[Paleopsych] NYT: Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan

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Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan
New York Times, 5.8.3
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/international/asia/03nationalism.html

    By [3]NORIMITSU ONISHI
    and [4]HOWARD W. FRENCH

    TOKYO, Aug. 2 - Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a
    resolution that plays down this country's militarist policies in World
    War II, less than two weeks before ceremonies take place across Asia
    marking the 60th anniversary of the war's end on Aug. 15.

    Though expressing "regret" for the wartime past, the resolution
    omitted the references to "invasion" and "colonial rule" that were in
    the version passed on the 50th anniversary.

    The action will most likely be seen by China and Japan's other Asian
    neighbors as further proof of growing nationalism here. A right-wing
    vandal seemed to capture a growing sentiment last week when he tried
    to scrape off the word "mistake" from a peace memorial in Hiroshima
    that said of Japan's war efforts: "Let all the souls here rest in
    peace, as we will never repeat this mistake."

    But in the weeks leading to Aug. 15, the leaders of China have been
    making sure that their view of the war, simply called the
    Anti-Japanese War there, gets across. China is spending $50 million to
    renovate a memorial hall for the victims of the Rape of Nanjing in
    1937, when Japanese soldiers killed 100,000 to 300,000 civilians, at a
    time when details of it are disappearing from Japanese school
    textbooks. Chinese state television is broadcasting hundreds of
    programs on China's resistance against Imperial Japan.

    The two countries find themselves playing out old grievances in a new
    era of direct rivalry for power and influence. Never before in modern
    times has East Asia had to contend with a strong China and a strong
    Japan at the same time, and the prospect feeds suspicion and hostility
    in both countries.

    China has experienced 25 years of extraordinary economic growth,
    deeply extending its influence throughout Asia. But just when China's
    moment in the sun seems to be dawning, Japan is asserting itself:
    seeking a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council,
    transforming its Self-Defense Forces into a real military and revising
    its war-renouncing Constitution.

    Both governments are encouraging nationalism for their own political
    purposes: China to shore up loyalty as Marxist ideology fades, Japan
    to overcome long-held taboos against expanding its military. With the
    impending 60th anniversary, both are trying to forge a future on their
    version of the past.

    In Japan, major newspapers have published articles defending the Class
    A war criminals convicted by the postwar Tokyo Trials, and a growing
    number of textbooks whitewash Japan's wartime conduct. Prime Minister
    Junichiro Koizumi makes annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where war
    dead including Class A war criminals are enshrined.

    In China, a new television series called "Hero City" tells of how
    cities across China "fought bravely against Japan under the leadership
    of the Communist Party." In Beijing on Aug. 13, six former Chinese
    airmen from the Flying Tigers squadron are to recreate an air duel
    with Japanese fighters.

    "On the one hand we have a victim's mentality, and on the other we
    don't see this much smaller country as being worthy of comparison with
    us," said Pang Zhongying, a professor of international relations at
    Nankai University in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin. "The
    reality is that they must accept the idea of China as a rising
    military power, and we must accept the idea of Japan becoming a normal
    nation, whether we like it or not."

    To Japanese conservatives, becoming a normal nation amounts to a
    revision of the American-imposed peace Constitution that they feel
    castrated - a term they use deliberately and frequently - their
    country.

    Arguing that Japan must draw closer to the United States, Mr.
    Koizumi's government has reinterpreted the Constitution to allow
    Japanese troops in Iraq and has reversed a longtime ban on the export
    of arms to join the American missile defense shield. Recent polls show
    an increasing percentage of Japanese favoring a revision of the
    Constitution.

    The conservative news media have helped demonize China, as well as
    North Korea, to soften popular resistance to remilitarization. Sankei
    Shimbun, the country's most conservative daily, recently ran a series
    about China called "The Threatening Superpower."

    One of the most emotional issues has been the dozen or so Japanese who
    were abducted by North Korea, mostly in the 1970's. The whereabouts of
    one woman, Megumi Yokota, remains a particularly sore point.

    North Korea said she had died, and late last year gave Japan what it
    said were her remains. After DNA tests were done, the Japanese
    government accused North Korea of deliberately handing over someone
    else's remains, though most independent experts called the tests
    inconclusive.

