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National identity, collective memory and history wars in East Asia [Национальная идентичность, коллективная память и исторические войны в Восточной Азии]
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National identity, collective memory and history wars in East Asia [Национальная идентичность, коллективная память и исторические войны в Восточной Азии]
Аннотация
Код статьи
S086919080015325-4-1
DOI
10.31857/S086919080015325-4
Тип публикации
Статья
Статус публикации
Опубликовано
Авторы
Стрельцов Дмитрий Викторович 
ORCID: 0000-0001-7177-2831
Должность: Ведущий научный сотрудник
Аффилиация: Институт востоковедения РАН
Адрес: Российская Федерация, Москва
Гришачев Сергей Викторович
ORCID: 0000-0002-6039-9637
Должность: Научный сотрудник
Аффилиация: Институт востоковедения РАН
Адрес: Российская Федерация, Москва
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Выпуск 1
Страницы
196-205
Аннотация

В статье рассматривается феномен «исторических войн» между Китаем и Республикой Корея, с одной стороны, и Японией, с другой, которые вспыхнули после холодной войны вокруг исторической интерпретации экспансионистской политики Японии на материке, особенно в период Второй мировой войны. Цель статьи - изучить происхождение, этические и политические основы «исторических войн», в частности, в контексте коллективной памяти о Второй мировой войне и национальной идентичности в трех странах. Авторы попытались проследить предысторию формирования национальных идентичностей в Восточной Азии в ХХ веке.

В то время как Южная Корея и Китай воспринимают период империалистической экспансии Японии в XX веке через дуалистическую призму отношений между жертвой и преступником, в Японии политика на материке, хотя и считается «ошибочной», не подлежит безоговорочному осуждению на том основании, что в то время все империалистические государства действовали одинаково. Кроме того, дискурс жертвенности, основанный на военных страданиях японского народа, находится в конфликте с уязвленными чувствами восточноазиатских народов.

В статье сформулирована роль патриотического воспитания и, в частности, политики создания музеев и исторических мемориалов в трех странах в деле ведения «исторических войн». Авторы настаивают на том, что взаимодействие внутреннего дискурса и политики международной памяти стало постоянным источником сильной напряженности в международных отношениях региона.

Ключевые слова
Восточная Азия, национальная идентичность, исторические войны, историческая память, культурная травма, виктимность, храм Ясукуни, Нанкинская резня, «женщины для утешения»
Источник финансирования
Исследование выполнено за счет гранта Российского научного фонда (проект 19-18-00017) «Проблемы исторического прошлого в отношениях Японии со странами Восточной Азии и России. Уроки для России».
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Получено
03.06.2021
Дата публикации
07.03.2022
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1 After the end of cold war the rise of nationalism in East Asia was accompanied by growing conflict among East Asian nations over the issues of historical past. Differences in views about shared historical past, along with other contradictions, have led to "history wars", which manifested itself in disagreements on interpretations of the past events, mutual accusations and demands for apologies1.
1. Duus P. Introduction: History Wars in Postwar East Asia, 1945–2014. ‘History Wars’ and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea. The Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists. Ed. by M. Lewis. NY: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017, pp. 10-12.
2 Tension in relations between the PRC and the Republic of Korea with Japan started to grow especially in the 2010s, when the generational change entailed a renewal of the socio-political discourse around the war history issues. The new generation of leaders who came to power in these countries after the end of cold war began to advocate a revision of the predominant historical narratives and the establishment of more "nationalistic" visions of history, that would allow to strengthen their legitimacy and increase support ratings among the electorate.
3 Generally speaking, “history wars" are disputes not so much about the facts of the past, but about what should become part of historical narratives, how should specific events be called and evaluated, and what messages should these narratives bring to current generations. The problem is thus not in the past historical events per se, no matter how hard and complex they are, but in their interpretation. The arsenal of painful or tragic events that can be interpreted as offence of national pride is quite wide, and a plenty of them can be used to justify certain political statement or accusation.
4 One of the reasons why the phenomenon of “history wars" has become a sound factor in regional politics of East Asia is that collective "historical memory", namely, the preservation of deep and painful memories of the past on the level of mass consciousness, generates paramount tension in the relations between Japan, China and Korea. A strongest point of contention lies in fundamental differences in the historical narratives of all the three countries, where a wary and sometimes hostile attitude towards each other prevails.
