Memory Politics and Ontological Security in Sino-Japanese Relations

Abstract:

Most international relations (IR) research on the role of collective memory and representations of the past gives the impression that these primarily matter for states constrained internationally by their history as aggressors, such as Japan. How former perpetrator states represent the past is seen as important for bilateral relations because it may affect perceptions in previously victimised states. Representations of the past in the victimised states are seldom dealt with. This article argues that war memory in victimised states is also highly relevant for bilateral relations, since it is closely connected to “ontological security”, or the “security of identity”. By analysing Chinese official documents and Japanese parliamentary debates the article shows how the Chinese government has used representations of the past for ontological security purposes, and how in response Japanese political actors have politicised exhibits at Chinese war museums that are seen as a threat to Japanese identity and interests.

Keywords:

• Japan
• China
• Sino-Japanese relations
• collective memory
• memory politics
• ontological security
• securitisation

Introduction

Since the end of the Cold War, what is often referred to as a “memory boom” has taken place in many parts of the world (Olick et al., 2011, p. 3). On the one hand, this points to the explosion in the construction of memorial sites, such as monuments and museums, and ceremonial remembrance activities. On the other hand, the “boom” also entails a growing interest among researchers in the politics of memory. Most of these studies, however, have dealt chiefly with domestic memory politics (e.g. Lebow et al., 2006; Dawson et al., 2000). Academics have given much attention to domestic struggles about what to remember, and how to define the identity of a particular group. Since the late 1990s, this has been accompanied by a growing interest in the role of memory in international politics. Scholars have argued that memories and their associated historical lessons can either legitimise certain foreign policies (Banchoff, 1997; Müller, 2002), or limit the options available to decision-makers (Berger, 1997). The role of memory in foreign policy has thus been quite thoroughly theorised (e.g. Berger, 2002, pp. 79–84), whereas the way it affects bilateral relations is generally still treated on an ad hoc basis (Langenbacher and Shain, 2010, p. 2). Similarly, in reference to studies dealing with Asia, it has been argued that theoretical advances are scarce because it is historians rather than International Relations (IR) scholars who have addressed the issues (Hamilton-Hart, 2009, pp. 63–64).

Several observers have argued that Japan’s collective memory is crucial for understanding Japan’s relations with its neighbours and that the Japanese government’s perceived failure to sufficiently address and properly remember its wartime past has played a crucial role in curtailing its international influence (Kleinman, 1996, pp. 109–12). According to one argument, Japan’s strategy has thus been to attempt to reassure its neighbours that it will not resort to aggressive behaviour again (Midford, 2002, p. 2). Such studies focus primarily on the remembrance of former perpetrator states, with scholars such as Lind (2008, p. 11) arguing that proper remembrance and contrition on the part of a former aggressor is necessary, not only to demonstrate benign intentions to other states, but also to delegitimise violence and confer respect upon former victims in the eyes of the domestic population.

Even though it has been demonstrated that collective memory matters for China’s foreign policy (Wang, 2012), when the emphasis is on bilateral relations between China and Japan, the focus has tended to be on Japanese representations of the past to the exclusion of Chinese representations.¹ This article seeks to redress this imbalance. Securitisation theory has opened up possibilities for studying how various issues are constructed as threats, but few studies of the securitisation of war memory, especially of museum exhibits, have been conducted. Significant links between war memory and bilateral relations become visible when securitisation theory is applied. In doing so, I demonstrate that collective memory theory is more generally applicable than is commonly recognised, as representations of the past matter not only for former perpetrator states but also for previously victimised states. On the one hand, states may attempt to use memory to “immunise” their citizens from perceived ideological threats from other states. On the other hand, political actors may depict the memory narratives of other states as threats, and attempts may be made to alter specific representations of such narratives. As the analysis illustrates, this can involve the bilateral negotiation of the content of such representations. The article provides a rare insight into such negotiations.

Sino-Japanese relations offer intriguing and informative data concerning the politics of war memory. In particular, scholars have studied intensely controversies over Japanese history textbooks and visits by Japanese politicians to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. War museums, in contrast, have been given little attention. This is perhaps because they have not caused any major diplomatic rows between Japan and China (Rose, 2005, p. 118). Nonetheless, through an analysis of previously unexamined material relating to the politics of memory in Sino-Japanese relations, including official Chinese documents, Japanese parliamentary debates and other printed matter, this article demonstrates that war museums matter in Sino-Japanese relations. I analyse this material on the basis of a theoretical framework that combines insights from collective memory studies, securitisation and ontological security theory.

The article demonstrates how the Chinese government has constructed foreign threats to Chinese identity in official discourse since the 1990s. The Chinese authorities operate war museums, labelled “patriotic education bases”, as part of an effort to immunise Chinese citizens against such threats. Whether or not these attempts have been successful Japanese political actors have recognised these “challenges” and in response have discursively framed the content of Chinese war museums as threatening, prompting the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to raise the issue with Chinese government representatives. As we shall see, Chinese authorities have made changes to some Chinese exhibitions in order to accommodate Japanese concerns.

