How (not) to deal with China

JOHN POMPHRET, editor of the Washington Post’s Outlook section, runs a blog on the Post website called Pomphret’s China. For his posts, Mr. Pomphret uses the experience gained from serving as that newspaper’s Beijing bureau chief for six years.

In his latest entry, he gushes over a linguistic device that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (who is fluent in Chinese) used during a recent speech at Beijing University. He suggests that Western countries could employ it as a model for dealing with China in the future. Mr. Pomphret seems to contradict himself in the post, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The piece is headlined, “Australia to China: Let’s Not Be Friends”. It contains an explanation of the connotations of the word “friendship” as it is applied to foreigners in China today:

Rudd’s brilliance in the speech involves turning the Chinese term “friend” on its head. Friend (pengyou in Chinese) and frienship (youyi) are two of the most distorted concepts in modern China culture. In modern China, a friend is someone who will do you favors and who expects favors in return. A “foreign friend” is someone the Chinese party-state expects will carry water for them and NEVER criticize them.

Whenever a Chinese official called me “foreign friend” (waiguo pengyou), I knew some type of horrible deal would soon be asked or expected of me.

Here’s what Mr. Pomphret thought was brilliant:

So what did Rudd do? He went back — way back — into Chinese history, to the 7th century AD, and used another word for friendship (zhengyou).

“A true friend,” Rudd said, “is one who can be a zhengyou, that is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship….A strong relationship, and a true friendship,” he told the students, “are built on the ability to engage in a direct, frank and ongoing dialogue about our fundamental interests and future vision.”

Clever perhaps, but brilliant overstates it by more than a bit. The contradiction is the declaration in the headline—let’s not be friends—with Mr. Rudd’s actual use of the phrases “true friend” and “true friendship”.

Mr. Rudd’s assertion that “a true friend…is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship” comes across as empty political boilerplate. Read it over a couple of times and watch how quickly it evaporates. Then try to imagine how convincing the Chinese found it.

Mr. Pomphret’s enthusiasm for the Australian PM can perhaps be ascribed to a practice common among the mass media, in which a newspaper or broadcaster tends to lionize those people with whom it shares political viewpoints.

The blogger seems to have forgotten, however, that one G8 nation has considerably more diplomatic experience with China than the others. And he probably wasn’t aware that a prominent politician from that country also used the Chinese language to tell them to knock off the friendship talk and get down to brass tacks. Former Japanese Foreign Minister Aso Taro—who might well become Japan’s next prime minister—described his 2006 meeting with then-Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing during an interview published in the February issue of Shokun! magazine.

Here’s what Mr. Aso said. The translation is mine:

“The chief characteristic of the Chinese government’s diplomatic stance is to give priority to their own benefit. They’ll join hands with anyone if they think it will be beneficial to them. They are a formidable country in that regard. I’ll give you an example.

“This happened during my meeting with the Chinese foreign minister in Doha, Qatar, in May 2006. Talks (between our countries) at the foreign minister level had been suspended for some time. Li Zhaoxing kept going on and on about Japan-China friendship, but I just brushed it off and told him, “I’m not interested in that at all.” An approach and response based on emotions will at times be very damaging to the national interest.

“He seemed suspicious of what I was saying, so here’s what I told him. I said that what we needed was “Japan-China Mutual Benefit”, and we should both recognize that Japan-China friendship was a means to that end. I took out a piece of paper, wrote 日中共益 (Japan-China mutual benefit) in kanji on it and handed it over to him.

“When the meeting was over, he immediately came over to me and quickly extended his hand for a handshake.”

As Mr. Aso noted elsewhere in the interview, there hasn’t been any Japan-China friendship during 1,500 years of diplomatic relations. (He wasn’t taking a hard line; he was just stating the facts as he saw them.) But he also pointed out that an examination of the long bilateral relationship shows the Japanese can disregard a few years of chilly ties without having to worry about it.

Rather than follow Mr. Pomphret’s suggestion that the West use Mr. Rudd’s approach, the better course might be to take a tip from Mr. Aso and the Japanese experience. Bilateral friendship implies shared values. The Chinese nation is a totalitarian hegemon without a shred of respect for human rights. What advanced democracy shares such values as the forced sterilization of women and the absence of free elections?

The Australian prime minister knows enough Chinese to refuse the dubious distinction of “foreign friend”, and has enough wit to make a point by employing a linguistic gambit. Unfortunately, that is as likely to influence the Chinese as a Free Tibet bumper sticker.

Mr. Rudd suggests that friends look beyond benefit to engage in an honest dialogue. The Japanese foreign minister understands that the Chinese accept no nation as a friend unless they benefit from it, and they’re not at all interested in honest dialogue on someone else’s terms. He knows that for China, “the broader and firm basis for…sincere friendship” is their own self interest.

Mr. Rudd’s fluency in Chinese is an advantage when talking to university students in Beijing, but Mr. Aso’s more practical approach is an advantage when actually dealing with that country in a bilateral relationship.

That’s because he speaks their language.

Mac’s question about Japan and Tibet

FREQUENT POSTER MAC asked an off-topic question while replying to another thread. The question is so good, however, it deserves to be asked where everyone can see and hear it:

What face are the Japanese people going to show amidst all this Olympic Torch/Tibet/Human Rights kerfuffle? It’s a high stakes card to play, but I would say with China’s credibility on the way down, Japan have an opportunity to raise theirs. Whose example are they going to follow on this one?

Whose example indeed?

Were Koreans Oppressors in the War, or its Victims?

IF YOU CHOOSE TO BELIEVE the newspaper narratives, the Japanese nation denies or chooses to ignore its behavior during the first half of the 20th century, while the Koreans were innocent victims of that behavior.

That might be the price one pays for choosing to swallow the mass media product, but then sometimes the antidote to that particular poison can be found in a surprising place—such as a Korean newspaper!

Here’s an example: Earlier this month, the Choson Ilbo of South Korea published an article titled Were Koreans Oppressors in the War, or its Victims? The piece gives readers a glimpse of a reality more complicated than that usually presented in the popular press.

