During the ceremonies German veterans embraced their French and British counterparts.
The D-Day anniversary ceremonies demonstrated how peace reigns in Europe. The prospect of Germany, the United Kingdom and France (or other West European nations) fighting each other again is implausible.
I asked the class I was teaching at Hong Kong University, which included Chinese (from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong) and South Koreans, but unfortunately no Japanese, when they thought the end of the war in the Pacific might be celebrated with ceremonies including the heads of government of China, South Korea and Japan. My students unanimously opined that it was unlikely to happen in their lifetimes. Or, perhaps, one quipped half-jokingly, only after another war.
There are many reasons why history post-1945 has evolved so differently in West Europe and East Asia. Ian Buruma’s excellent 1994 publication Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and in Japan provides a compelling framework and incisive analysis. One of the most recent incisive comments made on Germany, which stands in blaring contrast with the situation in Japan, was made in a book, Reluctant Meister: How Germany’s Past is Shaping its European Future, written by Stephen Green (the former CEO of HSBC) and reviewed by Quentin Peel in the Financial Times. For Green, Peel writes, Germany’s greatest achievement has been in coming to terms with its history: ‘for all its imperfections, this atonement has been more thoroughgoing than in most other countries where human evil has been rampant within living memory’.
While Japan has made numerous and sincere official apologies, most prominently the Murayama Statement in 1995, this is missing the point. It is the drowning out of these liberal voices by right-wing revisionists coupled with the failure of the Japanese establishment to truly come to terms with its history — and indeed the propensity to aggravate the wounds with outrageous remarks and visits to the Yasukuni Shrine — that makes Japanese wartime reflection appear insincere.
Among the outrageous remarks, some of the most egregious remain those of former Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara who denied that the Nanjing massacre occurred. Were the mayor of Berlin to make a comparable statement in respect to, say, Auschwitz, Germans in their thousands would be out in the streets protesting and demanding his immediate resignation.
It was not always like this in Japan. In the mid to late 1960s, trying to come to terms with why the Japanese Imperial Army had been so barbarous during World War II was a major theme in Japanese intellectual and literary circles. Scholars like Masao Maruyama, Shuichi Kato and Saburo Ienaga and contemporary novelists, including Shohei Ooka, Shusaku Endo, Jiro Osaragi and others, vividly evoked this theme in their work in a way that is comparable to Günther Grass and others in Germany.
But, by the 1980s, these fires of historical enquiry seem to have been extinguished. The revisionist right hijacked history. The result is eerily displayed in the museum adjoining the Yasukuni Shrine, the Yūshūkan War Museum.
This is not some fringe issue. According to Ernils Larsson, the Shinseiren (Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership), counts nearly 300 Diet members as supporters, including 16 of the 19 current Cabinet members. A number of these Shinseiren supporters in the Diet are also members of the Association of Diet Members for Worshipping at Yasukuni Shrine Together. Can you imagine an ‘Association of Members of the Bundestag for Venerating Nazi Soldiers’?
As the scholar and diplomat Tatsuo Arima pointed out in The Failure of Freedom there were liberal internationalists in Japan in the 1930s (as in Germany), but they were cowed into submission by the obscurantist forces of emperor-worship totalitarianism.
In the contemporary context it has to be stressed that there are many Japanese thought leaders and individual citizens who are critical of Japan’s role and committed atrocities during the war. Once again, however, their voices tend to be muted by the cacophony of the extreme right and the compliance of the mainstream parties.
Today, no amount of pressure from outside, whether from China, South Korea, Singapore or even the United States, is likely to transform Japan into coming to terms with history. It has to come from within. As in the title of Benedikt Buechel’s article, ‘liberal Japan needs to drown out revisionist voices’.
That is the only way to be sure that the commemoration of a genuine peace between Japan and its neighbours will occur before, rather than after, the next war.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at IMD, Switzerland, Founder of The Evian Group, and visiting professor at Hong Kong University and NIIT University in India.
Just to point out, Germany got closure when Hitler is presumed dead and the party extinguished. In Japan, The Emperor is still alive and kicking so the discourse about his dad is just too personal for the Japanese. Remember there are Japanese who still revere the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Excellent article of Prof Lehmann.
At the end of WWII in the Pacific 70 years ago, occupied Japan was treated differently from Germany in Europe where 4 nations occupied divided Germany. United States set a bad precedent in favor of Japan in coming to terms of surrender and in dealing with post-war Japan. At the time, Occupied Korea, except for their anti-Japanese independent fighters operating in China and Manchuria, did not participate in the war as a nation but at least China deserved to be treated as a rightful party in victory over Japan in the Pacific War. Japan had to deal amicably only with US and never had to deal seriously with China and Korea over problems they are accountable. Japan learned a wrong lesson that they can manipulate historical facts as long ss US stands by their side. United States made serious mistakes in dealing with defeated Japan and Japan will remain a troublesome weak spot in US pursuing their Asia policy in the future.
Bravo! The first time I’ve seen the facts laid out in such as clear and fair fashion. One might conclude that until the US-Japan alliance is dissolved, Japan will not face its past squarely.
Though I agree with many of Professor Lehmann’s points, I find the comparison between Yasukuni Shrine and Nazi soldiers problematic. In my view, the main problem with Yasukuni lies in the chauvinistic view of history pictured in the Yushukan, not in the shrine as a war memorial itself. You could make a fair argument for visiting the shrine and paying respects for the war dead, based on the precedent set by for instance the Arlington Cemetery in the US (which, like Yasukuni, does not differentiate between defensive wars and colonial adventures). It has often been suggested in the Japanese debates on the issue that a “secular” war memorial should be established, unblemished by the association to State Shinto, but for various reasons – not the least of which is Japan’s very real problem with nationalistic historiography – those plans have not yet been realized.
I believe that the historiography related to Japan’s role in the Second World War is problematic in most places. Western discourses on the war tend to emphasize Japan’s role as an ally of Nazi Germany, leading to a sort of “guilt by association” scenario in which Japan is unreflectively portrayed as the villain in the Asian setting. While a serious historiography of the war needs to emphasize the atrocities caused under Japanese rule during the colonial expansion in East-Asia as well as during the war, it would also benefit from a more problematizing view on the role of the Western powers. I for one find it very hard to motivate why we are still rooting for the European colonial powers in the Western narrative of the war.
A less narcissistic historiography in the West – and I think in particular the US – would make it easier for the liberal majority in Japan to promote their own much more nuanced view of history. Instead we have a situation in which nationalistic discourses on history vie for dominance, be they Japanese, Korean, American or Chinese – a situation which makes it very difficult for any country to back down. In academic circles the war has been problematized for ages, but this discussion needs to be more clearly reflected in the “general” historiography of all concerned nations – not just in Japan.
While in no way defending the LDP position on Yasukuni, I am here simply trying to problematize it. Though Japan and Germany can and have been compared for good effect – as Professor Lehmann suggests, Ian Buruma’s “Wages of Guilt” is an excellent example of this – we also need to view the Japanese discourse on history in light of other nations – in particular the US, China and Korea. A nation has the right to remember its dead, and there is no reason why a Japanese prime minister in particular should not be allowed to pay his or her respect to those who have died in war. The problems arise when this is combined with nationalistic chauvinism and a blatant ignorance of those crimes that have also been committed by the very people you pay respect to. These problems, however, are not unique to Japan.
good points, Ernils, thanks. It is arguably more the symbol of Yasukuni than the substance that matters – and the motivations lying behind the visits. Rana Mitter’s China’s War with Japan provides a valuable historiographical contribution.