The politics of Kan's apology

"I would like to face history with sincerity," said Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto in a statement issued on 10 August, the 100th anniversary of Japan's annexation of Korea. "I would like to have courage to squarely confront the facts of history and humility to accept them, as well as to be honest to reflect upon the errors of our own."

In what is now being referred to as the Kan Statement, the prime minister acknowledged the suffering caused by Japan's "colonial rule" and apologized to the Republic of Korea, and also pledged to return the remains of Koreans as well as cultural artifacts removed to Japan during the annexation.

Cynics will undoubtedly be quick to note that this is only the latest in a lengthy list of apologies issued by Japanese leaders for Imperial Japan's behavior — and one need not be a cynic to ask what value one more apology will have for Japan's relationship with South Korea or its standing in the region more generally. Japan's conservative ideologues, never shy in their opposition to what they see as "masochistic" behavior on the part of Japan's leaders, have vociferously opposed the statement. In a lengthy editorial published the day after the statement, the Sankei Shimbun, a revisionist right-wing daily, criticized the government for "imposing" a "one-sided view of history," denigrating the achievements of Meiji Japan in the process. The paper stressed that it is necessary to balance the "shadow" of Japanese rule with the "light," which came in the form of education and railroads.

In its coverage, Sankei also raised questions about the procedure by which Kan secured cabinet approval for his statement, claiming that Kan foisted the statement on his cabinet and the ruling DPJ, over the objections of party members.

Two days after the statement an "emergency citizens' meeting" met in central Tokyo to demand the withdrawal of the apology. Headed by Odamura Shirō, a leading conservative figure who was involved in opposition to the infamous "comfort women" resolution passed by the US House of Representatives in 2007, the meeting passed a resolution calling for a bilateral relationship based not on feelings of moral superiority for one party and guilt for the other and questioning the legitimacy of prime ministerial apologies. (Of course, the resolution also called attention to the role played by Japan in triggering Korea's economic development.)

The revisionist right's reaction to Kan's statement has less to do with South Korea, however, and more to do with the right's program for Japan. Its reaction is, above all, narcissistic: what does Japan lose by apologizing to those harmed by Japanese imperialism? As Kan himself noted, there is nothing cowardly about frankly acknowledging one's transgressions without hedging or equivocating. And while the list of apologies to Japan's neighbors is lengthy, it is precisely because conservatives question the legitimacy of those apologies — most notably the Murayama statement — that prime ministers are compelled to keep issuing new ones. The revisionist right believes that a "proper" and "truthful" historical perspective are critical for national pride, which it believes to have been corroded by the left-wing academics and media personalities and pusillanimous politicians. While they claim to be interested only in historical fact, their selective reading of history belies a blatantly opportunistic approach to Japan's imperial past that belittles the claims of Japan's victims and presents a blatantly self-serving (and at least in this telling contradictory) narrative in which Japan was not a colonizer, and even if it was, it was a benevolent one that hastened the demise of those wicked European empires.

Japan's revisionist right, of course, is not the only political group that propagates a self-serving account of its past that explains away inconvenient enormities (cf. the United States and Hiroshima, among other examples). But the revisionist right's attitude has persistently placed a stumbling block in the path of better relations with South Korea and China. As Kan makes clear in his statement, a good relationship with South Korea is critical in the years to come. While I do not doubt that Kan's apology is sincere, it also comes with strategic benefits, as President Lee Myung-bak appears no less interested in building a close relationship with Japan. Since taking power last year, the DPJ has steadfastly worked to build closer bilateral relationships throughout the region. This latest apology is but another step in that program.

And so the battle over Kan's apology pits two very different world views against each other. For Kan and members of his cabinet, Japan's future is in Asia, which means maintaining partnerships with important countries in the region. If apologizing to South Korea again strengthens Japan's position and clears the way to closer and deeper exchanges not just with Koreans but other Asian peoples, it is an exceedingly small price to pay. For Japan's revisionists, any unambiguous admission of Japan's guilt is evidence of "masochism" and an indication that Japan's leaders are simply not up to the challenge of competing with China for predominance in Asia. If Kan's view is strategic (although, again, not only strategic), the revisionist right is absolutist, and were it embraced by those in power it would result in an ignoble and ultimately self-defeating isolation for Japan in the region.

