This edition first published 2017
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Cover image: Jeff Kingston / It is handprints of veterans of the Sino-Japanese war 1937–45 at the Jinchuan Museum near Chengdu, China.
I would like to thank Temple University Japan’s Dean Bruce Stronach, Associate Dean Alistair Howard, and Mariko Nagai, Director of Research, for their support of my research, fieldwork and writing, and Jonathan Wu, Assistant Dean for Academic Programs, for his deft scheduling of my teaching duties. I also want to thank Robert Dujarric, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, who recruits excellent research assistant interns. I am especially grateful to Chaninart Chunaharakchote, Sora Yang and Kimmin Jung for their extensive research assistance and to Eriko Kawaguchi and Mai Mitsui who have provided invaluable administrative support. Tom Boardman, our librarian, has been proactively helpful in tracking down material and alerting me to relevant publications.
I am grateful to the editorial crew at Wiley-Blackwell, especially Tessa Harvey for commissioning this book, and special thanks to Peter Coveney for picking up the baton when she retired and graciously shepherding the manuscript through the entire process before retiring. Kudos also to Brian Stone and Jayne Fargnoli for bringing the book out, Boston-based Katie DiFolco in marketing, UK-based Sarah Pearsall for copyediting and to the Spi Global production crew in India, making this a globe-spanning effort. I also want to thank anonymous reviewers and numerous colleagues who have shared their insights, offered suggestions and helped improve the final product. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Machiko for her unstinting support, and her father, Eichiro Osawa, who died at age 94 in early 2015 as this project was nearing completion. I trust he is singing with the angels on the sunny side of the street where he always seemed to be, perhaps walking with Rhubarb, our shibainu whose exuberance over 15 years (1999–2014) never failed to lift my spirits.
1 Asia
2 Northeast Asia
3 China
4 Southeast Asia
5 South China Sea: Disputed Claims
6 India
7 Map of Kashmir showing disputed regions
If World War III ever breaks out, its origins will not lie in the Middle East, South Asia or Eastern Europe. It is in East Asia—where the strategic interests of China, the United States, and their respective partners intersect, that the geopolitical stakes, diplomatic tensions, and potential for a global explosion are highest.
Gareth Evans, former foreign minister of Australia, Japan Times (January 14, 2015)
Gareth Evans’ warning about East Asia being the most likely site for a global conflagration is reason enough to probe deeper into the sources of regional tensions that are elucidated in the following pages. One need not be an alarmist or an economist to appreciate the increasing global importance of Asia. To understand the implications of the global geopolitical shift back to Asia after a two-century hiatus, it is critically important to examine the shared regional history and to appreciate how the end of colonial domination brought on by World War II, and legacies of that era, has shaped nationalistic attitudes. It is essential not to underestimate the power of the ghosts of the past to haunt 21st-century Asia and how they animate contemporary nationalism and influence national identity. Explaining this dynamic is one of the main goals of this book.
Nationalism is ever in search of an enemy. As such it is an abiding concern because it raises the risks of conflict, not just between nations, but also within nations. Nationalism is a modern ideology that draws on history, religion, beliefs, customs and traditions to establish a commonality and intense bonds of group solidarity that serve the purposes of the nation state (Smith 1995). Precisely because nationalism is so useful to the state, it involves myth-making, selective memories and dubious interpretations to construct the basis of a common identity and shared past that arouses and inspires. It involves forgetting that which divides or is inconvenient so that the Idea of nation can arouse “the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future” (Renan 1882).
Nationalism is so useful because it justifies state policies, endorses leaders’ aspirations and confers legitimacy on those who invoke it. By helping to construct unity based on shared identity, nationalism is crucial to establishing a sense of nation, an imagined community of affinity, belonging and communion that highlights distinctions between those who are part of the group and those who are not (Anderson 2006). Thus nationalism involves an intense “othering,” drawing physical and psychological borders that exclude in ways that intensify a sense of belonging and solidarity among those who are included. Tensions that arise from nationalism can thus target other nations or those who reside within the national boundaries who are not part of the mainstream and are thus excluded or marginalized. The populist passions aroused, however, can careen out of state control, leading to unintended consequences, spreading like wildfire at the grassroots. Since the affairs of state and demands of international diplomacy often require compromises or concessions, nationalism can thus prove inconvenient and discrediting to those in power. Leaders often find that unleashing the genie of nationalism is easier than getting it back into the bottle.
