Tsutsui W.M. A Companion to japanese histоry

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world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and

the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the

end, of life.

Unlike Fukuzawa’s call for Japan to abandon its neighbors and his recognition of

the inevitability of Wester nization, Okakura constructs an organic Asianness that

attempts to overturn the material superiority of the West by an imagined culturalism

of the East. Okakura is not oblivious to the diversity and difference that exist within

Asia. The unity of Asia, despite periodic intertribal upheavals and numerous

ethnic conquests, lies in the ‘‘old energy of comm unication’’ embodied by Chinese

humanism and Indian spirituality so that the Asiatic races form a single mighty

web. In spite of the irreducible historical cont ingencies and differences in particular

regions or locales, there exists a perceivable unitary structure: ‘‘Arab chivalry,

Persian poetry, Chinese ethics, and Indian thought, all speak of a single ancient

Asiatic peace, in which there grew up a common life, bearing in different regions

different characteristic blossoms, but nowhere capable of a hard and fast dividing

line.’’

Whereas Fukuzawa sees modern civilization and the old conventions of Asia as

mutually exclusive, Okakura advocates the superiority of Asia’s spirituality over the

scientific progress of the West: ‘‘The simple life of Asia need fear no shaming from

that sharp contrast with Europe in which steam and electricity have pl aced it today.’’

Whereas Fukuzawa sees the futility of resisting the West and urges Japan to delink

from China and Korea, Okakura envisions the past as a way to create new paths for

the future and contends that Asia, not the West, should be the agent of historical

change. He ends the book with the following:

We await the flashing sword of the lightning which shall cleave the darkness. For the

terrible hush must be broken, and the raindrops of a new vigor must refresh the earth

before new flowers can spring up to cover it with their bloom. But it must be from Asia

herself, along the ancient roadways of the race, that the great voice shall be heard.

Victory from within, or a mighty death without.

Although Okak ura’s Asianism and Fukuzawa’s de-Asianism appear to be articulat-

ing two opposing positions of Japan in relation to its Asian neighbors, it would be

wrong to view them as incommensurable and irreconcilable. The two approaches

converge on a Japan-centrism that, regardless of their respective symbolizations of

Asia, bestows upon Japan a privileged position within the region in the emerging

imperialist-colonial world system. First and foremost, the opposition between Fuku-

zawa and Okakura derived from the same sense of crisis: the confronting of Western

civilization.

It was this imminent threat that necess itated the rearticulation of the

Japan–Asia relationship as a modern problem that cons tituted a rupture from the

China-centered worldview. Fukuzawa sees Western civilization as a kind of epidemic,

although with greater benefits than measles. Okakura sees it as inferior, as totally

absorbed in the consideration of means rather than ends. Both were confronted with

the opposing relation of East and West, and an existing Asia. More importantly, they

also subjected Asia to symbolization away from geographical or environmental de-

terminism.

410 LEO CHING

In these tumultuous times, Fukuzawa and Okakura ascribe to Japan a unique role

in between East and West which ultimately gives rise to a hierarchical relation of

nations that affords Japan a special status within Asia, but does not fundamentally

challenge the Eurocentric mapping of the world’s peoples in terms of race and

development. The archipelago therefore becomes an apt metaphor for both Fuku-

zawa and Okakura in their imagining of Japan in its new role in the sea of empire. For

Fukuzawa, although ‘‘Japan is located in the eastern extremities of Asia, . . . the spirit

of her people has already moved away from the old conventions of Asia to the Western

civilization.’’ This location and disposition will allow Japan to float in the ‘‘same

ocean of civilization, sail the same waves, and enjoy the fruits and endeavors of

civilization.’’ The eastern extremities of Japan’s location also, in Okakura’s view,

bestowed upon Japan ‘‘the unique blessing of unbroken sovereignty, the proud

ancestral ideas and instincts at the cost of expansion [and] made Japan the real

repository of the trust of Asiatic thought and culture.’’ Japan is therefore the living

museum of Asiatic civilization where the historic wealth of Asiatic culture can be

studied through its treasured specimens. However, Japan is more than a museum

‘‘because the singular genius of the race leads it to dwell on all phases of the ideals of

the past, in that spirit of living Advaitism which welcomes the new without losing the

old.’’ The history of Japanese art therefore becomes the history of Asiatic ideals: ‘‘the

beach where each successive wave of Eastern thought has left its sand-ripple as it beat

against the national consciousness.’’

