Diagnosing Korea–Japan relations through thick description: revisiting the national identity formation process

Abstract

Existing theories of international relations have failed to interpret the hostile relations between Korea and Japan due to their Cartesian assumptions about the nature of national sovereignty and identity. Such theories view the hostilities between the two states as the result of incorrect policies or unhealthy interactions between domestic norms and foreign policies, because they believe that there are few negative structural elements between Japan and Korea. This study suggests an alternative explanation by utilising the worldview of East Asian medicine. By interpreting the formation of the Japanese and Korean national identities from the late nineteenth century and by viewing the hostility between the two states not as evidence of ‘malfunctioning’ inter-state relations but as a core element of their national identities, this study proposes an alternative understanding of ‘problem-solving’ with respect to Korea–Japan relations that is directed towards healing their relations with a long-term perspective.

Keywords:

• Nationalism
• colonialism
• national identity
• Korea
• Japan
• East Asian medicine

Introduction

Since the normalisation of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan in 1965, the depth of interdependence between the two nations, in terms of economic and security arrangements, has been unrivalled in Asia. For Japan, South Korea has been a buttress against security threats from the former Soviet Union, China and North Korea, whereas the US troops deployed in Okinawa and other military posts in Japanese territory have been regarded as the ultimate resource for a counter-attack if South Korea were to be invaded by North Korea. Until the rise of China as a global manufacturer, South Korea was the key offshore production site for Japanese firms, and South Korea’s export-oriented economy has been heavily dependent upon Japanese technology, capital and industrial expertise. Their economic and security-related interdependence is matched by their cultural interactions, as demonstrated by the ubiquity of Japanese food and animation in Korean society and the popularity of K-pop and K-dramas in Japan. The two nations, thus are indispensable to one another in terms of security, economy and popular culture.

However, there also exists an unending and ever-increasing political discord between their governments and their societies. As indicated by numerous studies, the conflict over their differing interpretations of their colonial histories (1910–1945), the issue of compensating Korean victims of Japanese military sexual slavery during the Second World War, and the territorial dispute over Dokdo/Takeshima have repeatedly generated tension between the two nations. Japan and South Korea have shared certain historic moments in the process of the consolidation of their relations. These include the Murayama Statement in 1995, in which the Japanese Prime Minister officially apologised for Japanese colonial rule, and the South Korea–Japan Joint Declaration of 1998, by President Kim Dae-Jung and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, that aimed for a co-prosperous future and the resolution of various historical issues (Chun 2015, 315). However, such moments were undermined by Japanese politicians’ repetitive visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, the deletion of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery from their history textbooks, and South Korean politicians’ habitual exploitation of anti-Japanese sentiments during elections.

The political disharmony between the two countries had been regarded as merely rhetorical due to its limited impact on their security arrangements, economic interdependence and human interactions. However, a recent series of alarming and unprecedented incidents has profoundly disturbed the politico-economic stability of their bilateral relations. When the Supreme Court of South Korea ordered three Japanese firms – Nippon Steel, Sumitomo Metal Corporation, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – to compensate the Korean victims of forced labour during the Second World War in 2018,¹ Korean society regarded this final decision as the hard-won victory of dying plaintiffs who had sought justice for over half a century. The Japanese firms refused to follow the court order and were set to have their Korean assets liquidated by Korean authorities in 2019. The Japanese government consequently imposed a restriction on the export of three key chemical materials to Korea. This move targeted the lifeline of Korean economy – the semi-conductor industry. Additionally, Japan removed South Korea from its ‘white list’ of countries that receive preferential treatment in the import of Japanese products.² The South Korean government retaliated by announcing the possible termination of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA),³ which aimed to share military intelligence related to North Korea’s military provocation. The political tension between the two governments was matched by animosity between the two societies on an unprecedented level. The impact of the boycott of Japanese products and travel to Japan in 2019 was significant, resulting in a decrease by over 25% in Korean tourists visiting Japan⁴ and a reduction by over 35% in the import of Japanese consumer goods⁵ by Korea compared with the previous year. The magnitude of anti-Korean publications and popular discourse in Japanese society signals that the kenkan/hyeomhan (hatred against Korea) is no longer an isolated sentiment among right-wing political activists in Japanese society (Haag 2017).

