'History Wars' and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea: The Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists

214 Pages·2017·3.48 MB·English

by  Michael Lewis (eds.)

‘HISTORY WARS’ AND
RECONCILIATION IN
JAPAN AND KOREA
The Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists
Edited by
MICHAEL LEWIS
‘History Wars’ and Reconciliation
in Japan and Korea
Michael Lewis
Editor
‘History Wars’
and Reconciliation
in Japan and Korea
T R H ,
HE OLES OF ISTORIANS
ARTISTS AND ACTIVISTS
Editor
Michael Lewis
Department of Japanese Studies
University of Sydney
Sydney , Australia
ISBN 978-1-137-54102-4 ISBN 978-1-137-54103-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-54103-1
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P : R P
REFACE ETROSPECT AND ROSPECT
N A ’ H W
IN ORTHEAST SIA S ISTORY ARS
So far, Northeast Asia’s history wars have been a battle of words, at times
made more emphatic by occasional protest demonstrations. That the
exchanges over war and remembrance have been far more peaceful than
the events they describe does not mean the confl ict is less than genuine.
In fact, our historical identities, whether created by fi rst-hand experience
or by waves of secondary infl uences, shape how we see ourselves and the
others that make up the world. We may not know the who–when–why
particulars of history, but that does nothing to limit our capacity to make
sweeping historical judgments based on our received sense of the past.
But what are the history wars that carry such weight in forming both
the individual and collective understanding of the past and present in
Northeast Asia? As demonstrated by contributors’ chapters in this collec-
tion, the answer is plural and changing.
The plurality can be seen in the various disciplinary categories used to
study them. The confl ict over historical accounts in textbooks, for exam-
ple, poses questions for the political scientist as much as for the histo-
rian. Similarly the use of fi lms, TV, and popular social media in generating
potent if usually inaccurate pictures of prewar, wartime, and postwar pasts
creates problems ripe for study by analysts in such fi elds as literature, media
studies, and sociology. The chapters in this volume have been selected to
demonstrate this variety in several of its representative forms.
Compounding the complexity of history wars plural is the tendency for
such confl icts to change over time. As this volume enters its fi nal stage of
editing, two developments, as fresh as they are important, make clear this
changeable character. The fi rst is the announcement by the foreign min-
v
vi PREFACE: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT IN NORTHEAST ASIA’S HISTORY WARS
isters of both South Korea and Japan of their intent to resolve defi nitively
the “comfort women” issue. The agreement is still under construction,
but offi cial statements from both governments pledge the making and
acceptance of an offi cial Japanese apology issued by Prime Minister Abe
Shinzō together with a one-billion yen relief fund for the 46 surviving
Korean victims. This major policy shift forward followed close on the heels
of another in the opposite direction when South Korea’s President Park
Geun-hye rammed through national changes to unify historical interpre-
tations presented in Korean textbooks. The step met with violent street
demonstrations in Seoul to block a new nationalistic presentation of the
nation’s past. Commentators noted that Park’s preference for a top-down
centralized method of textbook selection and emphasis on patriotic con-
tent over historical accuracy were just the kind of measures encouraged for
Japanese schools by Japan’s most strident rightists.
As chapters in this volume make clear, particularly the overview
“Introduction” by Peter Duus, the debates over wartime responsibility,
guilt, and retribution are not age-old and unchanging but have a shape-
shifting quality readily apparent in the decades since 1945. This plural
quality in part results from the emergence of new facts of what was done
during the war and left undone during the postwar peace. A clear example
of this is the sound of new voices detailing the system of “comfort women”
sexual slavery and calling out for acknowledgement and reckoning. Yuki
Tanaka’s “‘Comfort Women Bashing’ and Japan’s Social Formation of
Hegemonic Masculinity” considers the ramifi cations for contemporary
Japanese society of what we now know.
The tendency of interpretations to shift, of course, is not simply
because more is known today than was known before. The fl uid character
of the history wars throughout the period bears witness to the utility of
the new or revised angle. Since 1945, they have served various political
purposes, and prospects for this continuing are beyond doubt. This qual-
ity of the history wars is reminiscent of the Russian joke that observes
that the future is assured; it is just the past that keeps changing. The way
the past has been presented in schools in Korea and Japan is discussed
in Ku Nan Hee’s “East Asian History in Korean High Schools” and my
“Japanese Textbooks in the Asian History Wars: The Waning Importance
of Weapons of Mass Instruction.” Both chapters emphasize the tendency
of the history wars to morph into new confl icts depending on contempo-
rary political circumstances. But the direction is not inevitably retrograde
PREFACE: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT IN NORTHEAST ASIA’S HISTORY WARS vii
and admits room for a degree of optimism on the classroom-teaching level
and, as recent developments indicate, on a wider political front as well.
The various sides in the Asian history wars, particularly governments
and affi liated institutions—ministries of education, schools, museums, and
other memory sites—have obviously reshaped interpretations in accord
with prevailing political winds. Popular culture and the mass media have
additionally infl uenced offi cial views through movies, novels, and manga.
The result is that the pot is always being stirred, albeit more energetically
during some periods than others. James Orr’s “The Politics of Inclusion
and Exclusion in Postcolonial Japan: State, Shrine, and Honor for Ethnic
Veterans, the Fallen, and their Bereaved” delves into the intersection of