Prior to the publication of Fukuzawa’s ‘‘On Leaving Asia’’ and Okak ura’s The

Ideals of the East, Japan had already claimed sole sovereignty over the Ryu

kyu

Islands

and established Hokkaido

as a settlement colony. Between the time of their publica-

tions, Japan defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War which was fought on the soil of

the Korean peninsula and as a result acquired its first overseas colony in Taiwan

(1895) while preparing for the formal annexation of Korea in 1910. In sh ort, by

the early twentieth century, Japan had emerged as an imperialist power, albeit not in

content, but certainly in form. Asia, as part of the Japanese empire, could no longer

exist only at the levels of symbolization and discourse; it had become the object of

Japanese colonization and subjugation with for mal policies, informal practices, and

ideologies.

Asia remained an integral site of articulation for the Japanese empire’s self-identi-

fication and in its differentiation from the West. The specific historical conditions of

the Japanese empire elicited different strategies of positionality vis-a

-vis its Asian

colonized and Western imperialist counterparts. Unlike the expansive imperialist

outreach of the British and French empires, Japanese exp ansionism was limited to

peoples in close physical proximity to the Japanese islands in East Asia, in what could

be called a contiguous empire. Japan was also a latecomer in the great game. By the

late nineteenth century, over 80 percent of the world’s sur face was occupied by

European powers. More importantly, Japan was the only non-Western and non-

white modern imperialist power. Japan’s entry into the geopolitical arena of global

imperialism is already upheld by the coloniality of power. One constitution of the

coloniality of power is the classification and reclassification of the worl d population

wherein the concept of ‘‘race’’ becomes crucial in delineating and discrimi-

nating peoples in their relative positionalities to the omnipresent and omnipotent

‘‘West’’ through the dichotomous schemata of underdevelopment/development,

JAPAN IN ASIA 411

premodern/modern, incivility/civility, etc. This ambivalence – ‘‘not white, not quite,

yet alike’’ – colored Japanese colonial discourse in Asia and its relationship to the

white imperialist powers throughout the modern colonial period.

For it is in part to

justify Japanese rule and to differentiate it from the Western powers as benign and

liberating for the ‘‘colored’’ peoples of Asia that notions such as ‘‘common script,

common race,’’ and ‘‘universal brotherhood’’ were propagated as the endowed

mission of the Japanese nation to assimilate all its subjects under the benevolent

rule of the emperor.

Like the various colonial rules and discourses of Western imperialisms, the

Japanese empire was neither homogeneous nor without contradictions. There was

substantial difference between rhetoric and policy not only between the earlier

colonies of Taiwan and Korea but also between the formal colonies and the

puppet state of Manchukuo. Unlike other colonies, Manchukuo was officiall y desig-

nated as an independent state based on the idea of harmony between the

five nations of Japan, Korea, Manchuria, China, and Mongolia. Setting aside such

differences for the moment, we may devise a general contour of Japane se rule

under the gradual shifts from incorp oration to assimilation to integration as

the three dominant moments of Japanese colonial practice and discourse in Asia.

What can be observed here is how, as Asia became incorporated into the Japanese

empire, Japan’s imperial imaginary grad ually abandoned the Western model of mod-

ernity fo r an Asia-centric counter-modernity that attempted to justify and

legitimize Japan’s colonial rule and imperialist expansionism until the defeat of

Japan in World War II.