Why is the tension between the two neighbouring countries intensifying despite the memories of colonialism and war-time atrocities being far in the past? This study argues that existing theories of international relations have failed to accurately interpret the hostile relations between Korea and Japan due to their Cartesian conceptualisation of the nature of national sovereignty and identity. Scholars informed by such theories view the hostilities between the two states as the result of incorrect policies or unhealthy interactions between domestic norms and foreign policies. However, this study suggests an alternative explanation by utilising the worldview of East Asian medicine (EAM). Applying EAM to the formation of the national identities of Japan and Korea from the late nineteenth century, I argue that the hostility between them is not evidence of ‘malfunctioning’ inter-state relations, but rather a core element of their co-constitutive national identities. Therefore, analysing, interpreting and prescribing solutions for the tensions between Korea and Japan require a ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973)⁶ and monistic perspective that focus not on the foreign policies of each state, but on the capillaric relations of the two nations through which their national identities and national interests emerge. I argue that this radical shift of perspective is made possible by creatively adopting the worldview of EAM, which attempts to identify possible solutions to a disease by prioritising the relations among human organs rather than the isolation and diagnosis of individual organs.

Beyond us and them: towards a monistic perspective

This section explores why existing theories of international relations have failed to explain the persistent hostility between Korea and Japan despite their shared security interests, economic concerns and cultural norms. I also suggest an alternative perspective that integrates the constructivist view of national identities and the philosophical framework of EAM, which was initially introduced into the field of international relations by Ling (2014, 2016, 2018). The utilisation of EAM in this study does not claim an authoritative interpretation or definition of EAM,⁷ nor does it intend to mechanically apply seemingly esoteric EAM conceptions to the interpretation of Korea–Japan relations. Neither do I argue that the introduction of EAM in this study replaces or refutes postmodern or poststructuralist approaches that take identity seriously in the interpretation of international relations. Rather, by adopting the alternative worldview of EAM, which prioritises inter-organ relations rather than the functionality of each organ in isolation (Maciocia 2015, 335; Kim 2017), this study tries to supplement and enrich projects to enable them to overcome the methodological nationalism (Chernilo 2011; Vasilev 2019) that is predominant in the studies of East Asian international relations.

From a realist point of view, Korean antagonism against Japan is understood as purely emotional and irrational. When survival is assumed to be the primary concern of their foreign policies, the common threat facing these countries is undoubtedly the rise of China and of the unpredictable North Korea. To solve these security problems, both states rely heavily upon the US, which provides them with the nuclear umbrella – the ultimate security guarantee. Though Korea and Japan never signed an official treaty of alliance, the presence of the US as a common security guarantor made their bilateral relation a ‘quasi-alliance’ – a term coined by Victor Cha (1999, 2000). According to the realist perspective, if two states share vital security interests, political discord over seemingly non-vital and trivial issues, such as the conflicts over the contents of history textbooks or remote memories of the wartime atrocities, are ignorable anomalies. Therefore, Cha assumes that the weakening commitment of the US in Northeast Asia will eventually strengthen cooperation between Korea and Japan regarding handling the rise of China and the North Korean nuclear threat (Cha 1999). This perspective cannot, therefore, explain why the disputes between the two states have escalated rather than diminished. This escalation has been demonstrated through the recent military tension between a South Korean destroyer and Japanese surveillance plane⁸ and the possible termination of GSOMIA.

The liberalist perspective that views institutional arrangements and international economic interdependence as the key factors for persistent cooperation among nations is not much better than realism at explaining the disputes between Korea and Japan. They are among the two most democratic countries in Asia and display high levels of congruence in terms of their policy preferences and voting behaviour in international organisations, such as the United Nations General Assembly (Chun and Kim 2014). They belong to the gigantic supply/production chain of East Asia, in which the classical notion of comparative advantage has been working perfectly (Obashi and Kimura 2018). From the production of mobile phones to the automobile industry, Korea, Japan and China have simultaneously been economic partners and fierce competitors. The weaponisation of their economic interdependence through Japan’s export restrictions on materials essential for Korea’s vital semi-conductor industry demonstrated that rather than disputes being resolved due to economic interdependence, political tension jeopardises such economic relations. The Korean government retaliated to the Japanese trade restriction with a number of corresponding measures, such as the elimination of Japan from its lists of preferred trade partners (white lists); subsequently, the Korean public launched a massive ‘boycott Japan’ campaign that resulted in a drastic reduction in the quantity of imports from Japan and the number of Korean tourists travelling to Japan.

Both realist and liberalist observers of Korea–Japan relations have noticed that their hostile bilateral relations can be attributed to the unhealthy nationalism prevalent in both societies. The left-wing nationalism in Korea⁹ and the right-wing nationalism in Japan have significantly influenced their respective political leadership’s stance towards the other state and hindered a desirable reconciliation (Chun 2015; Hundt and Bleiker 2007; Kim 2015; Glosserman and Snyder 2015). Lind (2011) further argues that the seemingly necessary apologies from the Japanese government for their colonial rule in the Korean peninsula have been counter-productive due to the backlash from Japanese conservatives. The conservative backlash in Japanese society has consequently stimulated nationalistic sentiments in Korean society – ‘creating a spiral of acrimony that makes reconciliation even more elusive’ (Lind 2011, 4). Contrarily, some observers believe that the Japanese government’s inappropriate or incomplete apology, which resulted from either the American mismanagement of post-war Northeast Asia (Dudden 2008) or Japan’s insecurity regarding the rise of China and Korea in the age of globalisation (Suzuki 2019), is the deepest source of the unhealthy nationalism that fuels this hostile bilateral relationship. Nevertheless, these interpretations are ‘thin’ because they treat nationalism as the result of political mobilisation or popular sentiments. Lind’s assertion is highly state-centric and ahistorical. It does not consider the issue of colonialism itself and mechanically compares Korea–Japan relations to France–Germany relations. Dudden and others, despite their critical stance towards the nations’ historical political mobilisation, are inherently positivistic because they endorse an uncontaminated, true history that seeks to induce a thorough apology from the former colonial aggressor (Seo 2008, 371).

