Recommended Book: The Coldest Winter, David Halberstam

As the six-party talks continue to dance around the question of the future of the Korean peninsula — and the major powers plan for the collapse of the DPRK — it is worthwhile to look back to the (unresolved) conflict that cemented the division of the peninsula and had untold consequences for US Asia policy.

In his final book, The Coldest Winter, the late David Halberstam, who died in April 2007, provided a magisterial account of the Korean War that weaves together biography, political analysis, and historical narrative to explain how the war unfolded at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. As the subtitle suggests, his focus is on the war's impact on the US and much of the narrative is told from the American perspective, but he takes time to look at the war from the perspectives of Pyongyang, Moscow, and Beijing (if not the perspective of Chinese and Korean foot soldiers).

The greatest virtue of this book is the care Halberstam took to embed the war in contemporary American debates about the future of US foreign policy and the growing struggle between anti-communists, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the foreign policy establishment, epitomized by Secretary of State Dean Acheson and his fellow "wise men." This book is in many ways a prequel to his earlier The Best and The Brightest. Halberstam showed an America that in 1950 was still unprepared for the global role envisioned by policymakers. For all the commitments that Washington had undertaken 1945-1950, in 1950 the American people were still mentally unprepared to meet those commitments. Part of that mental unpreparedness was a tendency to embrace the crudest anti-communism, the anti-communism of the "Asia-Firsters — the China Lobby and General Douglas MacArthur — that minimized the importance of Europe and called for a "crusade" that would reverse the "loss" of China by the Democrats and begin the process of rolling back communism worldwide. This facile anti-communism eliminated all nuance from US Asia policy, leading the US to ignore signs of tension in the Sino-Soviet relationship and to view all indigenous independence movements in Asia through the prism of the cold war. (It also led to the purge of the "China hands," those policymakers who might have been able to implement a more nuanced Asia policy.) The result was a quarter-century of unmitigated Sino-US hostility and all the wasted opportunities that entailed; the enduring protection of Chiang Kai-shek's government; the disastrous intervention in Indochina; and the overall failure of the US to appreciate the significance of decolonization.

The failure of the US foreign policy and military establishments was total. The "eastern" liberal elites, overwhelmingly focused on containing Soviet expansion in Europe, underappreciated the role the US had to play in Asia, leaving them open to the hysterical charges of isolationist-turned-Asia First members of Congress and the media. On the defensive, they found it difficult to elaborate a more sensible Asia policy. They were unable to explain to the American people that backing Chiang — a corrupt, incompetent, unpopular leader — was a dead end, and that China wasn't America's to lose in the first place. They were also unable to say no to MacArthur, darling of the Asia-Firsters, who was dangerously out of touch with reality on the ground during the war and inexcusably contemptuous of his military and, more importantly, his civilian superiors.

Of course, as far MacArthur is concerned, by the time the war began it was too late for Washington to be able to curb him. As members of the Truman administration came to realize during the war, five years as the unquestioned ruler of Japan made him effectively a foreign sovereign and thus as impossible to control in war as in peace. Halberstam's portrait of MacArthur is, not surprisingly, unflattering, not least because of the contempt with which he treated the lives of the soldiers under his command.

The foreign policy elite do not, however, deserve all the blame for the fiasco. In some way it was inevitable. The Truman administration had been painted into a corner. With Republicans hungry to reclaim the White House after losing five straight elections (after 1948), they needed an issue with which to hammer the Democrats. The Soviet menace combined with the Chinese Communist victory proved the perfect formula: the Democrats, whether as a result of incompetence or, in the McCarthyite version, communist sympathies, were dangerously unprepared to resist monolithic communism, which was supposedly on the march everywhere. The result was that Democrats came to feel the need to look tough on communism — and cower in the face of those seen as tough on communism (i.e., MacArthur). This psychological need for Democrats to appear strong on foreign policy lingers today, and could become an incredibly important factor in US foreign policy should a Democrat win the presidency this year. (It is not at all hard to see Republicans in opposition once again castigating a Democratic president for being soft on what they say is an existential threat to the US, in this case Islamic terrorism — and the Democrats overcompensating in response, with disastrous effects.)