It is in fact a review of a book recently released in South Korea called A Metahistory of Korean-Japanese Disputes over Historical Awareness. (It doesn’t seem to be available in Japanese yet.) The newspaper (poorly) translated their own article into Japanese, and I’ve tried to render it into English because I think the information it conveys should be more widely known. Please keep in mind that what you see after the process went from Korean to Japanese to English (and in one excerpt from English to Korean to Japanese to English) is probably not what people higher up the linguistic chain got.

The Choson Ilbo chopped up the review into three separate pieces for some reason, so I’ve put them all into one place. I’m not sure how well-written the original was, but the situation is what it is. Hereafter, the voice is that of the reviewer, Yu Seok-je.

*****

A 19-year-old youth born in the colony of Korea volunteered to serve in the Japanese military. He rose to the rank of first lieutenant in the army and became a member of the kamikaze special attack squadron. Before leaving on his mission, he made a sound recording of his will for family members back home. The disc on which that will was recorded was discovered decades later. The voice cutting through the noise on an old record was by no means filled with sadness. It was the powerful voice of a first lieutenant in the Japanese army who pledged his loyalty to “His Majesty the Emperor”, and wished for the health of his parents. After his death in battle, he was enshrined with 26,000 other Koreans in the Yasukuni Shrine.

There was a surprising response to a television documentary broadcast three years ago that contained this information. Previously, one constant in Korean society was that the mention of the word Japan, with its negative image, would create a frenzied reaction. This time, however, there was no reaction at all.

Why was that? It was because these people were victims who, it was claimed, died an unjust death, while at the same time, serving as officers in the Japanese military and shouting Tenno Heika, Banzai! (Long live the Emperor!) In the decades-long debate about the faction friendly to Japan (during the colonial/merger period), dominated by the Korean-Japanese problem, there were no means available to offer an explanation about them.
　
The editors of this book are Kan-Nichi Rentai 21 (Korea-Japan Solidarity 21), a group consisting of Korean and Japanese intellectuals launched in 2004 to seek a new Korean-Japanese relationship appropriate for the 21st century. They are searching for a means to achieve solidarity by examining themselves and achieving a more mature viewpoint that transcends the antagonistic relationship that has arisen between the two countries. In brief, they now want to leave behind the intolerant nationalism with which one party views the other for a closer study of history. That’s why the authors of this book have chosen to step back from knee-jerk nationalism itself and develop a new viewpoint of their own through self-reflection.
　
The book So Far from the Bamboo Grove (In Japanese, Yoko’s Story) touched off a dispute about historical awareness last year. (Note: This is a semi-autobiographical novel by Yoko Kawashima Watkins describing a Japanese family’s escape from northern Korea at the end of World War II. The father was serving there as a government official during the colonial/merger period.) Commenting on the book, UC San Diego literature professor Lisa Yoneyama said, “Yoko’s Story closely resembles that of A Little Princess (a 1905 children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett). Both have the backdrop of a colonialist history that is not American and leave the impression that the United States is not connected with the history of colonial rule. That’s why mainstream American society appreciated Yoko’s Story as a book depicting the suffering of war. In this book, the historical background of Japanese colonial rule in Korea is wiped clean. This is related to the lack of historical awareness in the United States of their own colonial domination of others.”

Also commenting on Yoko’s Story was Professor Shin Hyon-gi of Yonsei University: “The dispute regarding this book began drawing nationalistic battle lines over the war in memory. Moreover, there was a sense of outrage that the Japanese, in their memories, considered themselves the victims. If you think about it carefully, however, (you’ll wonder) is it true that all Koreans were victims and all Japanese were always the victimizers? Talking about the experience of cruel persecution and ordeals is one way to achieve a collective identity. A clear line of distinction is drawn between the “good Korea” and the others, who are the villains. But crushing the memory of the Japanese does not mean that the memory of Koreans has won.”

Thus the book extends the horizon of thought into “troubling territory” that had been viewed as taboo in both countries. The victims in the victimized country have raised their voices to censure the victimizers in the oppressor country. But neither the victims in the oppressor country nor the oppressors in the victimized country are visible in this construct. No clear distinction can be made between victimization and victimhood, and the construct is both compound and multilayered. When the nationalism of both countries is in conflict, there is no place for one to stand in the rapids.

The Japanese wives have been forgotten by nearly everyone. Professor Kano Mikiyo of Keiwa College asserts that the problems of the past are by no means resolved. In the latter half of the 1930s, the policy of forming a unified whole of Japan and the colony of Korea (in Japanese, the naisen ittai policy) led to the strong encouragement of intermarriage. There were 5,458 marriages between Koreans and Japanese from the years 1938 to 1943, and of these 3,964, or 73%, were between Korean men and Japanese women. Most Japanese women stayed in Korea (after the war), and according to a 1975 survey, 73% of the remaining 956 women were in the economic classification of poverty or extreme poverty.

Professor Kano said, “The backdrop to the tragedy of these Japanese wives is the tacit acceptance of their fate in the patriarchal systems of both countries. In Japanese society, Korean men, who were ethnically weaker, were stronger both socially and culturally in gender terms under the patriarchy. Fixing up these men with the women of the stronger (Japanese) group exacerbated their self-esteem as males. Did this really achieve a balance by promoting equality?”

Considerations of the “troublesome territory” continue. Professor Lee Yon-hun of Seoul National University was critical of the explanation written in a South Korean history textbook that “Japanese imperialism stole 40% of Korean territory”.

In regard to the argument that the Class A war criminals should be separated from the rest of those venerated in Yasukuni Shrine, Prof. Takahashi Tetsuya of the University of Tokyo worries this would be a “dangerous scenario”. “After the Class A war criminals were separated, the war dead who were involved in Japanese invasions overseas before 1928, and who had no connection with the invasions after 1928, would remain enshrined. Once the Class A war criminals were removed, if the Yasukuni Shrine were to become operated by the state and visits by the Tenno (Emperor) were possible, it could be used as a device for supporting Japanese military activity.”

