism, 53, 57–8, 59, 66n2 pragmatic aestheticism, 65 situational logic for conflict avoidance, 54, 55 values and interpersonal relations, 80 view of apologies as restorative of harmony and order, 6, 13, 22, 79, 89 see also Japanese memory problem Japanese Empire, 5 Japanese Hibakusha Association, 62 Japanese memory problem, 11–14 acknowledgment of existence of Korean hibakushas, 63–4

alleged white-washing of colonial past and war-time atrocities, 11 as antagonist in memory wars of Northeast Asia, 10 apologies to Asian countries for past aggression, 60 awareness of Asian perception of in 1980s and 1990s, 60 backlash against anti-Japan activities abroad, 87 commemoration of past inhibited by respect for Emperor, 22 commemoration of war criminals, 2, 11–12 conservatives’ justification of Japan’s actions as self-defense, 14 disparity between verbal expression and inner feelings of regret, 12–13 ideological interpretations of war, 54–5 impossibility of decisive apology and forgiveness, 85 interest in past and Asia in 1980s and 1990s, 60 lack of consensus on effects of atrocities, 13, 21 lack of urgency regarding wartime compensation, 10–11 Left’s push for war compensation and acknowledgment of war responsibility, 55 linking of atomic victimization to moral leadership, 57 mass media transfiguration of World War II narrative, 14 merging of social experience, history, and tradition, 84 public assessment of history from Meiji period to 1945, 60 and responsibility for national misdeeds, 13, 75–7, 86, 87 revisionists, and Nanjing Massacre, 120 Right’s advocacy of nationalism, 55 school textbooks, see textbooks, Japanese sensitivity revolution of 1990s, 86, 87 Takeshima island controversy, 229–41, 243

266

Index

Japanese memory problem – continued view of Koreans as dogmatic, 20 views of conservative politicians, 60–1 view of selves as war victims in post-war decades, 86, 251 Japanese Peace Movement, 170, 175 Japanese Privy Council, 216 Japanese Supreme Court, refusal of all reparations claims from China in 2007, 170, 184 Japanese war criminals, 124n23 Japan hands, 118, 123n10 Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty, 235 Japan Socialist Party (JSP), 36 Japan Teachers’ Union, 250 Jaspers, K., 85, 86 Jeju, S., 201 Jenkins, C., 65, 66 Jiang, J.-L., 10 Jiang, Q., 142n1 Jin, R., 244 Jiuguo Shibao, 107 Johnson, C., 83 Jones, S. F., 104 Jun, S. I., 10 Jung, C., 138 Kaldor, M., 233 Kamisaka, F., 38 Kang, E. H., 216 Kang, H., 197 Kang, J.-k., 208n15 Kashiwagi, G., 66n2 Kataya, M., 66n2 Kato, N., 85 Katz, P. R., 9 Katzenstein, P. J., 56–7, 59 Kawai, H., 54 Kellner, H., 6 Kenkanryu (Hating Korean Wave), 249 Kevin, D., 250 Kim, C., 18, 222 Kim, D. J., 49, 195, 203–4 Kim, D. S., 205 Kim, H.-D., 200, 235 Kim, Il, S., 199, 221 Kim, J.-k., 202 Kim, J. S., 56, 65 Kim, M., 4, 12, 130, 244, 247 Kim, S., 198