In their campaign against the administration, the Republicans had the backing of much of the American public, who were simultaneously convinced of the communist menace (and in the case of China, the administration's failure to protect a democratic ally of the US from it) and unwilling to support properly the global commitments necessary to resist communism. (Hence the US military was dangerously unprepared for war in Korea when it came.) In Kennan's containment policy, the US had a prudent strategy for resisting Soviet expansionism — but as Halberstam made clear, the American people and their elected representatives were not up to the strategy. Indeed, the conversion of the US from isolationism to superpower was messy, especially in Asia, where wartime propaganda about "our ally" China contributed to a major overreaction to the communist takeover.

The result of all this was a bitter, inconclusive war on the Korean peninsula that destroyed for two decades the possibility of a modus vivendi between the US and Mao's China (and ensured a lingering element of mistrust in the relationship even after the opening). It was a war that took the lives of more than 36,000 American servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Koreans and Chinese, and, as a result of the brittle anticommunism it engendered, contributed to the deaths of thousands if not millions more as the US intensified its commitment to fight communism in Indochina. And it bequeathed to future generations flashpoints that might yet be the death of us all.

Fear and loathing in the global economy

Every once in a while, I read an article that is worth posting largely without comment. Tony Judt, a professor of European history at NYU, has written one such article, a review in the New York Review of Books of Robert Reich's Supercapitalism.

The key paragraphs:

But we have good reason to believe that this may be about to change. Fear is reemerging as an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Fear of terrorism, of course; but also, and perhaps more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of one's daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have lost control as well, to forces beyond their reach.

Half a century of security and prosperity has largely erased the memory of the last time an "economic age" collapsed into an era of fear. We have become stridently insistent—in our economic calculations, our political practices, our international strategies, even our educational priorities—that the past has little of relevance to teach us. Ours, we insist, is a new world; its risks and opportunities are without precedent. Our parents and grandparents, however, who lived the consequences of the unraveling of an earlier economic age, had a far sharper sense of what can happen to a society when private and sectional interests trump public goals and obscure the common good.

We need to recover some of that sense. We are likely, in any event, to rediscover the state thanks to globalization itself. Populations experiencing increased economic and physical insecurity will retreat to the political symbols, legal resources, and physical barriers that only a territorial state can provide. This is already happening in many countries: note the rising attraction of protectionism in American politics, the appeal of "anti-immigrant" parties across Western Europe, the call for "walls," "barriers," and "tests" everywhere. "Flat worlders" may be in for a surprise. Moreover, while it may be true that globalization and "supercapitalism" reduce differences between countries, they typically amplify inequality within them—in China, for instance, or the US—with disruptive political implications.

In the midst of an unfolding credit crisis that could wind up destroying major US banks and who knows what else, Professor Judt is sobering as only a historian of the European twentieth century can be.

Read the whole thing. (HT: Andrew Sullivan)

Recommended Book: In The Ruins of Empire, Ronald Spector

My apologies for not recommending a new book sooner, but blame it on a hectic few weeks in Japanese politics.

This book, though, is well worth reading. A sequel of sorts to Eagle Against the Sun, his account of the Pacific War, Ronald Spector outdoes his earlier effort in providing a comprehensive record of the bloody aftermath of the war in In the Ruins of Empire, a subject that may be as important for understanding Asia today as the war itself.

Spector, a professor of history at George Washington University, focuses on the aftermath of the war in Korea, China, Indochina, and Indonesia and the problems of reconstructing the domestic political orders faced by the US and its allies throughout the region (while trying to get stranded Japanese forces back to Japan).

There are a few points that struck me as particularly relevant. First, the US in 1945 was wholly unprepared for life as a superpower. Responsibility for postwar Asia — China especially — fell into Washington's lap, and for the most part the US government failed to forge a postwar settlement for the region. It was not for want of talent, at least on the spot; indeed, Spector is full of praise for individual OSS agents, military officers, and diplomats who worked with local political leaders and allied counterparts to set up new regimes. The fault, to Spector, was in Washington and other allied capitals, where senior leaders were inept in the face of considerable uncertainty. As he writes in the book's concluding paragraph, "The most deleterious effects of the Allied military presence developed not through blunders or misjudgments of those charged with carrying out the occupations, but when the highest levels of government acted indecisively, had mistaken notions or no notion at all about what was actually happening on the scene, and neglected or ignored reports from the field."