Much of the focus of the study is on Chinese exhibitions and less attention is given to Japanese displays. It might be argued that in this respect the analysis is somewhat unbalanced, but since the aim is to demonstrate that representations of the past in victim states matter in bilateral relations, it makes sense to focus on representations found in the latter.

Memory, Ontological Security and Securitisation in Bilateral Relations

The theoretical framework used in this article combines insights from collective memory studies, securitisation theory and ontological security theory. According to securitisation theory, a public issue can be either “non-politicized (meaning the state does not deal with it and it is not in any other way made an issue of public debate or decision)”, “politicized (meaning the issue is part of public policy, requiring government decision and resource allocations or, more rarely, some other form of communal governance)”, or “securitized (meaning the issue is presented as an existential threat, requiring emergency measures and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure)” (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 23–24).　Museum exhibitions are seldom seen as bilateral political issues that require action on behalf of state representatives, but if museums hold the collective memories that make a group what they are – that provide them with identity – museums may be important to the existence of such collectives. Memory is central to the creation and preservation of collectives: “It is not just that we remember as members of groups, but that we constitute those groups and their members simultaneously in the act (thus re-member-ing)” (Olick, 1999, p. 342; see also Bell, 2006, p. 4; Gilbert, 2000, p. 48). A key reason that people are members of collectives is that they remember the same things in more or less the same ways. Collective memory provides group members with a feeling of sameness and sense of who they are – i.e. with ontological security. “Ontological security theory … generally refers to the study of the practices that social beings (individuals and groups) utilise to secure their sense of Self through time” (Delehanty and Steele, 2009, p. 524). These practices include the stories that groups tell about their pasts. They “are the stories which a group, a society, or a culture lives by” (Assman, 1997, p. 15).

If collective memory provides groups with a sense of Self (that is, with ontological security), such memories need to be protected and secured from fading into oblivion through security measures. One “factor facilitating the longevity and continual re-creation of memory and its influence is the infrastructure dedicated to keep the memory alive” (Langenbacher, 2010, p. 29). An elaborate memory infrastructure, consisting for example of museums, memorials and school curricula, contributes to the institutionalisation of memories and reduces the risk of events being forgotten. In this way, museums function as a security measure against oblivion.

Securitisation theory argues that the goal of securitisation is to legitimise the adoption of emergency measures – i.e. measures that go beyond normal political practice (Buzan et al., 1998, pp. 21–26). Securitisation in the international realm “means to present an issue as urgent and existential, as so important that it should not be exposed to the normal haggling of politics but should be dealt with decisively by top leaders prior to other issues” (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 29). Museum exhibitions are perhaps not framed as such urgent threats that top leaders must deal with them “decisively prior to other issues”, but they are presented as threats that arguably need to “be exposed to the normal haggling of politics” (cf. Hagström and Jerdén, 2010). My analysis demonstrates how such exhibitions are raised from non-politicised to politicised issues.

The Discursive Construction of Foreign Threats to Identity in China

In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has emphasised the existence of foreign ideological threats to Chinese identity in a number of central policy documents and speeches. For example, in a document issued in 1990, it was stated that: “the forces of antisocialism, both at home and abroad, are bound to take every advantage and opportunity … and adopt every means at their disposal – political, economic and cultural – to infiltrate our society, to confuse and misguide us, and to carry out activities to undermine our purposes” (State Education Commission, 1990, p. 90). For this reason, it was necessary to raise the education of patriotism to “a position of extreme prominence” (State Education Commission, 1990, p. 91). An even more explicit example is found in a policy document issued in 2000, which stresses the need to strengthen patriotism in education. The document states that:

our country is at a critical stage of reform and in a crucial period of development, and the social situation has encountered complex and profound changes, influencing young students’ value orientations. Domestic and international ideological contradictions and struggles have become more complicated; in particular, hostile international forces have further intensified ideological and cultural infiltration among our nation’s younger generations (General Office of the Chinese Communist Party and the General Office of the State Council, 2000, p. 45; emphasis added).

The documents articulate an urgent need to immunise minors from ideological threats stemming from other states. In 2004, another policy document stressed the importance of the younger generations to the future of the motherland and stated that because they are the future of the country there is a need to further emphasise their education in patriotism, collectivism, socialism and the national spirit. It reiterated the existence of a threat from “hostile international forces” mentioned in the previous document (Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council, 2004, pp. 75–91). Furthermore, on 18 October 2011, Chinese President Hu Jintao gave a speech in which he stated: “international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernising and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration” (Hu, 2011).

