(PDF) Obstacles to European Style Historical Reconciliation between Japan and South Koreaa practitioner's perspective 1

Before and during the Second World War, Japan established a legalised system of sexual slavery, in which approximately up to 200 000 women, euphemistically known as ‘comfort women’, were exploited. Although the victims came from all the regions of the Japanese Empire, the majority of them were Korean. While initial reconciliation attempts were met with refusal, a seemingly positive step was taken in December 2015, when South Korea and Japan announced that they had reached an agreement which would ‘finally and irreversibly’ resolve this issue. The main argument developed throughout the present article is that the agreement does not do justice in addressing the victims’ needs and rights in many ways, with the need for acknowledgement and memorialisation being primarily neglected. A critical evaluation of the 2015 agreement is particularly important in light of its suspension due to the dissolution of the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation.

In his Liberation Day speech, President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea pointed out that he would like to improve Korea-Japan relations towards a common future. However, a thorn in the relation between Japan and South Korea has been the unresolved issue of the so-called comfort women who had been forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese army between 1932 to 1945. The case of the comfort women raises many legal questions. On December 28, 2015, the Japanese and Korean government reached an agreement that aims to resolve the decades-old problem. The so-called 2015 Agreement gave new impetus to the debate over the legal responsibility of the Japanese government under international law. The most relevant issues and subsequent legal developments will be discussed in the following article.

Abstract: The issue of “comfort women,” who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army during the imperial expansion of the Japanese Empire into the Asian continent in the 1930s and 40s, has been severely contested since its reemergence in early 1990s. The Korean Council, the feminist advocacy group for Korean former comfort women, has emphasized the national responsibility of the current Japanese government to correct the wrongs committed by its direct predecessor, the Japanese Empire, and demanded an official apology as well as proper legal reparation toward former comfort women. Feminists, both Korean and international, and the Japanese government have criticized the Korean Council for its unapologetically nationalist stance, arguing that Korean nationalism damages the international feminist coalition on this issue. I argue that not only is the Korean Council’s nationalist position compatible with feminism, but also that the issue of comfort women is an ideal case in which feminism and nationalism can be reconciled.

Obstacles to European Style Historical Reconciliation between Japan and South Korea – a practitioner’s perspective 1 By Andrew Horvat Introduction On November 19, 2006, the Asian Women’s Fund convened a symposium in Tokyo to mark its own demise. Established in 1995 on the initiative of the Japanese government to compensate women who had been recruited to provide sexual services for Japanese soldiers during World War II, the AWF’s mandate ended on March 31, 2007. Dogged by controversy from its inception, the organization was able to provide compensation to 285 former ianfu (comfort women) in eleven years. Right wing politicians and critics in Japan, who had long insisted that all comfort women had been “voluntary paid prostitutes,” denounced the AWF for attempting to address a non-existent issue.2 As for the Asian feminist and nationalist women’s organizations who had embraced the ianfu as symbols of their various causes, virtually all had pressured the elderly women they supported not to accept funds from the AWF. To the ianfu support groups, the AWF was an attempt on the part of Japanese government to avoid taking full legal responsibility for state-sanctioned sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Asian women. Throughout its short existence the AWF represented in a microcosm the failure of Northeast Asian nations to forge a shared perception of a negative past in spite of the passage of more than half a century since the end of World War II. Perhaps it was fitting that the farewell symposium should end with a heated exchange between a representative of a Japanese women’s NGO and a Korean3 academic, one of very few to have come to the AWF’s aid. Just as the moderator was about to declare the final session of the symposium closed, Nishino Rumiko,4 representative of the Japanese NGO VAWW-Net (Violence Against Women in War Network) stated: “This summing up session has been carried out without regard for the victims. The victims don’t want money. Their sufferings cannot be settled with financial compensation.” Park Yu-ha, professor of Japanese literature at Sejong University in Seoul, author of books and articles advocating reconciliation between Japan and Korea responded: “As I agree with you that it is the victims who are the central characters in this process, perhaps it would be best if we allowed them to speak for themselves.” Park’s comment referred to the pressure which ianfu support groups had put on the former comfort women to refuse money offered by the AWF. In a rare example of transnational cooperation between NGOs, VAWW-Net worked closely with Korean nationalist organizations to oppose the work of the AWF. A Korean ianfu support group had publicly denounced seven Korean former ianfu for having accepted money from the AWF. 5 The AWF, its demise, and the heated exchange which punctuated it, are all testimony to the obstacles faced by Japan and Korea while seeking to deal with the legacy of war and colonial subjugation. Although the AWF’s farewell symposium was by 1 no means the most dramatic example of Northeast Asians exchanging harsh words over an unresolved past in recent years, the incident is nonetheless significant because it offers an opportunity to assess the role of non-state actors in transnational history-related dialogue. Thanks to pioneering research by political scientist Lily Gardner Feldman, we now know that the day-to-day work of post World War II reconciliation in Europe was accomplished not by such visionary political leaders as Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt whose names we associate with the process of European integration, but rather by a multitude of organizations and individuals behaving as “transnational non-state actors” (TNAs). 6 For the most part, the TNAs Gardner Feldman categorizes correspond more or less with present-day definitions of civil society organizations.7 Gardner Feldman’s conclusions about how TNAs worked with or against their governments in the context of postwar European reconciliation, described below, lead us to ask about the likelihood of a similar process taking place in Northeast Asia, where, some six decades after the end of World War II, unresolved issues stemming from invasion and colonial rule continue to act as barriers to regional integration and, according to some, contribute to the risk of future conflict.8 Moreover, if, as Gardner Feldman’s research indicates, TNAs do play a key role in post-conflict reconciliation and that civil society organizations do make up a significant portion of a country’s TNA resources, then is it fair to conclude that countries with vibrant and active civil societies will stand a better chance of reaching out to their neighbors and engaging in the kind of grass-roots activities that will lead to overcoming a negative past? In other words, does the post World War II European experience offer lessons for Northeast Asia, specifically for Japan and Korea, the two countries in the region which can be described as having active civil society sectors? Or are there other factors such a the geopolitics of the cold war, legal and financial constraints on the growth of NGOs, or the particular historical and social conditions of each country, which mitigate against a European style solution to the region’s history problem? Civil Society in Korea and Japan On the positive side, we can see that in both countries, the civil society sector has flourished since the early 1990s albeit for different domestic reasons. In Korea, thanks to the transition from a succession of authoritarian military-backed regimes to popularly elected ones, NGOs have come to play active roles not only in domestic politics but also in foreign relations including the implementation of policies aimed at the reunification of the peninsula. In the case of Japan, the devastating Kobe Earthquake of 1995 and the long period of economic stagnation triggered by the bursting of the stock and real estate bubble in the early 1990s showed that a highly centralized bureaucratic state (though well suited for promoting economic development and expansion) is ill equipped to respond quickly to the needs of citizens after a natural disaster or to take care of the weakest members of society during an economic crisis. The above trends necessitated a reappraisal of government-civil society relations in Japan, which culminated in the introduction in 1998 of a new law permitting relatively easy incorporation of non-profit organizations. 