In the first months following the war, the US had no plans for Korea or Indochina, and its plans for China amounted to little more than pushing for a ceasefire between the Guomintang and the Communists, even as it assisted in moving Chiang's forces to northern China and providing Chiang with arms. The strategic vacuum in the early months of the postwar period made it all the more likely that US Asia policy would be viewed solely through the prism of anti-communism as the cold war unfolded. The consequences for US policy in Indochina, Korea, and China up to the present day require no further explanation.

If Washington suffered from a failure of imagination in its postwar Asia policy, the policies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands were almost impervious to the reality on the ground, especially the latter two. It was absurd to think that France and the Netherlands, broken nations reemerging from German occupation, could reassert imperial control over distant colonies whose peoples saw the mystique of the empires crumble as the imperialists were in turn conquered and whose national consciousnesses emerged during the war (not unlike the national movements that followed in the wake of Napoleon's conquests in Europe). The Dutch, lacking sufficient force to reassert control over Indonesia, actually had to rely on the British to do much of their fighting for them. Despite the fact that their empires were on the edge of oblivion, the European empires were determined to restore their empires to their former glory. They failed to appreciate both the political awakening among Asian peoples and their own attenuated statures.

A final interesting thread that ran throughout the book is the variegated roles played by stranded Japanese forces throughout Asia. While waiting to be repatriated to Japan, Japanese forces were present on all sides of the conflicts in the immediate aftermath of the war — in some cases helping to preserve order for the allied powers, in others working with opposition movements.

Spector's book ultimately provides an excellent reminder that history is messier than the textbooks would have us believe. Wars don't end when peace treaties are signed. Especially for wars in the modern period, the end of war presents a whole new set of challenges for the restoration of political and economic order (not to mention the lingering remnants of wartime hatred, which result at least in part from the need to mobilize whole populations and mar postwar relations between former adversaries).

Another sign of lingering Japanese war guilt

Following yesterday's finding that a plurality of respondents indicated that Japan still needs to apologize for its actions during the war, I have found, thanks to a tip from a trusted correspondent, a survey conducted by Fuji TV'sHodo 2001" program in April that suggests that the Japanese people are far from defiant when it comes to making amends for Japan's wartime crimes.

If readers go to the Hodo 2001 site's public opinion survey archive and scroll down to the poll from 8 April, they will find an opinion poll that shows that the Japanese people are not exactly rallying behind The Facts brigade (and let's not forget the honorary representative from the English-language blogosphere).

The third question in the survey asked, "Regarding the comfort women issue, do you think that Japan has apologized sufficiently?" 43.8% answered no, 37.2% answered yes. (Beyond that, a majority answered "no" to the question asking whether Prime Minister Abe should pray at Yasukuni.)

At the same time, the survey found that 59% of respondents "cannot understand" the repeated criticism by Chinese and South Korean leaders of the various statements made by Japanese politicians about history problems, which goes to show, I think, that historical reconciliation begins at home; there is a limit to what efforts to improve acceptance of past crimes emanating from outside Japan can achieve, which is not to say that others should abstain from good-faith criticism of the revisionists, relativists, and deniers, but it must be done with the knowledge that ultimately the Japanese people have to do the job themselves.

More sorrow, more pity

The International Herald Tribune published a long review by Bernard-Henri Lévy of newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign book Testimony, recently translated into English.

Lévy notes that one of the Sarkozy's leitmotifs is a reassessment of twentieth century French history that dwells less on moments of national disaster and tragedy, enables the French people to once again feel proud of their nation, and enables France to play a prominent role as a leading Western power.