There was no clear colonial policy based on the supposed racial and

cultural similarity between the Japanese and its colonized peoples in the early

period of incorporation. There were arguments that the Taiwanese were too under-

developed and the Koreans too ethnocentric to ensue the policy of assimilation.

In the early phase of Japanese colonialism, there was neither consistency nor consen-

sus in imperial Japan’s association with its supposedly culturally and racially similar

subjects. In the 1920s, assimilation emerged as the dominant ideology of the Japan-

ese empire. The shift in colonial policy, from incorporation to assimilation, was

a response of Japanese imperialism to the changing conditions between Japan

and China and the world situation at larg e. It was a resp onse to the expansion

of Japanese imperialism onto the continent and to contain and accommodate

the growing demands of the colonial elite. Furthermore, with growing tension

among the imperialist nations and mounting unease about Japanese expansionism,

Japanese colonialism had to legitimize itself based on its dif ference from

European colonialism through a precarious discourse of identity with its colonized

peoples. It is significant that Okakura’s proclamation that ‘‘Asia is one’’ was appro-

priated and rearticulated by the Japanese only during the height of the Pacific War.

With increased imperialist competition and regionalist conflict, the Japanese

sought to further integrate its coloni es and posse ssions into the empire, accelerating

its assimilationist policies into what has come to be known as ‘‘imperialization’’

(ko

minka) where colonial subjects are encouraged and coerced into becoming

Japanese subjects under imperial benevolence. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity

Sphere is but the most visible manifestation of this wartime mobilization and

integration.

412 LEO CHING

Postwar/Cold War

On August 15, 1945, through a static-filled radio broadcast, Emperor Hirohito, in a

highly formalized language, spoke to his subjects for the first time in his reign,

announcing that the war did not bode well for Japan and asking the people to endure

the unendurable and to bear the unbearable. Although few could make out the

meaning of the message from the emperor, soon after the rescript was summarized

in everyday language, the profound reality and immediacy of the emperor’s words

became clear: that the great Japanese empire had come to an end.

The dissolution of the Japanese empire and the insertion of Japan into the postwar

order dominated by US hegemony in the region ensured a disengagement of Japan

from Asia that was radically different from that of the modern/colonial moment. A

new postwar national identity based on singularity and exclusivity dominated the

discussion. A postwar Japanese identity was constructed by the effacement of the

memories of war and empire. Instead of an outstretched and vast imperial landscape,

Japan, as both a geographical and a cultural signifier, was now enclosed and delimited

within the borders of an ‘‘island country.’’ The militaristic imperialist nation was

replaced by the self-absorbed and timeless ‘‘snow country.’’ The multi-ethnic com-

position of the ‘‘Ja panese,’’ as necessitated by the incorp orating logic of the empire,

was readily discarded and disavowed in the immediate postwar years. Instead, a

singular national/racial identity, or what Oguma Eiji has called ‘‘the myth of the

homogeneous nation,’’ was inaugurated and consolidated in conjunction with Ja-

pan’s refusal to confront its war crimes and colonial past. The new understanding was

that Japan had been a natural community integral to the Japanese archipel ago since

antiquity. In the postwar construction of Japanese national history, Japan’s modern

past and its relation to Asia was never properly grasped as a history of empire-building

and where former subjects of the Japanese empire had been totally obliterated from

its discourse. It was by effacing and denying the traces of coloniality that the postwar

cultural identity of the Japane se as a homogene ous people was established as Japan’s

self-image. Even the occasional interrogation of and response to the issues of war

responsibility more often than not deflected and bypassed the questions of Japanese

colonialism in Asia.