5 The persistency of conflict around history issues between China, Japan, and Korea is often explained by the realistic logic, which addresses current changes in the regional balance of power that give birth to growing military-political rivalry. However, within the framework of the constructivist logic, struggle evolves not between states, but between their identities2. Countries perceive the partner's efforts to create its national identity as a challenge to their own identity and mobilize historical knowledge to justify their "sovereignty" over the conflict-prone past. Thus, conflict arises from the struggle of identities on the level of national consciousness.
2. Li R. Identity Tensions and China-Japan-Korea Relations: Can Peace be Maintained in North East Asia? Identity, Trust, and Reconciliation in East Asia. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Ed. by K.Clements. N-Y., Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, p. 48.
6 In historical narratives, a key role is played by the policy of "saving face", which makes compromise and "non-standard" thinking much more difficult. In the traditional Chinese, Korean, and Japanese cultures, the emphasis on “saving face” prioritizes formal ritual in typical social interactions. Problems in relations between Japan and its neighbors, including those related to different historical narratives, can partially be explained by the unrealized "face expectations" which is apparently one of the reasons for the lack of trust between the countries of the region3.
3. Moore G. History, Nationalism and Face in Sino-Japanese Relations. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2010, vol.15, pp. 297-298.
7 This paper addresses a specific aspect of “history wars”, related to confrontational relations between China and the Republic of Korea, on the one side, and Japan, on the other side, over the controversial history of the first half of the XX century, namely, Japan’s expansionist policy on the mainland, especially in the period of WWII . The aim of this article is to examine the origin, the moral and the political underpinnings of “history wars”, specifically in the context of collective memories of WWII and the national identities in the three countries. Origins and Evolution of National Identities in East Asian Countries
8 Sociologists regard nation as a kind of imagined community, whose members for the most part are not familiar with each other in person, but feel a sense of mutual proximity, nurturing common ideas about their own history, geography, culture4. Such communities became possible only in the last two centuries as a result of enlightenment and universal primary education, which led to the formation of national identities.
4. Anderson B. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. N-Y., Verso, 1991, 240 p.
9 In East Asia Japan was the first nation to create a renewed estate-free unitary national state (minzoku kokka 民族国家). It was during the Meiji period that the country's political elite managed to carry out successful modernization. A significant role was played by compulsory primary school education, as well as the system of patriotic education in the newly created regular imperial army. Through secondary school and army textbooks, for the first time in Japan’s history a holistic mass idea of nation’s self, nation’s glorious historical past and nation's noble mission in the world was introduced into the mass consciousness, especially that of young generations.
10 The process of "educating the nation" was implemented with an eye to the experience of European countries most which had passed the period of the formation of nation-states much earlier. Japan was anxious to be acknowledged as great power, so the Japanese were ultrasensitive and reacted quite painfully to their diplomatic failures, often perceiving geopolitical miscalculations and defeats as national disgrace or even an insult from the Western powers. Therefore, Japan's entry into World War II can to a certain extent be explained, among other things, by a wounded ego, an unsatisfied sense of vindictiveness for the insults inflicted by the West, and an ambitious desire to show the "white" world its worth as a great power capable of creating its own empire. It was this psychological complex that largely pushed Japan into the alliance with Nazi Germany "offended" by the injustice of the Versailles system. In the post-war period, however, Japan's national identity was to a large extent built on the basis of critical rethinking of its own mistakes made in the militaristic past.
11 The process of forming national identity in China and Korea was even more dramatic. Neither of them succeeded in the construction of a strong statehood as a result of their modernization efforts at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. In China, after the collapse of the Qing Empire, a period of turbulence started, when temporary political stabilization of the period of Kuomintang rule was disrupted by the Japanese aggression. War with external enemy was succeeded by civil war, which led to a split of the Chinese nation and the formation of two Chinese identities - in the mainland China and in Taiwan. In the newly created PRC large-scale reforms of public education and writing were carried out, provoking a break with the previous cultural tradition, as a result of which, over several generations, a new Chinese identity with an embedded communist code was formed. This code was not destroyed, but underwent only a partial transformation after the death of Mao Zedong.
12 The Chinese identity in Taiwan was shaped in continuity with the tradition, and writing was preserved without major changes, but this identity was not a successor to imperial China. In addition, for several decades it existed in hard-to-hide opposition to mainland China. It would probably not be possible to overcome this division in future, because at the moment there are virtually no living people with the experience of the pre-communist way of life in China, while more than one generation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have been brought up in opposing paradigms. A confirmation to this hypothesis can be found in the independence-oriented election programs of several political parties in Taiwan.
