Sympathy from the devil.
Sino-Japanese relations have undergone a significant thawing of late and have certainly improved since recent incidents. I am in Japan on business and something that has struck me since landing is the disparity between ‘foreigner’ (non-Japanese) and local reaction to my explaining that I live in China.
Foreigners are generally impressed, largely (and, yes, I am being unkind and painting with a brush about a foot wide) because they know that they have taken the soft, and possibly less rewarding option moving to Japan over China. This is especially true in Fukuoka where I am now. This is a supremely comfortable, soporific, unhurried, un-harried Japan. But I digress. The Japanese reaction is universally: ‘How was/about the earthquake?’. Every convenience store and check out has a donation box next to the register; some containing hundreds of dollars. In the new airport on the way here I saw one of the rescue teams Japan had sent, some of the first to arrive, on their way home. Clearly exhausted, stumbling toward the gate, there was a palpable feeling of appreciation from the Chinese folk about. This for people treading Chinese soil in uniform with the Japanese flag on their shoulders.
I am a very harsh critic of Japan and believe that its war history remains a cancer at the heart of the country. This, to my mind, is a driving force behind the suspicion of China I encounter here regularly; in part an unease that retribution will one day be at hand. The cynic in me wonders, in this context, if Japanese are hoping, even if unconsciously, for some kind of absolution, but I can’t see it.
chriswaugh_bj responds:
Posted: May 26th, 2008 at 9:50 pm →
TheOtherRichard: Who are you? And how does your final paragraph fit with the rest of the post?
But otherwise: My wife, who has never been a fan of Japan, has recently been moved by Japan’s response to the quake- and this purely through the Chinese media- to the point she’s saying perhaps Chinese shouldn’t be so hard on Japan, maybe they aren’t so bad after all. So perhaps Japan’s exceptional response to the quake has done some good for the future of Sino-Japanese relations.
justrecently responds:
Posted: May 27th, 2008 at 1:20 am →
I think Westerners are too used to think of the more or less Christian scheme: After the crime comes repentence, and repentence leads to confessions. That’s not the East Asian way, as far as I can see. Feeling ashamed of the past (blandishing of schoolbooks and the obstinacy of certain Japanese politicians notwithstanding) and the need to show a different attitude made Japan an important contributor to Chinese development projects through the past decades. Different from such contributions from many other developed countries, Japanese ones were not attached to deals with Japanese corporations.
I’m German, and for that reason alone, I do not want to leave the impression that I am trying to belittle the Japanese crimes in China during the 1930s and 1940s. But I believe that China has frequently instrumentalised the past. Right now, Sino-Japanese relations seem to be better than Sino-American relations. And that has little, if anything, to do with the past, right?
TheOtherRichard responds:
Posted: May 27th, 2008 at 8:36 am →
@chriswaugh_bj
Josh has done me the honour of an introduction in a new post.
The feeling I am trying to convey in the last paragraph is that my stock approach to understanding Japanese feelings on China comes up short in this instance.
Pug_ster responds:
Posted: May 31st, 2008 at 4:02 am →
I think there is a common problem with Both China and Japan of trying to hide their shameful past as in China in TS 1989 incident and Japan in Nanking incident. Sometimes the truth hurts, but we should’ve acknowledge and learn from those mistakes from the past, so that we won’t make the same mistakes in the future.
justrecently responds:
Posted: June 1st, 2008 at 12:58 am →
I’m not trying to compare June 89 and the Japanese war crimes – I suppose they are quite different in size. But another difference between the two cases is that June 89 seems to have become “forgotten” and really hidden within mainland China. As for the Japanese war, I think they in general won’t try to hide it – but they won’t make it a general topic of conversation. And if China had been the perpetrator instead of Japan, they probably wouldn’t either. I think it isn’t that much a try to hide yesterday’s shame – it is a different way of dealing with it. No vocal confessions, but genuine efforts to improve interaction with a country of former victims.