There is also the risk of stoking what Ramachandra Guha (2012) calls “little nationalisms.” This refers to the identity politics of groups residing within the national territory that feel excluded, mistreated, overlooked or overwhelmed by the mainstream nationalism. These threats or slights to minority identity can serve as the basis of autonomy or secessionist movements by political and diplomatic means, or in some cases insurgency, terrorism or other weapons of the weak. Like mainstream nationalisms, little nationalisms construct a common identity and shared history that is deployed to forge unity and advance agendas in their territory or community within the larger nation. To the extent that little nationalisms subvert the legitimacy of the prevailing mainstream nationalism, or resort to violence, they provoke a backlash because such subversion is an assault on the crucial idea of unity that is the foundation of the nation. This sabotage and treachery begets state-sponsored violence that inflames little nationalisms, strengthening solidarity in support of challenging the state and thereby igniting a cycle of violence. Guha also warns about the ugliness of little nationalisms, cautioning against glorifying or romanticizing what can deteriorate into sectarian thuggery and random violence in response to state repression.
There is a vast literature that specifies, complicates and interrogates theories of nationalism, but for our purposes, the succinct summary above can serve as a working definition/understanding that suffices for the narrative history that follows. This book focuses on how nationalism is embraced, expressed, contested, asserted and manipulated and how the confluence of these currents shapes national identity and destiny. In doing so, we explore the shackles of the past and how they influence contemporary attitudes and behavior.
Here the focus is on China, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, five critically important nations in Asia that will play a key role in how the world’s future plays out. Together they account for nearly 3 billion people, about 40% of the world’s population, and account for about 25% of global GDP, with each ranking in the top 16 world economies. Four of the countries are in the top 10 for defense spending: China #2, Japan #8, India #9 and South Korea #10; and China and India are nuclear powers. China spends more on defense, $144 billion in 2014, than the other four focus nations combined. The ongoing modernization of the armed forces in each nation is increasing military capabilities across the region, one that is beset by various territorial disputes and lingering animosities related to previous conflicts and unresolved historical grievances. As we discuss throughout the book, there is no shortage of flashpoints in the region; hence a need to understand the basis and context for these disputes. India is the hegemon of South Asia; Indonesia dominates Southeast Asia; while China, Japan and South Korea are navigating the uncharted waters of a massive shift in geopolitical power in East Asia favoring Beijing at the expense of Tokyo, a process influenced significantly by the US alliances with Japan and South Korea. Indonesia, India, China and Japan also face significant internal tensions that arise from clashes of culture, religion or ethnicity within national borders and in some cases a backlash against the encroachment of mainstream nationalism on minority communities and their sense of threatened identity.
The target audience is university students and global citizens curious about understanding Asia in the 21st century. There is no attempt to add to the rich theoretical literature on nationalism as this project addresses the need for a narrative history and thematic analysis of nationalism in Asia. Rather than a series of nation-specific chapters, here the emphasis is on cross-national comparison of selected topics that illustrate the impact of nationalism in Asia since World War II and what this portends. In order to do so, nationalism is contextualized so that readers can understand how it fits into the wider mosaic of each nation’s history. It is evident that past traumas cast a long shadow in 21st-century Asia that animates and sways identity politics relevant to comprehending nationalist sentiments and regional dynamics. The clinging to grievances, the selective amnesia and jingoistic swaggering are the basis of battles within and between nations on diverse battlefields ranging from textbooks and museums to territorial flashpoints.
