History that still hurts 

Apr 13th 2005 
From The Economist Global Agenda

   China and South Korea have excoriated Japan over its approval of new school books which they say whitewash the atrocities committed during Japanese occupation, and anti-Japanese protests have been held in Chinese cities. The lingering bitterness over Japan’s past imperialism still threatens to mar relations between the big East Asian powers 

   JAPAN’S prime ministers and its emperor have apologised to China for the brutal conduct of the occupying Japanese army in the 1930s-1940s on 17 occasions since the two countries restored diplomatic relations in 1972. Seven years ago, Japan also made a written apology for its harsh colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, in 1910-45. But its expressions of regret have never been seen as quite sufficient, especially by China. So, though relations between the East Asian powers have improved greatly since the end of the second world war, Japan’s big neighbours remain acutely sensitive to any words or deeds on its part that suggest a lack of genuine contrition. 

  The latest such act of perceived impenitence is the Japanese government’s approval of a set of school books written by nationalist historians, which reportedly omit or gloss over such wartime atrocities as the rape of thousands of “comfort women”, captured and used as sex slaves by the Japanese military. Furthermore, to South Korea’s fury, one of the books asserts Japan’s claim to a group of rocky islets that Korea possesses and calls Dokdo, which the Japanese call Takeshima. On Thursday April 7th, South Korea’s foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, had what officials called a “very frank discussion” (ie, a blazing row) with his Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura, over the issue, telling him that the books had “greatly enraged” his countrymen. 

   In China, where the fury over the books is even greater, the country’s largest retailers’ association is urging its members to boycott Japanese goods. As in Seoul, the foreign ministry in Beijing has summoned the Japanese ambassador to express official anger. Last week, demonstrators attacked Japanese-owned stores in Chinese cities, prompting Japan to ask the Beijing government to help it ensure that Japanese investments in China, and Japanese citizens there, were safe.

   The protests swelled at the weekend, with crowds gathering in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In the biggest demonstration against foreigners since NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, a crowd of around 10,000 threw bottles and stones at the Japanese embassy and the ambassador’s residence, according to Reuters news agency. On Tuesday, the war of words between the two countries also escalated, with Japan’s trade minister calling China “a scary country” and China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, urging Japan to “face up to history squarely”.

   China’s own school books are harshly critical of Japan’s conduct in the 20th century’s wars, so even Chinese far too young to remember them harbour strongly anti-Japanese feelings. Last August, after Japan’s victory over China in a soccer match in Beijing, Japanese flags were burnt and a Japanese diplomatic car was vandalised. 

   Rows over the wording of Japanese history books have been flaring up for a quarter of a century, most recently in 2001 when a previous version of the books at the centre of the current controversy was submitted for approval. Then, the Japanese government demanded over 100 revisions to try to answer the accusations of “airbrushing history”. The government points out that Japanese schools are not obliged to use the approved texts and, indeed, many do not. But to the Chinese and South Koreans, that is beside the point. It is unfortunate that Japan and its neighbours did not set up an equivalent of the Franco-German history textbook commission that, soon after 1945, sought agreement on a common account of the two countries’ bitter history.