Japan’s ‘history problem’ lingers on after Abe
Japan’s ‘history problem’ lingers on after Abe
WRITTEN BY CHRIS DEACON
8 December 2022
Almost eight decades after the end of the Second World War, the legacy of Japan’s military expansionism and colonial rule across the Pacific continues to haunt its contemporary international politics, particularly within Northeast Asia. While bilateral antagonism concerning this history has also been prevalent in relations with Beijing, recent years have seen South Korea-Japan relations as the most prominent venue for such frictions, with the relationship reaching a new post-normalisation low in 2019 amid disputes concerning wartime forced labour.
Tokyo and Seoul’s ‘history problem’ is of significant importance for regional relations and alliance politics within the broader Asia Pacific. For decades, the United States has largely unsuccessfully attempted to encourage a more cooperative relationship between its two liberal democratic allies, frustrated by their failure to put security issues that Washington considers a priority — China’s growing power and North Korea’s weapons development — above historical antagonisms.
These antagonisms have deepened in the context of a marked shift within Japan towards a more hard-line position of growing nationalism and historical revisionism in the last two decades, particularly associated with former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Abe’s resignation in 2020, and subsequent assassination in 2022 — combined with recent efforts to negotiate a resolution of the forced labour issue with South Korea — may have suggested the possibility of Tokyo shifting course on such matters. Far from this, however, Japan’s increasingly uncompromising attitude towards its difficult history appears unrelenting in the post-Abe era.
Abe and the rise of the nationalist, revisionist right
While ill-feeling concerning Japan’s colonial and wartime conduct had existed in the background of regional relations since the end of the Second World War, the matter came to the surface much more prominently in the final decades of the twentieth century amid increasing examination of this history within Japan, international controversies over the content of Japanese school textbooks, and the coming forward of former ‘comfort women’. In response, while some argue that it should have gone much further, the Japanese government made multiple statements expressing contrition for the past and school textbooks began to incorporate more references to matters such as the ‘comfort women’ system.
Almost eight decades after the end of the Second World War, the legacy of Japan’s military expansionism and colonial rule across the Pacific continues to haunt its contemporary international politics, particularly within Northeast Asia.
At the same time, however, a backlash against such moves grew within the conservative right. This revisionist movement argued against what it saw as a masochistic vision of history, in which Japan was expected to continually apologise and feel only shame for its past. Intimately tied to this movement was Abe Shinzo. Abe sought to cultivate a proud Japanese identity that, while ostensibly wanting to move on from the past, often tried to revise it. During his first period as prime minister in 2007, for example, he contradicted previous admissions of the Japanese government by denying that there was proof that the ‘comfort women’ were coerced. Multiple school textbook reforms also watered down or removed mention of such matters during his second term.
Abe also sought to emphasise Japan’s peaceful post-war era to justify proposed amendments to constitutional restrictions on its armed forces that, in his view, stymied Tokyo’s ability to be a proactive member of the international community in defence cooperation. Many saw this as a deeply personal mission to achieve the unaccomplished ambitions of his grandfather, former Prime Minister (and suspected war criminal) Kishi Nobusuke — although he failed to do so.
While fostering this growing nationalism, however, Abe was also conscious of its impact on Japan’s foreign relations. Throughout his terms as prime minister, other than on one occasion in 2013, he avoided visiting the controversial Yasukuni Shrine — although he did make regular ritual offerings and visited multiple times after his 2020 resignation. In 2015, his government also negotiated an agreement with South Korea, under former President Park Geun-hye, that purported to settle the ‘comfort women’ issue with the establishment of a fund for victims and official expressions of remorse.
Nevertheless, tensions remained. The minimal restraint Abe showed was more than outweighed by other moves angering Japan’s neighbours — be it textbook controversies, claims to the disputed Dokdo/Takeshima territory, or cabinet visits to Yasukuni. Moreover, on the South Korean side, once Park was impeached and removed from office, her successor, Moon Jae-in, opposed the ‘comfort women’ agreement and it fell apart. Matters became worse still once the forced labour issue re-emerged as South Korean courts ordered compensation for victims, and Tokyo retaliated with trade restrictions.
