Hatoyama's historical challenge
Josh HongPublished: Sep 24, 2009 10:21 PM | Updated: Sep 25, 2009 4:44 AM
Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was inaugurated as prime minister in Tokyo last Wednesday.
With the party's dominant position in the Diet, it will be at least several years before the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), now reduced to a paltry presence, is able to make a comeback.
There was a pervasive sentiment of change among the Japanese electorate, and Hatoyama appeared to represent a paradigm shift.
Yukio Hatoyama of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was inaugurated as prime minister in Tokyo last Wednesday.
With the party's dominant position in the Diet, it will be at least several years before the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), now reduced to a paltry presence, is able to make a comeback.
There was a pervasive sentiment of change among the Japanese electorate, and Hatoyama (right) appeared to represent a paradigm shift.
But reform is a long process fraught with danger, and it could result in massive backlash from the conservative forces if change came too swiftly and drastically.
One major area of concern for the new government is foreign policy.
While Hatoyama had expressed the wish to direct Japan onto a path that would be more independent of the United States, and cast doubts on the longevity of the US-Japan alliance, he quickly moved to assuage the fears in Washington by assuring that the bilateral relationship would remain strong upon winning the general election last month.
But the newly elected leader is also known to be keen on forging closer ties with China and South Korea, the relationships with whom have been mired in and worsened by territorial and historical disputes in the past.
Among the favourable auguries is that the Chinese leadership, having played up nationalistic sentiments against Japan and now finding the increasingly assertive and jingoistic Chinese youths difficult to rein in, is secretly hoping to improve ties with Tokyo as well.
A sense of history
To his credit, Hatoyama's understanding of history is among the most progressive within the political establishment.
Together with counterparts in the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Japan, he had called for commissions to investigate Japanese war crimes during World War II, while criticising in no uncertain terms Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.
Most significant of all, Hatoyama once stated that Japan should enact law to make reparations to the surviving sex slaves from neighbouring countries used by the Japanese army during WWII, winning him enemies at home but friends around the region.
During WWII, the Japanese army established the system of institutionalised sexual slavery and forcibly recruited women from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaya, China, South and North Korea, Japan, Indonesia, the Netherlands and other Japanese-occupied countries or regions.
The victims were euphemistically but ironically called "comfort women".
Now in power, there will be hurdles to cross if Hatoyama truly desires to fulfil his pledges to the electorate and the neighbouring countries.
The DPJ, very much like the LDP, is made up of various factions including those who represent the mainstream view on history.
Under the LDP, Japan as a nation has persistently refused to acknowledge fully and frankly the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers across Asia during the 1930s and 1940s, despite the irrefutable evidence that has been accumulating since the end of the war in 1945.
Nanjing Massacre questioned
Even when the past was mentioned by Japanese leaders, wordings were almost always vague or evasive that they amounted to nothing more than a reluctant statement.
And no sooner would the effort be undermined by other rightwing politicians contesting it, the latest being Takashi Kawamura, the mayor of Nagoya. Kawamura, who questioned last week as to whether as many as 300,000 civilians were indeed brutally murdered during the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937.
Kawamura won the mayor post on DPJ platform last April, and had said during campaign that the massacre could have been exaggerated by "certain people".
His comments as such clearly raise doubts on the sincerity of the Hatoyama administration to handle historical issues with finesse.
Sometimes it is hard to understand why the Japanese nation remains elusive about its own war atrocities while the very same group of people have been portraying the country as the ultimate victim of injustice with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
During my association with the Japanese Embassy in KL some years ago, I had sought to gauge the view of some officials on the issue, to no avail. Nearly all of them shied away from WWII, and preferred to talk about Japan's positive image of the contemporary and "peace".
But would there be real and genuine peace without the Japanese leaders facing up to history?
The massive mandate given to the DPJ symbolises the despondence of the Japanese people with the post-war political structure; it also presents Hatoyama with a historical opportunity to create a new alliance with Asian countries.
New Konrad Adenauer of Japan?
However, with Japan looking over history and China exploiting it - both for domestic political gains - an East Asian economic community anchored by the two giants will be a long time coming, if it did come at all.
I agree all Asian countries must not be entangled by history in a fast-changing world, especially when the export-oriented model of the economy has now been discredited, with alternative not being in sight.
It is therefore all the more pressing for major economies in the region to patch up their differences and move on.
But a nation's identity is also built on its chequered past. Only by facing up to it can it regain trust and confidence to set a new course for the future.