Frankly, I am not against the idea of political leaders and citizens speaking about the sadness, the pity, even the horror they feel when examining some of the blackest pages of their national history. In other words, I think that shame is quite useful in politics, and the idea of not feeling, as Emmanuel Levinas said, "accountable for" or even "hostage to" the crimes we did not commit, and even worse, not feeling accountable and responsible for those in which we or ours have had some part — I think this is exactly what Sartre (him again!) called a politics of "bastards." Where would the United States be if it were not ashamed of its past of slavery, then of racism? Where would France be if — under the pretext that, as Sarkozy says, we have not "produced" a Hitler (true) or Stalin (unclear, given how much the French intelligentsia participated in the creation of the Stalinist vulgate) or Pol Pot (rather doubtful, given that Pol Pot and his men all trained in Paris, in the very cradle of human rights) — we were simply to sing together the sinister "proud to be French" refrain the new president keeps humming, which amounts to finessing, for example, the enormous anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus era, or the huge collaborationist enthusiasm of the cultural and administrative elite in the darkest Vichy years, or the practice of state-sanctioned torture in the last years of the war in Algeria?

I could not help but read this passage and think of a certain Japanese prime minister with a penchant for recasting Japanese history in a way that enables Japan to be proud again, to stand as a great power without having to fuss about with all that history.

To "modernizers" like Sarkozy and Abe (for Francophones, I find this article hints at a similarities between their domestic agendas), the past is an inconvenience, an obstacle standing in the way of their nations' return to glory. And yet both France and Japan, at least in terms of their wartime pasts, could stand for more openness, more reflection on the "blackest pages of their national history." France, arguably, has come along further, but in some way, the manner in which both have dealt with the war has been affected by a sense of victimhood that both countries took from the war, France from the experience of spending the war occupied and divided as part of Hitler's New Order, Japan from its experience of its cities being leveled by conventional and nuclear bombs, followed by the trauma of surrender and occupation. (This may be one way to watch Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour.)

I have no truck with those like Ampontan, this blogger's favorite foil, who are convinced that Japan is plenty open as far as its past is concerned, that it has apologized and repented and reflected enough. The problem is not denial, but rather the revision and obfuscation of facts that others are struggling to make clear not just for the present, but for all time. We should not want future generations to be unburdened of what happened during the twentieth century — precisely the opposite. No generation henceforth should be allowed to "forget" the twentieth century. The twentieth century was perhaps the worst in human history. If it means that countries have to revisit their "dark pages" repeatedly, what of it?

How long before feelings of victimhood fade and the Japanese people can, to borrow from an anecdote including in the Ampontan post above, scratch beneath the blacked out ink of the wartime past look face to face with Imperial Japan's crimes — without the litany of excuses that taint so many discussions of the war (the US victimized us too, the Tokyo tribunal was illegitimate, the European powers did it first, and so on)?

And so the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly is right to censure the Japanese government for instructing textbook publishers to play down the Imperial Army's role in ordering mass civilian suicides in Okinawa. And so the US Congress is right to pass a mere "Sense of the Congress" resolution demanding that Japan acknowledge and apologize for its military's sexual enslavement of civilians. No Ampontan, it is not "preening," "ugly," or "gutless." It is a simple act, incumbent on all, to remember the twentieth century and to see that others do the same. It is for the same reason that I did not dismiss out of hand Ozawa Ichiro's call for a US apology for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No country is free from having to reflect.

I will not break out the Santayana cliche about repeating history, because I do not think the doom of the twentieth century (the clash of technologically advanced nation-states) will be the doom of our century; the lesson of the twentieth century, rather, is that anyone is capable of barbarity against one's fellow human beings, those inflamed by ideology doubly so. All peoples need to reflect upon that, and all governments ought to facilitate reflection by their peoples.

And so I too, like Lévy, am dubious about leaders who are in a hurry to fast forward through the brutal moments of their nations' histories and skip straight to the good parts. This applies as much to events within nations as between them, as Lévy notes. Why did the twentieth century happen as it did? Scholars, schoolchildren, statesmen: all ought to spend the twenty-first century reflecting upon that.

Murakami Haruki and Sino-Japanese relations

Joel Martinsen at Danwei posted a translation of an interview in the Southern Metropolis Weekly with Lin Shaohua, Murakami Haruki's Chinese translator.