2 Nevertheless, questions do remain whether the new Japanese NPO law marks a genuine departure from strict oversight of civil society by the state enshrined in the 1896 Civil Code. Moreover, in spite of the rapid growth of CSOs in both Korea and Japan, the 1990s also saw the rise of nationalism in both countries and with it the widening of the gap in approaches to a shared, difficult past. This gap was showing signs of deepening not only between Japanese and Koreans but also domestically within the two societies. For example, under President Roh Moo Hyun, a law was enacted to punish Koreans who had collaborated with the peninsula’s Japanese colonial administrators, even though any traitors who might be found alive would be 90 or more years old. In Japan as well, while millions of viewers have been glued to TV sets watching Korean soap operas since their introduction in 2003, just two years earlier right-wing political activists succeeded in gaining official approval for a history textbook for use in Japanese junior high schools. The textbook, asserting a national narrative aimed at countering what its authors saw as a far too apologetic attitude toward the teaching of the past so offended Koreans that the Korean organizers of the Japan-ROK project to jointly host the 2002 FIFA World Cup soccer matches threatened to pull out of the games less than a year before they were scheduled to take place. Only the rejection of the textbook by more than 99 percent of Japan’s local educational committees reassured the Koreans of the Japanese public’s good intentions and permitted resumption of preparations for the games. The success of the World Cup games in which Japanese fans, once their own national team had been eliminated, rooted for the Korean team, offers an alternative vision to the failure of the AWF to address the ianfu issue. State actors do have a track record of promoting reconciliation in Northeast Asia. One example is that between Japan and the United States after World War II.9 Although more modest than the postwar European movement for historical rapprochement, Northeast Asia has seen its share of state-inspired international exchanges in such fields as sports, popular culture and education. But while one cannot underestimate the superior resources available to the state in convening symposiums, supporting academic exchange, and funding major sports and cultural events, at least in the European case, non-state actors have demonstrated an ability to act more effectively than state organizations. 10 Transnational Non-State Actors – the European Experience In her analysis of the German government’s attempts to improve relations with France, Poland, Israel and the Czech Republic after World War II, Gardner Feldman creates four categories of TNA-state relations: TNAs can act as catalysts, complements, conduits or competitors. Gardner Feldman writes: “As catalyst or competitor, it is the TNA that dictates the terms of reference, with the German government performing in a more reactive mode. When TNAs are complements, the government sets the overall tone. The role of catalyst or competitor involves relations of tension with the government, whereas activity as complement or conduit by TNAs suggests harmonious relations.” 11 3 There are also TNAs that are religious bodies, academic organizations, labor unions, chambers of commerce, international friendship groups, student unions, political foundations, as well as prominent individuals – journalists or retired political leaders -who act in the public sphere to promote reconciliation. Gardner Feldman offers many examples of faith based catalytic activities such as the outreach by the French Protestant church to German POWs in the immediate post WWII period, the missives of the German Evangelical church to Poland in the 1960s, the exchange of letters between German and Polish Catholic bishops, similar attempts between German and Czech Catholic leaders, and the formation of the Societies of Christian-Jewish Cooperation promoting ties between Germany and Israel. Although strictly speaking not a religious group, Moral Rearmament played a crucial role in bringing together German politicians and French leaders (including members of the Resistance) for reconciliation meetings at MRA headquarters in Caux, Switzerland, in the late 1940s. One prominent German to participate in the meetings was Konrad Adenauer. With regard to TNAs as complements, Gardner Feldman focuses on the various school book commissions whose aim was to “decontaminate”12 school history textbooks by removing from them one-sided nationalistic versions of the past. Also in the complement category are TNAs, mostly NGOs, engaged in the promotion of exchanges including “youth associations, sports clubs, language centers, training centers, trade unions, schools, universities and town twinning organizations.” 13 As for TNAs in the role of conduits, an example is provided by the activities of the German political foundations, of which the three most prominent are: the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Social Democratic Party), the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Christian Democratic Party) and the Friedrich Neumann Stiftung (Free Democratic Party). While all of these foundations are supported from the public purse, they function independently of the state. All three have offices outside Germany and engage actively with the publics and opinion leaders of former enemy countries, holding symposiums, administering scholarships and generally promoting activities stressing shared values of democracy, free markets and human rights. With regard to competition, Gardner Feldman makes reference to the clandestine activities of former Nazi scientists who tried to help Egypt in the 1950s develop nuclear weapons for use against Israel, and the recent public questioning of Germany’s Middle East policies by a younger generation of Germans sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. In the case of Poland and the Czech Republic, German governments have faced internal opposition to rapprochement from large groups of expellees, ethnic Germans forced to flee from Silesia, an area with a formerly mixed German-Polish ethnic population which became virtually entirely Polish after 1945 and the Sudetenland from which ethnic Germans were driven out after World War II by the Czechoslovak government. Are there Northeast Asian TNAs? Although the above “patterns of reconciliation” reflect a European reality, they provide a grid against which it is possible to compare progress (or lack of it) in Northeast 4 Asia’s history debates. First of all, it is possible to see that religious organizations play a much smaller part in transnational activity in Northeast Asia in general, and on historical issues in particular. Unlike in Europe where Catholic and Protestant believers can easily find co-religionists in neighboring countries, there are no large transnational religious organizations to speak of in Northeast Asia. Granted, the Japanese and Korean ianfu support groups do have connections with the Christian churches of their respective countries, their relationship is highly asymmetrical: some 40 percent of the Korean population describe themselves as Christians while less than one percent of Japanese claim affiliation with any Christian denomination.14 When it comes to Buddhism, the relationship between Koreans and Japanese is even more tenuous. Although Buddhism was transmitted to Japan from China via Korea in the seventh century, the last time Koreans and Japanese shared that faith was in the 14th century. Buddhism was suppressed by the Choson Dynasty (1392-1910) which used Confucianism to bolster its legitimacy. The legacy of seven centuries of a shared belief in Buddhism between Japanese and Koreans consists today of about 100 Koryo Period (935-1392) Buddhist paintings now in the possession of a number of Japanese temples.15 We can also eliminate from Gardner Feldman’s patterns the conduit roles played by Germany’s three largest political foundations.16 No such organizations exist in Japan, Korea or the PRC. In the case of Japan, most transnational activity in international relations is either in the hands of government supported organizations or else a handful of large foundations which according to law must report to “competent governmental agencies.”17 The AWF is typical of a government-initiated foundation with close relations to its “competent agency,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As explained below, the overwhelming strength of the state in comparison to civil society has inhibited the development of large, independent Japanese NGOs and therefore has made it extremely difficult for all but a handful of civil society organizations to function as TNAs. One of very few Japanese NGOs that can be described as having a significant track record as an active TNA in historical issues is Peaceboat, which organizes cruises to various parts of the world holding on-board seminars aimed at achieving better understanding of the viewpoints of Japan’s neighbors. Peaceboat supports its activities through fees it collects from cruise participants. 18 Founded in 1982 when attempts to remove from Japanese history textbooks references to aggression on the Asian mainland triggered anti-Japanese demonstrations in Seoul and an official protest from Beijing, Peaceboat has grown into a mainstream, national organization with broad-based support throughout the country. Posters advertising its cruises to such trouble-spots as North Korea, the Middle East, and Cuba can be seen on the walls of restaurants, coffee shops, language schools and colleges even in remote communities. The fact that individual Japanese spend as much as $10,000 each to take part in the cruises indicates a willingness to invest both time and money in getting to know the often negative views of one’s neighbors. 