뉴스레터

On September 11, 2012, Japan nationalized three of the Senkaku Islands. Fifteen days later, on September 26, Shinzo Abe, campaigning under the slogan 'Revival of Japan, Strong Japan,' was elected the president of the LDP. The officially launched Abe Cabinet gained popularity with Abenomics, and secured a landslide win in the upper-house election on July 21, 2003. Meanwhile, in China, Vice President Xi Jinping was elected to the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission by the 18th Central Committee of the CPC in November 2012. And Xi Jinping's first words as General Secretary were: "Great revival for the Chinese people."

In other words, the new leaders of China and Japan proclaimed their respective new dreams as they came to power late last year. Earlier this year, the strife between China and Japan, fueled by nationalist sentiments reaching a peaks over historical and territorial issues, escalated almost into an armed confrontation. According to media reports, Japan complained that a Chinese battleship had aimed a shooting radar shooting at a Japanese destroyer on the East China Sea; Sino-Japanese relations had never been worse since World War II.

Will the three Northeast Asian countries be able to overcome the historical conflict caused by the aggression of militarist Japan in the early 20th century and make peace with one another? The answer to this question lies in the attitude of Japanese society. Even if Japan apologized for its past wrongdoing, it would be only a necessary condition for historical reconciliation among the three Northeast Asian countries. The sufficient condition is the fundamental change of Japanese society. In international politics, reconciliation is defined as the process of solving problems caused by hostile acts between countries, and it has three steps to complete: "1) procedural reconciliation (e.g. normalization of diplomatic ties); 2) material reconciliation (e.g. economic cooperation, indemnification and compensation); and 3) ideational reconciliation (e.g. publication of common history textbooks for memory beyond the first two steps." (Chun Ja-hyun, Collection of Treatises on International Politics Vol. 53 No. 2, 2013) The ROK and Japan, and China and Japan, normalized their diplomatic ties in 1965 and 1972, respectively. Japan claims that they have implicitly completed the step of material reconciliation by providing the ROK with economic cooperation and China with ODA (Official Development Assistance). But the problem is that Japan's attitude of perceiving history is not genuine. Shinzo Abe and other rightists of Japan try to remember only what they want in their own ways whether it is consistent with historical facts or not. If Japan had decided to whitewash their history of aggression simply because it was shameful and they wanted to inspire their younger generations with pride, then they are wrong. Recently, Japan's attempts to whitewash history are frowned upon even by the U.S. Congress.

In Europe, Germany and Poland went beyond procedural and material reconciliation and achieved true ideational reconciliation by publishing a common history textbook to remember and reflect on what had really happened in history. Some Japanese may say that East Asia's situation is different from Europe's. Granted, not all "situations" are alike. In the war of aggression, Japan and Germany were the perpetrators rather than the victims. The historical issues facing the three Northeast Asian countries today stem from differences in their historical perception of the cause, course, and consequences of the war of aggression, not the 'situations' at that time. Germany and France also rose beyond hatred toward each other and achieved true historical reconciliation (by signing the Elysée Treaty in 1963). This wouldn't have been possible without 'the fundamental change of German society.'

What about East Asia today? It is going in the opposite direction of historical reconciliation in Europe. Are Korea-Japan relations, and Sino-Japanese relations, the kind that can be severed over history and territory? Or are these countries geo-politically bound together anyway? If the latter is the case, then they might as well use wisdom and put themselves in the others' shoes, not just acknowledging the others' positions. To try to be in other's shoes is an Asian virtue, and that's what is needed today. I suggest, for example, that Japan should put itself in the shoes of the descendants of the victims of the Japanese military sexual slavery, or the descendants of citizens killed during the Nanjing Massacre. In reality, however, Japan is crying for "Revival of Japan," and China "Great Revival of the Chinese People" as new slogans. Given the outward operation of these slogans, military confrontations in East Asia, like those in the late 19th and early centuries, would be inevitable.

