U.S. Should Be Sympathetic To China's Anti-Japan Protests

by Philip J. Cunningham

(PNS) BEIJING -- The tendency for the Western media to tacitly side with Japan in the latest volatile history tiff with China is predictable, given ideological proclivities and insecurities about China's rise. But it is hypocritical and ultimately self-destructive to remain silent as Japan goes about, in a determined and sustained way, rewriting history.

In the "New History Textbook," Japan's invasion of northeast China is no longer termed an invasion, comfort women are erased from the record and the Nanking Massacre is dismissed as a controversial "incident."

The textbooks are just the tip of an iceberg as Japan's post-war ruling party revives militaristic values in Yasukuni Shrine rituals, reinstates obligatory school ceremonies involving the controversial wartime flag and anthem and continues to chip away at broadly received historical narratives, as it has done since Prime Minister Nakasone announced his proactive vision for a strong Japan.

Do Americans, who sacrificed so many of their "greatest generation" to defeat Japanese fascism really want to live in a world where the massacre of America's steadfast allies in Nanking is reduced to a non-event? Where Pearl Harbor is repainted as a justified attack? Is the United States ready to live in a world where the war against Japan was but an example of white man's racism?

Anyone comfortable with such conclusions can make light of China's anguish about Japan's rewriting of history. Of course respectable pundits never go so far; they prefer to chastise China with blinders on, conveniently forgetting the freedoms they enjoy are dependent and directly related to the sacrifices made by the Allies, including China, in the world war against fascism. The World War II memorial in Washington correctly recognizes China's contribution, as does the composition of the UN Security Council, where China has a coveted permanent seat with veto powers.

China is a big country with big problems, but it is unpopular for all the wrong reasons. Anachronistic Cold War ideologues hate China for being too communist, while beleaguered manufacturers and protectionists hate China for being too capitalistic. America hates China for not letting its people demonstrate, while Japan hates China for letting its people demonstrate.

Western punditry on the latest outburst ranges from triumphant condescension to feigned neutrality: "Settling scores is for small minds." "China is pushing and scripting protests." Anger about whitewashed textbooks can't possibly be sincere, so it must be government-manipulated. Japan apologized already, get over it. Why can't you Asians get along?

Daniel Lynch writes in the Asian Wall Street Journal that China's outburst reflects a desire to "control history writing in Asia." But is China's take on Imperial Japan -- that it was wrong to invade, wrong to cross the sea to kill, rape, plunder and colonize -- really all that different from America's?

Former U.S. China Ambassador James Lilley suggests it is somehow below the dignity of the United States to get involved in little island disputes or questions of history. But what about U.S. involvement in the Falklands conflict? What about Grenada? What about the Gulf of Tonkin, for that matter?

Michael Eliot of Time magazine said just before the recent flare-up that "those nervous spats between China and Japan have one prayer: that the U.S. will continue to hug Asia's powers in a comforting embrace." Prayer? Hugs?

Philip Bowring, writing in the International Herald Tribune, belittles Asian tensions as "historical mudslinging." He mocks Beijing, saying, "any country that purports to want greater Asian representation deserves bitter criticism if in practice it thwarts the aspirations of Japan and India" to gain Security Council seats. What of China's support for India's bid, and U.S. unwillingness to support the same?

The Economist leans heavily on Japan's side, making the lop-sided and condescending suggestion that in return for Japan withholding approval of the textbooks, China should give up propaganda and be serious about "negotiations about disputed waters," putting the onus on Beijing.

Japan Times contributor Gregory Clark, a contrarian and revisionist known for his dubious claim that the Tiananmen Massacre is a myth, comes as close as any commentator in memory in justifying Japan's attack on China and then Pearl Harbor, blaming the WWII attacks on "anti-Japan boycotts and incidents in China" and U.S. "racist anti-Japanese policies."

Japanese accusations of racism are not without merit. Indeed, it is a form of reverse racism that the West demands more of Germany's reckoning with history, and gets it. Japan's cultural and geographic distance from Europe reinforces a sense of exotic differentness. "If Americans come from Mars and Europeans come from Venus," writes the Arts and Letters Daily, published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, "what is the home planet of the Japanese? Saturn?"

But there is only one world, and on this one little planet there is room for only so much disagreement on documented historic matters. When it comes to the Holocaust, most Westerners appreciate the fact that recklessly rewriting history is not OK. Why is it so hard, then, for opinion leaders in the West to see that denying Nanking or the existence of comfort women or Japan's invasion of Asia is deeply infuriating?