The book is organized as follows. In the first section—National Identity—we explore the Idea of nation in each of the five nations that are the focus of this book: China, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea. Chapter 1 examines what these respective Ideas are and the leaders who played decisive roles in shaping their nations. Chapter 2 focuses on the legacies they bestowed and how these have been contested in recent decades as the Idea of nation has evolved. Chapter 3 focuses on national identity as represented in nation branding and soft power, while probing the gap between desired image and reality. The second section—Political Economy and Spectacle—shifts to examining nationalism and national identity in terms of economic policies (Chapter 4), democracy (Chapter 5) and sports (Chapter 6). This section imparts important context for understanding these societies, their varying trajectories and some key touchstones of national identity. Section III—Shackles of the Past—turns to the past and why it is relevant to understanding the present. Chapter 7 is about some of the key traumas that have shaped national identity and animate post-World War II nationalism. Chapter 8 examines museums as sites of collective memory and recrimination that provide insights on how the past is conveyed and wielded with an eye to contemporary purposes. Chapter 9 further develops this theme in focusing on textbooks. The fourth section—Flashpoints and Fringes—elucidates the implications of nationalism, internationally and domestically. Chapter 10 focuses on the origins and consequences of territorial disputes between nations, while Chapter 11 sketches some of the consequences of mainstream nationalism for domestic minorities and the backlash of ‘little nationalisms” that contest their marginalization.
This overview of a wide range of themes spanning five nations introduces readers to the vast subject of nationalism in contemporary Asia, with the aim of stimulating curiosity in delving deeper into areas of specific interest. In order to assist in further research there is a subject-organized bibliography pointing readers to some key articles and books.
China’s growing assertiveness in challenging the regional status quo and recalibrating it to serve Beijing’s interests has sparked an arc of anxiety that stretches from Tokyo, Seoul, Hanoi and Manila to Sydney, Jakarta, Naypyidaw and New Delhi. Is this shared concern propelling a US-led containment policy in the region, targeting China? Beijing is convinced this is the case, pointing to the so-called Obama Pivot to Asia, involving a planned shift of US military assets that has yet to materialize and enhanced security cooperation with regional partners where many of the dominant 21st-century issues will be decided. Some analysts wonder if China’s rise can be managed peacefully, while others counter that its track record is unthreatening and that its aspirations are about regaining the central role in regional affairs it exercised until the advent of western imperialism in the 19th century. And, isn’t China acting just like other major powers? Problematically the US and Chinese governments have grown accustomed to getting their way, raising questions about whether the two dominant powers in Asia can continue to both compete and cooperate. Probably they can, but what if they can’t?
India, the other Asian nation with a billion-plus population and impressive economic growth in recent years, is leveraging its position to maximum advantage, wooed by the US, Japan and Australia to offset China’s growing regional power, while also seeking improved relations with Beijing for economic benefit and strategic reassurance on their shared border. India is also threatened by Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy of gaining access to ports in the Indian Ocean in order to project its growing naval power. While China promotes this as a maritime Silk Road, New Delhi sees an encircling initiative driven more by military considerations than commercial interests. Aside from a border war with China in 1962, India has fought four wars with Pakistan, three of them related to the disputed territory of Kashmir. Kashmir remains a volatile flashpoint, while Pakistani support for terrorist raids in India heightens the risk of retribution and the potential for skirmishing to escalate. Cozier relations between Beijing and Islamabad are evident in the Chinese-bankrolled and -built Gwadar deep-water port project in western Pakistan on the Arabian Sea, situated near the mouth of the Persian Gulf where much of China’s imported oil and gas transits. This is a key link in China’s string of pearls. India is also concerned about Beijing’s increased support for weapons sales and nuclear energy projects in Pakistan, its arch-enemy.
Similar to India’s nuclear standoff with Pakistan, Seoul faces an existential crisis across its border with nuclear-armed North Korea, where the imperatives of regime survival complicate hopes for reunification of the entire peninsula. But, one asks, on whose terms? China and the US have a common strategic interest in managing a soft-landing for the North Korean regime, but divergent views on how to proceed that are echoed in their respective client states. South Korea’s growing economic dependence on China calls for a hedging strategy, but even if it is sensible to forge closer ties with Japan and thereby enhance the trilateral security alliance involving Washington, bitter enmities from the Japanese colonial era still resonate loudly in contemporary public discourse. Indeed, Beijing and Seoul have developed solidarity over their shared history with Japan and perceptions that Tokyo is again trying to whitewash this past. Indonesia, aside from squabbles with Australia, faces a relatively benign external environment.
