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23 July , 2001
DO OTHER ASIANS LIKE JAPANESE?
Do other Asians like Japanese? I wonder sometimes, because even in this global era when people and countries try harder to get along, the ghosts of the past continue to hover over relations between Japan and her neighbors.
| It's understandable if some Asians - especially older people - feel animosity towards Japanese. |
One manifestation of this nationalism is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's insistence on making a tribute to Japan's war dead at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where remains of some of the leaders convicted of war crime during World War II are memorialized, including wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo. Koizumi plans to go to the shrine on August 15, the anniversary of the end of the war, to honor soldiers who died in the war - something that only one post-war prime minister has done, out of sensitivity to the country's pacifist post-war constitution. Koizumi's seemingly implicit approval of the war criminals' actions along with the soldiers honored at the shrine has raised the ire of officials in China and South Korea, where people are still waiting, half a century later, for some sort of official apology and acknowledgment of atrocities committed during the war.
The level of emotion over Japan's past is understandable - without an apology, the events at issue are like unhealed wounds on the country's history.
Those issues include the 1937 "Rape of Nanking," where up to 400,000 Chinese civilians including women and children were tortured, raped and brutally massacred over a period of six weeks. Even now, there are Japanese from that era who do not believe the rape of Nanking occurred, like people who insist the Nazi Holocaust never happened. Other issues that still inflame Japan's relationships with Asian neighbors include an army unit in China which conducted medical experiments on prisoners of war as horrendous as any committed by Nazis on Jews, and the forced sexual slavery of thousands of women wherever Japanese troops went, but especially in Korea, to "service" soldiers under the cynical euphemism of "comfort women."
There were less heinous, but culturally cutting wounds inflicted: Japan invaded Korea early in the 20th century, and forced all Koreans to stop using their language and learn Japanese. Koreans to this day are often treated as second-class citizens in Japan, even though South Korea has become a popular vacation spot for Japanese tourists, and there is a great deal of trade between the two countries.
Along with Koizumi's upcoming visit to Yasukuni Shrine, the other storm brewing over Japan-Asia relations is the publication this summer of a new middle-school history textbook. The book was written by a committee of conservative educators who feel that Japanese students are not patriotic enough, and that this lack of patriotism is leading to a breakdown in Japanese society. They feel that Japan should not be ashamed of its role, presents wartime events through a revisionist perspective. The text portrays Japan's aggression in east Asia as an "expansion" instead of an invasion; re-introduces a phrase banned since the war, the "East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," which implies that Japan was simply trying to free its neighbors from Western imperialism; denies the severity of the occupation of Nanking; and says that current claims by former "Comfort Women" for an apology and reparations are false, and that sex slaves never existed.
This flap over the history book is already a serious international incident - both China and South Korea have condemned the Japanese government for allowing its Ministry of Education to approve the book, and are urging the government to change its mind. Street protests have been held for weeks in Seoul in front of the Japanese embassy, South Korea has recalled its ambassador to Japan, and consumers are being urged to boycott Japanese goods throughout South Korea.
So far, there have been no violent incidents caused by these tensions. But it's understandable if some Asians - especially older people - feel animosity towards Japanese.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I sometimes feel as if this animosity clouds relations between Japanese and other Asians even here in the US. Even though I am a third-generation Japanese American, I sometimes feel as if I'm being treated rudely when I shop in stores or dine in restaurants operated by other Asians.
I wonder if there is something about me that reveals my Japanese roots to store clerks or servers, who are brusque when I ask questions to try and learn more about their culture.
Like I said, maybe I am paranoid - these businesses might simply be rude to everyone. Maybe I'm unnecessarily wearing the guilt and shame of events from half a century ago, and of misguided nationalism in Japan today.
I certainly don't feel animosity towards other Asians. In fact, I'm increasingly more and more interested in learning about other Asian cultures, and embracing a pan-Asian outlook on life. I am Japanese-American but I also consider myself an Asian Pacific American, alongside Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Taiwanese, Filipinos and others from Asian Pacific cultures.
I delight in the free flow of cross-cultural currents, even down to dining with a Chinese friend at a Thai restaurant one day, then having dim sum with some Caucasian friends the next. One of our favorite new restaurants in town, in fact, calls its food "creasian gourmet cuisine." It's located in a former Japanese restaurant called Akebono and has kept the name and still features the sushi bar, but it's run by former staffers of a very popular Chinese restaurant in town and serves a contemporary Chinese menu.
Come to think of it, I have had wonderful experiences recently at both Akebono and King's Land, the restaurant where we had a great Sunday brunch dim sum feast. No one treated us poorly because we were Japanese.
I'm proud of my heritage, but understand that along with my heritage comes some baggage that I do not agree with, and that I think Japan should apologize for. Here in the US, I will reach out to my Asian neighbors and build bridges, not tear them down.