I read this essay as a foreign policy recommendation. Sato is arguing, that historical revisionism favoring nationalistic interpretations is hampering East Asian diplomatic unity. From an IR perspective, the status of domestic factors, like history, in understanding alliances is disputed. IR Liberals would accept debates such as Sato’s at face value, as would Constructivists. But, as a Realist, it’s merely an effect of a deeper cause. I’m more concerned about developing universal theories of alliance-building, for which often cultural and historical arguments are a red herring. There are numerous proposals for East Asian alliances, and all of them have cultural and hisotrical support. Culture and history are completely unhelpful to a lasting solution to East Asia’s destiny.

I’ll just mention two other proposals to supplement the Johnson recommendation. There’s Brzezinski’s in The Grand Chessboard arguing that the US recognize Beijing’s regional hegemony and give Tokyo a global role, including a normal military one, commensurate to its economic heft. And, there’s also Cha’s quasi-alliance proposal, that recommends an explicit triangular alliance between the US, Japan, and ROK to replace the current Us-Japan and US-ROK treaties.

I also would point out, that DPRK, ROK, and PRC criticism of Japan did not start until the 80s notably with PM Nakasone’s search for normality. Before that, Japan, and the rest of NE Asia, were content with the Yoshida Doctrine, streessing economic diplomacy and US hegemony. Irredentist claims, with the exception of the Kuriles dispute between Moscow and Tokyo, to Takeshima/Dokdo and Senkaku/Daioyu also started quite recently.

The historical alarm was the end of the Cold War, and the problems that end pose for East Asia. Europe can point to the end of Yalta when the Berlin Wall fell, but East Asian diplomacy was covered under the 1951 San Fransisco Treaty. Interestingly, that treaty postponed every island claim now back up for grabs, including the Spratleys, Dokdo/Takeshima, Senkaku/Daioyu, Kuriles, and Taiwan to a future date. It’s now the future! The problem is not history, but the 1951 Treaty. As in Europe with Yalta, San Fransisco must end. That means the signatories to SF, which excluded PRC and Russia, must reconvene and revisit all the points the Korean War made too controversial for them to deal with.

Short of that, it’s just a bite here and there out of the 1951 treaty by anyone with a gun for as long as it takes for one country to establish military hegemony in the region. History is fascinating, but it also is manipulable. It also is not as important as power.

I fondly remember reading a report from a Korean embassy in the mid-Edo Period (1600-1868) that graphically describes utter Korean disdain for Japan and, I must add, the Japanese willingness to go along with it.

He doesn’t give a specific date for this report he “fondly remembers,” but much of the first half of the “mid-Edo Period” would be within the memory of living witnesses of the so-called Imjin Waeran, a seven-year Japanese invasion of Korea that devasted the peninsula with massive loss of life and destruction (not to mention that the military and financial failure led to the takeover by Tokugawa) or their children and grandchildren who would have heard stories directly from survivors.

In other words, citing a report of Korean disdain toward Japan from that period would hardly be an example of a natural Korean dislike for Japan based merely on Korea feeling it was Japan’s “senior” in the Sinocentric world order.

Over the past six or seven years, Koreans seem to have taken almost every opportunity to try to piss off Japan and the US. Why? Do they do it as a way to win favors with China and North Korea? Do they do it because they lack confidence and such actions give them some? Or have they become so overconfident and cocky that they feel they can say “screw you” without suffering any bad reprecussions? Or is it just some kind of “yangban complex” that makes them so arrogant?

I am not sure what it was like in Korea in the late 1890s and early 1900s, but I have witnessed many things in Korea since the late 1990s that me wonder if Koreans, themselves, have not been responsible for much of their suffering over the centuries.

I do not know if Japan and Korea will someday come to blows, as many Koreans believe, but I do think the anti-Japanese actions and attitudes in both Koreas are largely responsible for Japan’s moving away from its peace constitution. If someday there is a war between Japan and the two Koreas, I wonder if Korean history books 100 years from now will remember to mention the part that Korea played in creating the atmosphere for it?

is anyone surprised that the expat, so full of charisma, tries to excuse japanese behavior?

Is anyone surprised that unfounded Korean arrogance has been the root of problems for centuries?

It’s true! It’s true!

And if Korean porn would get as good as the Japanese stuff, we’d be more than happy to support Korea in everything it does.

I, for one, don’t need to be told by the Kansai report that Korea’s irrepressible resentment of Japan may be derived from its view of itself as the legitimate avatar of China, cultural values and all, while Japan is considered no more than one of the Middle Kingdom’s outer tributaries.

Korea the legitimate avatar of China? That is brutal.

What 18th-century invasions are you talking about? The Tokugawa bakufu actually took care to profusely apologize to Korea for Hideyoshi’s misdeeds and not to further offend Korean sensibilities?

The Japanese are into “killing the competition”. The small island culture made them into vicious people who like to subjugate others by force. Survival of the fittest. Always eager to show that they are the best. Very difficult people to get along, unless you have the upper hand. If they see you are stronger, they will bend over backward and be your servants.

Koreans are just clueless. Stuck between two idiots, they vacillate between them. In the position to take advantage of the best characteristics of two countries, it always ends up learning the worst ones. Just another village idiot.

These three deserve the others. China, Japan, Korea. The parade of fools. Soon to suffer the worst war (the first nuclear war) in human history.