Kissinger, H., 158 Kitayama, S., 93n10 Kobayashi, T., 37 Kobayashi, Y., 50 Kodansha Bi-lingual Books, 55 Koenig, T., 250 Koga, M., 48 Koizumi, J. admiration of for persistent shrine visits, 44–5 sought support of Izokukai during 2001 presidential election, 44 visits to Yasukuni shrine, 43, 44–5, 248 Kojong, Emperor, 216, 218 Kolakowski, L., 85 K¯ omeit¯ o, 36, 49 K¯ ono, Y., 49 Koopmans, R., 250 Korea attempts to preserve cultural heritage, 208n98, 222 demonstrations against Japanese claims of Dokdo island, 231, 243 diplomatic protest of Koizumi’s visit to Yasukuni, 45 Grand National Party, 203 historical landmarks associated with monarchy, 213 100-year anniversary of loss of independence to Japan, 233 Japanese annexation and occupation, 10, 17, 80n6, 194, 215 June 10 Movement, 218 as kingdom, 10 Ky˘ ongbok Palace, reopening of National Museum, 222 left-right divide before 1945, 199 liberation from colonialism, 236 March First Movement, 218 minjung, 206 Movement Headquarters to Stop Worse Revision of Japanese History Textbooks, 251 nationalism, 208n9 “National Shame”, 231 pensions to descendants of former royal house, 222–3 “Pok Wan Dong” (Restoration Party), 218 post-war monarchy, 218–21

Index 267 protest of US indecision over East Sea islets, 235 “Public Opinion Society”, 218–19 relations with Japan hampered by Cold War, 237 reparations movement against Japan, 170, 174, 183–4, 224 “righteous armies”, 217 60-year anniversary of liberation from Japan, 231, 233 transformation from monarchical government into democracy, 214 US military occupation of, 221–5 see also Chos˘ on monarchy Korea, Republic of, see Korea Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association of Hiroshima, 61–2 Korean comfort women, 13, 80n6 reparations movement, 170, 174, 183–4 as source of Japanese shame, 77 Korean hibakushas, 58–9 numbers of, 67n5 request to Hiroshima officials to include in Museum, 61–2 Korean memory problem, 17–19, 205–8 Cheju uprising (4.3 Incident), 200–1 “cleansing of the past” movement, 195 and colonial experience, 18, 196–8 debate over Korean War, 3, 198–201 Dokdo/Takeshima Island controversy, 18–19, 230–41 and dynastic heritage, 213, 225 “historical justice” (yoksajok jungeui), 20 influence of moralistic Confucian mindset, 195–6 Kwangju tragedy, 18–27 May 1980, 203–5 manipulation of memories of cultural trauma by governments, 194–5 musicals transforming memory, 18 no dominant memory of the 1970s, 203 Park Chung Hee regime, 1961–1979, 201–3 and question of Korean collaboration with Japanese, 197–8 “recovery of honour” (myongyehoebok), 20

royal past as symbol of nationalism, 18 “settle the past” (kwago ch’ongsan), 18 shame and resentment, 20 as source of internal strife, 17, 18 “386” generation, 195 view of Japan’s apologies as opportunistic, 2, 6, 20, 22 view of royal family as tragic victims of imperialism, 216, 217 Korean memory studies, 10 Korean monarchy, see Chos˘ on monarchy A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History of Kim S˘ongsu (C. S. Kim), 198 Korean National Museum, 196 Korean War, 10, 17, 18, 194, 198–201, 235 meaning to Japan, 237 and Treaty of San Francisco, 234–5 Koschmann, J. V., 56, 72 Kraft, R. N., 55 Kriesi, H., 168 Kubik, J., 166 Kundera, M., 166 Kuomintang (Nationalists) acquittal of O. Yasutsugu, 109 commemoration of Nanjing, 110–111 official view of Japanese atrocities, 107 use of Nanjing to measure atrocities of antagonists in Civil War, 108 Kurosawa, A., 246 Kwangju “democracy festival”, 205 “The Kwangju People’s Righteous Uprising”, 204 Kwangju tragedy, 18–27 May 1980, 17, 194, 200, 203–5 Kwon, G.-S., 20 Kwon, H., 18, 233 Kwontaek, I., 199 Ky˘ ongbok Palace, 222, 225 “La Marseillaise”, 160 Lang, G., 7 The Last Empress, 18 Lee, C. K., 129 Lee, H. Y., 199 Lee, I., 80 Lee, K.-B., 4, 10 Lee, S. G., 59