It is clear that among political leaders a fear of general ideological threats to Chinese identity exists, but is there a specific fear related to Japan and Japanese representations of the past? The Chinese government has not demanded changes to Japanese exhibitions seen as downplaying Japanese aggression, such as the Yūshūkan operated by the Yasukuni Shrine. This can be explained by the fact that the content of Japanese exhibitions has been given relatively little attention domestically in Japan. When domestic controversies have arisen concerning the content of Japanese exhibitions (as happened in the 1990s), with few exceptions the focus has not been on museums that failed to emphasise Japanese aggression but on exhibitions that were seen by Japanese conservatives and right-wingers as overemphasising Japanese aggression (Gustafsson, 2011, pp. 141–44). Needless to say, these museums were unlikely to be construed as threatening Chinese ontological security. In addition, the Yasukuni Shrine is a private entity. Chinese government criticism tends to be directed at representations linked to the Japanese government or at the behaviour of Japanese government representatives. The mere existence of the Yasukuni Shrine and its museum is therefore not criticised but visits by cabinet members to the shrine are. Similarly, when the Japanese media has reported on the screening of Japanese history textbooks, which it has done to a large extent, the Chinese government has repeatedly criticised its Japanese counterpart for approving textbooks regarded as downplaying Japanese atrocities (Rose, 2005, pp. 50–68). When Japanese government representatives endorse particular representations of the war, Chinese actors may perceive this as provocation as well as a threat to ontological security. If the Japanese media focuses extensively on such activities it is more likely that the Chinese government will take action.

Even though Japanese exhibitions dealing with the war have not been politicised by the Chinese government, there is nevertheless evidence of official Chinese concerns about representations of the war that are considered to be insufficiently anti-Japanese. In 2002, the Chinese Censorship Bureau refused to allow the screening of a Chinese film about the war against Japan. One reason was that Chinese civilians looking after a Japanese prisoner were not depicted as hating him (Gries, 2005, p. 835). A similar episode took place in 2009 when the Chinese movie Nanjing! Nanjing!, dealing with the Nanjing Massacre, premiered in Chinese cinemas. The director Lu Chuan received death threats and was branded a “traitor” because the film was said to depict one of the Japanese protagonists in a nuanced way. According to the director, the film came close to being cancelled in its first week on the big screen because of criticism on the Internet (Wong, 2009). Even though these incidents pertain to Chinese films, it is reasonable to assume that Japanese cultural products are similarly regarded as problematic. Indeed, there is specific evidence to suggest that museums dealing with the War of Resistance are supposed to provide a counter-balance to Japanese influences. In an interview, a member of the educational staff at the War of Resistance Museum in Beijing stated that: “(t)here are many young people whose understanding of Japan is just from … television and the brand names of household appliances, and they do not know the historical tendency of the ‘Japanese imperialists’ to invade, as well as the hegemonic nature of the Western world today” (quoted in Mitter, 2000, p. 292). This statement appears to express a fear of Japanese soft power – that there is a risk that young Chinese will acquire an unduly positive image of Japan.

Against this background, representations of Japanese aggression in Chinese war museums, as we shall see in the next section, serve to remind the Chinese of “the historical tendency of the ‘Japanese imperialists’ to invade” and arguably contribute to the creation of a negative image of Japan.

Measures Taken to Deal with Threats to Identity in China

The CCP’s primary measure in dealing with perceived threats to identity has been patriotic education. Even though it had already been part of education for some time, in the 1990s and 2000s, a number of policy documents, most notably the 1994 Guidelines for Patriotic Education, further emphasised the importance of patriotism. This document aims to evoke the national spirit, foster national pride, promote national unity and revitalise China. It states that: “patriotism and socialism are in essence identical”. The history of China, especially its modern and contemporary history, is said to occupy a central place in patriotic education. Moreover, Chinese people should understand how their forefathers remained indomitable in the face of foreign aggression and fought bloody wars for national independence and liberation. The role of the CCP in leading the whole nation in the brave struggle to establish a New China should especially be understood. The document stresses traditional culture, the country’s national conditions (guoqing), national defence and security, unity among the nationalities, and the importance of peaceful reunification with Taiwan. It describes the Chinese as a multinational family. Furthermore, the plan calls for the creation of an atmosphere in which patriotic ideology is the leitmotif of society. Patriotic education should hence be disseminated via all levels of news, publishing and visual media. Traditional holidays, it is said, should not only entertain the people but also provide them with patriotic education. Patriots such as heroes, martyrs and other outstanding role models should be publicised and commemorated as good examples (Central Committee of the CPC, 1994).