Compared to realists and liberalists, constructivist theorists recognise history as the core source of tension between Korea and Japan. They indicate that memories of war and colonialism in the former have never been properly addressed by the latter or by the international community (Berger 2003), even though it has always been possible for historical contentions to serve as a dialogical medium to establish a common understanding between the two countries (Suh 2007). Constructivists emphasise that the problem of national identity, especially that of Japan, is at the centre of the conflicts over history and memory. Early observers of Japanese identity in the field of international relations wondered why the military and economic powers of Japan are not commensurate, and concluded that the nations’ domestically constructed pacifist and anti-militarist identity influenced the orientation of its foreign policy towards pacifism (Berger 2003; Katzenstein 2008). Nevertheless, such a perspective cannot explain why Japanese foreign policy is pacifistic towards the US, but not necessarily towards Korea.

Therefore, recent interpretations that utilise a relational approach emphasise that Japanese identity is constructed through the drawing of boundaries vis-à-vis several others and in multiple contexts (Hagström and Gustafsson 2015, 2). Tamaki’s (2010, 2020) works are exemplary in this regard. He convincingly elucidates how Japanese policy elites reproduced and reified the image of South Korea as a backward and recalcitrant nation and how, over decades, this image consequently reinforced Japan’s self-identity as an advanced and peaceful nation. In this view, national identity is fundamentally relational, and the points of demarcation between the self and the other are exactly where national identities emerge (Neumann 1996; Campbell 1998; Hagström and Gustafsson 2015). Therefore, this interpretation of national identity posits that national identity is constructed vis-à-vis certain others in a particular context (Qin 2016).

Although the turbulent Korea–Japan relations warrant a more sophisticated interpretation of the relationality between nations, the existing understanding of the relationality of international relations, which has largely developed to analyse Chinese positions in global politics (Wang 2020), has not completely exhausted its potential by virtue of delimiting its analytical scope to a single nation rather than internationally and to synchronic understanding rather than diachronic interpretation. The discussions on the destabilised economic hierarchy between South Korea and Japan that caused the latter to be anxious over its ontological security (Tamaki 2004; Bukh 2015; Suzuki 2019) delineated the dynamics of the relational positions that triggered the rise of conservative nationalism in Japan. Yet those works focus on the constructed or reified realities of South Korea among Japanese elites and do not deconstruct the Japanese subjectivity that compels the construction of such realities and is subject to the feeling of ‘anxiety’. Casting no doubts on the constructedness of ‘Japan that can feel anxiety’ or ‘Korea that can be angry’ – both of which could be regarded as ‘essential states’ in Wendt’s theoretical universe (Wendt 1999) – implies that the original premise of constructivism is unfulfilled (Epstein 2013).

This study suggests an alternative interpretive framework by turning to a few philosophical tenets of EAM that emphasise the ontology of in-betweenness. In her seminal work that combines EAM and international relations, Ling states that ‘viewing India–China in capillaric terms means accepting their existence as one body politic’ (Ling 2016, 103). In her work, she suggests Indo–China relations be viewed as ‘one residing in the other’. In other words, rather than viewing India and China as separate and autonomous entities, she suggests that China be viewed as part of India, and vice versa.¹⁰ If we visualise this image of capillaries¹¹ that connect two constructed entities – China and India – the focus of interpretation or analysis is not on how India and China behave with one another, but how the thousands of capillaries inform the perceptions and behaviours of both nations. In other words, the relation itself can be treated as a being rather than as interactions between two entities in a vacuum.