The critical weakness of this book is that the opinions and assertions of the 18 Korean and Japanese authors, and the logic of those assertions, are not unified. One possible interpretation is that the lowest common denominator for the authors is simply that they have removed themselves from the line of sight of nationalism, with which many people have been permeated. As the book itself states, if that is the case, as heated disputes with a multiplicity of viewpoints rage with no one offering a conclusion or a proper answer, its significance can only be discovered by considering it as one attempt to identify their common ground.

Endnotes

I’m not sure why Mr. Yu thinks the lack of a unified voice is a drawback; it is inevitable there will be a wide range of viewpoints in an issue such as this, and I think it is worth drawing attention to them.

The group Korea–Japan Solidarity 21 recently published a textbook examining the war that was written by Japanese, Korean, and Chinese historians. Nothing by that group is available on Japanese Amazon.com, however.

It is interesting to note that a textbook is apparently in use in South Korea with the claim that “Japanese imperialism stole 40% of Korean territory”. Who knew that such a textbook existed? Yet everyone knows about a Japanese textbook that glides over the same period in history–everyone except students in Japanese schools, because only a miniscule micropercentage of them even use it.

It is unfortunate that all the Japanese cited in the review are academic leftists; Prof. Yoneyama in particular seems to have permanently pitched a tent out in left field. Here is her profile on her university’s site, in which she tells us as much about her cat as she does her “partner”. The professor is rather upset at the success of So Far from the Bamboo Grove, as you can tell from this article in the English-language version of The Hankyoreh, a South Korean newspaper. Here is a plot summary of A Little Princess; I haven’t read either book, but to think the two are comparable seems like something dreamt up by a college literature professor with an axe to grind and time on her hands. She’s offended that Ms. Watkins wrote the book, and she’s offended that Americans like it.

Extend the logic of her argument and one would expect her to be attacking Gone with the Wind for its portrayal of slaveholders on a plantation during the American Civil War.

It is worthwhile for people outside Japan to realize that viewpoints such as those of Prof. Takahashi exist, even though the scenario he postulates here is as likely to occur nowadays as a cow jumping over the moon. His Japanese language website describes him as an enthusiastic participant in the Peace Boat voyages to South Korea and Pyeongyang. (Members of their cruises also met several times with Yasser Arafat.)

The Peace Boat project was the brainchild of a group that included Tsujimoto Kiyomi, a member of the lower house of the Diet in the Social Democratic Party (formerly the Socialist Party). She was forced to resign in a financial scandal, and was later reelected through the proportional representation system. She is also suspected of, at minimum, having ties to the Japanese Red Army terrorist group. Others think she funneled them money.

It would be interesting to know if a wider spectrum of Japanese political opinion is represented in Korea-Japan Solidarity 21. There are other currents in contemporary Japanese-Korean relations, after all. For example, former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro, a conservative/traditionalist, is the chair of the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians’ Union; an assistant executive director of the same group is former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo!

Koga Takeo (1950-2008)

SORRY FOR THE LIGHT POSTING lately, but the end of the fiscal year in Japan is a busy one for translators, and other things have been occupying my time this week as well. On Monday afternoon, Koga Takeo, the man who got me to Japan 24 years ago this month (and the nakodo at my wedding three years later) died. His wake was held tonight, and the funeral will be held tomorrow.

Ordinarily Japan is the subject here rather than anything to do with me, but in many ways, to talk about Mr. Koga is to talk about grass-roots Japanese internationalism over the last quarter of the 20th century. To the extent that Japanese society, a former feudal domain that emerged from its self-isolation in a particularly unpleasant way, is now enthusiastically and pleasantly engaged on a variety of levels with the rest of the world, is due to people like Mr. Koga and thousands of people like him in cities and towns throughout the country.

The obituary in the newspaper noted that he was a pioneer (kusawake, literally grass-parter) of international exchange activities in the prefecture, and that doesn’t begin to describe it. The man was a veritable fountain of ideas, and he had the energy to pull most of them off and the persuasiveness to get people to go along with him. He was the founder of three different enterprises (all of which continue to operate today), as well as an instructor in Wado-ryu karate with his own dojo. (He was seventh dan.) It was not unusual for him to spend summer vacations leading a group of students to stay in a remote Thai village that lacked electricity or running water.

On one occasion some years ago, I was part of a group of people bouncing around ideas for solving his latest problem. He was trying to figure out how to find the money to ship two buses to Thailand that he had convinced the local bus company to donate to an orphanage in that country. It took him a while to get them there, but it was just the sort of thing he enjoyed doing.

He had created a scholarship fund for that orphanage, and there were two reasons for his involvement with it. First, he wanted Japanese to become more aware of Asia, and second, he wanted poverty-stricken orphans in rural Thailand to go as far in school as they could. In a country where uneducated country girls often wind up in the sex industry, that is a very big deal.

He convinced his hometown to form sister-city ties with a small town in the United States, and then served as the interpreter during the formal signing ceremony. He also could have interpreted had the ceremony been conducted in French. Ten years ago in Busan, I had a couple of late-night drinks with him in a pojang macha (I think they’re called), a sort of yatai, or street stall, but with the selection of a yakitori restaurant, and his conversational Korean was good enough for all the other customers.

He thought that too often for Japanese, foreigners = Caucasians, so he embarked on a one-man affirmative action program of hiring as English teachers people from such countries as Sri Lanka, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Zaire whenever he could.

Here is the website of the Terra People Organization, the NPO/NGO he founded. (Only in Japanese, unfortunately) His greeting (which is a bit cosmic) and photo are on this page.

As if that weren’t enough, he was always coming up with ideas for projects on the side. For example, he conceived the idea of filming The Wings of A Man, the story of the only Japanese professional baseball player to die as a kamikaze pilot, and wound up borrowing money from the bank himself to finance the bulk of it.

He also had his eccentric aspects. I have seen him show up for events dressed in an informal men’s kimono, a black cape lined in pink, and a bowler hat. Apparently, he was like that as a young man, too. His first job was as a high school English teacher, and his classroom attire was a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals.