The post-Abe era: more of the same?
Abe’s inextricable association with Japan’s increasingly hard-line position on history issues meant that his resignation as prime minister in September 2020, and his death in July 2022, held open the possibility that Tokyo might shift course. Thus far, however, there appear few signs of this.
In textbook screening, for example, the current Japanese administration under Prime Minister Kishida Fumio earlier this year furthered revisionist policies that object to characterisations of wartime labourers as having been coerced, or of the ‘comfort women’ system as having been orchestrated by the Japanese military. Such moves, unsurprisingly, produced outrage in Seoul in the latter months of Moon Jae-in’s government. Bitter recriminations also followed Japan’s application for UNESCO recognition of the Sado mine complex without, Seoul argued, sufficient recognition of Korean forced labour there.
Even now, amid efforts by the current South Korean administration under President Yoon Suk-yeol to improve relations, tentative negotiations should not be understood as indicative of any substantive change in the Japanese government’s position. On the contrary, it appears that the Yoon administration has proposed — perhaps somewhat counterintuitively — that South Korean corporations fund compensation for wartime forced labourers, requiring no major concessions from Tokyo. So far, therefore, post-Abe Japan does not appear to have softened its position on these issues, either domestically or within bilateral disputes.
Cycles of mutual antagonism
This state of affairs does not seem poised to change in the near future, either. Even outside of the nationalist establishment, a large proportion of the Japanese public feel increasingly removed from, and with no responsibility for, Japan’s past conduct. Opinion polls in recent years have shown that the proportion of citizens who believe that Japan should stop apologising for the past has risen to a clear majority. This perspective — broadly aligning with Abe’s desire for a national identity that is not so caught up in negative history — results in widespread frustration when persistent demands for apologies come from Seoul, known as ‘Korea fatigue’.
This also reminds us that the history problem is not Japan’s alone to settle. In relations with South Korea, even if Tokyo sought improved ties and found a willing partner in Seoul — as there currently appears to be — given the extent to which memory of Japan’s colonial rule goes to the heart of (South) Korea’s own prevalent national identity narratives, any durable agreement will need broad and deep buy-in within the country. There are already frequent and sizeable protests taking place in Seoul castigating the ‘pro-Japanese’ Yoon government (among other criticisms), and, as the collapse of the 2015 ‘comfort women’ agreement illustrates, it is eminently possible that a subsequent progressive president, sympathising with a perceived shutting out of victims, civil society, and the public, could renege on any pact with Tokyo.
The difficulties of finding resolutions to the history problem, then, lie not just in the conduct of governments, but also in the widespread embodiment of notions of national identity which treat the same history and its appropriate consequences in diametrically opposing ways. Such nation-building narratives tend not to be transformed overnight, suggesting that lasting reconciliation will require a sustained reimagination not only of how to deal with the past, but how to understand what it means to be Japanese and (South) Korean — if such a reimagining is even desired.
Japan’s history problem, therefore, is not likely to recede anytime soon in the post-Abe era. Domestically, with conservatives almost perpetually in power and a public increasingly of the opinion that Japan has apologised quite enough, a determination not just to forget the past, but to actively contest problematic elements of it, is only continuing in strength. Internationally, despite the United States’ continued efforts to establish meaningful bilateral cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul as part of its broader strategy for the Asia Pacific, South Korea’s own relationship with this past puts it on a collision course with Japan that is difficult to overcome. Even if progress occurs in fits and starts — as it has for decades — for as long as widely-held national identity constructs engage in opposing narratives of this history, and what to do about it now, antagonism in relation to it is likely to linger stubbornly.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Chris Deacon is an ESRC-funded PhD candidate at the Department of International Relations of the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research examines memory and identity in the context of Japan-South Korea relations and has been published in European Journal of International Relations and The Pacific Review. Image credit: Wikimedia.