According to the plan, patriotic education is for everyone, but with a focus on the youth. Their patriotic consciousness should be developed and, significantly, people should be guided into establishing correct ideals, beliefs and values. Youngsters need to understand the relationship between the nation, collective and individual. They are supposed to love the nation, their hometown, the collective and their position. Schools, from kindergarten to university, play an important role in the education process, and all education departments in all provinces should work out patriotic education plans for all subjects. In addition, schools must conduct education outside school that appeals to the senses of the students. Patriotic education bases such as war museums are indeed specified for use by schools as part of their curriculum. Activities at the bases should be made attractive and inspiring and tourist departments should make sure that their guides are aware of patriotic education. Commemorative activities on important holidays can be used and schools can utilise the bases for winter and summer camps (Central Committee of the CPC, 1994). In a previous notice on patriotic education, the bases were described as “vivid textbooks” with “better educational effectiveness” than the traditional classroom study of written material. Visits to these education bases have become a regular part of the school curriculum (Wang, 2008, pp. 794–96).

The importance of patriotic education bases was further emphasised when the Red Tourism campaign, which aims to attract tourists to revolutionary sites, was launched in 2004. According to an official with the national coordination group on Red Tourism, the campaign “will make people, especially the young people, [to] further consolidate their faith in pursuing the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics and realising the great rejuvenation of the nation under the [CCP’s] leadership”. The official also stated: “the great national ethos that grew out of the fights to win national independence” is a “valuable asset in both the revolutionary war periods and present-day efforts to realise the rejuvenation of the country. Visits to these sites will infuse such elements in the youngsters”.² The campaign has involved channelling large sums of money into the construction and expansion of Red Tourism sites, a significant number of which deal with the War of Resistance (Zhongguo Hongse Lüyou Wang, 2005). Patriotic education is, together with the Red Tourism campaign, a way of providing ontological security by dealing with foreign threats to the identity of the Chinese, especially Chinese youngsters. These efforts have involved the creation of a comprehensive memory infrastructure consisting of a large number of patriotic education bases.

When it comes to content, the War of Resistance against Japan plays a central role in patriotic education. For example, it stresses the importance of days of national shame related to the War of Resistance for educational purposes (Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council, 2004, pp. 75–91). Moreover, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin mentioned the Nanjing Massacre as a good example that could be used in patriotic education (Hughes, 2006, pp. 56–60). His successor, Hu Jintao, is quoted at the exhibition at the Nanjing Massacre Museum as having stated on 4 May 2004: “This is a good place to conduct patriotic education. We must never forget to carry out patriotic education of young people. No matter the time, we can never forget this painful history” (Zhu and Zhang, 2008, p. 292). In 1994, the year the patriotic education guidelines were issued, the memorial ceremony held at the Nanjing Massacre Museum grew to a “considerable scale” (Mo, 2011).

Some of the most important patriotic education bases deal with the War of Resistance (Zhongxuanbu, 1998). Museums such as the one in Nanjing and the War of Resistance Museum on the outskirts of Beijing receive large numbers of visitors, many of them school children. For example, the museum in Nanjing has received 5 million visitors every year since it re-opened in 2007 after being refurbished and expanded (personal correspondence with Zhu Chengshan, head of the museum).

To summarise, the CCP has dealt with the perceived ideological and cultural threat to Chinese ontological security through the launch of a comprehensive patriotic education campaign, which emphasises a particular Chinese identity. Patriotic education bases, of which war museums dealing with the War of Resistance against Japan make up a central part, function as a key pillar in this campaign. The campaign has been followed by the Red Tourism campaign, which further stresses the role of museums in patriotic education.

The Discursive Construction of Threats to Identity in Japan

War memory has long been a battlefield in Japanese domestic politics. Scholars have given a fair amount of attention to how the Japanese right wing criticises peace museums, which they consider masochistic and anti-Japanese (Yamabe, 1998; Hein and Takenaka, 2007; Ma, 2007; Smith, 2002). It has also been demonstrated that there is resistance to these attacks and that peace movements have been active in creating exhibitions (Yamane, 2009, p. 309). In addition, citizens’ groups have to a lesser extent criticised other museums for not dealing with the negative aspects of war (Tanaka, 2008). These incidents can be understood in terms of securitisation theory; competing groups attempt to politicise the content of war exhibitions because it threatens what they believe Japanese identity ought to be. In other words, the exhibitions constitute a threat to their ontological security.

Japanese groups are divided not only on their views of Japanese exhibitions dealing with the war but also when it comes to Chinese exhibitions. Japanese pacifists and peace educators hold largely positive opinions of Chinese war museums. Members of such groups have, for instance, published guidebooks for school visits to China in which a number of famous war museums are listed (Heiwa Kokusai Kyōiku Kenkyūkai, 2004). My focus, however, is on Japanese attempts to politicise Chinese war museums. It was mentioned above that the CCP’s patriotic education, in which war museums exhibiting the War of Resistance against Japan play a central role, is meant to provide security against ideological threats from abroad. In Japan, the content of such Chinese war museums has been constructed as threatening to what some believe Japanese identity should be.