13 As far as Korea is concerned, its attempts of modernization were unsuccessful similar to China, and the country was void of its statehood for almost forty years. As a result of the events of the late 1940s-1950s, the nation was divided. On both sides of the 38th parallel, several generations have been also brought up in mutual opposition, making the perspective of reunification practically impossible.
14 The examples of divided China and the Korean Peninsula are a fairly strong proof of the constructability of national identity, where ethnic or linguistic affiliations play only a supporting role and do not predetermine the possibility of reunification. Among significant factors of identity formation one can mention the spread of literacy, the creation of national literary language and its reform, as well as ideology reflected in textbooks and school and university curriculums. All these factors taken together bring visible results only if they consistently work for several generations.
15 Five post-war national identities have taken shape in East Asia over several postwar decades. The PRC and the DPRK emerged as states with formal predominance of communist ideology, though it is more arguable to talk of national than international models of communism. According to B. Anderson, after the WWII every successful revolution was self-determined in national categories5. In the communist states of East and Southeast Asia, Marxist doctrine was transformed to support local nationalist ideologies. As for Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan, their identities are nationalistic in the traditional sense, fundamentally antagonistic towards each other and simultaneously hostile to communist ideology. Though ideological confrontation essentially weakened after the end of cold war, mutual identity-based antagonism between all the five countries has paradoxically strengthened.
5. Anderson B. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. N-Y., Verso, 1991. p. 2.
16 National consciousness in the five countries based on the paradigms of mutual self-perception has become a steady and durable factor in regional politics. One should probably expect further consolidation of existing identities, so politicians will hardly be able to ignore this fact without risking their careers. As a result, different views of history will probably stay a significant source of international tension in the region in the foreseeable future.

Cultural trauma and request for apology
17 Each nation forms its own idea of the historical past. In other words, historical narratives are the product of nation’s "historical optics". The British historian R. G. Collingwood insisted that every history is written from the point of view of a particular present6. Thus, every new generation writes its own history, based on its own experience and its own "historical optics".
6. Collingwood R. G. History as Re-enactment of Past Experience. Pp. 282-302 in The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1946). URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
18 National identity often bases itself not on the heroic, but on the traumatic past. Trauma consolidates nation by a shared sense of compassion for the sufferings of fathers and forefathers through mutual connectivity channels. These sufferings are in many cases attributed to foreign invaders and interference from outward. This technique is certainly effective, as the external danger unites people better than any internal discord. It is much easier to reach unanimity, for example, around resistance to external aggression, than to appeal to reconciliation, for example, in a civil war. Thus cultural traumas, associated with tragedies experienced by “my own native people" from “aggressive foreigners”, become a powerful means of national unification.
19 Claims related to past traumatic experiences are put forward not so much by the victims themselves, but by their descendants (or even more precisely, by those who consider themselves descendants). They have not witnessed, or have witnessed to a minor extent, for example, the horrors of the colonial past or foreign occupation. . And here we have a question that makes sense: are the sufferings of our ancestors equal to the sufferings of the living us? After all, if we talk of a distant past event, especially in case all its witnesses or participants are already dead, how can a living person address past sufferings as his own ones and what is the reason for his right to speak on behalf of long-dead or deceased people? By associating themselves with the past victims who have experienced trauma in reality, current generations intentionally over-expand the notion of victimhood to the transgenerational level .
20 With regard to East Asia, it is relevant in this connection to note the seemingly paradoxical fact that in the first postwar decades, when numerous witnesses of the Japanese militarist rule were alive, the anti-Japanese rhetoric was not in wide use both in Beijing and Seoul. Emotions based on the dreadful memory of recent historical past were muted for the sake of political expedience. In Communist China in the 1950-60s, criticism of Japan and even a reminder of the sufferings by the Chinese people were considered "tactless". The reason for Beijing’s unwillingness to additionally annoy Tokyo was that the PRC pursued the goal of breaking out of diplomatic isolation and gaining recognition from Western countries, including Japan. Besides, in the paradigm of communist ideology, there prevailed the idea of dividing the responsibility of the people and the ruling authorities. According to this view, the Japanese were themselves a victim of a relatively small clique of militarists, so it was improper to blame the entire people for crimes. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai used to say that it was a limited group of militarists, not the Japanese people, that should be responsible for the aggression.