There is a basis for cautious optimism that Gareth Evans’ warning about East Asia, while valid, is an unlikely outcome. Of course that is what European diplomats, the so-called “sleepwalkers,” were saying on the eve of WWI when it was assumed that strong economic ties between Germany and Great Britain made war unthinkable until the nightmare erupted (Clark 2013). Yet again the stakes are high and the losses would be incalculable, so the risk of regional or global conflagration seems very remote, or so we hope. Layered and extensive economic interdependence within Asia and between Asian nations and the US and Europe is a stabilizing factor that provides ballast in stormy seas. While the risk of conflicts within the region cannot be dismissed given the numerous flashpoints and tensions detailed in the following pages, the recent record on inter-state conflict is encouraging.
Much of Asia has enjoyed a prolonged spell of peace since the late 1970s. To clarify, the East Asian peace refers to the lack of major violent conflicts between states over the past four decades. Two exceptions to this peace are the brief Indo-Pakistan war in 1999, a relatively small-scale conflict, and China’s ill-fated 1979 incursion into Vietnam, also brief, but with heavy losses on both sides. Beijing learned the hard way what Washington already knew about Vietnamese tenacity.
While there are many competing theories about why the East Asian peace has prevailed and differing assessments about whether it will persist, there has been a significant degree of state violence directed within national borders (Kivimäki 2011; Weissmann 2012; Goldsmith 2014). Civil unrest, ethnic and sectarian conflict and secessionist insurgencies serve as a sobering counterpoint to the regional peace, and here it is argued that nationalism is a salient factor in domestic turmoil. Nationalism is one of many factors that have sustained antipathies, sabotaged reconciliation, limited governments’ room for maneuver and judicious compromise, while amplifying anxieties that undermine trust and cooperation between fellow citizens, accentuating divides between communities. No country knows the costs more than Myanmar (formerly Burma) where multiple ethnic insurgencies have flared since the middle of the 20th century. The military justifies its outsized role in Myanmar in terms of preserving the unity of the nation, crushing those who seek independence or greater autonomy. Similar instances of endemic violence are evident in India and Indonesia, while China has also had to cope with restive frontiers.
How nationalism will influence Asia’s future is a subject of considerable speculation. Predicting the future is not featured prominently here, but for what it is worth, it seems there are good reasons to expect that the Asian peace will persist and that cooler heads will prevail despite hotheaded nationalism. This doesn’t mean everyone should assume complacently that there is nothing to worry about. Formal and informal mechanisms designed to help manage conflicts and prevent escalation provide a basis for cautious optimism that conflict will not engulf the region. But warnings by Evans and others serve as stark reminders that preserving the peace requires constant attention aimed at reducing risk factors, and that neglect to do so may prove destabilizing.
Nationalism is not one of the most urgent risks to regional peace, but it is a salient factor that complicates the task of conflict prevention and managing tensions. Strategic rivalry, and the inherent risks of a rising China challenging a status quo promoted and protected by the US, is the main threat to regional peace. History does not hold many inspiring examples of status quo powers ceding enough to accommodate the aspirations of a rising power or the rising power settling for much less than it expects. The most recent example in Asia involves Japan and its ill-fated efforts to join and modify the status quo in its favor from 1895 to 1945. Rebuffed by the western powers, feeling bottled up and treated with racist condescension, Japan embarked on war to achieve its aims. This ended in tragedy for Japan and the region, a nightmare that still resonates loudly even now. Inadvertently, however, Japan did hasten decolonization and unshackle the nationalisms that define the region and its tensions which we discuss in the following chapters. Although there are some striking parallels between 21st-century China and Imperial Japan, the differences are profound, as is the international system, cautioning against exaggerating the threat. Clearly, China’s foreign policy has become more assertive, ratcheting up tensions with its extravagant maritime territorial claims, but it has also demonstrated restraint in pursuing its agenda, pushing forward and falling back in what amounts to a long diplomatic game in a situation where time appears to be on its side.
