by Daryl Guppy
There is a thread running through Asia. In Singapore, it sits as a vacant square on the edge of bustling Chinatown, a quiet acknowledgement of the Sook Ching massacre. In Malaysia, it's more often found in literature seeking to balance cooperation with obligation. In South Korea, it's found in the decades-long struggle to overcome the shame of forced sexual slavery. Through the sweep of the Indonesian archipelago, it is an unspoken history, deliberately suppressed to leave death march ghosts undisturbed. For some foreign visitors, it's a journey of remembrance -- an ancestral homage aimed at reconciliation, or an attempt at comprehension of infamous bridges across Thai rivers.
For all in Asia, these are at times not-so-gentle reminders of Imperial Japan's rape of Asia. In China, the truths of the Nanjing Massacre, the atrocities of Unit 731 and the exact language of aggression and subjugation persist in memory.
For many in the Western world, even the memory of the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II remained buried in history, barely acknowledged and with no evidence of lessons learned. With casual indifference, they assume that Asia, like themselves, has forgotten or forgiven.
Words have the power of remembrance. Germany no longer speaks of the concept of "Lebensraum" -- living space -- that underpinned its attacks in Eastern Europe because Europe would be appalled at the memory and implied intent.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has revived the Japanese equivalent of "Lebensraum" with her recent use of the term "survival-threatening situation" in relation to Taiwan. Singapore's former Foreign Minister George Yeo has noted that this was the exact policy language that justified Japan's attacks on China, and then the broader Asian region.
China's response is robust because it recognizes the historical resonance. "Survival-threatening situation" was the policy term justifying Japan's "casus belli" or cause of war. Its most recent resurrection cannot be dismissed as a casual mistake. It marks a warning of a policy shift.
China's response bewilders the United States and its Western allies, because they dismiss the influence of history that they have not written for themselves. The shivers of genuine history rippled most uncomfortably in China, but they did not pass unnoticed elsewhere in the region.
The difference in Asian and European perceptions of Takaichi's statement is rooted in different experiences of war against Japan.
For the United States, the battle of the Pacific is largely about the protection and ultimate extension of its interests in the Philippines and the scattered islands of the Pacific. For the European colonial powers, the Far Eastern theater was about the reclamation of empire and the protection of European supremacy and trade.
It is remembered in Asia, but not in the West, that in restoring these colonial orders, they quickly recruited and rearmed the recently defeated Japanese enemy as militia enforcers of the European return.
The contemporary Western interlocutors in Asia fail to understand the depths of the reservoir of antipathy towards a militarised Japan. There is an unalterable geography at play that has nothing to do with island chains, so central to the U.S. strategic thinking. China is central to Asia. It is a cultural foundation weaving historical threads through every political interaction of Asia. It is the weft and weave of the Far East, including Japan.
Yet China has not aspired to military domination of the entity of Asia and the Far East. Only when under the control of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) did the political entity extend across the plains of Central Asia.
Japan is the only Asian nation to attempt to impose military domination on the entire region. It was an aggression so unusual, so unique, in the history of Asia that it cannot be conveniently forgotten. The brutality, still unacknowledged by Japan, adds to the persistence of memory.
Western nations underestimate the depth of remembrance, of fear and of trepidation that drives the response to the remilitarisation of Japan. This sets an approach to the region that diverges from the commercial cooperation that developed following the defeat in 1945.
The western idea that Asia will happily accept a militarily resurgent Japan is a deeply flawed idea rooted in a poor understanding of lived regional history.
Western thinking is that Japan is a bulwark against China. For many in Asia, the feeling is that China is a bulwark against Japan's resurgent military ambitions.
In their eagerness to halt China's progress, some in the the West would be happy to believe that the policy of "survival-threatening situation" contains only benign intentions because Japan's militarisation serves their own purposes of China containment.
The deepest and growing fear in Asia is that the West's poor understanding of Asia will bring war to the region. The blood-red thread running through Asia is neither frayed nor broken.
Editor's note: Daryl Guppy is a former national board member of the Australia China Business Council (ACBC) and former president of the ACBC Northern Territory Branch.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Xinhua News Agency.