Therefore, a monistic diagnosis is required to interpret the formation of relations between political entities (in this study, Korea and Japan) to understand their relation as a being. The Westphalian worldview treats every state as ‘identical, ranging from [their] interests to desires to logics’ (Ling 2016, 110). As biomedicine in general identifies pathogens that are ontologically separated from body (Kim 2020, 48; Farquhar 2020), the Westphalian worldview tends to analyse inter-state conflicts by identifying pathogens that are ontologically separate from the Westphalian state rationality. These pathogens include miscalculation, misperception and irrational/emotional decisions. According to EAM, the source of diseases or pain is the energy of the body and mind (Park 2006, 40) – that is, the particularly configured flow and balance of qi. Furthermore, emotions such as anger or contempt are not considered to be expressions of irrationality, but a way of expressing bodily conditions (Park 2006, 46) that cannot be suppressed by reason and rationality. If we adopt Ling’s perspective that views India–China relations as one body that is intertwined by capillaries, the diplomatic difficulties between Korea and Japan can be interpretated as the expression of a particular configuration of the flow and balance of qi in the body – the relations between Korea and Japan. Contempt and anger – the emotions that the two nations feel for each other – are indeed a symptom that corresponds to the condition of their relations.

In EAM, treatment begins by identifying the patient’s particularities, not just their symptoms (Ling 2016, 104). Therefore, the diagnosis and treatment of the difficulties related to the diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan must begin by delineating the emergence of the specific relational configuration from which their two seemingly separate but deeply intertwined national identities have been constructed. In light of this insight from EAM, the next section will explore the historical emergence and evolution of the two hostile national identities without reducing the historicity of the nations’ bilateral relations to the generalised logic of competition for state interests.

Identities and emotions in Korea–Japan relations

We do not have time to wait for the enlightenment of our neighbors so that we can work together to forward the development of Asia. It is better for us to leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with civilized nations of the West …. We simply follow the manner of the Westerners in knowing how to treat them [Korea and China]. Any person who cherishes a bad friend cannot escape his notoriety. We must simply erase from our minds our bad friends in Asia.

Fukuzawa Yukichi, ‘On Saying Good-bye Asia (Datsu-a Ron)’, 1885, reprinted in Lu (1996, 353).

Following Anderson’s perspective (Anderson 2006; Duara 1995), this study views national identity as an essential part of the global modernity that emerged during the late nineteenth century. Harootunian notes, ‘One of the more widely agreed upon characteristics of modernity, where none practically exists, is the fact that modernity – the ideology of the modern – has subsumed all preceding histories as prefiguration of moments that now have been surpassed’ (2002, ix). Just as the preceding historical stages of ancient slave society, feudalism and bourgeois society are nothing more than the explanatory backgrounds for the emergence of a communist revolution for Marx, modern national identities are not the result of historical accumulations but the consequence of a radical departure from the past that subsumed diverse, heterogeneous and intermittent histories of traditional communities into linear and teleological narratives of a modern imagined community – a nation. The underestimation of such a radical rupture and epistemological revolution in the concepts of nationhood, sovereignty and statehood often results in hasty attempts to utilise premodern international structures, such as the tributary system, to explain contemporary regional structures in East Asia (Kang 2008; Zhao 2009). Yet these attempts are neither empirically rigorous nor politically balanced, because they interpret the ancient past through the histories that are produced through the prism of modern nation states.

The emergence of national identities in Northeast Asia under the backdrop of expanding Western imperialism and global capitalism was initially a regional event (Duara 1995, 1997) rather than a confined phenomenon in a single premodern political community.¹² Although they followed different political trajectories, China after the Opium War (1839–1842), Japan after the convention of Kanagawa (1854) and Korea after the Kanghwa Treaty (1876) had to create modern nation states in relation not only to the West, but also to each other, as the tributary system that had governed East Asian international relations for centuries crumbled before the end of the nineteenth century. Therefore, it is important to understand the emergence of national identities in Korea and Japan during this period as a deeply intertwined historical process, in which the ‘other’ was incessantly reproduced to construct ‘our nation’ as a coherent political subjectivity in the age of imperialism, colonialism and global capitalism. This process, which forced a radical departure from premodern histories, has simultaneously determined the way in which the two states perceive each other. Japan is viewed as a permanent aggressor in Korean national narratives, whereas Korea is considered an uncivilised neighbour in Japanese imperial imaginations. In fact, these two contrasting images are the outcome of one political process – the uneven modernisation and westernisation in Northeast Asia.

As the initial moderniser in the bilateral relation, Japan faced a deep dilemma: ‘how to become modern while simultaneously shedding the objectivistic category of Oriental and yet not lose an identity’ (Tanaka 1995, 3). From a Eurocentric point of view, Japan was easily categorised as one of the Far Eastern countries along with China and Korea. While adopting Western temporality (Tanaka 2004) and inventing imperial traditions similar to the European precedents (Fujitani 1998) throughout the Meiji era (1868–1912), the rapidly westernising Japanese elites had to confront the dual task of defining the national self that was capable of negating their Oriental image and distinguishing themselves from the formidable force of the universalisation of modernity. The rise of modernity in Japanese society, which was usually represented by the insatiable demand for new technologies, social transformation, and cultural sensitivities, brought up ‘a consciousness that oscillated furiously between recognizing the peril of being overcome by modernity and the impossible imperative of overcoming it’ (Harootunian 2002, x) among Japanese elites, who were obsessed with Japan’s problematic status as a late adopter of modernity.