19 In taking on the task of holding shipboard conferences in ports of both Koreas, Taiwan, the PRC and Russia – countries with which Japan has historical and territorial disputes – Peaceboat has the potential of acting as a catalyst for future government action. One of its former leaders has recently been re-elected to the Japanese 5 parliament. Its ship-board lecturers represent a broad cross-section of Japanese society, from leading public intellectuals to television cooking instructors. VAWW (Violence Against Women in War – Network Japan), the feminist NGO mentioned above, is a typical small-scale Japanese NGO, unusual only in that it is one of very few to function successfully as a TNA. Organizer of a mock trial in December 2000 which found the late Emperor Hirohito guilty of war crimes, VAWW acts as a competitor to the Japanese government. Nicola Piper states, “VAWW-NET Japan is one of the few Japanese groups active on behalf of gendered violence generally, and the ‘comfort women’ issue in particular, which has strong transnational links. The original, and possibly still the main impetus for concrete lobbying at the international level, however, seems to come from Korean groups.” Although a comprehensive comparison of the Japanese and Korean civil society sectors is beyond the scope of this essay, Piper is correct in highlighting the far greater level of activity on the part of Korean NGOs, especially on the issue of the former comfort women.20 Structural Constraints on Advocacy NGOs in Japan Peaceboat and VAWW present unique examples of independent transnational NGO activity in Japan in the field of political advocacy. Strictly speaking Peaceboat is not totally a non-profit; rather it acts as an ingeniously conceived corporation whose business model (travel agency and cruise line) allows it to be a self-supporting enterprise totally independent of the state and free from reliance on charitable donations. VAWW, on the other hand, consists of a highly committed small group of volunteers who belong to the minority of Japanese citizens capable of functioning across boundaries of language and culture.21 Peaceboat and VAWW are to a certain extent the exceptions that prove a rule. When comparing the role of European versus Northeast Asian NGOs in addressing problems of history the most important difference is the legal and financial constraints that have been imposed on civil society activity of any kind in Northeast Asia. Until very recently, in all three countries in the region, Japan, Korea and the PRC, the coming together of ordinary citizens for the kinds of activities that might benefit historical reconciliation with neighboring countries has been strictly controlled by the state. For this reason, TNA activity in any of the four categories cited by Gardner Feldman can be expected to take place on a far smaller scale between Japan and Korea, than for example between Germany and France, even though the former two neighbors have a combined population well in excess of the latter two.22 In Japan, until the coming into effect of a new Non-Profit Organization Law in 1998, advocacy groups, environmental organizations, in fact all but large-scale corporate foundations had virtually no hope of obtaining legal status. Without legal status NGOs could not rent offices, lease telephone lines, open bank accounts (needed to receive donations) or hire employees. Although Article 34 of the Japanese Civil Code, the law defining the activities of NGOs and NPOs has been in force virtually unchanged between 1896 and the present day, the definition of permitted activities for private non-profit groups was actually narrowed 6 in the 1970s and would not be broadened for almost 30 years – not until the passage in 1998 of a new NPO law..Until that time, Article 34 limited non-state or non-profit activity to so-called kôeki hôjin, literally “public benefit juridical persons” commonly translated as “public benefit corporations,” or “foundations.” An international survey of the non-profit sectors of some 40 countries described the challenges facing Japanese wishing to take part in civil society activities in the latter part of the twentieth century in the following words: “In order to establish a kôeki hôjin, approval by the ‘competent governmental agency’ is required. …[I]t is a very difficult and time-consuming process, except when the government itself takes the lead in establishing a kôeki hôjin. Moreover, approval is also subject to the discretion of the officer in charge of the application case, and no clearly stated and standardized criteria for incorporation exist. One of the major obstacles to creating a kôeki hôjin is the substantial amount of financial assets required by the public authorities prior to the actual establishment of the organization. The actual amount may vary from case to case, but it is very difficult for groups of citizens to accumulate assets of 300 million yen (US $2.3 million) or more, as required by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” 23 An example of the negative impact that an overwhelmingly state-centered political system can have on transnational civil society activity in reconciliation is the refusal in 1997 by the Japanese committee of UNESCO to accept an invitation from its Korean counterpart to initiate a dialogue on the teaching of history in high schools. In proposing the textbook talks, Korea was following the precedent of UNESCO mediation between West Germany and Poland on history issues begun in 1972 and concluded successfully four years later. According to a Japanese news report, in turning down the Korean request to enter into talks, the Ministry of Education’s school textbooks department and the Japan UNESCO committee stated, “This sort of research should be delegated to private historians. It is not the role of governments.” The Japanese UNESCO Committee, however, is part of the Ministry of Education and is staffed by the ministry’s own bureaucrats. As this example shows, in a state-centered society, there is little room for non-state actors. 24 What the above example also proves is that in the case of the West German-Polish negotiations non-state actors, working in harmony with the state, can achieve in the historical field breakthroughs which for structural reason may elude representatives of the state. Although the new NPO Law permits NGOs to obtain legal status through a much simplified reporting procedure, it still takes as long as three months to obtain approval. Moreover, tax exempt status has to be applied for separately; it is granted only rarely and often after long months of negotiations with officials. Since tax exempt status is reviewed once every two years, the lengthy procedure has to be repeated regularly. No wonder the majority of Japanese NGOs have opted not to obtain legal status even under the new much more liberal NPO Law. Korean NGOs – nationalism versus human rights 7 Given that Korea’s modern legal system owes its origins to the period of Japanese colonial rule, the Korean non-profit sector bears some remarkable similarities – at least in form – to that of Japan. Names of the various types of non-profit organizations (including expression for that term itself) are derived from the same Chinese character compounds that were absorbed into the Korean vocabulary during the 35 years when Japanese administrators ruled the peninsula. The structure and agenda of Japanese and Korean civil society began to diverge in the 1980s. Civil society advocacy groups came to be formed in the latter stages of authoritarian military-backed rule when rapid growth triggered “discrepancies in almost every aspect of society: between city and country, between classes, between regions, and between sexes.” 25 But economic expansion under Korea’s state-guided economy also spawned the growth of a middle class, whose members were now keen to address social ills. In contrast to Japan, civil society in Korea exercises strong influence on government. President Roh Moo Hyun owes his election – and his return to office after his impeachement – to the support of Korea’s powerful civil society sector. As Kim Inchoon and Hwang Chansoon state: “Civil society organizations are new actors in Korean society especially after the economic crisis of 1997. Sometimes they influence the behavior of the state and business. The reason the role of civil society organizations is highlighted in the reform process is that political parties cannot serve as a leading force of reform…. Cases in which civil society organizations express their views on pending policy issues became more frequent and their influence on the policy making process more powerful. Furthermore, the pressure they exert on the government and parties to adapt their policy alternatives [has] intensified. Major civil society organizations have equipped themselves with research institutes and policy commissions to strengthen their policy-presenting capacity.”26 Korean civil society has also undergone rapid expansion and a broadening of its agenda with the sudden shift in the late 1980s from military-backed regimes to elected governments. But, the flowering of advocacy activism in Korea would amplify differences between Japanese and Korean NGOs, not only in their relations with the state but also in political orientation. Perhaps no statistical comparison between Japanese and Korean advocacy groups is more relevant for the purposes of this discussion than the one released in 2006 by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. By the early part of this decade, the proportion of civil society workforce engaged in advocacy in Korea had risen to 9.9 percent, compared with 0.5 percent for Japan. Even accounting for the much larger size of Japanese civil society, nearly 2.9 million “full time equivalent” (FTE) employees, there were an estimated 53,000 Korean FTEs active in highly political Korean NGOs, compared with an estimated 14,000 similar workers in Japan. As a ratio of the total population of the two countries, the figures are even more meaningful: In the case of Korea, there is one civil society advocacy activist per 885 members of the population whereas in Japan there is one for every 9,285 citizens. 27 The asymmetry between Japanese and Korean advocacy NGOs is further compounded by divergent agendas. Commenting, for example, on the willingness of Korean NGOs to continue to work in North Korea long after European and North 8 American counterpart organizations had given up, Chung Oknim stated, “For Korean NGOs, nationalism, unification, and reconciliation [with North Korea] are the main motivations for relief activities that extend beyond simple humanitarianism.”28 It was this same tendency to place a higher priority on nationalism than on human rights which would bring about a split between Japanese and Korean NGOs working on behalf of the comfort women. The main reason for the rift, according to Chung Jin-sung, was the decision by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a coalition of Korean women’s organization to prefer to form alliances with so-called “anti-feminist [Korean] nationalist organizations” even at the risk of alienating the Japanese feminist groups with whom the Council originally joined forces in the early 1990s.29 Chun quotes an unidentified Japanese woman activist commenting at a joint Japan-Korea meeting of ianfu support groups as saying, “If Korea strongly raises nationalistic issues it will be difficult to form alliance [sic].” 