It is a bizarre interview, to say the least, starting with the unironic use of the word "bourgeois" to describe novels like Norwegian Wood. Bourgeois? I guess. And then there's a statement like, "his later works focus on the hard, rigid aspects of being a warrior." If there is one thread that runs through all of his novels, "bourgeois" or post-bourgeois, it is his strong emphasis on humanistic individualism. Lin touches on this — "...He gave an interview with Chinese media in which he said that individual rights and freedoms were to be highly respected, like an egg smashed colliding with a wall. If he had to choose, he would stand on the side of the egg" — but he does not develop it further, emphasizing Murakami's social criticism without spelling out the perspective from which he makes it.

Beyond Lin's critique, however, the interview provides an interesting glimpse at one intellectual's impressions of Sino-Japanese relations, as well as his views of China today. (Emphasis on the one intellectual, because it is far from clear how much one can generalize from the views of someone who translates from Japanese to Chinese.)

While I recommend the whole interview, two exchanges stand out in my mind:

SMW: Is this type of misunderstanding related to the fact that there is an insufficient degree of cultural interchange and communication? For example, before 1949, there were many great masters in China who had returned from studying abroad in Japan - the Zhou brothers, for instance, and Yu Dafu and Guo Moruo. At the time, Japan perhaps had many authors, such as Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Junichirô Tanizaki who had traveled in China. Are exchanges today not up to the level of the Republican period?

Lin: That is one side. Another side is that Japanese schools do not tell their students true history. I've asked a Japanese high school history teacher whether he had taught his students about the Japanese army's invasion of China. He said he had not taught it, and circumstances were quite coincidental: every time his lectures reached the [second] Sino-Japanese war, the semester ended. Practically all schools were that way. And even if they lectured on it, the class time was quite short. This would be the careful plan of Japanese government agencies. Japanese contemporary literature, too, basically avoids touching on that period of history. So many Japanese young people do not understand history, and they are mystified at the opposition of the Chinese people when they visit the Yasukuni Shrine.

And:

SMW: What is your view of the nationalist sentiments toward Japan that are current in China?

Lin: I only have to mention Japan on my blog and I am subject to frequent abuse. I feel that angry youth are extreme in their sentiment; as the intelligentsia, we ought to look at the whole picture, the good and the bad. We have a responsibility to present a relatively complete Japan. The birth of certain extreme feelings is due in part to the fact that the intelligentsia has not carried out its responsibilities to the full, it has not introduced a complete, objective Japan. As intellectuals, we too have the problem of silence. I feel sad for our intellectuals; in the past they were not permitted their own voice under the pressure of ideology, but it's the commodity economy amid a rising tide that seduces them. There is no moral integrity, no perseverance. Of course we cannot tar them all with one brush; sober intellectuals with a conscience still exist, but in the clamor of the mob, their influence grows ever smaller.

Interesting that Lin actually agrees with Prime Minister Abe and his coterie about the state of Japanese education — although naturally their ideas for ensuring that Japanese students know their country's history are substantially different. (Check out Adam Lebowitz and David McNeill's review of Abe's education reforms at Japan Focus.) But seriously, is Lin's criticism of Japanese education unfair, or spot on?

For those interested in Murakami's thoughts on his own writing — note, strictly literary, not political — check out this recent essay published in the New York Times.

Those other historical issues

Defense Minister Kyuma Fumio — a Lower House representative from Nagasaki of all places — remains under attack today despite backing away from his argument that the US atomic bombings "could not be helped."

The Nagasaki Prefectural Assembly has, in fact, passed a resolution condemning Kyuma's remarks.

Kyuma has once again showed his utter lack of political judgment, and, mutatis mutandis, called into question once again Prime Minister Abe's choice in advisers.