268

Index

leftists Korean, 198, 199–200, 202 in post-war Japan, 36, 111, 115, 120 Lerner, R., 73 Lewis, L., 204, 205 Li, L., 169, 170 Liao, T., 15, 16 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 42–3 electoral defeat in 2009, 47 opposition to secular memorial, 47 and Yasukuni Shrine bill, 36–7 Lie, J., 93n10 lieux de mémoire, 232 Life and Death in Shanghai (Cheng), 133 Lifton, R. J., 55 L’Impartial, 109, 111n17n123n11 Lind, J. M., 247 Linenthal, T., 229 Lipset, S. M., 8 Liu, S. D., 244 Long March, 158–9 Lu, L., 137 Lun Riben (Discussing Japan), 249 Lutze, T. D., 109 Lynch, M., 9, 249 Lyotard, J.-F., 15 MacArthur, D., 109 exclusion of Takeshima from Japanese sovereignty, 234 MacArthur Line, 234 Mahon, J. E., Jr., 73, 92n3 Maines, D. R., 7, 148 Mainichi Newspaper, 60 Mainichi, S., 38, 39, 48 Manchester Guardian, coverage of Nanjing Massacre, 101, 105 Manchurian Incident, 4, 92n6, 111n18 manga (comic book) authors, 50 Man-gil, K., 195–6, 196, 197 Mannheim, K., 5 maoflag.net, 139 Mao’s Children in the New China (Jiang and Ashley), 135, 136 Mao, Z., 10, 15, 151, 153, 155 and Chinese national anthem, 151–2 death of, 129, 131 sacralization of image, 157 March First Movement, 218

“March of the Volunteers”, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156–7, 160 lyrics, 1978–1982, 163 lyrics, current and original, 161 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 45, 111n18 Margalit, A., 66n1 Markus, H. R., 93n10 Masako, Princess, 217, 223, 224 Matsudaira, N., 38, 40, 42 Matsudaira, Y., 38 Matsui, I., 110, 118 May 18 (Hwary˘ohan hyuga), 205 McAdam, D., 168, 169 McCammon, H. J., 168 McKeon, R., 93n16 Mead, G. H., 7, 148 media and dominant and alternative forms of memory, 138 effect on articulation of memories, 138–41 and genres of expression, 138–9 radiation victim testimonial printed by Japanese media, 57–8 Meiji elites, 5 Meiji emperor, 215, 216 Meiji period, 9 Meiji Restoration, 84 Mei, R. (Mei Ju-ao), 111, 118, 119n29 memoirs, 129, 130 memoirs of exile, 133–5 plot line and chronology, 134–5 resemblance to official Chinese discourse, 135 status of new master narrative about Chinese Cultural Revolution, 134 memorials, 129, 131 Cheju 4.3 Peace Memorial Hall, 201 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 12, 13, 59, 60–6, 67n10 virtual, 139 Memory, History, and Opposition Under State Socialism (Watson), 2–3 memory movement in an authoritarian context, 172 origin and development of, 170 two target categories, 183

Index 269 memory problem resolution of, 19–20 single-country approach to, 244–5 in the West, 1–2, 21–2 see also Chinese memory problem; Japanese memory problem; Korean memory problem; Northeast Asia memory problem Merrill, J., 200 Merton, R. K., 5 metaphysical guilt, 85, 86 mianzi (face), 176, 177 Miki, T., 39–40 Mikula, M., 139 Military Pension Law, 37 Mills, C. W., 86 Misztal, B. A., 139 Mitani, H., 252 Mitsuchi, S., 36, 49 Mitter, R., 3, 171 Miyazawa, K., 43 Mizumoto, K., 57 mnemonic genres diversity of, 129–30, 142 and media, 131 official resolutions and pronouncements, 133 open attitude about past, 131 as types of speech genres, 129 Mochizuki, M., 11, 12, 13, 55, 244, 247 monarchy exploitation of memories of in post-monarchical governments, 214 levels of attitudes toward, 214 see also Chos˘ on monarchy Mongolia alliance with Russia, 9 ethnic and racial similarities with Asia, 9 Mongolian People’s Republic, 9 monuments, 129, 130, 131, 138 moods and choice, 156–7 as commemorative media, 15 generated by national anthems, 149–50, 157–60 Moon, S., 202, 203 moral guilt, 85 moral responsibility, see responsibility