Dissociation from the empire, and the delinking from Asia, was due to the peculiar

way in which the Japanese empire liquidated itself without going through the process

of decolonization. The Potsdam Declaration stripped Japan of its colonial and occu-

pying territories, with Japanese sovereignty limited to Honshu

, Hokkaido

, Kyu

shu

and Shikoku. Unlike the French and the British, the Japanese did not have to concern

themselves with prolonged, and at times violent, procedures of decolonization. There

was no debate within Japan regarding the fate of its possessions; it was as obvious as

defeat itself. The Japanese empire simply vanished. As a result, decolonization was

never a domestic concern; it was the prob lem of other peoples. What has been

precluded from intellectual and popular discourses alike in postwar Japan is the

question: what exactly constituted the decolonization of the Japanese empire? It is

a question that will re-emerge in the postcolonial/ globalization moment, as we shall

see later. In this way Japan was deprived of, or rather conveniently relinquished, a

sustained discussion and debate over its responsibilities not only for the Pacific War

JAPAN IN ASIA 413

but also for its overall colonial legacy. The abrupt withdrawal of the Japanese colon-

izer, however, had dire consequences for many who found themselves thrust into an

era of postcoloniality only to be mired in another neo-colonial struggle under the

American-led postwar regional order. The lack of decolonization and the dominance

of American political and economic activities in the postwar era played a pivot al role in

severing Japan’s historical and colonial relationship with Asia and moving Japan

towards a new sub-imperialist relationship with the United States.

The end of World War II, the dissolution of the Japanese empire, and the ensuing

cold war structure were followed by a number of hot wars in Asia. The Korean War,

the Vietnam War, and the civil wars were largely fought under the premises of the

superpowers. As a consequence, Northeast and Southeast Asia (not to mention South

Asia) were characterized primarily by fragmentation and high levels of mutual hostil-

ity. The alliances forged out of the cold war further militated against any serious

regional cohesion in Asia. The United States sought to create a ‘‘grand crescent’’ of

anti-communist regimes housing US military bases from the Aleutian Islands through

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and extending further south through the Philip-

pines and South Vietnam. As the leader of this alliance structure, the United States

worked assiduously to maintain bilateral relations with its various alliance partners

and to resist more than perfunctory efforts at closer intra-Asian ties, which it saw as a

potential challenge to A merican dominance in the region.

The political orientation

towards the United States was instrumental in preventing and obstructing much

intra-regional dialogue and interaction among the intellectuals and cult ural worke rs.

Political and cultural fragmentation under US geopolitical interest divided not only

Asia, but also affected Japan’s relationship with Asia. For obvious reasons, Japan had

been quite heavily linked with Asia through trade during the prewar years, with nearly

52 percent of Japanese exports going to Asia and 36 percent of Japan’s imports

coming from Asia. Western trade played a far less substantial role as the war ap-

proached. T his balance was rather quickly reversed for Japan following the loss of the

country’s colonies and its domestic economic prowess in World War II. As a conse-

quence, during the 1940s and 1950s, Asia receded in economic and strategic signifi-

cance, and the West, particularly the United States, became much more dominant.

For Japan, it was a period focused on domestic economic revitalization under the

nuclear and security umbrella of the United States, combined with virtually unre-

stricted access to the rich US market for Japane se goods.

During this time, trade and aid became the principal mechanisms for Japan’s

postwar developing involvement with its A sian neighbors. This took the form of

Japanese wartime reparati ons. Between 1955 and 1965, Japan negotiated agreements

with a total of ten East and Southea st Asian countries, transferring about $1.5 billion

in reparations and economic and technical assistance. The bulk of this money was tied

to the purchase of Japanese goods and services, thereby opening up these markets to

Japanese companies and creating ever more important bilateral economic links be-

tween these countries and Japan. This was congruent with postwar Japan’s broader

economic strategy which relied primarily on importing raw materials, largely from

Asia and the Middle East, and using them to produce manufactured goods in a host

of ever more soph isticated plants within Japan. These products were then sold within

the Japanese domestic market and also exported, primarily to the United States and

only secondarily to the rest of Asia.

Although 70 percent of Japanese government

414 LEO CHING

aid went to Asia, it was almost invariably linked to the development and expansion of

markets for Japanese companies.

