East Asian Update

Last night I had a crazy dream! A student of mine was jack-hammering outside of my window and rumbling my room. It wasn’t until my roommate opened her door and exclaimed – “Did you feel that?!” that I woke and realized I had just experienced my first Tokyo earthquake!

It wasn’t scary at all. I partially grew up in California, so it wasn’t my first earthquake. But after being away from the West Coast for so long, it’s strangely comforting to know that the earth beneath me is moving. It’s kind of like being back. Not in California, of course, but certainly a return to something I knew in my earliest years.

In other East Asian news, there is quite a bit going on out here politically! North Korea is all over the newspapers, but first - a new Japanese Prime Minister (Abe) was recently elected. It’s a big deal because he is really conservative, but he is also hoping to improve Japanese-Chinese (Sino) (and Japanese-Korean) relations. There is a shrine in Tokyo called the Yaskuni Shrine, which among other people honors four Class A war criminals from WWII. Every previous Japanese prime minister has visited it, and that really angers South Korea and China because for those countries it is a symbol of Japan’s aggression in those areas. Abe has not yet said whether he will or will not visit the Shrine. The Japanese PM’s usually make their first overseas visit a trip to Washington, but this time it was Beijing, which was a good sign. I’ve talked to a handful of my students about it, and they say they want relations with China to improve, but they don’t want to capitulate to Chinese and Korean demands about how to view and honor their history.

And then North Korea set off nuclear tests. Japan is reacting really severely, and in some regards independent of the UN because Japan and North Korea have a contentious history. A few years (or months, I can’t remember which) ago North Korea recently fired missiles over Japan, as a warning. Japan has totally banned all imports, vessels, and North Korean nationals from entering the country. Some of the history between Japan and North Korea is really interesting. For example, North Korea feels that Japan still hasn’t properly atoned for it’s aggression in Korea between the two world wars. In the 70s and 80s, Japanese citizens were kidnapped in Japan and taken to North Korea. Both countries still bring up these issues.

While Japan is taking a hard line towards North Korea, China is calling for a more moderate reaction than both Japan and the U.S. China has long been a supporter of North Korea, and regularly supplies the country with food and energy. China fears that if North Korea is pushed too far it will bear the brunt of whatever happens.

So it seemed like China and Japan could make progress, but they have such divergent attitudes towards North Korea, there may be a new set of priorities.