But I for one find DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro's response to Kyuma more interesting. Ozawa, in a debate with Abe earlier this week, not only condemned Kyuma but also demanded that the US apologize for the atomic bombings. Politically speaking, this is a no-brainer. The reaction to Kyuma's remarks show just how sensitive this issue is, and just how much anguish at being the only country to be attacked with nuclear weapons — and then to be allied with and defended with nuclear weapons by the very country that used them — lurks beneath the surface of Japanese society. So for Ozawa and the DPJ, facing a tough election battle, not just condemning the government for Kyuma's remarks but demanding an apology from the US (implicitly criticizing the government for being on the receiving end of historical criticism without responding in kind) seems to make good political sense.

Even more interesting, however, is what this reveals about the strong desire for independence that colors Japanese attitudes towards the US. Once again, the thoughts of Amaki Naoto are revealing. Recognizing Ozawa's opportunism, Amaki takes the opportunity to attack the whole political class for its longtime timidity on the question of forcing an apology out of the US. He wrote:

Japan, as the only country to be attacked with atomic bombs, should seek an American apology limited not just to our country, but, so to ensure that no other people undergoes this tragic experience, it is our responsibility to show our leadership qualities and take the initiative and demand that the US, which committed a crime, totally abolish nuclear weapons from the earth. The Japanese prime minister's demanding an apology from the US before the eyes of the world — this would strongest demand for an apology, and it would be a demand for an apology that the US could not refuse.

However, successive LDP cabinets have not tried even once to demand this from the US. Of course, this is also Ozawa. On the contrary, by virtue of being defended by the US nuclear umbrella, the Japanese government has not even received a judgment from the International Court of Justice on the illegality of the use of nuclear weapons.

The pain associated with the atomic bombings is an incredibly important factor in how Japan has come to view the war and war guilt, because in a flash of light Japan, in the eyes of its people, became the first victim of a terrible new age. Even as the world viewed and continues to view Imperial Japan as the executor of an extensive war of aggression, the Japanese people themselves have long thought of themselves as victims (although being victims of atomic weapons has not stopped Japanese governments from relying on American extended deterrence).

There are no easy answers here, at least that I can see. But all of these unresolved historical issues need to see the light. If it makes for tense bilateral relations in the short term, the benefits of Japan's "truth and reconciliation" process over the long time will be innumerable, and will be felt through the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, amidst all the talk about Sino-Japanese and Japanese-Korean reconciliation, everyone forgets the serious historical issues between the US and Japan, issues that remind Japanese of the pain of being bombed (conventionally and atomically) and then being occupied. Strategic considerations have meant these feelings have been concealed, at least, partially for most of the postwar period, sneaking out only occasionally (the debate over constitution revision is steeped with these emotions too). The US-Japan relationship is in as much need of historical openness as Japan's relationships with its Asian neighbors.

So no more taboos or sacred cows. If anything, Kyuma should be given credit for trying to look at the war through American eyes. That kind of thinking is necessary for Japan to begin confronting the past nakedly, unshielded by victimhood.

What is it going to take for Japan to do this? And if Japan were to take steps to assess its wartime past more honestly, would the US respond in good faith, dutifully looking back at its own wartime behavior?

The nationalism question, revisited yet again

Although the comfort women resolution appears to be on hold until after Japan holds Upper House elections next month, the waters have been roiled by a full-page advert in the Washington Post taken out by a bipartisan group of Japanese legislators, as well as journalists and commentators (including Abe confidante Okazaki Hisahiko) laying out "The Facts" on the comfort women issue. (The ad is available here, courtesy of Occidentalism.)

At the same time, a group of legislators led by former LDP member (and postal rebel) Hiranuma Takeo, who also signed the Wapo ad, has protested to China that it should remove photos from war museums that distort the past and defame Japan.

Ampontan has addressed both these acts of "assertiveness," arguing that the comfort women issue reflects worse on Japan's neighbors and the US Congress than on Japan, and that Japan is rightfully standing up to China in demanding changes to China's war museums.

