They don’t look like much, those few uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea between Okinawa and Taiwan, and a couple of tiny islets in the Sea of Japan, inhabited by a few token fishermen and some South Korean Coast Guard officials. The former, called the Senkaku Islands in Japan, and the Diaoyu Islands in China, are claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan; the latter, called Takeshima in Japan, and Dokdo in Korea, are claimed by South Korea and Japan.
These tiny outcroppings have little material value, and
yet the dispute over their ownership has led to a major international dustup.
Ambassadors have been recalled. Massive anti-Japanese demonstrations have been
held all over China, causing damage to Japanese people and properties. Threats
fly back and forth between Tokyo and Seoul. There has even been talk of
military action.
The historical facts actually appear quite simple. Japan
grabbed the islands as part of its empire-building project after the Sino-Japanese
war in 1895 and the annexation of Korea in 1905. Prior sovereignty is unclear;
there were fishermen from Japan in Takeshima-Dokdo, and some awareness of the
Senkaku-Diaoyu in imperial China. But no formal claims were made by any state.
Things became more complicated after World War II. Japan
was supposed to return its colonial possessions, but the United States took
over the Senkaku Islands along with Okinawa, before returning both to Japan in
1972. The Koreans, still enraged at Japan for almost a half-century of
colonization, took the Dokdo islands without worrying about the move’s
legality.
Given the brutality of the Japanese occupations of Korea
and China, one is naturally inclined to sympathize with Japan’s former victims.
The fiery emotions inspired by this dispute – some Koreans even mutilated
themselves in protest against Japan – suggest that the wounds of the Japanese
war in Asia are still fresh. Indeed, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has
used the occasion to demand a formal apology for the war from the Japanese
emperor, and financial compensation for Korean women who were forced to serve
Japanese soldiers in military brothels during the war.
Unfortunately, the Japanese government, despite much
circumstantial and even documentary evidence supplied by Japanese historians,
now chooses to deny the wartime regime’s responsibility for this ghastly
project. Not surprisingly, that stance has further inflamed Korean emotions.
And yet it would be too simple to ascribe the current
dispute entirely to the open wounds of the last world war. Nationalist
feelings, deliberately stirred up in China, Korea and Japan, are linked to
recent history, to be sure, but the politics behind them is different in each
country. Since the press in all three countries is almost autistic in its
refusal to reflect anything but the “national” point of view, these politics
are never properly explained.
The communist government in China can no longer derive
any legitimacy from Marxist, let alone Maoist, ideology. China is an
authoritarian capitalist country, open for business with other capitalist
countries (including deep economic relations with Japan). Since the 1990s,
therefore, nationalism has replaced communism as the justification for the
one-party state, which requires stirring up anti-Western – above all,
anti-Japanese – sentiment. This is never difficult in China, given the painful
past, and it usefully deflects public attention from the failings and
frustrations of living in a dictatorship.
In South Korea, one of the most painful legacies of the
Japanese colonial period stems from the Korean elite’s widespread collaboration
at the time. Their offspring still play an important part in conservative
politics in the country, which is why Korean leftists periodically call for
purges and retribution.
President Lee is a conservative, and relatively
pro-Japanese. As a result, the Japanese view his recent demands for apologies,
money, and recognition of Korean sovereignty over the islands in the Sea of
Japan as a kind of betrayal. But precisely because Lee is regarded as a
pro-Japanese conservative, he needs to burnish his nationalist credentials. He
cannot afford to be tainted with collaboration. His political opponents are not
the Japanese, but the Korean left.
The use of the war to stoke anti-Japanese feelings in
China and Korea is annoying to the Japanese, and triggers defensive reactions.
But Japanese nationalism is also fed by anxieties and frustrations –
specifically, fear of rising Chinese power and Japan’s total dependency on the
United States for its national security.
Japanese conservatives view their country’s post-war
pacifist Constitution, written by Americans in 1946, as a humiliating assault
on Japanese sovereignty. Now that China is testing its growing power by
claiming territories, not just in the East China Sea but also in the South
China Sea, Japanese nationalists insist that Japan must act as a big power, and
be seen as a serious player, fully prepared to defend its sovereignty, even
over a few insignificant rocks.
China, Korea and Japan, whose economic interests are
closely entwined, have every reason to avoid a serious conflict. And yet all
three are doing their best to bring one about. For entirely domestic reasons,
each country is manipulating the history of a devastating war, triggering
passions that can only cause more damage.
Politicians, commentators, activists and journalists in
each country are talking endlessly about the past. But they are manipulating
memories for political ends. The last thing that interests any of them is the
truth.
**Ian Buruma is a professor of democracy and human rights
at Bard College, and the author of “Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on
Three Continents.” THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration
with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).