30When the Korean Council shifted priorities in the early 1990s away from demanding compensation for the aging ianfu to campaigning for the punishment of officials who had been responsible for the coercive recruitment of the women and their maltreatment at “comfort stations,” the schism between the Japanese and Korean NGOs widened causing several of the former to side with the AWF which stressed compensation for the aging comfort women while they were still alive over pursuing the legal responsibility of the state. The Japanese women justified their compromise with the AWF on pragmatic grounds and argued that the goal of obtaining a full legal apology from the state is so time-consuming that given the advanced age of the ianfu, pressuring them to demand an apology and to refuse compensation actually violated their human rights. As of time of writing, there seems little hope for reconciliation between the Japanese and Korean women’s NGOs on the comfort women issue. On the contrary, the demand for a full legal apology from Japan has become so firmly embedded in Korea’s domestic politics of grievance, one suspects that even if the Korean NGOs wanted to compromise, they would find it difficult to do so as long as feelings of nationalism remain at present high levels in Korea. It would be a mistake, however, to suggest that Korean NGOs are more responsible for the heightened sense of nationalism in Korean society today than other groups. History talks between Japan and Korea came to an impasse in June 2005 when Korean scholars, appointed by the government, insisted that the Japanese members of the committee agree that the Treaty of Annexation concluded between Korea and Imperial Japan in 1910 had been illegal and therefore the entire 35-year period of Japanese colonial rule that followed was contrary to international law. One could argue that the fact that the Japan-Korea history talks had been set up by the governments of the two countries and all the delegates were officially appointed did not give much of an opportunity for participants from either country to work out compromises which might be embarrassing to the governments that appointed them. But since non-governmental talks between Japanese and Korean historians have also broken down in the past for similar reasons, Korea’s domestic politics of grievance has to be seen as a factor greatly limiting the potential of civil society TNAs for work toward Japan Korea reconciliation.31 9 What’s in a Name? As the name of the Korean Council indicates, the dominant Korean vision of the ianfu is a) that they were victims of colonial exploitation, b) that all were coerced into providing sexual services and c) that the vast majority were Korean. Although this view of the ianfu is widely held among Koreans, not all of these points are accepted by all scholars who have studied Japan’s wartime military “comfort stations.”32 The influence of the Korean NGOs, however, is so powerful that the Korean Ministry of Gender Equality’s home page carries a wartime photo of Korean girls belonging to the Women’s Labor Volunteer Corps (Chongshindae) incorrectly identifying them as comfort women.33 Although the mixing up of the volunteer corps with the comfort women is historically inaccurate, it reflects the nationalist narrative of victimization to which the majority of the Korean population subscribes today. The most likely scenario is that unscrupulous wartime recruiters of the ianfu spun tales of “a job at a factory in Japan” as a means to lull their victims and their gullible rural relatives into thinking that their daughters would be taken to Japan as members of the volunteer corps. Another reason why the ianfu have become conflated with the Chongshindae in the Korean consciousness may be because the most active period of recruitment for both took place at the same time, in the latter stages of the war. Research by Takasaki Sôji raises serious doubts about any members of Chongshindae being recruited by the colonial government for duty as ianfu although Takasaki concedes that a very small number of the girls could have been diverted to comfort stations after the factories they were assigned to had been bombed. One survivor states that this is what happened to her. However, as the Chongshindae were to be assigned to work at factories where Japanese language literacy was required, they had to have had a fairly high level of education. In 1942, according to official figures, high school enrollment for girls in Korea stood at 30,000.34 If one accepts the estimates of numbers of comfort women as “between 50,000 and 200,000,” a considerably high proportion of teenage Korean girls attending school would have had to have been deceived into becoming sex slaves for Chongshindae to be synonymous with ianfu. Since the total number of Chongshindae from Korea came to fewer than 4,000 for the entire duration of the war, the numbers don’t add up. In his report on the Peninsular Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps, Takasaki strongly implies that leaders of the Korean ianfu support groups are aware that most of the surviving comfort women were not Chongshindae, and yet, the Korean language name of the Korean Council, Han’guk Chongshindae Munje Taech’aek Hyeopuihoe (literally, “Korean Council to Tackle the Problems of the Chongshindae”) contains this highly problematic word. 35 That such a perception gap can exist between citizens of Japan, a former colonial power, and those of Korea, a former colony, may be understandable but for this kind of myth to be perpetuated, certain political conditions have to obtain. Every Wednesday, since January 8, 1992, a dwindling number of aging comfort women appears in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, demanding a “sincere apology” for the past. One cannot help wondering if these Wednesday demonstrations might not be part of a nationalist ritual in which the perpetuation of an image of suffering is likely to have greater value for 10 the movement than a compromise solution, even one that might actually bring considerable material benefit to the victims.36 Indeed, the sight of such anti-Japanese forms of nationalism has triggered a negative reaction from a small but growing group of Korean intellectuals, as can be seen in the response of Park Yu-ha to VAWW’s Nishino. It is an undeniable fact that Korea’s politics of grievance is an obstacle to transnational collaboration. While the sufferings of the comfort women cannot be underestimated, nationalism has driven a wedge between Korean civil society groups and potentially influential intellectual allies in Japan. For example, Takasaki, whose work on the Chongshindae is referred to above, has been a vocal critic of the Japanese government’s handling of negotiations with Korea leading to the 1965 Treaty of Normalization. Another is Uneo Chizuko, professor of sociology at Tokyo University, a prolific writer on feminist issues. Ueno has pointed to the inconsistency of the Korean position of focusing only on non-Japanese comfort women as victims. It is well known that a significant proportion of the estimated ianfu were licensed prostitutes from Japan as well as Korea. Possibly in response to the claim by right wing nationalists in Japan that all ianfu were prostitutes, the NGOs ignore the existence of the licensed prostitutes, insisting that all women had been coerced or deceived into becoming “sex slaves.” The actual stories that the ianfu tell are more complicated and point to a difficult era, when licensed prostitution was legal, when relatives in both Japan and Korea sold their female dependents into debt bondage, and when a Korean woman who escaped a bad marriage or an abusive father stood in great danger of being delivered by unscrupulous associates into the hands of recruiters working for private brothels connected to the military. Ueno has criticized the Korean NGOs and their Japanese supporters for creating an unrealistic “model victim…, a coerced Korean whose purity was sullied.”37 To Ueno, the airbrushing from history of the Japanese licensed prostitute, a victim of the same injustices albeit on a slightly lesser scale than her Korean counterpart also amounts to an injustice. Ueno has written, “The Korean NGOs have fiercely resisted equating Korean comfort women with Japanese licensed prostitutes but all that this accomplishes is to draw an artificial national boundary dividing one group of victims from another while perpetuating discrimination against prostitutes.”38 The process ends up making it difficult for the “impure victims” (Japanese former comfort women) to come forward. None have. There is reason to believe that as long as Korean NGOs subscribe to a national narrative in which Japanese are permanently characterized as perpetrators while Koreans embrace victimization, there is little hope for the emergence of the kind of mainstream civil society alliances that made postwar reconciliation in Europe possible among former adversaries. Although narratives stressing national suffering are universal, in the case of Korea the failure of successive governments to promote free discussion of the complex nature of the colonial experience, a time when the country experienced economic development under conditions of national humiliation, has nurtured simplistic black and white visions of noble patriots struggling against venal collaborators.39 As Sheila Miyoshi Jager has pointed out, in the power shift that took place immediately after the end of the cold war in Korea, “talk of the past has become a hot button issue.”40 In other words, history has become a convenient tool by which to settle old scores. The laws passed under President Roh to ferret out past collaborators is but one example of the kind of 11 “instrumentalization of history” which is viewed as no longer acceptable in the parts of Europe which have experienced the process of historical reconciliation with neighbors. 