Tag: Japan

The file photo shows Japanese Emperor Hirohito (R) reading an address for a dinner party in Tokyo on Sept. 6, 1984, held in honor of a state visit to Japan by then South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan. The address contained wordings to express regret over Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Diplomatic documents released by the South Korean foreign ministry on March 30, 2015, show that Japan believed in 1984 that it was “inevitable” for its emperor to make comments that express regret over its wartime wrongdoing. (Yonhap)

The Stars & Stripes has this sad story of a sailor trying to find this daughter who disappeared with her mother in Japan 40 years ago:

It’s been 45 years since James Walker went to war in Vietnam, leaving behind his daughter and her mother in Japan.

The young sailor thought they’d be reunited once he got back from deployment on the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany. When the letters he wrote to his young family were returned marked “wrong address” Walker realized something was wrong. Almost four decades later, he’s still searching for them.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully Mr. Walker is able to find his lost daughter.

Shown is a capture of CCTV footage released by the Korean Cultural Center in Tokyo on March 26, 2015, on an arson attack on the building in downtown Tokyo earlier in the day. (Yonhap)

Japan’s Abe Invited to Address Joint Session of US Congress http://t.co/M3NqbIVkER pic.twitter.com/jUDOw90yEg

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) March 22, 2015

I guess just the fact that all three foreign ministers are meeting is progress, but I don’t expect anything to become of it:

For the first time in nearly three years, the foreign ministers of China, South Korea and Japan will meet Saturday for trilateral talks that could pave the way for a new era of cooperation – or prolong festering animosities rooted in the World War II era.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will host his Chinese and Japanese counterparts, Wang Yi and Fumio Kishida, in Seoul for the discussions, which were last held in 2012.

The meeting is seen as a possible prelude to a three-way summit between leaders of the countries later this year. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met briefly on the sidelines of the APEC world leaders’ gathering in Beijing in November, but have never had a bilateral summit since they both came to power in 2012. Nor has Abe had a summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Park and Xi, however, have met repeatedly, and warmly.

The 70th anniversary of the war’s end will be marked this summer in Asia with a variety of high-profile events, including a military parade in Beijing. Seven decades since Tokyo’s surrender, Japan, South Korea and China have strong economic ties, but deep strains remain, inhibiting collaboration on a range of matters including maritime issues and North Korea.

Frostiness between South Korea and Japan – both U.S. allies – and closer relations between South Korea and China have complicated Washington’s diplomacy in the region amid China’s continuing rise.  [LA TImes]

Here is why it is not in the interest of China or South Korea to resolve these issues with Japan:

At the same time, leaders in China and South Korea often see an advantage to stirring up nationalist, anti-Japan sentiments at home as a way of shoring up political support. Blatant anti-Japanese propaganda appears regularly in state-run media in China, for instance. And conflicting claims to uninhabited islands have also marred relations between Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul.

Whether the three nations now have the will to break their cycle of recriminations and defensiveness remains to be seen. World leaders from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have been urging all three countries in recent weeks to forge a new path.

To be fair members of the Japanese government also use the historical issues to push their own domestic agendas as well.  Just visit the Yushukan Museum next to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and see the absurd historical revisionism going on there that many on the Japanese far political right support.  If the Japanese government was serious about resolving these historical issues this is what I recommend they should do.

Interesting analysis over at Popular Gusts in regards to the below Joong Ang Ilbo article which a Korean lawmaker is complaining about how Japanese textbooks depict the March 1st Korean independence movement back in 1919:

History textbooks in Korea and Japan are still riddled with inaccuracies in their descriptions of Korea’s March 1 Independence Movement 96 years ago, the catalysis of Korea’s fight against Japan’s colonial rule (1910-1945).

Rep. Han Sun-kyo, a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party, told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday that he analyzed Korean and Japanese history textbooks he received from the Seoul-based think tank Northeast Asian History Foundation and Korea’s Ministry of Education and found the results troubling.

He said a “considerable number of Japanese history textbooks are distorting the facts or minimizing the significance of the March 1 Independence Movement.”