21 In the Republic of Korea, criticism of Japan during the period of authoritarian regimes in the 1960s and 1980s was not welcome for the reason that the country was in a desperate need for Japan’s economic assistance. The democratization of the country in the late 1980s and the growth of its economy made it possible for South Korea to feel more confident, so the new vision of the history of WWII was now required as leverage in Seoul’s relations with Tokyo.
22 Tension around the issues of history as a serious international problem has sparked only in the first decade of the XXI century, when the socio-political discourse in China and South Korea changed due to generational and political shifts, as well as the changes of political leaderships. New leaders tried to take advantage of the problems of the historical past for achieving political dividends7. Seeking new ideological pillars for supporting their domestic legitimacy, they tried to redefine historical narratives and turned to a more distinct anti-Japanese rhetoric.
7. This was confirmed by the deliberately anti-Japanese line of the President of the Republic of Korea, Park Geun-hye, who came to power in 2012. She had to demonstrate an ostentatious rigidity towards Japan in order to get rid of the label of the daughter of a "traitor" (her father , Park Jung-hee, signed a treaty with Japan in 1965, which was later perceived by the South Korean public as humiliating)
23 According to South Korean researchers Ja-hyun Chun and Young Chul Cho, South Korea and China perceive the period of Japan’s imperialist expansion to the mainland through the dualistic prism of the relationship between the victim and the criminal8 . This view has clear moral dividing lines: Korea and China are the victims, and Japan is the perpetrator. From this perspective, the defeat of China by Japan in 1895 and the subsequent annexation of Taiwan, the annexation of Korea in 1910, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937, and other facts of Japanese behavior on the mainland are evidence of Japan's consistent imperialist policy. At the same time, the Nanking massacre and the biological and chemical experiments of the Japanese detachment 731 are considered as state crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, in Japan, the policy on the mainland, although considered to be "erroneous", is not subject to unconditional condemnation on the grounds that at that time all the imperialist states acted the same way.
8. Ja-hyun Chun, Young Chul Cho. Different Historical Prisms and Regressive Political Reconciliation in Northeast Asia. Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, 2016, vol. 23, no. 3, p. 95.
24 Japan, for its part, is also an active participant of the "history wars" with its neighbors. The conservative "historical optics" that dominates the official discourse in Japan is not dyadic with its Asian neighbors. Rather, Japan understands its military past through the prism of its relations with the West, especially with the United States. From this perspective, Japan fought for its independence against the encroachments of Western imperialism, seeking equality with the West, and that although it hurt the Asian neighbors, its behavior was no worse than that of any other colonial power. In other words, in the interests of national survival Japan had no choice but to catch up with the West and become part of it through accelerated modernization, accepting the rules of the epoch. Subsequently, modernized Japan attempted to defend its national interests, liberate Asia from Western imperialism and create a Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, so its entrance to World War II was motivated purely by self-defense considerations. While Japan's decision to fight the United States was a disastrous mistake, its military expansion into East Asia was justified.
25 In other words, Japan's place and role in World War II is mostly considered in the paradigm of its conflict with the West over regional hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. Special attention in this view is drawn to the last year and a half of World War II, when the territory of Japan was subjected to massive air strikes by the United States, and when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the post-war Japan a national discourse of victimhood emerged, in which the Japanese people were the victims of the militaristic clique, and by their suffering on the final stage of war they washed away their historical guilt for the "past mistakes".
26 In such "historical optics" there is practically no space for the Asian peoples who suffered from the Japanese aggression. East Asia was not a subject, but rather an additional element in the history of relations between Japan and the West. After the war, many Japanese held the view that they were defeated by the Americans, and not at all by the Asian nations. Therefore, Japan's repeated apologies to its Asian neighbors for the suffering caused to them are psychologically perceived not as repentance for what it has done, but as an acceptance of the inevitable for the losing side reality, in which its guilt is determined by the "justice" established by the Western winners. This logic allows Japan feeling its moral rightness.
27 The formation of such a view of the World War II history in Japan was facilitated by the decisions of the Tokyo Tribunal, which placed responsibility for the outbreak of war and the war crimes on the Japanese military and political leadership, absolving from responsibility the Japanese citizens who were deceived by their political and military leaders. It should be noted that Beijing and Seoul hold the view that since the Tokyo Tribunal was organized by America and its allies, it did not become a real trial of war criminals, focusing on Japanese aggression against the West, not the Asian countries. Therefore, the Chinese and Korean "historical optics" were not recognized and not reflected in the decisions of the Tokyo Tribunal.