A 2002 issue of the conservative Japanese magazine Sapio, which includes an extensive feature on Chinese “anti-Japanese sites”, claims that the “30 years of Sino-Japanese friendship is a lie”. The introduction to the special issue states that “even though successive Prime Ministers have repeated apologies and regret, been accused of conducting tributary foreign policy while giving huge amounts of aid, these buildings manifestly show the reality that China has obstinately kept making ‘anti-Japan’ the key word of Japan-China relations”. Furthermore, the purpose of the museums is allegedly to “fan anger and hatred” toward Japan.³ The first article in the special issue is called ‘China’s policy of hatred and spite as seen at the head temple of anti-Japanese exhibitions’ (Komori, 2002, pp. 8–11). Articles included describe some of the central claims of the exhibitions as fabrications, fiction and lies (Tanabe, 2002, pp. 21–23; Kō, 2002, p. 31; Sakaeda, 2002, pp. 16–20). In terms of securitisation theory, the publication of this special issue could be regarded as an attempt to politicise the content of these exhibitions.

Similar attempts to politicise the content of exhibitions have been made by Japanese parliamentarians in the Japanese Diet (Parliament).⁴ On 8 October 2001, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi visited the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Memorial Museum on the outskirts of Beijing and stated that he viewed the exhibits “with feelings of heartfelt apology and mourning” (MOFA, 2001). Nakai Hiroshi of the Liberal Party questioned the appropriateness of Koizumi’s upcoming visit to the museum (Diet Session 153, Budget Committee meeting 2). On 31 October, the museum was again discussed. This time, the main focal point of the discussion was that many Japanese school children visit such museums on school trips.⁵ According to one speaker, the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) Morioka Masahiro, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzō, who had accompanied Koizumi on his visit to Beijing, had reported that the exhibits were “grotesque”. Morioka stated that the number of Japanese high schools conducting school trips to foreign countries was steadily increasing. At the time, around 250 Japanese high schools went on trips to South Korea and around 200 to China yearly. The problem, Morioka argued, was that “in the schedules for such trips, visits to the kind of facilities Koizumi visited are incorporated”. Morioka asserted that all travel agents include visits to places such as the War of Resistance Memorial Hall in their schedules for school trips. In addition, he argued that it was a problem that even though the point of school excursions is to deepen students’ love for history, visits to domestic historical sites have receded while students have been made to go abroad to be “subjected to masochistic experiences”. In addition, he claimed that “the influence of school excursions is very strong” and that people “remember them for all their lives”. If such memories are made into “masochistic experiences,” he argued, “Japanese children would not be able to take pride in being Japanese” (Diet Session 153, Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Committee meeting 2). In this statement, then, Chinese exhibitions are clearly constructed as a threat to the identities of Japanese school children.

On 31 May 2002, Tsuchida Ryūshi of the LDP noted that more than “fifty anti-Japanese facilities” in the form of memorial halls dealing with the war existed and that more were being constructed. He stated that the feeling one gets is that through the use of these memorial halls, “anti-Japanese sentiments are being planted in Chinese people from the day they are born”. He then went on to say that his own experiences had led him to feel that young Chinese are more anti-Japanese than those who actually experienced the war. He suggested that they have been influenced by war museums – that exhibits inflame anti-Japanese sentiments. He therefore recommended that MOFA look into the matter (Diet Session 154, Foreign Affairs Committee meeting 17). Unlike the statement above, what is constructed here is not a direct threat to the identity of the Japanese. Instead, the speaker regards the construction of the identities of young Chinese as the problem, since he believes that they are raised to become anti-Japanese.

On 9 November 2004, Yamatani Eriko of the LDP suggested that the expression of anti-Japanese sentiments by Chinese soccer fans during the Asian Cup was due to the existence of war museums. She stated that people visiting museums such as the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and the War of Resistance Memorial Hall are given a misleading image of Japan. Yamatani stressed that in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics many foreigners were expected to visit China. If they were to be exposed to exhibitions containing misleading and terrible captions this would be “a big minus for Japan’s national interest”. Furthermore, “an amplification of hatred against Japan would destroy Sino-Japanese friendship”. Foreign Minister Machimura Nobutaka replied that Japanese students going on school trips to China and South Korea should perhaps be handed “proper material” containing “historical facts” to study ahead of the trips. According to Machimura, it was important to avoid the risk that “one-sided information was planted into the heads of Japanese high school students”. He also related that MOFA had pointed out some problematic exhibits at Chinese museums to the Chinese side (Diet Session 161, Diplomacy and Defence Affairs Committee meeting 5). For the purposes of this article, the exchange between Machimura and Yamatani is significant because it explicitly constructs a threat to the identities of Japanese and Chinese young people as well as “foreigners” and, by extension, to Japanese national interests.

