Taking the lead to peace

Ten years ago I was living in a small town in rural Japan. A three-hour drive could get you to Hiroshima and a good seven-hour drive to Nagasaki. These two locations are etched into the global conscience and the reasons given for their infamy¹ can never fade.

In almost two years of my living there, the war was never discussed. Etiquette² demanded that is was the 'great unsaid'. Around the town there were a few memorials but in the common people's mindset, such things were best left buried.

The fact that a large US military base, Iwakuni, was not too far away, and that American soldiers were still misbehaving with local women on Okinawa, gave the issue a sense of nagging³ pain, like a throbbing⁴ toothache that refused to go away.

It was around this time the then Chinese President Jiang Zemin met with the late Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. Since this time no other Chinese President has returned. Of note when President Jiang made his visit he asked for a more concerted apology from Japan regarding its soldier's behavior during the Second World War.

It was a fair enough request because at the time there was still the nagging issue of Japanese revisionist textbooks being published that overlooked the many wrongs committed by Japan's Imperial Armed forces. It wasn't just Chinese and South Koreans who were indignant at this but also Australians, Canadians, Americans and many other nations who had soldiers and civilians⁵ abused, executed and or raped⁶ by Japanese soldiers.

Sadly Obuchi, who was credited with turning around the flailing⁷ Japanese economy, later suffered a stroke and died. The reins⁸ were passed on to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori for a year, then Junichiro Koizumi for five, Shinzo Abe just over a year and now the 71-year-old Yasuo Fukuda sits at the helm.

Good leaders in Japan seem to be few and far between. In the last 20 years they have had 14 prime ministers. In such a climate it is difficult to build lasting⁹, trusting relationships on shifting sands.

Koizumi lasted the longest, but he fanned the flames of anti Japanese sentiment by insisting on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine¹⁰. Globally he was deplored¹¹ yet domestically he was very popular which is a sad indication that many Japanese are either unaware¹² of the pain such visits create or alternatively, just don't care.

One of the most intelligent, sensitive, bridge building actions the new Prime Minister Fukuda has done since taking office is to pledge that he will not visit Yasukuni.

Elections in Japan are not scheduled until September 2009 so there is time for some groundbreaking diplomacy¹³. Yang Yi a rear admiral with the PLA University of National Defense¹⁴ called it, "a critical window of opportunity for developing (their) bilateral¹⁵ ties."

Appreciating this context on Tuesday it was announced that President Hu Jintao would visit Japan next year after he met with Japan's Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura in Beijing earlier this week.

Then in another first last week the Chinese missile destroyer Shenzhen dropped anchor off Tokyo Bay, the first time a People's Liberation Army (PLA) ship has called at a Japanese port. Eiji Yoshikawa Japan's chief of naval¹⁶ operations commented that he hoped it would "open a new page in the history of Japan-China military exchanges".

Prime Minister Fukuda went on further optimistically commenting, "I believe spring has already come to Japan-China relations... I want the spring to continue as long as possible."

I like Fukuda for his vision, yet as I write, a new controversy¹⁷ is hitting the headlines regarding Japanese filmmaker Satoru Mizushima and his movie, The Truth of Nanking, which insists Nanking never really happened.

Though an infuriating distraction¹⁸, Mizushima and the publicity¹⁹ he is attracting actually compels the rest of the world to remember that next week is the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre²⁰.

History cannot be changed though the future can be shaped.

Stepping in the right direction President Hu and his Japanese counterpart are boldly working towards a new horizon.