moral universalism, 167 and memory politics, 184 war reparations discourse, 181 Morihiro, H., 174 Mori, Y., 93n8 Morning Breeze (Lo), 133 Morris-Suzuki, T., 72 motivation as commemorative media, 15 generated by national anthems, 149–50 Mukden Incident, 42 Murakami, S., 37 Murase, M., 122n7 Murayama, T., 45 Murray, A. Y., 183 Nagasaki, bombing of, 53, 56–8, 116 Nakasone, Y. and pilgrimages to Yasukuni shrine, 40–4 Nanjing Massacre (Rape of Nanjing), 80, 92n6, 101 central focus of International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 109 and characterization of “Japanese devils”, 104–8 in Chinese Civil War, 104, 108–13 element of nationalist claims in 1970s, 104, 120–1 exposed to outside world through Western media, 104 memory of in China, 14–15, 117–19 “negative case” for theories of collective trauma, 103, 121 not commemorated by China until late 1970s, 14, 103, 121 as source of Japanese shame, 77 Nanjing safety zone, 118 Nanjing Treaty, 5 Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal, 109, 110 national anthems, 8 Chinese, 15–16 and collective memory, 147–64 and moods, 149, 156–7 and motivation, 149 and national identity construction, 147 and relation of memories of past to present reality, 148

270

Index

national independence, declarations of, 131 nationalism, 81 growth of in China, 3 hard, 80, 90 Korean, 208n9 and regret, 80–4 soft, 80, 90–1 National People’s Congress (NPC), 150, 152, 158, 170 National Socialist era, 71 national symbols, 8 NATO forces, bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade, 150 Nazi Germany, 5 Nelson, R. S., 60 Neo-Confucian ideology, 215 New China, 113, 117 New China Daily: “Recollections of the Great Japanese Massacre in Nanjing”, 118 Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs), 60 new media, 130, 142 New York Times, coverage of Nanjing Massacre, 101 NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai) Survey, 76 Nietzsche, F., 93n16 Nie, Y., 137 Nixon, R., 158 Noboru, T., 62 Nobusuke, K., 59 Nonaka, H., 47 non-governmental organizations, and reparations, 16–17, 184–5 Nora, P., 1, 80, 222, 232 Norihiro, K., 72 Northeast Asia countries of, 2 definition of, 9 the Great Contradiction, 4 growing economic and political interdependence, 2 nationalist forces, 253 postcolonial Cold War, 236–40 regional public sphere, 250–3 see also China; Japan; Korea Northeast Asia, historical contentions escalating cycle of, 247–9 interdependency of, 243, 244–6

modulating the cycle of, 249–53 necessary structural conditions of, 246–7 rise of nationalistic historical narratives, 248 Northeast Asia History Foundation, 252 Northeast Asia memory problem and collective memory, 7 debates and quarrels, 10–11 and demands of the state, 22 and disagreement about blame and responsibility, 22, 71 and disagreement about meaning of apology, 22 history and memory, 9–10 history wars, 229, 243 interdependent historical contentions in, 243, 244–7 memory of dehumanization under Japanese fascism, 5 negative memory, 2 past as relevant and unforgettable, 21 presence of past in business negotiations, 2 and public sphere, 253–4 surfeit of memory in Korea and China, 50 violations of honour vs. violations of dignity, 6, 22 North Vietnam, US bombing of, 117 nostalgia, narratives of, 136–7 nuclear power, 53 O’Brien, K. J., 169, 170 Ogata, S., 83 Oglesby, E., 104 Oguma, E., 216 Ohira, M., 40 Okamura, Y., 109 Olick, J. K., 4, 74n4, 102, 129, 130, 132, 166 Olin, M., 60 Oliver, R. T., 221 Onishi, N., 147 online exhibitions, 139 “On Regulations of War Reparations and Victim Reparations in International Law” (Tong), 172 oppression, cultural differences in reaction to, 88