Most Asian states traded heavily with Japan as well as with the United States. At

the time Asian ‘‘regionalism’’ meant largely that a number of countries in the Asian

region had similar bilateral economic links with Japan and the United States;

there was little complex economic activity within the region as a whole.

In short,

for most of the first three decades following World War II, Japan was linked primarily

to the United States and only secondarily to Asia. Relations between Japan and the

rest of Asia were highly asymmetrical. Asia was principally a source of raw materials for

Japan as well as an outlet for Japan’s manufactured goods. In this context, Asia

continued to exist as underdeveloped Other to the fast developing and mod ernizing

Japan. In the ‘‘triangle of growth’’ between the pivotal United States and the

peripheral Asian Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs), Japan acted as an import-

ant mediating economic agent. To summarize the process: as the United States played

the important role of providing an immense market and basic technology develop-

ment, Japan imported the basic know-how and applied it to practical use; subse-

quently, Japan was able to sell or dispose of previously used ‘‘secondhand’’

technology (machinery and equipment) to the peripheral NIEs; the NIEs, in turn,

used this ‘‘secondhand’’ technology and equipment to launch their export-oriented

industries.

The dominant intellectual discourse that justified the development-centric

model of the postwar/cold war system was modernization theories propagated by

American social scientists in the 1950s. At their core, mod ernization theories argued

that factors internal to an enclosed nation-state and culture, such as a traditional

agrarian structure, the traditional attitude of the population, the low division of

labor, etc., are responsible for underdevelopment. Differences in structure and his-

torical origin are considered of little importance; international dependencies are

not taken into account. As a result, a change in these endogenous factors is

the only strategy for development. The industrialized countries are the model for

economy and society; this model is universal and will be reached sooner or later.

There is a continuum between the least and the most developed countries on which

each country has its position, with the less developed nations separated from

the industrialized countries by the degree of backwardness that has to be made

up for. Suitable measures are the modernization of the production apparatus,

capital aid, and transfer of know-how, so that the developing countries can reach

the stage of industrialized countries as soon as possible. Development is seen as an

increase in production and efficiency and is measured primarily by comparing per

capita incomes.

Firmly ensconced in theories of evolution and functionalism, moder nization the-

ories sought to promote the core economic interests of the United States as a

developmental imperative. Japan was hoisted up during the cold war years as an

inspiring exemplar of evolutionary modernization and a model for developing nations

to follow. Within the specific context of Asia, Japan was represented as a westernized

Asian nation, an example of development that any non-Western (read non-white)

people could emulate. Japan was the ideal model because it had become an American

colony and client state, complete with a permanent army of occupation. There are two

mutually related factors that went into making Japan the showcase of modernization

JAPAN IN ASIA 415

in the cold war era: the active involvement of an American military occupation

between 1945 and 1952 and its continuation since that time under the provisions

of the US–Japan Security Treaty, and the recoding of Japan’s modern history into an

instance of modernization in scholarly social science writing in the 1960s, 1970s,

and early 1980s.

The Japanese, of course, reconstructed their own regionalized

modernization theory in the 1970s as the changes in global economic circumstances

made re-Asianization an imperative for the Japanese economic machine. In the so-

called ‘‘flying geese’’ model, initially advanced in the 1930s and revived in the 1970s,

Japan was the lead goose heading a flying-V pattern of Asian economic geese. The

other Asian countries, maintaining their respective and relative positions in the

formation, were to follow and replicate the developmental experience of the Japanese

and other ‘‘geese’’ in front of them. Over time, the Asian nations would proceed

collectively toward mutually beneficial advances in industrialization and manufactur-

ing, and eventually achieve prosperity, with Japan remainin g the undisputed devel-

opment leader in the region.

American modernization theories and its Japanese

variant are simply a mutation of an imperialism and colonialism discredited by World

War II.