On 25 April 2007, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) lawmaker Watanabe Shū presented arguments that depicted Chinese exhibitions as a threat to Japanese interests in a similar way to Yamatani’s statements. He urged MOFA to do something about exhibits “not based on facts” because during the Olympics in Beijing and the World Expo in Shanghai many foreigners who “know absolutely nothing about history” would visit China and have a terrible image of Japan imprinted on their minds. In addition, he suggested that the museum had been expanded in order to get it listed as a UNESCO world heritage site (Diet Session 166, Foreign Affairs Committee meeting 8).

Groups consisting of conservative politicians and academics have also made efforts to politicise exhibits at the museum in Nanjing. For example, in March 2009, a group called the Citizens’ Society for Removing Improper Photos from China’s Anti-Japanese Memorial Halls released a book about these memorials. On its website, the group claims that at anti-Japanese memorial halls around China, photos are being used for political purposes without having been subjected to any examination concerning their authenticity. To leave such exhibits alone is described as broadening a mistaken historical awareness and as amounting to a degradation of Japanese honour. The group therefore demands the removal of problematic photos. The group’s political connections are illustrated by their cooperation with the Diet Members’ Society for Removing Improper Photos from China’s Anti-Japanese Memorial Halls, which consists mainly of members of the LDP (Motomeru Kai, 2008). Hiranuma Takeo is the head of the Diet group and author of a book published by the society. In the book, the efforts by what is referred to as “our country” (wagakuni) – i.e. Japan – and China’s responses are summarised. At a symposium about Chinese exhibitions, the group emphasised the importance of protecting the “honour of the homeland” (Hiranuma, 2009, p. 134). They consider this purpose so important that it is even mentioned on the cover of the book.

Measures Taken to Deal with Threats in the Form of Chinese War Exhibitions

The analysis of measures taken by Japanese actors to address Chinese war museums constructed as a threat focuses primarily on the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Museum in Beijing and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing. These museums both receive large numbers of visitors, many of whom are school children.

The Chinese People’s War of Resistance Museum, located on the outskirts of Beijing close to where skirmishes between Chinese and Japanese soldiers led to the outbreak of full-scale war on 7 July 1937, was opened in 1987 and has since been renovated twice. On 13 October 2005, a representative of MOFA informed the Diet about the results of the most recent renovation of the memorial hall in Beijing, which had re-opened on 7 July 2005. The official, who had inspected the renovated exhibition in August 2005, mentioned three aspects that had been changed. First, before the renovation, the exhibition had ended with a section dealing with Japanese violence against the Chinese that, in his words, “gave a very bad impression and left a bad aftertaste”. The new exhibition, in contrast, had been “organised so that a section on postwar Sino-Japanese friendship came last”. Moreover, in the new exhibition, installations containing wax dolls illustrating the cruel behaviour of Unit 731 and the Japanese military during the Nanjing Massacre had been removed. Furthermore, “in the final part of the exhibition, new exhibits on postwar relations with Japan, for example, Japan’s recognition of history including a detailed presentation of the Murayama statement⁶ and a photo from earlier that year showing Koizumi and Hu Jintao shaking hands are displayed”. In conclusion, the official stated that even though some contentious exhibits remained, he thought, “the Chinese side had shown consideration” towards Japan. This change had been preceded by discussions between representatives of the Japanese and Chinese foreign ministries concerning the content of this and other Chinese war museums (Diet Session 163, Diplomacy and Defence Affairs Committee meeting 2). This episode is revealing as it indicates that the position of MOFA is that exhibits in Chinese war museums should end with sections stressing the positive relations between Japan and China after the war, thereby contextualising the war as an unfortunate period in bilateral relations that was succeeded by friendship. MOFA apparently believes that such sections have the ability to mitigate the negative impact these exhibitions may have on the image of Japan.

The Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders first opened in 1985 and has been expanded twice thereafter, most recently in 2007. Just as at the Beijing museum and some other Chinese museums dealing with the War of Resistance, towards the end of the exhibition there is a small section that could be called a “friendship corner”. In this section, the four great leaders of the PRC – Mao, Deng, Jiang and Hu – can each be seen in photos along with a Japanese prime minister. The normalisation of relations, the signing of the treaty of peace and friendship, the issuing of a China-Japan joint declaration and joint statements are mentioned along with a panel on economic and cultural exchange, people’s diplomacy and a text with the heading “past experience, if not forgotten, serves as a guide for the future”. This phrase should, according to the CCP, be the foundation of Sino-Japanese relations. There is also a small panel dealing with Japanese Official Development Aid to the PRC. Such friendship corners, it appears, have been constructed at the request of MOFA. MOFA’s efforts have been spurred by repeated requests in the Japanese Diet for it to take measures to deal with the content of Chinese exhibitions. Such discussions have, as seen above, often specifically targeted the Nanjing museum.