Index 271 oral histories, 129 “original innocence”, 114, 115 The Origins of the Korean War (Cumings), 199 Orr, J., 60 Orwell, G., 1984, 166 Orwellian approach, 166, 185 Outcry from a Red Guard Imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution (Lu), 137–8 Ozaki, Y., 66n2 Pacific War, 46, 56, 64–5, 75, 77n7, 218, 221, 252 pacifism, Japanese and bombing of Hiroshima, 56–8 and “empty centre”, 54–6 movements, 12 Paek, M., 202 Pak, K., 220 Pan, Y., 136 parallax vision, 18, 233, 235–6 Park, C. H., 244 and memory problems, 201–3 regime, 10, 17, 194, 195, 198, 206, 224 Park, G., 198, 202, 203 Park, S., 202 Parsons, T., 8 patriotism advocacy, 80, 91 patterns of culture, 8 peace, classical definition of, 53 Pearl Harbor, Japanese attack on, 56 Peers School, 216 Pelikan, J., 8 People’s Daily, 109, 122n8, 123n9, 150 commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 116 on Communists’ Japanese policy, 112 coverage of Japanese leftist groups, 111 publishing of new national anthem, 153–4 on reasons for adopting “March of the Volunteers” as national anthem, 152 “The Situation of the Japanese People’s Struggle”, 113–14 People’s Republic of China, see China Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War (Fujitani, White, and Yoneyama), 3 Pfaff, S., 169 photographs, 129, 135, 137, 138

poison gas attacks, 105 political center importance to memory of Nanjing Massacre, 103–4 influence on memory of victims, 102–3 state as, 102 political compromise, 64–6 political correctness, 92n2 political guilt, 85 political opportunity structure in an authoritarian society, 170 core and peripheral components of, 169, 177, 186 defined, 167 discursive dimension, 168–70 four quadrants of, 169–70 organizational dimension of, 168–70 political opportunity structure, in China core ideologies in 1990s, 172, 186 discourses on stability and Four Principles, 172 and reparation movements before 1995, 174 political power, five dimensions of, 148–9 politics of memory as both discourse and collective process, 168 and Chinese use of war memories as a legitimizing ideology, 171 dominant approach to study of, 171 moods and motivations and, 155–7 and theme of “sufferings-struggleliberation”, 113 as zero-sum memory game, 167 politics of regret, 4 in Northeast Asia, 6 state and individual, 74 in the West, 22 postcolonial history and Chos˘ on monarchy, 214, 218–25 and parallax vision, 233 question of effect of colonial politics on present history, 232 post-honour world, 73 postmodernism models of memory, 7 in Western cultures, 55

272

Index

Potsdam Declaration, 111, 112, 114 power cultural, of national anthems, 148–9, 155–9, 179 of internet, 16, 139 and memory changes, 11 political, five dimensions of, 148–9 symbolic, of monarchy, 214 pragmatist models of memory, 7 Pratt, K., 10 presentist model of collective memory, 130, 185 and Chinese national anthem, 160 interdependence with cultural mode, 148 and Orwellian approach, 166 The President’s Last Bang (K˘ uddae k˘ usaramd˘ ul), 202 Princess Tokhye, 18 principle component analysis, 89–92 The Private Life of Chairman Mao (Li), 133 progressive narratives of American redemption, and Holocaust memories, 104, 121 of the Anti-Japanese War, 125n27 of Australian founding, and suffering of native peoples, 121–2 of Chinese Communists and memories of Nanjing Massacre as cultural trauma, 104, 121, 122 protests anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, 42, 45 Chinese protests over Japanese textbooks, 147, 150, 155, 159–60, 164n1 Japanese protests against Chinese anti-Japan protests, 147 public sphere formation, and development of democracy, 249 “Pursuing Historical Truth and the Dignity of the Human” (Wang Xuan), 181 Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, 10 Ranger, T. O., 166 rank-ordered societies, and honour, 72 Rashomon, 246