28 The victimized mentality gave rise to a comfortable feeling of self-pity among the Japanese, weakening the feeling of guilt and hindering the search for the "historical truth". Historical memory was focused primarily on the suffering of the Japanese people, not their Asian neighbors. The discourse of victimhood became the basis for the pacifist consensus in the post-war Japanese society. The idea that all wars are bad and that everyone suffers from their consequences allows avoiding a dividing line between the aggressor and the victim. According to Ja-hyun Chun and Young Chul Cho, Japanese pacifism is " a high-minded way to dull the pain of historical guilt” and even a way to "turn national guilt into a virtue”9.
9. Ja-hyun Chun, Young Chul Cho. Different Historical Prisms and Regressive Political Reconciliation in Northeast Asia. Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, 2016, vol. 23, no. 3, p. 97.
29 The historical memory of Japan, based on the victimized mentality, is in conflict with the victimization complex that has developed among the East Asian peoples. It is this interplay of domestic discourse and international memory politics that becomes the source of Japan's "history wars" with its neighbors. Obviously, the "historical optics" of Japanese victimization is almost impossible to reconcile with the historical views of Korea and China, according to which Japan is the culprit of state-sanctioned crimes.
30 It is worth noting that in the conflict of historical narratives, the main criterion in assessing the appropriateness of Japan’s behavior lies in ethical, not in legal categories. It is interesting to recall that it was from a moral standpoint that Japan's actions were evaluated in the Cairo Declaration of 1943, signed by the U.S., Britain and China, which states that Japan should be expelled from the territories "she has taken by violence and greed"10.
10. Cairo Communiqué. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
31 In the eyes of Seoul and Beijing, the centrality of moral responsibility in the assessment of Japan’s militaristic policy necessitates for Japan to unequivocally condemn its past actions and sincerely apologize to its Asian neighbors in a form that should satisfy its victims.
32 Generally speaking, an apology requires both parties to agree that a misdemeanor was committed, and the party who committed the misdemeanor admits that it did so. As Stanford University's prof. P. Duus put it, an apology establishes a moral hierarchy in which the aggrieved victim is morally superior and the perpetrating victimizer morally inferior. The injured party may regard the apology as insincere, insufficient, or unsupported by actions and, therefore, not subject to satisfaction. In this case, the "apology diplomacy" leads not to reconciliation, but to even a greater confrontation, creating a downward spiral where the victim insists on more and more apologies, and the apologizer feels resentful that he is constantly forced to do what he has already done over and over again11. For this reason, repeated attempts by the Japanese leadership to solve the problems of the historical past in relations with its neighbors by formally expressing apologies have proved fruitless12 .

Patriotic education and historical memorials

11. Duus P. Introduction: History Wars in Postwar East Asia, 1945–2014. ‘History Wars’ and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea. The Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists. Ed. by M. Lewis. NY, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017, p.2- 3.

12. Streltsov D. “The Diplomacy of Apologies” in the Foreign Policy of Postwar Japan. Yearbook Japan, 2020, vol. 49, pp. 29-61. (In Russian).
33 In early 1990s the Chinese government launched a patriotic education campaign that emphasized the CCP's historical role in combatting the imperialism of foreign powers. This campaign was a reaction to the growing discontent among the Chinese youth with the progress of political reforms in the country, which became evident in the Tiananmen Square incident in 198913. The ruling party began to rely on strengthening the nationalist component in the ideological education of the masses, using patriotic education campaigns managed from the center, especially since the consolidation of society on the basis of nationalist sentiments was necessary for the leadership of the People's Republic of China, led by Deng Xiaoping, during the crisis of socialist ideology after the start of reforms14 .
13. Zhao Suisheng. A state-led nationalism: The patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen China. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 1998, vol. 31, issue 3, pp. 287-302.

14. Perminova V. War Remembrance in China and Its Influence on Contemporary Sino-Japanese relations. Istoriya, 2020, vol. 98, no. 12-1, p.3. (In Russian).
34 The patriotic education campaign was initially not aimed at promoting anti-Japanese sentiment among the masses. Rather, it was intended as a way to strengthen popular support for the party and its goals of economic development, national unity and strong statehood15. But gradually the anti-Japanese vector of this campaign was becoming more and more obvious.
15. Reilly J. Remember History, Not Hatred: Collective Remembrance of China's War of Resistance to Japan. Modern Asian Studies, 2011, vol.45, p.471.