Oh, and did I mention he shaved his head like a monk? He said a priest gave him permission to do so.

The subheading to this site is “Japan from the Inside Out”, and the reason I was allowed that vantage point is because he was the one who opened the door and invited me in. To be sure, participation in Japanese society as an equal (with no special favors) is exactly what I wanted, and that is exactly what he insisted upon from his foreign employees. Still, it is surprising even today that many foreigners who talk about internationalism and their interest in Japan and the Japanese are really just blowing smoke. It is also surprising how many Japanese still give them a pass.

But I continue to learn things from him, even indirectly. At the wake, his son delivered a short eulogy in which he said, “My father was like a storm who always thought what he wanted, said what he wanted, and did what he wanted. Many of you might have been engulfed by that storm and suffered some damage from it, but we ask you to forgive him.”

That’s when I learned that the Japanese can laugh at a funeral, as well as cry.

The final scene in the movie Leo the Last, made in 1970 during a period of global social upheaval, shows the star Marcello Mastroianni lying in a heap in the street with the neighbors after an explosion on his block. One of his neighbors tells him, “You can’t change the world.” Mastroianni replies, no you can’t, but you can change your street.

Koga Takeo didn’t change the world, but he certainly changed a lot more than his street. Over the years, he inspired more young people than I can count to expand their horizons, travel the world, and accomplish things they couldn’t have imagined trying before they met him.

Before going to his wake tonight, my wife and I calculated how much time it would take to drive to the funeral parlor and set out accordingly. So many people came that it caused a traffic jam, and we arrived 25 minutes later than we planned. Goodness knows what it will be like at the funeral tomorrow.

He died 10 days short of his 58th birthday. May he rest in peace.

Update: I don’t know how long the link will last, but here’s a Japanese-language story about his funeral with a photo that appeared in the regional newspaper. Attendance was estimated at about 1,000, and that is no exaggeration. The prefectural governor delivered one of the eulogies, in which he said, “That a person such as him even existed is a marvel.” That about sums it up.

The Imperial warehouses

THE SMITHSONIAN in Washington D.C. is sometimes referred to as America’s attic. While it is primarily the repository for items of historical value, it is also the storage place for objects that are more curiosity than treasure and part of the country’s cultural legacy only in the aggregate.

There is a group of buildings in Japan that serve a similar function, though they are not open to the public and not widely known. That’s the Gyofu, a cluster of wooden warehouses on the southern end of the Fukiage Gardens in the Imperial Palace.

They were originally used to store the spoils of war. Each of the five buildings in the group has a name that ends with the suffix –fu. In each of the five was kept the booty taken from overseas in military campaigns.

Specifically, the Shintenfu was the repository for items from the Japan-China war, the Kaienfu was for items from the North China Incident (the start of the second war with China), the Kenanfu stored the items from the Japan-Russia war, the Junmeifu held the spoils from the Siberian Intervention (1918-1925), and the Kenchufu was the warehouse for the plunder and souvenirs from the Manchurian and Shanghai incidents.

The Korosei Rock, a symbol of the relationship between T’ang Dynasty China and Bohai (a kingdom that existed in Northern China and the Korean Peninsula from 698-926), was taken from China to Japan during the Japan-Russia War and is still standing in the front garden of the Kenanfu (the building shown in the photo). All the other items from overseas were returned to their countries of origin after the war.

The buildings of the Gyofu still serve as warehouses, however; they are used for the storage of the possessions of the current emperor, some of the art donated to the country by the Imperial Household after the death of the Showa Emperor, and the implements used for palace ceremonies.

According to those who have gotten a glimpse of the interior of these buildings, they just have an open space with no dividing walls or shelving. All the stored items are placed seemingly at random inside.

Though the buildings are old, they were solidly built and are still in good shape. The people responsible for their design and construction were part of the Takumiryo, a group of builders and craftsmen in the former Imperial Household Ministry. That group was also involved with the construction of other parts of the Imperial Palace and the Tokyo National Museum.

The Gyofu are located in a part of the palace grounds where entry is highly restricted, so they are almost never seen by anyone without a reason for being there. But there is one exception: the Suwa teahouse in the East Gardens, a popular site for strollers that is open to the public. The building is actually the Kaienfu, which was moved to this location and rebuilt. It was decided to move it in 1968 when the plans for the East Garden were formulated because its distinctively Japanese appearance was thought to blend in well with the surrounding area.

It’s a shame the rest aren’t available for viewing by the public, but they are just storehouses, so they wouldn’t be the most appropriate place for public exhibitions. Then again, there’s no reason why the Korosei Rock should still be there. It should have been returned to China long ago.

The Chinese would like to have it back, of course, but to their credit, they seem to be asking for the return in the spirit of bilateral friendship rather than making strident demands. Here’s the Japanese-language explanation of the history of the object and the Chinese viewpoint on the website of the Chinese Embassy in Japan, as written by Xinhua. China sent a team to this country to examine the rock, but the Imperial Household Agency, perhaps the most backward government organization in the country, refused to let them see it. They gave the team photographs instead.

It’s an object of historical and cultural importance from China that belongs in China. Why should it be sitting on a plot of land in Japan that most Japanese aren’t allowed to see? Indeed, returning it would be of great benefit to Japan, if only for the positive publicity it would generate among the Chinese.

Keeping it there does not reflect well on the Japanese government. I suspect the Japanese public would agree–if they knew about it.

Cultural commissars

THE JAPANESE SHOULD THANK their lucky stars they’ve kept their festival traditions alive over the centuries—and that no megalomaniac dictators decided to eliminate them in the name of progress. Otherwise, like the Chinese, they might be regretting what they’ve lost, as this article in the Asia Times points out.

Here’s what happened:

China’s late leader Mao Zedong had tried to erase many traditional Chinese celebrations by ordering the destruction of religious sites and outlawing folk customs. Everything “old” - from marriages to funerals, from folk medicine to folk music - was targeted.
But as communist ideology gradually lost its influence in contemporary society, Chinese leaders after Mao have tried to fill the void with nationalistic appeals for people to take pride in the country’s 5,000-year-old history and culture.

