Bad Memories and IR

Abstract

Bad Memories and IR Walter C. Clemens Jr. (bio) Ezra F. Vogel, China and Japan: Facing History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). Barry Buzan and Evelyn Goh, Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: Historical Problems and Historical Opportunities (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). Gregory Afinogenov, Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia's Quest for World Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020). Actors on the world stage often behave in ways they hope will enhance their material interests, but intangibles also play a role—not just feelings and ideals but also memories of pain and pleasure. Blends of tangible and intangible factors probably shape the behavior of most individuals and larger entities—communities, businesses, nongovernmental bodies, and governments. For more than a century, most US citizens have forgotten whatever pains earlier Americans suffered when dealing with the British Empire. Many Americans have also pushed away the factual record of how many whites treated (and still treat) Native Americans, Afro-Americans, Asians and other non-whites. But memories of negative experiences linger in other parts of the world, including East Asia. Even in the United States, some elderly Chinese living in their adopted land do not forget trying to save their own lives, cattle, and other possessions from Japanese invaders in World War II. Some of these individuals refuse to buy a Honda or Toyota no matter how highly they are rated by Consumer Reports. How China and Japan have faced history is chronicled by Ezra Vogel in a book that covers the last two millennia. An emeritus professor at Harvard, Vogel notes the importance of memory and perception in the introduction to his book. When Chinese and Japanese scholars meet to try and clarify what happened in the past, their meetings often end in rancor. So he seeks to address Asian as well as Western and other audiences to lay out so objectively as possible wie es eigtenlich gewesen [End Page 767] ist—how and why things really happened. Similar goals probably helped to inspire Rethinking Sino-Japanese Alienation by Buzan and Goh. Actions not intended to offend can produce hurt feelings that linger. Japanese early on sought to learn from China, but trouble arose from the Chinese claim that their emperor was the "Child of Heaven," while leaders of tributary states could be no higher than "king." In 697, however, the top Japanese leader Suiko wrote that "the Child of Heaven in the land where the sun rises addresses the Child of Heaven in the land where the sun sets." Offended by her effrontery, the Chinese emperor instructed a subordinate that "if memorials from barbarian states are written by persons who lack propriety, do not accept them." Japanese began referring to their country as Nihon—"the origin of the sun." After Suiko died, Japanese began to refer to her as tenno (emperor or heavenly lord). The first character of the Japanese word for emperor, ten (Heaven), is the same character as tian (Heaven, in Chinese) (Vogel, pp. 8–9). From times nearly immemorial, Japanese and Chinese have taken turns purporting to be superior to and mentor of each other. When I hiked with Chinese professors in Taiwan in 1992, they joked with each other in Japanese—the language in which they had been schooled in Taiwan and later in Japan. Vogel's essays about China and Japan range across the centuries from ancient times to the present. They include trade without transformative learning, 838 to 1862; responding to Western challenges, 1839–1882; and rivalry in Korea and the Sino-Japanese war, 1882–1895. This chapter illustrates again the way that admiration can turn to disdain. Some Japanese were enamored of Chinese classics and culture; others, Western models of modernization. When Chinese troops put down the "Soldiers' Riot" in Korea in 1882, Japanese resented the rise of Chinese influence and new Korean trade laws that curbed Japanese interests. The "Kapsin coup" in 1884 led by a Korean admirer of Japan, Kim Ok-kyna, was suppressed in three days. China's influence again rose. Kim's plan for Meiji-type reforms in Korea (but not the coup) had been encouraged by Fukuzawa Yukichi and other Japanese...