Can one have imagined a prosperous and strong European Union had Germany not made the biggest and most heartfelt effort to atone for its historical wrongs?
The choice before Hatoyama now is whether he is the Konrad Adenauer of Japan, or just a more friendly and presentable version of his LDP predecessors.
With the party's dominant position in the Diet, it will be at least several years before the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), now reduced to a paltry presence, is able to make a comeback. There was a pervasive sentiment of change among the Japanese electorate, and Hatoyama (right) appeared to represent a paradigm shift.
But reform is a long process fraught with danger, and it could result in massive backlash from the conservative forces if change came too swiftly and drastically.
One major area of concern for the new government is foreign policy.
While Hatoyama had expressed the wish to direct Japan onto a path that would be more independent of the United States, and cast doubts on the longevity of the US-Japan alliance, he quickly moved to assuage the fears in Washington by assuring that the bilateral relationship would remain strong upon winning the general election last month.
But the newly elected leader is also known to be keen on forging closer ties with China and South Korea, the relationships with whom have been mired in and worsened by territorial and historical disputes in the past.
Among the favourable auguries is that the Chinese leadership, having played up nationalistic sentiments against Japan and now finding the increasingly assertive and jingoistic Chinese youths difficult to rein in, is secretly hoping to improve ties with Tokyo as well.
A sense of history
To his credit, Hatoyama's understanding of history is among the most progressive within the political establishment.
Together with counterparts in the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Japan, he had called for commissions to investigate Japanese war crimes during World War II, while criticising in no uncertain terms Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.
Most significant of all, Hatoyama once stated that Japan should enact law to make reparations to the surviving sex slaves from neighbouring countries used by the Japanese army during WWII, winning him enemies at home but friends around the region.During WWII, the Japanese army established the system of institutionalised sexual slavery and forcibly recruited women from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaya, China, South and North Korea, Japan, Indonesia, the Netherlands and other Japanese-occupied countries or regions.
The victims were euphemistically but ironically called "comfort women".
Now in power, there will be hurdles to cross if Hatoyama truly desires to fulfil his pledges to the electorate and the neighbouring countries.
The DPJ, very much like the LDP, is made up of various factions including those who represent the mainstream view on history.
Under the LDP, Japan as a nation has persistently refused to acknowledge fully and frankly the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers across Asia during the 1930s and 1940s, despite the irrefutable evidence that has been accumulating since the end of the war in 1945.
Nanjing Massacre questioned
Even when the past was mentioned by Japanese leaders, wordings were almost always vague or evasive that they amounted to nothing more than a reluctant statement.
And no sooner would the effort be undermined by other rightwing politicians contesting it, the latest being Takashi Kawamura, the mayor of Nagoya. Kawamura, who questioned last week as to whether as many as 300,000 civilians were indeed brutally murdered during the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937.Kawamura won the mayor post on DPJ platform last April, and had said during campaign that the massacre could have been exaggerated by "certain people".
His comments as such clearly raise doubts on the sincerity of the Hatoyama administration to handle historical issues with finesse.
Sometimes it is hard to understand why the Japanese nation remains elusive about its own war atrocities while the very same group of people have been portraying the country as the ultimate victim of injustice with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
During my association with the Japanese Embassy in KL some years ago, I had sought to gauge the view of some officials on the issue, to no avail. Nearly all of them shied away from WWII, and preferred to talk about Japan's positive image of the contemporary and "peace".
But would there be real and genuine peace without the Japanese leaders facing up to history?
The massive mandate given to the DPJ symbolises the despondence of the Japanese people with the post-war political structure; it also presents Hatoyama with a historical opportunity to create a new alliance with Asian countries.
New Konrad Adenauer of Japan?
However, with Japan looking over history and China exploiting it - both for domestic political gains - an East Asian economic community anchored by the two giants will be a long time coming, if it did come at all.
I agree all Asian countries must not be entangled by history in a fast-changing world, especially when the export-oriented model of the economy has now been discredited, with alternative not being in sight.
It is therefore all the more pressing for major economies in the region to patch up their differences and move on.
But a nation's identity is also built on its chequered past. Only by facing up to it can it regain trust and confidence to set a new course for the future.
Can one have imagined a prosperous and strong European Union had Germany not made the biggest and most heartfelt effort to atone for its historical wrongs?
The choice before Hatoyama now is whether he is the Konrad Adenauer of Japan, or just a more friendly and presentable version of his LDP predecessors.
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