It’s not so easy to recreate the connection once the ties to the past have been severed, however. Many Chinese find the efforts to reclaim those festivals contrived and hollow:

“Any resemblance to the elaborate imperial sacrifices to heaven and Earth of the past was lost in these caricature performances of poorly trained traveling troupes from the provinces,” columnist Zhang Min wrote of his experiences at the capital’s Temple of Earth in the Beijing News. The exquisite works of artisans that once adorned Beijing temple fair stalls - Peking Opera masks, figurines made of painted dough and modeled on legendary figures, intricate kites and embroidered clothes - have now been replaced with “ubiquitous and cheap mass-produced trinkets”, Zhang complained.

The Chinese also faced an unexpected development. Other countries are claiming Chinese festivals and customs as their own for UNESCO registration:

The country saw one of its most treasured events, the Dragon Boat Festival celebrated in June, nominated and later successfully listed as an intangible part of the cultural heritage of neighboring South Korea. The listing angered Chinese scholars and officials who accused South Korea of brazenly encroaching on China’s cultural heritage.
Since the 2005 UNESCO listing of the Dragon Boat festival, South Korea has applied to have its ritualized Confucius memorial ceremony listed as another unique cultural heritage and is reported ready with an application for the listing of “Chinese traditional medicine” as “Korean traditional medicine”.

This touched off a different kind of culture war. Countries can get just as huffy about their rituals and ceremonies as they can about their territory:

“It is not enough to talk just about territorial integrity - China needs to safeguard its cultural sovereignty too,” argues literary scholar Bai Gengsheng. “Unlike material culture which is traceable, intangible cultural heritage can be very contentious and we must design strategies to preserve China’s heritage from being lost to other countries.”

This debate is fascinating because it highlights both the historical movement of culture in the region at large and some of the tensions that currently exist within it. Regardless of UNESCO bureaucratic fiats, no one can deny that the Chinese are the progenitors of much of East Asian culture that later became localized in other areas. The Japanese, to cite one of many examples, freely acknowledge the Chinese (and Korean) origins for gagaku, or Imperial Court music.

Chinese Overreaction?

But even some Chinese realize that when cultural traditions are replanted elsewhere, they adapt to the new soil and become transformed in the process. As this China Daily article points out:

Some Koreans working in China believe that the Chinese who are upset may be overreacting. A teacher surnamed Kim pointed out that the festival has been celebrated in Korea for more than 1,000 years, since it was introduced from China. It has been integrated with Korean culture over the centuries, so that celebrations now bear little resemblance to China’s.

The same article suggests that the Chinese who object may misunderstand the UNESCO process:

For all the pride the Chinese take in such traditions, however, they do not necessarily hold any proprietary rights over them.
“Unlike natural heritage sites, which are fixed and unique, the ‘masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity’ can be shared,” said Wu. “If UNESCO approves something as an intangible cultural property of one country, other countries may still apply. For example, mukamu is a typical music of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, but still UNESCO has approved Iraq mukamu and Azerbaijan mukamu as those nations’ intangible cultural properties.”

Choseon Chicanery

Be that as it may, the Koreans are not entirely blameless in this affair, as this brief article points out:

The Chinese domain name for the (festival) website (duanwujie.cn), however, was first registered by a South Korean company in October last year when the two countries had already competed against each other fiercely in a struggle that aimed to include the Dragon Boat Festival as a world cultural heritage of their own country.

It cost the Chinese $30,000 to buy back the domain name.

The Koreans have been known to do this before. They were the first to register the rights for the Japanese name of the alcoholic beverage shochu in the United States, for example, and used it to sell their own version of the drink, which they call soju. The Japanese had to buy those rights back, too.

Everyone recognizes that some cultural practices which originated elsewhere have long been a part of Korean life and have taken on a Korean identity. It’s another matter, however, to register the Chinese and Japanese names with the intent of scamming some cash. And everyone also recognizes that it’s pointless to expect people on the Korean Peninsula to chastise the grifters who scavenge off of the Chinese or Japanese while poking a finger into their eyes. They’re likely to be applauded instead.

The Source of the Problem

But some questions inevitably arise after reading these accounts: Why is anyone bothering to register their cultural properties, tangible or intangible, with UNESCO? Why should anyone think any organization has the standing to render judgments on a country’s cultural heritage?

And who is this all for, anyway? Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans need UNESCO’s “approval” for cultural validation, particularly for a festival that dates back a millennium in Korea and 2,500 years in China. The Koreans haven’t needed it to keep their festival alive, and the Chinese still have their cultural memory despite the social devastation Mao wrought.

A look at the UNESCO website for the project provides some hints.

Other than country-specific lists with brief explanations, the site is short on reports of what it has achieved with actual, on-the-ground projects. Yet it is packed with organizational trivia, rules of procedure, and vapid platitudes. Just the sort of thing to keep people busy without doing any real work. Here are some statements from their convention, which presents the reasons and objectives for their activities:

Considering the importance of the intangible cultural heritage as a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development…

When did intangible cultural heritage become a guarantee of sustainable development? It’s a toss-up which is worse: cutting and pasting political banalities to create a pleasant-sounding but meaningless mush of linguistic oatmeal, or inserting that phrase as self-justification into their convention as if it were an absolute scriptural truth.

An intangible cultural heritage guarantees nothing, least of all sustainable development.

And it’s no surprise that UNESCO should be so concerned about protecting—or enforcing—yet another mushy platitude: cultural diversity. It’s as if UNESCO were encouraging people to have sex. Cultural diversity is what happens when people are left to their own devices to interact naturally. Especially when the NGOs aren’t looking.

Recognizing that the processes of globalization and social transformation, alongside the conditions they create for renewed dialogue among communities, also give rise, as does the phenomenon of intolerance, to grave threats of deterioration, disappearance and destruction of the intangible cultural heritage, in particular owing to a lack of resources for safeguarding such heritage…

We have a winner in the contest for non-native English speakers to see who can write the longest sentence with as many clichés as possible.