41 Japanese NGOs – Relevant but Marginal The geopolitical environment of post World War II Europe created conditions in which historical reconciliation could be seen as being in the national interest of each state. During the cold war, the major European powers faced a common enemy in the form of communism; they received massive encouragement from the United States to coordinate economic policies partly to assure speedy recovery from the ravages of war, and partly so as to put an end to wasteful and dangerous practices of economic nationalism, which had been among the causes of World War II. The Marshall Plan would spawn the OECD, the US would become a prime mover for the establishment of NATO, and US leaders would provide encouragement to Monnet and Schuman to press forward with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community, the first step to the creation of the EU.42 In the Far East, however, American foreign policy during the cold war would encourage division, not unity. The cold war demarcation line dividing the communist and capitalist camp in Asia – known back in the 1950’s as the “bamboo curtain” – placed Japan and the People’s Republic of China in opposing camps, thus making it impossible to carry on constructive dialogues about the past. In the case of Korea, division and war, followed by decades of poverty conspired to delay coming to terms with a complicated relationship with Japan. As for Japan, the cold war created domestic ideological divisions, which would make certain that Japan would lack the domestic consensus43 on historical issues necessary to engage former victims and enemies in constructive dialogue. Contrasting geopolitics meant that in Europe de-Nazification of Germany became absolutely necessary for the harmonious functioning of NATO. In Japan, however, the cold war required the mobilization of Japan’s pre-war elite – including the rehabilitation of officials who had overseen aggressive expansion and colonial exploitation – in order to turn Japan into a prosperous ally for the United States in the struggle against communism. But, obtaining the help of Japan’s pre-war elite came at a high price: the Western alliance would get an efficient, prosperous Japan with an anti-communist government, but dealing with Japan’s negative historical legacy would have to be shelved since asking questions about the past careers of US-backed leaders such as Kishi Nobusuke, an architect of the economy of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and a member of the wartime cabinet of General Tôjô Hideki, would inevitably tarnish the image of postwar Japan as a “new nation” committed to democratic values. And, because history had become the Achilles heel of every conservative government since the end of World War II, every unresolved issue – from the Rape of Nanking, to Unit 731 (the Imperial Army’s bacteriological warfare center in Northern China), payment of compensation to individual victims of Japanese aggression (such as slave laborers from China and Korea) and the description of such excesses in Japanese history textbooks – all became ammunition for the left to discredit the right. For the right, denying the past and casting doubt even on the most cautious scholarly assessments of 12 damage done by Japan on the Asian mainland, became a legitimate form of defense. As for the mass of Japanese citizens, with each passing year of prosperity under conservative rule, the historical issue became less of an immediate cause.44 Mass prosperity under conservative rule in Japan has also contributed to the asymmetry between Japanese and Korean civil society organizations active in the history field. In contrast to Korean advocacy NGOs, which are so powerful that they can help shape government policy on history,45 in Japan advocacy NGOs have failed to attract a mass membership, not only because of legal and financial constraints on the formation of civil society organizations, but also because for ordinary Japanese citizens digging up unpleasant aspects of their nation’s past is not a high priority issue. If anything, the outrage expressed by Beijing and Seoul over former prime minister Koizumi Junichirô’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, ostensibly because the souls of 14 Japanese Class A war criminals are consecrated there, has served to isolate Japanese advocacy NGOs from ordinary citizens, many of whom disapprove of Koizumi’s visits but see Chinese and Korean complaints about the visits as interference in Japan’s internal affairs. That is not to say that the Japanese advocacy NGOs are irrelevant or that ordinary Japanese are insensitive to the sufferings caused by their country on its neighbors during and before World War II.46 As Rikki Kersten points out, in spite of their small numbers, Japan’s “progressive intellectuals” have remained remarkable effective adversaries to successive conservative governments: “The tireless history textbook campaigners (such as Net 21) insist on detailing the facts of Japan’s war atrocities in high school textbooks…. Japan’s courts are bursting with former victims of wartime Japan demanding compensation, supported by citizen’s groups and teams of pro-bono Japanese lawyers…. And they have had some successes. So-called ‘comfort women’ were finally acknowledged by the Japanese government in the early 1990s when a progressive thinker, Yoshimi Yoshiaki, exposed documentary evidence of official complicity.”47 But, as Kersten concedes, “All of these movements… are self-consciously antistate….. It is an intellectual life on the periphery, far from the bowels of power….”48 And as Sheldon Garon has argued, most Japanese, even those who work with civil society organizations, are not predisposed to be anti-state. On the contrary, large numbers of Japanese citizens have positive attitudes toward their government and are happy to collaborate with it to help solve a broad array of social problems. 49 Isolated from political power, prevented from expanding by legal and financial constraints, and driven by a passionate sense of mission, one must ask if Japanese advocacy NGOs can be expected to become the vanguard of the kind of mainstream movement toward international historical rapprochement that we have seen in Western Europe. To see in high relief once more the differences between Northeast Asian and European approaches to similar historical problems, let us revisit the AWF, this time 13 comparing it with the German Future Fund, set up to address the needs of another group of forgotten victims of World War II. The AWF versus the German Future Fund Although the AWF has been described above, it is worth examining its origins since its debacle offers a textbook case of the obstacles posed by the combination of marginalized advocacy NGOs and a divisive political environment on historical issues. Confronted in 1992 with irrefutable evidence of official complicity in the recruitment of tens of thousands of women to provide sexual services for the Japanese military, the government came under pressure from two sides: from the left, to accept legal responsibility, show sincere contrition, and provide condolence money, and from the right, to stick to the official position that all pending claims against Japan stemming from World War II have been fully settled by the San Francisco Peace Treaty and subsequent international agreements.50 Unused to collaborating with non-state actors and confident that officials are best suited to handling international crises, bureaucrats took the lead and encouraged a group of scholars and prominent individuals to act as advisors to a foundation set up with the support of the Foreign Ministry. In spite of its noble purpose, the AWF became a reviled symbol of leftists and nationalists alike. Funding for AWF came mostly from the Japanese government but also, significantly, from voluntary contributions made by private individuals, who felt sympathy for the aging ianfu. Although the reasons for combining public and private funding were largely legalistic, the AWF did break new ground in being the first Japanese organization that sought to deal with a controversial historical problem as a public-private partnership. Set up in 1995 under Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, a former socialist, AWF sailed into controversy the following year, when Hashimoto Ryûtarô , a political conservative who replaced Murayama, reportedly resisted signing individual letters of apology to surviving comfort women. Hashimoto was also said to have opposed the idea of using funds directly from the national budget to make compensation payments on the grounds that doing so would undermine Japan’s official position that all claims against Japan had been settled.51 Although Hashimoto did eventually sign the letters of apology, the news of his hesitation caused one of the early supporters of the Fund, the widow of a former prime minister to resign, thus severely undermining the AWF’s reputation. What the AWF debacle illustrates is that Japanese advocacy NGOs working in the history field bear such strong animosity against their own government that even when political leaders do take steps to compensate survivors the pursuit of a political struggle against the state appears to the NGOs to be more attractive than compromise on behalf of long-suffering, elderly victims. In stressing the importance of taking a moral stand against the Japanese government, the marginalized Japanese advocacy NGOs and their much larger Korean nationalist counterparts do share a common purpose. It would seem that reconciliation is not part of the vocabulary of either the Japanese or Korean NGOs 14 that have supported former comfort women in their struggles against the Japanese government. 