Fred Bottley

“History,” announced the self-dramatising Stephen Dedalus, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” Less floridly but no less significantly, T.S. Eliot saw history as either servitude or freedom. “What can be done?” The answer can only be one nerved by idealism and the unwelcome act of self-confrontation. We must help each other to awaken from the nightmare or the servitude by recognizing our own roles in the origins of the problem. We must face history.

Economic self-interest often seems to overcome the barriers erected by chauvinism. Unfortunately, contrary to the proclamations of those who would sanctify capitalism, the feet of the warrior too often tread the paths beaten by the trader. Only by rising above tribalism to achieve a unity of the spirit can real community be attained. Reconciliation, which is the condition for progress to a communal future, is effected by an often necessarily painful honesty. To identify saints and sinners, perpetrators and victims, suffices only to perpetuate rancorous segregation. We must first reconcile before talking of an era of reconciliation. And the roots of reconciliation lie in education – proper education, not an aggressively proclaimed manifesto of self-interest and self-justification.

When I taught ESL in Toronto my classes consisted of young Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. The students often socialised together, and some went further and found romance with someone from another country. The strident, understandable dislike of Japan usually expressed in China or Korea was completely absent from the personal relationships that I observed. On the other hand, if I ask a class of middle or high school students here in Korea about Japan, the responses are unequivocally and unanimously hostile. This is true even of students who have travelled in Japan, who know Japanese people, and who may even love their native Japanese teacher. The personal perspective cedes to the national.

Of course, we can all chant the tribal mantras. Ask an Englishman about Germans, and he might offer the vilest verbal sludge dredged up from the more vulgar dailies. Significantly, the school textbooks do not agree with the tabloids. Hatred is not inculcated in the European history class. Although the nation is emphasized, the history is positively European. It is not the fact of national history that is wrong: it is often the content that is. This point is obvious. But without facing this obvious fact and altering it, no advance will be made.

“History” as an objective stream of events cannot be discerned by the intellect. History is what is learned from teachers and books. Change the book, history changes. Language either enslaves or liberates us. The language we use to explain our past will either demean or elevate us. To purify the language we use to recount the past requires a purification of the heart. This means seeking for an ever more objective means of expression, not somehow prettifying accounts to facilitate “compromise” and reconciliation. Truth, whether historical or eternal, judges us all.

While it is melancholy to witness the recrudescence of fierce nationalism and isolationism in Japan at the end of the first decade of the supposed century of reconciliation, how would a Korean explain to any Japanese the success of “The Last Empress” for example? Japan must open its mind and ensure that the reactionary forces cede to the demands of truth. She must admit to the atrocities, the barbarities and the guilt. But Koreans must open their own minds and face the fact that many were complicit in their national humiliation for personal gain, whatever their declared motives. Rifts in the national psyche must heal before international antagonisms can be effectively addressed. This is true for China as much as for Korea. The Japanese were not sheer aggressors, nor were the “colonials” all immaculate victims.

History taught in East Asia should focus on the cultural-historical unity of the whole region. This demands a supranational perspective on the transmission and reformulation of religions and ideologies, art forms, literary influences, material cultures and political relations. It also requires the abnegation of scales of priority and superiority, and the emphasis of reciprocity and mutual development. There are good western textbooks that treat the history of China, Japan and Korea as an entity – the cultural hegemony of China notwithstanding. Equally good texts could be written by Asian scholars for use in the schoolrooms of all three nations. This history need be neither bland nor emasculated to guide students towards a pan-Asian consciousness

The study of history thwarts forgetting but it should nevertheless inculcate forgiveness. The strong remember but move forward, the moribund of tomorrow are crippled today by unresolved hatreds. There is no perfect justice for us, but there need not be an interminable captivity in the slough of unrelieved resentment.

One common cultural phenomenon is the public confession of, and atonement for, wrongs committed. I would not suggest ritual suicide on anyone’s part, but a sincere public cleansing of the waters which have been muddied for too long. Every country should offer future generations a feasible dream, so they might not slip back into nightmare. This is idealism, but the question, couched in idealistic terms, can only allow an idealist’s response.

I don’t know if any of the students in Toronto went from romance to inter-national marriage. I do know that happy reminiscences about friendships are infinitely more valuable than sour memories of enmities perpetuated.

Fred Bottley