Chinese and Japanese study the difficult history of their relations
Tokyo (AsiaNews) - "An unprecedented undertaking". This is how the newspaper Asahi defines being able to bring together Chinese and Japanese experts and the 31 January publishing of a document of 549 pages summarizing the results of three years of joint discussions on the history of both countries in their relations with one another.
The approach to China is a cornerstone of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government’s foreign policy.
Throughout the last century, feelings of enmity, and colder periods of mutual mistrust defined the relationship between the two most important nations in East Asia. The greater responsibility, as the report also acknowledges, lies with Japan. The main cause was its war of aggression against China (1937-1945). It inflicted a serious wounds on the Chinese people that the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed by the governments of Beijing and Tokyo in 1978 have failed to heal. Indeed they have been exacerbated by the stubbornness of the eccentric, though charismatic Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006), his repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shinto shrine, considered a symbol of the old militaristic nationalism.
The Genesis of the Project
The proposal for a joint study on the history of both nations, a Japanese initiative , was ironically advanced during the third government of Koizumi . However, it was not inspired by the problematic prime minister rather by his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nobutaka Machimura, who understood that the real cause of friction between the two nations was not political, but psychological: the serious wounds inflicted on the Chinese people by Japanese imperialism had not healed. Joint research on the history of the two nations could indeed be the most effective cure.
The violent anti-Japanese demonstrations by young Chinese in April 2005 led Mochimura to propose a draft joint study of history to Beijing in order to improve mutual understanding. A few months later Koizumi voluntarily stepped down and in October 2006 during the summit meeting in Beijing between Chinese President Hu Jintao and the new Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, the two governments decided to give the project the go ahead.
Difficulties and convergences
The historical analysis was commissioned to two groups of academics, chaired respectively by the Japanese Shin ichi Kitaoka, from the University of Tokyo, and the Chinese Bu Ping, director of Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Scholars on both sides, working with great zeal, were able to present the final report in the summer of 2008, the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty between China and Japan. It seems that freedom of research was unlimited with regard to the scientific and technical work.
However there were difficulties, due to political interventions, especially from China, regarding the opportunity and the time of publication. The inevitable discrepancies in the judgments of some events, did not harm the project which in itself did not involve an "agreement" but only a study based on documents considered in the light of historical criticism.
Two facts and a disagreement of opinion remain, however, that cast a shadow on the endeavour.
An incomplete and postponed report.
Under the original plan, the experts of the two committees would have to write and exchange views on issues related to ancient, medieval, modern history and contemporary art, including the peaceful development of Japan after the war. And in fact the work was completed.
However at the intervention of the Chinese government, the post-war section was not published. Japanese analysts believe that the inevitable reference to "the massacre of Tiananmen Square" on 4 June 1989 was the cause of Chinese government censorship.
The cut was detrimental to Japan because it presented to the Chinese and, indirectly, to the world the beautiful face of this nation after the war. Under the Constitution of 1947, the Japanese people renounced "war as a sovereign right of the nation and the use of force as means of settling international disputes" (art. 9). And so in the last 64 years not a single Japanese died, killed or was killed in war. But the Japanese pacifism was not only passive: the economic development of the world, Asia, above all and including China and Africa owe a lot to money and technical assistance from Japan.
The work of Japanese and Chinese academics proceeded smoothly until the time of the state visit of Hu Jintao (pictured) to Tokyo (May 2008). The joint report was to have been published in August of that year. Instead, once the Chinese president was back home, the Beijing government asked that the publication be delayed, because they feared negative the population reactions, which would have spoiled the atmosphere of the Olympic Games in the Chinese capital and that of the celebrations for the sixtieth anniversary of the People's Republic of China (1949-2009).
The unresolved difference of opinion on the Nanjing massacre in 1937
In December 1937 the city of Nanjing, then capital of China, occupied by the Japanese Imperial Army troops became the scene of one of the worst atrocities of that war, writes British historian G. Beasley. Since then the conflict of opinions about the number killed has never been solved. China, based on the declaration of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, has always claimed that those killed exceeded the figure of 200 thousand. Japan on the basis of other information has always felt that you were much less: 20 thousand or 40 thousand.
In the joint study the disagreement has not been resolved. However, the two parties abstained from claiming what the legitimate figure was.
Despite these flaws, the opinion of critics on the project is positive. It aims is to improve mutual understanding. And this was achieved, at least in part, at an expert level. Now they can publicize this knowledge among their respective populations. For this reason and to improve the content of the report the two nations have decided to continue their joint study.
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17/07/2018 17:20