Postwar stability reached a crisis in the 1970s whi ch forced Jap an to alter and

redefine its economic relationship with Asia. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods

monetary system (1971), the quadrupling of world oil prices (1973), and the grow-

ing trade surpluses with the United States led to a shift in Japanese foreign economic

policy. First, foreign direct investment by Japanese firms gradually became more

important than simple trade. Second, Asia became more important to Japan’s overall

economic strategies. Japan’s refocus on markets in Asia begun in 1970s, but acceler-

ated vigorously following the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the consequent 40 percent

appreciation in the value of the Japanese yen by 1987.

As a consequence, Japanese

foreign direct investment (FDI) in 1986 was nearly double that of 1985. By 1988 the

figure had doubled once again and it peaked in 1989 at $67.5 billion. While the bulk

of this investment went to North America, principally the United St ates, roughly one-

quarter was targeted at the rest of Asia, making a profound impact on economics

throughout the region. Furthermore, between 50 and 60 percent of Japan’s Asian

investment was in manufacturing, especially in consumer electronics and automobile

industries, moving and expanding towards a intra-regional and intra-industrial div-

ision of labor. For the single year 1993, Asian FDI by Japan accounted for a much

higher proportion of total Japane se FDI (33 percent).

One of the consequences of growing Japanese FDI and expanding manufacturing

facilities in Asia and the fast developing consum erist economies in Asia is the prolif-

eration of Japanese mass culture in the region, especially in Thailand, Hong Kong,

Taiwan, and other Chinese-speaking communities in Southeast Asia. Largely because

of Japanese colonialism and war crimes, Japanese cultural products were until recently

officially banned in some of its former colonies such as Taiwan and South Korea.

Although limited products, mostly TV animation, were broadcast in Taiwan and

South Korea from the 1970s, any associations with Japanese culture were erased or

modified. The systematic proliferation and transnationaliza tion of Japanese mass

image, sound, and commodity in Asia took place only in the 1990s, a period that

coincided with the heightened process of globalization in the region in the wake of

the thawing of the cold war.

416 LEO CHING

Post-Cold War/Globalization

The end of the cold war and the inherent contradictions of postwar Japanese eco-

nomic development which culminated in the decade-long recession of the 1990s have

significantly altered hitherto repressed and neglected postwar Asia–Japan relations.

Furthermore, the process of economic globalization has greatly facilitated intra-Asia

circulation of peoples, commodities, and ima ges to an extent unseen since the

Japanese empire. The end of the purported East–West, capitalist–communist con-

frontation in East Asia hastened the variou s democratic and people’s movements in

Northeast Asia, especially in high economic growth countries and Japan’s former

colonies of South Korea and Taiwan. The coming out of the former Korean ‘‘comfort

women’’ and the localization of Taiwanese cultural politics contributed to the re-

examination and reassessment of Japanese colonial rule and its legacy. The long

recession in Japan rekindled latent neo-nationalist sentiment regarding not just

Japan’s defeat and its subsequent submission under US hegemony, but the entire

modern history of Japan. In short, the end of the cold war opened up, as if by whim,

all the repressed contradictions of postwar Japan. The discussions, although motiv-

ated by the bursting of the ‘‘bubble economy’’ and the fallacy of social equity and

economic benefit, have been linked to historical issues relating to Asia. As these issues

re-emerge, we have also witnessed an unprecedented integration within Asia, espe-

cially in popular and youth culture under the process of globalization. In this stage of

geohistorical development, we are perhaps witnessing the waning of a bipolar ‘‘Japan

and Asia’’ and the emerging of a multi-polar configuration and power balance, with

China taking a major role in defining the questions of Asia.