35 The period of Japanese military occupation was incorporated into the narrative of the "century of humiliation", which refers to the period from the end of the Opium War in 1839 to the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. War against Japan was thus presented in the broader context of the century-old war struggle with the liberal West, from which China emerged victorious in 194916. China constructed its national identity by appealing to the threat of a repeat of the period of national humiliation, declaring Japan as the main source of such a threat. The new history books proclaimed not the Kuomintang, as it had previously been, but the Japanese militarism as the main enemy in the struggle for national liberation. Compared to earlier narratives that had considered the "war of the anti-Japanese resistance" as only an episode in the liberation struggle of the Chinese people, this resistance was specifically highlighted as the main event of WWII for China. The "Japanese imperialist aggressors" were declared the main villains, replacing the imperialist powers of the West and the “national traitors”. Much more attention was paid to the Nanking incident and other atrocities of the Japanese military.
16. Fitzgerald, J. (2015). China’s Anti-Fascist War Narrative: Seventy Years On and the War with Japan is Not Over Yet, The ASAN Forum, November 17. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
36 Special efforts were devoted by the government of the PRC to creating historical memorials. Visiting these mnemonic memorials has become a regular part of secondary school curriculums. By the mid-1990s, a network of 100 historical memorials was organized - battlefields, memorial halls, museums, and monuments. Twenty of which were dedicated to the war of the anti-Japanese resistance17.
17. Duus P. Introduction: History Wars in Postwar East Asia, 1945–2014. ‘History Wars’ and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea. The Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists. Ed. by M. Lewis. NY, Palgrave Macmillan US, 2017, p.10.
37 The largest among them are the Memorial Hall of the People's War of Resistance against Japan (Zhongguo renmin kang Ri zhanzheng jinianguan), the Memorial to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese invaders (QinHua Rijun Nanjing datusha yunan tongbao jinianguan), the Exhibition Hall of the Crimes of the Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731 (QinHua Rijun di qisanyao budui zuizheng chenlieguan), and the Museum of the History of September 18 (Jiuyiba lishi bowuguan). All of them were created in the 1980s and 1990s. The establishment of these memorial objects reflected an ideological transition in the education of the masses, the main focus of which was shifted from criticism of the Kuomintang, where the class struggle plays a key role, to patriotic education, in which the main focus was put on the crimes of the Japanese militarists in China.
38 In 1985, the Nanjing Historical Memorial, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the "Nanjing Massacre" of 1937, was opened. Its motto was the slogan "Remember history". Oblivion of historical events has come to be equated with treachery. Since the 1990s, the museum has been used as a model in the patriotic education campaign run by the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China18.
18. >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
39 In Wanping, near the famous Lugou Bridge (known in the West as the "Marco Polo Bridge"), where the new Sino-Japanese war broke out in May 1937, there is a Memorial Hall of the People's War of Resistance against Japan. The hall, dedicated to the atrocities of the Japanese army, contains a diorama including three-dimensional scene with the bloodied bodies of women and children in front of a large image of the battlefield, littered with corpses to the horizon.
40 Another example is the Museum of the History of September 1819, which was opened on this date in 1991 in commemoration of the" Mukden incident " - the sixty-years old events when the Japanese army invaded Manchuria. The exterior of the museum contains a huge sculpture in the form of an open calendar, on which the date of September 18 is inscribed. At the back of the museum building, a huge bronze bell was installed with four Chinese characters Wuwang Guochi (勿忘國耻), which means "Never forget the national humiliation". Not far from the bell lies a huge marble stone with the dictum of the President of the People's Republic of China Jiang Zemin "Never forget September 18". The memorial particularly appeals to the feelings of national pride of the Chinese. The architect's idea is that future generations should not forget September 18-th as the date representing the start of a new stage in the history of "national humiliation".
19. www.918museum.org.cn
41 Since the 2000s, the idea of shared memory of the anti-Japanese resistance has been used to establish historical ties between Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland, and thus draw attention to their shared identity and political destiny. For example, in the fall of 2005, the National Museum of China put on a highly publicized exhibition dedicated to the anti-Japanese resistance struggle of Taiwanese compatriots20 .