52 The inability of the AWF to carry out its goals is remarkable since it bears close structural resemblance to the German Future Fund, which by contrast has been a success.53 Both funds were set up to address unresolved historical issues, initially reluctantly by two former aggressor states.54 In the case of the German fund, the need was to provide compensation for the approximately one million surviving victims of Nazi forced labor mostly from former communist countries, who, because of the division of Europe during the cold war could not be parties to previous compensation schemes. Both the Japanese and the German governments chose a formula in which both government and private funds were mobilized. In both Germany and Japan, conservative forces resisted the compensation schemes and in both countries industry was reluctant to contribute to the funds. But, by 2000, just two years after law suits were brought against German companies in US courts by survivors of Nazi forced labor, the fund “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future” was set up and fully functioning. By making contributions to the fund tax deductible, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was able to get nearly 3,000 German companies to take part. Other than paying out the equivalent of $7.5 billion in compensation to nearly one million survivors, the Fund has also undertaken programs such as arranging for traveling photographic exhibitions on Nazi forced labor, the disbursement of scholarships to needy students, and recently even a German speech contest for Polish children in Gdansk (formerly Danzig) where the first shots of World War II were fired. By way of contrast, the AWF finished compensating individual former comfort women in 2002 and as has been mentioned already, the Fund ceased to exist as of March 31, 2007. No plans exist to commemorate the sufferings of the comfort women, to offer scholarships to needy women in lands where the comfort women were recruited, and no Japanese language speech contests are to be sponsored in neighboring countries. The AWF debacle highlights the inadequacy of Japanese institutions – governmental and NGO -- to give voice to the expressed desire of the majority of Japanese to see victims of past aggression properly compensated.55 Some Conclusions and Proposals Examining European examples of TNA activity is helpful in that we can see clearly that the kind of vibrant, mainstream civil society especially in the advocacy field evident in Europe is virtually absent in Japan. We can also conclude that for various historical and structural reasons state-NGO relations – especially in the advocacy area – are so hostile in Japan that it is unrealistic to expect European-style government-TNA relations to develop quickly in Northeast Asia. In Korea on the other hand the relationship is reversed, with civil society setting the agenda. While the positive effects of government-sponsored reconciliation programs such as officially initiated cultural exchanges, the broadcasting of soap operas on television, joint hosting of sports events, 15 and the promotion of “years of citizens’ exchanges” ought not to be dismissed wholesale, such top-down campaigns fail to address historical issues and therefore pose the risk of simply postponing divisive debates in which history can be abused by those in power. The comparison also helps us see that a vibrant civil society – for Korea does have one – is not the only factor that contributes to reconciliation. Favorable geopolitics, popular support for regional integration, and harmonious state-civil society relations are all contributing factors. We can also see that an entrenched political elite with ties to a negative past (as in the case of Japan) and a heightened sense of nationalism fueled by domestic politics of grievance (Korea) can negate the work of even the most enthusiastic TNAs. An obvious question for concerned third parties is, if Northeast Asia lacks homegrown TNA’s then should foundations and governments from outside the region make available the services of their own TNAs? The answer is yes. The first round of FrancoGerman textbook talks held in the early 1930s was underwritten by the Carnegie Corporation, which is still engaged in brokering peace throughout the world. Although the original Franco-German talks broke down in 1935, the recommendations made by participants at the final meeting before World War II were accepted in full when talks resumed in 1950. One outcome of Carnegie’s prewar funding of textbook talks was the Georg Eckert Institute for Textbook Research at Braunschweig, a repository of more than half a century of German experience in textbook negotiations with former enemies and victims, which recently mediated between Israeli and Palestinian educators. A German political foundation might do well to consider extending invitations to Chinese, Korean and Japanese delegations of educators to tour the facilities and perhaps stay long enough to spend time around a negotiating table. Another area in which the European experience offers a positive example is in the setting up of foundations whose aim is to turn the sufferings of victims into opportunities for reflection and a renewal of a commitment not to repeat the mistakes of the past. As mentioned above, the agreement in 2001 to compensate victims of Nazi forced labor in former East Bloc countries included the establishment of the German Future Fund. By way of contrast, the disbanding of the AWF represents the squandering of eleven years of investment in reconciliation. What a shame that the process of remembering the sufferings of the ianfu cannot be utilized positively to overcome the past by, for example, setting up a joint government-industry fund in Japan to underwrite the study at Japanese universities by needy but gifted students from Asian countries. Such a project would serve as a permanent act of atonement as well as a commitment to future cooperation. The Chinese and Korean graduates of Japanese universities, funded by such a program could act as bridges between Japan and China, as well as Japan and Korea in future economic and cultural relations. Youth exchanges offer another area where foreign foundations could cooperate with local organizations. An integral part of the reconciliation movement in Europe after World War II was the promotion of youth tourism. The Japanese government is at present promoting inbound tourism, but the goal of the “Yôkoso Japan” program appears to be 16 limited to improving the bottom line of the ailing domestic tourism industry. With a little extra effort – and outside encouragement -- the campaign could be turned into an opportunity to promote Japan-Korea and Japan-China dialogues in a friendly atmosphere at a very basic level.56 Not all examples of tourism as a peace mechanism need come from Europe. South Africa has been a pioneer in the establishment of transnational nature reserves. While there has been talk of turning the Korean DMZ into a peace park, a smaller group has proposed a similar idea for parts of the disputed Southern Kuriles, islands occupied by the Soviet army in 1945 but claimed by Japan. Placing the Gardner Feldman grid onto Northeast Asia, one can see that activity is concentrated heavily on adversarial state-NGO relations in the history field. What is needed now are TNAs capable of acting not only as competitors and catalysts, but also as complements and conduits. Of course, the emergence of political leaders and government officials in Northeast Asia capable of dealing sensitively with advocacy NGOs will have to be part of any successful plan to forge a regionally shared perception of the past. (ends) 1 From 1999 to 2005, the author served as the Japan representative of the Asia Foundation, an American non-profit whose mandate includes strengthening civil society. In 2005, the author helped found the International Center for the Study of Historical Reconciliation at Tokyo Keizai University. 2 Members of Japan’s conservative elite have never accepted the AWF’s mission as legitimate. On October 28, 2006, then Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shimomura Hakubun requested that the “government review the historical facts” that are the basis of the 1993 statement by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Kôno Yôhei accepting official responsibility for the wartime “direct and indirect involvement” in the “establishment and management” of comfort stations. Shimomura is among several leading members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who would like to see the government rescind the statement and disavow responsibility for forcible recruitment and maltreatment of comfort women. 3 Unless otherwise stated, Korea refers to South Korea. 4 Japanese names appear in Japanese word order, family name first, given name second; Korean names are spelled to the extent possible in keeping with the spelling preferred by the Korean person quoted or referred to. 5 For a comprehensive treatment of the Asian Women’s Fund and its difficulties in providing compensation to ianfu, see: Soh, Chunghee Sarah, “Japan’s National/Asian Women’s Fund for “Comfort Women,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 76, No. 2 pp 209-233. 6 Lily Gardner Feldman. “The Role of Non-State Actors in Germany’s Foreign Policy of Reconciliation: Catalysts, Complements, Conduits, or Competitors?” June 2005, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, unpublished paper (quoted with permission of author). 7 Susan Pharr has defined civil society as consisting of “sustained, organized social activity that occurs in groups that are formed outside the state, the market, and the family.” Schwartz, Frank J. and Pharr, Susan J. eds., The State and Civil Society in Japan, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003. p.3 8 “Disagreements over interpretation of past events between Japan and China, and Japan and Korea can trigger regional instability, and as a result may threaten the peace and security of the entire world.” Fujisawa Hoei, “Commentary,” in Horvat, Andrew and Hielscher, Gebhard, eds. Sharing the Burden of the Past: Legacies of War in Europe, America and Asia, The Asia Foundation/Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Tokyo 2003) p. 19. 9 For examples of government-initiated programs aimed at promoting US-Japan reconciliation, see Yamamoto Tadashi, Iriye Akira and Iokibe Makoto eds., Philanthropy and Reconciliation – Rebuilding Postwar US-Japan Relations, Japan Center for International Exchange, Tokyo, 2006. pp 101-134. 10 In 2001 during the period of diplomatic friction between Japan and Korea as a result of the Japanese Ministry of Education granting approval to the nationalist history textbook for use in public schools, a 17 senior German official, who asked not to be identified by name, stated that the reason history talks between West Germany and Poland (1972 – 1976) had ended in success was because “We officials were not there.” 11 Gardner Feldman, p. 3. 12 Wolfgang Hoepken, former director of the Georg Eckert Institute of International Textbook Research writes, “An early goal of the [Georg Eckert] institute was to eliminate, through collaboration with international partners, the hostile images and negative stereotyping of other people and countries, which early textbooks had promoted, and thereby to come to a consensual narrative of past and contemporary history. Its basic intention was the “decontamination” of textbooks and historic concepts that had been poisoned by nationalistic misuse of history.” Horvat and Hielscher, eds. Sharing the Burden… p.3. 