It's time for China and Japan to stop bickering about history
BY BILL POWELL
Monday, Nov. 22, 2004
In the 1970s British comedy series Fawlty Towers—about an innkeeper, his wife and the slightly shabby hotel they run—there was a hilarious episode in which the hotel is expecting its first-ever German guests. Basil, the husband and hotel manager, famously instructs his wife: "Whatever you do, don't say anything about the war.'' But when the guests arrive, it's Basil himself who can't think about anything else. "Milk or lemon with your war, sir?"
Watching China and Japan over the years—I've lived in both countries—is a bit like watching a rerun of this episode, over and over again, with one significant difference: it's not at all funny. They were at it again this month. As Japan tried, justifiably, to get a coherent explanation as to what a Chinese nuclear submarine was doing in its waters off Okinawa, Beijing's ambassador could think of nothing to say, and so initially just hit the rewind button, mentioning Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Not only did that not go over too well in Tokyo, it left a little to be desired in Southeast Asia, too, where China's rise generates some apprehension.
Start by acknowledging the obvious: Japan brings some of this on itself, with the annual, dreadful pilgrimages to Yasukuni by Koizumi and other leading lights from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. But it's pretty clear by now that those visits aren't going to stop. In American political terms, this is called playing to your base and, alas, the right wing in Japan is a part—albeit only a small part—of the LDP's base. Unfortunately, nothing China says or does on the matter will change that.
That's why allowing the war to dominate so much of the public discourse between these two governments—obviously the two most important countries in East Asia—has gone beyond mindless. It's destructive. It sucks up, as the saying goes, nearly all the oxygen in the room. And it's no secret that the Japanese—whether diplomats, salarymen working in China or hip twentysomethings hanging in Shibuya—have been thoroughly fed up with it for at least a decade. Their message is simple: The war? It's been over for nearly 60 years. Moreover, as an implicit sign of our guilt, we've paid billions of dollars in overseas-development assistance to China over the years. In fact, the main reason we continue ladling out that kind of cash—to a country that's become an export powerhouse and an economic superpower, with a rising defense budget and a space program to boot—is precisely because of that war guilt. We were already rethinking this (remind us again why we gave China almost $1 billion last year?). Now the submarine fiasco may, thank you very much, put an end to it once and for all.
There is a subtext to the submarine episode that no one should miss. These days the common assumption, worldwide, is that the future belongs to China, and the rest of us are just going to have to get used to it. A huge nation is rising, economically and in every other way, and the other nations of East Asia will just have to sit back (if not genuflect) as Beijing takes its rightful spot at the table's head. It is, after all, a done deal.
Forgive the Japanese. In their quiet, polite and indirect way, they don't buy this quite yet. For all the chatter about China's awakening, it has become too easy to forget that Japan has recently reawakened, finally emerging from its lost decade of deflation and debt. Japan is the world's second-largest economy and still Asia's biggest by far. Further, after decades of inconsequential prattle about it, Japan has, under Koizumi, actually taken steps toward becoming a more "normal" country. It still has a small contingent of troops in Iraq, even after a Japanese civilian was kidnapped and killed there, and the Tokyo press had its predictable nervous breakdown. And though China has long wished it could pry Tokyo from the U.S.'s side, under Koizumi the Japan-U.S. military alliance has never been more robust. Tokyo, moreover, is now looking with a cold eye at greater military spending—spending that is aimed at countering China's growing strength.
Japan, in other words, is not conceding its place in the global pecking order relative to China. Not quite yet, anyway. Last weekend, China's President Hu Jintao met with Koizumi at the APEC meeting in Santiago. Their countries are both benefiting immensely from growing mutual trade and investment. They also compete, with increasing urgency, for energy supplies offshore in East Asia, in Russia and the Middle East, and just about anywhere else that hydrocarbons are or may be found. Whatever they discussed in Santiago, in the coming months they need to talk about Taiwan and in particular about North Korea—specifically, about whether there's anything they can do to get Washington to agree with them on the best way to defuse Pyongyang's nuclear program. And that's just for starters. All of which is to say: Gents, seriously, here's hoping that whenever and wherever you meet, you do yourselves and everyone else a favor—and don't just talk about the war.
From TIME Asia Magazine, issue dated November 29, 2004 / Vol. 164, No. 22
