the random oracle

As a person of Chinese descent who’s keen on Asian affairs and history, I’ve been paying careful attention to the kind of politics I see in Japan.  Obviously not speaking the language I can’t understand exactly what’s going on, but I can sort of deduce some things from the Kanji on various posters and the images you see.

As a little background, Japan and China in the 20th century were mortal enemies.  Between its victory in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895 and the end of World War II, Japan perpetrated endless incursions, invasions, and atrocities on China in its quest for Asian domination.  The most famous of these is the Rape of Nanjing (南京大屠杀), but there were also biological and chemical warfare and experimentation in Manchuria and the indiscriminate aerial bombing of Shanghai and other cities, among other things.  And that’s only in China; ask any Korean and they’ll tell you equally horrific tales of Japanese occupation.

After its defeat in WWII, Japan has been (forcibly) pacified by its American-written constitution, and since has established peaceful, though often uneasy, relations with its Asian neighbors.  But unlike Germany and France, which are now the best of friends and partners, Japan has never fully re-integrated into Asia.  Part of this is because Japan is far richer than the rest of Asia, but part of it also is that it has never fully apologized for its actions before 1945.

The two most cited examples of this lack of remorse are the white-washing of history in textbooks and the visits to Yasukuni Shrine by former prime ministers.  The first is probably more serious: some (though not all) Japanese textbooks gloss over its war crimes during its imperial age, and frame World War II as a necessary struggle for natural resources that was caused by the West’s monopoly on things like rubber and oil.  It’s a load of bullshit and frankly I’m not surprised that America isn’t more outraged by these lies.

The second thing is that former prime ministers used to pay their respects to Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto shrine that honors Japan’s war dead, but includes in its list of honored dead the war criminals Hideki Tojo and others who were the masterminds behind Japan’s atrocities.  Imagine the furor that would be caused if Germany’s chancellor paid his respects at a monument that honored Adolph Hitler!  Fortunately the current prime minister has had more sense and has stopped this tradition; despite the fact that this only has symbolic value, this act has already caused a tangible thawing in relations between Japan and its neighbors (especially China and Korea).

So what have I seen so far here?  Yesterday in Shibuya where I ran into a demonstration that blocked off traffic for several blocks..  Although I didn’t understand most of what they said, I caught something about “boycott Olympics”.  I’ve posted some pictures showing the signs the marchers were carrying, and I’ve translated as much as I can… mostly they say things like “Sino-Japanese friendship is a fantasy” and “break relations between China and Japan”, as well as stronger statements like “Overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.  But the whole tone of the protest made it pretty clear that it was the “Chinese” part of CCP that they had a problem with, not the “Communist” part.

The sentiment in China is probably even harsher; if the government didn’t hold back protests then things would be much worse.  The West often criticizes the Chinese government for stamping out demonstrations, but I don’t think they realize how strong anti-Japanese feelings are in China… if the government didn’t intervene things could easily spiral out of control.  I’m not sure how strong the corresponding hatred is here, but at least on the surface it seems to be much more subdued; the protest today was probably only 100-people strong, and most of the people I’ve met so far have been very nice (although I have to admit I usually tell them I’m American and not Chinese-American).  But then again, it only takes a small vocal minority to take the country’s foreign policy in a dangerous, confrontational direction.  In fact this is the second such protest I saw; there was another on in Kyoto that I ran into, although that one was just a truck driving by broadcasting slogans.