realist model of memory, 7 rebellious civil society, and collective memory, 166, 185 Record of Blood and Tears of the Fallen Capital (Guo Qi), 106 Red Azalea (Min), 133, 134 Red Flower of China (Zhai), 133 Red Guard Movement, 10, 132, 134 rebel Red Guards, narratives of, 137–8 regional public sphere, 249, 252, 253 regret Christian norms of, 93n16 and cultures of honour and dignity, 72–4 of Japanese students for past atrocities, 78–80 and modern commemorative activities, 22 and nationalism, 80–4 politics of, 4, 6 and responsibility, 22, 74–7 sources of dishonour, disgrace, and shame in Japanese history, 74, 75–6 Reid, T. R., 173 Reischauer, E. O., 5 Remembering and Forgetting: The Legacy of War and Peace in East Asia (Gong and West), 3 reparations movements Japanese-American internment, 3, 183 Korean “comfort women”, 170, 174, 183–4 see also Chinese World War II Victims’ Reparations Movement (CWRM) residual attitudes toward monarchy, 214 resolution, 148, 149 resource mobilization, 168 responsibility, 85, 94n16 absolute, 85 acceptance, 91 and blame, 86 contingent, 85 and Japanese culture, 13, 75–80, 86, 87 and regret, 22, 74–7 and Western culture, 22 retrievability, of political power, 148–9 rhetorical force, and political power, 148, 149 Richardson, K., 139

Index 273 Ricoeur, P., 54 Rieff, P., 8 Riesman, D., 8, 78n10 “rightful resistance”, 169–70 rightists Japanese, 39, 43–7, 62, 174, 198, 251 Korean, 206–7 Risse, T., 253 Robbins, J., 102 Robinson, M. E., 197, 198, 201 Roh, M. H., 195, 198, 199, 202, 225 Rorty, R., 7 Rosett, A., 80 royal families, 8 see also Chos˘ on monarchy Rozman, V., 4 Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Jager and Mitter), 3 “ruse of history”, 246 Russia, 9 Russo-Japanese War, 235 and colonization of Korea, 230, 232–4 Saaler, S., 56 Saburo, I., 250 Saito, H., 4, 83 Sakaito, S., 66n2 Sakamoto, S., 224 San Francisco Peace Treaty, 18, 37–8, 224, 238, 239 Sanguang Zhengce (“kill-all, burn-all, loot-all”), 106 Sat¯ o, E., 39, 67n9 Saunders, J., 201 Schmid, A., 244 Schoenhals, M., 133 Schudson, M., 8, 14, 130, 141, 148, 160 Schuman, H., 4, 7 Schwan, G., 71–2, 85 Schwartz, B., 4, 7, 12, 13, 22, 54, 130, 142, 148, 149, 159 Selden, M., 9, 250 “sensitive people” (minggan renwu), 173 sent-down campaign, 136–7 Seo, J., 244 Seoul 1945 (TV serial), 18 Seoul National University Museum, 213 Seraphim, F., 36, 49

shame, 6, 20, 74, 75–6, 77 see also honour and shame cultures Shen, S., 244, 246 Shibuichi, D., 43, 50, 244 Shils, E., 7, 8, 121 Shimazu, N., 230 Shindong, A., 20 Shin, G. W., 196, 197, 198, 244, 248 Shinj¯ o, M., 215 Shinobu, K., 106–7 Shinoda, T., 244 Shint¯ o purification rites, 40 Shin, Y.-H., 195–6, 196–7 shrines, 8 Chinreisha (Spirit Pacification Shrine), 38 see also Yasukuni shrine Shuppan, C., 57 Shuppan, K., 57 Sichuan earthquake, 185 Simmel, G., 93n12 A Single Tear (Wu), 133 Sino-Japanese war, 45, 92n6, 167 Sino-Korean Peoples League, 220 Sino-US relations, 158 Sivan, E., 167 Smith, A. D., 80, 166 Snow, D. A., 168, 172 Society for the Making of New School Textbooks in History, 248, 251 soft nationalism, 80, 90–1 Soh, C. S., 184 S¯ okagakkai religious organization, 36 Solidarity for Asia Peace and History Education, 251–2 Some of Us (Zhong), 135, 136 Song, B. N., 201 songs, of Chinese Cultural Revolution, 137 Sono, A., 54 Son of the Revolution (Heng and Shapiro), 133 Sons and Daughters in a Time of Storm (film), 151 Spillman, L., 7, 14, 15, 102, 104, 121, 166, 167, 245 “Star-Spangled Banner”, 160 State Shint¯ o, 36 state socialism, and forced forgetting and remembering, 166