The Japanese consul in Shanghai reportedly pointed out to the vice-director of the museum during a visit in 2005 that some photographs at the exhibition in Nanjing were problematic. During the autumn of 2007, Japanese government representatives, including the ambassador, are said to have met with Chinese government personnel and negotiated the arrangement of the Nanjing museum a total of thirteen times. The Chinese side allegedly responded that the theme of the new exhibition is peace, that the content is based on historical facts and that there is hence no need for concern on the Japanese side. Reportedly, three photos, which were described as “improper”, were removed (Hiranuma, 2009, pp. 2–3). It appears that the results of these talks were not entirely satisfactory to the Japanese side since the consul in Shanghai lodged a protest after the museum re-opened in December 2007 claiming the exhibits were “unbalanced” and did not sufficiently deal with the countries’ friendship after bilateral relations were normalised (Katō, 2008). As a result of the measures taken by the Japanese side, some changes to the exhibition were made to placate the Japanese. Since the consul was not pleased with the results, however, it is likely that additional attempts to influence the content of the exhibition will be made.

It should be noted that even though Japanese concerns have been accommodated to some extent, the changes to Chinese exhibitions do not alter the basic narratives and interpretations of the exhibitions. The exhibitions continue to depict the Japanese military as an aggressor and the CCP as having heroically rescued the nation from the threat of Japanese imperialist aggression. The museums still explicitly interpret the historical episodes dealt with in a way that emphasises the importance of patriotic behaviour and the need to support the policies of the CCP (Gustafsson, 2011). In addition, the sections on postwar peace and friendship, especially in Nanjing, are small. The Japanese consul’s reaction, along with continued criticism of Chinese exhibitions in Japan, underscores the fact that the changes have not been radical.

Japanese political actors nonetheless spend time and effort on this issue. They obviously consider museum exhibitions to be important enough for diplomats to spend a great deal of time in meetings discussing them. Moreover, the fact that MOFA has acted – that it has made attempts to get Chinese authorities to alter the content of exhibitions – demonstrates that politicising moves by Japanese political actors have been successful in getting the issue onto the foreign policy agenda. In addition, the Japanese media has increasingly linked the expression of anti-Japanese sentiments in China to patriotic education, which is often called “anti-Japanese education”.⁷

Importantly, negotiations concerning the content of Chinese war museums did not stop with the 2009 power shift from LDP to DPJ. This is clear from a Diet discussion, which took place on 22 October 2010. The LDP’s Hirasawa Katsuei asked the then Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Yamahana Ikuo of the DPJ, about MOFA’s approach to problematic Chinese exhibitions. The discussion centred on a particular museum at the site of the former Jiandao Japanese Consulate in Jilin province in Northeast China, which according to Hirasawa is visited by busloads of children. As stated by Hirasawa, the Japanese military is shown in the exhibition torturing Chinese, yet there are no panels mentioning the friendly bilateral relations and the great aid provided by Japan to China in the postwar period. To this Yamahana replied, as had other MOFA representatives before him, that MOFA has repeatedly told the Chinese side that it wishes for more future-oriented and peace-emphasising exhibits and that it is concerned that such exhibits will have a “negative impact on the youngsters who in the future will carry Sino-Japanese relations on their shoulders” (Diet Session 176, Judicial Affairs Committee meeting 2). This exchange, like the other discussions in the Diet, illustrates that the participants largely agree that these are issues that need to be dealt with urgently. No objections are raised to what could have been understood as interference in China’s domestic affairs. Chinese war museums, politicised under the LDP, stayed politicised under the DPJ. The arguments presented to the Chinese side remain the same – Japan’s peaceful trajectory after the war and the friendly bilateral relations in the postwar era should be stressed for the sake of the future of Sino-Japanese relations.

Whereas the Chinese government has responded to what it interprets as threats to Chinese identity by strengthening patriotic education, the Japanese government has reacted differently to similar threats. Even though measures have been taken to make Japanese education more patriotic, for example through the revision of the Fundamental Law of Education (FLE) in 2006, these efforts have not been explicitly linked to the kinds of threat construction discussed here. Instead, the main thrust has been to try to persuade the Chinese authorities to alter exhibitions. MOFA has requested not only that the Chinese government make efforts to remove exhibits but also that it make sure that material in the form of friendship corners emphasising the positive aspects of bilateral relations is added to exhibitions. The threat to Japanese ontological security is understood both as a direct threat to the identities of the Japanese who visit these exhibitions and as an indirect threat because the Chinese and others who are exposed to the exhibitions are likely to become anti-Japanese. Anti-Japanese Chinese threaten not only Japanese material interests – for example, when Japanese businesses are attacked during demonstrations against Japan – but also Japanese ontological security, because they are likely to voice opposition to understandings of the past based on a certain view of Japanese identity.