popular memory and political manipulation involving the Yasukuni Shrine,
as well as legal issues that ensnare one-time colonial subjects, contempo-
rary offi cialdom in Japan and neighboring countries, and legal institutions.
Takashi Yoshida addresses the related issue of memory politics, particu-
larly the treatment of colonial identity after colonization has ended, in his
“Remembering Colonial Korea in Postwar Japan.” Both Orr and Yoshida
highlight the fact that the history wars create new interpretations of the
past for domestic political purposes as well as international contestation.
Understanding the history wars in their full variety and changing forms
is as important as it is challenging. The contributors to this volume speak
to this in considering not only the history of the history wars, but the pros-
pects for the future direction of confl ict. The approach in several chapters,
for example in those by Ku, Duus, Tanaka, and Yoshida, is explicitly pre-
scriptive. In analyzing the past, assessing causes and consequences, recom-
mendations are made for the future.
The authors of chapters dealing with cultural fi gures and the use of the
past are less direct in their recommendations. Pankaj Mohan’s “A Fresh
Look at the Korea–Japan History War,” Yasuko Claremont’s “Young
Poets Under the Shadow of War: Yun Dong-ju and Tachihara Michizō,”
and Roman Rosenbaum’s “Oda Makoto and Literary Reconciliation”
discuss the lives and works of poets, essayists, and historians less with an
eye for policy recommendation than to explore the constants running
through the contemporary history wars that were present during and after
wartime.
The chapters in this volume, in taking diverse approaches and arriving
at different conclusions, capture the very quality of Asian history wars. In
each chapter, there is room for both optimism and concern. Again, this is
much like the actual state of the ongoing history wars and the processes of
viii PREFACE: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT IN NORTHEAST ASIA’S HISTORY WARS
governments, nongovernmental organizations, teachers’ groups, artists,
and individual activists who continue to invoke the past and challenge our
memory of it.
Sydney, Australia M ichael   Lewis
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
A well-worn sports cliché is that every success is a team effort. While this
collection of chapters is undoubtedly the collaborative work of many gen-
erous colleagues, Dr. Yasuko Claremont of the University of Sydney’s
Department of Japanese Studies has been the star player. Dr. Claremont
secured foundation support for the multiyear series of conferences that
has produced this volume and promises additional studies to come. The
fi rst two conferences convened in 2011 at the University of Sydney on the
theme of “The Asia-Pacifi c War: Return, Representation, Reconciliation”
followed the next year by “Looking Back on the Asia-Pacifi c War: Art,
Cinema, and Media.” The third meeting in 2014, “Initiatives towards
Peace and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacifi c Basin,” was at the Academy of
Korean Studies, Seongnam, Korea, where scholars and graduate students
from Korea, Japan, the USA, and Australia met for extensive discussions
on history, memory, and the direction of postwar reconciliation.
Without Dr. Claremont’s indefatigable work, as organizer and contribu-
tor, the project would never have reached its current stage. In many respects,
she has led in all the roles mentioned in this volume’s subtitle: historian,
artist, and activist. Dr. Claremont’s foundational work and ability to bring
together colleagues, academics, and activists has lightened my role as a com-
paratively new team member and editor of this fi rst collection of chapters.
The Japan Foundation provided generous grants for each of the major
conferences that yielded this volume’s chapters. The political sensitivities
inherent in contemporary studies of history and memory in modern Korean–
Japanese relations required courage on the Japan Foundation’s part.
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In Korea, the Academy of Korean Studies provided project support
through its 2014 international conference on reconciliation, nongovern-
mental organizations, and the future of the Asian “history wars.” The
Academy’s members demonstrated an encouraging willingness in allowing
their organization to be the vessel to hold such a heady and at times politi-
cally charged mixture of deeply felt opinions touching on historical mem-
ory and prescriptions for the future. The Academy’s President Professor
Lee Bae Yong captured the importance of this meeting in her opening
remarks on the fundamental importance of the Korea–Japan relationship
and the need to fi nd common ground despite the pain that at times comes
with the search.
Professor Pankaj Mohan, the lead organizer on the Academy of Korean
Studies (AKS) side, was instrumental to the meeting’s success. Among
his colleagues at the Academy, Jun Seong Ho, Director, The Centre
for Comparative Korean Studies; Lee Jong Cheol, Professor, Faculty of
Humanities; Han Hyeong Jo, Professor, Faculty of International Korean
Studies; Moon Ok Pyo, Professor, Faculty of Culture and Arts; Lee Gil
Sang, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences; and Lee Wan Bom, Professor,
Faculty of Social Sciences all enriched the discussion through their critical
commentary. Questions and critiques by AKS postgraduate students also
inform the content of the chapters that fi nally appear in this volume.
The University of Sydney has added to the support of the Japan
Foundation and AKS. Dr. Jeffrey Riegel, former Head of School, School of
Languages and Cultures, deserves particular thanks for local funding sup-
port. A number of colleagues in the Department of Japanese Studies also
shared their time and talents. University of Sydney professors Judith Keene
(History), Elizabeth Rechniewski (French Studies), and Peter Armstrong
(Architecture) also have been enthusiastic supporters and contributors to
the reconciliation project from its inception. At Palgrave, Anne Schult and
Anca Pusca shephered the manuscript toward publication. I Finally, thanks
are due to David Kelly, text editor for J apanese Studies , for his ever patient
and precise editorial work.