20. Denton K.A. Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums. Japan Focus, 2007, October 1, vol. 5, issue 10. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
42 The "anti-Japanese" element of historical education in the PRC has been significantly intensified after the return to power in Japan in 2012 of the cabinets of Shinzo Abe, who is considered in China to be "revisionist". Japan’s authorities were sharply blamed for whitewashing their own dark past21. When Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013, the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China declared two new anti-Japanese national holidays (the commemoration of the Nanjing incident and Victory Day over Japan). In addition to the official ceremonies, a number of creative events were launched to update the historical memory of the period of Japanese aggression. For example, the social media department of the Chinese state-run newspaper People's Daily introduced in 2014 an online game called "Shoot the Devils", which invites players to remember history "by shooting the Japanese devils" - 14 Japanese Class A war criminals who received a guilty verdict at the Tokyo Tribunal. "The purpose is to expose the crimes of the Japanese invaders through the much-loved game form and make netizens remember history and cherish peace" 22 - its developers said. Another example was the attraction "Shooting Japanese devils", held in honor of the 70th anniversary of the victory in the theme park of the city of Bizhou, Shandong Province: children could shoot with water pistols actors dressed in Japanese military uniforms of the 1930s23.
21. Wawrzyński Patryk Politics of memory and cooperation in East Asia: the remembrance of the Second World War and Chinese-Japanese relations in the 21st Century In “Dilemmas of Contemporary Asia. Deliberations on Politics” edited by Joanna Marszałek-Kawa (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek 2013, p.168.

22. >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).

23. >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
43 South Korea also pays great attention to patriotic education. The memorials pay tribute to various events and facts that testify to the humiliation of the Korean people during the Japanese colonial rule. Especially strong emotions are aroused in South Korea towards the war on the mainland of 1937-1945, when Tokyo repeatedly strengthened the line for the assimilation of Korea into the Japanese Empire. Koreans were forced to take Japanese names and worship Shinto shrines, the Korean language was banned in official documents and the press. In 1943, Koreans began to be conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army. More than 100,000 Korean women were forced into sexual slavery in "brothels" set up by the Japanese authorities to serve the Japanese military. The issue of "comfort women" is still the subject of controversy between South Korea and Japan over financial compensation for living victims of sexual violence. After 2012, particular indignation in the South Korean society was caused by the behavior of the Japanese prime-minister who repeatedly silenced or downplayed the "comfort women” issue, trying to present it as a common wartime practice.
44 The campaign of patriotic education, which focuses on the liberation struggle against the Japanese invaders, continues to enjoy the official support from the government. This motif is in the center of the historical composition of the Independence Museum (the Independence Hall of Korea), which illustrates the main stages of the independence movement, including the March 1 Movement and the activities of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai. The exposition reflects Japan’s discriminatory policies against Koreans and various crimes committed by the Japanese authorities during the colonial rule, including the massacre of Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and the suppression of anti-Japanese protests in Korea24.
24. Hong Kal. Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism: War Memorial Museums in Korea and Japan. Japan Focus 2008, Sep. 01, vol. 6, issue 9. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
45 Similar to China, in Korea the "history war" with Japan received a new impetus after 2012. In 2013, the Government of the Republic of Korea initiated the opening in Harbin of the memorial museum of Ahn Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist who assassinated Ito Hirobumi in 190925. At the International Manga Congress in France France's Angouleme International Comics Festival in January 2014 a special exhibition of Korean wartime sex slave comics titled “Flowers that Never Wilt” was presented, featuring scenes of violence against innocent Korean women who were forced to satisfy the sexual needs of the Japanese military26.
25. Rauhala E. 104 Years Later, a Chinese Train Station Platform is Still the Site of Anti-Japanese Rancor. Time. January 30, 2014. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).

26. Special Korean comics exhibition “Flowers that Never Wilt” at the 2014 Angouleme International Comics Festival. KBS World, 2014, March 4. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
46 It is noteworthy that the museums of the Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China have begun to coordinate their work in order to more convincingly demonstrate the contribution of the two peoples to the fight against Japanese aggression. So, in January 2021, the Historical Museum in Cheonan (ROK) announced its intention to create a memorial hall in honor of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1992, which would reflect the joint struggle of the Korean and Chinese peoples against Japanese aggression before and during World War II27.
27. Ji Yuqiao. South Korea to remember joint fight against Japanese aggression with China. Global Times, 2021, Jan.26. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
47 The practice of patriotic education through historical memorials is widely used in Japan, where more than 220 museums touch on the wars that the country fought between 1868 and 1945. The variety of expositions and different methods of their presentation suggest that Japanese society is still in search of a consensus on the issues of war history 28.