Of course, there is actually little risk of the revisionist agenda being implemented. Even Abe Shinzō, the most unabashedly revisionist conservative prime minister Japan has had in recent years, recognized the value of strong relationships with both South Korea and China and was willing to make concessions on the history issue, whatever his personal beliefs. Since Abe's downfall in 2007 the revisionists have been increasingly marginalized in Japanese politics, their influence virtually non-existent under the DPJ despite having sympathizers within the party. Indeed, their influence may be inversely proportional to the amount of noise they are capable of generating through various media outlets.

As Jun Okumura suggests, it is now up to South Korea to accept Kan's apology in good faith. That, of course, points to the central problem with apologies between nations: no matter how sincere the apology (and the acceptance of the apology), it is difficult for one leader to bind the hands of his successors. Nevertheless, by building a closer bilateral relationship, Kan and Lee can do their part to minimize the harm that can be done by political actors in both countries who wish to exploit history for political gain.

Okada acknowledges past wrongs in Seoul

The Hatoyama government's campaign to revitalize Japan's bilateral relationships in Asia continues, with Foreign Okada Katsuya's visiting South Korea for the first time as foreign minister for meetings with President Lee and other senior officials.

While Americans are focused on celebrating what is being called the fiftieth anniversary of the US-Japan alliance this year, a more significant anniversary this year may be the 100th anniversary of Japan's annexation of Korea. The South Korean government has expressed its desire for a joint statement that will include a proper statement of remorse by Japan for its actions in Korea from 1910 until 1945.

In a meeting Thursday with Yu Myung-hwan, minster of foreign affairs and trade, Okada unambivalently expressed his understanding for the pain caused to the Korean people by Japan's usurpation of their country, and expressed his desire that the two countries can settle their disputes and build a forward-looking relationship.

Of course, Japan has apologized to South Korea before, and many — not only conservatives — will wonder why Japan has to apologize again. Okada's remarks provide some hint as to why Japan still has work to do on historical reconciliation. Rarely has a Japanese statesman shown that he is apologizing because he has looked at his country's behavior through the eyes of its victims and come to appreciate just how destructive Japan's actions were.

Diametrically opposed to Okada's attitude is that of Japan's revisionist right, which not only thinks Japan did nothing it has to apologize for in Korea or China, but actually denies that the Koreans and Chinese have legitimate grievances against Japan. Consider the arguments made by Tamogami Toshio, the now-retired Air Self-Defense Forces general who has become a prominent conservative spokesman since being driven from the service for his essay denying that Japan was an aggressor. In that essay, not only does Tamogami claim that Japan "advanced into" Korea with the "understanding" of its government (so understanding, in fact, that Korea's ruling dynasty willingly signed a treaty ending its own reign, willingly if one ignores the Korean government's pleas to the Western powers at The Hague to save it from Japan), he claims that under Japanese rule Korea was "prosperous and safe." After all, he writes, Korea's population nearly doubled! The Japanese were in Korea as liberators! ("The people in these areas were released from the oppression they had been subjected to up until then, and their standard of living markedly improved.") Japan built universities in its colonies! It permitted Koreans to fight for Japan!

No mention, of course, of what the Korean people wanted. Did they ask for Japan to develop their country for them? Or to replace the Korean language with Japanese, Korean names with Japanese names? For that matter, did they ask for the privilege of fighting and dying on behalf of the Japanese emperor?

It is for this reason that Okada's almost matter-of-fact statement is significant. It should be simply a matter of fact when a Japanese official acknowledges the tremendous pain caused by his country to its neighbors — and that a not insignificant portion of elite opinion can see little or nothing wrong with Japan's behavior means that there is a great need for more matter-of-fact statements like Okada's, and yes, a joint statement that unambiguously acknowledges Japan's wrongdoing in specific terms (not just the general statements of remorse) while looking to build a new relationship for the future.

As a final note on this matter, I think it is important to take issue with Tamogami's comparison of Japan's behavior in Korea with the behavior of the Western powers in their Asian colonies (the British in India is a favorite example). While the comparison has some merits, it is by no means the best comparison. The best comparison that comes to mind when I think of Japanese rule in Korea is not the British in India but the British in Ireland. After all, how can British rule in India — which was in many ways indirect, even after 1857 — be compared to the brutal domination of an immediate neighbor? Indeed, British rule in Ireland was far more brutal than even Japanese rule in Korea, lasting longer and having ever-more devastating consequences. The Great Potato Famine, for which Tony Blair apologized early in his premiership, was only one of the more monstrous moments in the bloody history of British rule in Ireland. The Irish still curse Oliver Cromwell, nearly four centuries after his invasion of Ireland cemented British rule.