274

Index

state-society relationship, and reparation movements, 177, 184 Statham, P., 250 Straughn, J. B., 169 Stueck, W., 10 Suh, J.-J., 19, 246 Suh, S. C., 196, 244 Sun, L., 173 Sunjong, Emperor, 215, 216, 217, 218 Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), 57, 67n3, 221, 223 Suzuki, Z., 40 symbolism and collective memory, 102 and commemoration, 1 and cultural objects, 156 of monarchy, 18, 214 national, 8 Syngman Rhee administration, 195, 214, 220, 221 preservation of properties of former royal house as historical cultural properties, 222 treatment of former royal house, 222, 224 Tadokora, M., 83 Taebaek sanmaek (film), 199 Taeg˘ uggi (film), 200 T’aep’y˘ong ch’˘onha (Ch’ae Manshik), 197 Taft-Katsura Agreement, 235 Taish¯ o government, 216 Taiwan, 9 Takahashi, T., 46, 72, 85, 244 Takaki, R., 56 Takashi, H., 62, 64 Takashi, Y., 108, 124n23 Takenaka, A., 253 Takeshima, see Dokdo/Takeshima Island controversy Tanaka, A., 43, 44, 45 Tanaka, N., 36, 37, 38, 40, 41 Tayama, K., 66n2 Taylor, C., 6, 73 Tei, T., 83 Terdiman, R., 1 Tewksbury, D. G., 215 textbooks, Chinese, first mention of Nanjing Massacre in 1979, 116, 120–1

textbooks, Japanese A Bright Society, 57 caution about atrocities of World War II, 77 Chinese and Korean concerns about, 147, 150, 155, 159–60, 164n1, 250–1 common history textbook project, 252 The Country’s Footsteps, 57 Japan and the World, 57 and Japanese memory problem, 15, 19, 55, 57 Korean Movement Headquarters to Correct Japan’s Textbooks, 251 “Neighboring Countries Clause”, 251 New History Textbook, 55, 164n1 1982 textbook revisions, 77 textbooks, Korean, focus on resistance by Koreans to Japanese oppression, 197 Theater Missile Defense, 174 Thurston, A. F., 10 “Tiananmen embargo”, 173 Tian, H., 151, 153, 154, 155 Tiedemann, A. E., 5 Timperley, H. J., 105, 122n1 T¯ oj¯ o, H., 43 T¯ oj¯ o, K., 46, 49 T¯ oj¯ o, T., 43 Tokita, H., 37 Tokyo Trial, see International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial) Tong, Z., 170, 172, 173 Torpey, J. C., 4, 104, 184 traditionalism, 80, 91 traditionalist model of memory, 7 transitional justice, 166–7 trauma victims, suffering of and local symbolism, 102 Treat, J. W., 9 Treaty of Portsmouth, 235 Treaty of San Francisco, and Korean War, 234–5 Trouillot, M.-R., 87 Tsukuba, F., 38, 49 Tsukurukai association, 55 Tuchman, G., 7 Tutu, D. M., 101 21 Demands against China, 92n6