March 1, 1919, remains a touchstone of Korean nationalism as the day when activists declared Korea’s independence and triggered large-scale peaceful demonstrations against Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945).

One Japanese middle school history textbook published by Jiyusa says the March 1 independence movement in Seoul “initially was planned as a non-violent rally but gradually became a large-scale movement,” and that “the army was mobilized and because of a clash on both sides, there were many casualties.”  (……)

Korea has been alarmed by Japanese right-wingers’ historical revisionism, which glosses over or denies wartime aggressions and trivializes the victims of its colonial rule over Korea. (……)

But Han added that Korean history textbooks also have inaccuracies, and there are many cases where they “describe the non-violent March 1 movement as violent” or do not mention key events or figures such as Yoo Gwan-soon’s martyrdom  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

However, there is only one problem with the lawmakers complaints, the March 1st movement was violent.  Popular Gusts provides the analysis:

The problem is, the textbooks describing the independence movement as being “violent” are being accurate. While some of the Japanese dispatches during the Samil Uprising reported in the New York Times described violence on the part of demonstrators, I didn’t realize just how violent the protests were until I read Frank Baldwin’s “Participatory Anti-Imperalism:The 1919 Independence Movement” (Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 1, 1979, pp. 123-162). One assumes this contains some of the material in his dissertation, “The March First Movement: Korean Challenge, Japanese Response” (Columbia University, 1969). In his article, he notes that between March 1 and April 10, 1919, there were “approximately 667 peaceful demonstrations” as compared with “approximately 460 violent incidents.”   (…….)

The tale of “peaceful Samil demonstrations” serves the cause of depicting Koreans as a peaceful people beset upon by marauding outsiders; that is to say, victims with no responsibility for their actions. [Popular Gusts]

You can read much more act the link in regards to much of the South Korean myth making in regards to the March 1st Independence Movement. I always appreciate well documented historical analysis like this that cuts through the historical revisionism so prevalent in Korea today.

China-Japan-South Korea Relations Inching Forward http://t.co/lGbWGpsiAw

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) March 16, 2015

Regarding Korea, China and Japan’s troubled modern history, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman seemed to side with Tokyo’s stance when she said, “Of course … it is not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy. But such provocations produce paralysis, not progress.” By Park Yong-seok

This speech was probably not a good idea:

Washington said on Monday that there has been no change in U.S. policy, part of an attempt to rectify controversial remarks made by an American diplomat that seemed to position the United States with Japan on historical issues with its neighboring Asian countries.

On Monday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf expressed surprise over how Seoul had interpreted comments made by Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.

“We were, frankly, a little surprised to see that some interpreted her remarks as being directed at any particular leader in the region,” she said.

On Friday, Sherman stated in an address at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington that, “It’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy,” words that seemed to be directed at South Korean President Park Geun-hye or Chinese President Xi Jinping, though the Asian leaders were not specifically identified.

Sherman’s remarks, which appeared to trivialize sensitive historical issues, were met with strong backlash in Seoul over the weekend, namely her claim that Seoul and Beijing “have quarreled with Tokyo over so-called comfort women from World War II.”

“There are disagreements about the content of history books and even the names given to various bodies of water,” she continued, likely referring to the dispute over the name of the body of water between Korea and Japan, designated as the East Sea in Seoul and the Sea of Japan in Tokyo.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but publicly calling out leaders like this is sure to backfire and entrench their positions.  Something as sensitive as the comfort women issue I think requires more quiet back room diplomacy.  The Chinese government is never going to stop using historical issues to drum up anti-Japanese sentiment to turn attention away from major domestic issues when needed.  The South Korean government does this as well, the best example is when former President Lee Myung-bak was plagued by scandals so he took a trip to Dokdo to bash the Japanese and his poll numbers rose.  However, if the Japanese right wing would stop making provocative statements in regards to this issue more traction in regards to reconciliation between Korea and Japan could happen.

South Korean activists give an anti-Japanese performance in front of the Japanese Embassy in downtown Seoul on Feb. 22, 2015, to condemn Japan’s territorial claim to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo. (Yonhap)