Cautious optimism on inter-state conflict in Asia is tempered by the relative fragility of peace between Pakistan and India and risks on the Korean Peninsula. Kashmir remains a potent source of tensions that could boil over again, and, given the nuclear option, a horrific scenario to contemplate. The tense standoff between the two Koreas could also spiral out of control, but China and the US have much at stake in averting such a scenario. Both nations also have much at stake in the East China Sea and South China Sea, a fraught situation of overlapping claims by China and its neighbors. Diplomatic and military maneuvering over these rival claims is driven and constrained by the Sino-US strategic rivalry and their respective interests. For the US, the stakes are arguably higher in the East China Sea because that involves Tokyo’s worries that its security alliance with Washington might prove unreliable, unwilling to risk its extensive interests in China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu, as the disputed rocky islets are named by Tokyo and Beijing respectively. Meanwhile, China is constructing a military base closer to where any action might take place in this evolving flashpoint.
The risks of nationalism are arguably greater domestically than internationally. As noted above, Asia has enjoyed four decades of almost uninterrupted peace between nations, but the region has been beset by extensive internal conflict. Mainstream nationalism “others” minority groups inside the national borders, making them a target of discrimination, marginalization and sometimes violence, thereby alienating these minorities and sparking tensions that can escalate into communal clashes and insurgency. Whether targeting ethnic, religious or linguistic differences, or a combination thereof, the tendency of the state to acquiesce to or indeed actively promote mainstream jingoism and communal politics is destabilizing. Communities that are marginalized, find ambitions thwarted, feel they are treated unfairly or endure the indignities of discrimination have good reasons not to buy into the mainstream Idea of nation and are open to alternatives. As we discuss in subsequent chapters, identity politics, chauvinism and resource exploitation at the expense of minorities in China, India and Indonesia have provoked rioting, bloodshed and acts of terrorism. These problems will persist. In the far more ethnically homogeneous Japan, the situation is quite different, but identity politics among Okinawans has been mobilized against the extensive presence of the US military bases on their islands, and resentment towards Tokyo for foisting this on them. A recrudescent nationalism among Japan’s conservative political elite generates other risks, notably hate speech targeting the large ethnic Korean minority in Japan, and orchestrated attacks on liberals and liberal institutions. These assaults spill over into international relations because the goal is to retract or dilute official Japanese admission of wrongdoing in the wartime and colonial eras and promote a valorizing and vindicating history that is unacceptable to those that suffered most from Japanese imperialism—Chinese and Koreans. In trying to regain national dignity, Japanese conservatives are trampling on that of Japan’s past victims and in doing so tarnishing their own while roiling regional relations.
Nationalism has a checkered reputation for good reasons. George Orwell famously commented that it is “the worst enemy of peace.” Nationalism feeds on grievance and unifies by recalling the shared struggle of overcoming past traumas. It is blinding and repressive, feeds on insecurities and appeals to primordial instincts. Problematically it also serves as the ideological basis for the modern state and thus shapes its agenda.
India’s Nobel Literature laureate Rabindranath Tagore was also deeply wary of nationalism; thus it is ironic that a poem he wrote in 1911 and set to music in 1919 was adopted as the Indian national anthem in 1950, after his death. He wrote:
Nationalism is a great menace. It is many countries packed in one geographical receptacle. They create huge eddies with their passions, and they feel dizzily inebriated with the mere velocity of their whirling movement, taking that to be freedom. (Tagore 1917, 144)
In a similar vein, Haruki Murakami (2012), a Japanese author with a 21st-century global cult following, also deplores nationalism writing:
It’s like cheap alcohol. It gets you drunk after only a few shots and makes you hysterical. It makes you speak loudly and act rudely … but after your drunken rampage you are left with nothing but an awful headache the next morning.
In his view, territorial disputes are an inescapable consequence of dividing humanity into countries with national borders. When such disputes are refracted through “nationalist sentiment,” they become dangerous situations with no exit. As such, “We must be careful about politicians and polemicists who lavish us with this cheap alcohol and allow things to get out of control” (Murakami 2012).
Now let’s turn to the Idea of nation and those who have distilled this powerful brew and bequeathed not only hangovers, but also shaped national identities on the anvil of history in the wake of World War II.