The proposition that globalization threatens diversity is untenable. Globalization enhances cultural diversity, and examples abound. To cite one: trends in popular music over the last century on every continent except Antarctica.

“Deterioration, disappearance, and destruction” result from isolation and the rejection of outside influences. Nature loves a wide gene pool. So does culture.

Considering the invaluable role of the intangible cultural heritage as a factor in bringing human beings closer together and ensuring exchange and understanding among them…

If this is referring to specific local areas, they’ve got it backwards. A cultural heritage results from the pre-existing exchange and common understanding between people. And while multinational cultural exchange sometimes does result in bringing people together, it doesn’t ensure it. Exhibit A: the Dragon Festival registration story.

UNESCO also attempts to define what they’re talking about. Here’s one definition:

(d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;

Perhaps the Chinese should register feng shui before the Koreans beat them to it!

Give UNESCO credit for trying to cover every conceivable base, however:

Close to half of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world are doomed or likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. The disappearance of any language is an irreparable loss for the heritage of all humankind.

The disappearance of any language is no more an irreparable loss for our heritage than was that of the pterodactyl. It just means that the language no longer has a practical use. If there were any benefits to be gained from its use, a language wouldn’t have to be protected.

After looking over this website, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the enterprise seems less about recognizing and preserving culture than it is about providing the transnational NGO jet set with a marvelous opportunity for self-congratulation and a chance to dress up and meet people from around the world on someone else’s tab.

If the plug were pulled on UNESCO tomorrow, Koreans would still celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, Nigerians would still play juju music, the Balinese would still dance, and the Japanese living cultural treasures would still make ceramics and perform kabuki—not to mention holding more traditional festivals than the public sector can count.

Bam Goes Bamian

Yet when a cultural heritage really was threatened, UNESCO turned out to have been all bumper sticker and no horsepower. When the Taliban used the 1,500-year-old Buddhas of Bamian for bazooka practice, as the third photo shows, the largest Buddhist statues in the world–a UNESCO World Heritage site–were turned into rubble.

Here’s what former Afghanistan leader Mullah Mohammad Omar allegedly said to a Pakistani reporter:

“I did not want to destroy the Bamian Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamian Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings — the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddhas’ destruction.”

The Mullah is obviously a lunatic, but there is a point lurking in that nonsense. If multinational organizations think it’s important to save threatened cultural heritages, a good place to start would be to help the culture save itself. Their money would be a lot better spent ensuring that people had safe drinking water than by creating an artificial cocoon for a language or dance form that long ago lost its meaning for living people.

But laying water pipe has very little cachet. At a catered multinational cocktail party, it’s a lot more impressive to be able to boast that one helped save indigenous weaving and dying techniques, and doesn’t that blanket look lovely on the wall of the apartment?

The problem here is not the end, but the means. The ostensible aims of this scheme may be admirable, and I’d elbow my way to the front of the line to see some of the registered activities, but UNESCO is just as likely to get in the way of people devising their own cultural preferences instead of helping them. Like the pterodactyl, cultural practices become extinct for a reason.

The best solution lies where it always has—at the local level. Even the Marxist government of Cuba has kept its local musical culture alive while allowing it to evolve by incorporating outside influences. Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has a robust program for preserving and utilizing cultural properties, as you can see here. Even Japanese villagers need little encouragement to continue holding festivals that are hundreds of years old and that only a handful of people see.

And they don’t touch off arguments about who has dibs on what is supposed to be the shared heritage of humanity.

Postscript: Here is the UNESCO page for registered Japanese cultural properties. The Japanese seem to be paying a lot of the bills for other countries, while noh, kabuki, and joruri don’t need UNESCO registration to survive. The Japanese government is also playing a leading role in restoring the Buddhas of Bamian.

A lesson in activism

You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.
- Former American baseball player Larry Andersen

ALMOST A YEAR AGO, I wrote this post about the changes made to signs at Yushukan, the museum next to the Yasukuni Shinto shrine in Tokyo. The inscriptions on the first signs charged that President Franklin Roosevelt goaded Japan into attacking the U.S. at Pearl Harbor in 1941, using the subsequent American entry into the greater war as a means to bring the country out of the Depression.

Okazaki Hisahiko, the former Japanese ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Thailand, was directly responsible for making those changes, but his statements suggest his motivation was a newspaper column written by George Will. Here’s what I said then:

The impetus for some of the changes at Yushukan might have been inspired by American George Will…If that is the case, it should not be lost on observers that the change was spurred by Will’s Japan-friendly, dispassionate presentation that eschews moralizing and blame. Some people fail to realize that the only thing finger-wagging harangues accomplish is to turn people off, but the scolds aren’t paying attention to their audience, anyway. Finger-wagging harangues are just the means to congratulate themselves on their moral superiority–one of their primary enjoyments in life. They’re not delivered with the intent of actually persuading people.

And now, a year later, friendly persuasion has again accomplished the objective when finger-wagging harangues did not.

Someone discovered one restaurant in Tokyo (home to tens of millions of people) with a sign that said “Japanese People Only” at the top in English and a large amount of explanatory Japanese text below.

Another person seized on the sign’s existence as an opportunity to get into a lather, slip into his identity as The Caped Crusader, and fight for truth, justice, and the moral order of the universe. Two other people with common sense and human understanding used a different approach, however. A native Japanese discussed the matter calmly with the owner, and the sign was taken down. Matt at Occidentalism describes what happened in two posts–the first here, and the second here. This is an excerpt from his second post:

…The owner said that different customs led him to write “Japanese people only” on the sign. In addition to the foreign customers not being able to follow the written rules in Japanese, they also brought their own food to the restaurant, brought children to the restaurant but left the children alone in the restaurant while the parents went elsewhere which caused trouble for the staff, and some foreign customers ordering only one dish between 5 people, etc….At the moment there is (now) no sign, but the text of the sign may be changed to make it clear that it is non-discriminatory, unlike the old sign which easily leads non-Japanese speaking foreigners to conclude that the shop owner hates foreigners.