Japanese elites and intellectuals faced the daunting task of overcoming modernity because while the mission of westernisation was pre-given in the age of imperialism, the political subject that had to accomplish that mission had not yet been constructed. Therefore, establishing cultural authenticity to make Japan a nation that was to be recognisable as the subject of history without being affected by the passage of time (Duara 2003, 28) was an imminent necessity for Japanese society, which was experiencing westernisation and modernisation at the time. The imagination of Toyo (East Asia) emerged among Japanese intellectuals during this period. Japan needed China and Korea – the other key ethnic members of Toyo – as a similar race to distinguish Japan from the West. However, Toyo ethnicities that were not Japanese needed to be inferior to Japan to make it the leader of East Asian modernity (Tanaka 1995, 277). The creation of an ethnic hierarchy in East Asia was a solution to recognise Japan as similar to European nations when the Japanese Empire saw itself as a victim of Western imperialism, which led to a paradoxical consciousness of ‘anti-imperial imperialism’ (Tierney 2010, 34). However, the hierarchy was not identical to the racial hierarchy embedded in European imperialism. In the Western imagination, racial hierarchy was constructed as an ahistorical, natural and permanent structure; but the East Asian hierarchy constructed in Japanese public discourses was based on a linear temporality that placed Korea and China in Japan’s past.

The newly emerging Japanese identity had to clearly separate itself from its immediate and backward past – the Tokugawa period – and commence its search for the ‘real’ Japan in the remote and ancient period (Tanaka 1995, 14). Then, the hierarchy constructed in this linear temporality generated a dubious relationship between Japan and Korea. Positioned in Japan’s past, Korea became the target of Japan’s contempt that originated at once from the self-loathing of its own past and from nostalgic yearning for authentic Japaneseness. The backwardness of the Korean peninsula was reminiscent of the powerlessness of the Tokugawa regime in the face of Commodore Perry’s black ships, whereas the cultural relics from the ancient times, such as pottery belonging to the Koryo dynasty (918 AD–1392 AD) and Buddhist statues belonging to the Shilla dynasty (57 BC–935 AD), inspired Japanese historians, who were constructing ancient East Asia as the source of Japanese cultural authenticity or the ‘real’ Japan (Em 2013). In this sense, the Japanese temporal self-understanding did not view Korea merely as an inferior other, but considered it a core element of Japanese national identity.

The duality of the Japanese perception of Korea determined the nature of Japanese colonialism in Korea. Similar to Western imperialism, Japanese colonial policies were based on an ethnic/racial hierarchy that positioned the Japanese above the Koreans, and the former’s civilisational mission politically and ethically justified Japanese colonialism. The annexation of Korea in 1910 completed the Japanese mission of becoming an equal to the Western empires that had been sustained by imperial inclusiveness and racial hierarchisation (Balibar 1991). Nevertheless, the Korean peninsula was not simply an inferior portion of the Empire, but rather a part of Japan’s ‘structured nostalgia’¹³ – the ancient East Asia from which the Japanese sense of cultural authenticity had to be constructed. For this reason, unlike British colonialism, which heavily relied upon indirect rule through local elites (Mamdani 1996, 18), the Japanese Empire tightly controlled the Korean peninsula through the Japanese settlers who formed the upper strata of the colonial society (Uchida 2014). Simultaneously, the Empire began to ardently document Korean national history to discover the glorious past of East Asia. The narrative of the rise and fall of the Korean nation – from the splendid cultural achievements during the Shilla and Koryo dynasty that were positioned as Asian rather than Korean, to the vulgar and trivial art of the Joseon Dynasty (1392 AD–1910 AD) – discursively constructed the necessity of Japan’s tutelage of Korea and its people (Em 2013, 93).

The Japanese construction of Korean history in the early twentieth century can be characterised as ‘internal orientalism’ (Schein 1997), which objectified, otherised and essentialised a part of the empire. The ancient interactions between Japan and Korea were narrated in a manner that reflects the contemporary hierarchy between the two nations. For example, the few instances of contact between Japan and the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618 AD–907 AD) were described as equal interactions, whereas the numerous exchanges of envoys between kingdoms in the Korean peninsula and Japan during the same period were treated as unequal and supplementary to Japan’s relations to China (Lee 2001, 29–33). The Korean dependency upon the Chinese tributary system was considered a reflection of Korea’s ineptness, femininity and cowardice (Yoon 2003, 51). This was akin to the manner in which the Japanese Empire – a junior member of the league of empires – was essentialised and feminised by the Western empires (Shibusawa 2010).