28. Yoshida T. Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum in Modern Japanese History. Japan Focus, 2007, December 1, vol. 5, issue 12. URL: >>>>
48 The most famous historical complex, which is considered an expression of right-wing nationalist views on war history, is the Yushukan Museum, created at the Yasukuni Shinto Shrine. The shrine houses the souls of Japanese soldiers and civilians who died in past wars. The official website of the shrine states that the souls of all people who rest in it are equal and are revered as respected deities, regardless of their rank or social standing, and that the souls of those who were labeled war criminals and executed after being tried by the Allies are also among the venerated.29
29. >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
49 The practice of visiting the shrine by acting prime ministers, which began in 1951, numbered 64 such visits by 201330. Japanese politicians, including those in the rank of member of cabinet, continue to visit the shrine quite regularly. For example, on the anniversary of the end of the war on August 15, 2020, four members of Abe cabinet visited the shrine for the first time in four years. From the point of view of Japanese prime ministers, visits to the shrine are nothing more than a tribute to the memory of the hardships and sorrows of the past war, which has nothing to do with honoring the past "imperial glory"31 . In the eyes of China and the Republic of Korea, visiting the shrine by the head or cabinet is actually equivalent to officially honoring war criminals, as well as legitimizing the crimes they committed. These countries believe that by their visits Japanese prime ministers negate the repeated apologies made by Japan to the peoples of Korea and China.
30. Lewentowicz, Steven E. In response to Yasukuni: the curious approach the Chinese and South Korean governments take toward an unresolved link to the past. Master’s Thesis. Naval Postgraduate School

31. Tamaki T. An Unholy Pilgrimage? Yasukuni and the Construction of Japan’s Asia Imaginary. Asian Politics & Policy, 2009, vol. 1, number 1, p.36.
50 The exposition of the Yushukan Museum is largely aimed at embellishing the military past of Japan, romanticizing the actions committed by the Japanese military, including those on the mainland. The museum's educational mission is to foster a sense of lost pride in the country's "glorious" history, including the wars waged by Japan in the recent past32.
32. Hong Kal. Commemoration and the Construction of Nationalism: War Memorial Museums in Korea and Japan. Japan Focus 2008, Sep. 01, vol. 6, issue 9. URL: >>>> (accessed: 25 April, 2021).
51 Other Japanese historic museums do not take such an openly apologetic position. In keeping with the post-war pacifist tradition, the museums generally assess Japanese colonial expansion and the aggressive course of the Japanese political leadership from the critical angle. However, by the end of the 1990s, a remarkable shift had occurred in the ideological and political underpinning of the newly created museums: they began to avoid unambiguous assessment of the events of the past. A symbolic event was the situation with the first national peace memorial, which was eventually named the Showa Era Museum and opened in 199933 . The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare originally intended to create a memorial in commemoration of 3.5 million Japanese who died during the war. However, the Communist and Socialist Parties of Japan insisted that the memorial should recognize the damage caused by the Japanese empire to other Asian countries. The result was a compromise: the new museum memorialized the suffering of all Japanese, both during and immediately after the war, but displayed artifacts with minimal commentary. At the same time, the collection of museum documents and the museum's library present a variety of points of view on the war: from the version that the war contributed to the national liberation of Asia, to its critical interpretation, based on a detailed description and unequivocal condemnation of the atrocities of the Japanese military.
33. >>>>
52 The countries of East Asia continue to rely on collective memories of war for the construction of national identities. Each country’s understanding of war history, as can be seen from this paper, involves a considerable component of traumatic consciousness. National trauma in South Korea and China is rooted in the cruel legacy of war, where Japan is declared the main culprit of the people’s sufferings, so the Japanese leaders are pressed to apologize again and again. Japan on its side relies on the discourse of victimhood and feels an “apology fatigue”, clearly expressing its reluctance to continue this practice. For example, prime minister Shinzo Abe, delivering an address marking the 70th anniversary of World War II's end for Japan in August, 2015, said he doesn't want future generations to be "predestined to apologize" for the war34.
34. >>>>
53 Since historical issues are central to the definition of national identity, "history wars" in East Asia are likely to continue in the foreseeable future, having practically no chance for final resolution. The main danger of history wars is that they feed ethnic stereotypes that can escalate into ethnic hatred with mutual demonization of the warring parties. Thus, history wars will definitely remain one of the most fundamental obstacles to expanding cooperation in East Asia.

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