Abstract
Franco-German reconciliation is often seen as a model in Japan. As a historical process, however, it is not necessarily transferable to East Asia, where there is a need to come to terms with war and colonial history and to reconcile perpetrators and victims. Over the last three decades, the East Asian countries have become closer both economically and culturally, but this has not led to political cooperation based on mutual trust; if anything, the rise of globalization has seen an increase in history-related conflicts. Despite this, though, Japan has led a number of initiatives for conducting dialogues about its painful past with its neighbors. The Franco-German example (e.g., the principle of multiperspectivity) can be instructive in this context. Franco-German experiences with youth exchanges or town twinning as “parapublic underpinnings” of reconciliation can also provide a model for East Asia, where, despite China’s predominance, there is a certain shift toward greater symmetry.
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- 1.
A fierce reaction on the part of Japanese conservatives to the liberals’ high estimation of Weizsäcker’s speech, among other things, that Germany’s coming to terms with the past was essentially a tactical politics of history or a one-sided shifting of the war guilt onto the ‘Nazis’, would indicate that this ‘liberal’ perception of Germany’s coming to terms with the past was connected with Japan’s lack of coming to terms with the Japanese past, which prevented reconciliation with its Asian neighbors.
- 2.
The image of marines hoisting the national flag on the peak of Iwo Jima became a powerful icon of the U.S. culture of commemoration (Dülffer 2006). However, a U.S.-Japanese memorial service was held on the island and a monument erected to the memory of the fallen of both countries in 1985.
- 3.
The above-mentioned Supreme Court verdict on forced laborers from South Korea was based on the fact that this forced labor had come about partly through the illegitimate annexation of the Korean Empire, an issue on which the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations was ambiguous, leaving room for opposing interpretations.
- 4.
In the case of Taiwan, another former Japanese colony, relations are less tense, but it is important to take into account not only Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation and tensions with the People’s Republic of China, but also the fact that Taiwanese memories of Japanese colonial rule were partly overlaid by the dictatorship of Kuomintang.
- 5.
See Appendix. In the case of the People’s Republic of China, it is clear that Japanese sympathies were greater before the 1990s than afterward—that those Japanese who declared themselves ‘sympathetic’ outnumbered those who declared themselves ‘unsympathetic’, whereas the trends are reversed in the 2000s. By comparison, South Korea is less clear-cut and more fluctuating. In the 2000s, Japanese “sympathetic” towards South Korea outnumbered those who were “unsympathetic,” although a clear reversal in trends can be seen starting in 2012 and 2019 marks a low point, with sympathy at 26.7% (and a massive 71.5% of Japanese “unsympathetic” toward South Korea). The high level of “sympathy” in the 2000s owed much to the wide-scale import of Korean pop culture, leading to a discrepancy in mutual perception. While the Japanese associate South Korea with actors, musicians, and sportspeople, Koreans associate Japan with politicians and historical figures (cf. Nishiyama 2014: 326–7).
- 6.
The proportion of revisionist and nationalist history books has, however, increased since the books were approved. Since 2015, Ikuho-sha’s history book, a slightly moderated version of the nationalist narrative, has accounted for 6.3% of all history textbooks used in Japanese junior high schools.
- 7.
Tellingly, the chapter “War and Nation: Experiences and Memories”, written by a Korean historian, was not accepted by the Chinese and Japanese historians. Because of the publication deadline, there was not enough time to continue discussions, and the comments of the two dissenting historians were published separately (Chinese-Japanese-Korean Joint History Textbook Commission 2012: 216–224). The result is an unintended exchange of perspectives on the different commemorative cultures of the three countries.
- 8.
These are further developed in the German-Polish history book, of which three of the four volumes planned have already been published (Ruchniewicz 2009; Strobel and Wojtaszyn 2017). Interestingly, the third volume of the textbook contains part of the 2017 petition of the Herero people (demanding compensation for the German Empire’s brutal political repression of their ancestors), and accompanies the extract with the question: “whether the former colonial powers should provide reparation and, if so, what form it might take?” (Gemeinsame Deutsch-Polnische Schulbuchkommission 2019: 205). Such a question would be unthinkable in a Japanese textbook, from both a didactic and a political point of view.
- 9.
In South Korea, “East Asian History” was introduced as an optional high-school subject in 2012. An interesting account of this can be found in Ku (2017). While there is still no equivalent subject in this direction in Japan, a new mandatory subject, “General History”, will be introduced in 2022, which integrates world and Japanese history, separated until now in the high-school curriculum, by focusing on modern and contemporary history and ascribing importance to Asian history. However, the separation of world and Japanese history will not be completely abolished, as advanced subjects for both will be offered as options in the context of “General History.”.
- 10.
In May 2016, Barack Obama visited Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park with Abe and made a speech, which generally found a positive resonance in Japan, but made no mention of regret or apology. In return, Abe visited the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center with Obama in December 2016; he, too, commemorated the fallen soldiers in only very general terms.
- 11.
See Nicolas Moll’s contribution in this book.
- 12.
The first city partnership with Russia was established earlier (Nahtoka-Maizuru 1961). There was also a partnership with North Korea between the cities of Wonsan and Sakaiminato, but this lasted only from 1992 until 2006. For the history of Japanese city partnerships (Menju 2018).
- 13.
On the topic of youth exchanges from a biographical perspective (Egloff et al. 2013).
- 14.
In 2016, the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications of the Abe government said that broadcasters that repeatedly failed to show ‘fairness’ in their political coverage, despite official warnings, could be taken off the air. In 2017, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression published his critical assessment of eroding media freedoms and stifling public debate in Japan, including historical issues, through the growing pressure of the government and the self-censure resulting from it, while the government strongly denied this (Human Rights Council 2017).
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Nishiyama, A. (2021). Franco-German Reconciliation Through the Prism of East Asia: A Japanese Perspective. In: Colin, N., Demesmay, C. (eds) Franco-German Relations Seen from Abroad. Frontiers in International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55144-5_13
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