[Analytics] How Abe and the ruling class of Japan have stirred up anti-Korean nationalism

The Japanese government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, first placed restrictions on exports of key materials to South Korean semiconductor manufacturers, and now it has decided to drop South Korea from its “white list” of trusted trading partners. Conscientious intellectuals in Japanese civic society have responded by issuing a protest statement and collecting signatures for a petition. Choe Byoeng-du specially for the Hankyoreh.

Such individuals claim that Japan hasn’t offered an honest apology for its colonial occupation of Korea or taken responsibility for its actions during that time; they declare that Japan’s imposition of economic sanctions on South Korea represents an act of hostility. The title of their statement poses the following question to the Abe administration and to the Japanese public: “Is South Korea our enemy?”

World history has frequently witnessed hostile relations between states. Since the creation of the nation state in modern times, conflicts between states have been treated as conflicts between the peoples divided into those states’ respective territories. In actuality, however, the majority of those conflicts have been caused not by those peoples themselves, but by their ruling classes, the smaller groups that run the state. While the peoples have suffered because of these conflicts, their leaders have whipped them up through nationalist ideology and fomented hostile attitudes in an attempt to enrich themselves.

The relationship of the neighboring countries of South Korea and Japan has always been fraught by latent tension that has occasionally erupted, with tragic results for both sides. The hostility in their relationship can be blamed not on South Korea but on Japan, and especially on the hegemonic push for territorial expansion that drove its ruling elites. To be sure, another problem was South Korea’s failure to prevent the formation of that hostile relationship or to deal with it appropriately once it had formed.

As a result, the people of both South Korea and Japan have been sacrificed to the greed of the ruling class, and civic society was unable to cultivate the strength necessary to stop this.

While the Abe administration’s explanations of its export controls have been inconsistent, its motivation is perfectly clear. The controls were used to stir up anti-Korean sentiment in a bid to bring out the conservative base in the recent elections for the House of Councillors. That election results show the inefficacy of such an approach and make it impossible, at least for the time being, for the ruling party to follow through on its pledge of amending Japan’s “peace constitution.”

Nevertheless, it’s evident that the Abe administration will continue attempting to push through that amendment in order to achieve its ultimate goal of removing Japan’s postwar shackles and making it a “country capable of waging war.”

Abe’s power based in right-wing lobby group called Japan Conference

Whence does the Abe administration derive its strength? While Abe is said to have inherited the tendencies of his maternal grandfather, who has been accused of being a Class A war criminal, the policy direction of a state is rooted in the collective, rather than being defined by any individual politician. Indeed, in a public opinion poll about the export controls held by Tokyo Broadcasting System, support for the controls far exceeded opposition, by a ratio of 58% to 24%. Meanwhile, a poll by the Nihon Keizai Shinbun found that 52% of respondents favored Abe’s effort to amend the constitution during his time in office.

These hostile and aggressive views held by the Japanese public have been presumably cultivated by the Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), the largest lobby group in Japan’s right wing and a major mover in the Abe administration. In a book exploring the true nature of the Nihon Keizai, journalist Osamu Aoki argues that the group’s basic operating principles are emperor worship (the rejection of popular sovereignty), constitutional reform, devotion to the national defense (rearmament), and patriotic education. In an attempt to restore imperial power, this group has been attempting to change popular opinion in Japan by bringing strategic hostility back into its relations with its neighbors.

Immaturity of Japanese civil society based on lack of facing history after WWII

The growing power of these far right forces is linked to the immaturity of civil society in Japan. During World War II, 3.1 million Japanese, and 20 million Asians, lost their lives. But whereas German war criminals were held strictly accountable during the Nuremberg trials, Japan preserved the imperial system that bore the ultimate responsibility for its actions even after the war. Japan’s failure to prosecute war crimes allowed the far right to return and eventually to regain power, while stunting the growth of civil society, which could have helped establish human rights, equality, and democracy.

To be sure, Japan is not the only country in which civil society remains immature. The countries of Northeast Asia — South and North Korea, China, and Taiwan — were all victims of Japan’s colonial rule and wars of aggression, and each followed its own historical path after the war. But in each country, civic society was unable to cultivate the people power needed to resist the authoritative rule of their respective ruling classes. In that sense, the enemy that civil society should be fighting can be defined as the authoritarian ruling class that uses various tricks to mobilize the populace and then sacrifice them toward its real goal of satisfying its hegemonic ambitions.

The Abe administration’s export controls, which have triggered hostility between South Korea and Japan, and its attempt to turn Japan into a “country capable of waging war,” which would terrify the people of Northeast Asia, is an issue whose ramifications go beyond the individual states of South Korea and Japan. Rather, it’s a grave issue that must be dealt with in concert by civic groups in those two countries, as well as in other countries in Northeast Asia.

Along similar lines, there’s also a critical need for civic groups in each of these countries to support each other and to band together in support of democratization and peace in Northeast Asia. For example, they should call for North Korea to denuclearize and to end its totalitarian behavior and human rights abuses, and they should also support the Hong Kong demonstrators who are opposing a proposed law that would allow the extradition of criminals to mainland China.

By Choe, Byoeng-du, board director for the Korea Center for City and Environment Research

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