The Politics of Memory

Abstract

Japanese identity narratives and the associated Asia imaginary legitimized colonial policies in which the implied hierarchy of kokutai whittled away Korean sovereignty from 1875 onward. Even when the “colonial” relationship ceased in August 1945, the anti-Korean sentiments during the Allied occupation (1945–1952), as well as the exchange of invectives during normalization negotiations reproduced the familiar hierarchy: the Japanese self “forced” into war with Western colonial powers re-encounters a “boisterous” Korean otherness single-mindedly determined to exact revenge for the thirty-six years of annexation. The psychological dynamics of colonial relationship persisted as a residue in bilateral relations even if the international context of bilateral relations changed. The narratives of Korean otherness continued to be remanufactured in August 1945, with the images of backward and ungrateful Koreans reified into an obdurate diplomatic fact for Tokyo.¹ Put differently, if it were not for the ambivalent relationship between continuity and disjuncture within Japanese self throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the near-permanence of rivalry cannot be explained. In short, this ambivalence tempers the contemporary bilateral relationships in which the colonial residues remain an obstinate reality.