The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since World War II

Abstract

Yinan He adds yet another book on the subject of post-war reconciliation. The aim of her book is to examine the validity of two theories, that of standard realist theory of international relations, and that of ‘national mythmaking theory', in explaining the process and outcome of reconciliation between countries. For this purpose, she examines two post-World War II cases, Sino-Japanese and (West) German-Polish relations. In the end, Yinan He wishes to establish why reconciliation is achieved in some cases and not in others. There is actually little new on Germany and Japan in this book. This topic has been extensively discussed both in journalism and in the academic world. Nevertheless, she does add one new aspect to this subject by bringing into the open how much national myth-making had actually happened not only in Japan but also in China. Thus, she traces how official history treated the CCP, the KMP, and the Japanese since the early post-war days and points out how it ‘retained the self-glorifying and other-maligning myths constructed and institutionalized in the earlier period' (p. 180). She admits that much was politically motivated ideological propaganda.