Japan must go beyond victimhood

Lee Ha-kyung

The author is a senior columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has turned friendly towards Seoul after President Yoon Suk Yeol made big concessions for a breakthrough in the sticky issue of compensating victims of wartime force labor. The two leaders stood side by side to pay respects to Korean victims of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima on the sidelines of the Group of 7 (G7) Summit. The scene was a great comfort to the survivors of the bombing. But it also triggered demand from Japan for an apology from U.S. President Joe Biden, who was in Hiroshima for the G7 summit.

That marked a dramatic turning point of Japan from the perpetrator of forced labor and sexual slavery during World War II to the victim of the atomic bombing. Such postwar feelings of victimhood in Japan made the country reluctant to regret or apologize for its atrocities against other countries. The United States is partly blamed for such a twisted psychology of Japan. The U.S. had thought that if it dethroned Emperor Hirohito, it could destabilize Japanese society, which was long used to the imperial system. So, the U.S. granted immunity to the ruler.

The Tokyo trials were much different from the Nuremberg trials on war criminals of Nazi Germany. John Dower, emeritus professor at MIT and the author of “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II,” criticized the war tribunal as “show trials” where victors fabricated evidence to save the leader of the defeated country. The Japanese officials tried for Class-A war crimes did their best to protect the emperor from any culpability for aggressions, except for one slip. Hideki Tojo — the general of the Imperial Japanese Army and wartime prime minister — confessed that acting against the will of the emperor was unthinkable at the time, hinting at the emperor’s responsibility.

As a result, U.S.-appointed Chief Prosecutor Joseph Keenan cajoled the office of the emperor into pressuring Tojo to retract his testimony in the trial. Tojo complied. That constitutes a major manipulation by General Douglas MacArthur, who was charged with rebuilding a postwar Japan as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. The pardoning of the emperor encouraged the Japanese to have no sense of guilt, a feeling fueled by their victimhood from mankind’s first nuclear bombs.

Japan indulged in self-pity even though it had turned most of Asia into a war zone. Despite all the brutalities it had committed against its neighbors, there was no sincere atonement or show of responsibility. Instead, Japan strived to befriend the victor and occupying power — the United States. The regrets and apologies by former prime ministers such as Tomiichi Murayama, Keizo Obuchi and Naoto Kan, lost their luster in the face of unremorseful and revisionist comments from other leaders. That way, Japan became an obstacle to Asia’s integration despite its third largest economy.

Some of the leaders overcame such victimhood. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone visited communist China in 1984 and offered billions of dollars in aid. The funding helped China build airports and subways in Beijing and Shanghai. Nakasone persuaded Japan’s conservative bureaucrats and politicians to bump up the aid to make amends for the sufferings of the Chinese during the war. He even proposed to premier Zhao Ziyang to each send a letter to Pyongyang and Seoul to arrange an inter-Korean dialogue. In 1983, when he visited South Korea as the first Japanese prime minister, he bypassed the foreign ministry lest officials should advise against the trip.

Japanese Emperor Akihito braved through a visit to China in 1992 despite worries about his arrest in China. He acknowledged that Japan’s wartime occupation had caused “great sufferings on the people” and expressed “deep sadness.” Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized for colonial occupation during his visit to North Korea in 2002. In reaction, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il responded with an apology for kidnapping Japanese citizens.

President Yoon Suk Yeol, right, U.S. President Joe Biden, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida greet one another before a tripartite summit at the Grand Prince Hotel in Hiroshima, May 21, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in the city. [YONHAP]

Despite Yoon’s concession, there are still critical voices about pardoning Japan for its atrocities during the colonial rule. But we should find some lessons from China’s response to Japan, whose aggressions killed or injured more than 10 million Chinese people. China asked Japan to resume trade even as it was engaged in the Korean War and Japan served as U.S. logistics base in that war. A trade pact was reached the following year. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, the architect of China’s foreign policy under Mao Zedong, was a “chameleon” who could pose as a pragmatist before a pragmatist, a philosopher before a philosopher, and a Kissinger when addressing Henry Kissinger. In 1961, Mao thanked a leader of the Japanese socialist party for invading China as Japan’s aggression helped create communist rule in China. We also must put practical national interests and strategy before abstract ideology and emotions.

In his famous book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” Jared Diamond wrote, “As reluctant as Japanese and Koreans like to admit, they are like twin brothers who shared their formative years.” The two must move beyond the “weaponization of interdependence.” There is an old Russian proverb that says, “Forget the past and lose an eye, and dwell on the past, lose both eyes.” Korea and Japan must prepare a reconciliatory process by the time the two leaders celebrate the 60th year of the normalization of relations in 2025.

The two must pave the way for the Asian era together with China by making the most of Asian dynamism and the strength of a long civilization. The East Asian countries can build a peace and economic community even Europeans will envy. The vision also can help sustain a healthy alliance with the U.S. Japan must not err this time. It must be honest in recognizing its past wrongs to open a new era through a Yoon-Kishida declaration.