13 Gardner Feldman, p. 7. 14 Christian groups have political motives in opposing the AWF and demanding that the government clarify its legal responsibility for the recruitment of comfort women. After interviewing members of Christian groups helping illegal foreigners in Japan, Apichai Shipper and Loren King concluded in “Associative Activism and Democratic Transformation in Japan” (unpublished paper, MIT, 18 February 2002), “Assisting foreigners also strengthens their [Japanese Christian groups’] longstanding campaign against the popular deification of the Japanese emperor.” Another motive for Japanese Christians could be a feeling of regret or guilt for past collaboration with the government during World War II. Although some Christians did resist militarism during World War II, the majority of Christian groups bent to pressure from the government to support the war effort. Many regretted setting aside Christian their Christian principles and issued statements to that effect after 1945. 15 In 2004 Korean and Japanese newspapers reported that a number of the Korean Buddhist paintings, stolen from a Buddhist temple in the city of Akashi, in western Japan, had turned up in Korea. The thieves, two Koreans, stated at their trial that they felt no remorse since the paintings were originally Korean. These days, no one but a handful of scholars in Korea and Japan recognize that these paintings represent a shared cultural legacy and that they predate the invasions of Korea by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the late 16th century or Japan’s colonial domination of Korea in the 20 th century, eras when Japan did in fact plunder Korea of its cultural artifacts. 16 The Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy attempted in 2000 to encourage the creation of a Japanese foundation devoted to advocacy of democracy throughout Asia. As of present writing no Japanese political foundation with aims and programs similar to the German Stiftungs or with transnational capacity has been set up. 17 Amenomori Takayoshi, “Defining the Nonprofit Sector: Japan,” in Salamon, Lester M., and Anheier, Helmut K., “Working Papers of The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, 1993, p.8 accessed on Internet at: http://www.jhu.edu/ccss/pubs/pdf/japan.pdf (Last accessed January 1, 2007.) 18 Peaceboat’s ability to function as a TNA is closely related to the success of its business model. A disproportionately high percentage of the income of Japanese NGOs in the humanitarian and social development field, an area in which Peaceboat is also active, comes from “for profit” activities that are necessitated by the lack of other kinds of support either from government or private foundations. For a description of the utter poverty of Japanese non-profits working in the advocacy and international relations areas see Kuroda Kaori, “Current Issues Facing the Japanese NGO Sector,” in Informed, an Internet publication of The International NGO Training and Research Centre, Bulletin No. 8, May 2003 p. www.intrac.org The need for “earned income” by Japanese NGOs of the kind that might act as TNAs in historical issues becomes clear on p. 29 of Kuroda’s article where she states that as of Feb. 25, 2003 “only 12 organizations out of 10,000 non-profit corporations incorporated under the [1998] NPO Law have been approved as qualified non-profit organizations” permitted to receive tax-deductible donations from private individuals and corporations. In other words, while the 1998 NPO law has provided civil society organizations with legal status it has not made it possible for them to grow into viable organizations capable of acting as TNAs in any of the various roles described by Gardner-Feldman. 19 Peaceboat is international in ways that many Japanese NGOs involved in international relations are not: a significant number of its staff are Japanese-speaking foreign nationals. Other than operating cruises, Peaceboat works together with the European Centre for Conflict Prevention to put on conferences and symposiums on peace-building. 20 Piper, Nicola, “Transnational women’s activism in Japan and Korea: the unresolved issue of military sexual slavery,” Global Networks 1, 2 (2001) pp. 155-170. (ISSN 1470-2266) p. 163. Piper makes reference to a suggestion that “many Korean feminist groups draw on a nationalist discourse of the comfort 18 women as embodying foreign domination of Korea.” This question has serious implications for future, broad-based transnational activity since the Japanese and Korean NGOs focus on the comfort women issue for totally different reasons: for the officially approved Korean women’s groups the sufferings of the former comfort women are part of a narrative of national humiliation, a shared tragedy with symbolic meaning, the constant retelling of which is part of an exercise in patriotism; for the much smaller Japanese feminist NGOs the sufferings of the comfort women are part of gender politics for which, at least for the time being, there is little broad-based support in Japan. In the context of a Europe-Asia comparison, this rift is highly significant: TNA activity in Europe represented a desire on the part of people of diverse nationalities to forge a shared vision of the past. 21 Thanks to large-scale officially encouraged immigration to the United States and other English-speaking countries, Korea can now rely on a significant group of English-Korean bilingual speakers who act as a bridge not only in business dealings but also in public diplomacy. Japan has no such cadre of competent English speakers capable of dealing easily with counterparts in foreign countries. Their absence is lamented in op-ed piece such as this: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/opinion/edkumiko.php 22 Sister city ties offer a good barometer of transnational non-state activity. As of 2005, there were 111 relationships between Korean and Japanese cities and prefectures. Between France and Germany, there were more than 2,200. 23 Amenomori, p.8. 24 Rekishi kyôkasho kenkyû – Kankoku teian wo Nihon kyohi, (Japan rejects Korean invitation to engage in joint history textbook research), Hokuriku Chûnichi Shimbun evening edition page 1, July 22, 1997. 25 Kim Inchoon and Hwang Chansoon, “Defining the Nonprofit Sector in South Korea,” Working Papers of The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project No. 41, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Center for the Study of Civil Society, accessed at http://www.jhu.edu/ccss/pubs/pdf/skorea.pdf (Last accessed January 1, 2007) Although the transliteration of Korean terms in this paper does not follow either the official Korean government or the McCune-Reischauer systems of romanization, such an expression as “beyooungri danche” (non-profit organization) is clearly the Korean pronunciation of the made in Japan Chinese character compound “hieiri dantai.” Likewise “simin danche” (literally citizen’s group, meaning NGO) is a cognate of the Japanese “shimin dantai.” p.5-6. 26 Kim and Hwang, p.4. 27 Estimates of numbers of advocacy activists per population derived from figures available at http://www.jhu.edu/%7Ecnp/pdf/table301.pdf (Last accessed January 1, 2007.) 28 Chung Oknim, “The Role of Korean NGOs; the Political Context,” in Flake, Gordon and Snyder, Scott eds., Paved with Good Intentions – The NGO Experience in North Korea, Praeger, Westport Connecticut, 2003. p. 82. 29 Chung Jin-sung, “Alliances and Conflicts of Civic Societies of East Asia for ‘Purging the Past History:’ centering on the issue of Japanese military sexual slavery by Japan,” [sic] draft of an English translation prepared for presentation at The Academy of Korean Studies, Global Forum on Civilization and Peace, December 7, 2005. p. 4. The origin of the alliance between mostly Christian Japanese women’s NGOs and Korean women’s groups dates back to the 1970s when members of the two groups cooperated in a campaign to put an end to so-called “kisaeng tourism,” the travel to Korea mostly by men from Japan for the purpose of purchasing sexual services by Korean women. Although the use of the word “kisaeng” (traditional Korean female entertainer) which was applied to all Korean women engaged in selling sex to foreign tourists, “sex tourism” had been officially condoned since the 1970s since it was a source of valuable foreign currency for the country. 30 Chun, p. 5. 31 For an account of Japan-Korea non-governmental history discussions that ended inconclusively, see, Fujisawa Hôei, “’Nikkan gôdô rekishi kyôkasho kenkyûkai’ (90-93nen) yume no ato” (Remnants of a Dream: “The 90-93 Joint Japan Korea History Textbook Research Commission,”) in Chûô Kôron, August 2001. pp126-133. 32 For background on the various forms of recruitment of ianfu, see Soh, Chunghee Sarah, “Human Rights and Humanity: The Case of the ‘Comfort Women,’” The ICAS Lectures, Institute for Corean-American Studies, Inc. http://www.icasinc.org/lectures/cssl1998.html (last accessed, January 1, 2007.) 33 The photograph in the center of the lay-out captioned in English as “Choson woman, Korean comfort women of Nagoya” actually shows Korean school girls assigned for work at the Mitsubishi Aircraft 19 Company in that city. The Chinese characters on the sign carried by one of the girls refer to the aircraft company. http://www.hermuseum.go.kr/eng/exp/Experience01.asp (Last accessed January 1, 2007.) 34 Accoridng to figures released January 15, 1942 by the colonial government general, cited by Takasaki, school enrollments in Korea at all levels stood at 1.86 million. Most students, however, were attending primary school since colonial educational policies purposely failed to make available schooling for Koreans at higher levels. As of 1937, just under 94 percent of school age Koreans were attending primary school. Girls accounted for about one third of enrollments. Girls’ education in general was neglected in Korea until well after independence. For 1937 figures, see Lone, Stewart and McCormack, Gavan, Korea Since 1850, St. Martin’s, N.Y. 1993 p.67. 