Index 275 Ûi, Prince, 216, 218 Unger, J., 142 Unit 731 in China, 92n6 United States “Japan bashing”, 60 post-World War II shift in foreign policy, 233 preoccupation with communism, 18 shift from anti-fascist alliance, 233 universal revolution, theory of, 114 unmaskers, 5 The Unpredictability of the Past: Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in U.S.-East Asian Relations (Gallicchio), 3 Urabe, R., 48 Utopia, 139–40, 141 Vachon, J., 248 Van de Steeg, M., 253 victim consciousness, 205 Victoria, Queen, 214 Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, 130 virtual memorials, 139 Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution, 139, 140, 141 Wagatsuma, H., 80 Wagner, E. W., 215 Wagner-Pacifici, R., 130, 139, 147 Wakamiya, Y., 42, 83 Walker, S., 56 Wan, M., 4 Wang, B., 129 Wang, C. W., 220 Wang, H., 142n1 Wang, X., 176, 179, 182, 185 War-Bereaved Families Association for Peace, 43 war guilt, typology of, 85 War-injured or sick and War-dead Survivors Relief Law, 37 war testimonies, 55 War Victim’s Relief Bureau, 37–9, 38 Washington, G., 148 Watanabe, T., 54 Watson, R. S., 3, 10, 104, 166 Weber, M., 8, 73n3 web sites, 135 of Cultural Revolution memories, 139 Wertsch, J. V., 129

West, P., 3 Western cultures, 2 Western memory problem, 1–2, 21–2 West German Soderweg, 83 What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China (Timperley), 105 White, G., 3 Whiting, A. S., 42, 43 Wickham, C., 129 Wickham, J. A., 204 Wild Swans (Chang), 133, 136 Williams, R., 214 Wilson, W., 218 Winkler, H. A., 83 Winter, J. M., 167 Wolf Totem, 10 wounded honour, 87 Wu, G., 244 Wu, X., 42 Xinhua Ribao (New China Daily), 107 Xu, B., 151, 156 Xu, Bin, 16–17, 245 Xu, D., 118–19 Xu, X., 14, 15, 245 Yamashita, H., 221, 222 Yamazaki, J., 12 Yamazaki, M., 12 Yang, D., 119 Yang, G., 4, 15, 130, 139, 169 Yao, W., 142n1 Yasukuni shrine, 11–12, 230 Chinreisha (Spirit Pacification Shrine), 38, 49 choice of war dead to enshrine, 46 and conflict about historical memory and national identity, 45–7 criteria for “private” pilgrimages, 39 and enshrinement of war criminals, 37–9 international controversy under Koizumi, 44–5 internationalization of controversy, 40–7 issue of de-enshrinement of Class A war criminals, 42–3, 47–8, 50 key symbol for nationalist right, 46

276

Index

Yasukuni shrine – continued opposition of business and diplomatic communities to prime ministerial visits to, 46 options for changing, 47–9 possible solutions to controversy, 47–50 private vs. official pilgrimages to, 39–40 proposal to establish national secular memorial, 48, 49–50 symbol of Japan shirking war responsibilities, 46 visits of prime ministers to, 13, 41 Year of Korea-Japanese Friendship, 231, 236 Yeo, H., 244 Yerushalmi, Y. H., 8 Yeungnam University, 238 Yi, P., 220, 224 Yi, T., 219 Yi, U., 213 Yiwu bacterial weapon case, 175–8, 182 Yiwu city, Zhejiang Province, 174 Yokino, A., 66n2 Yomiuri Newspaper, 60 Yoneyama, L., 3, 56n10

Y˘ ong, Prince, 217, 218 demotion to commoner status in Japan under US occupation, 223, 224 1963 homecoming, 213, 224 residence in Tokyo, 221 Yoshida, R., 48 Yoshida, S., 35, 109, 224 Yoshida, T., 105, 110, 116, 118n23 Yoshino, S., 66n2 Young-Soo, K., 233–4 Yu, C., 10 Yuan, J. D., 244 Yukichi, F., 93n14 Y¯ ush¯ ukan war museum, 45, 49 Zarrow, P., 133, 135 Zeller, R. A., 89 Zerbubavel, E., 7, 166 Zerbubavel, Y., 166 Zhang, A., 10 Zhang, C., 142n1 Zhang, G., 15, 16 Zhang, L., 15, 16 Zhang, T., 4, 142 Zheng, Y., 139 Zhou, E., 152, 156–7, 160 Zhou, L., 137 Zhou-Tanaka Communiqué, 120 Zhu, J., 245