Cultural research seeks to lay ghosts of East Asia's history to rest

Source:Global Times Published: 2012-12-27 22:29:05

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov & Timothy Y. Tsu, East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence, published in December 2012 by Routledge.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov & Timothy Y. Tsu, East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence, published in December 2012 by Routledge.

With the rise of China, East Asia's international status is much more important, and is being viewed as the world's economic powerhouse.

However, the ghosts of history continue to haunt relations between the region's key countries.

Countries are demanding that Japan reexamine its military expansion during World War II and are calling for apologies. China and South Korea are embroiled in disputes over cultural heritage.

The Korean Peninsula is also very unstable. Just a few weeks ago, the two Koreas' launching of satellites made surrounding countries worry about the possibility of a space race between the two.

At a time when controversies over history have become a major source of conflict between the countries of East Asia, the book East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence, published in December by Routledge, examines the role of popular culture in promoting both friction and reconciliation within the region.

The book was jointly written by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, professor of Japanese History at the Australian National University, Morris Low, associate professor of Japanese History at the University of Queensland, Australia, Leonid Petrov, former Chair of Korean Studies at Sciences Po, and Timothy Y. Tsu, Professor at the School of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan.

The book stated that for over a decade, the region's governments and non-governmental groups have sought to confront the ghosts of the past by developing paths to reconciliation.

It analyzes the territory and cross-border dialogue of East Asia, and grass-roots historical dialogue in East Asia's borderlands.

It also set out specific examples to describe the reconciliation efforts in detail, such as gender and representations of the war in Tokyo's museums, historiography and media, cross-border dialogue in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the second Sino-Japanese War in Chinese movies.

The book examines how Korean historians from the two Koreas exchange ideas about national history, how Chinese filmmakers reframe their views of the war with Japan, and how Japanese social activists develop grass-roots reconciliation projects with counterparts from South Korea and elsewhere.

It also explores the increasingly important role of grass-roots social movements in creating dialogue across frontiers.

As the volume's studies of museums, monuments and memorials show, East Asian public images of modern history are changing, but change is fragile and uncertain. A new dispute will see all previous efforts go to waste.

However, even if little success has been achieved, this book can help us to sum up past experiences and promote future reconciliation. The ghosts of history should not always stand in the way of East Asian development.



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