35 For a detailed explanation of the reasons for the perception among Koreans that Chongshindae were synonymous with ianfu, see Takasaki Sôji, “’Hantô joshi rôdô teishintai’ ni tsuite,” (About the Korean Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps), at http://www.awf.or.jp/program/pdf/p041_060.pdf After going through the records of Korrean schools for the latter years of World War II, when most recruiting for the Volunteer Corps was taking place, Takasaki found that schools attended by middle and upper class girls sent few (some sent not even one) girl to the Volunteer Corps. The colonial government’s Chongshindae recruitment program on the Korean peninsula was remarkably unsuccessful. Compared to the approximately 4,000 girls recruited as Chongshindae in Korea, there were just under 473,000 Teishintai (Japanese pronunciation of same Chinese characters as Chongshindae) volunteers drafted in Japan who were at their jobs at the end of the war. See also, Soh, Sarah C., “Aspiring to Carft Modern Gendered Selves – ‘Comfort Women’ and chongshindae in Late Colonial Korea,” in Critical Asian Studies 36:2 (2004), 175-198. Soh writes, “Notably, despite the widespread Korean equation of comfort women with Chongshindae, only four cases – out of more than sixty published testimonials – were identified as having been initially recruited under the guise of Chongshindae to become comfort women….The postcolonial appropriation of the term Chongshindae for comfort women by the Korean Council, in fact, not only reflects but also has reinforced the depth and strength of lingering suspicions on the part of Koreans about the abuse of Chongshindae as a convenient mechanism to deceptively recruit comfort women.” (p. 182). 36 Soh, C. S., “Japan’s National/Asian Women’s Fund for “Comfort Women,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 76, No. 2 pp 209-233. Soh observes: “Despite the assumed good will of the advocates for the victims they represent, it is necessary for supporters and observers alike to be alert regarding the insidious workings of power relations found in most political movements, the leaders of which are apt to maneuver and disregard the voices of the subaltern (as in the case of dissenting South Korean survivors) even after they have spoken.” 37 Ueno Chizuko, “Posuto reisen to ‘Nihonban rekishi shuuseishugi,’” (Japanese style historical revisionisms in the post cold war era) in Ronza, March, 1998. p. 67. 38 ibid. 39 For an excellent treatment of Korea’s economic development under colonial rule, see, Eckert, Carter J., Offspring of Empire – The Koch’ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism 1876 – 1945, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1991. 40 Jager, Sheila Miyoshi, “Korean Collaborators: South Korea’s Truth Committees and the Forging of a New Pan-Korean Nationalism,” in Japan Focus (e-zine) http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2170 (Last accessed January 1, 2007.) 41 Wlodzimierz Borodziej, who as a young Polish official took part in the 1972-1976 West German-Polish history dialogues has written, “[S]ince 1989, as Poland once again attained its sovereignty and Germany was unified, history does not play a large role in our relations. It is certainly still in our minds and will always remain so, because our location as neighbors did not begin in 1989, however, it can no longer be exploited for political reasons.”41 From Borodziej, W. “The German-Polish Textbook Dialogue,” in Horvat and Hielscher, p. 37. (The word “instrumentalisiren” in the original German has been translated as “exploited for political reasons.”) 42 Judt, Tony, Postwar – A History of Europe Since 1945, The Penguin Press, New York, 2005. Judt writes on p. 156, “On October 30, 1949, [US Secretary of State] Dean Acheson appealed to Schuman for France to take the initiative in incorporating the new West German state into European affairs.” The US request is in direct response to the communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin blockade. 43 “[T]hose who stick to the pacifist constitution – mainly on the Left – will use, as a reason for their position, the fact that the Japanese cannot be trusted with military power. Look what happened in World War II. It was uniquely atrocious and horrible and should never happen again. The more they make those 20 arguments, those who are interested in changing the constitution and want Japan to regain the sovereign right to wage war will have to minimize the historical facts with comments like ‘every country has waged a war like that and besides it was an anti-colonial war.’ ” Buruma, Ian, “Commentary” in Horvat and Hielscher p.140. 44 For a description of how Japanese enterprise unions, which had originally embraced leftwing causes in the 1950s including the promotion of good relations with the PRC, by the late 1960s had moved out of the political sphere, see Suzuki Akira, “The Death of Unions’ Associational Life? Political and Cultural Aspects of Enterprise Unions,” in Schwartz and Pharr, pp 195-213. 45 Takasaki refers to an article in the Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, which pits membership of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan at 300,000; by way of contrast the largest Japanese advocacy NGO, the Japan Wild Bird Society has some 120,000 members. 46 Saaler, Sven, Politics, Memory and Public Opinion – The History Textbook Controversy and Japanese Society Judicium, Munich, 2005. Quoting the results of a survey of Japanese public opinion about Japanese war responsibility carried out by NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting network in 2000, Saaler concludes, “The results suggest that a clear majority of Japanese believe that Japan still has continuing responsibility for the war [World War II], a belief that follows logically from the perception of the war as a war of aggression.” In the survey referred to by Saaler, 51 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “World War II was a war of aggression by Japan against its neighbors.” Just 15 percent of those surveyed disagreed with that question. Fifty percent also agreed that “unresolved problems” required the attention of “later generations….” p.143. 47 Kersten, Rikki, “The lament of progressivisim: voicing war responsibility in postwar Japan,” in International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter, No. 38, Autumn 2005, Special Issue “The Asia-Pacific War: history & memory.” Leiden. p 9. 48 ibid. 49 Garon, Sheldon, “The Evolution of Civil Society: From Meiji to Heisei” in Civil Society in the Asia Pacific Monograph Series, Harvard University Program on US-Japan Relations. Garon states that in Japan “new social forces did not necessarily arise in opposition to the state…. Most societal groups preferred to work with the state to realize their objectives….” Garon is referring to mainstream civil society which works with the state to “civilize the nation and alleviate poverty.” (p.5) For the attitudes toward the state of non-mainstream civil society activists working in politically controversial areas, see Shipper and King in note 52 below. 50 The boiler plate expression “subsequent international agreements” refers primarily to the 1965 JapanKorea Treaty of Normalization by which Korea gave up all further demands for reparations from Japan, and the 1972 agreement between Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei and Chinese leaders that the PRC would not seek compensation from Japan for war damages. In return, however, it was understood that Japan would actively support the PRC’s economic development. In the case of both China and Korea, Japan did this by means of soft loans. 51 Bureaucrats did dip into the public purse to make payments to former comfort women by setting up a separate budget item for “medical needs.” These funds, which were calculated depending on the costs of medical care in the women’s home countries varied between the equivalent of US$12,000 in the case of the Philippines to US$30,000 for Korean, Taiwanese and Dutch women. The official funds, however, were not paid directly to the women but on their behalf to medical and other institutions in their home countries as part of an elaborate arrangement designed to placate hardliners who felt that any direct payments from government coffers would undermine Japan’s official position that it owed no compensation to foreign individuals. (Personal interview with Ms Ise Momoyo, former director of AWF, October 8, 2005.) For a detailed description of the use of both private and government funds, see “Ianfu” mondai to Ajia josei kikin , (“The ‘comfort women’ problem and the Asian Women’s Fund, “ AWF September 2004. ) 52 In the dispute over the AWF between the government and activist NGOs, it is not too difficult to perceive a political fault line. Apichai Shipper and Loren King write in “Associative Activism and Democratic Transformation in Japan” (unpublished paper, MIT, 18 February 2002), “…103 of 107 Japanese staff and volunteers of these groups had never voted for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party….” (p.20) Although Shipper and King studied NGOs involved in supporting illegal foreign workers and victims of trafficking, a number of the same organizations have taken anti-government positions on the former comfort women. 53 For accounts of events leading up to the creation of the German Future Fund, please see Otto Graf Lambsdorff, “The Long Road toward the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future,” and 21 J.D. Bindenagel, “US-German Negotiations on and Executive Agreement Concerning the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future,” in Horvat and Hielscher eds. Sharing the Burden…pp 152160, and pp 161-172 respectively. 54 The German Future Fund (official name, Fund for Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future”) was set up in response to the launching of a number of lawsuits against German companies in the United States by survivors of Nazi forced labor. Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a conservative, had opposed any arrangements to pay former slave laborers. http://www.religioustolerance.org/fin_nazi.htm Jan 18 2002. 55 See Saaler.op.cit. 56 “Political reconciliation went hand in hand with reconciliation among people…. Since the 1950s, every summer millions of students began touring Europe individually, favored by the various programs set up in all countries in order to promote youth tourism.” Mezzetti, Fernando, “Historical Reconciliation in Italy,” in Horvat and Hielscher eds. Sharing the Burden…50. 22

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