Echoes of Conflict in East Asia: Remembering the Past from a Pan-Asian Perspective

Yasukuni Shrine, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan, a controversial shrine that commemorates fallen Japanese soldiers (Photo: Miki Yoshihito, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons)

Last year, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that Hitachi Zosen Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries must pay between 50 million won (39,000 USD) and 150 million won (116,000 USD) in compensation to each 17 plaintiffs for forced labour. 

This is the third South Korean ruling that has recognised Japanese companies as being responsible and punishable for their actions and policies against Koreans during the Japanese occupation from 1910-1945.  

To say that Japan reacted well to these decisions is a bit of an overstatement. Rui Matsukawa, a ruling party lawmaker in Japan, claimed: “The patience with South Korea has come to an end for many ordinary Japanese people." 

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi stated: “This is a clear violation of the Japan-South Korea Claims Agreement and is extremely regrettable and absolutely unacceptable." 

The referred 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea, created to establish and normalise diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea after the First and Second World wars, indeed stipulates that South Korea would be entitled to a “$300 million grant paid over 10 years, $30 million per year and $200 million in low-interest loans" as reparation fees for Japan’s occupation.  

The treaty also concludes that the “problems concerning property, rights, and interests of the two High Contracting Parties and their peoples (including juridical persons) [...] have been settled completely and finally.” 

In Japan, this treaty is therefore considered as the conclusion of its past actions in South Korea, and as the introduction of a new chapter of renewed cooperation and peace between the two nations. These South Korean Supreme court rulings are therefore seen by Japan as a dangerous step backwards that could reopen supposedly healed wounds. 

South Korean perception is very different however: these wounds have never healed and, on the contrary, they have been left to fester for far too long.  

Japanese perspective maintains that the actions of signing documents and providing economic reparations are enough to move on from the past. Past Japanese leaders have therefore remarked: “It is because we have reflected on the past that we cooperate with Korea economically. Is it really necessary to grovel on our hands and knees and prostrate ourselves any more than we already have?"  

But Japanese legacies of the First and Second World Wars continue to have an impact today, and it is easier said than done to forget and move on. A key critique thrown at Japan is that despite all this talk of ‘reflection of the past’, Japan continues to deny the atrocities it committed. 

This denial is made evident in the sugar-coating and minimisation of Japan’s actions in South Korea: the term ‘comfort-women’ itself hides the horrific reality of human trafficking and sexual abuse women were subjected to by the Japanese military.  

Such glossing over has left not only South Korea, but also East Asia, unable to turn the page. Acknowledging wrongdoing is therefore not enough, there is a need for Japan to accept the responsibility of its actions and its harsh reality. But what makes Japan unable to recognise this? What makes rehabilitation such as the one seen in Germany with the European Union after its Nazi past irreplicable in Japan with Asia after its imperialist past? What made rehabilitation successful for their Axis ally Germany in Europe that appears to be irreplicable in Japan in East Asia?  

Understanding the legacies of Pan-Asianism can elucidate the mystery behind Japan’s understanding and perception of the war and its actions.  

Pan-Asianism discourse emerged after the horrors of the First World War.  The war was a turning point for international imperialist discourse: Western nations, who had always asserted their authority over the rest of the world due to their supposed technological, cultural and historical superiority, savagely fought one other and in the process destroyed each other. 

The war was seen as an act against humanity that questioned the supposed superiority of the West. This triggered intellectual change led by indigenous elites in the ‘rest’ of the world, in which European modernity was rejected. This is the case of Pan-Asianism.  

Pan-Asianism was to embody a new system of modernity that embraces humanity and Asian culture, distinguished from Western standards and biases. It endeavoured to renew Asian civilization in denying European intrusion and allowing for a distinctly Asian sense of being to prevail on the international stage. 

This is embodied by Rabindranath Tagore (1861- 1941), a Bengali philosopher and artist who denounced the British Raj and advocated for India’s independence. He argued that: “if Asian civilization constituted a great reservoir of spiritual power, and if modern civilization was about to destroy humanity itself, then it must be from a regenerated Asia that man’s salvation would come”. 

Pan-Asianism placed importance on restoring lost civilizational values destroyed by Western intervention. It was attractive to colonized nations and their respective nationalist movements that hoped to get rid of Western domination. The Pan-Asian movement was an Asian creation which was supposed to facilitate self-determination.  

However, Japan appropriated the movement and shaped its goals according to its interests. Japan used this rhetoric to justify their nascent imperialism: it portrayed itself as a ‘synthesizing’ leader that would connect and improve Asian nations under its guidance, rather than trusting Asia to develop itself into a leader. The Pan-Asian rhetoric went from ‘Asia for Asians’ to ‘Asia for Japan and by extension Asians’, as Duara theorises in The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism. 

This Japanese narrative is ironically similar to European imperialism that sought to ‘advance’ humanity in colonising it, which is exactly what Pan-Asianism was supposed to avoid. Due to this, there was discursive tensions that sabotaged the Pan-Asian movement and prevented it from accomplishing its goal of humanity.  

The discursive tension is illustrated in the Japanese concept of the Greater Asia-Co-Prosperity Sphere. It described a sphere of cooperation and peace, with Japan as the benevolent nation leading the fight against it. But it also subsequently justified Japan appropriating resources, invading nations and colonising Asia. As such, the Greater Asia-Co-Prosperity Sphere was also a cover under which Japan divided Asia according to their economic needs and associated a particular rhetoric and ideology in order to justify their rule over these territories.  

Japan truly believed that its invasion of Asia and its imperialism was justified according to Pan-Asianism because it facilitated independence from European imperialism. However, whilst Japan acknowledged Asian superiority to the West, it also believed that Japan was superior to all Asian races, re-enacting Western racism and superiority. The hierarchy between Asians which Japan topped led to innumerable horrors in the name of cultural superiority and assimilation which went against the core of the Pan-Asian movement.  

This issue is at the core of Japan’s refusal to take responsibility for the past: education about the world wars and Japanese occupation of Asia remain engrained in the belief that Japan was helping the Pan-Asian mission. 

This discrepancy in perceptions, on the one hand Japan believing it attempted to liberate Asia from the West, and on the other hand the harsh reality of this theory put into practice as seen in South Korea, explains why Japan still struggles in establishing friendly relations with East Asia and remains in the shadows of its imperialist past.  

Studies have shown that only 22% of the South Korean population has a favourable view of Japan, as opposed to 56% for China, 59% for India, and 30% for Pakistan. 

Japanese historiography and education curricula need to discuss the co-optation of the Pan-Asian rhetoric  to transcend the biased perceptions of the First and Second World Wars. This is a key step for peaceful and diplomatic relations in Asia. It is therefore not necessary for Japan “to grovel on [their] hands and knees and prostrate [themselves] any more than [they] already have”, but rather there is a need for a serious discussion within Japanese circles detached from imperialism, nationalism and civilising missions.