In Japan, there is a sign that this is becoming a reality: the move to amend the constitution (Article 9). History may be largely divided into three periods in depending on changes in the powers of China and Japan: Strong China and Weak Japan; Strong Japan and Weak China; and Strong China and Strong Japan. Under the Sino-centric order, the asymmetrical Strong-China-and-Weak-Japan structure lasted from the ancient Sui and Tang Dynasties of China, during which Japan sent a large number of envoys to China to learn their advanced culture and technology, until the modern Sino-Japanese War.

In the modern times, however, the situation was reversed as the Strong-Japan-and-Weak-China structure took over. Japan was the first to take on modernization with the Meiji Restoration (明治維新, 1868). Once it created the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (a.k.a. Meiji Constitution) to have the national system in order, Japan began endless invasions on its neighbors with the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Manchu Incident, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and World War II. Japan's military power reached a peak in 1915 when Japan imposed Twenty-one Demands on China. The year 1915 (Twenty-on Demands) marked the beginning of gradual decline in China's power, and China eventually ended up as a semi-colony of Japan. For about a century, from the Meiji Restoration to the 1960s, Sino-Japanese relations were marked by the asymmetrical Strong-Japan-and-Weak-China structure in which Japan was generally far superior to China in any area, whether it be politics, military, or economics.

And today, in the 21st century, Sino-Japanese relations are marked by the symmetric Strong-China-and-Strong-Japan structure never seen before in history. In 1971, China replaced Taiwan as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) initiated the reform and opening-up which, with the tactics of the 'White Cat and Black Cat Theory (黑猫白猫論)' and the Get Rich First Theory (先富論) and the strategy of "biding our time and focusing on building ourselves (韜光養晦)," would make China one of the world's fastest growing economies over the next 20 years. After the death of Deng Xiaoping, China had Hong Kong back on July 1, 1997, 150 years after it was ceded to Britain in the wake of the Opium War. In his speech made that day, Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) stressed that 'the 100-year disgrace had been wiped away.' The retrocession of Hong Kong accelerated the economic rise of China. By 2010, China's GDP reached 5 trillion and 88.12 billion dollars, surpassing that of Japan. With China and Japan being the world's second and third largest economies, respectively, the first symmetric Strong China and Strong Japan structure in history has begun.

In Japan, the discussion of constitutional amendment was prompted by the Gulf War in 1991. The point of the discussion was that Japan should play (military) roles commensurate with its status as the world's second large economy in order to contribute to world peace. The rationale behind Shinzo Abe's move for constitutional amendment (Article 9) today is different from the one in the 1990s. If the Gulf War had prompted the relatively indirect and abstract move to make Japan a 'normal state' through consitutional amendment in the 1990s, it is the Threat of China from the September 7 Senkaku Incident experienced in 2010 that motivated Shinzo Abe's move for constitutional amendment (Article 9).

The discussion of constitutional amendment (Article 9) led by Shinzo Abe and the LDP will determine the direction of Japan's national development for the next 100 years. In August 2013, at a meeting of his supporters in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Shinzo Abe stated that "it was his historic mission to amend the Japanese Constitution (Article 9)." His use of the strong phrase 'historic mission' seems to indicate his determination to get it done during his term as Prime Minister. The Japanese Prime Minister's term in office is not specified, but there are no elections scheduled in Japanese politics until 2016. Therefore, in the next three years, there will be continued discussion in Japan between the parties in support of constitutional amendment (Article 9) (e.g. LDP, Your Party, Japan Restoration Party) and the NKP in support of "strengthening the constitution (加憲))." And this will be likely to result in a new constitution (tentatively known as Heisei (平成) Constitution), regardless of its form. Considering that historical and territorial conflicts and disputes between China and Japan have caused conservative shifts in Japanese politics and rightward shifts in their perception of history, the nature and details of Shinzo Abe's Heisei Constitution will be directly linked to Japan's relationship and issues with China over history and territory in the future.

Accordingly, we Korea must keep an watchful eye on the dialogues between our neighbors China and Japan, if we were to avoid new military confrontations under a new symmetric power structure of China and Japan, which, as I mentioned earlier, would inevitably result, given the outward operation of Shinzo Abe's "Revival of Japan i.e. Strong Japan" and Xi Jinping's "Great Revival of the Chinese People i.e. Chinese Dream" as their new political slogans.