The redefining of Japan’s relation to Asia, once again, has been intimately linked to

Japan’s self-definition during the uncertainty of its long economic downturn, espe-

cially by the neo-nationalists. The economic crisis and Japan’s embarrassing role as

financial lackey to the United States in the first Gulf War culminated in a deep

reflection on the identity of Japan and its relation to the outside world. A represen-

tative of this rearticulation of Japanese identity and its relationship to Asia is the

literary critic Kato

Norihiro. Reflect ing on the modes of postwar Japanese epistemo-

logical and existential subjectification in Haisengoron (On Defeat, 1995), Kato

em-

ploys the notion of nejire, or ‘‘twistedness,’’ as the core of the Japanese being. Since

the Pacific War has been condemned as a war of aggression, Kato

argues, those

Japanese who died believing in the cause of the state died meaningless deaths. For

those who survived, the y could not maintain the continuity of their wartime identity,

nor could they deny it and break from it by their own choice. This ‘‘suspended

identity’’ is the culmination of a repressed ‘‘twistedness’’ in the Japanese psyche that

includes both the Japanese state and society.

The postwar Japanese state would, on

occasion, apologize to its Asian neighbors for ‘‘acts of aggression,’’ but in other

instances, glorify Japan’s ‘‘acts of liberation’’ and justi fy what Japan did to its

neighbors. This schizophrenic duality and subject position is the consequence of

the reluctance of the Japanese state and society to confront this repressed ‘‘twiste d-

ness’’ in its postwar history.

Given this externally inflicted but internalized condition, it is important for the

Japanese to first acknowledge the presence of the ‘‘twistedness,’’ and overcome the

JAPAN IN ASIA 417

split personality through the constitution of a singular ‘‘we’’ as a nation which can

then qualify as a body able to apologize to others. And here is Kato

’s own ‘‘twist’’: he

proposes that the Japanese adopt a particular national procedure – the mourning of

the three million Japanese war dead and the constituting of a ‘‘we’’ that have

collectively paid tribute to our war dead. Then, and only then, can the Japanese

apologize to their Asian neighbors for having killed twenty million of them.

Simply

put, Kato

argues that in order to offer an authentic apology for the twenty million

Asian victims of Japan’s war aggression, it is first necessary to form a national subject

(kokumin shutai) though the process of mourning for the three million Japanese war

dead. Kato

’s position suggests that in an era of recession, the perceived need to

apologize to other Asians for Japanese aggression and atrocities can be appropriated

as a pretext for national mobilization. It also reveals deep-seated anxiety over a

perceived decline in national power and prestige. It can also be understood as an

effort to settle accounts with Asia on the issue of war guilt as a necessary step toward

cultivating a more ‘‘ord inary’’ military as well as political and economic role for Japan

in international affairs, whether it is to join the United Nations Security Council or

mobilize military actions abroad. The emergence of neo-nationalism in the 1990s is

best represented by the collective campaign by intellectuals around 1996 against the

‘‘postwar view of history.’’ These intellectuals and elites argued that the ‘‘postwar

view of history,’’ which they claimed dominates school textbooks, is a ‘‘masochistic

view of history,’’ which sees only the vices and not the virtues of the Japanese

nation.

The neo-nationalists’ attempt to redefine Japan’s postwar history and its role in

Asia is only a sym ptom of the larger process of incomplete decolonization in the

postwar era. The continuous wrangling over the Northern Territories with Russia,

the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands with China/Taiwan, and the more recent Tokto/Take-

shima cont roversy are unresolved territorial disputes stemming from the legacy of

Japanese imperialism. The lingering effects of the Japanese empire and its war

responsibilities are paradoxically intersected and interspersed by the growing Japanese

cultural hegemony and intra-Asian popular cultural flows. It is important, however,

to note that the emerging Japanese soft power does not constitute an alternative or

opposition to other forms of cultural power such as Americanization. Instead, the rise

of Japanese cultural exports can be read as a symptom of the shifting nature of

transnational cultural powe r in a context in which intensified global cultural flows

has decentered the power structure and vitalized local practices of appropriation and

consumption of foreign cultural products and meanings.