Throughout the colonial period (1910–1945), both the Japanese colonial state and Korean nationalists were the authors of Korean national history, through which the modern sense of Korean authenticity was formed (Schmid 2002, 181). The Korean national identity¹⁴ was being formulated during the late Joseon dynasty, but its contents, language, scripts and other key components related to national authenticity were completed under Japanese colonial rule – partly absorbing and partly resisting the Japanese assimilation policy (Shin 2006). Unlike Western imperialism in Asia and Africa, which denied the presence of coherent and unified national identities among the colonised population and erased local histories and geographies through the colonial rewriting of histories (Mignolo 2007; Vázquez 2011), Japanese colonial policy (including its assimilation policy during the 1930s) did not attempt to eliminate any notion of Korean identity; rather, it endeavoured to produce Koreans as distinct and simultaneously inferior national subjects that required Japanese civilisational guidance (Shin 2006, 42; Em 2013, 353).

The Japanese colonisation of the Korean peninsula disrupted the indigenous nation-building process and replaced it with the imposition of colonial modernity and subject-making (Shin and Robinson 2001). In response to this dire reality, Korean nationalists associated with the Korean independence movement constructed modern Korean national identity around the concept of minjok, which can be translated as both ‘ethnicity’ and ‘nation’. As Schmid succinctly explains, ‘with the state stolen, the minjok presented an alternative locus for national existences and autonomy, an existence that was defined historically’ (2002, 175). In the absence of a state that could undertake the task of nation-building, Korean nationalists, especially historians such as Shin Chae-ho, conceptualised the Korean nation as a natural entity and a genuine political subject that had objectively existed for centuries and had to be re-discovered through empirical inquiry (Schmid 2002, 182). Therefore, the Korean nation was to be awakened, not built, by historians as the protagonists of Korean nationalism.¹⁵

As a resistance against Japanese colonial historiography on the Korean peninsula, Korean nationalist historiography constructs its own civilisational hierarchy that emphasises the Korean peninsula’s role as the benevolent donor of civilisation to the Japanese archipelago, which passed down classical Chinese philosophy, transcripts, Buddhism and other key elements of East Asian civilisation. While Japanese historiography depicted cultural relics in the Korean peninsula as an Asian civilisational legacy that enabled the Japanese sense of cultural authenticity, Korean historiography presented Japan as a barbaric nation that could have not been civilised without the benevolent Korean nation. While Japanese historiography and most Western historiography related to ancient Asia treated the Korean peninsula as an agency-less bridge between Chinese civilisation and the Japanese archipelago (Cumings 1997, 20), Korean historiography emphasised the ancient Korean kingdom’s defence against the incessant invasions by Northern nomadic peoples and the greedy expansionist ambitions of the Chinese, which safeguarded the peace and independence of both the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago.

Ironically, the two competing historiographies are conflicting but interdependent, as their narratives broadly share factual elements. From the Kanghwa Treaty in 1876 to the end of the Second World War, virtually all key events in East Asia were shared experiences between the two nations and crucial elements in the formation of their national identities. Nevertheless, the shared events produced two contrasting and conflicting sets of national memories and narrations that constitute their national identities. The Japanese colonisation of Korea was an integral part of the Japanese narration of modernisation, in which the emulation of Western empires through the acquisition of colonies was seen as the only way to survive in the age of imperial competition. According to Korean national historiography, in contrast, Japan was an unforgivable betrayer that received civilisational benefits throughout history and turned into a ruthless invader. In short, the foundational narratives of the two nations have produced two interdependent national identities, the dynamics of which are heavily dependent upon contempt towards the inferior and hatred towards the betrayer.

Whether Japan has genuinely apologised to Korea for its colonial atrocities has been a central issue for those who take history, memory or discourses seriously in explaining the relations between the two nations (Berger 2003; Suh 2007; Dudden 2008). Some argue that the source of political tensions between the two nations is the insufficient or ingenuine nature of Japan’s official apology to Korea. In contrast, a few scholars noticed that the repetitive apologies by Japanese leaders have been counterproductive in improving the nations’ bilateral relations (Lind 2011) or have resulted in ‘apology fatigue’ (Fukuoka 2018). Nevertheless, whether a genuine apology can solve their issues encounters the same conundrum as the question of whether an accurate history or historical memory can solve politics. As much as the pursuit of an ‘accurate history’ is doomed to fail due to the ultimate impossibility of determining historical factuality and historical subjects (Seo 2008), the problem with respect to apologising emerges not from its genuineness or efficacy, but from the impossibility of determining for what and to whom to apologise.