The problem was resolved when a minor and understandable transgression was handled with consideration and tact. It is likely that no hard feelings resulted. Had a more confrontational method been used, it could very well have set back the progress of international interaction in one corner of Japan, rather than promoting it.

Eldridge Cleaver once noted that you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution. It is ironic that some people who claim to be part of the solution seem to be more interested in self-congratulation and the masturbatory thrill of controversy–making themselves part of the problem.

I know which method I prefer.

Postscript: Here’s another post I wrote last October describing my views on alleged Japanese exclusionism.

Australian media priorities

COLUMNIST ANDREW BOLT of the Herald Sun, an Australian newspaper, blogs about the priorities of the Australian news media here.

He also explains to a young’un the meaning of “a hero’s welcome” here.

Yes, both are Japan-related!

U.S. erecting missile shield in Japan

THE UNITED STATES hasn’t forgotten about its treaty commitment to defending Japan, as this article in the International Herald Tribune makes clear.

In a multibillion-dollar experiment, Japan and the United States are erecting the world’s most complex ballistic missile defense shield, a project that is changing the security balance in Asia and has deep implications for Washington’s efforts to pursue a similar strategy in Europe, where the idea has been stalled by the lack of willing partners.

The name of the system is the Joint Tactical Ground Station, or JTAGS, which you can read all about here.

This is not the Patriot system itself, but rather a detection, tracking, and notification system to be used for the missiles. There is already a Patriot system at Kadena in Okinawa, and both the Japanese and American navies use sea-based systems.

The Americans hope this will kill two birds with one stone (so to speak) because further developments in North Korean missile technology might threaten the United States itself.

North Korea has over the past several years made major strides in its development of both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to the shores of other countries. In October 2006, it conducted its first nuclear test - a step that Iran has not taken - and more than a decade ago shot a multistage ballistic missile over Japan’s main island and well into the Pacific, almost reaching Alaska.

The article also notes there are 50,000 American troops in Japan.

The JTAGS has been set up at the Misawa Air Base at the northern end of the main Japanese island in Aomori. The Japanese military has used the site since the Meiji period, when it was an Imperial Army cavalry training center. It became an air base in 1938.

And to give credit to journalists where credit is due: the first edition of this article used the phrase “balance of power”, but the IHT later amended it to “security balance” in the part quoted above.

The first expression was not appropriate because Japan does not “project power” in the military sense. Their military forces are for self defense only. Indeed, the current interpretation of the Japanese Constitution is that the country would be prohibited from taking preemptive action against North Korea even if the North Koreans were gassing up a warhead-topped missile on the launch pad.

If these systems function properly, that point would no longer be at issue.

Featurettes:

• Misawa was the starting point for the world’s first non-stop trans-Pacific flight. Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon took off from Misawa on the “Miss Veedol” in 1931 and landed 41 hours later in Wenatchee, Washington.
• Misawa is the only combined joint service military base in the western Pacific, as it is used by the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the Japan Air Self Defense Force.
• Misawa also has scheduled civilian flights operated by Japan Airlines to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and Osaka’s Itami Airport, which makes it one of the few joint civilian-military airports in the American defense system.

Now I’m going to have the phrases “Miss Veedol” and “Wenatchee Washington” bouncing around my head for the next few hours!

Ozawa Ichiro’s foreign affairs

OZAWA ICHIRO, the president of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s leading opposition party, is considering a trip to South Korea to visit Lee Myung-bak on 22 or 23 February, just before Mr. Lee’s inauguration as president, according this Kyodo report. Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo also might drop in on Mr. Lee, but he would visit around the time of the inauguration itself.

The Japan Times eagerly suggests in its headline that Mr. Ozawa might upstage the prime minister by being the first to visit Mr. Lee. (The newspaper’s political orientation is such that they would be delighted if that happened.) Upstaging Mr. Fukuda might well be the DPJ president’s reason for making the visit, but the way Mr. Ozawa and the party behaved when he visited China in early December suggests another possible outcome: the visit could blow up in their faces like an exploding cigar.

Mr. Ozawa’s mentor was the late Tanaka Kakuei, the Boss Tweed of Japanese politics. Mr. Tanaka took a special interest in China, and this interest is shared by his protégé. The DPJ president regularly leads groups on goodwill tours of the country. During his tour last December, the group met with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Here’s the BBC report on his visit; the headline reads, “Ozawa beats Fukuda to China visit”, as if the article belonged in the sports section rather than the Asian news category.

Starting at the Beginning

This story begins when the Dalai Lama visited Japan last November on a tour to raise the awareness of the Chinese oppression of his Tibetan homeland. DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama Yukio held a joint press conference with him during his stay here.

You don’t need a fortune cookie to figure out how the Chinese responded. They wrote this letter to the DPJ, which is still up on the website of their embassy in Japan. Here’s a translation from the Japanese of the good parts:

“We express our great surprise and strong dissatisfaction with Secretary-General Hatoyama’s statement of support for the Dalai Lama at the press conference.

“Under the guise of religion, the Dalai Lama is an anti-Chinese political exile working to break up the country.

“Ozawa Ichiro, the president of your party, will lead a large delegation to visit our country early next month.

“We most firmly request that you extend all due respect to China’s position toward Tibet so that a similar event does not happen again, and that relations between the DPJ and China can continue to develop soundly in the proper direction.”

The DPJ’s Response

As it happened, Uyghur human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, who had spent six years in a Chinese jail, and who was forced to divorce her activist husband by the Chinese government, was also in Japan at the time. She had been invited to attend a study conference organized by Makino Seishu, one of the DPJ’s founding members with Kan Naoto and Hatoyama Yukio. A former lower house member, Makino has for years been an outspoken advocate for the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, and of democracy in Asia.

Ms. Kadeer (shown in the second photo with the Dalai Lama) soon found herself disinvited by the conference. A room for the meeting had been reserved since August in a building used by Diet members, but the party applied some pressure to Mr. Makino to avoid offending the Chinese. She did wind up addressing a study conference, but it was not one with direct DPJ involvement. That get-together was sponsored by three LDP members of the Diet instead: Nakagawa Shoichi, Eto Seiichi, and Hiranuma Takeo.

