Abstract
Japanese identity narratives and the associated Asia imaginary legitimized colonial policies in which the implied hierarchy of kokutai whittled away Korean sovereignty from 1875 onward. Even when the “colonial” relationship ceased in August 1945, the anti-Korean sentiments during the Allied occupation (1945–1952), as well as the exchange of invectives during normalization negotiations reproduced the familiar hierarchy: the Japanese self “forced” into war with Western colonial powers re-encounters a “boisterous” Korean otherness single-mindedly determined to exact revenge for the thirty-six years of annexation. The psychological dynamics of colonial relationship persisted as a residue in bilateral relations even if the international context of bilateral relations changed. The narratives of Korean otherness continued to be remanufactured in August 1945, with the images of backward and ungrateful Koreans reified into an obdurate diplomatic fact for Tokyo.1 Put differently, if it were not for the ambivalent relationship between continuity and disjuncture within Japanese self throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the near-permanence of rivalry cannot be explained. In short, this ambivalence tempers the contemporary bilateral relationships in which the colonial residues remain an obstinate reality.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See, for example, Victor Cha, “Abandonment, Entrapment, and Neoclassical Realism in Asia: The United States, Japan, and Korea,” International Studies Quarterly 44, no. 2 (2000): 261–91; and
Dorothy Robins-Mowry, ed., Is a Korea-Japan Symbiosis Possible? (New York: The Pacific Institute/Asia Institute, 1996).
Taku Tamaki, “An Unholy Pilgrimage? Yasukuni and the Construction of Japan’s Asia imaginary,” Asian Politics and Policy 1, no. 1 (2009): 31–49.
David Hundt and Roland Bleiker, “Reconciling Colonial Memories in Korea and Japan,” Asian Perspective 31, no. 1 (2007): 66–67.
Quoted in Rudolf Kranewitter, “Prejudices Against the Japanese,” Korea Journal, 32, no. 1 (1992), 74.
Yoshida Yutaka, Nippon-jin no senso-kan: sengo-shi no nakano henyo (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1995), 8.
Kim Young-seul, Nikkan kankei no sai-kochiku to Ajia (Fukuoka: Kyushu daigaku shuppankai, 1995), 76–77.
Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt (London: Jonathan Cape, 1994), 65.
See, for example, Lee Chung-sik, Sengo Nikkan kankei-shi, trans. by Okonogi Masao and Furuta Hiroshi (Tokyo: Chuo koron, 1989), chap. 6; and
George Hicks, Japan’s War Memories: Amnesia or Concealment? (London: Ashgate, 1997), chap. 4.
Takasaki Soji, “Han-Nichi kanjo”: Kankoku, Chosen-jin to Nippon-jin (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993), 56; and Lee, Sengo Nikkan, 197.
Kimijima Kazuhiko, Kyokasho no shiso: Nippon to Kankoku no kin-gendaishi (Tokyo: Suzusawa shoten, 1996), 175.
Kimijima Kazuhiko, Kyokasho no shiso, chap. 7. See also Chung Jaejeong, Kankoku to Nippon: Rekishi kyoiku no shiso (Tokyo: Suzusawa shoten, 1998), chap. 6.
Chung Dae-kyun, Ilbon no imeji: Kankoku-jin no Nippon-kan (Tokyo: Chuko shinsho, 1998), 229.
Quoted in Miyake Akimasa, “Rekishi kyoksaho wo meguru seiji-teki gensetsu to sono tokucho,” in Rekishi to shinjitsu: ima Nippon no rekishi wo kangaeru, Nakamura Masanori, et al. (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1997), 35.
Quoted in Tawara Yoshifumi, Dokyumento “Ianfu” mondai to kyokasho kogeki (Tokyo: Kobunken, 1997), 11.
Takahashi Testsuya, Sengo sekinin-ron (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1999), 118–20.
Kuboi Norio, Kyokasho kara kesenai rekishi (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 1997), 54–55.
George Hicks, “The ‘Comfort Women,’” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 306.
See Onuma Yasuaki, “Ianfu” mondai towa nandatta noka (Tokyo: Chuko shinsho, 2007), 2;
Jane W. Yamazaki, Japanese Apologies for World War II: A Rhetorical Study (London: Routledge, 2006), 58.
Yoshikawa Haruko, Jugun ianfu: shin-shiryo ni yoru kokkai ronsen (Tokyo: Ayumi shuppan, 1997), 96.
Quoted in Ryuji Mukae, “Japan’s Diet Resolution on World War Two: Keeping History at Bay,” Asian Survey 36, no. 10 (1996): 1014.
Copyright information
© 2010 Taku Tamaki
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tamaki, T. (2010). The Politics of Memory. In: Deconstructing Japan’s Image of South Korea. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106123_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106123_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38201-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10612-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)