First, if we take the mutually constitutive identity formation process seriously, it is not clear what Japanese leaders have to apologise for. For Japanese intellectuals and leaders, the construction of an empire was regarded as a way to escape from the semi-colonial status of Japan after the convention of Kanagawa. Hence, colonialism was a survival strategy as well as a core element of modernisation. From this perspective, we can raise a fundamental question regarding Japan’s apology to its former colonies: can Japan apologise for colonialism without denying its history of modernisation? This conundrum made it easier for the Japanese mainstream conservatives to come up with their strategy regarding public memories of modern Japanese history: delimiting the problems of history to temporary aberrations during the Second Sino–Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Pacific War (1941–1945), and holding a select few military leaders responsible for the damages suffered by the Japanese people and the Allied powers, especially the US (Auer 2006). Japan, as the leader of the East Asian modernisation, cannot apologise for colonisation itself; whereas Korea, as the victim of Japan’s betrayal, cannot accept the official Japanese apology unless it encompasses the whole colonial period. Even from the liberal perspective in Japan, which is displayed in Yanaihara’s work, Japan failed at maintaining a liberal or benign empire after the collapse of the Taisho Democracy (Nakano 2013). According to this liberal perspective, Japan has to apologise for ‘not being a good coloniser’ not for ‘being a coloniser of Korea’.

The second, more important problem related to apologising stems from the intertwined nature of the two national identities. As the present section explored, the formation of the national identities of the two nations occurred through the notion of civilisational hierarchy. The expansion of the Japanese Empire resulted in the construction of a system of dual negotiation in creating Japanese national identity, compensating for the sense of inferiority to Western imperial powers through the sense of superiority to Japan’s neighbours, especially Korea. As shown in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Datsua-Ron (On Saying Goodbye Asia), the sense of superiority was constructed not only in terms of power and modernisation but also in the realms of morality and ethics. Furthermore, Japan’s inability to forget its defeat in the Second World War owing to the continuing presence of American troops in the archipelago (Harootunian 2006, 101) congealed its sense of inferiority to the West, despite its social and economic prosperity. Therefore, the continuing sense of national identity in hierarchical terms forced Japan to view the Korean nation as inferior, which was in accordance with the hierarchy that was initially imagined in the late nineteenth century. In this sense, the Japanese national identity does not compel the nation to refuse to apologise, but continuously decapitalises Japanese resources that could enable an apology for its colonialism. Simultaneously, the postcolonial Korean society could not acknowledge that the Korean national identity is based on the negation of Japaneseness and has been unable to overcome, even after its successful modernisation and democratisation in the late twentieth century, its impulse to demand an apology for colonialism from a Japanese nation that does not have the capacity to apologise.

The relations between Korea and Japan are ‘capillaric’ (Ling 2016, 163) not merely because their two national identities are intertwined, but because they have co-constituted the hierarchical and colonial relationships that have defined the foundation of their national identities. The emotional elements in the relations between Japan and Korea – the former’s contempt and the latter’s anger – are therefore not the consequence of malfunctioning inter-state relations. Instead, they are the constant expression of two seemingly separate but ontologically interdependent national identities. In this sense, existing studies that try to identify pathogens such as incorrect or irrational diplomatic policies to solve the current diplomatic problems between South Korea and Japan are largely futile or only partially successful at most. Alternatively, we need to diagnose the problems between South Korea and Japan by looking into their relationship itself, just as EAM observes the harmony and interactions among various organs rather than the functionality of each organ separately.

Conclusion

What does the history of the identity formation of the two nations reveal to us regarding their current relations? The thick description of the co-constitutive process of Korean and Japanese national identity enables us to consider the foundational problem of the ontological security of the two nations. Temporal hierarchy – the idea that there exists a hierarchy of races and nations with different capacities to achieve civilisation – was critical to the formation of Japanese authenticity. Simultaneously, Korean national identity evolved while accepting and resisting hierarchical national narratives imposed by the Japanese colonial state. Through this process, the status of the Korean nation in Japanese national narratives was fixed as an inferior and backward entity – a reflection of Japan before its successful modernisation in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, Japan became an integral part of Korean national narratives as an eternal threat and evil. The worldview of EAM suggests that emotions such as contempt and anger are a component of the co-constructed national identities of Korea and Japan, not a by-product of poorly managed bodily (in this case, international) relations.

My new interpretation of reconstructing the two separate but intertwined identities of Korea and Japan is not a different form of truth claim. Following Cox’s well-known tenet that ‘theory is always for someone and for some purpose’ (1981, 128), the monistic view of Korea–Japan relations based on EAM’s worldview is both analytical and performative, because it challenges the mainstream theories’ ahistorical and decontextualised assumptions regarding national identities. The mounting tensions between Korea and Japan largely stem from the issues that emerged from the colonial histories through which the two distinct national identities emerged. Whether it is the territorial disputes over Dokdo/Takeshima or the recent controversy over the compensation for Korean forced labour during the colonial period, none of the tensions are directly linked with the interstate relations between the Republic of Korea that was established in 1948 and post-war Japan that emerged after the San Francisco Treaty of 1952. Instead, these disputes emerged due to the relations between the two nations from the late nineteenth century. Mainstream theorists’ belief that rational dialogues, true apologies or joint declarations can quickly and permanently solve current problems that plague the bilateral relations between Korea and Japan is profoundly misguided, because the ontologically intertwined national identities of Korea and Japan rely upon the very problems that the two states have been trying to resolve. A straightforward recognition of the source of the problems – the national narratives that constitute the essence of the national identities of the two nations – should be the starting point in the realisation of sustainable bilateral relations. Then, the most important virtue required to solve the current problems that plague Korea–Japan relations is patience that prioritises the de-escalation of disputes and facilitates the reformulation of national identities in a manner that presents the other not as an ontological enemy, but as a tolerable and understandable neighbour.