I have written about my unease about the US Congress demanding an apology on this issue from Japan before, but that should not be taken as an endorsement of the position that Japan has apologized enough and we should all start paying attention to China's wrongs, instead of Japan's. As I have written before, Japanese governments may have apologized before, but the contemporary Japanese right — the political and in some cases familial descendants of the figures who led Japan to war — has never apologized for the war. Through various indiscreet comments made by Japanese conservatives, including the current prime minister in his younger days, it is clear that to them the worst thing about the war was that Japan lost. How that is consistent with former Prime Minister Murayama's apology is beyond me. The leaders who apologized before were those who thought that Japan was right to lose the war and were proud of Japan's unique pacifist identity (or were otherwise insincerely repeating what their predecessors had said).

It does not take much effort to see why Chinese, Koreans, and certain sections of the public in Australia and the US might have a problem with a Japanese prime minister who has never properly expressed remorse for Japan's colossal historical crimes and yet at the same time talks about abandoning Article 9 and the postwar regime built around it — abandoning the constitutional provision that has served as a mark of Cain, showing the world (and reminding Japan) of its bloody past.

The question is not a matter of resurgent militarism; as Benedict Anderson, author of Imagined Communities, said in an interview in the July issue of Ronza (my translation), "During the first phase of globalization, in the first half of the twentieth century, Japan's response to globalization was to commence invasions, starting with Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and Manchuria, and finally annexing the various countries of Asia. However, this kind of thing will likely not happen again. In theory, one can imagine war between Japan and China. However, now the act of a victorious country's seizing a defeated country is nonsense. Until the Second World War, the two countries had mutual, violent animosity that could be expressed in war, but now that does not apply."

Rather, it is a question of historical justice. Regardless of the questionable legitimacy of the Tokyo trials, regardless of what Japan suffered, regardless of what the other imperial powers did or did not do, Japan committed egregious acts of violence against its neighbors. It is not up to Japan to dictate when the wounds it inflicted upon its neighbors and their citizens have healed. And denying or relativizing Japan's actions only rubs salt into the open wounds of its victims.

Yes, China has historical issues of its own with which to grapple. Mao's crimes were monstrous, and that his visage can still be found all over China is deeply unsettling. But guess what? Mao's crimes were against the Chinese people. The Chinese people will one day have a serious reckoning with their country's history during the twentieth century, but that is a matter for the Chinese. And so with the Koreans. Between Japan, Korea, and China, it seems to me that only one has launched a massive war of aggression against the whole region in the past century — and has the responsibility to show sincere remorse for its crimes and to not make excuses for what happened.

The question of Japan's making a proper account and atoning for its wartime behavior has nothing to do with placating the Chinese and Korean governments, who for reasons of their own will not be placated by Japanese apologies. Nationalism and the attendant historical sensitivities will be a part of the landscape of Northeast Asia for decades to come, because vigorous, rising powers shape their histories to flatter their contemporary aspirations. No bilateral or trilateral panel of historians is going to overcome the urge to present history in a light that flatters oneself and makes one's rivals look bad.

No, Japan's historical reckoning is for its own sake, to clean out its wartime closet once and for all.

So what Ampontan sees as Japan's standing up for itself, I see a country for which pride and the redemption of honor take priority over historical justice — and I see a country that is, as of yet, unfit for the global leadership after which it lusts.

I love the smell of nuance in the morning

Robert Koehler of The Marmot's Hole writes of a talk by Park Yu-ha, a Korean professor of Japanese literature, at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, in which she argued that Koreans are also to blame for the comfort women system.

And hence my problem with the congressional resolution condemning Japan and only Japan. History is more complicated than "good guys" versus "bad guys," and the whitewashing of history that would result from simply blaming Japan and moving on is little different from the whitewashing of history by Japanese nationalists.

In other words, let historians do their jobs.

Japan's PR problem

Francis Fukuyama has written a brief essay called "The Trouble with Japanese Nationalism," in which he recounts his own encounters with Japanese nationalists -- including the translator of The End of History and the Last Man -- and wonders whether the US wants a normalized Japan that has yet to resolve its historical issues. (Hat tip: Arts and Letters Daily.)

He concludes:

A number of American strategists are eager to ring China with a NATO-like defensive barrier, building outward from the US-Japan Security Treaty. Since the final days of the Cold War, the US has been pushing Japan to rearm, and has officially supported a proposed revision of Article 9 of the postwar constitution, which bans Japan from having a military or waging war.