    Shinzo Abe, 50, the acting secretary general of the governing Liberal
    Democratic Party and the leading member of a young generation of
    hawks, immediately called for economic sanctions.

    Hiromu Nonaka, 79, who retired as secretary general about a year ago,
    said the present situation reminded him of prewar Japan, when
    politicians manipulated public opinion to rouse nationalism through
    slogans like "Destroy the brute Americans and British."

    "Mr. Abe, who has been in the forefront of the abductee issue, turned
    toward making all of North Korea into the enemy," Mr. Nonaka said.

    Mr. Abe is also one of several conservative politicians who defend
    textbooks that have outraged Chinese and South Korean demonstrators by
    sanitizing Japan's wartime atrocities. References to the women forced
    into sexual servitude by Japan's wartime authorities, called comfort
    women, all but disappeared this year from governmentendorsed junior
    high school textbooks.

    At a recent news conference, Mr. Abe was asked whether politicians had
    exaggerated the threat from North Korea and China to influence public
    opinion and ease Japan toward revising its peace Constitution. "Well,
    there may be such opinions, but I think it's rubbish," he said.

    In China and Japan alike, hatred and suspicion of the other are being
    deliberately fostered, in many cases by the governments themselves.

    In Tokyo, 291 teachers have been reprimanded in the last year and many
    may face dismissal for refusing to stand before the rising-sun flag at
    school enrollment and graduation ceremonies and sing Japan's national
    anthem, "Kimigayo," or "His Majesty's Reign," considered symbols of
    Japanese imperialism by most Asians and some Japanese. Those signals
    of respect used to be optional, or shunned because of their
    associations with Japan's past militarism.

    Efforts to control how the Japanese, especially the young, view Japan
    and China have even reached the comics. Late last year, 47 local
    Japanese politicians from all over the country protested that a comic
    series called "The Country Is Burning," published in "Young Jump
    Weekly," had distorted the Rape of Nanjing.

    The drawings did not actually depict Japanese soldiers committing
    atrocities, but showed ditches filled with Chinese cadavers. The
    magazine's publisher quickly backed down and announced that it would
    delete or modify the offending passages when the series was reprinted
    in book form.

    Hidekazu Inubushi, a politician and leader of the protest, added that
    forcing respect of the Japanese national anthem and flag was necessary
    because postwar Japanese education had focused too much on wartime
    misdeeds and produced graduates who were not proud of their country.

    "To correct the big mistake in our education in the postwar 60 years,
    we've got to introduce forceful methods," he said.

    Today's Chinese have been shaped by an anti-Japanese patriotic
    education, overseen by a government that is aware that its own
    domestic credentials depend, in part, on a hard line toward Japan.
    Having a hated neighbor shores up national solidarity and helps
    distract people from the failings of the Chinese Communist Party.
    Besides the party's monopoly on power, few orthodoxies are as
    untouchable today as hostility toward Japan.

    Yu Jie, a Chinese author who spent time in Japan researching a book on
    the two countries' relations, "Iron and Plough," and went on to write
    another book about his experiences in Japan, discovered that at his
    own expense.

    The books are nuanced works, built around lengthy conversations with
    pacifists, right-wing activists, scholars of every stripe and ordinary
    Japanese. One chapter, "Looking for Japan's Conscience," warned
    against speaking of Japanese in blanket terms.

    "In the 60 years since the war, numerous Chinese and Japanese people
    have worked for the difficult Sino-Japanese friendship, selflessly
    emitting a dim yet precious light," he wrote.

    The books appeared briefly in stores and then disappeared. In a
    country where censorship is routine, that is a sure sign, the author
    said, that officials had put pressure on the publisher or the stores
    to withdraw them.

    Mr. Yu said China's policy toward Japan was unlikely to become more
    balanced as long as an authoritarian government remained in place,
    because Japan offered an unrivaled distraction from China's own
    problems.

    "We criticize Yasukuni Shrine, but we have Mao Zedong's shrine in the
    middle of Beijing, which is our own Yasukuni," he said. "This is a
    shame to me, because Mao Zedong killed more Chinese than the Japanese
    did. Until we are able to recognize our own problems, the Japanese
    won't take us seriously."

    Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo for this article, and Howard W.
    French from Shanghai.