Abstract
Japan, South Korea and China have come to play increasingly important roles in maintaining peace and stability in Northeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. There are growing challenges, however, stemming largely from the lack of trust and insufficient trust-building, which are deeply rooted in the differences in each country’s threat perceptions as well as competing identity and recognition needs. Therefore, East Asian countries need to emphasize the importance of empathy, an intermediate stage between confidence (initial stage) and trust (final stage). They need to see the past and present situations more from others’ perspectives and take no action that will jeopardize the sensitivities of the others. This will minimize the substantial gap between confidence and trust, and establish a firm foundation for building confidence and stability between the three countries.
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Notes
- 1.
It is important to note that the reasons behind the decreasing numbers of Chinese and South Korean tourists and exchange students to Japan are a combination of the territorial/history issues and the effect of the 3.11 incidents in 2011.
- 2.
According to Welch, confidence is “a degree of subjective certainty that one is safe from imminent conflict resting on situational constraints (i.e. the incapacity of others to pose a proximate threat through surprise or otherwise).” Trust, on the other hand, is “a degree of subjective certainty that one can count on non-violent interaction and peaceful dispute resolution resting on dispositional considerations (another’s well-meaning character or a relationship based on respect and mutual concern for the others wellbeing).”
- 3.
Interview with a CRF official on September 27 (Sano, 2014).
- 4.
Japan’s 2014 Defence White Paper spends 11 pages on North Korea’s WMDs and missiles, and roughly two pages on North Korea’s conventional military threat.
- 5.
According to Steinberg and O’Hanlon, the term “peaceful rise” was amended to “peaceful development” out of concern that even a “peaceful” rise might seem threatening to other countries in the region and beyond. See Steinberg and O’Hanlon (2014: p. 30).
- 6.
Tensions in the ROK-Japanese and the Sino-Japanese relations have heightened during power transition periods in the three countries where any newly coming administration may have a smaller room for diplomatic manoeuvre. Political leaders at their early phase need to establish their bases for domestic support, and therefore cannot afford to be viewed as being too soft or too weak in foreign policy. The Abe administration won the upper house election with a fairly big margin in July 2013 and gained political assets to implement its political agenda including seeking better relations with South Korea and China. President Park Geun Hye has been in power for nearly two years and seems to have established her own style and steady course for policy implementation. President Xi Jinping has been extremely active in establishing better relations with other countries including the neighbours in Southeast China, and seems to be successful in gradually gaining stronger support within the Chinese Communist Party. It is highly desirable and probable that the three leaders with stronger domestic support take steps forward to improve the ROK-Japanese and Sino-Japanese relations that are essential for the peace and stability of Northeast Asia as well as the Asia-Pacific region as a whole.
- 7.
For more than 115 years since the seventh century, Japanese strategic thinkers have been concerned about the western flank of Japan because most of the battles between Japan and China were fought either on or through the Korean Peninsula. During the battle of Baekgan (or Hakusukinoe in Japanese) in 663, Japan experienced a total defeat in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula against the alliance of the Tang Dynasty of China and the Siila Kingdom of Korea. After the defeat, the Yamato Court of Japan feared an invasion from Tang or Siila and established the first-ever defence system in the western part of Japan such as frontier guards (Sakimori in Japanese), signal fire systems and permanent fortification. Additional battles were fought between Japan and the Yuan Dynasty in 1274 and 1281 off the coast of Kyushu, as well as a series of battles on the Korean peninsula from 1592 to 1598. After the Meiji Restoration in 1867, the western flank of Japan was secured at the expense of Korean sovereignty and national pride until 1945, and subsequently with the help of the US-ROK alliance.
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Noboru, Y., Shutaro, S. (2018). Trust and Trust-Building in Northeast Asia: The Need for Empathy for Japan-ROK-China Security Cooperation – A Japanese Security Perspective. In: Clements, K. (eds) Identity, Trust, and Reconciliation in East Asia. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54897-5_10
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