The Japanese efforts seem to have had some success, as several Chinese museums, for example the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, the 9.18 History Museum in Shenyang, the Ranzhuang Site of Tunnel Warfare and the Pingdingshan Massacre Museum, contain sections that mention Sino-Japanese friendship. At the same time, there are many museums that do not contain such sections.⁸ As we have seen here, the difference can to a large extent be attributed to whether or not MOFA has made a particular exhibition into a diplomatic issue.

Conclusion

This article has argued that, while the focus of study has often been on perpetrator states (e.g. Japan), representations of the past in victimised states (e.g. China) also play an important role in bilateral relations. Chinese representations matter in several ways – attempts have been made by the CCP to use memory for ontological security purposes. Furthermore, political actors in Japan have politicised Chinese memory and made partly successful attempts to influence the content of museum exhibitions in China.

Political actors may, as has been the case in both China and Japan, depict the cultural products or memory narratives of other states as a direct threat to the ontological security of citizens of their own state. In addition, Japanese actors have politicised Chinese exhibitions of the past as a threat to the identities of Chinese and foreigners because of a fear that those exposed to such representations may become anti-Japanese. According to this argument, if Chinese and other foreigners become anti-Japanese this may, in an indirect way, threaten both Japanese material interests and the Japanese identity envisioned by these Japanese actors. In other words, it is ultimately a matter of ontological security.

The evidence presented in this article has revealed that many political actors share a fundamental understanding according to which people’s minds are affected by memory narratives. This rationale motivates their actions. They may not believe that their own minds are affected in such a way but they explicitly express the belief that others’ minds, most notably children’s, are thus affected. Some would perhaps argue that the primary reason that Japanese government representatives have raised the issue of Chinese war museums is to blame the Chinese side for bilateral tensions. Yet if this were indeed the main purpose, the Japanese government would certainly have made a greater effort to get its message across to a larger audience. Instead, Japanese government representatives have discussed the content of exhibitions with Chinese officials with the intent of having it changed in a discreet way. If the objective had been to shift blame it seems likely that the media would have been used. This further indicates that these Japanese actors actually do believe that people’s minds are affected by these museum exhibitions.

Both Chinese and Japanese actors politicise threats to similar referent objects, but the threats identified by the CCP are often general, whereas those referred to by Japanese actors are specific. This, it seems, leads to different responses and measures for dealing with these threats. The CCP addresses them mainly through education, whereas measures taken by the Japanese government have chiefly involved attempts to make Chinese actors alter Chinese exhibitions. The Japanese actors believe that Chinese exhibitions threaten Japanese interests not only because the minds and identities of Japanese youngsters may be affected but also because Chinese and foreigners may be similarly influenced by Chinese exhibitions leading, in turn, to security threats to Japanese interests. In other words, the referent objects referred to by Japanese actors are not all domestic. Therefore, domestic measures, for example in the form of education, are insufficient. Even though educational reforms that emphasise patriotism have been implemented in Japan in recent years with the revision of the FLE, Japanese politicians and bureaucrats arguably operate under more far-reaching constraints than their Chinese counterparts. This means that domestic measures cannot be as comprehensive as in the PRC. An additional reason for the dissimilar responses could be the different nature of the threats. The threats against which Japanese actors attempt to secure Japanese identity consist of negative representations of Japan. Demands for changes to such portrayals might be seen as legitimate. Chinese actors, in contrast, appear to be more concerned with the positive portrayal of other countries. That foreign requests for changes to positive representations will be met, or even seen as reasonable, seems unlikely. This makes immunisation through education necessary.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to express his gratitude for invaluable feedback from Linus Hagström, Ulv Hanssen, John Hennessey, Björn Jerdén, Paul O’Shea, Marie Söderberg and the anonymous peer reviewers.

Notes

1. He (2009) is an exception, as the study focuses on the myths of both former perpetrator and victim states. However, it does not deal with how specific representations are politicised.

2. ‘China Boosts “Red Tourism” in Revolutionary Bases’, Xinhua News Agency, 22 February. Available at http://www.china.org.cn/english/government/120838.htm, accessed 5 September 2012.

3. ‘Chūgoku han’nichi meisho meguri’, Sapio 14(9), 2002, p. 7.

4. The full Diet transcripts referred to are available in the Gikai kaigiroku database: http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/.

5. Educational school trips are a Japanese institution with a history that dates back to the Meiji period, the first recorded school trip of this kind having been conducted in 1875. During the first postwar decades, as the peace movement grew stronger, school trips emphasising peace education to destinations such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Okinawa became common (Ide, 2009, p. 64).

6. In the statement, then Prime Minister Murayama expressed “feelings of deep remorse” and stated his “heartfelt apology” (Murayama, 1995). Subsequent governments have announced that they stand by this statement.

7. For a recent example, see ‘Han’nichi kageki demo – chūgoku wa naze yōnin suru no ka’, Yomiuri Shimbun, 17 September 2012, p. 3.

8. The author has visited close to 20 Chinese museums dealing with the War of Resistance since 2008.