Those who attended heard about the Chinese imprisonment and execution of Uyghurs and their justification of their behavior by insisting it is part of the global war on terrorism.

Mr. Hatoyama admitted the letter had been delivered to the party, and that party leaders thought it best for the conference to be held at a different location. And so Mr. Ozawa’s Beijing junket remained on the schedule. He did miss a few days of the special Diet session extended to discuss the new bill for Japanese support of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, but the DPJ boss is not one to let legislative affairs interfere with his other interests.

Mr. Ozawa Goes to Beijing

Alas, Mr. Ozawa didn’t do himself any favors in Japan with his behavior. The DPJ leader can be arrogant at times, particularly when he thinks he has the upper hand in a situation. Indeed, The Economist of Great Britain has in the past referred to him as a bully. But his behavior when he met with President Hu bordered on fawning obsequiousness, according to several sources quoted in the 20 December edition of the weekly magazine, Shukan Shincho.

Photographs of the meeting show the often haughty Japanese politician beaming and sitting up straight in his chair like a child anticipating a special treat. Reports suggest that in contrast to his normally calm and deliberate speaking style, Mr. Ozawa’s voice was high-pitched and squeaky, even quivering at times, as he spoke to President Hu. Instead of the standard bland diplomatic boilerplate, he offered President Hu thanks that came across to some as unctuous toadying.

Two of the magazine’s sources were members of his own party, and they were not shy about speaking on the record. Watanabe Hideo said he found the whole scene too embarrassing to watch, and added that everyone in the traveling party should be ashamed of themselves. Oe Yasuhiro described Mr. Ozawa as behaving as if he were pledging fealty to a feudal lord in an old-fashioned tributary relationship.

Mr. Watanabe recalled that Mr. Ozawa had once given a press conference in which the DPJ president claimed that Japan was too biased toward the US and too fawning toward China. He quoted Mr. Ozawa as saying, “I will say what should be said to both China and the US.” He also remembered that Mr. Ozawa once criticized two-track diplomacy by saying that the conduct of foreign relations is the exclusive right of the government.

It should be noted that both Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Oe were members of Mr. Ozawa’s now defunct Liberal Party. That generally conservative grouping was part of the Liberal Democratic Party’s ruling coalition during the Obuchi Keizo administration. When other LDP members blocked Mr. Ozawa’s readmission to the party (to which he belonged for almost 30 years), he converted that into an opportunity to cross the aisle and join the opposition DPJ.

The two men are now among Mr. Ozawa’s harshest critics, perhaps because the latter seems to have blithely jettisoned his former political beliefs after becoming the leader of the generally more left-of-center DPJ.

Criticism from a Chinese Observer

Also criticizing Mr. Ozawa was the staunchly anti-communist Chinese-born journalist and critic, Shi Ping (third photo). Mr. Shi (who recently took Japanese citizenship) observed that the Ozawa-Hu meeting was given front-page coverage in the People’s Daily the next day. The article quoted Mr. Ozawa as using language that was both fulsome and excessively flowery to thank Hu for meeting him. In Japanese, his words were rendered this way.

日本国民は中国の最高指導者が日中友好に大変な関心を持ってくださったことに深く感動しています。

“The Japanese people are deeply moved that China’s supreme leader has favored friendly relations between Japan and China with his great interest.”

Mr. Shi characterized the Japanese visitor’s attitude as that of a Ginza hostess trying to curry favor with her customers. He thought that Mr. Ozawa’s approach was tantamount to positioning Japan as a Chinese vassal state, and that the description used by the People’s Daily was identical to those the paper prints when provincial Chinese government officials go to the capital to call on President Hu.

He also wondered how Mr. Ozawa could claim to represent the entire Japanese people, much less describe them as being deeply moved.

The account of the Ozawa-Hu meeting is noted with little more than a photograph in the English edition of the People’s Daily. Here is the Japanese version, which uses language more restrained than that described in the magazine interview. Mr. Shi, however, is talking about the Chinese-language version of the article, and the People’s Daily is known to change versions of their coverage depending on the language of the edition.

Is Seoul Next on the Travel Agenda?

But now Mr. Ozawa wants to visit South Korea in advance of Prime Minister Fukuda’s visit. What will he and the future South Korean president talk about?

The Kyodo article suggests one topic—Mr. Ozawa’s recommendation last week that voting rights be extended to Korean citizens resident in Japan for local elections. These Koreans citizens are the descendents of those ethnic Koreans who were either brought to Japan or came voluntarily to work.

In fact, what Mr. Ozawa actually said earlier this week was that he has favored for some time extending the right to vote in local elections to people with permanent resident permits, and that his party would introduce such legislation in the Diet later this session. The ethnic Koreans who would receive the right to vote are estimated to total about 600,000, while the figure for all foreigners with permanent resident permits, ethnic Koreans included, number about 950,000.

His suggestion was immediately seconded by the leader of the New Komeito Party, Ota Akihiro. This was significant because New Komeito is the junior coalition partner of the governing LDP. There has been speculation that Mr. Ozawa hopes to pry New Komeito loose from its ties with the LDP and entice them into a new governing coalition with the opposition parties.

New Komeito is the political arm of the lay Buddhist group, Soka Gakkai. A large number of their membership is thought to be ethnically Korean.

Japan’s citizenship laws are based on the legal concept of ius sanguinis, or nationality on the basis of family origin. This contrasts with the legal concept of ius soli, or nationality on the basis of the place of birth. In other words, the ethnic Koreans who were born and grew up in Japan, speak only Japanese, and often have never set foot on the Korean Peninsula, do not have local voting rights unless they become naturalized Japanese citizens.

Should Ethnic Koreans Have Japanese Voting Rights?

It is not the business of foreigners to recommend to the people of another country with a democratic system to whom they should or should not extend the right to vote. That includes me, who, as the holder o