In the circuitry of glob-

alizing the regional, Japan has arguably, for the first time, encountered other Asian

nations as ‘‘modern’’ cultural and economic neighbors. The binary opposition be-

tween ‘‘traditional’’ and ‘‘underdeveloped’’ Asia and the ‘‘developed’’ West, which

was instrumental in modern Japan’s construction of its national identity in a West-

dominated world, is no longer feasible. The denial of the role of Japan as a mediator-

translator between Asia and the West does not signal the end of Japan-centric

thinking in the consumption of intra-regional cultural flows. This is evident in the

fantasy and nostalgia for a supposedly bygone or lost Japan in the identification and

consumption of Asia.

A partial explanation of the popularity of Japanese mass cultur e amongst youth in

Taiwan and other Asian countries is founded on the emerging sense of a coeval

418 LEO CHING

temporality with Japan. This sense of contemporaneousness, however, is not shared by

the Japanese, thus underscoring the persisti ng uneven and asymmetrical relationship

between Japan and other Asian countries.

Instead of coevality, Japan sees a lag

between developing Asia and itself and tends to view Asia nostalgically as a kind of

bygone Japan. This kind of nostalgia and longing is predicated on the familiar scheme

of modernization, development, and even coloni alism. The neo-nationalist and manga

artist Kobayashi Yoshinori has discovered the lost ‘‘Japanese spiri t’’ in Taiwan, espe-

cially among Taiwanese over the age of 60 who speak Japanese and experienced

Japanese rule. He also contrasts the vibrancy and energy of the Taiwanese youth with

the disillusioned and insecure young Japanese.

The presence of ‘‘Japan’’ in Taiwan

represents the era of high growth filled with ‘‘innocent’’ hope and vitality of modern-

ization, a bygone era in Japan which most Japanese youth can no longer experience.

Japanese reception of Hong Kong popular culture, although driven by the former

British colony’s economic strength and advanced cultural production, may also remind

Japanese women (who make up its largest fan base) of Japanese music and idols of the

1980s.

The recent popularity of the ‘‘Korean Wave,’’ especially the television melo-

drama series ‘‘Winter Sonata,’’ has most of its middle-aged female fans longing for a

simpler and purer love that supposedly reminds them of their younger days.

This sentiment of nostalgia is really not about the past, but about the present

predicament of Japan’s place in the world and in Asia. It reflects anxiety ove r the

Japanese nation and society and what Japan itse lf has lost or is about to lose in

contradistinction to the present vigor and dynamism of a promising Asia. The lack

of mooring deeply felt by the neo-nationalists and consumers has to do with the

breakdown of the postwar Japanese system under the auspices of the American

military and economic umbrella, and the secondary status of the Asian economies.

The growing importance of trade and economics has made the regional relationship

more multilateral and interdependent. With Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea

moving into subsidiary, but nonetheless important, roles in the march toward Asian

integration, the result is a much more complicated criss-crossing and interpenetration

of economic forces than the earlier patt ern, in which Japan was the center and the

other countries of Asia were at the periphery, connected to one another primarily

through Tokyo.

Conclusion: A Withering Japan in Asia

Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Japan’s equivalent of the Wall Street Journal) , in its annual

2001 ranking of ‘‘the bestselling products’’ in the format of a sumo

tournament,

listed the baseball player ‘‘Ichiro

’’ and the phrase ‘‘Made in China’’ as the west and

east grand champions respectively. Sukuki Ichiro

, with his unprecedented success as

the first Japanese position player to star in the US major leagues, has become the

symbol of Japan’s ‘‘soft exports’’ (sofuto yushutsu). The proliferation of China-pro-

duced consumer goods has profoundly affected the commodity prices and manufac-

turing structures of Japan. It is estimated, for example, that three-quarters of all

imported clothing and over half of all imported vegetables in Japan in 2000 came

from China. The juxtaposition of ‘‘Ichiro

’’ and ‘‘Made in China,’’ with its corre-

sponding though unintended ‘‘West’’ and ‘‘East’’ orientations, points to the double

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