The point of looking to British rule in Ireland is that nations have long memories — even longer memories when the harm done to them was by a close neighbor, nations with shared destinies thanks to geography. On top of the weight of history is the natural resentment felt by small countries at being dominated by their larger neighbors. Why should Japanese expect that Koreans will simply "get over" Japanese rule, which began only a century ago and was brutal in its own right, if not nearly as prolonged or as total as British rule in Ireland? More importantly, what right do Japanese have to tell Koreans (or Chinese) what the appropriate level of remorse is? Japanese leaders need to stop thinking of the rectification of history has simply being a matter of the number of apologies rendered and recognize, as Okada does (and, I think, Prime Minister Hatoyama does), that less important than the number of apologies is seeing history through Korean or Chinese eyes and acknowledging that the humiliation experienced by colonized peoples is not something that can be balanced out by a list of universities established or a tabulation of miles of train tracks built, and, moreover, cannot be expressed in terms of the numbers of victims, as meaningful as those numbers are. As the Irish experience suggests, in some way these wounds never heal completely.

But at least the Hatoyama government is determined to take a big step forward. Building a constructive relationship with South Korea is too important to allow Japan to continue to be held back by the unwillingness of Japanese nationalists to accept any people's love of country but their own as legitimate.

Who is missing from this group?

In Abe's Magical Democracy tour, there was lots of talk about cooperation between Japan, India, the US, and Australia — glorious Pacific-spanning cooperation among democracies.

But what about South Korea, which last time I checked was a vibrant democracy whose people struggled to achieve it after decades of authoritarian rule?

It seems that any organization of democracies in Asia would be incomplete without a democracy that also happens to be a significant economic power. Is South Korea's inclusion implied in any such organization? Or was Mr. Abe signaling that he expects that if given a choice, South Korea is bound to choose China (and its northern brother) over its fellow democracies, so why even bother extending a hand?

Now, granted, South Korea could do a better job trying to bridge the divide with its Japanese neighbor (like, for example, not arms racing with it). But to me this strikes me as just another sign that no one should take Mr. Abe's proposal all that seriously — as MTC wisely suggests in his "Magical Democracy Tour" post, the community of Asian democracies is more about Mr. Abe's personal and political needs than a serious effort to reorganize the regional security environment.

No gaiatsu on revision

Oh, to be the "grand strategist" author of best-selling books — and to be the peddler of a strategic concept that purports to explain everything.

Clearly, that's the ticket to being able to get away with writing blog posts like this one by Tom Barnett: "Japan will and must un-pacify." In a single thirty-word post, Dr. Barnett reduces a debate that is fundamental to how Japan thinks not only about its future, but also its past and the relationship between state, society, and individual to the simple formula of "Japan will revise its constitution so it can retain influence in Asia and the world."

Parsimonious, I guess.

This is a good time to note that in the constitution revision debate, gaiatsu is not an option — not for the US, for China, or for South Korea.

Japan must revise — or not revise — on its own.

Japan — the Japanese people — must be permitted to consider its future without the interference of foreign powers. What is at stake is the legitimacy of the Japanese political system; it's not just about the shape of Japanese security policy over the coming decades. The settlement that results from the coming debate on revision must be seen as universally legitimate, lest it become the basis for a new political cleavage, just as during the cold war the LDP and the Socialist Party spent decades fighting over the meaning of the constitution.

This debate should be the occasion for a new birth of Japanese democracy, the moment at which the Japanese people wrest power away from the bureaucrats and the politicians and demand the formulation of a new relationship between government and governed, in which the government is actually held accountable for its actions.

Whether that will be so remains to be decided, but the US — and alliance handlers in Washington who have been long awaiting this moment — cannot try to influence the outcome.

Fortunately, the cold war is over. It is no longer a zero-sum world. If the Japanese people decide against permitting a more expansive regional and global security role, Japan will not be "lost." Rather, it will be consigning itself, regrettably, to a more limited position in the global balance of power, and once more limiting the US-Japan alliance largely to Article V of the Mutual Security Treaty with the US (i.e., the defense of Japan).

Alternatively, the Japanese people could opt for greater independence in the region and greater responsibility for their own defense, resulting necessarily in a looser alliance (if not breaking it altogether).

Whatever Japan chooses, however, must be the product of decisions made by the Japanese people: the new settlement should not be foisted upon them by foreign countries or Japanese politicians.

As such, it should not matter what US conservatives or liberals say, contrary to the point of this article by Sankei's Komori Yoshihisa. Nor should it matter what Beijing or Seoul have to say in opposition to constitution revision.

