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Fast-forward fifty years, however, and East Asia presents a different picture. Japan no longer constitutes the great exception, a Western level of development surrounded by a sea of backwardness. On the contrary, the first four Asian tigers enjoy a GDP per head not far short of Japan ’s, [994] living standards in the region have risen enormously, and Japan ’s old nemesis, China, has been the subject of a remarkable economic transformation. In short, history has finally caught up with Japan. [995] As a society and culture, Japan has always been at its best when its goals — and the path towards those goals — were set in concrete. But when both the goals and the path need to be adapted to changed circumstances, perhaps even subject to wholesale revision, Japan seems to find the shift inordinately difficult. [996] Rather like France, it tends to fiddle and delay until nothing short of a revolution — or, in Japan ’s case, a restoration — is required. In the face of the transformation of East Asia, and above all China, Japan has been effectively paralysed, unable to change direction, offering little other than more of the same. The ruling Liberal Democrats, who have dominated Japanese politics since 1955, have found lateral thinking virtually impossible. [997] As Chinese East Asian expert Zhu Feng argues: ‘ Japan has been less prepared for the rise of China than any other country. They can’t believe it. They don’t want to believe it. Yet it affects them more than anyone else.’ [998] For the most part, Japan has gone into denial about the rise of China, wishing that somehow it might go away or that it was perhaps a figment of everyone else’s imagination.
From the early nineties, Japanese politics began to shift to the right and become more nationalistic, a process hastened by the collapse of the Social Democratic Party, which had always been a staunch opponent of Japanese rearmament. [999] Japanese ruling politicians grew more aggressive towards China, displaying impatience with traditional deferential tendencies towards their neighbour, increased concern about China ’s rise, and frustration with what they saw as China ’s exploitation of Japan ’s colonial past. [1000] In 1996 for the first time the proportion of those saying in an a
Japan, meanwhile, finds itself more or less isolated in East Asia. Although it has been generous in bestowing aid on many countries in the region, it has failed to address its wartime legacy, which is a continuing source of resentment for many of its neighbours, especially South Korea and China. It has remained, furthermore, relatively aloof from its neighbours, having refused to open up its market and resisted entering into multilateral, rather than bilateral, arrangements with them until its hand was finally forced by China ’s recent initiatives with ASEAN. [1004] There have been two recent illustrations of Japan ’s continued isolation. The first concerned its failed bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2005, when China succeeded in mobilizing most of the region in opposition to Japan’s proposed membership, thereby effectively torpedoing it. [1005] The second example was the anti-Japanese demonstrations in China in 2005, provoked partly by Japan’s UN bid but mainly by the publication of a new school history textbook in Japan that sought to downplay Japanese crimes against China during the last war; [1006] in this case, as in that of the United Nations, the sympathies of the region were overwhelmingly on the side of the Chinese rather than the Japanese government. [1007] In both instances, the underlying cause of Japan ’s isolation is the same: its failure to address not only China ’s grievances about the last war but nearly everyone else’s as well. [1008]
China ’s rise requires a fundamental shift in Japanese thinking — indeed, Japan ’s interests would have been best served if it had been willing to address the wartime treatment of its neighbours several decades ago [1009] — but there remains little sign of it. Instead Japan has clung to variants of its post-war stance, with the result that China has succeeded, with the adroitness of its recent diplomacy in the region, in outmanoeuvring it. Meanwhile, the relationship between the two remains frozen in the ma
[994] In 2001 both Hong Kong and Singapore enjoyed a slightly higher GDP per head than Japan, while Taiwan’s was 78 per cent and South Korea’s was 71 per cent of Japan’s; Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris: OECD, 2003), pp. 184-5.
[995] Satoh, The Odd Couple: Japan and China, the Politics of History and Identity (Japan Institute of International Affairs, 7 August 2006).
[996] Interview with Peter Tasker, Tokyo, 8 June 1999.
[997] Satoh, The Odd Couple.
[998] Interview with Zhu Feng, Beijing, 16 November 2005.
[999] Drifte, Japan ’s Security Relations with China since 1989, pp. 78- 9.
[1000] Ibid., p. 79; Mike M. Mochizuki, ‘China- Japan Relations: Downward Spiral or a New Equilibrium?’, in Shambaugh, Power Shift, p. 137.
[1001] Drifte, Japan ’s Security Relations with China since 1989, p. 77.
[1002] Ibid., pp. 80–81, 83, 88-9; Mochizuki, ‘China-Japan Relations’, p. 147.
[1003] David Pilling, ‘Less Toxic Relations between Japan and China ’, Financial Times, 6 February 2008.
[1004] Zhang Yunling, Designing East Asian FTA, p. 61.
[1005] Japan Times, 13 April 2005; Shi Yinhong, ‘The General Situation of the China-Japan Relations and the Imperative for a Composite Strategy’, workshop on Sino-Japanese relations, Renmin-Aichi University Conference, Beijing, 2005, p. 2.
[1006] Ibid., pp. 2–3; Japan Times, 13 April 2005.
[1007] For example, Japan Times, 17 April 2005 and 19 June 2005.
[1008] International Herald Tribune, 2 April 2007.
[1009] Drifte, Japan ’s Security Relations with China since 1989, pp. 183-4.
[1010] Shi Yinhong, ‘The General Situation of the China-Japan Relations and the Imperative for a Composite Strategy’, 2005, pp. 1, 5.
[1011] Drifte, Japan’s Security Relations with China since 1989, pp. 55–60; Shi Yinhong, ‘The General Situation of the China-Japan Relations and the Imperative for a Composite Strategy’, 2005, pp. 3–5; Shi Yinhong, workshop on Sino-Japanese relations, Renmin-Aichi University conference, Beijing, 2005.
[1012] Drifte, Japan ’s Security Relations with China since 1989, pp. 49–51.
[1013] Ibid., p. 59.
[1014] Reinhard Drifte, ‘Japanese-Chinese Territorial Disputes in the East China Sea — Between Military Confrontation and Economic Cooperation’, pp. 35-6 (unpublished working paper, available to download from http://eprints.lseac.uk.).
[1015] Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, pp. 273-5.