Acknowledgements

This research was initiated by my fortunate participation in the Political Healing Workshop held in Kyoto, 8-10 June 2019. I wish to express my thanks to Ching-Chang Chen and Kosuke Shimizu for their constructive comments on my earlier drafts. I also thank Seoyoung Choi for her supportive work during the revision processes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

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Jungmin Seo

Jungmin Seo is Professor of political science and international studies at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He received a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and taught at the University of Oregon and University of Hawaii before he joined Yonsei University in 2010. His teaching and research areas are nationalism, Korean politics, Chinese politics, critical approaches to political science and international relation theories.

Notes

1 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/world/asia/south-korea-wartime-compensation-japan.html (retrieved 19 May 2020).

2 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/business/japan-south-korea-trade.html?searchResultPosition=1 (retrieved 19 May 2020).

3 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/asia/south-korea-japan-intelligence-sharing.html?searchResultPosition=1 (retrieved 19 May 2020).

4 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/21/national/south-korean-tourists-to-japan-still-falling/#.XsN182gzZbU (retrieved 19 May 2020).

5 https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200218001700320 (retrieved 19 May 2020).

6 I believe that ‘thick description’ – a term coined by Geertz (1973) – and EAM fit together well because thick description also prioritises semiotic relations over individual behaviours in interpreting cultures.

7 It is important to note that current EAM as medical practice is a collaborative product of traditional medical practices and the state’s modern regime of medicine. In China, Japan and Korea, the modern conceptualisation of traditional medicine took rather different paths of combination, accommodation or co-existence (Jiang 2017). In this study, EAM is used only in terms of its philosophical premises and perspectives on the human body and mind.

8 In the open sea between Korea and Japan, a mild military confrontation between a Korean Navy destroyer and a Japanese maritime patrol aircraft occurred on 20 December 2018. Immediately after the incident, the Japanese government claimed that the Korean destroyer had threatened the Japanese plane by directing its fire-control radar at it. The South Korean government denied Japan’s allegation and counter-argued that the Japanese plane made a threatening low-altitude flight within 500 m of the vessel when the destroyer was in the process of rescuing a distressed fishing boat. The two governments made numerous announcements and revealed several pieces of evidence, but never reached a common understanding. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/12/25/national/politics-diplomacy/south-korean-warship-locked-onto-japan-patrol-plane-multiple-times-defense-ministry-says/#.XsXIJWgzZbU. (retrieved on May 21, 2020); https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/01/24/South-Korea-discloses-images-of-low-altitude-Japanese-flight/7631548340903/ (retrieved on 21 May 2020).

9 Unlike the general increase of right-wing nationalism worldwide, nationalistic political discourses in South Korea are strongly associated with left-wing/progressive politics, due to the significant role of nationalism during the democratisation movement in the 1980s. See Lee (2009) and Seo (2009).

10 Hence, problems such as border disputes are the symptoms of disharmony and imbalance in the capillaric relations.

11 According to an East Asian medical anthropologist, the ‘image’ maximises the observer’s ‘perceptual capacity and minimizes reductions by linguistic re-presentations’ (Kim 2017, 75).

12 The predominance of the paradigm of national history over regional history is particularly salient in historiographies in East Asian nation states (Lee 2001, 79).

13 According to Michael Herzfeld, structured nostalgia is ‘the longing for an age before the state, for the primordial and self-regulating birthright that the state continually invokes’ (1994, 22). Facing the issue of overcoming modernity (Harootunian 2002), the modernising nation states were to construct nostalgic national pasts that were not contaminated by modern bureaucratic state apparatuses. Therefore, structural nostalgia is an integral part of national cultural authenticity. For further discussion, see Seo (2005).

14 Although Korea, along with Japan and China, had sustained a central bureaucratic state for centuries, especially from the tenth century AD, I follow Henry Em’s insight that Korean national identity was formed through Korea’s integration into the global system of nation states, since the premodern Korean states were not interested in nationalising its populations (Em 1999).

15 The absence or weak statehood implies that the state-led construction of national identity was impossible in China or Korea. The development of the Chinese national consciousness by Kuomintang based on the notion of ‘national awakening’ is a similar example. See Fitzgerald (1996).