But America should be careful about what it wishes for. The legitimacy of the entire American military position in the Far East is built around the US exercising Japan’s sovereign function of self-defense. Japan’s unilateral revision of Article 9, viewed against the backdrop of its new nationalism, would isolate Japan from virtually the whole of Asia.

Revising Article 9 has long been part of Abe’s agenda, but whether he pushes ahead with it will depend in large part on the kind of advice he gets from close friends in the US. President Bush was unwilling to say anything about Japan’s new nationalism to his “good friend Junichiro” out of gratitude for Japanese support in Iraq. Now that Japan has withdrawn its small contingent of troops, perhaps Bush will speak plainly to Abe.

Fukuyama's argument is largely unexceptional, but it illustrates the real consequences of the reports trickling out of Japan about just how little some senior Japanese politicians have come to terms with Imperial Japan's crimes. Japanese nationalists may have an easy time dismissing Chinese and Korean complaints about Yasukuni visits and the like, but if the US -- the executive branch especially -- begins voicing serious complaints about how the Japanese view their wartime history, the alliance will be in serious trouble.

Why? Well, because after urging Japan to do more over the past two decades, the US cannot slam the Pandora's box of Japanese normalization shut, certainly not without angering Japanese politicians (and perhaps the public at large) -- some of whom are demanding that Japan takes a greater role in defending itself even without the US cautioning Japan to slow down. The result could well be the end of the alliance, with the US coming around the Chinese/Korean view of Japan.

So Fukuyama's essay --- coming from an intellectual who is by no means known to be hostile to Japan's playing a greater role internationally -- can be taken as an indicator that the time for the allies to resolve the tensions between them is now. Perhaps the long-awaited 2 + 2 meeting, now scheduled for 30 April, will go some way towards clearing the air, and laying the groundwork for a more durable framework for bilateral cooperation.

The US Congress, thought police?

So Prime Minister Abe has commented upon the US House Resolution 121 -- the so-called "comfort women resolution" -- currently under debate in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The resolution states that Japan

(1) should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force's coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as 'comfort women', during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II;

(2) should have this official apology given as a public statement presented by the Prime Minister of Japan in his official capacity;

(3) should clearly and publicly refute any claims that the sexual enslavement and trafficking of the 'comfort women' for the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces never occurred; and

(4) should educate current and future generations about this horrible crime while following the recommendations of the international community with respect to the 'comfort women'.

I'm not going to debate the facts of Japanese behavior during the war, but, rather, I'm going to question -- as Adamu of Mutantfrog Travelogue did in this post -- Congress acting as an arbiter of history, in part, it seems, due to pressure from ethnic groups in the US. My problem is not necessarily the usual "what would the US think if governments passed resolutions condemning American slavery," but rather the likely impact of congressional intervention in this matter.

I see two possible outcomes. The first is defiance. As noted in the BBC article linked above, Prime Minister Abe's response has been to question the historical facts. Rather than sheepishly accept the dictates of a foreign legislature, Japanese nationalists -- and perhaps even those who are not particularly fervent nationalists but still object to being told what to think about their history -- will likely stonewall, obfuscate, and fight the passage of the resolution, aggravating the issue, because no doubt the activists pushing for this resolution will redouble their efforts in response to Japanese defiance.

The other possible outcome is false acceptance, which at the moment seems less likely. But the larger point is that it is impossible to decree acceptance of historical wrongdoing. It is impossible to make people believe something they refuse to believe, regardless of the facts of the matter. Contrition that results from the goading of foreigners is, in my opinion, not contrition at all. Japan has a lot of historical soul-searching to do, but that soul-searching cannot -- and should not -- be the product of a decree from Washington.

Maybe the House Committee on, er, Foreign Affairs should spend more time thinking about the numerous problems in American foreign policy, instead of policing the thoughts of foreign governments; I'm not quite sure if that's what Tom Lantos had in mind when changing the committee's name.

And I wish someone could remind me where in the US Constitution Congress is empowered with the authority to dictate history to foreign governments. I keep flipping through my copy, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.