The Japanese people must do this own their own terms.

Japan's friends, kept at arm's length

The Japan Times today has two op-eds that illustrate Japan's troublesome ties with the US, its ally, and South Korea, its wealthy, democratic neighbor and former colony.

The first, by journalist Hanai Kiroku, calls for a US-Japan economic partnership agreement (EPA), to follow on the heels of the Japan-Australia EPA currently under negotiation. Given the scale of the economic links between the world's first and second largest economies, the benefits of a US-Japan EPA would be large -- and would undoubtedly have spillover benefits for both the search for a compromise in the WTO and the push for an APEC FTA.

But I fear that political conditions in both countries militate against the negotiation and passage of a US-Japan agreement for the foreseeable future. With economic insecurity on the rise in the US, and the president's trade promotion authority set to expire, a wide-reaching EPA with Japan could very well aggravate US fears of Japan's economic prowess -- imagine the screams that would emanate from Detroit.

In Japan, meanwhile, the opposition to an agreement would be more fundamental, as it would no doubt emanate from Japan's heavily protected agriculture sector. Hanai makes the sensible suggestion that since Japan is dependent on food imports anyway, it might as well conclude deals that ensure that imported food supplies will remain stable, cheap, and plentiful:

Japan's calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate is only about 40 percent, much lower than the comparable rates of other countries. Some fear that EPAs with major farm exporting nations such as Australia and the U.S. will lower the rate further. However, in my opinion, Japan should secure stable food supplies from overseas because of its low food-sufficiency rate. If Japan, through EPAs with Australia and the U.S., has both countries promise to refrain from one-sided restrictions on food exports, it will help strengthen Japan's food security.

For that to happen, though, Japan's political system will have to change: as long as rural prefectures are the LDP's power base, and as long as the distribution of power in the political system favors agricultural producers over consumers, any agreement that forces Japan's farmers to face substantially greater competition will be nigh on impossible. This kind of opposition has already emerged against the Australia EPA negotiations; imagine the opposition that would await EPA negotiations with the US.

The second piece, meanwhile, is Pyon Junbeom and Tsukagoshi Yuka, South Korean and Japanese scholars respectively, writing about concrete steps that South Korea and Japan can take to ease bilateral tensions and build a genuine partnership. I like this piece, because it seeks to craft policies that take into account intangible cultural and historical factors. As they write: "The root of anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea is wounded pride. Koreans feel humiliated and insulted that they, a highly civilized society, were invaded by the Japanese, whom they believed to be barbarians." A sensible argument, but it leads me to wonder if even their modest recommendations will be difficult to implement. The kind of attitude they describe South Koreans as having seems like it would be difficult to overcome simply through Japanese apologies and other conciliatory measures. I don't doubt the value of a closer, more active Japan-South Korea partnership, I just doubt whether a South Korea intent on rectifying centuries of shame and a Japan feeling insecure as it watches its neighbors succeed will be able to forge a strong, dynamic friendship.

If Japan is to remain a significant player regionally and globally, however, it better start laying the groundwork for more constructive, open partnerships with its friends now, before it's too late.

Seoul speaks up -- how about Washington?

The Jiji wire service carried two articles today that report on South Korean officials criticizing Japan for its focus on the abductions issue in the multilateral de-nuclearization talks.

First, Yu Myong-hwan, South Korea's newly appointed ambassador to Japan, said at a press conference with Japanese journalists in Seoul that the resolving the nuclear issue must take priority in the six-party talks.

Subsequently, Jiji reported that the Song Min-soon, Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, criticized Japan for raising the abductions issue -- what he argued is a bilateral issue -- in the multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear program, and urged Japan to contribute to energy support for North Korea.

Altogether sound advice: I cannot see how Japan will come out looking good if its insistence on putting the abductions issue before the issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons, which arguably threaten Japan more than any other country, scuttles this agreement. I certainly do not expect that the Bush administration, which has already demonstrated that it is making a good-faith effort to reach a lasting agreement, would be altogether pleased with the Abe Cabinet. If anything, the departure of Robert Joseph, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, means that the Bush administration is that much more committed to seeing the six-party talks through to fruition.

So when will Washington follow Seoul's lead and question Tokyo's abductions obsession publicly, reminding Japan that a de-nuclearized Korean Peninsula is in its interests?

Or maybe Japan has decided to base its North Korea policy on Dr. NakaMats's promise to develop a missile shield that will "make missiles turn around"?