EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No. 4 Abstract East Asian countries have been engaged in disputes over history. While their historical contentions have caused suspicions and frictions among them, I argue that they have also served as a medium of dialogue that helps establish a common understanding about the individual countries’ contemporary reality and future direction. Historical contentions contribute to such a dialogue if and only if regional actors recognize each other as legitimate participants in a dialogue about the salient past and when they contend over the past within a common framework of meaning, can contentions over history contribute to the creation of a regional public sphere. The regional public sphere is a discursive area where regional actors exchange their understandings of the past and their desires for the future, out of which emerge a new focal point for regional issues and a shared understanding of their own and others’ identities. East Asia, through historical contentions in the 1980s and 1990s, produced an embryonic form of a regional public sphere but now stands at a fork between strengthening the regional public sphere and fracturing it into a contentious public sphere.
Author J.J. Suh is Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University. He teaches International Relations theory, International Security, international institutions, Asian security, and U.S. foreign and security policies. His research interests include military alliances, regionalization, US security policy, weapons of mass destruction, Asian security and Korea.
Asian countries wrangle over history. China, Japan and Korea are locked in disputes over Japan’s history textbook. Japanese prime minister’s apology about Japan’s past has been a sore issue for China and Korea for over half a century. A Chinese study of a local history (東北工程) suddenly became a concern for Koreans in 2004, degenerating into a source of tension between the two countries that were otherwise fast becoming close friends. A territorial dispute over a tiny island claimed by Japan and Korea or by Japan and China routinely escalate to a “history war” as the pair of governments turn to their respective versions of history as the source of the authenticity that prove their claims. These historical contentions are not mere academic disagreements. They have led to emotional street demonstrations, exchanges of accusatory government statements, and even recalling of ambassadors. They have had chilling effects on otherwise booming and mutually beneficial economic relationships. They often overshadow, and even forestall, summit meetings. Historical contentions are central to international relations in East Asia. The central location of historical contentions in the region’s international relations raises a number of questions. Why are the East Asian countries so concerned about the past of their neighbors as to make it an international political issue? Will these historical contentions condemn the region to a fractured and conflictual arena of diatribes where they remain a source of suspicions, contentions and possibly conflicts in the future? Do historical disputes hold the potential to contribute to the emergence of a regional public sphere in which East Asian countries engage each other in dialogues about their identities, desires, and worries? These are some of the questions I address in this project. In other words, I am not so concerned with questions of historical accuracy: What are historical facts, and who, if any, got them right? Rather I am more interested to analyze the phenomenon of historical contentions itself as a way to think about the possibilities and difficulties in creating and maintaining a stable, and even peaceful, regional order. The central task of the paper is to understand the ways in which disputes over history widen the emotional fissure between the East Asian countries or lay a discursive foundation for a community.
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